Browse Articles

The gender gap in STEM at top U.S. Universities: change over time and relationship with ranking

Kruus et al. | Jun 25, 2024

The gender gap in STEM at top U.S. Universities: change over time and relationship with ranking

Authors address the gender disparity in STEM fields, examining changes in gender diversity across male-dominated undergraduate programs over 19 years at 24 top universities. Analyzing data from NCES IPEDS, it identifies STEM as persistently male-dominated but notes increasing gender diversity in many disciplines, particularly in recent years. Results indicate that higher-ranked universities in disciplines like computer science and mechanical engineering show a weak correlation with improved gender diversity, suggesting effective initiatives can mitigate the gender gap in STEM, despite ongoing challenges.

Read More...

Does Gaming Improve Cognitive Skills?

Chakravarti et al. | Jan 26, 2015

Does Gaming Improve Cognitive Skills?

Playing video games may improve mental performance by encouraging practicing logical reasoning skills. Students who played video games in between two tests tended to perform better on the second test than those that did not play video games.

Read More...

Sex differences in confidence and memory

Primack et al. | Oct 25, 2021

Sex differences in confidence and memory

In this work, the authors sought to provide an original experiment to investigate the conflict over whether males or females tend to exhibit greater accuracy or confidence in their memories. By using an online portal to obtain a convenience sample, the authors found that their results suggest that though males tend to be more confident regarding their memories, they may in fact remember fewer details. The authors suggest that these findings merit further research before making systematic changes regarding crime scene recall settings.

Read More...

Defying chemical tagging: inhomogeneities in the wide binary system HIP 34407/HIP 34426

Còdol et al. | Oct 05, 2023

Defying chemical tagging: inhomogeneities in the wide binary system HIP 34407/HIP 34426
Image credit: Pixabay

This assessed the hypothesis that stars in wide binary systems are chemically homogeneous because of their shared origin. Abundances of the HIP 34407/HIP 34426 binary were obtained by analyzing high-resolution spectra of the system. Discrepancies found in the system’s elemental abundances might be an indicator of the presence of rocky planets around this star. Thus, the differences found in chemical composition might demonstrate limitations in the assumptions of chemical tagging.

Read More...

Modeling the heart’s reaction to narrow blood vessels

Athulathmudali et al. | May 22, 2023

Modeling the heart’s reaction to narrow blood vessels

Cardiovascular diseases are the largest cause of death globally, making it a critical area of focus. The circulatory system is required to make the heart function. One component of this system is blood vessels, which is the focus of our study. Our work aims to demonstrate the numeric relationship between a blood vessel's diameter and the number of pumps needed to transport blood.

Read More...

On the Relationship Between Viscosity and Surface Tension

Wei et al. | Sep 16, 2014

On the Relationship Between Viscosity and Surface Tension

Surface tension and viscosity are both measures of how "sticky" a liquid is, but are they related? The authors here investigate the surface tension and viscosity of mixtures of water with different concentrations of agar agar, flour, or detergent. Surprisingly, they find that the least viscous mixtures had the strongest surface tensions, indicating that the two properties are not linked.

Read More...

Bacteria and Antibiotic Resistance in School Bathrooms

Ciarlet et al. | Aug 24, 2020

Bacteria and Antibiotic Resistance in School Bathrooms

Since school bathrooms are widely suspected to be unsanitary, we wanted to compare the total amount of bacteria with the amount of bacteria that had ampicillin or streptomycin resistance across different school bathrooms in the Boston area. We hypothesized that because people interact with the faucet, outdoor handle, and indoor handle of the bathroom, based on whether or not they have washed their hands, there would be differences in the quantity of the bacteria presented on these surfaces. Therefore, we predicted certain surfaces of the bathroom would be less sanitary than others.

Read More...

Search Articles

Search articles by title, author name, or tags

Clear all filters

Popular Tags

Browse by school level