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.

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.