Japan Earthquakes

After the first earthquake in Japan, people were left in turmoil as they watched an episode of mass destruction. But that was not the end of it. It has been reported that up until yesterday, there have been at least 400 aftershocks in Northeastern Japan since that first earthquake, and all of them had a magnitude of at least 5.0. According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, this ridiculously high amount of earthquake activity typically would take place over the course of two and a half years. Then again, it’s not too surprising considering that Japan is located above four colliding tectonic plates. In addition to all the physical damage these earthquakes are causing are the psychological effects that have occurred. Doctors have reported a high number of patients who are complaining of dizziness and of “swaying” back and forth; they seem to be victims of something called “phantom quakes.” In other words, they imagine that an earthquake is happening as a result of the fear they developed. The worst part of all though, is the danger that revolves around the nuclear power plants. With every new earthquake, a new wave of radiation can be released from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Hidehiko Nishiyama, the director of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, has stated that three measures are being taken to avoid a nuclear disaster. By interconnecting the plant’s external power lines in order to ensure proper flow of electricity, stationing a generator at the plant site on a small hill, and preparing a fire pumper engine on the hill in case the electricity is interrupted, he stated that the possibility of a disaster is much lower

I chose this article not only because I thought this topic was important to the world today, but also because it is interesting to learn about the science behind this whole situation. With science, researchers can use the information they are learning every day to solve the problem and prevent it from occurring again (or rather learn how to mitigate the effects if it does happen again). It seems like a situation where the importance of “under pressure” science really makes a difference.

I though the authors did a good job with this article. I like how they used a lot of different sources for their information and didn’t stay constrained with one specific source. However, I thought that the article kind of skipped from topic to topic very abruptly and didn’t elaborate enough on one specific aspect of the earthquakes. Other than that though, this article was quite informative.

Pollack, Andrew, and Keith Bradsher. "In Japan, Aftershocks Are Also Felt From Within." New York Times. 13 Apr. 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2011. .

Chimpanzees’ contagious yawning evidence of empathy, not just sleepiness, study shows

          This article discusses how yawning in chimpanzees actually suggests a social connection between these individual animals, according to a recent study. The study was conducted in a research center at Emory University. Scientists were first led to this theory upon the realization that chimpanzees yawn more after viewing other chimps whom they know yawn, than after viewing strangers yawn. Two researchers at the center, Matthew Campbell and Frans de Waal, say that their findings support the idea that contagious yawning is in fact a sign of empathy, because the patterns they noticed in chimpanzees were similar to those they have observed in humans. The study that was carried out involved housing 23 adult chimpanzees in two different groups; the chimps in both groups were shown videos of other chimps either yawning or engaging in another activity. Results illustrate that the animals yawned 50% more often after seeing members of their group yawn than they did after seeing others yawn.

          Given that humans are known to be more sensitive to members of their own social group when seeing people go through pain, scientists now wonder whether contagious yawning in human shows the same patterns as those in chimps. The only distinguishing factor may be the in-group/out-group difference from a chimp’s perspective as opposed to a human’s perspective. The recent findings on chimpanzees, however, may very well help scientists better understand empathy in humans, because these experiments make empathy a “purely behavioral” topic of study.

          I greatly enjoyed this article. I highly value the author’s inclusion of the relationship between empathy in chimpanzees and empathy in humans. Drawing this sort of link allows the reader to better understand the scientific and real-world significance of conducting a test on the way in which chimpanzees’ yawn. The article was also written well and was easy to understand. I liked that explanation was generally provided following the introduction of new information or test results. Although I found the article intriguing for the most part, I felt that more statistics would have made it more interesting. While it mentioned one set of particular results from a study, the article could have been made more appealing and memorable by including more numbers and facts.


"Chimpanzees' Contagious Yawning Evidence of Empathy, Not Just Sleepiness, Study Shows." Biology News Net - Latest Biology Articles, News & Current Events. Emory University, 6 Apr. 2011. Web. 07 Apr. 2011.

posted for L. Detwiler

Searching for the Source of a Fountain of Courage

Until lately, courage has never been studied systematically. However, its centrality to everyday life makes it an obvious research topic, and now researchers have begun to study it. The journal Current Biology put out a report of a woman whose congenital syndrome made her completely fearless to extreme extents; this calls upon the question; is it better to conquer fear, or to never have had any at all? Neuroscientists looked at brain scans of subjects who had managed to overcome their fear of snakes, attempting to pick out regions which control fear in humans. Researchers in the Netherlands are doing similar scans on children in varyig stages of development. Research on paratroopers has pointed to three groups of people. Preternaturally fearless are those who never showed classic signs of fear at all, but rather jumped without sweat or an increased heart rate. The next group was prevented from jumping by their fears, and the third reacted physically like the second group but acted like the first group; in other words, they showed signs of worrying about the jump, but jumped anyhow. Peter Muris of Erasmus University Rotterdam and his team found that children assume courage is conquering one’s fears. Joel Berger claims that animals behave boldly because they lack experience, and animals that continue an action they know to be dangerous, are separate groups.

How humans and animals react to fear seems so central to daily life that people rarely wonder about the reaction any more. However, scientists have recently begun researching this seemingly basic reaction to learn more about the human brain and psyche. Fear and courage affect us every day, as they are basic human emotions that we all feel. This also links in to what we have been studying. The sympathetic nervous system initiates the fight-or-flight response seen in most animals, while the parasympathetic nervous system calms the body back down after the danger has passed; among other things, it makes the pulse and blood pressure return to normal.

The article was well written, but could have been organized better. I felt as though the first part of the article had very little to do with the rest of it. The first part was an insight into the harrowing life of a paramedic and firefighter, perhaps as means on introducing the topic. But rather than ease into the science smoothly, there was a rough separation between the story part of the article and the last part, which was mainly facts and the opinions of scientists. It seemed at points as though the first and second parts of the article could have been separate articles.

Angier, Natalie. "Searching for the Source of a Fountain of Courage." 3 Jan. 2011. Web. 8 Apr. 2011. .

Multitude of Species Face Climate Threat

          In the article, “Multitude of Species Face Climate Threat” in the New York Times, the author talks about how a group of scientists at University of California, Berkeley tested the hypothesis that a sixth mass extinction could happen in the next couple of hundred years due to global warming. This type of mass extinction has happened five times since there has been life on Earth and each time about 75% of all species became extinct. The results of the study indicate that we may be in the beginning of one of these mass extinctions because the current rate of extinction is far above normal. The scientists think that this is a result of global warming and what it does to these animals. The author goes on to cite another study conducted by Dr. Camille Parmesan and Dr. Gary Yohe, which showed that out of the 1,700 species that they analyzed, these species’ ranges were moving, on average, 3.8 miles per decade toward the poles. This is a result of global warming and how it affects the climate and makes animals migrate to more comfortable areas. Then the article goes on to give examples of certain species that have been affected by the climate change and of some possible effects that the climate change could have on animals in the future. The author states that it is hard for scientists to predict what is going to happen to the species of animals because of how the species will react the changes brought on by global warming and because of human expansion into the habitats of animals.

           

          The results from the studies in this article prove that in the next couple hundred of years, there will most likely be a mass extinction of thousands of species of animals because of the climate change due to global warming. In a study done in 2004 involving over a thousand species of animals, the scientists estimated that out of the 37% of all species that were part of the study, 15% of those would become “committed to extinction” by 2050, thanks to climate change. The results of this study and many others are warning the people of the world to be environmentally conscious and aware of their carbon footprint. If global warming causes the climate change to continue for the next couple hundred of years, animals will start to become extinct more often and eventually around three quarters of all species will become extinct, just like what happened during the last five mass extinctions. The results of the research shown in this article prove that many species of animals will become extinct if nothing is changed about global warming pretty soon.

           

          This article was overall very well written. It explained everything that it was trying to talk about and gave the results of many studies that proved the authors point that a multitude of species could face extinction in the coming centuries. The author was very detailed and explained exactly how all of the studies were performed. The one thing that this author could have added to the article to make it even better was a paragraph or two about what would happen if a mass extinction happened while humans were on Earth. It would be very interesting to learn what would happen if this actually happened and 75% of the species of the Earth were extinct.

Zimmer, Carl. "Multitude of Species Face Climate Threat." New York Times. 4 Apr. 2011. Web. 6 Apr. 2011. .

Posted for R. Faselt

Wolf Crosses the Lake Superior Ice to Become Leader of the Pack

            The article I discovered was about the wolf population on Isle Royale Island, Ontario. The island is located about 15 miles off the shore of Lake Superior, and during the winter, the lake freezes over allowing for travel over the ice. In the winter of 1997, a virile male wolf took a journey over the ice and found himself on Isle Royale. Once he arrived, the small, isolated group of wolves on the island changed dramatically. The migrated male wolf was bigger and more territorial than the rest of the Isle Royale wolves. Within two years, his presents led to the extinction of one of the four packs on the island and he strengthened his own pack to 10 wolves, the largest seen in 20 years. Researchers also noticed a decline of the moose population, the targeted prey of the wolf population. By 2002, the male wolf, which by then was designated wolf No. 93, and his offspring made up 5 of the 6 breeders. In eight years, wolf No. 93 produced 34 pups, and those pups produced 45 progeny. Researchers took a look at the odd predicament and figured out the reason for all this. They figured out that the original wolf population was suffering from inbreeding. After research, it was discovered that the original wolf population all descended from a single female wolf. The arrival of the male wolf in 1997 preformed a genetic rescue of the wolf population. Although the wolf population didn’t significantly rise, the current group of wolves are bigger and healthier than before, and the population probably would not still exist if wolf No. 93 didn’t come to the island.

           

            This article is important to society because it may explain why certain species are going extinct. It also teaches us the importance of variation within mammals, including humans. Variation is so important to the health and survival of all mammal species.

I thought the article was very interesting. The author did a very good job in explaining the very odd predicament on Isle Royale Island. There was a lot of strong data to back up the theory of wolf No. 93. While much of the article was strong, I felt there were a few things the author could have added in. There was only a limited amount of information given about who was performing the research. I only received two names of scientists and that’s it. But none the less, it was a very good article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/science/05wolf.html?_r=1&ref=science

posted for B. Davies

Anatomy of the Human Brain

The AP Biology classes learned the major regions of the human brain and their functions by drawing a model of the brain on bathing caps. The following are some pictures of the students wearing their "thinking caps".

Unfortunately many of the details are not that well seen on the colored caps.

However, a few truly brave souls volunteered for "close-ups" as they were sure their "brains" were far superior to their classmates'!!

One student even struck a bathing pose to accentuate the clean line of his brainy pursuit.

Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness

Tony Tao
4/03/2011

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_dsmv/3/

Current Event: Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness
The article is a revealing piece about the difficulty in defining mental illness. The article follows Allen Frances, lead editor of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – DSM-IV, as he starts a new campaign to reveal the blasphemy of the mental disorder health industry which he once worked for. Frances believes that his manual has skyrocketed diagnoses of autism, bi-polar disorders and ADD/ ADHD. This in turn, causes a boost in people who turn to psychiatric drugs to solve their problems. This rise against the mental illness manual is also supported by many major doctors and psychiatrists. The current belief is that the manual is still in a preliminary stage and should be updated before it is useful. The manual is currently the topic of heated debate because it is the defining work on the entire field of mental health. The DSM controls diagnoses, prescriptions, mental legal debates, and a large body of social and health workers. The DSM is a controversial work as well because of the way psychiatry works. The psychiatric field has a hard time differentiating mental illnesses from everyday suffering. The problem is severe enough that psychiatrists can only give rough definitions of mental disorders that may not be a definite diagnosis. There the DSM is a work of popular opinion among psychiatrics. Scientists use the DSM by following the checklists it provides. Before the DSM, often times psychoanalysis and judgment would be used on the patient. This method would often provide several mental disorders based on which doctors were consulted. This multiplicity resulted in a lack of faith in mental diagnosis. With the advent of the DSM, the checklist method has been a step forward, but its accuracy is still the same as the previous system. By using a checklist doctors can now provide the same diagnosis, but the accuracy of the diagnosis is not always correct. For example, a patient who has experienced a bad day before the diagnosis may be diagnosed with heavy depression. These potential errors have motivated some psychiatrists to launch a new branch of medicine titled: clinical neuroscience which analyzes concrete examples for certain diseases. For example, research has shown that there may be a correlation between cell loss in the hippocampal regions and depression. This field is currently in the infant stages and cannot be used as an exact science so attention currently is mostly on the DSM. Currently the DSM is at its 4th revision but soon the 5th version will come out. One important member in the development of the DSM is Robert Spitzer. He was the lead editor of DSM-III and helped expand public trust in the field of psychiatry. It is surprising to find that this past editor was recently denied access to contribute and give his opinion on the DSM-5. All members who work on the DSM-5 are forced to sign non-disclosure forms to prevent them from revealing information to the public. The current critical opinions on these protocols is that the health care and insurance fields are collaborating to maximize profits through this new edition of the DSM. One point of evidence is that Johnson & Johnson has recently started sending “support” to many psychiatrists working to develop the new manual. Joseph Biederman a psychologist working with Harvard is one of the few people who have received donations. Although there is a lot of negative pressure surrounding the DSM-5, there are also advances. The DSM-5 will include pre-condition monitoring. This lifelong monitoring of mental health will allow psychiatrics to make more accurate diagnosis.
The article is important to society because it affects the way we perceive our own mental health. Since the DSM is the definite protocol for all topics of mental health, any change in the manual will radically shift all understand that we have. It sets the standard for our healthcare system and how the diagnose children, adults and the elderly.
The article was well written because it gives a multifaceted view of the topic of psychiatry and the development of the DSM. In addition to this, the article also gives graphical comparisons of how the DSM has changed from its invention to the present. This is useful because it shows us both the change in mental health science. It also humbles us to see our own ignorance in the field of mental health diagnosis.
Greenberg, Gary. "Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness." Wired.com. Web. 03 Apr. 2011. .