Everybody loves listening to music. Some people like do nothing and listen to music and others like to listen to music while they are doing work. This article discusses how listening to music while at work or doing work can help improve productivity. The article talks about a study done with information technology specialists. The study found that those who listened to music while working got their work done faster than those who did not listen to music. The reasoning for this was that music helps improve the worker’s mood, which helps with their productivity. However, the study showed that this benefited those who were moderately skilled at their jobs the most. The music had little to no effect for the experts and those new to the jobs found the music to be distracting.This article here talks about how even though music can help productivity with some things, there are other things that music makes worse. For instance, a 2010 study shows that when trying to remember new information music makes it worse. The study also discovered that if you listen to music before doing work it can help improve your mood and help with getting the task done. It is very interesting how music can help increase productivity with somethings but can also distract the listener. I usually listen to music when I am doing homework. I also find it helpful to listen to music when I am doing homework in my dorm room with my friends in the room. If it is true that music can be distracting when doing some forms of work, I imagine it is a better trade off than the distraction that your friends can cause. 

A lot of people get that feeling where halfway through the day they just want to sleep. So what a lot of people decide to do is take a break from everything and just take a nap. Now if you are like me you can take a quick half hour nap and be fine for the rest of the day, but many people who nap will nap for several hours. According to this article, there is a possible link between long naps and diabetes. The article talks about a study that was done with 27,000 retired Chinese men and women. They were put into four groups based on their napping habits (which ranged from zero to sixty minutes). The study adjusted for confounding factors like smoking, sleep duration at night, and physical activity. The study found that those who napped for over an hour were more likely to be at risk of having diabetes than those who napped for less than 30 minutes or didn’t nap at all. The article does discuss a possibility of reverse causation. It mentions that diabetes could cause tiredness which would in turn promote napping. 

Everybody knows that getting a good amount of sleep is important. However, it has been discovered that there is a link between irregular bedtimes and behavioral issues among children. This article describes how researchers have found this link between irregular bedtimes and behavioral problems. In this study, the researchers collected data from 10,000 children in the UK. The data consisted of bedtimes from children at the ages of three, five, and seven along with reports from the mothers and teachers of the children about their behavioral issues. It was found that there was a significant link between irregular bedtimes and behavior. The research showed that the irregular sleep patterns affected the children’s behavior by affecting the disrupting their sleep rhythms, leading to sleep deprivation, which affects development of the brain. As those children who had irregular bedtimes progressed, their behavioral problems worsened, whereas those who switched to regular bedtimes showed improvement in their behavior. 

Everybody loves zombies, right? Especially the ant zombies. Wait, what? Apparently there is a parasite known as Ophiocordyceps that infects carpenter ants in Brazil. After getting infected with this parasite these ants eventually leave their colonies and stumble through the rain forest until the stumble upon a nice, juicy leaf. These infected ants climb under the leaf and then bite down on the leaf (an unusual activity for an ant). At this point, the parasite affects the ant’s jaws so that it can not release it’s jaw, leaving it stuck there to die. It is said that all of the infected ants always do this at noon. Apparently the parasite does this because the ants die within six hours after biting down on the leaf. This gives the parasite a cool night (they operate best in cold,moist areas) to start forcing the stalk out of the dead ant’s head. Once the stalk is sticking out of the ant’s head it releases pores down on to the floor of the rain forest for unsuspecting carpenter ants to get infected by. This amazed me when I found these articles. I mentioned before in a comment I made on someone else’s post about how much I love zombies. So when I saw an article talking about a parasite creating “zombie ants,” I just had to read it. 

Everybody knows the usual relationship between cats and mice. Cats chase and kill mice, so naturally, mice are terrified of cats. However, an observation of the parasite known as Toxoplasma gondii causes mice to no longer fear cats while infected. Toxoplasma gondii is parasite that can only reproduce in the intestines of cats and is very harmful to women who are pregnant. It can cause blindness or even death for the fetus.The parasite apparently alters the brain of the mouse causing it to lose it’s innate fear of cats. This seems all too convenient seeing as how, mentioned above, that this parasite can only be reproduced inside of a cat. The fact that the mice no longer fear cats makes it easier for the cats to catch and kill the mice, making it easier for the parasite to reproduce. It was recently discovered that after the parasite is no longer found inside the mice it appears that their fear of cats is gone permanently. I first learned of this infection in my Zoology class during my senior year which made me fear my cats a little bit because this does not sound like it would be a fun parasite to have (not that any seem fun to have…). This discovery is actually incredibly fascinating because it shows how this parasite has ways of altering the brain of a mammal. Who’s to say that it can’t eventually do the same to us?