Right now in 2015, it is easy to notice that cell phone use has skyrocketed over the past decade. According to Craig Lefebvre, Ph.D, there were 255.4 cell phone owners in the United States alone in 2007, which accounted for 84% of the total U.S. population. Global estimations of cell phone use have been as high as 2 billion people and that was in 2005, a decade ago (wikinvest). With the increase in popularity of cell phones, there has been a growing degree of speculation as to whether cell phone use has detrimental effects on human health. With the speculation have come many studies to determine whether cell phones are in fact unsafe.

The most popular debates center on the cell phone’s effect on sperm quality while in the regular pant pocket area and on its effect on the human brain while held next to the ear. A common agreement among researches is that cell phones are the most potentially dangerous while in talk mode. The main instance where this may affect spermatozoa is when the phone is left in the pocket while the user has Bluetooth enabled. This may be a factor behind the recent increase in the infertility rate among the male population, which is now 1 in 20 (De Iuliis et al.). It took about a century for humans to fully realize the dangerous effects of smoking cigarettes and it seems that the dangers of cell phone use may also take a while to be universally accepted and understood.

In a randomized crossover study conducted in 2009, Nora D. Volkow, M.D., the Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda, Maryland, and 8 other professionals evaluated the influence of the cell phone’s radiofrequency signals on the health of the human brain. In particular, they tested the relationship between cell phone use and brain glucose metabolism, which is the indicator of brain activity. The experiment enlisted 47 healthy participants who had their brain glucose measured after two 50-minute periods. For both of the 50-minute periods, a Samsung model SCH-U310 cell phone was attached to both the left and right ear. In one period, the right cell phone was turned on for all 50 minutes while the other was turned off. In the other period, both phones were turned off. After the periods had ended, a (18F)fluorodeoxyglucose injection was used to measure brain glucose metabolism. The results showed that the metabolism in the whole brain was unchanged regardless of the cell phone, but the metabolism in the region of the brain closest to the activated cell phone’s antenna was higher than the metabolism near the cell phones turned off. With the cell phone in talk mode, the metabolism near the antenna was measured at 35.7 μmol/100 g per minute whereas with the phone off it was measured at 33.3 μmol/100 g per minute, which is a statistically significant finding (P = .004). This main finding is not enough to unequivocally prove that the waves emitted by cell phones are unhealthy for the human brain, though.

Now to the matter of the possible effects of radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation (RFEMR) on sperm quality. In 2008, Ashok Agarwal, Ph.D., of the Center for Reproductive Medicine in the Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, and a group of 6 other scientists tested whether these effects exist with a prospective pilot study. They did so by taking neat seamen samples, which contain mature and immature sperm, from 23 healthy donors and 9 infertile donors. Each sperm sample was divided into two and each division was called an aliquot. One randomly chosen aliquot from each donor was placed into the control group and the other aliquot was placed into the experimental group. The experimental group aliquots were exposed to cell phone radiation from a cell phone in talk mode at a distance of 2.5 cm from the cell phone antenna for 1 hour. The distance was 2.5 cm because that is about the regular distance between the testes and the position of a cell phone in a pocket. The aliquots in the control group were placed under identical conditions for 1 hour except for the exposure to RFEMR. After the testing period, the individual sperm cells in the experimental group showed a significant decrease in motility and viability in comparison to those of the control group. In this case, motility means movement and viability essentially means whether or not the sperm are alive. The study also found a significant increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS) level among the exposed aliquots, but did not find any significant difference in DNA damage or antioxidant capacity (TAC) in the semen. These results indicate that the RFEMR released from cell phones may cause oxidative stress on spermatozoa, thus leading to infertility in men.

In 2009, Geoffry N. De Iuliis, Ph.D., of the School of Environmental and Life Sciences at the University of Callaghan in New South Wales, Australia, and 3 other researchers ran a very similar study and further validated the conclusion that cell phones in talk mode cause oxidative stress in sperm. Like the study conducted by Agarwal et al., this experiment used semen samples in vitro. There were 22 healthy donors who averaged 24 years of age. Using the same aliquot division system, the semen of the control group was incubated at room temperature for 1 hour while the semen of the experimental group was exposed for the same amount of time to a frequency of 1.8 GHz, which is about the regular frequency that a cell phone emits in talk mode. Like the procedure of the study itself, the results were very similar to those of the previously mentioned study. De Iuliis et al. found a significant comparative decrease in sperm motility and viability among the exposed aliquots as well.

Since all of these experiments were conducted well, it is not likely that confounding variables or chance affected their results. While the results of all these experiments do not certainly prove the negative effects of cell phones, they still support the recently popularized theory that cell phones are detrimental to human health.

Right now, laptops are as popular as they have ever been. Every year, more and more families are switching from desktops to laptops because of their easy, portable usage. According to a firm called the Information Network, laptop sales reached 145.9 million in 2008. That number increased to 177.7 units sold in 2009. Demand for laptops has skyrocketed, especially in the demographic of men in their reproductive years.

Elisabeth Carlsen, M.D., of the University Department of Growth and Reproduction in Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, and a group of three other researchers created a study to determine whether there have been any changes in the quantity or quality of sperm since the late 1930s, thinking that technology may be responsible. The team did so by comparing 61 papers including 14,947 men between 1938 and 1990. The ages of the men ranged from 17 to 64 years with a mean age between 30 and 38 years and none of the studies found any of the men to have a history of infertility. In order to downplay the effect of confounding variables in their results, Carlsen et al. used a collection of studies that used uniform sperm-counting methods. The studies they chose used different kinds of counting chambers, which is a method suggested by the World Health Organization. What they found was a substantial decrease in both sperm count and seminal volume. Sperm count decreased from 113 x 10⁶/ml in 1940 to 66 x 10⁶/ml in 1990 and seminal volume decreased from 3*40 ml to 2*75 ml over that period. The findings were recorded in the chart below.

The data suggest that the quality of semen has declined over the 50-year study period, but it is not made clear as to what is the cause of this degeneration.

In a 2011 Argentine study ran by Conrado Avendaño, Ph.D., et al., the scientists tested the hypothesis that laptops placed on laps cause a decrease in sperm quality. Two of the three negative effects that people commonly associate with laptops are that they apply heat and microwaves to the testicular region when placed on the lap. This experiment had an in vitro design using Petri dishes and samples from 29 healthy donors were utilized. The samples were divided into two parts called aliquots and for each sample, one aliquot was placed 3 cm under a laptop using wireless Wi-Fi while the other was placed into an identical environment except without the exposure to a laptop. The laptop used was a Toshiba Satellite M305D-S4829. The distance between the laptop and the Petri dish was 3 cm because that is the estimated distance between the laptop and the testes when people place laptops on their laps. After 4 hours, the samples exposed to the laptop showed a significant increase in DNA fragmentation and a significant decrease in progressive sperm motility. 80.9% of the sperm in the experimental group could not move forward after four hours whereas 68.7% of the control group’s sperm could no longer move forward. Interestingly, though, there was no significant difference in the amount of dead sperm between the control and experimental groups after the four-hour period. Also measured were the temperatures under a laptop with Wi-Fi, a laptop without Wi-Fi, and under normal conditions without a laptop. The heat coming from the wirelessly connected laptop was over 3 times higher than without Wi-Fi and 7-15 times higher than under normal conditions. Based off of this collection of results, the researchers concluded that laptop placement on the lap may lead to infertility in men.

However, there were some noticeable shortcomings to the experiment. First, only using one type of laptop can mean that the results relate to only that laptop. Perhaps a MacBook or a Dell laptop would have yielded different results. Also, the semen in the experiment was in Petri dishes as opposed to being in their natural placement in the human body. Without the protection that the tissues and fluids of the body offer, the semen could have been more prone to heat and waves emitted from the laptop.

In 2004, Dr. Yefim R. Sheynkin, M.D., of the Department of Urology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, NY, and four other scientists performed an experiment testing the heat emitted from laptops onto the testicular region. Like the last experiment, 29 healthy volunteers ages 21 to 35 were chosen, but no semen samples were taken. Instead, right and left scrotal temperature was measured. Sheynkin et al. attached two cutaneous thermocouples (5SRTC-TT J type Teflon insulated wire to both testes to find the temperatures. For the experimental group, the participants sat with a laptop on their laps for 60 minutes and temperatures were recorded every 3 minutes. Before putting the laptops on laps, the laptops had already been turned on for 15 minutes. The control group was put under the same conditions except for the laptop. The results state that there was a significant increase in temperature in both testes when under the laptop. Both testes in the experimental group increased significantly in temperature compared to those of the control group, proving that laptops raise scrotal temperature when placed on the lap. The results are shown in the 2 charts below.

In addition to the previously stated associations between laptops and infertility, the third negative effect that is associated with laptops is the position that the laps are put in to hold the laptop. People keep their legs close together when they put a laptop on their laps, which raises the temperature in the testicular region. An increase in testicular temperature has been associated with a decrease in fertility and this sitting position adds to the heat that comes from the laptop. Two possible answers to these problems are using lap pads between our laps and laptops and making sure our legs are not too close together. Aware of these possible solutions, Sheynkin and a separate group of 5 other scientists created another experiment to evaluate the effect of leg positioning and lap pads on scrotal temperature. Using almost the exact same design of their other experiment with the same amount of participants of the same ages, the results concluded that the best combination is to sit with legs apart while using a lap pad. The scrotal temperature raised high in every 60-minute session, but it did not raise as highly with a lap pad and laps 70 degrees apart than it did with legs together with a lap pad or legs apart without a lap pad.

Recently in the U.S., soy has become an increasingly popular ingredient in people’s diets. People commonly think that soy has properties that can reduce the risks of breast cancer and prostate cancer. On the other hand, people also think that soy intake can lead to an increase in estrogen in men, causing them to have a lack in sex drive, be over-emotional, and even grow breasts. The purpose of this post is to investigate the true effects of soy based off of credible studies.

In 1998, Chrisato Nagata, M.D., of the Department of Health and the Gifu University of Medicine in Japan, and a group of four other Japanese scientists created a study to analyze soy’s effects on breast cancer. The logic behind the soy-breast cancer connection is that many people think estrogens cause the development of breast cancer and that the isoflavones (phytoestrogens) in soy can reduce the estrogen levels. In order to test whether soy reduces estrogen levels, Nagata et al. randomly assigned 29 premenopausal women to the control group on their regular diet and 31 premenopausal women to a soymilk diet and ran the study for the time it took for three menstrual cycles to end in all the participants. Before starting the study period, the participants filled out a questionnaire on their menstrual histories and basic demographic information. The participants were also weighed before and after the study period. The answers to the questionnaire showed no significant differences in height, weight, smoking frequency, or other demographic variables between the two groups of women, which helped to root out confounding variables. They were also weighed after the experiment. The soy-supplemented diet consisted of a daily intake of 400 mL of soymilk. At the end of the first and third menstrual cycles for both of the groups of study participants, follicular-phase blood samples were taken.

At the end of the study period, the study found a 23% decrease in estrone levels in the soymilk-supplemented group and a 0.6% increase in the control group. The study also found a 27% decrease in estradiol levels in the soy group and a 4% increase in the control group. The participants also kept record of the menstrual cycle length that showed that the control group’s cycles were shortened by 1 day whereas the supplemented group’s cycles on average increased by 2 days. Based off of statistical analysis, though, these results were deemed statistically insignificant and it was concluded that a larger study is necessary to confirm the results of this study that support the theory that soy intake increases menstrual cycle length while reducing estrogen levels in women, therefore preventing breast cancer.

Jill M. Hamilton-Reeves, Ph.D., of the Department of Food Science and Nutrition and the University of Kansas, along with a group of four other scientists ran a 6-month long, single-blinded, placebo-controlled study to test the theory that soy products can reduce prostate cancer risk. Steroid hormones have commonly been associated with increasing the risk of prostate cancer and the theory being tested is that soy can reduce the amount of those hormones. The study consisted of 58 male participants who were randomly divided into three groups. One group was instructed to consume a soy protein isolate daily that contained 107 mg of isoflavones. Another group consumed an alcohol-washed soy protein isolate daily that was made up of less than 6 mg of isoflavones and the final group drank a milk protein isolate daily that contained 0 mg of isoflavones. Serum samples that were tested for a variety of hormones were taken from the participants at the beginning of the study, halfway through (3 months), and at the conclusion of the study period. Also, prostate biopsy samples were taken before and after the study period and analyzed for estrogen receptor-β expression and androgen receptor (AR) expression. Relative to the first samples taken, the group consuming less than 6 mg of isoflavones had a significant increase in serum estradiol concentration. However, the most significant results were that the group consuming 107 mg a day of insoflavones was found to have a significant decrease in AR expression levels in comparison to the other groups, which indicates that soy and other foods that are rich in isoflavones may in fact be capable of reducing the risk of prostate cancer.

In an attempt to test whether soy can actually reduce serum estrone concentrations and possibly verify Hamilton-Reeves’s results, Christo Nagata and the same group of scientists in Japan made a randomized dietary intervention study of 35 men between the ages of 22 to 50. The men were divided into 2 groups, one given a soy-supplemented diet of 400 mL of soymilk daily and the other asked to stick to their regular no-soy diet. In order to find the estrone concentrations, Nagata et al. took the blood samples of the participants every two weeks for 12 months. After the study period, there were notable differences in the serum estrone samples taken between the two groups. The serum estrone decreased in the soy-supplemented group and increased in the control group, as shown in the graph below. By lowering the circulating estrone concentrations in men, this difference supports the hypothesis that soy reduces prostate cancer risk, but it is still not proven.

In addition to these studies, there have been experiments on male rats that have rejected the hypothesis that soy products cause decreases in testosterone in men. Mindy S. Kurzer of the Department of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Minnesota, did a meta-analysis in 2002 and cited these experiments. Other cited examples include a dietary study done on 14 men between 18 and 35 years of age in which after soymilk intake of 40 mg per day for 3 months, there were no differences found in sperm count or quality compared to before the study period. There is the possibility that the results from this meta-analysis were affected by the file drawer problem, meaning that studies finding no significant effects from soy on the human body were put into the file drawer and therefore not used for this meta-analysis, but that would only support the hypothesis that soy does not “feminize” men. Overall, all the experiments above, while inconclusive, suggest that soy may reduce breast and prostate cancer risk while also not reducing testosterone or other hormones in men.

In one of my previous posts, I discussed the negative effects of night eating and what many of my sources mentioned was the dietary benefit of eating breakfast. Being a regular breakfast eater, I decided to research whether I have been making the right choice. After reading many studies, the favored answer is yes.

In 1996, Catherine S. Berkey of Harvard Medical School and a group of three other Harvard University scientists used a questionnaire to come to their own conclusion on the somewhat controversial topic. In this observational study, the scientists sent questionnaires to nurses who were parents all over the United States and got answers back from over 16 882 children (8980 girls and 7791 boys) ages 9 to 14. For those who responded to the questionnaire, they were sent the same questions three years later to analyze the annual effects of their breakfast habits. In the study, weight was measured in terms of body mass index (BMI). Of all the participants, 7545 girls and 5962 boys provided annual data regarding BMI-change.   The study grouped participants based on their average weekly consumption of breakfast: 1-2 days, 3-4 days, or 5 plus.

The participants answered questions that evaluated their physical activity, inactivity (watching TV, playing videogame, etc.), energy intake, race, schoolwork, and their Tanner maturation stage, which measures their sexual maturity. The race question proved to be important because 94.7% of participants were white, 0.9% African American, 1.5% Hispanic, 1.5% Asian, and 1.4% other. These percentages show an obvious lack of comparative representation among many American ethnicities, but based off of the raw number of participants, there was still enough representation in itself. The study found that breakfast skippers were more likely to be overweight. With the breakfast skippers, 26.4% of boys and 25.3% of girls were overweight whereas with the breakfast eaters, 21.2% of boys and 15.8% of girls were overweight. A more surprising finding is that overweight boys and girls gained less weight annually than the overweight children who ate breakfast daily. The results suggest that skipping breakfast is only beneficial weight-wise for those who are overweight. That is not the case for academic achievement, though. According to the graph of results below, the relative risk (RR) for doing very well at school was the highest with the participants who frequently ate breakfast.

In Japan, a study on this topic was conducted by a team of 9 scientists including Midori Nishiyama, Ph.D., from the Education Support Center and the Division of Education for Community Medicine at Dokkyo Medical University. In their paper, they observed the relationship between breakfast skipping and unhealthy behavior, academic success, and sense of coherence (SOC), which is made up of comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness. Here, the first component is confidence in grasping one’s present circumstance or predicting the future, the second is the sense that one is capable of coping with stress, and the latter regards well-being and the sense that one’s life is meaningful. For the study, Nishiyama et al. issued questionnaires to 92 first-year students (57 men, 37 women) at Dokkyo University’s medical school. The participants answered two self-evaluation questionnaires assessing SOC and lifestyle, one in July of 2010 and the second in August of 2011. In this study, breakfast eaters said they ate breakfast at least 6 times per week and the rest of the participants were categorized as breakfast skippers. 65.9% of participants answered to be breakfast eaters the first year and 55.4% the second year.

The study found that breakfast eaters on average had better annual test scores than breakfast skippers. It also found that breakfast eaters were significantly less likely to use sleeping pills. The most surprising results of this study claim was that breakfast skippers had less stress. However, they were also less likely to have the manageability to combat stress, but that was only found among participants in the first year. Concerning the other SOC scores, the only other considerable differences were that breakfast eaters tested better for meaningfulness in the first year and comprehensibility in the second.

In 1985 in Australia, a very similar study began. Dr. Kylie J. Smith and 5 others from the Menzies Research Institute of the University of Tasmania created a questionnaire that was completed nationally by 9-15 year old Australians, 2184 of whom finished the follow-up questionnaire between 2004 and 2006. Of the 2184, 1730 of the participants had their waists measured by trained staff and had blood samples taken after 12-hour fasts. In the follow up, the participants were between the ages 26 and 36. The objective of this analysis was to find the connection between breakfast eating and cardiometabolic risk over a span of about 20 years from childhood to adulthood. Cardiometabolic risk indicates one’s chances of having diabetes, heart disease, or a stroke (Office of Mental Health). The participants were broken up into 4 groups – breakfast eaters in both childhood and adulthood, in only childhood, in only adulthood, and neither. Based off of the blood tests, waist measurements, and the answers to the questions, the results were very one-sided. The participants in the “neither” category had a larger weight circumference, higher fasting insulin, and higher total and LDL cholesterol than those who ate breakfast in both childhood and adulthood. The framework of this study suggests that there is a possibility that it suffers from the Texas Sharp Shooter problem, but the fact that the results were only based off of relatively few questions and measurements is enough to reject that possibility.

While these studies do not unequivocally prove the dietary significance of breakfast, they provide sufficient data that support causation between breakfast and good health. A problem with these studies as a whole is that they are all observational, which means that the chance of confounding variables affecting their results is high. Out of this array of studies, the ones that seem least likely to have been affected by confounding variables are the studies conducted in Australia and the United States because the sample sizes for those two are very large. In sum, these studies conclude that skipping breakfast reduces stress, causes bad grades, has a negative association with overall health, has cardiometabolic risks, and causes everyone besides the obese to gain weight.

It is not even a debate that tap water is a better economical and environmental choice than bottled water, although buying bottled water is good for the economy as a whole. What is a debate, though, is which is safer health-wise. Despite the fact that many people do not actually know whether their own tap water is cleaner than the bottled water they buy, people globally spend more than $100 billion dollars on bottled water a year, which on average costs about a thousand times more (Karlstrom and Dell’Amore). The debate over which type of water is healthier does not have a constant answer as there are many different municipal (tap) water systems and brands of water bottles. After doing the research, though, it becomes easier to approach this decision moving forward.

Peter Gleick, Ph.D., a member of the International Water Academy and the National Academy of Sciences and also the author of the book Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water, appeared on Boston’s NPR news station and had many interesting things to say on the topic. For one of them, he highlighted the tendency for many bottled water brands to name themselves based off of what consumers want to see their water come from. As an example, he gave the brand Glacier Mountain Natural Spring Water, which, contrary to its name, is produced in New Jersey. When people think of bottled water, they usually think of pure, natural spring water. According to Gleick, though, about 40% to 45% of all bottled water originates as municipal water. Some well-known examples include Dasani and Nestle Pure Life. That almost seems like false advertisement, but in reality, there is no federally imposed obligation to put the source of the water on the bottle. Also, filtered tap water should be as clean as any as long as the processors do a thorough job.

Gleick also touches on the regulation differences between bottled and tap water, which are easy to find. Unlike in the case of tap water, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates bottled water because it considers it to be a food (Goodson). The FDA is much more lax in its regulations of bottled water than the U.S. Enviornmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in its control over municipal water systems. To compare the regulations, the FDA reviews facilities making bottled water on average every 2.5 years whereas the EPA will inspect a municipal water system as many as dozens of times daily, but to be fair, it is a rare occurrence for the FDA to be dissatisfied after inspections. In order to find out about these rare occurrences, Gleick contacted the FDA and after months, it released information to him that disclosed that there had already been 100 official recalls. Reasons for the recalls included contaminations with kerosene, mold, and algae. Other problems included findings of yeast, glass particles, and fecal coliforms, which are pathogenic to humans. Another bottled water producer was recalled months after cricket parts were found in their water. This means that there is a possibility that for as long as 2.5 years or maybe even longer, this company was distributing bottled water with cricket parts inside. Not all bottled water is under that lax inspection, though. Only bottled water that is involved in interstate commerce receives these inspections (Gleick). For what Gleick estimates to be around 60% to 70% of all bottled water, the FDA has absolutely no authority and thus these brands have little incentive to produce the highest quality of water possible. Even after exposing the risks of drinking bottled water, Gleik acknowledged that there could be new chemicals being placed into municipal water systems that the EPA is not testing for under the Safe Drinking Water Act, which was originally passed in 1974.

A comparative study in Cleveland, Ohio run by James A. Lalumandier, DDS and Leona W. Ayers, MD, took 57 samples of 5 categories of bottled water and compared them to the city’s municipal water in order to find the difference in tooth decay prevention (fluoride levels) and bacterial levels. The bottled water was purchased from local stores and the tap water was collected from 4 of Cleveland’s water processing plants. Fluoride levels were found through an ion-selective electrode method and bacterial counts were measured as colony-forming units (CFUs) per milliliter. The scientists compared the fluoride levels to the Ohio state-wide standard of 1.00 mg/L of fluoride with the range of 0.80 to 1.30 mg/L being acceptable. Of all the 57 samples of bottled water tested, only 3 came within the acceptable level of fluoride whereas all 4 tap water samples came within 0.04 mg/L of the optimal level of 1.00 mg/L. The bacterial counts in the tap water ranged from 0.2 to 2.7 CFUs/mL whereas the bottled water samples ranged widely from 0.01 to 4900 CFUs/mL. Based off of these results, tap water is generally better for tooth decay prevention and some bottled water is less bacteria-concentrated while others have alarmingly high bacteria counts. In terms of bacterial counts for the bottled water, the majority (32) of the samples had less than 0.02 CFU/mL, 10 had counts between 0.02 and 1.10 CFU/mL, 8 contained between 6 and 30 CFUs/mL, 1 sample contained 530 CFUs/mL, and 6 samples contained between 1500 and 4900 CFUs/mL. The complete set of bacteria-related results is in the chart below. The results indicate that Lalumandier and Ayers did not have any bias toward either tap or bottled water. Also, based off of the procedure of the experiment, it is unlikely that confounding variables or chance affected these results.

According to the previous information, some new conceptions can be added to the common knowledge regarding the tap versus bottled water argument. In general, we already know that tap water is better for the environment and your wallet and that bottled water tastes better and is better for the economy. Now we also know that tap water is better for your teeth and is not nearly as risky as many people believe it to be and we know that negligent regulations by the FDA can cause some bottled water to be much less safe than tap water. The argument over which is better varies on a case-by-case basis. Moving forward, you are more likely to be picking the right bottled water if it is in interstate commerce. Also, the best brands of bottled water are safer than tap water concerning bacteria count. If you do not know which bottled water to choose, tap water is a safe bet.

I have been asking myself this question for a while now and I thought that writing a blog on this would give me the perfect opportunity to address it (after a lot of research of course). First, let me give a definition of what an Internet troll actually is. According to Jiwon Shin, Ph.D., of the Teachers College of Columbia University, “A troll is a person who interrupts communications on the Internet, and (is) often seen as problematic or even (as) criminals.” Of course, there are many different kinds of trolls. There are trolls all over the web and are most commonly found on Wikipedia, social media sites like Facebook, and a wide variety of comment sections and chat rooms. So what is the common personality of the Internet troll? How do we perceive them? What are their motives? I am going to try to answer these questions in a review of recent studies. When researches try to answer these questions, they try to find any kind of correlation between trolls and what is known as “the Dark Tetrad of personality”: sadism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, the last of which is characterized by deception and dishonesty (Buckels, Trapnell, and Paulhaus).

In a 2010 observational study of trolls, Pnina Shachaf and Noriko Hara, both of the School of Library and Information Science Of Indiana University, Bloomington, interviewed an amount of only 8 Wikipedia system operators (sysops) with undisclosed names and asked them how they perceived trolls to be after showing them the cases of 11 different Wikipedia trolls. Being system operators, the people in charge of kicking out trolls, the sysops were in regular and often times adversary contact with them. After conducting the interviews, Shachaf and Hara found themes of attention seeking, boredom, opposition to authority, gratification, revenge, and a sadistic longing to mentally harm Internet communities and their users. These were the most popular motivations the sysops attributed to trolling, but instead of being actual evidence, they are indicators of social science theories. Of all these motivations, boredom was the most popular answer among the interviewees. The 8 sysops generally found trolls to fit under the category of the Dark Tetrad.

What many studies like the previous one don’t include is a gender-based analysis of the troll. Aware of this, Professors Pnina Fichman, Ph.D., and Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo of the School of Informatics and Computing at the Bloomington campus of the University of Indiana decided to research this specific topic. In their paper, they state that the main reason for this is because females have represented a small minority of Internet trolls and female-driven cases of trolling have been considerably less severe. They cite Susan C. Herring, another Professor of Information Science and Linguistics at Indiana University, Bloomington, who theorized the reason for this to be in the sexual disposition toward conflict. Trolls thrive on creating conflict and females tend to avoid it, she says.

Part of a list of hypotheses tested in their gender-based study of trolls, Fichman and Sanfilippo predicted that male and female trolls are perceived differently. The two professors tested this hypothesis by presenting three different scenarios to the 100 participants of their study. The participants, 75% female, 23% male, and 2% identifying as other, represented a wide variety of degree majors and academic statuses. The scenarios were of trolls operating on Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers, and the online gaming site League of Legends. For each question, every participant was given a variation of the troll’s name. The names were Emily, Todd, and AbcD. The participants were then asked to assume the motivations of trolls unaware of the significance of the names. According to the results of the study in the “Hypothesis 3” section of the chart below, participants “perceived Todd and AbcD to be motivated by malevolence, humor, and instigation at a higher frequency than Emily, who was perceived to be comparatively more ideological”, thus supporting the hypothesis that trolls are perceived differently in accordance with gender (Fichman and Sanfilippo).

Now I am going to get to the matter of the actual motives behind trolling, at least according to the trolls. Erin E. Buckles and Paul D. Trapnell from the Psychology Department of Winnipeg University along with Delroy L. Paulhaus from the University of British Columbia created a questionnaire for trolls themselves with a main focus on the correlation between the Dark Tetrad and trolling (Buckels, Trapnell, and Paulhaus). 418 participants were recruited and based off of the answers to a question in which the participants were asked to choose their favorite commenting hobby if any at all, 5.8% of the participants were trolls. The remaining multiple-choice questions assessed the Dark Tetrad qualities of the participants and the results were staggering. The chart below displays the results and almost certainly proves that Internet trolls are prone to the negative character traits of the Dark Tetrad.

These data support the common conception that Internet trolls are generally more sadistic, narcissistic, and psychopathic than the average person. There are noticeable shortcomings to all these studies, though. With this being a social sciences topic, I was only able to find observational studies, which are more prone to confounding variables than experiments. Factors like race and upbringing were not accounted for in these studies. There is a possibility that this could have led to false positives in all the studies. Chance could have also caused false positives. In the first experiment mentioned, there were only 8 participants as opposed to the other two having at least 100 participants. This means that the results of the first study are particularly at risk of being a collective fluke.

About a month ago, I was talking to a friend when he started complaining about his dad. He said that he was eating a banana and his dad told him he should throw it away because he was being unhealthy. Obviously I was surprised when I heard this. Like most people, I’ve lived my life thinking that there was no downside to eating bananas or any other fruit for that matter, but as it turns out, there’s a limit.

The average banana (126 grams) is made up of 110 calories, .5 mg of vitamin B6, 9 mg of vitamin C, 450 mg of potassium, and 3 g of dietary fiber (Chiquita Bananas). It also has 0 grams of fat, cholesterol, and sodium (Chiquita Bananas). All of this seems to indicate that bananas are perfect for the body’s health. In fact, studies have shown that bananas have positive effects on blood pressure, heart health, both types of diabetes, mental faculties like memory and mood, and even the prevention of asthma and cancer (Medical News Today). Other benefits include better digestion, weight loss, vision protection, and keeping bones strong (Szalay).

The problem, though, is when people eat too many bananas. “Most health experts recommend no more than two bananas per day” (Med-Health). Eating too much can lead to headaches, sleepiness, nerve damage, tooth decay, lack of fat and protein, and hyperkalemia, “which is characterized by muscle weakness, temporary paralysis, and an irregular heartbeat” (Med-Health and Szalay).

Based off of what many studies have concluded, my friend’s dad was wrong when he said eating a banana is an unhealthy choice. If you are part of the very small fraction of people who eats more than two bananas a day or if you know someone who does, I might’ve just given you a reason for the headaches or other health problems you are having. These studies prove that “too much of a good thing can be dangerous” (Med-Health).

Recently I was on Netflix watching the nature documentary show Wildest India and heard about water that can actually clean itself. This self-purifying title is strictly given to the water of India’s longest River, the Ganges (Kim). The mini-series’ narrator, Paul McGann, explained the phenomenon by using two examples of unlikely occurrences with the water. In the first, it has been estimated that more than 400 million people depend on the river for their livelihood and many of those people bathe in it regularly (Rogers). With that many people bathing in the river, there have been no epidemics caused by sharing the river. McGann also uses the observation that animal life is thriving in this river despite the fact that it is one of the most polluted water systems in the world.

Abnormalities like these two are only a couple of reasons why people inside and outside India’s borders see the river as a holy place to go to for the washing away of sins and in matters of death (The Telegraph). The Indian Emperor Akbar the Great (1542-1605) praised the river’s “water of immortality” and would not drink water from any other source (Grant, 115).

Scientific evidence has almost certainly proven that the water of the Ganges can in fact clean itself, but much like with the case of cigarettes causing lung cancer, scientists have not been able to prove what in the water is doing the cleaning (Hollick). Retired hydrologist professor D.S. Bhargava, “who has spent a lifetime performing experiments up and down (the) Ganges in the plains of India”, “says that the Ganges’ self-purifying quality leads to oxygen levels 25 times higher than any other river in the world” (Hollick). Bhargava performed an experiment to prove the self-cleaning water hypothesis by filling two beakers with water from the Ganges. In one beaker the water was boiled then cooled and in the other it was left untouched. Bhargava went on to place pathogens into both beakers and found that the pathogens only were able to survive in the once-boiled water (Bhargava).

There have been varying theories on what makes the water self-purifying. One came from an Indian Spiritual leader named Swami Ramesh Chand who claimed that the cleaning properties came from sulfur picked up from the riverbed, but this was quickly disproved. The leading theory right now is based off of how the Ganges starts in the Himalayas and descends from there. Molecular biologist Dr. Jay Ramachandran asserts that the cleaning particle in the water is a certain type of bacteria phage that comes from the glaciers of the Himalayas. Many scientists agree with Ramachandran that the phage is responsible for the preservation of Ganges wildlife and the lack of disease outbreaks among Indians.

Recently, I have heard from multiple people that drinking alcohol can make sleep less restorative. Before hearing this, I had the conception that it was a sleep aid and that it helped sleep. For this blog, I decided to research this debate and choose a side in the process. After reading through all the sources, every article that I found favored the side that backs alcohol’s negative effect on sleep and now I do, too. Almost all of these sources cite the findings of the peer-reviewed journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

They all also focus on the two major parts of sleep. The first is called SWS (slow wave sleep) because in this type of sleep brain waves move slowly and the second is called REM (rapid eye movement) for the opposite reason (Gordis). SWS “is physiologically restorative and produces, releases, or balances important hormones, blood sugar, metabolism, and energy” while “REM sleep is cognitively restorative and assists in the consolidation of memories and stabilizing of mood and temperament” (sleepsomatics.com). Alcohol has been found to disrupt sleep in the second half of the night and to negatively affect REM, which is essential to health (Mann).

Dr. Christian Nicholas, a scientist at the University of Melbourne, tested 24 people of ages 18-21 to learn how the brain reacts to alcohol while sleeping (Park). Nicholas and his team tested these young adults by giving them either orange juice with vodka or a placebo (orange juice with a straw dipped in vodka) before they went to bed and used electrodes to measure their sleeping brainwave patterns on an electroencephalogram (Park). The study concluded that alcohol heightened the activity of alpha wave patterns.  “Alpha activity tends to occur when the brain is awake but quietly resting, in metabolic break mode” and an increase in it leads to disrupted sleeping (Park).

Besides the fact that alcohol can intensify sleeping disorders like sleep apnea, there is an unsettling amount of other undesirable effects (Gordis). Alcohol shortening REM sleeping and increasing alpha wave patters makes sleep less restorative, which can lead to weight gain, muscle loss, low testosterone in males, poor energy, fatigue, and reduced quality of life and satisfaction (sleepsomatics.com). Other effects include psychiatric or mood disorders such as depression, mood swings, and anxiety (sleepsomatics.com). Also, studies have paired non-restorative sleep with increased risk of impaired breathing, heart disease, memory deficits, impaired social and occupational function, and car crashes (Gordis).

All of this research does not mean that drinking before bed once will end your life. If “somebody is doing this night after night after night, the effects can be cumulative, not only for alcohol use but on sleep disruption as well,” says Nicholas. With that in mind, it seems that moderation is the healthiest way to approach this issue (Szalavitz).

Most people in this science class follow a routine before having a morning class. Part of that routine is deciding whether to shower the night before class, the morning of, or not at all. Based off of my experience, I have learned that showering the morning of is the most efficient way to do it. Sophomore year of high school was when I realized this.

After freshman year, I was tired of waking up early to take a shower so I started taking them the night before school. What I noticed after that was a slip in my grades. I would be sitting in biology class (one of the hardest classes I had in high school) and wouldn’t pay attention at all, which was kind of new for me. I would sit in my seat in the back of the class with bags under my eyes daydreaming about anything that wasn’t biology.

I would usually daydream about playing either basketball or football. Either way, I would walk out of that class having learned barely anything at all. That was a class where people would specifically say, “If you don’t follow what she’s saying, you’re screwed.” We would do fill-in-the-blanks on outlines and I would just listen for the blanks. The day before the tests, I would have to go over all of those outlines, but I never did as well as I would have if I knew what I was studying. This applied to every other class that I had that year, too. Junior year, when I showered the morning of and noticed that I wasn’t daydreaming about crossing people over but was paying attention, I decided to make that my routine and haven’t regretted it since.

Scientific studies say that you’re supposed to take cold showers in the morning for energy, but no one wants to do that and hot showers have worked well for me (Dumontet). Other scientific evidence shows that most people do their best work in the late morning after their body temperature, working memory, concentration, and alertness have gradually improved (Shellenbarger). “Taking a warm shower can jump-start the process” (Shellenbarger).

Of course, this does not apply to everyone. Some people are able to get up and have enough energy to not want to fall asleep or daydream in class. Also, waking up earlier to take a shower means you lose sleep, but in my opinion, it’s worth it.

I am a freshman and I am taking this class to fill my general education requirement for business.  I chose this science class over the other ones because this one seemed a lot better.  I am not a science major mainly because I hate doing labs.

Here is a link to Bill Nye talking about measurements.