In high school, myself, along with various other people that I have met during my short period of time here at Penn State have discussed having to take a P.E. class in high school. In elementary school, physical activity was left more to recess. But no matter what the circumstance, there was always a good amount of time in the day that we as growing kids and adolescents were left to our own devices to exercise and take a break from the academic stress of the day. Lately there has been some controversy whether P.E. classes should even still be offered in public schools, and by examining many different credible sources the answer seems to be yes. Some of the many different sources that have published research that shows a strong correlation between the need for physical education in the school system to better academic performance include Columbia University, the New York City Health Department and Department of Education, the Universities of Illinois, West Virginia, and California.

The thing about physical activity is that it can have a great impact on many different parts of our bodies. It can have an impact on cognitive skills, attitudes, and academic behavior. All of these things have been proved to be important parts of improved academic performance. When combined, this enhances concentration and attention as well as behaving better in the classroom. The most recent argument, and my main point is that in some cases if students are exposed to more time in physical education, it can lead to improved grades and standardized test scores. Many schools nowadays are thinking about cutting P.E. funding and I was even able to see that in my high school before I left, however, there are actually many benefits of that small amount of time that students get participating in physical activity. Physical activity allows an increase of oxygen flow to the brain along with increased brain neurotransmitters. According to one of my sources that I used, the correlation of physical exercise and better academic performance may be due to, “[Increased] brain-derived neurotrophins that support neuronal differentiation and survival in the developing brain.” Neurotrophins assure the survival of neurons in areas responsible for learning, memory, and higher thinking.”

One study that I found done by various universities such as Michigan State and Tarleton State University found very promising just mixed evidence that discusses this claim. Although numerous studies have shown positive relationships between academic achievements and both physical activity and sports participation, there have only been a few that have shown no correlation or an inverse relationship. The researchers who took it upon themselves to do this study believe that students may perform better after physical activity due to increased arousal and reduced boredom: therefore they attention span and concentration was increased. Increased activity levels could also lead to higher self-esteem which could help in the classroom as well. The study was done in a public school in western Michigan. 215 six-grade students were randomly assigned to this study, narrowed down from the 662 six-graders that had the opportunity to be involved. Students were put into one of two groups. One of the groups was enrolled in P.E. the first semester, and one during the second. During the semester that they did not have P.E. they were enrolled in an exploratory class such as a computer class. Each class met every day of the week for 55 minutes. Having parental consent that was obtained before the study commenced, they took the height, weight, and body mass index of the children and they were also asked about their physical activities. Their academic achievement was based on their individual grades for each student in the core classes. An A was considered a 5, a B was a four, and etc. until you got to an F which counted as a 1. Terra Nova standardized test scores were also used to measure the academic achievement of the students. Not only this, but the study was very careful to monitor student activity levels in the P.E. classes, the curriculum context variables, and the teacher behavior. All factors that could alter the final results. They found that students who performed vigorous physical activity at a level that met or exceeded the Health People 2010 guidelines achieved higher academic scores compared with the other student in both and second semesters. However, surprisingly, moderate physical activity did not affect grades, and standardized test scores were not significantly related to P.E. or physical activity levels.

There was definitely evidence in the conclusion of the study that physical activity up to a certain point does affect academic performance in a positive manner, however if it’s only a moderate amount it may make no difference at all. Although, because there are  a lot of other studies, some small scale and some on the larger scale, that all came up with the result that physical activity is positively correlated with positive academic performance it may have been chance that they found little to no significance between the two in this specific study. According to the National Association for Sports and Physical Education recommends 60 minutes a day for children and adolescents. But maybe we could also apply this to our own lives even though we are no longer in high school or elementary school. If you find yourself losing focus, going for a walk or taking an hour at the gym might be just the thing to get your attention back.

Sources:

• http://www.sparkpe.org/blog/how-physical-activity-affects-academic-performance/
• http://www.wafapower.com/scienceresearch/PE_academic_achievement.pdf

Now that I’m in college some things had to change. I had to start being more responsible in certain ways; for instance, remembering to bring my key everywhere that I go. I also have to make sure that I get to my tests and remember to do my homework. But one thing that I noticed was that my procrastination continues to be a problem. When it comes to exams, it’s arguably one of the most difficult things to get out of your regular routine to study the material. This is why I often times found and now continue to find myself cramming for tests the night before, which isn’t such a rare thing for college students. Many students find themselves due to their busy schedules leaving the studying until the last minute. But research has shown time and time again that cramming is actually the worst thing you could do and that it actually has more negative effects towards academic and personal performance. I was able to find studies were able to explain why cramming is so bad.

One study that I found discussed something that two researchers by the names of Glanzer and Cunitz had found. They worked off of their assumption that humans have two memories: a working memory, and a long-term memory. The difference between the two is that the working memory was basically the short-termed memory system that is really only in use when you’re working on something at that specific moment. The long term memory is the general idea of memory. In other words, something we can remember on demand. The objective of studying for a test is to get everything that you need to know into your long term memory. However, according to these two researchers, the mistake that students make is that they think the way that they will get the information into their long-term memory is through their short one. The researchers designed two studies that relied on a model that showed a list of words to subjects who then were asked to remember as many of those words as they could directly after they were shown the list. In the first study they varied the rate of the presentation of the words. In some trials they lengthened the amount of time between words and in others they shortened it. In the second experiment they varied the delay with which words were presented and when the subjects were asked to recall the words. In some trials there was a small duration between the reading of the list and the recall of the list and then sometimes it was lengthened.

Their results showed the same thing. It showed that the participants generally recalled the first and last sections of the list better than they recalled the words in the middle of the list. They decided that this was expected due to the primary effect and the recency effects which were already two known effects. The results showed that if the words were presented more slowly, more words were remembered. They also predicted that the duration of time between presentation and recall would affect their curve. If there was more time between the presentation and recall, less words at the end were remembered. The conclusion of why the words in the beginning were remembered more is because as the subject read the words they commit those words to memory until there is too much information to process. If there is more time to do this, they will remember more. In the middle of the list, by contrast, the brain relies more on short-term memory. The same thing is true about cramming. When you cram, you read information and try to commit to memory, however it is simply forgotten in a couple hours. Similarly to the study, you are likely to remember the beginning and end of your study session the most.

The second study that I found focuses more on cramming with flashcards. It seems to be common practice that we make a bunch of flashcards and then take out a card if we get it right once assuming that we already know that information. However, this may not be the smartest option. In an experiment that was done during the Association for Psychological Science by a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the University of California at Los Angeles and a professor of psychology there, 20 people were asked to study 20 word pairs on flashcards for one hour. Half of the participants were instructed to review the whole stack of 20 cards eight times. As for the other half, they were told to break up their stack into small stacks of 5 and reviewing each stack eight times, and then moving onto the next stack. The two groups were asked to predict how many they would remember that final exam. The people with the small stacks predicted that they would have a 68% average, and the people studying the full stack predicted they would remember only 53% of the cards. What they found at the end was the complete opposite. At the end of the hour they found that the people who studied the full cycle of cards had an average exam score of 80 percent, and the people who studied the small stacks had an average of 54%. They used this evidence to conclude that cramming does not in fact work. Mr. Kornell noted that when you study something unfamiliar repeatedly in immediate succession it seems like you know the material a lot better than you actually do. It’s better to create an interval between the times that you study something.

There are numerous other studies that suggest the same thing about cramming before a test. It may be clearer whether or not cramming is actually as bad as everyone makes it out to be if these studies were done at a greater scale rather than small tests groups. However with the first series of studies that I discussed, I do think that it was important to do two different studies rather than one. Overall, since there is a common conception that cramming is definitely not the most effective way to remember information, it is either by chance that people do not remember things as well when they cram or it’s actually true or a false negative. No matter what, there are other things that you can do if you must cram. It’s better to spend 20-30 minutes a night to focus on a small portion of facts. You can try to focus on the most important parts of the test at the beginning of your cram session, the least important in the middle, and the second most important at the end. But avoiding cramming is most likely the best choice to make.

Sources:

http://learninglab.psych.purdue.edu/downloads/Chronicle_Cramming.pdf

http://www.laymanpsychology.com/cramming-for-exams/

This weekend being one of the many football weekends here at Penn State there is one thing that is inevitably going to show its face: lots and lots of tailgates. And what comes along with tailgates? Lots and lots of food. Whether it be buffalo chicken dip, pulled pork sandwiches, various sodas and drinks that excite our mouths or even the occasional sip of alcohol, we either dislike or like a little bit of everything that comes in touch with our taste buds. But what enables us to be able to taste the food that we eat and then further decide whether or not we like the certain thing or not? The mystery of this all is the way that our taste buds work, therefore I decided to get more in depth with my confusions.

One of the earliest explanations of why we taste things is through the evolution of man-kind. For example taste was a sense that helped our ancestors test the foods that they were consuming. Therefore it was considered a matter of survival. When there was a bitter or soul taste this would suggest that the food was either a poisonous inedible plant or rather it was a rotting protein-rich food. On the other hand, the taste of something sweet or salty suggested rather a food that is rich in nutrients. Savory, considered a flavor has been recognized as a fifth basic taste in addition to the normal four: sweet, sour, bitter, and salty tastes sweet and salty, on the other hand, are often a sign of food rich in nutrients.

However, it is not only the quality of the taste that we perceive from our tongue’s senses, but also the smell, texture, and temperature have an important role in whether or not we like a specific food or not. Additionally, the taste of our food has to be combined with the smell as well to ensure that the overall flavor is actually produced. This explains why when we are sick and are not able to smell as easily and effectively as if we were healthy we are not able to properly taste our foods. This is explained because both smell and taste are connected to the nervous system. Consider how a bad taste or odor can bring about the impulse to vomiting or nausea.

Something that has been a common misconception about the tongue is that there are specific zones for each flavor that we eat. That is to say that only on certain areas on our tongue we are able to taste a sweet or sour taste especially well. However, this myth primarily came from a misconstrued reading of an illustration of the tongue. The reality of the tongue is that all five tastes can be sensed all over the tongue. It is true that the sides and the back of the tongue are most sensitive to some tastes rather than the middle, but for the most part there is little discrimination. The only differentiation is that the back of the tongue is relatively sensitive to bitter tastes. The way that we are able to taste certain things is through our taste papillae which are bumps that contain sensory cells with a special structure. In the middle of the top of these papillae there is an indentation filled with fluid which the chemical substances that are responsible for the taste are washed into. This makes it so that they are immediately detected and analyzed by our brains.

A couple years ago there was a study done at the Ohio State University that made a breakthrough in common research related to taste buds. They discovered that there was a certain chemical messenger called neuropeptide Y which had been previously shown to be active in the brain and gut, and only recently found to be effecting taste buds as well. This was especially astonishing because a couple years before the date of the study, the team had found another chemical messenger, cholecystokinin that was also active in some taste bud cells. They came to the conclusion that both peptides had different effects in the same cells. Cholecystokinin was thought to tell the brain that something bitter was on the tongue, while the neuropeptide Y sent a signal indicating something salty. In the study, the researchers took taste bud cells from the rear of the tongues of rats and isolated cells from individual taste buds. From there they attached electrodes to the cells in Petri dishes to record the electrical activity of the cells. They found that NPY had a different signal than CCK therefore concluding that they release different responses in the cells. From there, it’s apparent that the cells might release both peptides and depending on the taste of the food one overpowers the other.

So why do we like some foods more than others? It’s apparent that some tastes we were born to like and dislike, but over times our bodies either adapt to change that or keep it the same. We are born with the innate like of sweetness and a dislike for something sour. This suggests why many kids do not like some vegetables right off the bat because bitter tastes are common in plant toxins. Whatever the reason, it is in fact possible to change our tastes and preferences solely by slowly eating a little bit of something we dislike every day. Eating vegetables and not liking them may be solely a learned response, however we may not like certain foods solely to chance. Our taste buds are complex and work with our brain to decide whether or not we like the food, and that in itself is remarkable.

Sources:

http://io9.com/the-psychology-of-hating-food-and-how-we-learn-to-love-476720251

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/tastebud.htm

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0033701/

Sneezing is a natural part of everyday life. We’ve all experienced a sickness when it seems like we sneeze and wipe our noses with a tissue so much that our nose goes raw. Not only this, but when faced with pepper, sunlight, and other weird things such as allergies it’s like we can’t control ourselves and get that undeniable urge. But I feel like a not so frequent question that is asked is why we get the urge to sneeze and its significance as well as how uncleanly being exposed to someone else’s snot is. Sneezing is known to generally occur when the respiratory epithelium in our nose is irritated. This irritation then stimulates the endings of a nerve that sends a message to our brain telling it to offset the sneezing reflex. But is that the only reason that we sneeze?

It turns out that our noses require a “reboot” every once in a while when it’s overwhelmed and this reboot is triggered by the force of a sneeze. This new discovery was only recently found out. The purpose of an effective sneeze is to reset the environment in the nasal passage to get all of the bad particles that we breathe in through our nose out by trapping them. The actual sneeze itself happens when biochemical signals that regulate the beating of the hairs on the cells in our nose are sent. This type of new knowledge on how sneezing works to help get bad particles out of our systems also has tremendously helped doctors acknowledge ways to treat people were various nasal problems. Take for example patients with sinusitis. They do not clear mucus from their nose and sinuses as easily as the rest of the general public, however, through developing new strategies to compensate for their inability to clear mucus doctors and scientists will be able to coexist and improve their quality of life.

To make the discovery, a couple of researchers used cells from the noses of mice which were grown in incubators. They then measure how these cells were able to clear mucus. They used simulated what a sneeze would be like using a puff of air to help them examine how these cells that they produced would respond. Some of these same experiments were also done in human sinus and nasal tissues, however because it would be a uncomfortable to do the experiment within a person that has sinusitis they removed the tissue from patients that both had sinusitis and those who also did not. The results that they found showed that the cells from patients with the sinusitis did not respond to the sneezes in the same way as the ells from the patients who did not have it. From there, the researchers were only able to conclude that people with sinusitis sneeze more often because they’re not able to “reset” their nasal passageways properly. I think it’s interesting to notice that they were perfectly fine with testing these cells on mice but not the humans. This might suggest that mice are not able to have the nasal problems that a human might, or perhaps they don’t think it would affect their overall health as drastically.

It seems as though sneezing is a pretty important way of ridding our bodies of some of the not so pleasant things. But there seems to be many other actors that contribute to why we sneeze. Take for example, why do we sneeze repeatedly sometimes four or five if not more times? What is the purpose of such a thing? Well according to Marjorie L. Slankard, the reason that we sneeze multiple times in one given instance is to get rid of what is irritating it. Our bodies are pretty efficient of getting rid of anything that doesn’t belong and therefore when your nasal passage is trying to get rid of this irritation it may sometimes take two or three tries. The color and consistency can actually say a lot about what’s going on inside your body as well. Naturally, when you sneeze the mucus that comes out should be clear, but sometimes it comes out differently. It range from the color green to brown. This is an indication from your body that there is an infection which results you going to the doctor and getting treatment. According to an article I read, the color comes from white cells in the mucus that produce antibodies to fight either the cold or infection. This, overall lets us know when we need to look out for our bodies and can turn out to be extremely helpful. Sneezes are powerful things and leave our bodies at speeds that reach 93 mph which transitions nicely into the next thin that we need to be aware about when we sneeze or are exposed to others that sneeze: they travel pretty far.

Recently there was a study that was published by MIT researchers that sneezes and coughs are not just spewed and then gone, but rather they have an associated with gas clouds that might give them the ability to leave infectious droplets floating around to further distances. The professor of applied mathematics stated, “When you cough or sneeze, you see the droplets, or feel them if someone sneezes on you, but you don’t see the cloud, the invisible gas phase. The influence of this gas cloud is to extend the range of the individual droplets, particularly the small ones.” Although it was previously though that the greater the droplets the further they can travel, the study found the contrary. Supposedly, the smaller droplets are able to travel 5-200 times further than they would if they were unconnected particles. The main concern with the discovery that these droplets may stay airborne is that it has great potential to make its way into ventilation systems and spread infections and illnesses to other people. They suggest the re-examination of the design of workplaces and hospitals to reduce the chance of these airborne particles. To grasp an idea of how far a sneeze really goes the researchers used high-speed imaging as well as laboratory simulations and mathematical modeling to get their information.

So while sneezing can help our own personal bodies by expelling the unnecessary irritations and gems that are covering our nasal cavities, it can also cause a bit of hazard. Although the discovery of the MIT researchers seems to be a credible and well-known study, it also could just be another theory. In that case it could either be true that our sneezes and coughs do travel around in a sort of gas bubble for a longer period of time than predicted or rather it’s a false positive. Only in due time will we know more about the positives and negatives of sneezing, but for now when everyone continues to get over their colds and coughs, be sure to cover up.

Sources:

• http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/coughs-and-sneezes-float-farther-you-think
• http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120731103035.htm
• http://www.everydayhealth.com/allergy-pictures/why-we-sneeze-and-other-fun-facts-about-sneezing.aspx#11
• http://www.livescience.com/44362-why-do-we-sneeze.html

Our dreams have always been a mysterious part of everyday life. We go to sleep and suddenly we are either living out our deepest desires, being confused by something that we find completely irrelevant, or rather cast into a completely horrifying nightmare. I assume that I’m not the only one who has had a dream that seems completely realistic and woken up either in despair or with relief depending on the situation. Wouldn’t it be nice to know whether you’re dreaming or in real life? Well, this consciousness while dreaming is described as lucid dreaming.

Lucid dreamers usually report being able to remember the circumstances of waking life, to think clearly, and act deliberately in their actions while dreaming in a world that seems real but clearly is not. In other words, they are aware that they are dreaming and can manipulate their actions and scenery based on this awareness. According to scientists such as Snyder & Gackenbach, only about 20% of the population reports having lucid dreams once a month or more. However, if you’re ever able to experience a lucid dream it’s a rather surreal experience. People are mostly seen to get attracted to lucid dreaming because it allows individuals to do things they could never do in waking reality. An example that I found in an article that I read would be to taste fire or fly to the sun.

One of the earliest evidence for lucid dreaming was first found by important scientists such as LaBerge, Nagel, Dement, and Zarcone. There were other studies done previously that suggested that some of the eye movements that the dreamer made during their REM sleep were the same as the reported direction of the dreamer’s direction of sight in their dream. The purpose of the experiment was to see if there was an actual correlation between experiencing lucid dreams and REM sleep. The subject were asked to make deliberate distinctive patterns with their eye movements once they realized that there was the onset of lucidity while dreaming. It is also said that the subjects were asked to clench their fists as well. The specific dream actions would be observable on a polygraph. The records shows that the prearranged eye movement proved that the subjects had been lucid dreaming during REM sleep. The scientists then reported that the occurrence of lucid dreaming during REM sleep had been demonstrated for five subjects. The subjects had been recorded from 2 to 20 nights each in the course of 34 nights, and at the end the results demonstrated that 35 lucid dreams were reported from various stages of sleep.

One of the most pronounced lucid dream researchers, Beverly D’Urso, knows everything about lucid dreaming. The same article mentioned above claims that D’Urso has been a lucid dreamer since she was seven years old. In her dreams she vividly remembers having the ability to be able to taste fire, visit the sun, and even overcome her writer’s block. If this is not confusing and fascinating enough, upon doing a study in which her main objective was to go into her dream and experience the first ever recorded orgasm in a dream she was successful. She now holds that specific title. The secret to being able to lucid dream is not clear, however there are a couple things that you can do to make it a little easier. Having the ability to tell a difference from our waking life to our dream life is all about paying attention. Being more aware and looking as well as listening and paying attention to details makes it much easier. Our mental habits that we practice during the day are said to continue in our dreams, therefore if we examine our environments closely during the day as well as our awareness it’s a lot easier to see the differences once you start dreaming.

There is an ongoing controversy as to whether or not individuals who are able to experience lucid dreaming are overall better off or agitated. A study done by Gackenbach in 1994 actually showed that frequent lucid dreamers are less stressed and more able to focus their attention compared to most of the population. Also, according to one website I looked at, lucid dreaming frequency is seen to be positively related to one’s search for controlling situations in our waking life. Overall, lucid dreaming offers an opportunity for adventure and does not live by the rules of physics or society. It’s risk free and that’s why it’s so appealing. I personally have only experienced a few lucid dreams when I was completely aware that I was in a dream and it was an overwhelmingly amazing experience. For the adventurers or someone simply looking to explore the boundaries of their dreams, lucid dreaming might not be such a bad thing to try.

Sources:

http://www.lucidipedia.com/lucid-dreaming-research/

http://www.lucidity.com/SleepAndCognition.html

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201212/lucid-dreaming-and-self-realization

http://www.durso.org/beverly/

Have you ever recorded a video on your friend’s laptop, or heard your voice eco back to you on the phone and cringed? Have you ever wondered why when you hear your voice on a recording it sounds like someone completely different? Well, unfortunately for us the voice that we hear in the recording is the voice that everyone else hears, and the one we speak is altered slightly. So how does this work you might ask?

Well, on NBC there was a man named Jordan Gaines who decided to discuss this strange phenomenon. It turns out that sound can enter our ears in one of two ways. Either air-conducted or bone-conducted. Air conducted sound, according to him refers otherwise to listening to something, such as a recording of oneself speaking, and that sound being transmitted through the eardrums causing three bony ossicles to vibrate and then finishing its journey in the cochlea. This structure which resembles something close to a fluid-filled spiral turns these vibrations into nerve impulses and the brain from there interprets them. The thing that we hear on a recording is therefore only using air-conducted sound.

We do not speak in solely air-conducted sound, however. We speak in both air and bone conducted sounds. Differently from air-conducted sound, with bone conducted sound the vibrations, rather than going through the long process of getting to the cochlea they are rather directly reached to the cochlea from our vocal cords. He explains further that the reason that we hear our voice differently that other people perceive it is because our skulls deceive us by lowering the frequency of these vibrations along the way.  In other words, when we speak, vibrations from our vocal cords stay in our throat and mouth while some get conducted by the bones in our neck and head. As a result, we hear our voices as higher-pitched when we listen to recording consequently.

So why are we so uncomfortable by this change? Because we are not used to hearing our voice in only the air-conducted component, however everyone else is. Gains also argues that we live our lives hearing our bone-conducted, not air-conducted voices and that’s why we get so uncomfortable hearing something different. Let’s admit, it’s a little disorienting listening to a voice that doesn’t sound a little bit like your own and having to come to the conclusion that that is in fact how everyone hears you on a daily basis.

I think that there could be some controversy about whether or not that really is our voice that we’re hearing and that someone could potentially argue that there could be third variables that are morphing our voices into something unrecognizable. However, I believe given all the research, thought, and knowledge that scientists have put into how our senses work there is a very small chance that there is any misleading information about what we actually sound like versus what we think we should like.

Given all the above, don’t be too quick to make a face and cover your ears every time you hear a recording of your own voice somewhere. Think about it this way: the same rule applies to everyone. You aren’t the only one who hears something completely different when you speak and that at least should provide a little bit of comfort.

Sources:

• http://www.nbcnews.com/health/body-odd/why-you-hate-sound-your-own-voice-f1C9173592
• http://mentalfloss.com/article/12796/why-do-our-voices-sound-different-us-other-people

It’s almost that time of year again. With the days getting colder as well as shorter, it’s only a matter of time until we find ourselves in the middle of fall. With the pumpkin spice lattes at Starbucks to the homecoming parade, cozy sweaters, and Halloween, it’s hard not to love the season. But something I’ve noticed that makes it especially magnificent here in State College is the changing of the leaves. With the hills, mountains and abundance of different trees it’s a sight to see when you look out amongst thousands of red, orange, and golden leaves. But what causes this beautiful and dramatic change?

Throughout most of the year, the trees as you might notice are either leafless or their green. Well this green color can be attributed to a large amount of chlorophyll within the lead. Although there are other pigmented colors within active leaves there is so much chlorophyll that it usually masks the other colors. What changes in fall, is the amount of light which is the factor that regulates chlorophyll production. So as the days grow shorter there is also less light which concludes in there being less chlorophyll produced. At this time, the decomposition rate of chlorophyll continues to remain constant causing the green color to begin to fade gradually from the leaves.

While this is all happening, the production of other sugar concentrations are responsible for the other colors being exposed. Anthocyanin pigments are responsible for turning the leaves that have an exceptionally high concentration of this pigment in them red. Another type of pigment that has some effect on the leaves are carotenoids. This pigment’s production does not depend on light, so the levels aren’t going to go down by the shortening of the days. Carotenoids can be orange, yellow, or red but the primary color that they turn is usually yellow. If the leaves have a good amount of anthocyanins and carotenoids, obviously that mixes red and yellow so that the leaves turn out to be some shade of orange. Similarly, leaves that contain mostly carotenoids but little/no anthocyanin is likely to be yellow. If neither of these pigments are in the leaf then there are also other things that can affect the color of the leaf such as tannins which can be recognized for being responsible for the brown color of some oak leaves.

From one source that I look at they suggested that temperature, light and water supply all have an influence of how long the leaves stay the colors that they are and how bright those colors are while they last. For example low temperatures are favorable for anthocyanin so that will richen the reds that we see. In constant, early frost will weaken these colors.  According to chemistry.about.com “sunny autumn days are needed for the brightest color displays, since anthocyanins require light. Overcast days with lead to more yellows and browns.”

http://www.esf.edu/pubprog/brochure/leaves/leaves.htm

http://chemistry.about.com/od/howthingsworkfaqs/f/fallleafcolor.htm

You close your eyes at night and go to sleep and boom, you’re emerged into a completely different world. Dreams are magical things that we are taken into every night when we close our eyes and it’s something completely surreal. Sometimes they send you into things we wish would happen, other times it takes us back in the past and lets us get a second shot at something, and sometimes they just seem completely pointless and meaningless. But what causes dreams? Why do we see these things every night that we end up only vaguely remembering in the morning or just not remembering at all? That’s the question that I hoped to figure out.

It seems that people have been trying to figure out the cause of dreams for as long as humans have been around, but for some reason no one has still come up with a concrete answer. There are really only theories to explain these indescribably detailed images we see every night. At the beginning, answers came mostly from spiritual explanations, but then that changed when Aristotle and Plato came up with a theory of their own that has been expanded on multiple times by many psychoanalysts. Their theory of why dreams happen is that they essentially believe that dreams are a way to act out unconscious desires in a setting that isn’t real because it wouldn’t be safe and/or acceptable to in the natural world. Nowadays, some researchers believe that there is no real purpose to dreaming while other believe that we need to dream in order to maintain a mental, emotion, and physical well-being. A director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Newton Wellesley Hospital in Boston Mass., suggests that “…a possible (though certainly not proven) function of a dream to be weaving new material into the memory system in a way that both reduces emotional arousal and is adaptive in helping us cope with further trauma or stressful events.”

Although there are way too many theories of why we dream to even mention on, I was able to locate a few of the big ones that have been accepted and adapted over time. For example, there is the theory of Sigmund Freud who suggested that dreams were a representation of unconscious desires, thoughts and motivations. This theory is very similar to the theory of Aristotle and Plato in the fact that he believes dreams are things that we wish we could do in the real world but only act out in dreams because that is the only place where it is acceptable and not detrimental. Not only this, but he believed that people are driven by aggressive and sexual instincts more than anything that we then repress from our conscious awareness. Freud suggests that we do not consciously express these feelings therefore they find their way into our “awareness” through our dreams. Finally, he expressed two different components of dreams: the manifest and latent content. Manifest content refers to the make-up of the actual images, thoughts, and content in a dream, and latent content is the hidden meanings within the dream.

A very well-known model of dreaming was first proposed by J. Allan Hobson and Robert McClarley in 1977. This theory proposed that the circuits in the brain become activated when a person goes into REM (rapid eye movement) sleep which then causes areas in the brain that effect emotions, sensations and memories to become active. The brain from that point is said to synthesize and interpret the activity in the brain and find meaning in the signals which results in dreams. Overall, the idea of this model is that dreams come from an interpretation of signals generated by the brain.

So while there are a million reasons as to why we dream it’s hard to find a clear and concise answer. Whether it be that our brain is trying to get out our inner desires or that our brain is sending signals from our emotions, something has to trigger the images that enter our mind and leave them just as quickly in the morning.

http://psychology.about.com/od/statesofconsciousness/p/dream-theories.htm

We’ve all heard the saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” but has anyone ever actually questioned what that means? It’s needless to say that we’ve been preaching time and time again that fruits and vegetables are stacked with some nutrients that we are sometimes not able to get anywhere else, but what’s so special about apples? I decided to do some exploring to see what this famous phrase was all about and if an apple a day could actually “keep the doctor away.”

Apples are good for our body, that’s a no brainer, but when looking at the nutrients that it contains it’s hard not to see why it may be one of the preferred fruits. If you go on just about any fitness website you’re sure to find a little something about the positive effects that apples have on your body, but some of the thing that I found were downright astounding. There’s of course the basic facts. For one, apples contain no cholesterol, fat and sodium, and are not harmful to our healthy in any way. Alongside this, the calorie count is incredibly low at 80. According to a specific website I looked at apples contain 22 grams of carbohydrates which equates to 7% of our recommended daily value. A lot of the carbohydrates are more specifically complex carbohydrates which are known to give a high energy boost which leaves you overall more energized. As for the various vitamins that apples alone contain, there are a number of phytonutrients in high amounts. This includes Vitamin A,E, and beta carotene. The significance of these things is that they can help prevent serious sickness such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even asthma for those of you who suffer with that. Vitamin C is also a large component of apples which of course offers a lot of essential nutrients for those of you who know this through taking vitamin C supplements and such. This is important because it helps protect the immune system overall and can also make our bodies more resistant to a lot of other disease which “range from eye disease to cancer.” Finally, from the fitness website it gave me insight on the nutrient that apples contain which is called boron. For those of you who have taken chemistry, this may sound familiar. Boron is responsible for promoting bone strength and brain health, so clearly it has a big effect on the body.

On WebMd, I was surprisingly able to find a small test that was done in Ithaca N.Y. what seems to be in the early 2000s. This was done by researchers from Cornell’s Food Science and Toxicology Department. What they were able to find is that antioxidant properties of one apple is essentially equal to 1,500 milligrams of Vitamin C, but this was the least of their findings. Apparently the researchers, using colon cancer cells treated with apple extract, found that 50 milligrams of it from the skins of an apple decrease the cancer cell growth by 43%. Similarly, with the same amount of extract from the flesh of the apple it decreased cancer cell growth by 29%. When studying how it affected liver cancer cell growth, they found that 57% was decreased when extracted from the skin, and found a 40% decrease without the skin. Needless to say that their findings were incredible as well as completely shocking. The article finished off by saying that Charles Halsted says, that “evidence is mounting that suggests taking vitamin supplements, even in large doses, does not provide the health benefits of a healthy diet.”

So although you may have thought of the saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” like I did, it seems as though apples are actually more beneficial to our health than we may have originally thought. Apples contain a lot of essential nutrients and components that we need to maintain a healthy body and immune system, therefore I think it’s safe to say that eating an apple a day wouldn’t be necessarily bad to keep ourselves healthy and energized.

http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/nutrition/healthy-eating/fact-or-fiction-an-apple-a-day-keeps-the-doctor-away.html#b

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20000621/benefits-of-eating-fruit

We’ve all been taught to think certain things, become accustom to others, and act a certain way, but why? This has to do with the on-going debate of nature vs. nurture. For those of you who don’t know the nature vs. nurture debate is centered on the question of whether our behavior is influenced by genetic or environmental influences. In other words, is our personality essentially the result of traits that we were born with or has it been shaped over time due to the things that we have experienced in life. In some ways this is a hard question to answer because it may be a mix of both, however it continues to carry on as a strong debate in today’s world.

According to psychology.about.com, when this question first arose it was debated by many philosophers such as Plato, Descartes, and thinkers such as John Locke. This source talks about how Plato and Descartes believed that certain characteristics and things were inborn or rather that they just naturally occurred without the help of environmental influences. This is one side of the argument that some people tend to agree with. The other side is more on the side of John Locke. According to the website, he believed that the mind begins as a blank slate, otherwise known as tabula rasa. In this case, everything that we are is all due to the things that we have gained through experience and the things that we have learned over time due to these moments. Personally, I’m a little stuck in the middle.

Psychology.about.com goes on to give a couple examples of nature vs. nurture. One of the examples that they give is a person who experiences a lot of academic success. The question that is posed is whether the person is already genetically predisposed to be successful (nature), or if they have been surrounded in such an environment that helps them strive in their academics and therefore help them perform better (nurture). Another example they give is a man who abuses his wife. The question is whether he was born with violent tendencies and does this because he cannot resist his urges, or if he has learned to do so because of how his own parents acted when he was younger. It’s an interesting argument and one that is constantly analyzed and debated.

In an article that I was able to find on The New York Times website, there was an interesting find discussing twins who were reared apart rather than reared together. This is to say that they were separated rather than growing up alongside each other. Many psychologists have tried to do studies similar to these to see whether or not environmental as opposed to biological characteristics could really alter a person’s IQ, height, weight, etc. One of the studies that really stood out to me was one done by Dr. Juel-Nielsen. In the New York Times article it discusses how he did a 12 pair study of twins who had been reared apart and his results were interesting. He found that there was a very high correlation in twins having the same height which was apparently not affected by their separation. However, he found quite the opposite when he analyzed the differences in weight. The article goes on to say that he, “attributes this lowered value to environmental influences, arguing that weight is more susceptible than height to external influences.”

So today it’s said that the majority of experts think that both behavior and development are influenced by both nature and nurture, and I entirely agree considering I don’t think that someone can be entirely made up of one or the other. Of course there are a few examples of biologically determined characteristics such as certain genetic diseases, eye, hair, and skin color, but a lot of who we are comes from a million other places.

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/01/books/nature-vs-nurture-a-natural-experiment.html?pagewanted=2

http://psychology.about.com/od/nindex/g/nature-nurture.htm

At some point or another we all may have heard someone say something along the lines of “if you keep that phone too close to your head for too long, you’re going to get brain cancer!” When I was first told this I thought that my parents were just trying to persuade me to stop having my phone attached to my hip, but then I started hearing similar things from more credible places. Once I was driving in the car and happened to flip my radio over a station who had a doctor talking about the possible effects that having your phone next to you while you sleep can have on your brain which I am most guilty of. Since these tests and studies first came out I have definitely been more skeptical about how long I talk on the phone with it pressed to my ear, but I still find myself having my phone either very close to or on my bed while I sleep. Given this, I thought it would be interesting to see what facts and statistics came up when I researched this specific claim in more detail.

From an article that I found on the National Cancer Institute website I was able to get more information as to whether or not there was a clear link between cell-phone radiation and cancer as a whole. From this website I was able to conclude many things. Apparently, one of the reasons that people believe that there may be some correlation between the two is that cellphones are known to emit radiofrequency energy which is a form of radiation and can be absorbed by tissues that are close to the area where the phone is located. Of course this would cause some concern for doctors. However, although this is true it seems as though studies have so far not shown a consistent link between close exposure to cellphones and cancers of many kinds. As they state in the article, this lack of confirmation is partially due to the fact that cell phone technology as well as the way that phones are being used has changed a lot over time. They can however conclude that the number of cellphone users, the number of calls per day as well as the length of each call has increased over time.

In the article, they also discuss a recent study which according to them, “showed that when people used a cell phone for 50 minutes, brain tissues on the same side of the head as the phone’s antenna metabolized more glucose than did tissues on the opposite side of the brain. The researchers noted that the results are preliminary, and possible health outcomes from this increase in glucose metabolism are still unknown.” So it’s clear that having a cellphone consistently pressed to our head or even in close proximity does cause some changes in the way our brain behaves, however it doesn’t seem like there’s much concrete evidence that there’s any direct correlation with cancer.

It seems apparent that the ultimate objective of scientists is to figure out if there are any cancer-causing effects of radiofrequency energy. The levels of radiofrequency is usually measured in studies using information from interviews and questionnaires. They based their final results on some of the following things: “how ‘regularly’ study participants use cell phones, the age and the year when study participants first used a cell phone, the average number of cell phone calls per day, week, or month, the average length of a typical cell phone call, and the total hours of lifetime use.”

So as said perfectly in the article, “although there have been some concerns that radiofrequency energy from cell phones held closely to the head may affect the brain and other tissues, to date there is no evidence from studies of cells, animals, or human that radiofrequency energy can cause cancer.” It seems as though all the things that we have been hearing on the television, radio, and from our parents may have to wait a couple more years to be completely verified. In the meantime, it might be wise to disconnect before you go to bed, place our phones somewhere not so close and try to minimize the time we spend on the phone as we find out if there is some real threat or not.

Sources:

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/cellphones

Hi everyone. My name is Mary-Frances Edwards and I’m from right here: State College, Pennsylvania. In high school I found a lot of my science classes either very hard to understand or just uninteresting in every way so i was automatically drawn away from those classes. In addition, our school was pretty well known for the variety of business classes that we offered so because of this reason I currently plan on majoring in Marketing at the Smeal College of Business. During orientation the person who helped me sign up for my classes recommended that I take this class because of its interesting variety of topics and the fact that it wasn’t a typical lab-oriented science class, so I thought it would be a good fit. Hope you all learn to love this town as much as I do.