This question has been around since space travel actually became a tangible concept in the mid-20th century. After John F. Kennedy proclaimed “We will go to the Moon”, the space race was in full swing. As time has passed, the depth of the space race has continued to increase, as the US and other countries have continued to push the “Final Frontier” and explore as much of outer space as possible. With inventions like the Mars Rover and the Hubble Telescope, exploring space has become a more realistic opportunity. But what happens in the event that Earth is no longer inhabitable? Should humans try to colonize space, and even if they tried, would they be able to?

The first place to find the answers to a question like this is NASA. The organization has already put out information for those who are looking to settle in outer space. While mostly mentioned in a joking manner, some of the information could seriously be useful if humanity were to find itself one day having to find real estate in outer space. Even if space colonization were to happen, would a different type of person have to exist to be able to survive?

Business Weekly decided to look into this issue for themselves. They remarked about how a number of scientists think human colonization will be inevitable. For this to occur without spacesuits and various other parameters that current humans would have to work around, some scientists think that humans will be forced to evolve. “These people will become an offshoot of the human tree, they will probably evolve into something else,” said Chris Impey, a professor at the University of Arizona quoted in the article. While his ideas might be a bit far-fetched, he has much more knowledge on this subject than most.

Between NASA, astronomy professors, and other speculators on the subject, the possibilities of the future are endless. Whether they involve NASA and other space travel associations across other countries, contingency planning is certainly underway. Between those who are merely speculative conspiracy theorists, and those who have extensive knowledge on the subject of Earth’s future, both might be on to something when it comes to space travel and potential space colonization.

A future Manhattan on a different planet? Link: http://bruceleeeowe.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/typical-colonization-of-moon.jpg

Bibliography:

Dickerson, Kelly. “Moving to Mars Could Create a Whole New Breed of People.” Business Insider. Business Insider, 12 June 2015. Web. 21 Oct. 2016.

Globus, Al. “Space Settlement Basics.” Nasa.gov. NASA, 2016. Web. 21 Oct. 2016.

Behavioral epigenetic expressions. I’m sure you’re thinking, epige-what? Just under 25 years ago, two scientists begin to realize the impact that certain events can have on specific races/ethnicities in each generation. Moshe Szyf and Michael Meaney, both of McGill University in Canada, began to realize the idea that events like the Holocaust, atomic bombings in Japan, the Vietnam War, and many other critical events of the 20th century could impact the next generation literally in terms of DNA. While obviously these events had effects in the lives of each affected group in terms of socio-economic and political factors, Szyf and Meaney started to develop the idea that it could literally change the .1% of DNA that can be altered.

To put behavioral epigenetics in simpler terms of nature vs. nurture, it is basically the idea that the nurturing affects the nature, rather than vice versa. According to the Oxford Journals, most of the research in the field focuses on early development of organisms. “Behavioral epigenetics refers to the study of how signals from the environment trigger molecular biological changes that modify what goes on in brain cells.” (Powledge, 2011). The hardest part of conducting research in a field as big as epigenetics is navigating the human genome.

The regulation of the structure of the genome is three-dimensional of course, adding an extra layer of difficulty as to mapping out where the discrepancies are inside the DNA itself. Regulating the physical structure and the chemical adjustments that are made, they are the two most frequently utilized processes. The most important development in epigenetics began with discovering where the changes came from with the parents (Oxford).

According to Oxford, the foundation for how epigenetics would be connected to parents and their children began with Meaney studying rats and how their parents could pass down responses to stress for their children. The journal cites that the scientists were able to study the brains of the rats, and following this discovery, continued to develop their ideas, eventually coming upon the process of imprinting as they discovered how different animals can become hybrids of one another through genomic imprinting. As for the future of epigenetics? Well, the hurdles to having meaningful research in the subject are numerous, according to the author, Powledge. But as far as cell biology goes, this could very well be the next big thing in the field, especially if hybrid traits continue to unravel with humans. While epigenetics still has a ways to go, it is heading in the right direction.

Mapping out the epigenetics. Link: http://discovermagazine.com/~/media/Images/Issues/2013/May/trait-4.jpg

Bibliography:

Hurley, Dan. “November 2016.” Discover Magazine. Discover Magazine, 25 June 2015. Web. 21 Oct. 2016.

Powledge, Tabitha M. “Behavioral Epigenetics: How Nurture Shapes Nature.” Behavioral Epigenetics: How Nurture Shapes Nature. Oxford University, 2011. Web. 21 Oct. 2016.

Can Human Memories Be Reliable?

In casual conversations with friends, people are naturally nostalgic and often like to talk about memorable moments they’ve had. Everyone likes to remember the times they have enjoyed with friends and family while also remembering times of trouble and difficulty getting through day-to-day life during periods of grief. But for better or worse, could our memories be letting us down? Are we really remembering past events in our lives or are people merely remembering what they want to? Some recent research has pulled up some interesting figures that are different than what many would imagine.

According to Psychology Today, neuroscientists have been able to show that when humans remember something, they naturally will reconstruct the event in their heads. They also mentioned how people will suppress memories that are painful, and that memory may just be adaptive to the situation, and therefore has to be considered as unreliable. While it is not surprising that people suppress painful memories away, it is unsettling to me how the memories of normal people cannot necessarily be considered reliable.

The New Yorker also had an article just last year stemming from an experiment on how people remember tragedies. According to the article, back in the late 1980’s, Prof. Ulric Neisser of Emory University began to look at how people reacted to “flashbulb memories”. He put this in context by asking his students to write about what they remembered when they heard about the Challenger explosion in 1986. His students were asked to do this the day after the tragedy. Two and a half years later, he again asked the students who completed the first reflection to make a second one. It seems pretty surprising that when the psychologists rated the accuracy of the students on a 1-7 scale, the average was less than 3. But on a 1-5 scale for confidence, the students rated themselves on average at about a 4.17, showing their confidence/inaccuracy.

I thought this result was somewhat surprising. Granted, I don’t have any background knowledge on human memory, but given that so many people trust the memory of others fairly easily, this study would definitely show otherwise. One would think that people would have the same memories about their reaction to a national tragedy, be it the day after or 11 years later. With that being said, it also makes it comical that statistically, the students can be quite confident with how inaccurate they end up being. In my research, I could not find a more recent study than after 9/11, where the neurologists had pretty similar findings, generally speaking.

Human memory can also fog things up in our legal system. The Psychology Today article also reported that in the United States, false confessions can happen in just under 25% out of 289 criminal convictions in an average year that were eventually expunged due to DNA evidence. Why does this occur? Possibly out of fear or intimidation from others. But you can’t rule out that it relates back to memory, because even if a suspect were lying, they would still have to remember their story and have a motive for doing so.

Bibliography:

Eisold, Ken. “Unreliable Memory.” Psychology Today. Psychology Today, 12 Mar. 2012. Web. 21 Oct. 2016.

Konnikova, Maria. “You Have No Idea What Happened.” The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 04 Feb. 2015. Web. 21 Oct. 2016.

Can People Alter Endings to Nightmares?

Regardless of whether people are young or old, people still have nightmares whether they are 8 years old or 88 years old. Nightmares are a part of sleep, for better or worse. As far back as dreams have been studied, people have been associating their bad dreams with an assortment of factors like stresses of daily life, trauma, and various other items. But are all nightmares related simply to our day-to-day lives? Not necessarily. In fact, there are researchers who say that nightmares could be helpful to the survival of humans, in terms of making important decisions and serving as a redirection to more important issues in the personal lives of people. In fact, some neurologists are arguing that people can use different endings to dreams to determine solutions to traumatic times, as well as every-day problems, in their real lives.

So how can nightmares actually help people get through difficult times? According to Deirdre Bennett, a psychologist at Harvard, nightmares have probably remained a part of mankind for so long because they are helpful to human survival. “Nightmares probably evolved to help make us anxious about potential dangers,” Barrett said. “Even post-traumatic nightmares, which just re-traumatize us, may have been useful in ancestral times when a wild animal that had attacked you, or a rival tribe that had invaded might well be likely to come back.” This interpretation of dreams is intriguing as it offers a more holistic approach to thinking about dreams, even if those of prior generations had no knowledge of the science behind dreams. I believe generations of the past probably related the dreams to religious purposes as these generations had a higher dependency on religion and lower emphasis on science than society today. An interesting phenomenon that has begun to unravel recently with dreams is the power to potentially control at least the ending of the dream itself.

Can people really control their dreams? Link: http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/531/557/a88.jpg

Perhaps partially taken from the plot of the movie Inception, Barrett also discussed the potential humans have to change the endings to their nightmares. “Some people prefer to fight off an attacker, some people would rather be rescued by someone else. Some want a realistic solution, for others, a metaphoric resolution is more satisfying.” She goes on to explain that analyzing a bad dream can help people see the correlation between that dream and the impact it can have on their day-to-day lives. So how can these “lucid dreamers” alter their dreams? According to a recent study, people who have a larger anterior prefrontal cortex are able to have lucid dreams. The correlation between the two stems from this part of the brain being responsible for self-reflection. Therefore, the correlation would make sense.

The problem with people claiming they are lucid dreamers is natural skepticism. Neurological studies can only go so far to show evidence that people really can have lucid dreams. Barrett argues that once people come up with the ending they desire, “they can rehearse this while awake and then at bedtime, to remind themselves that they want to have this ending, should the nightmare occur again.” At this point in neurologic studies, it is hard to determine how realistic lucid dreaming and dream-altering can be. But rest assured, this area will continue to be looked at over time and people could have some answers to this question over the next 10-20 years.

Bibliography:

Melina, Remy. “Why Do We Have Nightmares?” LiveScience. LiveScience, 28 July 2010. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

“People With This Special Quality Can Control Their Dreams – PsyBlog.” PsyBlog. PsyBlog, 26 Jan. 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

Picture Link:

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/531/557/a88.jpg