From: http://www.flickr.com/photos/photonyx/4334434530/
Many times men do not understand why women are so emotional, and arguments result over it. To fix this problem, there is a new nasal spray that enhances empathy in men. It makes men more emotional and able to read emotional cues better. The spray has the hormone oxytocin in it. Women react with oxytocin different than men, and that is why they are more emotional than men. The spray increases the amount of oxytocin in men.
However, the spray only works for about two hours, so the men have to do a spray every two hours. The spray has not been perfected yet, and it is not available to buy in stores. In the future though, it could be used by women when they want men to understand how they are feeling.
Guys, would you be willing to use this nasal spray to feel empathy for your girlfriends?
Girls, would you want guys to use this spray?
Here is the link to the website where I got the article: http://www.livescience.com/culture/nasal-spray-men-empathy-100430.html
From: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaparral/1545825204/
A new study shows that washing your hands after making big and small decisions helps to ease the stress. During the study students were asked to rank CDs by preference and then some washed their hands and some did not. Then they ranked the CDs again. The ones who had washed their hands ranked them about the same while the ones who did not wash ranked them differently. This suggests that washing the hands “wipes the slate clean” and removes the emotional ties that come with making a decision. It also worked when they did a similar study using an antiseptic wipe.
Do you think this would work with hand sanitizer or lotion?
Do you feel better after you wash your hands?
How could this phenomenon be scientifically explained?
Recently, a movie called “The Happening” was released, in which plants begin releasing a chemical that causes humans to commit suicide involuntarily. Now, in real life, trees are beginning to be infected with a certain fungus that actually causes death in humans, although not by suicide. Researcher Edmond Byrnes III of Duke University Medical Center says, “It’s in the environment, and we’re exposed to the environment.”
The fungus is scientifically called Cryptococcus gattii, and it had shown its face in Oregon, killing one out of four infected people. It is airborne, and can also attack animals like dogs and dolphins. It is not contagious, but livescience.com says, “people and other animals get it from inhaling spores released by samples of the fungus that infect trees.” There is no vaccine for this deadly fungus, so hopefully it does not begin to spread any further.
I chose this topic because it seems like something that should be acknowledged, especially by those of us living on the West Coast. It could become an epidemic, or it could simply die out. Only time can tell.
Do you think this is something that should be taken seriously?
What would you do if you were living in Oregon and heard about this issue?
http://www.livescience.com/health/deadly-new-fungus-oregon-100422.html
UK and Italian researchers have just found out that if you get less than the 6 to 8 hours of sleep you have a 12% more likely to die over a 25-year period. In the same study they found that if you sleep more than the recommended time you are at risk for an early death too. Professor Francesco Cappuccio, leader of the Sleep, Health and Society Program at the UK’s University of Warwick, had this to say, “The deterioration of our health status is often accompanied by an extension of our sleeping time. If the link between a lack of sleep and death is truly causal, it would equate to over 6.3 million attributable deaths in the UK in people over 16 years of age.” So when teachers assign large amounts of homework that’s due the next day, they could be shortening your life. I found this information at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8660373.stm
Do you think that there is a connection between how long you sleep and how long you live?
Will you be trying harder to get the recommended amount of sleep from now on?
Does it ever feel like your phone is vibrating and there is nothing there for it to vibrate about? I turns out it actually happens. “I just kept feeling it… sometimes I felt my old phone vibrating even after I got a new one. I thought I was going insane,” said a student at Cordova Jr./Sr. High School. This is just a minor case of what is commonly know as vibranxiety. In some instances an individual feels a vibration when they don’t even have a cell phone on their person.
I have read articles about this where people are “afraid to say anything” because they think they are “going insane”, much like the student at CHS I spoke with. This instance is actually considered a form of muscle memory.
Have you ever experienced this Phantom Vibration?
In some forums across the web it is believed that this could lead to a new drug. What do you think about this?
This link shows some skepticism on the topic.
http://americaswatchtower.com/2007/11/13/beware-of-phantom-vibration-syndrome-it-could-kill-you/
In one year, 400,000 breast augmentations are done in the United States. This is also the leading cosmetic surgery in North America. The article I read up on was about how studies are finding that breast implants may cause early detection of breast cancer. A group of 40,500 women who got cosmetic surgery between mid 1970s and the end of 1989 and had gotten breast cancer were used to study this topic. They found that in comparing women that got breast implants, and women that got another type of surgery, such as a face lift, had similar yet different forms of cancer. Both groups typically had the same size of tumors, and also the time of diagnosis and treatment of the cancer wasn’t much different either.
What was different was that women who had gotten breast implants were almost 2.5 times likely to have more advanced cancers. This is significant because later stages of cancer tend to be more aggressive. The good news is that 83-84 percent of women in this study survived the cancer.
What do you think about this?
What do you think the publication of this research might lead to?
From: http://media.mercola.com/ImageServer/public/2008/July/7.10flipflops.jpg
A recent study on footwear showed that flip-flops and flat sandals are the best for knee problems or arthritis. They compared the effects of 4 types of shoes on 31 men and women. The 4 types tested were clogs, athletic shoes that promise to minimize inward rolling of the foot, flat walking shoes, and flip-flops. The control group was barefoot. They found that clogs and the fancy shoes had a 15% higher load on the knees than flip-flops and flat shoes. They say that it is too early to recommend changes but I say if you have an excuse, flip-flops are good for every season. Although the flip flops were the best for load on the knees they still don’t recommend them for old people with knee problems because they have a higher risk for falling because of declined balance.
Have you found any other suggested shoe changes to help with knee problems?
Do you really think that flip flops would make old people fall more because of “declined balance?”
What other benefits are there to wearing flip-flops besides comfort?
Ever done something new or interesting before bed and after waking up really want to do that thing again? Harvard researchers have proven that people who take a nap and dream about a task that they’ve just practiced they get a big memory boost on that specific task when they wake. (click or article) The study shows that this memory boost is even bigger than one of a person who stays away thinking about the task.
“Task-related dreams may get triggered by the sleeping brain’s attempt to consolidate challenging new information and to figure out how to use it.” Says they study’s coauthor Robert Stickgold, a cognitive neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School. His new findings elaborate on research suggesting that sleep generally enhances memory and learning
In the study 99 students were asked to take part in computer generated mazes to find a tree at the end of it remember how to get there. After 1.5 hours of playing the maze the students were asked to either take a nap for the 5-hour break or do a quiet activity such as watching tv or reading.
All participants performed poorly before the break but those who took a nap and dreamed of the experimental task found the tree much faster than they had in first trials.
Have you ever dreamed about a task and done better the next time you tired it? (volleyball players – think about Mr. Harding’s “visualize” exercises)
Do you think it is possible to get better at something by just thinking about it?
A new study about chili peppers shows that the capsaicin in the peppers which makes them hot, is found in the human body where sites of pain are. Blocking this chemical can solve the problem for chronic pain sufferers. Dr Kenneth Hargreaves, senior researcher at the Dental School at the University of Texas and his team experimented on mice, by getting rid for the right receptor there was no sensitivity to capsaicin. . I found this information at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8644788.stm
Do you think that knocking out these receptors would get rid of all feeling of pain?
Would you get this treatment if you suffered from chronic pain?
This article is the sweetest thing ever! You know how you laugh when you see someone walking his or her dog and you notice some resemblances right? Well this article talks about how dogs and humans do share some genes that alter appearances.
Those dogs that have all the wrinkles and look really cute and funny, Shar-peis, they share the same gene as humans. The gene that makes their skin wrinkly is also what makes humans wrinkly, as they get older.
I bet all of you know about Dachaunds, a.k.a wiener-dogs, they have really short limbs, can you think of the relation to humans? Well, they go my many names, little people is the nicest term, but the medical term for their disfiguration of genes is called dwarfism.
Mutations in growth hormones effect both humans and dogs like Great Danes and Chihuahuas.
We all know about the increase in obesity sweeping through the country. Some people have a hard time maintaining their weight, well so do dogs such as Beagles. Beagles need excessive exercise in order to stay slim.
The white Boxer has a relation to deaf humans, something to do with pigments and Waardenburg syndrome type 2, which causes deafness in humans.
Who Knew. I sure didn’t think that humans had so much in common with dogs.
If you want to read a more detailed or scientific version of this, here is the website:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/slideshow.cfm?id=canine-chromosomes-humans&photo_id=BEAD27E2-C48A-1703-3A36570F733DC1F8
Here are some questions to consider:
1. Do humans have anything in common with other animals?
2. Do you think that just since we do so much more than animals, that we are somehow made of something better? Why are we compared to many other things on the planet that seem not as impressive as humans?
