The Journal of Young Investigators:
Innovation in scientific writing, publishing, and peer-review for undergraduates.
Social isolation and loneliness are strong risk factors for depression. Depression is highly prevalent, comorbid with eating disorders and disproportionately diagnosed in women. Still, the mechanisms underlying these disorders are incompletely understood and understudied in females. We used a social isolation model for depression to investigate its impact on binge- eating high-fat food in female mice.
Amphiphilic self-assembly is integral to membrane formation in the cellular environment. Prebiotic structures are guided by carbonaceous meteorites representative of components found on primitive Earth, such as simpler amphiphiles and fatty acids. The membrane assembly is an essential step to the protection of protocells in the hydrothermal environment, where they are introduced to high temperatures and osmotic tensions in hydrative and dehydrative cycles. Stabilization factors allow vesicles to compartmentalize from the larger hydrothermal environment, preventing the denaturation of non-template directed nucleic acid chains and other synthesized peptides. The presence of protein homopolymers in carbonaceous materials and their synthesis in simulated prebiotic conditions make them likely candidates for stabilizing lipid vesicles. In this study, protein homopolymers were analyzed for efficiency in decreasing vesicle permeability through kinetic spectrophotometry and retention of fluorescent labels in internal lamellar layers.
Early intervention is often recommended for children with cleft palate, although speech outcomes over the course of intervention have not been extensively documented. The primary objective of this study was to describe the change in use of deletions and substitutions in speech over the course of early intervention for children with cleft palate, with or without cleft lip (CP +/- L). Data from 25 participants were included in this analysis. The participants were part of a randomized control trial comparing Enhanced Milieu Teaching with Phonological Emphasis (EMT+PE) to a business-as-usual (BAU) group. Participants’ speech errors were evaluated at four time points using the Profiles of Early Expressive Phonological Skills.
ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that involves the loss of motor neurons in the spinal cord, brainstem, and motor cortex. This disease, estimated to be afflicting around 20,000 Americans, leads to progressive muscle weakness throughout the body. Recently, researchers at the University of California in Berkeley used the gene-editing technology, CRISPR-Cas9, to disrupt the mutant SOD1 gene expression in the spinal cord of mice with ALS, effectively extending their lifespan by 25%
Parents in modern Western societies are increasing their demands professional
childcare. According to Statistics Canada, about half of Canadian parents rely on childcare, with over 70% of households with two working parents using childcare on a regular basis. Despite the demand for daycare and after-school program specialists, Early Childhood Educators (ECE) are not widely recognized as holding a professional designation. Dr. Tricia Van Rhijn, professor of Family Relations and Human Development at the University of Guelph in Canada, shared some insights towards gaining a better understanding of professionals working in the childcare sector.
Proteins are often intuitively named after their function, and condensin is no exception. It condenses DNA inside the nucleus of a cell into X-shaped chromosomes for cell division. The name, however, provides no insight into how this feat is achieved. In fact, the molecular mechanism of how condensin organizes DNA inside the nucleus has previously only been hypothesized to involve extruding DNA into large loops.
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The increased popularity of micro-satellites puts great demand for precise measurement of thrust and impulse bits. Conventional methods cannot be used for this purpose because the extremely low values are significantly affected by background noise. This paper explains the development of a test bench to measure thrust between 0.1 and 1.0mN and impulse bits between 0.01 and 1mNs for micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) based micro-thrusters.