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by Hope

75% of parents let their child skip an exam for an important game, and only 47% of musicians’ parents would let them skip an exam for a concert or performance. A study conducted at the University of Haifa by Sharon Yaniv, Prof. Ron Lidor and Prof. Avigdor Klingman looked at 203 students in 7th to 12th grade in northern Israel in four different schools who play in sports leagues, seventy parents, six coaches, four team managers, ten educational counselors, and five school study counselors. Some of the students were on the school all-star teams, others were on active sport leagues, and the rest as the control group, were student musicians. This study not only looks at how many parents would let their child skip an exam, but it also looks at teenagers’ moods, disappointment, frustration and if they receive preferential treatment.

The teenagers’ moods had different effects with the participation of sports. All three groups had a high percentage of being in a good mood; 97% of all-star sports; 92% of those in sport leagues; and 88% of musicians. However, 80% of all-star sportsman reported that the sports might cause them to be in a bad mood, while 51.1% of those in sports leagues and only 28% of musicians. Participation in sports also causes athletes more disappointment; 70% of all-star athletes; 60% of players in sports leagues; and only 28% of musicians. Disappointment is also related to frustration; 66% percent of all-star athletes; 50% of those in sports leagues and 32% of musicians.

Athletes who represent the school receive preferential treatment. 63% of all-star athletes said that schools gave them special consideration, compared to 52% of musicians, and 40% of those in sport leagues. Also, the all-star players said the schools help give them extended deadlines for essays, homework, reports, etc., while the musicians only had 44% and the sport leagues 33%. In addition, 63% of all-stars said the schools helped them with tutoring sessions, while those in sport leagues had 11% and only 8% musicians.

After those facts, it is no surprise that the principals interviewed said,” Sports is one of the most popular interests in the school. This can be seen by the fact that the athletes’ needs are met through designing special programs, consideration of their needs, consideration of their teachers, competitions and placing the school athletics program high on our list of priorities…Sports is as popular a subject as communications and electronics, but sports raise school pride while other areas of study do not.” But the guidance counselors said exactly the opposite,” They are cognizant of their own needs but not the needs of others. It’s not a good part of their character, or their personality; the contempt for others, their condescending behavior and their feeling of superiority.”

The researchers summarized,” For young athletes, those that are active in sports leagues and primarily those that represent their school, there are unique needs that require special handling. Given that, the focus on athletic achievements and the pride they bring the school could harm other educational values that students should be taught.”

What Do You Think? Do You Think Being An Athlete Affects Your Personality? Do Athletes At Your School Get Special Treatment Like The Ones Above? Does Being An Athlete Affect Your Mood?

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by Samantha H

Have you ever been so tired, you feel like you might fall asleep at school? But you manage to stay awake all day?

In your brain, there is a chemical called dopamine that keeps you from passing out whenever you are completely drained from sleep. It is a complicated chemical, but somehow it influences the way you work and think.

Some scientists in Maryland and New York tested fifteen healthy people on the study of sleep loss and the amount of dopamine in their brains. They tested each person by letting them get a full night’s sleep and then kept them up all night the next night. This experiment was testing their memory and focus after each night and the amount of dopamine in their brains.

The scientists observed that when the people stayed up all night, the level of dopamine in their brains increased in the striatum which is the part of the brain that responds to motivations and rewards, and the thalamus which controls how alert you feel. From this observation, the scientists concluded that higher level of dopamine means it can keep you awake even if you feel tired and they also think that dopamine can help control how well you function without a lot of sleep.

Even though this may help you feel more awake, some brains are better at letting them concentrate with high levels of dopamine. You should not have too much dopamine, but you can’t have too little; you have to have the perfect amount, says sleep researcher Paul Shaw. Also, you should still get a good night’s sleep before a test because even if you might feel okay, you should still stay away from sleep deprivation and exhaustion.

Have you experienced the effects of dopamine when you are very tired and you were able to focus better? Do you think that you remember things and focus better when you are exhausted or when you get a good night’s sleep?

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by William

Why do some people like some foods and others do not? Well, according to this article, the San Francisco Exploratorium set out an exhibit explaining how we taste.

A lot of people do not realize that a persons sense of taste does not come from the tongue receptors alone. One biologist, Karen Kalumuck, believes only 25% of taste comes from the five receptors in the tongue. The other 75% comes from a combination of receptors in the nose. Kalumuck continues  to say ” Think about when you’ve a cold. You’ve got this stuffed up nose. I mean, what did things taste like? Not so great…” This is  because of the odorant molecules can not meet up with the sensory receptors in the nose.

A quick experiment to see how the nose and mouth work together, is to pinch your nose and eat a piece of candy, then unpinch your nose in the middle of eating that same piece.

Any given nose has a grand total of 5 million odor receptors. These receptors can detect over 10,000 different kinds of odor, good or bad. On the tongue, there are 50-100 taste receptor cells, in each bud. Each cell detects one of five different types of taste, sour, sweet, bitter, salty, and umami. Never heard of umami? It can detect the amino acid glutamate and was added to the list of tastes in 2000. Also you may have thought that spicy would have been a taste, but it’s not! Spicy food stimulates the pain cells in your mouth. So anyone you loves spicy food also has a high tolerance for pain.

Also taste, like many other things, is genetic. Your genes can actually determine the type of sensors you have, and even determine how many. So the next time you eat something you don’t like blame your parents.

How do things taste when you have a congested nose? Do you like spicy food?  What other information can you find?

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by Rachael

After a long hard day at school who wants to do homework? You come home from a fantastic day of school, but realize you have a 3 page essay! This may put you in a grumpy mood and this may affect how you act towards your family that night. Being in this bad mood could actually help you do better on your homework. Researchers from University of Plymouth England contemplated if children’s moods affected the way they learn. To find out, they conducted two experiments having to do with mood and focus.

The first experiment had thirty kids, ages ten to eleven. Each child was given twenty problems in which triangular shapes were hidden inside a different larger image. The children had to find the smaller shapes while sitting in a room that either had upbeat or gloomy classical music playing. The researchers found out that the kids listening to the gloomy music took a second less to find the small shapes. The gloomy kids also correctly identified three to four more shapes than the kids listening to the upbeat music.

In order to find out their mood, the scientist asked the kids to point to one of five different faces, ranging from ecstatic to depressed. The children who had listened to the upbeat music mostly pointed to the happier faces, showing that they were happy. While the children who had listened to the gloomy music mostly pointed to the sadder faces, showing that they were sad.

In the second experiment sixty-one children, ages six to seven, solved the same type of triangular problems. Except instead of listening to different types of music they were shown one of three different scenes from an animated film. One scene was happy, one scene was neutral, and one scene was sad. In this experiment, the children’s moods indicated on the scene they had been shown. Like in the first experiment, the kids who felt more sad or more neutral had an average of two to three more problems correct then the happier kids.

The scientist concluded that feeling gloomy makes people more aware of details. Maybe because sadness allows us to focus more on a problem or difficult situation. Although, some scientist disagree with this conclusion based off of other information. This is because other tests have shown that sad adults do better than happier ones on tests of memory, judgment, and persuasive arguments. Also, this experiment may have some flaws. This is because the peppy music in the first experiment may have distracted the kids from finding the shapes.

Do you focus better when you are in a happy mood or a bad mood? Do you find it easier to do homework while you are in a good mood or bad mood? Are there any other experiments scientists could try to make their hypothesis stronger?

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by Miss Baker

I’ve been hearing a lot about Spore, a new game invented by the SIMS creators.  The game involves a unicellular organism that the player will control as it evolves into a more complex organism.  There’s a lot of buzz about it in the science world, although many scientists don’t like it.

As with any popular take on a scientific concept, there’s bound to be some good science coupled with bad science in the game.  From what I saw in the video sample, the player controls the evolution of physical appearance, mating behaviors, inter- and intraspecific competition, and more complex social behaviors.  Whether or not the science behind it is any good, it does look like fun.

You can already download a trial of the Creature Creator.  The competition on youtube sounds pretty fun, too.  The game will be released September 7, 2008.

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by Miss Baker

Take this short quiz*. Answer yes or no to each question. There is no right or wrong answer so don’t think too hard about each question. Just answer it honestly.

1. My intelligence is something very basic about me that I can’t really change.
2. When I don’t understand something I like to slow down and try to figure it out.
3. I am intimidated by academic challenges.
4. I have been told by others that I am smart.
5. Learning is fun.
6. I often feel unmotivated to learn.
7. When I don’t do well in a subject I think that I must not be very good at that particular subject.
8. When I perform poorly academically I do not get discouraged.
9. When I don’t understand something, I get very frustrated and want to give up.
10. I shouldn’t have to work as hard in subjects that I am naturally good at.

Scoring

Give yourself four points for each of the following questions you answered YES to: 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, and 10.

Give yourself minus 2 points for each of the following questions you answered YES to: 2, 5, 8.

If you scored +15 you believe that intelligence is fixed.
If you scored 10-15 you believe that intelligence is mostly fixed.
If you scored 5-10 you believe that intelligence is somewhat fixed.
If you scored less than 5 you believe that intelligence is not fixed.

So, what does this mean? By the time students have reached the 9th grade they already have well-established beliefs about how they learn. When a student in the classroom does really well on an exam, other students will say he or she is “smart”. Those students who didn’t do so well may say their poor performance is due to not being as “smart”.

There are two ways of thinking about learning. On one hand, a student believes that some people are just naturally smart. Those people don’t have to work that hard at learning. Things just come easy to them. School comes easy to them. Their teachers have probably said things to them like, “you’re so smart” or “you’re really intelligent”. The student who believes that the ability to learn is innate or fixed is said to have a fixed mind-set. A student who believes they are not naturally smart and that there is little they can do to improve their learning ability also has a fixed mind-set. In my experience, it appears that most students have this mind-set.

On the other hand is the student who believes that they can do well in school, but only when they work hard at it. The student knows they must work hard to do well and they give their school work a great deal of care. This student is said to have a growth mind-set.

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Which of these two ways of thinking is best? Which students will end up succeeding in the long run, those with the fixed mind-set or the growth mind-set? Most people would say naturally “smart” students will fair better. They have a “gift” and are “gifted”, therefore, they will have greater success in school.

However, according to the data, they would be very wrong. Students with a fixed mind-set not only do worse in school in the long run, they also suffer more in their professional and personal life.

The fixed mind-set starts to backfire for the “smart” students as they get into high school and classes become more challenging. The December ‘07 issue of Scientific American Mind included an article summarizing over 30 years of research on the connection between student performance and the way students think about how they learn.

Research shows that an overemphasis on intellect or talent - and the implication that such traits are innate or fixed - leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unmotivated to learn.

Having a fixed mind-set can lead to experiencing great disappointment when a student performs poorly because they begin to lose confidence in their ability. Since they have been repeatedly told that they are “smart”, when they do poorly, they automatically begin to doubt themselves and start to believe that they are “stupid”. Or they may begin to blame their teachers or peers for their failures. Instead of bouncing back from their failure, they continue to struggle.

A person with a fixed mind-set often feels the pressure to “look smart” and so they begin to avoid challenges, they give up easily, see effort as being wasted time, and they are easily intimidated by the success of others.

A person with a growth mind-set desires to learn and thus, they enjoy challenges, bounce back from setbacks, see effort as being necessary to progress, and they learn from other people’s success.

I bring up this research now because we’re going to be talking about animal intelligence in class tomorrow. One of the things we’ll examine is the very nature of the nervous system. As it turns out, the brain is a flexible and malleable organ. It improves with mental exercise (aka learning). Understanding this will help those with a fixed mind-set make the transition to a growth mind-set.

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. -Albert Einstein

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Read one of these research articles below and answer the following questions:

1) What evidence in the research supports the advantage of a growth mind-set over a fixed mind-set?

2) Explain one of the quantitative findings provided by this study.

3) Will this study have any impact on the way you approach your learning in school?

Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine Children’s Motivation and Performance

Self-Discipline Outdoes IQ in Predicting Academic Performance of Adolescents

Why Do Beliefs about Intelligence Influence Learning Success? A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Model

Implicit Theories of Intelligence Predict Achievement across an Adolescent Transition: A Longitudinal Study and an Intervention

Subtle Linguistic Cues Affect Children’s Motivation

The Secret to Raising Smart Kids

*Please note that the quiz was created by Miss Baker and is not meant to substitute as an accurate method of determining learning patterns.

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by Rachel S

Tanning beds have become a good way to keep your summer tan even in the winter! But most doctors and dermatologists discourage using them. Are they really that bad?

I’m sure you’ve heard of UV radiation. There are two types of ultraviolet radiation, UVA and UVB rays. UVA rays cause tanning, but they also cause long term skin damage because they penetrate the dermal, or under later of skin. UVB rays are the rays that cause sunburn and they affect the outer layer of your skin. Tanning beds usually release 93-99% UVA rays over UVB rays, while the sun emits much more UVB rays. It’s easier to burn out in the sun rather than in a tanning bed.

Exposure to UV radiation is actually needed, and without it your risks for certain ailments increase. Exposure to UV rays helps the body create vitamin D.  Osteoporosis and osteoarthritis are linked to vitamin D deficiencies, so using a tanning bed increases your vitamin D, therefore decreasing your risk of osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. Vitamin D also prevents breast, colon, and prostate cancer.

Although tanning beds have many benefits, it can also lead to skin cancer, premature aging, and other harmful affects, so if you’re going to tan, do it responsibly! Do not spend excessive amount of time in the bed, and limit the frequency of your use.

With some good, old-fashioned common sense, tanning beds do provide a means for establishing and maintaining a beautiful, golden tan (source).

Can you find anymore benefits that indoor tanning has? Any other harmful effects?  Do you have any experience with tanning beds?

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by Danny

A couple of weeks ago, I had basketball practice and as always I was sweating like crazy. Towards the end of the practice, some of the sweat got into my eyes and that was not too pleasant. It stung a bunch because of the salt in my sweat. Well, on my ride home from practice, I started to wonder, why do people sweat salt and where does it come from?

Basically sweat, also called perspiration, is the body’s way of cooling itself. An average human has 2.6 million sweat glands in their entire body according to this article. The amount of humidity in an area around you can determine how much you sweat. You may also notice that sweat can appear when you are scared or nervous, because sweating can be a response to your emotional state.

Well, after looking around from website to website I finally found one that explains the answer to my question the best. This website shows that the amount of salt in your body is from all the sodium that you intake daily. Containing sodium in our bodies and replacing them when they leave the body is one of the extraordinary talents of the human body. This is why when we sweat really hard like in competitive sporting events or long distance activities, we should take energy drinks such as Gatorade, Powerade, Propel, etc. It may appear that salt and sodium are the same thing, however, they are different in a number of ways. Well, back to the first website, salt is made up of sodium and chloride. Just a way to check the difference is to look at FDA labels on all your food and drink products.

What are some other ways that we can replenish sodium lost when we sweat or cry? Why do you think it is important to put deodorant under our arms before we work out or do physical activity?

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by Connor 

So I play Halo 3 which is a game about a genetically enhanced super soldier (Spartan) who fights aliens to protect the earth.  Now genetic enhancement is something we have talked about before in biology and I always wondered how much scientists know about it. So I did some research and found some pretty interesting facts. In the books, the Spartans begin there long and painful genetic enhancement project at the age of 12. Their senses are heightened and they are injected with growth hormones. They are also injected with a protein complex to make their muscles enlarge. To read more about these enhancements just look at this link.

Well, we won’t be having any real superhuman alterations by tomorrow, but there is work being done with disease and such. According to an article from the National Human Genome Research Institute, a study has been done on a group of mice where they were injected with a gene that causes muscles to grow, leading to increased muscle growth. Scientists are trying to learn how to apply this to patients with muscular dystrophy and in the future it would be a possible alternative to steroids for athletes.

This same institute has done research on a gene that slows down the aging process because it grows muscle mass to keep old people able to live without the aid of a nursing home longer. To read more about this go here.

Halo is a fictional story with fictional characters. However, the human genetics part could someday become reality in the future. Someday we could even produce children exactly the way we want them; what sex they are, how smart they are, how tall they will be, etc. We could even make animals with a human level of intelligence! There are more examples on this website here. We as humans have limited knowledge about the world around us. However, the fact that we could somehow create living things the way we want them instead of the way they were meant to be, scares me. I like the way I am, and if this technology was ever available I would turn it down. What about you?

Do you think using this technology is right? If so why?  If you could pick any trait(s) for your child what would it be?  Would a different animal operating on our level of intelligence be bad for the ecosystem where it lives? Would it be bad for ours?

by Miss Baker

Important Super Bowl XLII Warning

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According to Steve Higgins over on his blog, Omni Brain, a new study performed by Clemson University scientists shows actual evidence that double dipping a potato chip in dip is hazardous to your health. Certainly, this is important research to discuss shortly before the Super Bowl game.

Truth or Fiction? Know the Difference?

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• The average person swallows eight spiders per year.
• More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in commercial airplane crashes.
• Tapping the side of a soda can will prevent its contents from foaming over when you open it.
• We only use 10 percent of our brains.

These are statements found on the science section of Snopes.com, a website dedicated to separating urban fact from urban legend. Which ones are true? Go there and find out. How many things did you believe to be true that actually turned out to be false?

Race and Sports

Photo source - Chinese gymnast, Yang Bo

In order to continue our conversation about race that we started on MLK Day, check out this amazing site where you can take a sports quiz to test the accuracy of certain stereotypes.

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by Miss Baker

This website explains reasons why biologists think it is important to learn and understand evolutionary theory. What do you think about these reasons?

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by Rose (2006-07 AP Biology)

This quiz is supposed to help scientists learn more about the phenomenon of empathy and how it might affect our morals. There are five moral-compass situations with two outcomes in which you can see where you compare to others. Are you a kind-hearted compassionate being or a cold-harded monster? Find out!

But, as I was taking this quiz it was really difficult to choose my answer. I found myself empathizing with both people in most of the situations. I thought, well what makes one person’s life more valuable than another person’s life? And also, why isn’t there a choice where you could sacrifice your own life instead of another persons? Because if you’re truly ‘moral’ than I would think that you would sacrifice your own life to save others instead of choosing whether to kill this person or another person…

What do you think?