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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Sean Nash

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Sean Nash

Study suggests 'biodegradable' teabags don't readily deteriorate in the environment and... - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...240528115039.htm

biodegradable teabags manufacturing ecology environment polylactic acid plastic cellulose soil potential research idea engineering biology chemistry environmental science HSR-2025 HSR

shared by Sean Nash on 01 Jun 24 - No Cached
  • The research looked at commonly available teabags made using three different compositions of polylactic acid (PLA), which is derived from sources such as corn starch or sugar cane.
  • The teabags were buried in soil for seven months, and a range of techniques were then used to assess whether -- and to what extent -- they had deteriorated.
  • The study also examined the impacts of the discs cut from the teabags on a species of earthworm, Eisenia fetida, which has a critical role in soil nutrient turnover as it consumes organic matter.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Researchers found that being exposed to three different concentrations of teabag discs -- equivalent to the mass of half, one and two teabags -- resulted in up to 15% greater mortality, while some concentrations of PLA had a detrimental effect on earthworm reproduction.
  • It used analytical techniques such as size exclusion chromatography, nuclear magnetic resonance, and scanning electron microscopy allowing scientists to examine not just how the teabags had changed visibly but also structurally.
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 01 Jun 24
       
      This sort of work could be done by visual analysis alone with a rubric of sorts, but once data is derived, reaching out to a local lab might provide access to some of these tools for a tighter analysis and an even more convincing project,
  • we've shown that when it is not properly disposed of, for example after seven months in the soil, its molecular structure remains intact
  • But it is with immense frustration that I see alternative and substitute materials entering the market without clear guidance on how their benefits might be realised. Even if consumers understand how to dispose of these products only around half of households in the UK currently have access to the necessary waste streams for the type of composting required.
  • It is essential we learn from the mistakes we made with plastic materials by testing and labelling these novel materials in relation to the prevailing waste management infrastructure.
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 01 Jun 24
       
      Again, when you find a call for more research (aka: "learning" in this case) it is a good sign that you have found an area ripe for more work to be done.
  • "In this study PLA-based teabags did not fully deteriorate, and it seems that composting worms may be harmed by them. The lack of clear labelling can lead to consumers disposing of teabags in their compost, where any limit to complete degradation of the material raises the potential for plastics to enter the soil when compost is added to the garden, with potential impacts on garden wildlife and uptake by food plants."
Sean Nash

Scientists develop visual tool to help people group foods based on their levels of proc... - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...240530182042.htm

images photos data VirginiaTech visual tools food biomedical health diet group people tool scientists potential research idea behavioralscience biology chemistry HSR-2025 HSR science

shared by Sean Nash on 01 Jun 24 - No Cached
  • Scientists studying ultra-processed foods have created a new tool for assessing the rewarding and reinforcing properties of foods that make up 58 percent of calories consumed in the United States. The foods have been linked to a wide range of negative health outcomes.
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 01 Jun 24
       
      I couldn't locate this imageset and associated tools online, but I am willing to bet they might make it available to us, and the generation of more future research in this area is a key purpose of this work.
  • provides a collection of carefully curated images of minimally processed and ultra-processed foods matched on 26 characteristics, including macronutrients, sodium, dietary fiber, calories, price, and visual characteristics such as a color and portion size
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 01 Jun 24
       
      Perhaps we just need to get the full journal article to get the raw materials (images) created and used.
  • The scale has its detractors. "A major criticism of the NOVA scale is that it's difficult to use or that foods are classified differently by different people," said Alexandra DiFeliceantonio, corresponding author and assistant professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute. "We found that people with education in nutrition generally agreed on the food classifications, providing some data that it might not be a valid criticism."
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 01 Jun 24
       
      See... this is the sort of thing I see as an opportunity. If the scale has detractors or isn't yet perfect, perhaps there is an opening here for a project. Perhaps there is even an opening to create something focused on teens (who I would argue are at most risk for the consumption of ultra-processed foods). This is an interesting area to me, not only behavioral science, but human diet in general.
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  • To develop the picture set, a team of psychologists, neuroscientists, and registered dietitians selected foods to represent either minimally processed or ultra-processed foods.
  • The foods were prepared in a lab, visually represented through professional photography, and controlled for consistency. Researchers also gathered price, food weights, and nutritional information -- calories, macronutrients, sodium, and dietary fiber -- for the food in each image.
  • researchers recruited 67 nutrition professionals and asked them to classify the foods as minimally or ultra-processed
  • "There is very little experimental research on ultra-processed foods, and part of what's been holding us back is better tools for measuring and assessing their effects,"
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 01 Jun 24
       
      Another big GREEN flag that this is an area ripe for new and creative approaches!
  • The Virginia Tech team is making the pictures and associated data accessible through the Virginia Tech Data Repository of the Virginia Tech University Libraries. This will allow scientists to test hypotheses in behavioral economic and neuroimaging studies.
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 01 Jun 24
       
      This states that the images/research tools WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE (if not already). This is very cool. So, could the already-existing tool be leveraged in a novel way compared to what the researchers used it for, or does this provide somewhat of a template for someone to create a better or more-helpful tool perhaps for teens?
  • Story Source: Materials provided by Virginia Tech. Original written by Leigh Anne Kelley. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
  • Journal Reference: Zach Hutelin, Monica Ahrens, Mary Elizabeth Baugh, Mary E. Oster, Alexandra L. Hanlon, Alexandra G. DiFeliceantonio. Creation and validation of a NOVA scored picture set to evaluate ultra-processed foods.. Appetite, 2024; 198: 107358 DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2024.107358
Sean Nash

Foraging ants navigate more efficiently when given energy-drink-like doses of caffeine ... - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...240523112447.htm

ants learning memory caffeine navigation poison bait uptake efficiency invasive insects zoology HSR HSR-2025 science behavioralscience biology potential research idea

shared by Sean Nash on 01 Jun 24 - No Cached
  • Ants who receive a caffeine-laced sugary reward become more efficient at navigating back to the reward's location compared to ants that only receive sugar. Researchers report on May 23 in the journal iScience that caffeinated ants move toward the reward via a more direct path but do not increase their speed, suggesting that caffeine improved their ability to learn.
  • "The idea with this project was to find some cognitive way of getting the ants to consume more of the poisonous baits we put in the field,"
  • it pushes them into having straighter paths and being able to reach the reward faster
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Control efforts, which focus on using poisonous baits, have proven ineffective, likely due to low bait uptake and bait abandonment. The researchers wanted to test whether using caffeine, which has been shown to improve learning in honeybees and bumblebees, might improve the ants' ability to learn the bait location and guide their nestmates back there
  • The ants walked down a Lego drawbridge onto a testing platform -- an A4 sheet of paper overlaying an acrylic surface -- on which the researchers had placed a drop of sucrose solution laced with 0, 25 ppm, 250 ppm, or 2,000 ppm of caffeine
  • The lowest dose we used is what you find in natural plants, the intermediate dose is similar to what you would find in some energy drinks, and the highest amount is set to be the LD50 of bees -- where half the bees fed this dose die -- so it's likely to be quite toxic for them," says Galante.
  • Overall, they tested 142 ants, and each ant was tested four times
  • Foraging time dropped by 28% per visit for ants that received 25 ppm of caffeine and by 38% per visit for ants that received 250 ppm of caffeine, meaning that if an ant took 300 s in its first visit, by the final trial, it would be expected to take 113 s at the low caffeine dose and 54 s at the intermediate dose. This effect was not seen at the highest caffeine dose.
  • The researchers showed that caffeine lowered the ants' foraging times by making them more efficient, not by making them speedier. There was no effect of caffeine on the ants' pace at any dosage, but ants that received low to intermediate doses of caffeine trips traveled by less tortuous paths. "What we see is that they're not moving faster, they're just being more focused on where they're going," says Galante. "This suggests that they know where they want to go, therefore, they have learned the locations of the reward."
  • Henrique Galante, Massimo De Agrò, Alexandra Koch, Stefanie Kau, Tomer J. Czaczkes. Acute exposure to caffeine improves foraging in an invasive ant. iScience, 2024; 109935 DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109935
Sean Nash

Bee body mass, pathogens and local climate influence heat tolerance - 1 views

phys.org/...body-mass-pathogens-local.html

climatechange climate bees heat pathogens size mass HSR HSR-2025 science environmental questions biology potential research idea

shared by Sean Nash on 07 May 24 - No Cached
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  • examined bee physical traits—such as sex differences in body mass—to understand how these traits interact with environmental conditions, pathogens and other factors
  • They found that variation in heat tolerance was influenced by size, sex and infection status of the bees. "Small-bodied, ectothermic—or cold-blooded—insects are considered to be highly vulnerable to changing climate because their ability to maintain proper body temperature depends on external conditions,"
  • researchers hypothesized that the bees' heat tolerance would increase with body size; that male heat tolerance would increase with ambient temperatures above ground whereas female heat tolerance would increase with sandier soils; and that parasite infection would reduce heat tolerance
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  • To test these hypotheses, the researchers collected squash bees from 14 sites across Pennsylvania that varied in mean temperature, precipitation and soil texture. They measured individuals' critical thermal maximum—the temperature above which an organism cannot function—as a proxy for heat tolerance
  • Although both sexes showed a positive correlation between heat tolerance and size, male squash bees had a greater change in their critical thermal maximum per unit body mass than females, suggesting that there may be another biological trait influencing the impact of body mass on heat tolerance that differs between the sexes
  • Sean Nash on 07 May 24
     
    There is a strong feasibility element to this sort of work. Being invertebrates, there would be no problem collecting large numbers of bees from the environment for testing. Now... how that is typically done in other research studies... is something to dig into. The challenge here would be the observation/measurement of parasites (like the trypanosomes mentioned here). It might be worth digging into microdissection methods and techniques that others have reported on when working with pollinators and other small insects. It might not be impossible, even in our lab, but it would definitely be a (good) challenge and perhaps something we could find an expert to help us with.
Sean Nash

The Secret Language of Trees - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

botany symbiosis fungi evolution cooperation competition plants roots video potential research idea biology environmental HSR-2025 HSR science language

shared by Sean Nash on 23 May 24 - No Cached
  • Sean Nash on 23 May 24
     
    The description of the experimental design toward the middle of this video... should be inspiring. Simple, yet complex. BOOM. So cool!
Sean Nash

Applied Sciences | Free Full-Text | Method for Prolonging the Shelf Life of Apples afte... - 1 views

www.mdpi.com/3975

agriculture apples fruit ripeness quality HSR HSR-2025 science botany biology potential research idea

shared by Sean Nash on 23 May 24 - No Cached
  • Sean Nash on 23 May 24
     
    (A pretty fancy piece of equipment is needed here, but I like the concept of this sort of project. Rigorous life science concepts, ability to generate a ton of data, super applicable to real life immediately, etc.)
Sean Nash

Hearing is be-leafing: Students invent quieter leaf blower | Hub - 1 views

hub.jhu.edu/...quieter-leaf-blower

engineering physics students potential research idea statistical analysis mathematic HSR-2025 HSR science

shared by Sean Nash on 17 May 24 - No Cached
  • Sean Nash on 17 May 24
     
    OK- so THIS specific thing is done. I have not seen the data (decibels @ 50') but I do know this... there are many other challenges unsolved (and largely unaddressed) out there.
Sean Nash

Dynamic microvilli sculpt bristles at nanometric scale | Nature Communications - 0 views

www.nature.com/...s41467-024-48044-3

3Dprinter 3D synthesis biomimicry biology chemistry physics engineering science HSR-2025 HSR potential research idea

shared by Sean Nash on 16 May 24 - No Cached
  • Scanning electron microscopy/SEM
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 16 May 24
       
      They had to use scanning electron microscopy to figure this out, yes. BUT... in scaling something like this up, we would not need such a thing!
  • The refractive index tomograms of isolated bristles were obtained by Nanolive 3D Cell Explorer, and raw data were deposited at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10207240.
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 16 May 24
       
      This might be the way to dial in the measurement ratios to mimick something like this on a larger scale for some purpose. How do the worms use them? If this doesn't get it, we can ALWAYS email the actual scientists to see if they can send us this data to do what we're trying to do. They are usually VERY helpful in such things for creative and hard-working students.
  • Sean Nash on 16 May 24
     
    I am often thinking about biomimicry. I wonder if something like this process could be 3D printed at a larger scale... for another valuable use of some sort. (?)
  • Sean Nash on 16 May 24
     
    This one is a LOT of chew through, but it is super interesting to figure out how living things bioengineer such structures over millions of years of evolution. Biomimicry is simply us studying (and then mimicking) the most interesting things in nature... to enhance something in the human world. This article is the original journal article linked to and highlighted by one of the ScienceDaily stories from today.
Sean Nash

Virtual reality warps your sense of time | ScienceDaily - 1 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...210514134213.htm

VR virtualreality computers gaming time senses behavioralscience potential research idea biology HSR HSR-2025 science

shared by Sean Nash on 15 May 24 - No Cached
  • Sean Nash on 15 May 24
     
    Interesting, perhaps. Well, we DO have a solid VR headset.
Sean Nash

Rocks beneath our feet could be key to carbon-neutral cement - 1 views

www.anthropocenemagazine.org/...-for-reducing-carbon-emissions

climatechange carbonsequestration carbondioxide concrete olivine peridot HSR HSR-2025 science environmental engineering chemistry potential research idea

shared by Sean Nash on 15 May 24 - No Cached
  • Sean Nash on 15 May 24
     
    This sort of thing isn't exactly my specialty, but I HAVE had a student do an award-winning project that dealt with engineered concrete...
Sean Nash

Add to the many afterlives of coffee grounds: Toxic cleanup - 0 views

www.anthropocenemagazine.org/...f-coffee-grounds-toxic-cleanup

coffee pollution toxins environment ecology toxicity bentazone pesticide HSR HSR-2025 potential research idea environmental botany science questions biology

shared by Sean Nash on 15 May 24 - No Cached
  • The experts selected onion plants to test out this idea, known for their high sensitivity to toxins in the environment. In beakers of water containing bentazone, they grew onion root tissue, called meristems, measuring its cell division and root growth as a sign of health. 
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 15 May 24
       
      One of the things I want VERY badly for our program... is a set of equipment for histology... where we can take things like onion root tips and lock samples in wax, slice them incredibly thin (microslices), and then be able to mount them onto slides for analysis.
Sean Nash

Study traces an infectious language epidemic | ScienceDaily - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...240513105214.htm

LLM ChatGPT language trace cause & effect study Reddit COVID words potential research idea computer science statistical analysis mathematic behavioralscience questions HSR HSR-2025 science

shared by Sean Nash on 15 May 24 - No Cached
  • Rho's work is grounded in a social science framework called Fuzzy Trace Theory that was pioneered by Valerie Reyna, a Cornell University professor of psychology and a collaborator on this Virginia Tech project. Reyna has shown that individuals learn and recall information better when it is expressed in a cause and effect relationship, and not just as rote information. This holds true even if the information is inaccurate or the implied connection is weak. Reyna calls this cause-and-effect construction a "gist."
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 15 May 24
       
      Fuzzy Trace Theory looks interesting for this, and perhaps many other reasons. I want to learn more about this myself, and I'm wondering if this theory could be put to work in other potential behavioral science projects. What do you think?
Sean Nash

Five Hormones that Control Plant Growth & Development - dummies - 2 views

www.dummies.com/...-signals-plant-hormones-241851

HSR-2025 environmental botany biology

shared by Sean Nash on 13 May 24 - No Cached
  • Sean Nash on 13 May 24
     
    Just a SUPER basic overview of phytohormones. The + is that we can obtain ALL of these for use in pure form. The - is that you need to develop a unique question/experimental design.
Sean Nash

Model Organisms - HSR 2025 - Google Docs - 3 views

docs.google.com/...edit

potential research idea zoology modelorganisms organisms research HSR-2025 HSR science environmental botany biology

shared by Sean Nash on 07 May 24 - No Cached
  • Sean Nash on 07 May 24
     
    This is a crowd-sourced document I created for a session with high school research teachers in Washington D.C. in 2022. SAVE this document and use it to explore some of the more commonly-used model organisms for all sorts of biological research. There is a TON to explore here!
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