Oral health is an essential part of overall well-being, yet many children in underserved communities lack access to dental education and basic hygiene resources. Although cavities are completely preventable, they remain one of the most common chronic diseases affecting both children and adults. Early education is crucial for building lifelong habits and preventing future dental issues. The New Smiles initiative is a student-led outreach program focused on improving oral hygiene awareness and access to care among elementary students in the Fort Worth community.

Through interactive elementary school presentations, the program teaches proper brushing and flossing, healthy eating habits, and the importance of routine dental visits to kids. To reinforce these lessons, hygiene kits containing toothbrushes, toothpaste, floss, and educational materials were assembled in collaboration with Cook Children’s and distributed to participating students. Additionally, a brief survey was administered to assess students’ baseline knowledge of oral hygiene and evaluate the effectiveness of the educational presentation.

By combining hands-on education, community partnerships, and the distribution of essential hygiene supplies, the New Smiles program aims to promote preventive oral health practices at an early age. This initiative seeks to reduce oral health disparities while empowering children with the knowledge and resources needed to maintain lifelong dental health.

Women who are obese have a much higher risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer than women who maintain a healthy body weight. However, excess body fat, even in the absence of excess body weight, a condition referred to as normal weight obesity also increases breast cancer risk. The goal of our study is to determine how serum from human subjects with three distinct obesity phenotypes, metabolically healthy obese, metabolically unhealthy obese, and normal-weight obese, influences breast cancer cell growth and proliferation. We have already collected preliminary data indicating differences in cell viability via NADH measurement, yet metabolic activity alone does not definitively demonstrate growth or vitality because cells may be metabolically active without entering S-phase or replicating. To conclusively show DNA replication (and thus true proliferation/vitality), our plan is to quantitatively measure differences in DNA synthesis using the Click-iT EdU DNA-synthesis assay, which uses a thymidine analog incorporated into newly synthesized DNA which can be detected by the appearance of fluorescent conjugates. Based on our preliminary findings, we expect that the lower rates of metabolic activity in cells grown in serum from obese subjects are not due to reduced rates of cellular proliferation. These findings could be used to inform improved, targeted nutritional and chemotherapeutic strategies for individuals with distinct obesity phenotypes.

Viral stability, replication, and host-virus interactions are all significantly impacted by temperature. Numerous experimental studies have demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 grows differently at different temperatures, but it is still unknown which specific infection processes are impacted. In this work, we used a mathematical modeling approach to quantify the effects of temperature on the kinetic parameters controlling SARS-CoV-2 replication. Results from previously published experiments were used to determine the viral load from in vitro infections of Vero E6 and human nasal epithelial (hNEC) cells at 33 and 37 C. We fit a mathematical model of viral infections to estimate model parameters at the two temperatures. Vero E6 cells showed evidence of temperature dependence when parameter distributions were compared; the infection rate, eclipse phase transition rate, and infected cell death rate varied between 33 and 37 C. The parameter estimates in hNEC cells, on the other hand, revealed no statistically significant differences and showed a significant overlap in parameter estimates between temperatures. These results imply that the cellular environment has a significant impact on how temperature affects SARS-CoV-2 replication dynamics. The measurement of temperature-dependent variations in viral kinetic parameters sheds light on SARS-CoV-2 replication and could enhance forecasts of infection dynamics under various environmental and physiological circumstances.

Our Milky Way’s neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), is a galaxy significantly shaped by powerful explosions from massive, dying stars that drive gas outflows. These explosions release gas and heavy elements, enriching the galaxy's outskirts and contributing to the formation of stars and planets. Understanding these processes is crucial for studying galactic evolution and the mechanisms that drive it. Our research uses observations from the Hubble Space Telescope to characterize the properties of the outflows from the LMC. Our observations are of light from background stars that pass through the LMC’s gas clouds. These clouds block some of the incoming light, and we analyze the missing features to study the physical properties of the outflows. To compare complex stellar spectra on a similar scale, we fit regions of the light that are free from major features blocking it with a best-fit polynomial. This process helps us differentiate components that either belong to the background star or the LMC’s outflowing gas. By examining the missing light, we gain a deeper understanding of how bursts of star formation impact the galactic environment and ultimately connect our existence to the explosive deaths of distant stars.

Zinc oxide (ZnO) is a versatile, inexpensive semiconductor material with unique characteristics. ZnO is particularly known for its inhibitory effects on bacterial growth. ZnO can reduce bacterial growth through mechanisms such as oxidative stress, the deterioration of crucial proteins in the bacterial cell, and the release of Zn²⁺ ions that affect bacterial cell function. The exact mechanism behind ZnO’s antibacterial properties remains unclear. It has been seen that changing the surface and morphology of the particles changes their effectiveness for bacterial inhibition. An additional lesser explored branch of ethanol-based synthesis is solution pH pertaining to ZnO morphology. Our research aims to explore this by doing a wholistic investigation of an ethanol-based synthesis, especially pertaining to how pH affects particle morphology. To produce these materials, we used ethanol-based solvothermal synthesis to create ZnO micro- and nanocrystals. We performed a thorough characterization of these materials to observe changes to the ZnO lattice. This was done by employing scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectroscopy.