Yoga and the science behind yoga have been studies this man kind first began. For years people have used yoga to get the full mind and body connection they look for. For year scientist have studied yoga and all it’s practices to try find how yoga can connect you to special parts of your brain.

MRI’s have been the best way for scientist to learn how yoga and meditation correlate with your brains activity. Scientist through MRI’s have found that yoga and mediation actually do change the way your brain works. Some scientist have said it could possible change your brain overtime Is what’s called brain plasticity. Your brain will be more functional over time inducing the yoga and meditation activities more over time. Scientist say you will see a change in the bodies stress reacting system overtime. Other things like your immune system builds up and becomes stronger as well.

Yoga and meditation isn’t something people should do when they are stressed up. Yoga and meditation are practices that you should try to do on a more consistent basis. They have physical, mental, and physiological benefits that can help everyone. Scientific researchers find new benefits every day.

Guns have been a hot topic the last few years. There are hundreds of types of guns you can buy, and each gun has its own way of working. Along with the different types of guns, you have all kinds of ways to customize your guns. You can buy lasers, sights, and much more, but I’m going to be talking about silencers. Whenever you think of silencers of guns James Bond pops into a lot of people’s minds. How can a silencer make a gun almost silent?

The real name for the common word silencer is actual compressor. It is called that because it is impossible to make a gun that is silent. The sound of a gun comes from three main sources of the gun, the hammer, gun powder, and pressurized gas. The pressurized gas coming out of the powder is 3000 pounds per square inch, that’s how the bullet is push out the end of the barrel.

Compressor lower the sounds with the way the barrel is made. The barrels of compressors are longer and bigger than the barrels on the guns. Inside the compressors there are special groves and chambers that give all the compressed gas a place to expand. Normally without a compressor the gasses come out at 60 pounds per square inch, but with a compressor drop them to about 20 decibels. 20 decibels are about the sound of a whisper. That’s how a compressor works.

Steroids  are one of the most popular and well known drugs in the world. When most people think of steroids they think of professional bodybuilders, or other sports athletes like A Rod, but were did steroids come from and how do they work?

Steroids started in 1939 in Germany. A Germany scientist named Adolf Butenandt, who won a Nobel Prices for his research on testosterone. From then on Germany was the Mecca for steroids and steroid research. Over the years Germany had leaps and bounds in the steroid world. German scientist found through countless hours of research that when a man works out that testosterone levels drop dramatically. Along with testosterone levels dropping, gluco-corticoid builds up in the body. Gluco-corticoid has an catabolic effect on the body, meaning that it breaks down the muscle tissue. Steroid stop the bodies testosterone levels from falling and blocks the gluco-corticoid. That means the muscles get bigger, stronger harder, faster.

The science behind squatting. Squatting like all exercises has different forms and variations like front squat, back squat, high bar, low bar, and many more, but what’s the science behind how to properly squat, and get full benefits from it without getting hurt?

The Squat is an exercise that works the muscles in your legs. When most people think of squat they thing about their quads, but the squat is an exercise that is a full body exercise. The main muscles you work are the quads, but secondary muscles like you adductors, abductors, glutes, and many others are thrown in the mix too.

There are a few steps to start a squat. First you want you to walk up to the bar and have your feet a little more than shoulder width apart. You want to grab the bar and make sure your hands are even, and place the bar right above your traps. Once set lift the weight up keeping your core tight, squat down keeping your knees lined up with your toes and go down below parole.

There are two parts to a muscle contraction, you have your acentric and eccentric. Controlling the weight while going down in the squatting causes your muscle to have an eccentric contraction. The eccentric contraction will turn into an acentric contraction on your way top to the top of the squat. When developing muscles, the eccentric contraction is just as important as the acentric contraction, so go down controlled. That is the basic science behind a squat.

The last decade the supplement industry has taken over the fitness world. You have your bigger main stream supplement companies like BSN, ON, Cellucor, and dozens of others. It seems like a new pre workout supplement is coming out, but how do these companies make the supplements?

Looking at the back label of a pre workout supplement you might see up to twenty different ingredients. The scientist the supplement companies hire do experiments and studies to see what combination of supplements works the best. The basic overall goal of a pre workout is to give you more endurance, energy, and focus during a workout. One of the main ingredients in all pre workouts it caffeine. Caffenie is a stimulant that works with a chemical in your body called adenosine. Adenosine is a chemical in your body what when it builds up causes you to get sleepy, caffeine in the pre workouts lowers the adenosine activity in your body. Beta-alanine is an ingredient you will find in almost all pre workout supplements. Beta-alanine is an amino acid. The scientist put beta-alanine in pre workout because there’s histidine in your body. When you mix histidine and beta-alanine it makes up carnosine. Carnosine helps with lactic acid build up in your body increasing your overall performance. Citrulline malat is an ingredient that increases your bodies ATP production in our body. The ingredient citruline malat overall with combination of processes in your body helps you recover faster.

There are a lot of pre workout supplement companies out there. Each one will tell you their better than the others, but there supplements are all made with the same three basic ingridents that scientist have found to work best. Caffeine for energy, beta-alanine to hold off laic acid, and citrulline malat to help you recover faster between sets.

If you look good you feel good right? That’s the philosophy most people have when it comes to school, your job, sports and many other things in life, but does looking better on the outside make you feel better on the inside?

There have been numerous studies done behind the mental state of mind about feeling good. Studies have shown that it doesn’t matter how good you look on the outside, but it’s the mental feelings on the inside that really count. There are a lot of factors that go into the mental side of looking good. Human touch, having friends, and stress levels are some of the major factors that go into the mental side of feeling good about yourself. Human touch was the first on the list because it can be the most important factor. Human touch and interaction is something we all crave for. Studies have shown if you are touched ten times per day human to human contact, you are more likely to have a better day. You can notice this in babies who are held a lot and babies who are encored. Babies who have more human touch and interaction are overall more happy babies than ones who get low levels of touch and attention. People who have more solitary lives very few friends tend to be depressed more often than people with a high friend count and a more active social life. Stress level is another major player in mentally feeling good. People with high stress levels also have higher levels of anxiety that can affect the body both physically and mentally. So just because you look good, doesn’t necessarily mean you feel good.

Whenever it comes to sports, home field advantage is something that always comes into play. Home field advantage can make the worst of teams come together and beat the top ranked team. You see home field advantage upsets like this a lot in sports, why?

The fans have a lot to do with what happens on the score board. The Seattle Seahawks one of the biggest and loudest group of fans you’ll see out of all NFL teams. There was actually a study done on the Seattle Seahawks and other NFL teams on how their fans at home games impact the scoreboard. In the study they show fans emotions can control the game. The fans can get the players hyped by their cheers of joy, or great them depressed with their boos. The fans have a physiological pull on the players they are cheering for. The study shows that games fan numbers are low the score is normally lower, with a few outliers here and there. With games the fans are at an all-time high, the score is a higher score on average.

Players on NFL and college football teams have been surveyed and conducted interviews with many people studying the impact fans have. Overall in both you see players saying they feel that they have an extra man out on the field with them, and they can definitely feel the disadvantage of it at away games. Studies show that the 12th  man theory is correct. The fans have a physiological and emotional advantage when it comes to teams playing at home.

Vasopressin also known in common language as hangover is a problem for people who go out and drink a lot. When you have a hangover you have a headache, tired, dehydrate, angry, and other symptoms based on the individual person.

The process of a hangover actually starts the moment you start to drink too much alcohol for your body to handle. There is thing called your pituitary gland that is located in your brain. Your pituitary gland produces a hormone that is called vasopressin. Vasopressin is the hormone that regulates the fluid intake and out take of your body. When you drink too much the hormone vasopressin shuts down, and that when dehydrates comes into play. Whenever you drink water you get hydrated, but when your drink alcohol you get dehydrated. Whenever your body goes into this dehydrated state from drinking alcohol it tries to get water from other parts of your body, and that includes the brain. When you lose water from your brain you start to get a headache that’s why that’s a major symptom of a hangover. The type of alcohol you drink also has a roll in the hangover process. Congeners a compounds found in the alcohol. Congeners range from high and low depending on how the alcohol was made. Alcohol like beer will not give you a hangover as bad as some hard liquors would. The higher the congeners, the worse your hangover will be.

As little children we’ve all heard that carrots improve your eyes, but is that true? In this vlog I will be going over the science behind carrots and eye sight.Eat your carrots?

If you wear glasses I would not start eating a lot of carrots. The truth is, eating carrots really don’t improve your eye sight. Carrots have a nutrient called beta carotene. Beta carotene is what gives carrots and many other fruits and vegetables an orange color to them. When you consume beta carotene it doesn’t stay in that state for long. Whenever beta carotene is consumed your body turns into vitamin A.

Vitamin A is retinol. Doesn’t retinol sound a lot like retina? That’s because you can find Vitamin A in the rods of your eyes. Rods are the part of your eyes that have task of helping you see at low light levels. Without vitamin A the photoreceptors in your eyes will eventually start to deteriorate over time. So anything with vitamin A in it will help your eyes, but why did we think it was carrots all these years? In World War Two the British pilots had a radar system that helped them defeat their enemies from the air. When interviewed the British piolets said it was carrots the British army was giving them that made them see so well. That’s how the myth about carrots improving your eyes started.

Sphenopalatine Ganglioneuralgia also known as Brain Freeze has been something we’ve all experienced in our lives. Have you ever wondered why is phenomenon happens? Read this vlog post and you’ll know why.

There are two main arteries that are in the back of our mouth, the internal curated artery, and the anterior cerebral artery. The internal curated is responsible for the blood that flows to your brain. The anterior cerebral artery is an artery that is right below were your brain tissue begins. Normal the internal curated artery and the anterior cerebral artery are very warm sitting in the back of your mouth. Eating food like ice cream and frozen yogurt at a normal speed will not give you a brain freeze, but eat it really fast and that’s when the brain freeze comes into play. Similar process happens with animals when they get cold food too fast. Cats getting brain freeze .

Eating ice cream and other cold food fast makes the temperature in the back of your mouth cool down in a dramatic fashion. When the temperature in the internal curated artery and the anterior cerebral artery drop that fast, it causes your brain to go into a cold state of shock. The brain reacts like this because it thinks you are trying to freeze it, so you get the cold painful sensation going through your head.

Stopping a brain freeze once it happens is pretty simple. You get the brain freeze because of the dramatic drop in temperature were the internal curated artery and the anterior cerebral artery are located. To stop the brain freeze twist your tongue to the back of your mouth. When you do that your warm tongue warms up your internal curated artery and the anterior cerebral artery, so the area warms up and the brain freeze stops.

Hey everyone,

My name is Jordan and I’m from State College. The title of this post “The Struggle” is a quick summary of all my past science classes. I have never been one to like science, but I need one more science class in order to graduate. This science class is the only thing between me and my degree. I am going to work hard to turn my past struggles in science classes to success in this one.