A windy midnight in April 2012, a quiet spring night as it supposed was. A phone call from my aunt-in-law suddenly broke the peaceful night and swiped all my sleepy away. I could feel that there was something wrong from my aunt’s flurried voice. “I can not reach your mom’s cellphone now, do you remember her home phone number?”

Of course I did. When it came to the reason why she was so anxious, “Your grandfather went to hospital because stomach”, she hesitated a while and answered.

 Around three minutes later, my phone was vibrating again because of another phone call. However, it was my mom this time.

“Your grandfather went to intensive care room at our city’s hospital because of myocardial infarction”, my mom said, “I will go back home tomorrow morning.”

After I heard that, my mind just became blanked and tinnitus appeared all of a sudden. I booked an air ticket online without even a second hesitation after I cleaned my mind. The only two children my grandparents have—my father and my uncle, were both went business trip aboard, and it was also the first time they went aboard together. It was such a coincidence that no one was ever expected for. I went to the hospital next morning after two hours taken airplane and one and half hours drove. While I went into the hall of the hospital, the long line of waiting for the elevator came into my eyes. I ran into the stairwell despite of the intensive care rooms are located in the ninth floor of the building. My tears burst out when I saw my grandfather lying on the white bed with several tubes on his face and heard beeps from those life saving machines. That was the most disappointment time in my life, ever.

Afterwards, along with my grandfather’s health condition got better, his doctor told him that he needed to take care of his eating habit. He smoked at least one pack of cigarette every single day backwards and had a way to disordered eating habits. He altogether changed into another person after that accident: he eats breakfast every morning, exercises several times a day, taking medicines under medical supervision, and never smoke after that.

Things happened on my grandfather is happing to many people nowadays. Eating disorder is leading more and more people into an unhealthy status. “More than 1.4 billion adults, 20 and older, were overweight. And more than 10% of the world’s adult population was obese”(WHO). The mainly reason why they were in an unhealthy status is because the increased intake of energy-dense foods that are high in fat.

With no doubt that every single personality knows how important health is. Meanwhile, why there still have such a marvelous quantities of people are leaving themselves in an unhealthy status just in the interest of unbalanced eating habit? Several reasons were found while researching that topic. Figuring out the reason why we intake more than before might is a good point of penetration. Lakshmi Raman examined why children and adults think they need to eat. Research article turned out that “Children and adults reasoned that physiological needs and routine are the most important factors”(411). This theory implies that we are not eating for physiological needs all the time. In other words, it is possible to control our energy intake as long as we can control the desire of eating.

Physiological needs is also a reason in the main why we needs to intake foods as the research article above mentioned. Julia Turner’s journal artical: “Your Brain on Food: A Nutrient-Rich Diet Can Protect Cognitive Health” is another source on this topic, while this journal has a more specific thesis about eating as a biological needs of body. “Brain health relies on a number of factors, including the nutrients in from one’s diet, so eating nutrient-rich foods can help nourish the brain and support optimal mood, energy, and cognition”(105). It well examined the thesis Lakshmi Raman mentioned before. While also refers to how important eating is to us physically.

I heard several theories from different perspectives about why they need intake foods. Some people say that the reason why they eating foods is for the reason of relaxing. That concept convincing me most, because I do seldom eating for relaxes. As the world goes faster, there have more and more competition in everywhere on this plant. With no doubt that we are facing much more pressure from social than ever before. Alejandro Magallares, a psychology professor works in Spanish Open University noticed that problem and did some research about that. “According to the results, the model proposed presents an appropriate goodness of fit that allows us to say that social anxiety patricianly mediate the relationship between social comparisons and risk to develop ED (eating disorder) and fully mediate the relationship between sociocultural attitudes toward appearance and eating problems”(151). This artical provides a powerful argument of how social influence our eating habit.

After figuring out reasons why people intake too much foods, whether there have any differences between different ethnic and different religion became another thesis of my reaching. The resource that representational most is a journal article called “Total Daily Energy Expenditure in Black and White, Lean and Obese South African Women”. The researcher’s conclusion towards this study is: “ In the present study, total PAEE (physical activity energy expenditure) was on average 25% lower in the black as compared to white women, largely due to between-group differences in the weight-bearing stepping exercise, where white obese women accumulated a significantly greater PAEE (11%) than black women”(671). They also say that: “It is conceivable that lower daily PAEE levels in the black women may be accompanied by lower levels of physical fitness and may further help explain the difficulty experienced with the stepping protocol” (673). According to these arguments above, we can say that there do have some differences between black and white women towards energy intake in South Africa.

What can we do to help ourselves is the third part of my researching on this topic. Breakfast was always the beginning of a day for majority of people back to days before. Meanwhile, due to the quickening pace of our daily lines, more and more people choose to skip breakfast as a way to save time, which researches implies it is not a good way neither for our health nor our weight. “Does skipping breakfast make you put on weight?” from BBC reveals that “A review of studies conducted before 2004 found that on the whole breakfast-skippers do not consume more calories during the rest of the day to compensate. People who ate breakfast tended to have a diet that was more nutritionally balanced, but it wasn’t more calorific” (Hammond, 5).

From these researches above, I can tell that eating breakfast is a habit for college students to engage energy and keep them away from diseases. And gathering knowledge about the importance of health is also a good thing to do for your healthy. As a friend told me before, he has a pharmacy major friend. “The only reason for him to intake foods is for health”, he told me. He said his friend seriously keeping his eating habit and ever east junk food or drink carbonated beverages. Perhaps taking health classes is also a good way for those students who are not pharmacy major and want to have a healthy lifestyle. Hopefully, my researching on eating habits can offer you some recommendations of having a healthy lifestyle.

References:

“Why do we eat so much?” Harvard Health Letter 30.1 (2004): 1-2. Web. 19 Oct. 2013

Davidi, A. et al. “The Effect Of The Addition Of Daily Fruit And Nut Bars To Diet On Weight, And Cardiac Risk Profile, In Overweight Adults.” Journal Of Human Nutrition & Dietetics 24.6 (2011): 543-51. Academic Search Premier. Web. 28 Oct. 2013.

Erdmann, Johannes, et al. “Impact Of Breakfast On Daily Energy Intake – An Analysis Of Absolute Versus Relative Breakfast Calories.” Nutrition Journal 10.1 (2011): 5-12. Academic Search Premier. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

Hammond, Claudia. “Does skipping breakfast make you put on weight?” BBC Future. Web. 5 March 2013.

Lambert, E. V. et al. “Total Daily Energy Expenditure In Black And White, Lean And Obese South African Women.” European Journal Of Clinical Nutrition 63.5 (2009): 667-73. Academic Search Premier. Web. 28 Oct. 2013.

Raman, Lakshmi. “Why Do We Eat? Children’s And Adults’ Understanding Of Why We Eat Different Meals.” Journal Of Genetic Psychology 172.4 (2011): 401-413. Academic Search Premier. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

Rozin, Paul. “The Meaning Of Food In Our Lives: A Cross-Cultural Perspective On Eating And Well-Being.” Journal Of Nutrition Education & Behavior 37 (2005): S107-S112. Academic Search Premier. Web. 28 Oct. 2013.

Turner, Julia. “Your Brain On Food: A Nutrient-Rich Diet Can Protect Cognitive Health.” Generations 35.2 (2011): 99-106. Academic Search Premier. Web. 28 Oct. 2013.

When you were doing a simple task, like walking, driving, or in a class, and all of sudden you fell like you were hit by something and weird enough thing is that the scene seems so vivid to you, like you have been experienced before. What was it?

That is called strange.

That is called Déjà Vu.

The first thing we need to discuss is dream. It indicates the thing we have when we feel asleep at night, sometimes at daytime as well. It may to most of us surprise that average person has about 3~5 dreams every night, sometimes it may goes up to 7 dreams a night. Some of us may say no way hosay. i only dream at certain nights. That is one of the most common fiction we ignored in our life. Actually the fact is we spend entirely 2 hours on an average 8 hours sleep. During our sleep there are several stages throughout the night, When it comes to the final stage of a cycle(a REM sleep), our dream occurs. Due to the fact that each sleep cycle occurs about 60~90 minutes, that is the reason why we have 3~5 dreams for an eight hour sleep. While it happens to us most of time that there is “nothing happened” or just one or two dreams the next day when we wake up, that is because that none of us could remember all of those dreams. That makes us “thought” that we do not have dreams or one or two dreams at night.

As for the reason why we have dreams, no one knows the reason behind this. Even though theories are saying that dream could be a factor that reduce the quality of our dream, while there is no method to date to help us reduce the time we spend on dream to improve our sleep quality.

Deja Vu, is you fells like something is really alike even if it happens somewhere you have never been to in your entire life. It basically is a process of recall our old experiences from our memory without being noticed. Yes, we indeed have a really good memory regarding some objects we even did not ever thought got our attention. For example, the library in your new school may have the similar design as one of the old building in the place you grow us with. When you see the library the “identical felling” triggered your emotion and feelings. That may makes you fell that what happens in front of you is something you are familiar with. And Deja Vu occurred.

Some scientists along with psychologists are saying that dream is one of our “library” of DeJa Vu. While since dream is very intangible and we could not recall most of our dreams even right after we wake up the next morning. It is hard to emphasize how much roles dream play to trigger Deja Vu’s appearance.

(Picture above is Neuroscientist Sigmund Freud, one of the most important scientist in psychology history. He have been studying on dream thought out his entire career and published the book “The Interpretation of Dreams”. He also also one of the most nominated candidate for Nobel prize, while never won one.)

References:

http://www.life.arizona.edu/docs/ra-section/dreams.pdf?sfvrsn=2

https://sleep.org/articles/how-often-dreams/

http://www2.ucsc.edu/dreams/FAQ/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dream-factory/201410/dream-d-j-vu

Wells, Christine E., et al. “Persistent Psychogenic Déjà Vu: A Case Report.” Journal Of Medical Case Reports 8.1 (2014): 111-118. Academic Search Premier. Web. 23 Oct. 2015.

Last weekend my fiancé and I went to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt‘s new movie: The Walk. The movie is based on a true story of Philippe Petit, the legend in human wire walker history. He is the only person challenged wire walk in between World Trade Center– at time it is the tallest building in the world, in the morning of August.7, 1974. He did a lot crazy things on the wire such as turned back and forth three times to trick those police officer who was trying to arrest him and  even laid down on the wire by one knees and stand back by himself. Trust me, it is hard. I tried to do that by myself on my carpet and of course, I failed.After his breath-taking performance on the sky he was arrested by NYPD. One interesting I saw on one article says that when the judge ask why you doing so in the court, he answered as “when I see three oranges, I juggler. When I see two towers, I walk”. His charges were granted after he did a performance for children for free in the Central Park. His behavior was breath taking and both my fiancé’s hand and mine were sweeting heavily. It may seems little bit overreaction to you all but when you sats down watch a crazy dude walking on a wire on the top of 1,358 feet tall sky without any protection you will know what I’m talking about. 

The movie “Man on Wire” is a documentary movie for Philippe Petit’s work. The movie showed us a more realistic, more comprehensive version of how he practiced for August 7, 1974. We can easily get a picture that with lots of efforts and failures he devoted in made him confident enough to do the performance.  While after saw that movie and came down from the excitement I questioned myself why it is so hard for human to balance ourself, especially after one day I was driving along the highway and a group of birds are standing along the sign board. Scenes like this in which shows how good animals are at wire walking are many, for example, our grandma’s cat; the squirrel on a wire (by the way it is safer for those squirrels to walking on a wire than walking on the ground), so on and so forth. Why though?

We know that squirrels are using their big tails to balance, if noticed, they are swinging their tail all the time when they are on the wire. Interestingly, things are different for cats. Cats are considered more “similar” to human beings than squirrels since they are also mammals. Cats’ balance is controlled via the inner ear–which connects to the middle and external ears to tracks movement and regulates balance, as other mammals. While there are lots of myths that whiskers plays a role in controlling a cat’s balance. But it is not the true. Whiskers indeed play an importance role for a cat since they are sensory organs to them, not like human friends does. It is mentioned in an article published by an Ireland Newspaper that “If whiskers are removed from cats, it may put them into significantly danger situations, even wounds and surgical sites”. Cats need their whiskers to sense the width of the road so that they know whether it is possible to pass though or not(There are cats got stuck since they gain too much weight and the whisker does not gets longer). It is also known to us that whisker sometimes are also as an expression of their mood. The most acceptable theory to me why cats could do so much better job at balancing themselves than their human friends do might is their lower center of gravity. Since without gravity, balance on an altitude wide is meaningless.

References:

“‘Man on Wire’.” Pittsburgh Tribune Review. (August 22, 2008 Friday ): 314 words. LexisNexis Academic. Web. Date Accessed: 2015/10/22.

Speaking of the methods to save our land by preventing soil erosion, political issues might are the most useful as well as the most useful one. Explore some more on this topic might is an important and necessary thing to better understand soil erosion.

As soil erosion is a problem bothers the entire world for a long time, many countries are trying to do something to successfully conservation our land. America, as the country with the most advanced agriculture methods and equipment, they might also have the most mature policy system so far on the world, which includes several huge successes on soil conservation before.

Using the most advanced country as an example probably is not that convincing. Actually, almost the politics in the whole world are trying to come up some efficient ideas on how to make our land become better.

People may think that soil erosion may not is a huge issue for them due to they don’t actually live with them every single day, it is a challenge for most people to imagine how an awful impact land could leave to their life. “Humans obtain more than 99.7% of their food (calories) from the land and less than 0.3% from the oceans and other aquatic ecosystems. Each year about 10 million ha of cropland are lost due to soil erosion, thus reducing the cropland available for food production. The loss of cropland is a serious problem because the World Health Organization reports that more than 3.7 billion people are malnourished in the world”, what 3.7 billion means for the world? It is more than half population in the world now, and it is even little bit more than the whole population on earth at 1970, which was 3.6869 billion.

Land is not only the negative influence caused by soil erosion. “Through ingestion (either deliberate or involuntary), inhalation and dermal absorption, the mineral, chemical and biological components of soils can either be directly beneficial or detrimental to human health. Specific examples include: geohelminth infection and the supply of mineral nutrients and potentially harmful elements (PHEs) via soil ingestion; cancers caused by the inhalation of fibrous minerals or Rn gas derived from the radioactive decay of U and Th in soil minerals; and tetanus, hookworm disease and podoconiosis caused by skin contact and dermal absorption of appropriate soil constituents. Human health can also be influenced in more indirect ways as soils interact with the atmosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere. Examples include: the volatilisation of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) from soils and their subsequent global redistribution that has health implications to the Aboriginal people of the Arctic; the frequent detrimental chemical and biological quality of drinking and recreational waters that are influenced by processes of soil erosion, surface runoff, interflow and leaching; and the transfer of mineral nutrients and PHEs from soils into the plants and animals that constitute the human food chain.”

References:

Environment, Development and Sustainability February 2006, Volume 8, Issue 1, pages 119-137 Soil Erosion: A Food and Environmental Threat David Pimentel

Science of The Total Environment Volume 291, Issues 1–3, 27 May 2002, Pages 1–32 Soils: their implications to human health W. Abrahams

During my last post, Lefties(1), I showed my interest in the study of lefties especially in the athletic category. While there are so many things interests me while could not simply be included in that one single post and here fellows couple more topics about lefties. Here below is an interesting video clip regarding lefties I found on YouTube.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx_Bl9J8r3Q)

First, what is the causation of using lefty and righty? Based on one of the Australia’s government science website, Better Health Channel, mentioned to us that till now no scientific evidence to prove the specific reason behind this, but there are several hypothesis that may could be the causation. Chances are may due to genes; sex; fetal development; modeling at young age; brain damage; or even acquired adjustments. Genes is the one on the top since there are many studies support that the existence of inheritance theory. Studies also shows that “there may have several genes “add up” to produce a left-handed person” since even 100% genetical same identical twins appears to have difference hand use preference. For the sex theory, studies shows that there are more boys than girls are left-handed, it says in the article that “male hormone testosterone has an influence on right and left handedness”. The hypothesis support fetal development theory is that “environmental factors in the womb(including exposure to hormones) may influence whether we favor the right or left hand in our life”. Modeling and adjustment may also have impact on left-handedness or right-handedness. Since children learn to use their hand in their later development life so that the behavior from children’s parents be a possible causation. While it is quiet challenging to explain why right-handedness parents sometimes have left-handedness kids. And there also have quiet a few researches believe that brain damage is the cause of left-handedness. It says in the article that “all human beings are meant to be right-handed, but some type of brain damage early in life causes left-handedness”. This is a very controversial theory and till now there is no scientific evidence toward this hypothesis.

Second, do lefties have or will have a worse health situation than the right-handed person? Both Wall Street Journal (The Health Risk of Being Left-Handed) and New York Times (Being Left-Handed May Be Dangerous To Life, Study Says), two of the most creditable publishers, concerned the healthy situation of lefties. As they said, lefties are generally have a shorter life span than the right-handed person. The article published by NYT implied that “researchers who studied the deaths of 1,000 Southern Californians report that right-handers, on average, live to be 75 years old. Left-handers typically die at age 66″. As mentioned in the article one number support this is study published in The American Journal of Public Health found that a higher rate of accident-related injuries were found in the lefties since that they lived in a world designed for the righties. While it quiet obvious that the studies were only focused on a small amount of people(1,000) in a specific geographic area (Southern California). It is quiet likely that chance plays a big roles in this case. The article published by Wall Street Journal have a more comprehensive perspective. In that article, the author told us that there is “no significant difference in IQ between righties and lefties”, but “lefties are better at divergent thinking, or starting from existing knowledge to develop new concepts, which is considered an element of creativity“. Within that article higher average schizophrenia, dyslexia, ADHD and some mood disorders are also found. 

Interestingly enough, a research performed at Harvard University shows that lefties usually have 10% lower salaries than righties. But the way how they got that answer was not emphasized in that article.

But I still question about all these since there still have lots of debates regarding all of these differences we talked about though this post.

References:

Last Friday, me and my fiancé spent the whole night watch Southpaw, the movie we have been waiting for a long time, and we were touched by the come back story of “Billy Hope”. He was the world boxing champion and all of sudden, due to his wife’s death he became no body, even his daughter does not wants to see him. After sulfuring the painful of failure he decides to come back so that he could get her daughter back. With lots of efforts devoted in practice he finally beat the boxer used to challenge him and get the world champion belt back– he did this with a hard punch from his left hand.

This phenomenal interests me a lot. Actually one of my best friend back home is a “lefty” and he only use his right hand under very few occasions such as writing. I asked him before and he said that he was asked to learn writing with the “right” hand when he was little and since then he changed it, but he still more comfortable with using his left hand as the preferred one. Indeed it is rare in a collective culture like us to have different behaviors with others.

For sports fans, especially baseball fans, maybe more excited about lefty athletics. There are lots of famous player in US are left-handed such as Babe Ruth (He was listed “Top 10 lefties” by Time magazine).

(Picture above is a baseball signed by former Yankees’s player Babe Ruth, now this item is listed on jet.com for $16,514.98)

It is not all by coincidence there are so many well known MLB players are left handed, based on the research made by David Peter, an aerospace engineer from Washington University who are sophisticated in using math and physics skills to emphasizes that the reason behind why there are so many successful MLB players are lefties. From the analysis he did on MLB, he noticed that a quarter of MLB players are lefties, with comparison only 1 out of ten in the overall population. And there are several reasons as he mentioned. “First is that the left-handed batter is closer to first base, so he’s got a several steps advantage”, so they are generally easier to beat out a grounder than their right handed competitors. “Also, when they swings they are turing toward first base”, another physical advantage over others. Most importantly, as Peter founded in his research, “is the angle of the ball”. “There are three quarters of pitchers are right-handed. For a right hand batter has to look over his left shoulder and the ball is coming at quite an angle. This offset of  eyes gives them depth perception and may cause generally 1/10th second loss to see the ball”.  These combined gave those lefty players a comprehensive advantage over the others, which made so many diamonds and fames in the baseball history.

References:

The first time I heard about fracking is in one of my science class, and I was shocked when I headed about the fact that this is related to our healthy. I know there is a word close to this is harmful to us but never thought this could play a role in our health. Since there is not many things left to talk about why not let me try to write something regarding this.

“Fracking is the process of drilling and injecting fluid into the ground at a high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks to release natural gas inside”. So the picture above is a process of fracking. It looks simple while you may have no idea how close this is related to our life.The combination of fracking and horizontal drilling, have allowed access to large volumes of shale gas, which in turn has revived the natural gas industry in the United States.

There are numerous benefits of fracking. The United States’ energy industry has been revived that with fracking making it easier than ever to obtain not only natural gas but also oil from the underground. As a result, both natural gas and oil prices have dropped. Fracking is also a jog-generator.

While the consequences due to fracking are environmental pollution and harm to human health. Even though till now there is no proof that the chemicals actually seep through the ground and contaminate water supplied, therefore it cannot be said that the actual fracking process causes water contamination. But there is large evidence linking water contamination to faulty wells.(Always remember correlation is not causation, right?)

In order to extract gas inside the shale formation, a well must first be made. A 16” hole is drilled below the water table and then the well casing is inserted, the gap between the pipe and the earth is cemented for protection against leaks from the pipe. Multiple layers of steel near the aquifer are then added for protection.

Ideally, if the well was built perfectly and was able to withstand all motions and vibrations due to the fracking process without any cracks or leaks, there would be no leaks of methane and chemicals into the aquifers.  But since things don’t always work perfectly, there can be failures in the well that contaminate water supplies. The risk of mechanical or chemical failure in not likely to happen with recently constructed wells but increases over time. The risk increases due to the fact that each well is drilled multiple times. If the cement doesn’t properly bond with the walls of the well, contaminants and methane can leak into water supplies. It is important that entire process of the well design, construction, and maintenance is properly done to avoid contamination.

There are many health related risks that can occur when a well leaks in to the local into the local water supply.  The source of this danger comes primarily from the fluids used to help break up the rock to release the oil and gas.  Even though the chemicals in the mixture only make up 0.5 to2% the rest being water the fact that each well will use 2 to 10 million gallons of water makes the amount of chemicals available to contaminate the water quite large. The chemicals include such as benzene, various acids, and even diesel. These chemicals can affect the heart, lungs, kidneys and many other organs in the body.

Resources:

https://dribbble.com/shots/1276505-Fracking

https://dribbble.com/shots/1261803-Fracking-animation-city-illustration

 “What is Shale Gas?” Internet: http://geology.com/energy/shale-gas/ [October 23, 2013].

W. Koch. “Fracking puts U.S. first in shale gas production.” Internet: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/23/fracking-shale-gas-us-global-leader/3170255/  [October 23, 2013].

“Fracking & Well Casing Failure.” Fracking & Well Casing Failure. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2015.

 “Natural Gas Drilling in Pennsylvania” Internet: http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/drilling/violations/

Hannah Wittmeyer. “Well Casing Failure Violations.” Internet: http://frackwire.com/well-casing-failure-violations/ [June 28, 2013]

The 2014 Ebola epidemic, as United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization emphasized: “is the largest in history, affecting multiple countries in West Africa”. Almost 30,000 (28,245 till the moment I post this blog) people diagnosed with Ebola in just three countries: Guinea; Sierra Leone and Liberia. And 11,293 of them died in just couple months. That is around 39.98% death rate. Actually that is only the death rate with people diagnosed with Ebola in those three countries. Based on the information published by WHO, Ebola’s human disease case fatality rates(CFR, another abbreviation…) is 54%, that is one of the highest in the 21st century when people thought we have the capacity to do many things we could never ever thinking about.

Ebola even speared to the states and caused huge panic all around the world. The first case in U.S. was found out tests positive for the virus is Dr. Spencer, 33, in New York City who recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea. At least three people he had contact with in recent days have been placed in isolation. He had traveled on the A and L subway lines Wednesday night, visited a bowling alley in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and then took a taxi back to Manhattan. The next morning, he reported having a fever, raising questions about his health while he was out in public. Before this event, we thought Ebola was far away from us. Since it has come to us, we need to learn more about it.

As I mentioned before, Ebola mainly occurs in Africa where most developing countries are located there. So someone doubts that poor economy and backward science technology contributes to the high death rate of Ebola. However, this might is not the case. Even thought they can afford the fees, there are no complete treatments available in the whole world now. Until today, the ZMapp by Mapp Biopharmaceutical, an experimental treatment towards Ebola is still under development and the U.S. government has granted them fast track so that they could be consumed for patients even more faster under FDA’s investigation.

The reason why it took so long for us to find out the cure is partly “due to the difficulty in obtaining samples and studying the disease in the relatively remote areas in which the outbreaks occur. In addition, a high degree of biohazard containment is required for laboratory studies and clinical analysis”. It is said by Sifferlin that the reason why Ebola did not get as sprayed as Africa is possibly due to the advanced technology environment.

One more reason why Ebola is that scary is the symptom is confusing. As early stage patient with Ebola fells nothing different than catching a cold. No one would pay too much attention on a symptom like that. While after the early stage it could suddenly cause organs bleeding therefore cause death to patients. In most cases, patients don’t even when know they get Ebola disease. “Texas Presbyterian Hospital failed to diagnose Duncan with Ebola right away, despite his Ebola-like symptoms and the fact he’d been in Liberia.” Furthermore, it makes Ebola harder to be diagnosed with the incubation period that “The time interval from infection with the virus to onset of symptoms is 2 to 21 days”, said by WHO.

Even though it already passed the most dangerous period of time, I think I still should talk about this in the end. What we could do is always keeps a personal hygiene, and if somehow Ebola-like symptom ever happens, I honestly wish it happens to nobody, please go to the hospital right away and ask for help so that it will not miss the best time to cure.

Resources:

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/

https://dribbble.com/shots/153963-Vintage-New-York-Travel-Poster

Sifferlin, Alexandra. “How Ready Is New York City for Ebola?” Time 23 Oct. 2014: 34-35. Print. 3 Nov. 2014.

As you may hear about or not, Google is launching their Self-driving car to the public but not for sale at this point of time. Many car companies such as BMW is also working on the self-driving technology since technology is based on help human being do less and less work. Link below is a self-drifting (it used the word “first” in the video while I do not think this is the case, I do saw a drifting video Google lunched before while sad for that I could not find it again, so just watch it if you would like to) BMW M235i, it looks cool even though it is little bit a shame for a car like to drink by a computer that on a track on Las Vegas. But it shows us that the ability for nowadays technology to process road informations in a safe enough period of time and be able to respond to that.

While today we still gonna talk about Google’s project. They have been working on this for a long time and I believe they may also become the pioneers in this industry if one day self-driving car is come to our general public. I think that day is coming soon, what do you think?

The Google Self-Driving Car is a project by Google that involves developing technology for autonomous cars, mainly electric cars. The software powering Google’s cars is called Google Chauffeur. Lettering on the side of each car identifies it as a “self-driving car”. The project is currently being led by Google engineer Sebastian Thrun, former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and co-inventor of Google Street View. Thrun’s team at Stanford created the robotic vehicle Stanley which won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and its US$2 million prize from the United States Department of Defense($2 Million dollars!!! It’s more than today’s PowerBall. Keep blogging maybe one day one of us will become a scientist like Andrew or him). The team developing the system consisted of 15 engineers working for Google, including Chris Urmson, Mike Montemerlo, and Anthony Levandowski who had worked on the DARPA Grand and Urban Challenges.

Normally, driverless cars can realize the automation depending on technologies such like LIDAR (Laser Illuminating Detection and Ranging), high-powered cameras, positioning (GPS), Sonar, and driving-control software.The core of driverless cars is the technology called autonomous, of course the manufacturing of vehicle is also essential. Autonomous means having the ability to self-government. Autonomous control implies good performance under significant uncertainties in the environment for extended periods of time and the ability to compensate for system failures without external intervention. It is often suggested to extend the capabilities of an autonomous car by implementing communication networks both for collision avoidance and for traffic management. By bringing in these outside influences in the decision process, some would no longer regard the car’s behavior or capabilities as autonomous but rather “life” like.

Till now even though the people who current working on the those projects have shown us self driving car is ready to rock. While I think it still will face a huge amount of questions no matter how well prepared and how many experiments they did on the road.

As Andrew said in our class: science is everywhere. It indeed is. Such as today when I saw one of the most famous hair style appeared once again in front my face, it then leads me thinking about the science about our humans hair.

(Photo from:https://dribbble.com/shots/2201057-Donald-Trump)

First, why do we have hairs? That is easy, because we are mammals. As many mammals do: “hair plays many important roles-warmth and protection from germs for example. Hair also helps reduce friction-and thereby irritation-in skinto-skin contact”, these are the reasons why we human and other mammals have hairs. 

You may then curious about that some mammals does not have hair as human nor King Kong does, such as elephant. To meet the appetite I searched on the website and the article published on Scientific American explained this issue: elephant does have hair, a very thin hair. But as a common scene: thin hairs makes our body temperature lower than a bare skin. The reason why after 65 millions years revolution the thin hair still exist on elephant’s skin is it actually help elephant survival under hot temperatures. Since elephants lives under temperatures of up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, the revolution learned to cool off by grow thin hairs at certain density. After reaching that point, “hair stops insulating and wicks heat off the body instead—helping the elephants get rid of an extra 20 percent of their body heat”, as Scientific American says.

Another thing related to hair I want to know about is wether hair loss is hereditary, my cousin worry about that quiet often since my uncle is already quiet bald. Regarding the fact that bald man could be even more attractive such as the gentlemen above, while he still hard to imagine after certain age he gonna suffer hair loss.

After reading couple journals I decide not to tell him the conclusion based on those journals since based on the experiments scientists did so far there is a strong relation between baldness and genes. “Those with hair loss commonly shared the same variations of two genes that together made them seven times more likely to suffer baldness“, researchers from King’s College (not the one in Wilkes Barre), London says to the public. The same relation also exist in women, but with less likely.

But it never means that it’s hopeless to keep his hair if he does not want to loss them. Now more and more scientists figured out how to successfully keep hair with the patient who potentially may loss hair as well as to regain hair for those who already suffer hair loss in their life.

Thanks, scientists.

.

References:

https://dribbble.com/shots/2201057-Donald-Trump

https://dribbble.com/shots/1698209-Little-bald-man

https://dribbble.com/shots/1612604-Granpa

Perry, B. (2000, Sep 18). You asked…why do we have body hair? Science World, 57, 22. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/docview/218144078?accountid=13158

https://dribbble.com/shots/1121424-Protein-Shakes

News, Bloomberg. (October 13, 2008 Monday ). Studies say genes may hold key to cure for baldness. Providence Journal, Retrieved from www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic

(Photo from: https://dribbble.com/shots/1898150-Adult-Night-lights)

Cell phone screen is a magic window, we may browsing many times more informations though it than maybe anything else. And I enjoy that all the time, lying on my bed with cell phone to check what is going on even though sometimes there is nothing much  going around while I still playing with my phone for no reason almost become my daily routine before I go to sleep. And guess what wakes me up in the morning? Like many of you guys, the answer is cellphone. I know I’m not alone in this case because a survey shows that 8 of 10 people does not turn off there cell phone at night and half of these people only use as alarm. Actually the very first thing I did to improve my life quality when I moved into a new apartment was—bought a charging cable next to my bed.

While recently a group of my friends go to a camp on weekends and a very best friend of mine he switched his phone into airplane mode before he went to bed. I asked him why he’s doing this he said since there is nothing really matters at night and he said the radiation from the phone is not very friendly to our health. I’m convinced by the first reason he throw out, even though there is it seems hard to wake me up based on my knowledge about my sleeping condition. While does the cell phone really hurts us when we are sleeping? There is only one way to find out.

I can almost certainly give you the answer: yes, it does hurts us. But it is not necessary to lock your cellphone in the mailbox outside your house like Saul does. Because till yet there is no evidence from a science perspective says that the radiation from our cell phone hurts our brain. But one thing really does, the light. 

(Photo from: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_JBx5uUwAAVMvn.jpg)

Cell phone at night may cause us at least “hypervigilant”, which cause us could not get enough restorative sleep we need. It may also cause other problems such as dizziness, headache, or even trigger insomnia, as the study from Dr. Guy Meadows from The Sleep School, London shows.

“The light comes out from the phone, especially from bright, high resolution modern phones is the main reason why it is bad for our sleep”, the study shows. It is certainly not an accident, Dr. Charles Czeisler from Harvard University also doing a research about this topic and he explained the reason why is “It triggers our body, makes us believe that it is daytime”. The light trigger retina behind our eyeball and as response “our brain release hormone melatonin, which makes you feel sleepy, and the waking hormone, cortisol”, says Dr. Meadows. We are more likely to experience tiredness and along with other symptoms when we wake up with the “help” from both of those hormones.

To stop that is easy— Turn off your phone, and use this.

Resources:

http://www.corbisimages.com/images/Corbis-42-27541409.jpg?size=67&uid=c142fb17-bab8-4e89-90b6-92e2745a9f4e.

http://www.iol.co.za/lifestyle/give-your-cell-a-rest-1.1663113#.VfmoFtZGMrg

https://dribbble.com/shots/195663-Braun-AB1-Clock-icon

https://dribbble.com/shots/1898150-Adult-Night-lights

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_JBx5uUwAAVMvn.jpg

Hey all,

Nice to meet you all earlier today. I’m Bowen Wang, a newly transferred student It was a crowed I almost couldn’t find a seat in the classroom. It’s a pleasure for me to join an almost 200 students class from a school only have about 2k people. Lots of fun.

Here comes to the questions: 1) This will be my last science class to finish my major requirements. 2) I didn’t become a Science major student was because I was well prepared for Business school. While after two years in school it looks like a really interesting idea to find a Science related minor to concentrate on.

The photo I choose to post maybe one of the most famous photo of the year maybe little bit behind the well known businessman, or should I call him a politician now. It’s the first photo human ever have for Pluto.

And also the video below is our earth’s from the space view.

Wish you all have a fantastic semester!!!

Nice to meet you all.

Bowen W