Video games have always been an outlet for me to just relax, waste some free time, and have some fun. My parents used to always tell me how bad video games can be if I play them too much. They would constantly try to get me away from playing but I never saw the harm in it. Mature rated games for people 18 years old and up can often be too violent or inappropriate for kids; but that is why they are meant for more mature people. Many adults think that video games can harm your brain and therefore effect their kids performance in school. From personal experience and with some evidence from research, I can inform you that this is not true.

A study was done to test the effects of video games on adults  between the 60 and 80 year old range. A relatively simple video game called NeuroRacer involves driving a car on a road while having to read road signs. After six months of these older adults practicing the game, they became more proficient than untrained adults in their 20’s. The brain wave activity of the 60 to 80 year old participants after playing the game for six months compares with the brain wave activity of the 20’s. The older adults also performed better at memory and attention tests outside of the video game.

Another study was done that suggested that video games increase teenagers left Dorsal Lateral Prefrontal Cortex and Frontal Eye Fields the more they play. This helps the teenagers working memory, decision making, and eye movements. After two months of the subjects playing 30 minutes of Super Mario 64, the results suggest that the game causes growth in the right hippocampus, the left Dorsal Lateral Prefrontal Cortex, and cerebellum.

Video games can actually enhance brain productivity in people between the ages of 14 and 80. If not abused, short periods of playing video games can be helpful to the development of the human brain.

http://psychneuro.wordpress.com/2014/04/13/do-video-games-really-rot-your-brain-nope/

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/technology/a-multitasking-video-game-makes-old-brains-act-younger.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=3&

Every sport requires a unique set of skills that become more advanced as the sport reaches different levels. A majority of the American youth population participates in some sort of sport, whether it is organized sports or just playing at recess. This is the time when the basics of sports are taught. Once kids get into their teenage years, sports start to become a major part of their life. This is the time to mature and acquire skills in sports. High school years are when the athletes start to separate themselves from the pack.  The next level is college, then amateurs, then professionals. Each step of the way your brain is learning to use the skills that you’ve acquired over the years faster.

Professional athletes, amateur athletes, and non-athletes  were part of a study in which each group was put through visual tasks. One task was to track virtual balls to represent players moving in a three-dimensional space on a computer screen. This task simulates being able to track multiple things at once.  It comes as no surprise that the professional athletes excelled at this task compared to the other two groups. After a little bit of practice, the amateur athletes started to break away from the non-athletes.

The athletes showed that they are far superior than the non-athletes at tracking the movement of people. Among other things, athletes excelled with creativity and working memory. For someone to compete at the highest level of any sport, that athlete has been through rigorous training that non-athletes are not experienced with.

I believe that this does not necessarily make athletes smarter than non-athletes, it just shows that athletes can think faster because sports move so quickly. The athletes are used to thinking fast and being creative and that gives them an advantage with this study.

http://www.mensfitness.com/life/sports/can-playing-sports-make-you-smarter

http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130129/srep01154/full/srep01154.html

http://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/do-sports-make-you-smarter-study-finds-athletes-039-brains-have-more-gray-matter/gray-matter-athlete-neurons-bochum-/c3s11034/#.VIGZbDHF-Op

Winter is sneaking up on us and it is the time to crank the heat up in the house. This time of year makes it much harder for me to stay in shape because I like to play sports outdoors and the weather does not cooperate with ideal conditions. Although the heat is much more comforting than the cold, lower temperatures seem to help with weight loss and reduced body fat.

In a recent study, eight people with little to no brown fat cells were exposed to 63 degree Fahrenheit temperatures for two hours a day for six weeks while a control group would go about their everyday lives. The group that was exposed to the lower temperatures had 5% less body fat at the end of the six weeks than the control group.

At first I was surprised by the results of this study. Because it is harder for me to go for a run outside or play basketball at the park, I’ve always thought that winter is the lazy season where people gain weight. This study explained that when the temperature is colder outside, your body has to use more energy to keep warm and it was something that I have always overlooked. Obviously this study will be more accurate with a larger sample size, but the results seem like they would continue this pattern.

A person should not put themselves in freezing temperatures with minimal clothing to lose weight. This study suggests that sometimes it is good to expose ourselves to cooler temperatures to make our bodies adjust to stay warm.

http://www.livescience.com/42764-temperature-training-lose-fat.html

http://www.weather.com/health/news/cold-weather-torches-body-fat-study-shows-20131017

One habit that is set at a young is brushing teeth. It is something that is second nature for me and that I know to do every morning and every night, but not everyone keeps up with this habit. Maintaining a high level of oral health is not only good for your teeth, but it can help prevent things such as HPV which can lead to throat cancer.

A study was done that showed that people with poor dental history or gum disease is an independent risk factor for oral HPV. The study drew 3,400 subjects who varied in gender and were between the ages of 30 and 69. Subjects who reported poor oral health had a 56% higher rate of HPV than those who did not. The subjects who reported having gum disease had a 51% higher rate of HPV than those who did not.

The results come as no surprise to me. I would assume that poor oral habits would increase the risk of infection because of the amount of bacteria in a person’s mouth. I think that this is an issue that needs to be fixed starting with teaching young children the importance of good oral hygiene. Teaching children the importance of washing their mouth and brushing their teeth will help them get into good habits at an early age.

How Brushing Your Teeth Lowers Your Risk of Cancer

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2157926/Poor-brushing-teeth-linked-premature-cancer-deaths-bacteria-increase-risk-80.html

Happiness means something different to every person. Some people find happiness through their successes, some from religion, some from family etc. There is an infinite number of ways to make someone happy. The most common way that people vision happiness is with someone who has a smile on their face. Research has shown that something as simple as smiling can lead to happiness. I have personally noticed that I am happier when the people around me are happy, but have never really thought about how smiling affects myself.

Charles Darwin originally hypothesized that smiling can intensify a person’s pleasure. There is still not  proven solution to this hypothesis. In a more recent study, a group of randomly selected subjects were split in half. Half were told to hold a pen in their lips tightly to inhibit smiling while the other half were told to hold the pen at the front of their teeth to activate muscles used to smile. Each group was told to rate how funny a cartoon is while having the pen in their mouth. The group who had the pen in their lips found the cartoon to be funnier than the group who had the pen in their teeth.

These results show that the act of smiling can cause a person to be happier, but the study cannot confirm this hypothesis. There is a lot of factors that can change these results. The ages of the the subjects were not stated. Also, the gender ratio was not specified of the subjects. Younger males would find cartoons funnier than the average middle-aged person.

While reading about these studies, I have forced myself to smile and frown repeatedly. Although there is not a proven answer to this hypothesis, I personally believe that smiling causes your brain to think of happy memories and frowning causes your brain to think about sad ones.

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2011/10/25/health-blog-video-is-it-true-smiling-improves-your-mood/

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/18/science/a-feel-good-theory-a-smile-affects-mood.html

Safety in sports is an major issue in today’s society. One particular safety concern with all sports is concussions. Each year, the scientific community finds out more about the effects of concussions but it is still not clear as to what all of the long term effects are. As the world’s most popular sport, head injuries occur frequently in soccer. There are so many different ways to get injured in a soccer match, especially with such minimal safety equipment. Throughout  my many years of playing soccer, I have acquired three concussions on the field. These injuries have kept me out of competing in sports and have kept me out of school for extended periods of time. Something has to be done about the concussion epidemic associated with soccer. I did not play organized football growing up, so I do not have any personal experience with head trauma caused during a football game. Football does have the highest percentage of athletes enduring head injuries, and there is clearly something to be done to decrease the number of these injuries.

One study that I find particularly disturbing revealed that 63% of varsity soccer players had symptoms of a concussion at some point, yet only 19% were aware of their symptoms. Another study hypothesized that previous concussions increase an athletes vulnerability to repetitive blows to the head leading to brain damage. To complete this study, Penn State collegiate football and rugby players were selected to be the subjects for this study. Twelve football and rugby players were selected for this study, six with a history of concussions and six without a history of concussions. The subjects were put through a serious of Virtual Reality tests and MRI scans to check the subjects before and after their competitions to see their brain productivity.

The results showed that brain productivity, balance, and spatial memory deficiency after the subjects competition. Although these athletes often do not realize the impact of repetitive knocks to the head, there is immediate and long term effects from these sports. Athletes continue to compete in their sport while having concussion like symptoms putting themselves at a high risk of serious injury.

I believe that the best solution to this problem is to have the coaches, referees, and trainers aware of the symptoms of concussions to protect the athletes as best as possible. It would be unfair to completely eliminate sports that have constant knocks to the head, therefore, awareness is the best solution to contain this issue.

http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/47/5/e1.12.abstract

http://consumer.healthday.com/cognitive-health-information-26/brain-health-news-80/heading-soccer-ball-can-damage-brain-study-says-684615.html

Once or twice a week, my busy high school schedule kept me awake until 3 a.m. and was forced to wake up at 6 a.m. I thought the work load was very unfair to students but I have a feeling it is only going to get worse. I have yet to be overwhelmed with work in my short life as a college student, but I know that all-nighters of studying are soon to creep up on me. Being the typical 18 year old male, I procrastinate things to the point where I cannot push them off any further. The amount of work that I am expecting in my near future will surely keep me up all night to study the material. Is this an effective way to learn though?

In high school, courses were  year long compared to here where they are a semester long but you cover the same amount of material. It is unfair for students to be expected to cover this material in such a short amount of time. How bad is it to have a lack of sleep though? All college students suffer from this so it cannot be that bad?

Slowing down the thinking process is one of the effects from lack of sleep. This sticks out to me the most because lack of sleep is usually caused by studying, but it actually “dumbs you down.” Also, lack of sleep can lead to major health issues such as heart failures and strokes. It can also lead to depression.

I never realized that lack of sleep was bad for you other than the fact that it is bad to drive when you are tired. This clearly is not a healthy way for kids to be studying and can lead to major health problems. Time to stop procrastinating and get some sleep!

http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/excessive-sleepiness-10/10-results-sleep-loss?page=3

http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/consequences

Is it true that white people are not able to jump as high as black people? I have wondered this for a while now because I was a high jumper for all of high school. I was never sure if I was at a disadvantage for being white. I never took the time to actually research if I was at a disadvantage in high school, but now I believe that I need to know truth about if race affects jumping ability.

There has always been rumors that black people have an extra muscle or bone in their legs that allows them to jump higher than white people. I never actually believed that this was true, but was never certain. In my research, I found that black people do not have an extra muscle or bone, but black people tend to have more muscle in their legs. In studies with teenagers and college athletes, black people jumped and average of 8 cm higher than the white people in their study. This study also showed that black people had a lot less body fat than the white people. It would be more reliable to have all of the subjects have similar body fat percentage to make it a more reliable study.

There is no genetically proven reason that black people jump higher than white people. However, these studies have shown that having less body fat and more muscle increase jumping ability. Now I know that I was not at a disadvantage in high school to compete in high jump.

http://medicine72.blogspot.com/2009/11/is-it-true-black-people-have-extra.html

http://makcellent.blogspot.com/2012/12/can-black-people-on-average-jump-higher.html

I have always wondered about this topic because it seems to cause a huge controversy with religion. I am a Christian raised kid who also grew up in a time where being gay was more acceptable than ever. I have gay friends who are also Christian raised but the Christian faith is against same sex marriage, at least it has been historically. Of course there are always going to be insensitive people no matter what type of person you are, but I am very interested to see if being gay is something a person is born with or if it is something that is learned.

In my research, I never came across anything that is 100% clear on this topic. There are so many environmental factors that come into play when discussing this issue. One thing that has been consistent throughout my research is that there is a clear correlation between childhood abuse and homosexuality. Many studies have been done to try and figure out what the truth is, but there has never been a study to prove that someone can be born gay even though that there is some evidence that supports it.

The most common theory is that there is an undiscovered “gay gene” that someone can be born with. Although this would  be an easy way to settle this debate, no such gene has been discovered to date. Many studies have been done on this subject specifically and all have ended the same, inconclusive. I believe that some day there will be an answer to this question, but for now, I will have to wait.

http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/genetics_of_homosexuality.html

Proof you can’t be ‘born gay’

All throughout my pre-teen and teenage years, I was under the impression that lifting weights before a person is finished growing would stunt a persons growth. I have always heard this rumor and stayed away from weight lifting until high school, but have always wondered about the kids that did lift. It seemed as if a lot of my friends who lifted at younger ages did not get to be very tall, but their parents were not very tall either. I have also had friends who lifted starting in middle school and are now over six and half feet tall.

According to Dr. Avery Faigenbaum of the University of Massachusetts, weight lifting does not stunt growth in adolescents. In fact, a healthy diet while working out during adolescents actually helps a person reach maximum height. Betsy Keller of Ithica College has also found that this myth came about from a flawed study which only came from sports in which smaller athletes are more successful, such as gymnastics and competitive dancing. However, damaging growth plates can stunt a persons growth. Weight lifting runs a huge risk of damaging these growth plates which is how this theory came about.

In conclusion, weight lifting has proved not to stunt a adolescents growth but enhance it. This is something I wish that I knew before today so that I could have continued to progress towards the NBA. Unfortunately, this dream was crushed when I stopped growing before ever reaching six feet. A person should still be careful with weight lifting because it could damage their growth plates.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/430166-can-lifting-weights-when-young-stunt-your-growth/

http://skinnybulkup.com/does-weight-lifting-stunt-growth/

My name is Matthew Knittel and I am from Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. I never liked science class in high school (because I never did well in class) but science is something that interests me. I do not want to be a science major because I do not believe I would do well at it and because business is something I am very passionate about. I am doing this course because I had no idea what science I wanted to take and my adviser suggested SC 200 because it is more of a discussion based class. I am also a huge soccer fan and support Manchester City.