I bet that over half of you will yawn after reading the title of this blog. Everybody knows about the phenomenon of “contagious yawning.” Contagious yawning is a well-documented action that occurs only in humans and chimpanzees.

There have been many studies of why we yawn, and why it is so contagious and although it is not entirely known, a new study from Duke University suggests that contagious yawning is not related to variables like empathy, tiredness, or energy levels. Researchers found that contagious yawning may decrease as people age.

The current study worked to better define how certain factors affect someone’s susceptibility to contagious yawning. 328 healthy volunteers, who completed “cognitive testing, a demographic survey, and a comprehensive questionnaire that included measure of empathy, energy levels, and sleepiness.” Participants then watched a three-minute video of people yawning, and the researchers recorded the number of times they yawned while watching the video. Out of the 328 people studied, 222 contagiously yawned at least once. When verified, the number of yawns was consistent. The only independent factor that significantly influenced contagious yawning was as age increase, participants were less likely to yawn.

Another idea about contagious yawning is based on the “hyperthermia hypothesis.” This hypothesis suggest that yawning helps cool down our brains. Researchers in 2007 found that holding warm or cold packs on the forehead affected how often people yawning while watching videos of other people yawning. Cold packs decreased yawning while warm packs increased yawning. Research has also revealed that mice show increased brain temperatures before yawning and that people are more likely to yawn when the air is cool.

Since this question is unanswered, for now we will just continue on with the phenomenon of contagious yawning. Also, you’ll yawn after looking at the picture below!

Almost all dog owners have seen man’s best friend graze on grass at one point or another. When my family first got our dog, we were completely perplexed as to why he would sit in the grass and chow down like a cow. A popular theory is that dogs eat grass to help with an upset stomach, but with my research I have found that this is a myth.

In this study conducted in 2009 and published in Applied Animal Behaviour, they found that grass eating behavior in the domestic dog may be related to gastrointestinal distress. This study observed grass eating behaviors in dogs fed a standard diet with and without supplementation of fructo-oligasaccharide (FOS), which temporarily induced a mild gastrointestinal disturbance. During both FOS diet and standard diet periods, dogs were presented with grass, and the time spent eating grass and the number of grass eating events was recorded. Researchers found that dogs spent more time eating grass when fed the standard diet than when they were fed the FOS diet. This suggest that dogs do not use grass to “self-medicate” a gastrointestinal disturbance.

In another recent study (2009) by Dr. Karen Sueda, Dr. Kelly Cliff, and Benjamin L. Hart, conducted three surveys of pet owners to find answers to these and other questions about plant eating in dogs. The first survey focused on twenty-five veterinary students who had pet dogs. They were asked about the frequency of grass eating in their own dogs and whether the students observed signs of sickness before grass consumption or vomiting afterwards. All students reported that their dogs ate grass, but none reported observing signs of illness before their dogs ate grass, and only 8% reported that their dogs regularly vomit afterward.

The next survey was a group of 47 dog owners that were asked for their observations of their pets’ consumption of plants and the animals’ behavior before and after. Of this group, 79% had observed their dogs eating plants, particularly grass, and thirty-three owners answered questions about their dogs’ behavior before and after eating plants. Out of these dogs, signs of illness were infrequent (four) and vomiting post-grass-eating was only occasional (six).

The null hypothesis (plant eating is not particularly related to illness or vomiting) was tested again with a large web-based survey with more than 3,000 owners responding. These owners were asked questions abut their dogs’ grass-eating habits and diet, and about their dogs’ sex, breed, and age. This is what they found: “Sixty-eight percent of the respondents said their dogs ingest plants on a daily or weekly basis,” “Eight percent of the respondents reported that their dogs frequently show signs of illness before plant eating,” “Twenty-two percent reported that their dogs regularly vomit afterward,” and “Of the plant-eating dog population, younger dogs ate plants more frequently than did older dogs and were less likely to appear ill beforehand or to vomit afterward.”

Contrary to the common perception that grass eating is associated with observable signs of illness and vomiting, this survey-based study found that grass eating is a common behavior in normal dogs unrelated to illness and that dogs do not regularly vomit after eating it.

After reading this and discovering that grass eating is a common and normal behavior with dogs, the only logical explanation left is that dogs may possibly be part cow.

You’re in west dining commons and you stand close while you wait for them to put out a fresh batch of cookies. As soon as they do, you reach for them, bowl already in hand. Personally, I take at least two, and no more than four. Everybody knows what it’s like to choose unhealthy foods over healthy ones, and feeling bad about it later, especially when it comes to west cookies. I always think, it’s just two cookies, what’s the harm? But as I thought about it, I usually eat those cookies up to three times a week. That adds up pretty quickly. This got me thinking about how food not only affects our physical health, but also our mental health.

Emerging research suggests a balanced diet and regular exercise can also protect the brain and ward off mental disorders. “Food is like a pharmaceutical compound that affects the brain,” said Fernando Gómez-Pinilla, a UCLA professor of neurosurgery and physiological science. One thing that Gómez-Pinila focuses on is Omega-3 fatty acids (found in salmon, walnuts and kiwi fruit) which provides many benefits, which includes improving learning a memory and helping to fight against mental disorders.

In an Australian study, 396 children between the ages of 6 and 12 who were given a drink with omega-3 fatty acids and other nutrients (iron, zinc, folic acid and vitamins A, B6, B12 and C) showed higher scores on tests measuring verbal intelligence, and also learning and memory after six months and one year than a control group of students who did not receive the nutritional drink.

In a study published September 21, 2011, 3040 Australian adolescents aged 11-18 years were measured on diet and mental health which was collected by self-report and anthropometric date by trained professionals. There were cross-sectional relationships identified between measures of both healthy and unhealthy diets and scores on the emotional scale, where higher scores mean better mental health. Improvements in diet quality were mirrored by improvements in mental health over the follow-up period (does not support the reverse causality hypothesis). This study shows the importance of diet in adolescence, since common mental health problems first manifest in adolescence. This shows how important a healthy diet is during adolescence, and also throughout your life.

Now this doesn’t mean that you can never have another cookie or chocolate bar in your life. Everything is in moderation. Having bad food available everywhere makes it harder to make the right choice, but think of this next time you reach for your favorite junk food.

The feeling of grief can be crushing. Whether it be over a lost loved one, a diagnosis of sickness, or even knowing you or somebody you love has a terminal illness, and many, many more causes. At my high school last year, we lost a sophomore girl after she was struck by a car on a Friday night. The entire school was in shock  and it was very difficult to go to school and pretend like nothing tragic had happened. For two weeks after the accident, there were therapy dogs available in the counseling center. I found myself visiting them every day during my free periods, and feeling a lot happier when I left. I was thinking of this event the other day and that got me thinking: Do therapy dogs really help? I decided to look into it.

What I found was not shocking, considering my love for dogs. University of California Los Angeles, found that dogs easy anxiety and improve the health status of hospitalized heart failure patients. To determine the benefits of animal-assisted therapy, researchers studied 76 hospitalized heart failure patients and their reactions to visits from either a human volunteer and a dog team, a human volunteer only, or no visit (control group), and patients were randomly assigned to one of these groups. In each visit researchers measured the changes in cardiac function, neuroendocrine (a stress hormone) activation, and psychological changes in mood.

Each visit was 12 minutes, and the patients visited by the dogs were able to have them sit on their bed with the and pet them. Researchers monitored patients’ hemodynamics (collectives system of measurement for blood volume, heart function and resistance of the blood vessels), and this was measured before the interaction, eight minutes into the visit, and four minutes after. Investigators also measured epinephrine and norepinephrine levels at these three time points, and also had the patients participate in anxiety tests before and after the visit.

They found that anxiety scores dropped 24% for patients who were visited by the volunteer-dog team, volunteer-only group dropped 10% and the control group’s score had no change. The levels of the stress hormone dropped 17% in the volunteer-dog team group; 2% in the volunteer-only group; and rose an 7% in the control group.

The volunteer-dog team group showed improvement in norepinephrine levels, heart rate, and anxiety levels. “This study demonstrates that even a short-term exposure to dogs has beneficial
physiological and psychosocial effects on patients who want it,” Cole said. “This therapy
warrants serious consideration as an adjunct to medical therapy in hospitalized heart failure
patients. Dogs are a great comfort. They make people happier, calmer and feel more loved.
That is huge when you are scared and not feeling well,” said Kathie M. Cole, lead author of the study and a clinical nurse at the UCLA Medical Center in LA.

Also, twelve different breeds participated in this study which adds external validity. The breeds were: 2 golden retrievers, 1 Great Pyrenese, 1 Poodle, 1 German shephard, 1 dachshund, 2 labs, 1 irish setter, 1 Bernese Mountain dog, 1 border collie, and 1 mini schnauzer.

Also, in 2011, The University of Arizona did a study on the effect of a therapy dog on the effectiveness of a child life intervention with adolescents experiencing grief and loss. In this study, subjects were randomly assigned to one of two groups: the “pet therapy group” or the “control group.” The control group received the Child Life Intervention (3 one-hour sessions with a Certified Child Life Specialist), and the pet therapy group received the same intervention, but with a therapy dog present during the sessions. The mean pre-test score for the control group was 10.76; post-test mean score was 7.15, which shows a 34% improvement in mood scores. The mean pre-test score for the pet therapy group was 15.35, and the post-test score was 6.28, which shows a 59% improvement in mood scores, which overall shows how pet therapy is more effective in boosting mood than therapy without the dogs present.

I love dogs more than I love people most of the time, and I knew that dogs helped people even before I did all this research and discovered these studies. I watched animal assisted therapy help those around me and myself after the tragic accident at my high school. I hope that in these next couple of years, therapy dogs become more widely used.

“Sit down.” “Do your homework!” “Can you stop moving and eat your dinner please?” “Don’t touch that!” Growing up in the my house, there was a constant chorus of these phrases. Having a brother with ADHD didn’t change much, it just made him just as easy to love and even easier to get irritated with. For the first couple of years before he was diagnosed, nobody understood why he wouldn’t just sit and do his work and be good like all the other kids. We later discovered that it was a lot more complicated then that.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common condition that affects children and adolescents and can continue through adulthood for some. Children with ADHD have problems paying attention or concentrating, and they can not seem to follow directions and very easily bored. Adults with ADHD may have difficulty with time management, organizational skills, goal setting, and employment. They are also more susceptible to addictions.

Recent studies show that people with ADHD have abnormal functioning of certain neurotransmitters, or brain chemicals. The brain chemical dopamine (carries signals between nerves and is linked to movement, sleep, mood, attention, and learning) has been found to play a role in ADHD. It is also known that ADHD children may have certain parts of the brain that are smaller or less active, and that there is abnormal functioning in the nerve pathways that regulate behavior.

Now the most pressing question is: how do we help these children and adults with ADHD? Recent studies have shown that the easiest and most effective way to help is medication such as Ritalin and Adderall.

The top universities in the country teamed up to study the brain abnormalities among youths and adults with ADHD, and discover the relationship between these abnormalities and stimulant medication such as Ritalin and Adderall. In this 2007 study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, nine healthy parent-child pairs were chosen to participate. Each participant had either never taken medication for ADHD, or had stopped a minimum of 6 months before the trial. These participants had their brain scanned before taking the medicine, and then “using a counterbalanced and double-blinded design, dyads were assigned to receive either placebo or immediate-release [stimulant medication] on the first day of [brain] image acquisition.” Each participant was then asked to do a task/activity, while their brain was still being imaged using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). The researchers concluded that among the youths, the stimulant medication increased activation in the frontal region of the brain, therefore concluding that stimulant medication helps those with ADHD.

Unfortunately, the side effects of these stimulant drugs are quite common. A team from Quintiles Inc., drug company consultants based in Falls Church, VA, looked closely at patient-reported side effects of ADHD drugs. They discovered that 48% of the 325 patients surveyed reported at least one of the following side effects: loss of appetite, sleep problems, and mood swings. Research has also started to look into the long-term side effects of these medications. A study conducted in 2007 examined the evidence and found possible links to appetite and growth (height and weight). 60% of children on stimulant drugs reported a loss of appetite. Fears have also been raised about potential long-term effects of stimulant drugs on the heart and on the developing brain. The data on these subjects is currently very limited, so the effects are still unknown.

Over the years, I have watched ADHD medication work wonders right before my eyes. My brother, who struggled all through elementary, middle, and high school to get good grades and keep up with the heavy workloads, is now a computer science major at Drexel University, and is smarter than I could ever dream of being. With success stories such as this one, it is difficult and scary to discover the possibility that there could be long-term side effects of these “miracle” drugs. With my personal experience, I think that the side effects are a small price to pay for the amazing things it can do. What do you think? Would the side effects be worth it to you?

“Hey, Doc, we better back up. We don’t have enough road to get up to 88.” “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

These are the famous last words of one of the greatest movies of all time, Back To The Future. Ever since I was a kid, I would watch this movie and wish that one day, time travel would be real. So with technology and outstanding advances in the science world, this raises an important question: Is time travel possible?

According to NASA, we all travel in time. Technically, we travel at the rate of 1 hour per hour. But the pressing question is, can we travel faster or slower than a rate of 1 hour per hour?

Albert Einstein developed a theory called Special Relativity, which states that space and time are generally one in the same: space-time. Einstein explains that if two objects are moving at a constant speed, the relative motion between the objects is a factor. For example, if you and your friend are moving in different cars and want to compare observations, the only part that matters is how fast you and your friend are moving relative with each other.

Another important concept that scientists take into account is a rotating black hole, or a “wormhole,” a theoretical link between two points of space-time or perhaps even two points in different universes. These “wormholes,” previously thought to be unstable, have shown that these constructs could provide a way to travel through time. We are years and years away from discovering if humans can even physically get close to a black hole, but when we do, who knows what we will find on the other side.

Researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia simulated how time-traveling photons might behave. This study used photons (single particles of light) to stimulate quantum particles traveling back through time. Also in the simulation, they examined the behavior of a photon traveling through time and interacting with its older self. This new discovery suggests that interactions that could lead to time travel may be possible, but only on a quantum level. Here is a video with some epic background music that might explain this concept a little better than I did.

We are centuries away from discovering if time travel through wormholes or on the quantum level is possible, but I believe that one day we will know the answers to the many questions we still have. Although I do not think we will ever get to see the creation and successful use of time machines, I do believe that one day we will see some form of traveling through time. For now, I would not disregard anybody coming to your door claiming to be your great, great granddaughter from the future, because who knows?

Hi! My name is Alyssa and I’m from Ridgefield, Connecticut, and I am majoring in Journalism and minoring in psychology and history.

I am taking this course because I need to fulfill a requirement, and my advisor recommended it to me. I love Biology and Environmental Science, but I hate Chemistry and Physics because of all the formulas and math involved. This course is perfect for me because I can still learn about cool things in the science world without having to do any math or learning about concepts I don’t understand.

Here is a link, and a picture: