Crohn’s disease is a chronic inflammatory bowel condition with symptoms like abdominal pain, fatigue, diarrhea, and malnutrition. Though there's no cure, various treatments help manage it. This study explored the potential impact of Massa Medicata Fermentata (MMF), a fermented Chinese herbal medicine containing Saccharomyces cerevisiae, on Crohn’s disease.
Psoriasis is a heritable autoimmune disorder characterized by abnormal red and itchy skin patches. The authors study the family of a man with psoriasis. They explore whether the man's children, who do not show any symptoms of psoriasis, demonstrate gene expression consistent with the disease.
The misfolding of proteins leads to numerous diseases including Akzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Type II Diabetes. Understanding of exactly how proteins fold is crucial for many medical advancements. Chenna and Englander addressed this problem by measuring the rate of hydrogen-deuterium exchange within proteins exposed to deuterium oxide in order to further elucidate the process of protein folding. Here, mass spectrometry was used to measure exchange in Cytochrome c and was compared to archived 1H NMR data.
Researching gun violence and mass shootings in the U.S. is difficult due to the lack of consistent data collection. Some studies have linked mass shootings to personal financial stress, but little formal research exists on the impact of broader economic conditions. This study hypothesized an inverse relationship between mass shootings and economic performance, using the S&P 500 and unemployment rate as indicators.
In this study, the authors test whether a gravity vehicle, which is a vehicle powered by its own gravity on a ramp, could be designed to move faster when mathematical calculations for optimal mass and center of gravity were applied in the design.
In a common high school experiment to measure friction coefficients, a weighted mass attached to a spring scale is dragged across a surface at a constant velocity. While the constant velocity is necessary for an accurate measurement, it can be difficult to maintain and this can lead to large errors. Here, the authors designed a new experiment to measure friction coefficients in the classroom using only static force and show that their method has a lower standard deviation than the traditional experiment.
Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are projected to lead to a 0.3- 0.4 unit decrease in ocean surface pH levels over the next century. In this study, the authors investigate the effect of pH change on the mass of calcified exoskeletons of common aquatic organisms found in South Florida coastal waters.
Image credit: Chunduri, Srinivas and McMahan, 2024.
Collisions of heavy ions, such as muons result in jets and noise. In high-energy particle physics, researchers use jets as crucial event-shaped observable objects to determine the properties of a collision. However, many ionic collisions result in large amounts of energy lost as noise, thus reducing the efficiency of collisions with heavy ions. The purpose of our study is to analyze the relationships between properties of muons in a dimuon collision to optimize conditions of dimuon collisions and minimize the noise lost. We used principles of Newtonian mechanics at the particle level, allowing us to further analyze different models. We used simple Python algorithms as well as linear regression models with tools such as sci-kit Learn, NumPy, and Pandas to help analyze our results. We hypothesized that since the invariant mass, the energy, and the resultant momentum vector are correlated with noise, if we constrain these inputs optimally, there will be scenarios in which the noise of the heavy-ion collision is minimized.
Mealworms (Tenebrio molitor) are important food sources for reptiles, birds, and other organisms, as well as for humans. However, the slow growth and low survival rate of mealworms cause problems for mass production. Since alloferon, a synthetic peptide, showed long-term immunological effects on mealworms, we hypothesized that alloferon would function as a growth promoter to maximize mealworm production. We discovered that the overall weight of the alloferon-containing gelatin diet group was 39.5-90% heavier, and the development time of the experimental group was shortened up to 20.6-39.6% than the control group.