2025 YIWC has concluded!
✨ Congratulations to the Winners of YIR’s Annual High School Science Writing Competition! ✨ We at the Young Investigators Review are thrilled to share the results of this year’s High School Writing Competition—designed to celebrate curiosity, creativity, and the next generation of scientific thinkers. In our largest application pool yet, talented students and aspiring scientists from across the country submitted pieces answering prompts in 1 … Continue reading 2025 YIWC has concluded!
SBYIR Spring 2025 Staff Applications Are Open!
Our staff application for the Spring 2025 season is open! This time, the journal theme is food science. Positions include the following: To apply, follow this link here. Applications are due by February 9th at 11:59PM. Any questions? Reach out to us at younginvestigators@gmail.com or send us a DM on our Instagram @SBYIR! Continue reading SBYIR Spring 2025 Staff Applications Are Open!
Spring 2025 Journal Theme
The theme for our Spring 2025 Young Investigators Review Journal has been decided! The winner was FOOD SCIENCE! Looking forward to the scrumptious work that our writers come up with! Continue reading Spring 2025 Journal Theme
Natural Antifreeze: Insights into Animals’ Adaptations to Extreme Cold
Author: Sean Krivitsky, Class of 2026 Many organisms, like fish and insects, are capable of living in extreme conditions far outside of the viable range for humans. While some bacteria can live in hot geysers, others live in the extreme cold, relying on adaptations such as the expression of antifreeze proteins (AFP) to survive. These proteins help adapt to the cold by depressing the freezing … Continue reading Natural Antifreeze: Insights into Animals’ Adaptations to Extreme Cold
Tiny Plastics, Big Impact: How Microplastics Affect Earthworms and Soil Health
Author: Diego Javier, Class of 2026 A concern that is emerging worldwide is plastic contamination in agricultural soils. Farmers frequently use plastic mulching films in order to improve crop yields and control weeds. However, these films can break down into tiny fragments, called microplastics, which are then ingested by soil organisms like earthworms and can affect soil health. In order to better understand these effects, … Continue reading Tiny Plastics, Big Impact: How Microplastics Affect Earthworms and Soil Health
Watching Muscles Heal: A Zebrafish Model for Regeneration
Author: Diego Javier, Class of 2026 Muscle regeneration is a nuanced and important area of study in understanding how muscles recover from injury. Researchers have been trying to develop therapies for muscle-related diseases, and some have used zebrafish as a model organism given their ability to regenerate their heart and skeletal muscles. In order to study muscle regeneration. Eric Paulissen, in the lab of SBU … Continue reading Watching Muscles Heal: A Zebrafish Model for Regeneration
Genome Grazing: lcWGS Across Livestock and Agricultural Landscapes
Author: Sajia Athai, Class of 2026 Just as cells comprise the fundamental units that make up an organism, livestock acts as the core of agriculture—anchoring growth across the world. As providers of food security to sustainability, livestock is an integral part of economic prosperity and animal diversity. Livestock is assessed on measures in the agricultural industry such as disease screening, mobility, fertility, and birth weight. … Continue reading Genome Grazing: lcWGS Across Livestock and Agricultural Landscapes
Specific protein, TlyC in bacteria Rickettsia plays a determining factor in the pathogenesis of Spotted Fever disease
Author: Kang Lai, Class of 2026 Ticks are commonly known vectors that transmit pathogens from one host to another. The genus of bacteria known as Rickettsia contains a hemolysin factor that causes disease progression through lysis of red blood cells. Several strains of Rickettsia are analyzed to deduce the key virulence factor behind its epidemiology of the Spotted Fever pathogenesis. Bacterial hemolysins are toxins that … Continue reading Specific protein, TlyC in bacteria Rickettsia plays a determining factor in the pathogenesis of Spotted Fever disease
Decoding the Lon Enzyme’s Protein Recognition Code
Author: Antonia Truta, Class of 2028 Lon protease is an important enzyme within the mitochondria’s inner membrane. This enzyme specifically regulates protein homeostasis, meaning it helps keep the protein levels within the cell balanced. The Lon protease acts by breaking down damaged or misfolded proteins that lack proper structure to function correctly and may harm the cell. Lon also degrades certain regulatory proteins whose levels … Continue reading Decoding the Lon Enzyme’s Protein Recognition Code
Climate Change and Zoonotic Diseases
Author: Antonia Truta, Class of 2028 The World Health Organization’s definition of zoonosis is any disease or infection naturally transmissible from animals to humans, or vice versa. Animals are important to understanding disease transmission, with over 60% of emerging infectious diseases having zoonotic origins. Yet, to fully understand the context of zoonotic disease outbreaks, we must look at our interactions with nature in a larger … Continue reading Climate Change and Zoonotic Diseases
Cows’ Moo-sic: Raga and Chinese Five-Element Music on Cattle Performance and Welfare
Author: Maegan Diep, Class of 2029 The beneficial effects of music are garnering attention for their healing abilities and their impacts on physiological and psychological states on humans and animals alike. Research has implicated music in stress alleviation in laboratory animals, improvements in egg production and hatchability in quails, and extended resting periods in pigs. Cows, in particular, are currently being studied for their productivity … Continue reading Cows’ Moo-sic: Raga and Chinese Five-Element Music on Cattle Performance and Welfare
Contrasting Chronic and Nonchronic Depression with Neuromelanin-sensitive MRI
Author: Maegan Diep, Class of 2029 Depression varies in traits and characteristics among individuals, making its causes and mechanisms difficult to treat. Though depression can be categorized into chronic and nonchronic courses, the issue of reliable diagnoses persists, as there is a lack of evidence in distinguishing the etiology and physiological processes of the condition. Thus, researchers from the Klein lab at Stony Brook University … Continue reading Contrasting Chronic and Nonchronic Depression with Neuromelanin-sensitive MRI
The Effect of Wildfires on Air Pollution and Mortality in the United States
Author: Amal Bilal, Class of 2028 Wildfires are becoming increasingly prominent and intense in the United States as a result of evolving climate change and human settlements in fire-prone areas. Although the major health impacts of air pollution caused by wildfires are known, there is less research on the direct impact of this pollution on mortality. Michigan State University researchers Zeying Huang and Mark Skidmore … Continue reading The Effect of Wildfires on Air Pollution and Mortality in the United States
Clinical Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Neurocardiology
Author: Amal Bilal, Class of 2028 Neurocardiology is a new and emerging field that examines the heart-brain interaction in the context of health and disease. Conditions such as stroke and cardiac arrhythmia are connected by the heart-brain axis: a network of neural, vascular, and physiological signals. Early and accurate detection of abnormalities along this axis is essential for improving patient outcomes. Stony Brook Medicine researcher … Continue reading Clinical Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Neurocardiology
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