As weird as it may seem, many people have reported that when looking at the sun, they sneeze. This is known as Photic Sneeze Reflex. Aristotle began questioning this but he thought it was from the heat of the sun. Francis Bacon refuted this by stepped into the heated sun with his eyes shut and there was no sneeze. It is not definite as to why his happens but it seems to be that when there is a crossing of pathways in the brain between the pupillary light reflex arc and the sneezing reflex arc. Therefore, when you look at the light (not only sunlight), your brain triggers your sneezing reflex arc causing nasal stimulation and you to sneeze.

It is said that this reflex trait is prominent in 17-23% of the worlds population. Also, in a study done with 460 blood donors, Photic Sneezing was found in 24%. Now the question may be how could this trait be helpful in any way. Well, the reflex exists in animals for which the smell sensation is vital to survive and can be used to clean the nasal cavity. And since we’re closely related to animals that may be why some people have this trait. However, it could cause negative results. If you have ever sneezed while driving you know how scary it can be. It feels like you lose control of everything for a split second but usually you can hold you sneeze back. Lets say you’re coming out of a tunnel after not having light, being exposed after the tunnel is going to make you sneeze and potentially cause an accident.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/714420_6

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/looking-at-the-sun-can-trigger-a-sneeze/

As you may know, kissing has its flaws and its benefits. The question is which one is more prominent. Regardless of the outcome, people are still going to kiss because it’s a natural thing that humans do.

There are many health benefits to kissing.  It creates an emotional bond between you and there person and can also serve as a stress reliever (as well as burn 12 calories per 5 seconds). Subsequently, the kissing can lead to foreplay which can lead to sex which is known to greatly enhance a persons physical and mental health. Surprisingly kissing is also good for your teeth. It increases salvia production which can slip under your plaque and remove it.

In the 1950s there was a study done with monkeys testing attachments. To sum it up, Harlow created two fake mother monkeys. One made out of metal and one made out of cotton and soft materials. The baby monkeys gravitated towards the mothers who were soft and “welcoming”. This goes to show that having affection present certainly helps people feel comfortable just as kissing releases epinephrine into your blood. However, there are some negatives to kissing.

There are many germs in everyones mouths and kissing is just going to transfer those more rapidly. There are some surprising and not so surprising issues that can arise. The surprising one is that you can get cavities from kissing. It is said that if you are kissing someone who has had a cavity has a certain amount and type of bacteria in their salvia which can cause you to get a cavity. More common are the diseases and viruses that can be spread. Simple bacteria infections such as colds and mono are prominent but kissing can also lead to herpes and hepatitis.

Now the decision is whether or not to continue kissing. In my opinion and most others, if you’re kissing the same person much less harm is going to be done because the germs transferred aren’t going to be changing so you should. The benefits of kissing are greater than the negatives which also means you should keep kissing!

http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Kissing_and_your_health

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/09/05/kissing.aspx

http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/blogs/vitamin-g/2009/02/kissing-good-or-bad-for-your-h

During the past few years exercise and being healthy has been a big thing. Some people go to the gym on top of their daily sports because as the saying goes “no pain, no gain”. As we all know the way to be healthy is the exercise and eat healthy. However, did you know there’s a point where working out too much can become detrimental to your health instead of benefit it?

When you exercise your muscles are said to release lactic acid which builds up and is what causes the soreness in your muscles. However, a study was conducted by scientists at the University of Utah showing that lactate, certain acids and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) are actually the three factors at fault. They injected these 3 substances into mouse nerves. When done one at a time there was no effect but when injected all at the same time the nerve cells responded. Similar effects happened with human subjects. The accumulation of these substances is what causes your muscles to hit a wall which would be exercising too much.

Another study was done in Britain based on the amount of running the people did and their age. The only collected all men who were fit and heart healthy from either a British national or Olympic team. This group ranged from the age of 26-67. Then they compiled another group who were healthy but not endurance athletes. These groups both got imaging done that tested for fibrosis which can lead to stiffening of the heart and cause heart failure. The results were interesting. None of the young athletes or old non athletes had fibrosis. However, half of the middle aged men, who have trained longest and hardest, showed some heart scarring.

However, it has been hard for scientists to find a clear relationship between excessive exercise and heart complications. For example, fibrosis was found in less active older men. But some of these racers took up running later in life so who’s to say the heart damage wasn’t cause from smoking or what not previous to their marathon training.

The new study avoids that though. None of the athletes were new to exercise and only one of them had smoked. However, that still can’t prove the weight and endurance training caused the heart damage, just that the two are associated with each other. As we learned in class, correlation does not equal causation.

So, it was decided to start a new experiment using rats. They had healthy rats run at an intense pace every day for three months which is equivalent to 10 human years. This was meant to mimic serious marathon training. At the beginning the rats hearts were normal but at the end their hearts showed signs of scarring and structural changing just like the hearts in humans hearts. The unexercised control group showed no sign in a change in their hearts. Interestingly however, after the stopped running for 8 weeks, the hearts returned back to their healthy state.

Now combining these too experiments it is hard to say at what point too much exercise is a bad thing. This is because yes, over a prolonged period of time you will do harm to your body but that means consistently working out to your fullest potential for years on end. Therefore, Dr. Volder’s says to exercise regularly like you would because the chances of permanent damage happening are unlikely but if you notice any changes in your body to consult your doctor.

http://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-too-much-exercise-can-be-bad-042514

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/too-much-exercise-may-be-bad-for-the-heart/

People who have had paralysis or an amputation have lost most or all of their sense of touch. People have been trying to make prosthetics that can combat this issue and a group of researchers have

Recent breakthroughs have allowed people who have lost the use of a limb to move a prosthesis and handle objects. But movement alone isn’t enough. The ability to perceive what you touch is fundamental to precisely controlling and accepting a prosthesis as a part of the body.

Dustin Tyler from Louis Stokes Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio, and his colleagues were able to discover this a few weeks ago.The found how to transmit long-term, realistic sensations such as being able to recognize the feel of cotton.

It works so well that one man, on leaving the lab where he tried the prosthetic, said it was like leaving his hand at the door.

Recently people have tried to recreate a sense of touch by delivering vibrations to a person’s residual limb that equal the amount of pressure on the prosthesis. This has proved to be more distracting because people have tried sending electrodes to the nerves but they slowly diminish over time.

That’s why Tyler’s team tried something else more complex. They implanted a bunch of electrodes around the three main nerves that would usually transmit sensory information of two people’s limbs. Each bunch of electrodes were linked to wires and could stimulate different parts of the nerves. The wires were attached to a machine that provided a stream of electrical pulses. This was connected to the prostheses the men were already using.

“As soon as we stimulated the nerves in the first subject, he immediately said ‘that’s the first time I’ve felt my hand since it was removed’,” says Tyler.When the electrode were turned on the men felt a tingling sensation that went through the whole hand.

With a real hand, touching distinct objects results in different patterns of nerve activity. To mimic this, the team altered the frequencies and intensities of electric pulses. After a healthy dose of trial and error, the first subject said “that’s not tingling any more, it feels real”.

Before researching this topic, I never really thought about how people with prosthetics aren’t able to feel anything with that part of their body. This improvement will help make injured people to be the most normal people they can be. However, how do they know if this will leave nerve damage or not? Since they’re connecting the electrodes to the nerves? It will be interesting to see how this advances in the future.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429914.400-prosthetic-hand-recreates-feeling-of-cotton-bud-touch.html#.VEm5XYd4Xdk

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/02/140222-artificial-limbs-feeling-prosthetics-medicine-science/

We’ve all been told one time or another by our parents to put sunscreen  on whether you get tan easily or you just burn. And we all know the sun in harmful but do you actually know what the sun is doing to your skin? Many people have researched this become it’s become a very big issue. People never used to think that the sun was too harmful unless you got a sunburn so they would use baby oil on their skin to get the best tan since the sun is attracted to it. This clearly caused many skin issues and lead people to try to fix the problem.

As we are all aware of sunburns are caused by the suns ultraviolet radiation (UVR). There are two different types of rays. UVA and UVB; UVA is what causes the wrinkles and sun spots and UVB is what causes sunspots and suntans. UVB rays show the science behind the sunburns and suntans.

These harmful rays come in contact with our skin and begin producing melanin, which is the pigment that darkens our skin and absorbs the harmfulness of the rays before DNA damage is done. These rays promote the secretion of MHS, Melanocyte Stimulating Hormone, which is what binds to a receptor on the surface of melanocytes and triggers melanogenesis. This releases cAMP which is a chemical. The more cAMP, the more melanin that is synthesized. Once the melanin is transferred from the melanocytes, it produces the tan appearance of the skin.

For people with fair or light skin, the MHS doesn’t bind to it’s receptor as well so less melanin is produced. Since there is less melanin, the UVB rays strike melanocytes which can cause nuclear damage and then an inflammatory response which we call sunburn. The damage done here is permanent although the discoloration and inflammation may go down. The less melanin, such as in people with fair skin, have a much higher risk in permanent damage such as skin cancer.

http://scribol.com/science/the-science-behind-tanning

http://health.howstuffworks.com/skin-care/beauty/sun-care/sunscreen.htm

http://www.skincancer.org/news/tanning/world-health-organization-scientists-warn-against-ultraviolet-tanning-beds-

I’ve always been amused with eye color and how some people eyes are so blue or dark brown etc. In biology you probably learned that it’s because of either having one dominant trait or two recessive traits from your parents. It actually turns out that there are dozen of genes that control eye color which leads to the question of how are there just blue, green, brown and hazel eyes. Your eye color is determined by two factors how much dark pigment you have in your iris and the actual structural make up of your iris. Therefore, if you have a lot of melanin (the dark pigment), your eyes will be dark brown or black. However, for blue eyes the story is completely different. There isn’t one pigment of blue in someone with blue eyes meanings there’s no melatonin in the front part of your iris. It’s just how light is scattered just like the sky isn’t actually blue, it just appears that way because of how light is scattered from the Sun.

Brown eyes are the most common eye color while blue and green are the least common with surprisingly only 2% of the population having them.

Another question that is asked quite often is how your eyes change color after birth. The answer to this is based on the same way you get your initial eye color. As your eyes develop your melatonin levels become more level, your eye color is going to change with them. Similarly, as your body goes through changes such as puberty or pregnancy, your eyes can also change color  because of structural changes in the iris (which is the other factor of eye color).

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/03/26/1953782_how-do-genes-pick-eye-color.html?rh=1

http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask29

Ever since we were kids we’ve been told drugs are bad for obvious reasons. They alter your state of being and destroy important parts of your brain. A recent study was done by medical researchers at Universita degli Studi di Milano, a university in Italy, testing the long term effects of marijuana. Surprisingly it led to serious autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases such as multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, and rheumatoid disease for adults when used in the teenage years.

To test the research they did, the researchers set up an experiment on adolescent mice where they injected them for 10 days  with THC, the main active component of marijuana. This 10 day period correlated with the adolescence period of humans (12-18). There was also a second group of mice that were given a placebo and both groups were left alone for two months after the treatments to reach full adulthood. The researches then evaluated the immune systems of both groups taking many measurements into consideration. The result was that the mice treated with THC had severe immune complications in adulthood.

If these results would be able to be replicated it would show that adolescence is a key phase of immune sensitivty when your immune system is forming to be the strongest it can be. If you alter factors during this period of development they can lead to serious and permanent health issues. One of the researchers, Paola Sacerdote mentioned “I hope that the knowledge that early exposure to marijuana is associated with immediate and long-term deleterious effects on the immune system may reach adolescents and their families”.

I’m a strong believer that drug should not be used especially for teenagers. It is proven to be very detrimental to your immediate health but many people aren’t aware of the serious, permanent long term effect it can have.

Sources:

http://learnaboutmarijuanawa.org/factsheets/adolescents.htm

Autoimmune diseases linked to adolescent marijuana use

On Monday, scientist released a huge breakthrough in discovering the routes of our universe. If the discovery is true, it will back up the hypothesis of the Big Bang theory. Researchers discovered for the first time what Albert Einstein had once predicted: gravitational waves. These gravitational waves are known as ripples in time which are known as the first tremors of the big bang.

The critical piece of equipment that helped discover this was the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization 2 (BICEP2). The BICEP2 is a telescope that allowed scientist to analyze the polarization of the light that was left over from the early universe such as the gravitational waves. 

The word “inflation” is used by scientist to describe how the universe rapidly expanded after the Big Bang. It’s the “bang” part of the Big Bang when the universe began to rip apart.

Sources:

http://www.livescience.com/44136-universe-inflation-gravitational-waves-discovery.html

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/17/tech/innovation/big-bang-gravitational-waves/

Colin Fielder, a 39 year old man, had a heart attack and was clinically dead for 40 minutes. When the ambulance arrived he was conscious and he made a decision that changed his life forever. This decision was going to the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. They’re testing two machines; one called the AutoPulse and the other is a heart-pulse machine. The AutoPulse is a mechanical CPR device that continuously performs chest compressions. The heart-pulse machine blood and oxygen through the bodies vital organs. While these two are working it gives doctors time to pin point how the heart attack occurred.

Choosing the Alfred Hospital saved his life. They are the only hospital with this equipment and it has already saved three out of seven people from cardiac arrest including him.  The same type of skills are used; however, the AutoPulse squeezes the entire chest opposed to one spot where your hands would normally go. The pump is non-invasive and with help from the heart-pulse, the risk of having permanent damage after the cardiac arrest and slim to none.

Since the first use of the AutoPulse in 2003, there has been a study done by the U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) where 29 patients have been examined after the use of it. It has shown that the AutoPulse caused a greater increase in diastolic blood pressure opposed to manual heart compressions.

From:

http://www.collegenews.com/article/dead_for_40_minutes_miracle_technology_revives_patient

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/13/man-brought-back-to-life-after-being-clinically-dead-for-40-minutes/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/14/dead-for-40-minutes_n_3272438.html

Healing a broken heart used to be a metaphorical saying because there was no really way to mend a heart back together. However, researchers have now created an adhesive that can repair heart wounds. Jeffery M. Karp invented from Harvard Medical School and Dr. Pedro del Nido from Boston’s Children Hospital have created a glue that is as strong as staples or stitches to bond heart tissue back together. Staples and stitches are both not the most practical methods because they can cause problems. They can both damage tissue and don’t provide for a watertight seal and staples usually have to be removed. The glue they designed is strong enough to withstand the stress of a beating heart or the blood vessels without deteriorating.

Once the doctor applies to honey like texture of glue to the area that needs to be sealed, the molecules in the glue begin to work their way into the collagen fibers in the tissue. The doctor then shines an ultraviolet light on the glue that makes its molecules bond to one another causing a strong chain bond. The texture is now a rubberlike material that flows with the natural makeup of the hearts collagen. The glue has been tested to work on both pigs and rats. There are other adhesives out their that have been used but unlike this one, those usually require the tissue to be dried. Human trials still have to be conducted before the product can be used clinically.

Karp and several others have started a company to market the glue called Gecko Biomedical which has so far raised $10 million. The company is hoping to get approval to use  this product that will eliminate the use of stitches and make surgeries easier in Europe by the end of 2015.

From: http://www.livescience.com/42420-new-glue-could-mend-broken-hearts.html

Virus in workplace

The University of Arizona in Tuscan did a study on how rapidly a virus from a door handle could spread throughout the work place within a few hours. Microbiologist Charles Gerba and his team put the virus in three different areas with consent from the workers. These places were a healthcare facility, an office and a conference room. After about two to three hours the virus began to show up in about 40-60% of the work place such as the break room, phones and computers. The virus that they used was able to infect bacteria but not humans and they made sure it wasn’t a virus that had been previously evident in the workplace.

Although the virus that they used was not able to infect people, it was still able to stick to their hands and such surfaces. Because this experiment was done to see the spread of viruses in workplaces, Gerba and him team decided to test it by offering disinfectant wipes to the employees. Surprisingly only about half of the employees offered the disinfectant wipes used them. However, the ones who did use the wipes helped reduce the presence of the virus by about 80%. Gerba say’s this is very important to be aware of staying disinfected to help you during the cold and flu seasons.

From: Science News 

I am taking this course because I needed to fulfill my science credits to be eligible for the Smeal College of Business. I sat down with an academic advisor at orientation and she suggested a bunch of Gen Ed classes and this one seemed the most interesting to me. I am not planning on being a science major because although I enjoy chemistry and bio, I am not interested in any of the fields that they have to offer.