In this study, the authors test new antimicrobials by measuring the ability of extracts from Australian-native Myrtaceae species to induce death of two bacteria S. aureus and P. aeruginosa.

Invasive species pose a significant threat to many ecosystems, whether by outcompeting native species and disturbing food webs, or through increasing risks of natural disasters like flooding and wildfires. The ornamental grass species Pennisetum villosum R. Br. was previously identified by the California Invasive Plant Council as being potentially invasive; this experiment was conducted to determine if P. villosum displays characteristics of an invasive species when grown in a California chaparral environment. Reults found that in both conditions, the two species had similar germination rates, and that P. villosum grew significantly larger than N. pulchra for around 95 days.

Farmers will need to increase crop yields to feed the world's growing population efficiently. The authors here investigate the effects of growing corn in the presence or absence of ragweed, an invasive weed found in many fields and gardens. Surprisingly, the authors found that corn grown in the presence of weeds grew taller and were more productive than corn that had weeds removed. This may help gardeners rethink the necessity of weeding, and may point a way to improve farm yields in the future.

In the modern world, communication and mobility are no longer obstacles. A natural consequence is that people from all over the world are mixing like never before and national identity can no longer be determined simply by a person's appearance or manner of speech. In this article, the authors study how a person's accent interferes with the perception of a their national identity and proposes ways to eliminate such biases.

This study assesses the capacity for milkweed species, an important host plant for Monarch butterflies, to grow in desert environments with different water levels.

Here, seeking to identify an optimal method to classify tree species through remote sensing, the authors used a few machine learning algorithms to classify forest tree species through multispectral satellite imagery. They found the Random Forest algorithm to most accurately classify tree species, with the potential to improve model training and inference based on the inclusion of other tree properties.

Inherent bias is often the unconscious driver of human behavior, and the first step towards overcoming these biases is our awareness of them. In this article the authors investigate whether race, gender or species affect the choice of charity by middle class Spaniards. Their conclusions serve as a starting point for further studies that could help charities refine their campaigns in light of these biases effectively transcending them or taking advantage of them to improve their fundraising attempts.

In this study, the authors develop a new hydrogel using photochemical crosslinking with bovine serum albumin and methylene blue. They find that this new hydrogel has some useful applications!

Zebra mussels are an aquatic invasive species. They attach to essential industrial structures and harm the native ecosystem, costing millions of dollars each year to control. This study explored the effectiveness of two nontoxic materials (Sharklet & Netminder) in combating zebra mussel attachment.

Research relating to freshwater acidification is minimal, so the impact of aquatic plants, Anubias barteri var. congensis and Anubias barteri var. nana, on minimizing changes in pH was explored in an ecosystem in Northern California. Creek water samples, with and without the aquatic plants, were exposed to dry ice to simulate carbon emissions and the pH was monitored over an eight-hour period. There was a 25% difference in the observed pH based on molar hydrogen ion concentration between the water samples with plants and those without plants, suggesting that aquatic plants have the potential to limit acidification to some extent. These findings can guide future research to explore the viable partial solution of aquatic plants in combating freshwater acidification.