lgarneau's blog

The Arctic is currently undergoing the most dramatic impacts of climate change. These changes not only have a drastic effect on the environment but also the people who live there, the Inuit’s. The land is vastly made up of land, sea ice, and open water. This region is highly dependent on the wintry conditions so warming poses an obvious threat. The Inuit people have been rerouting their daily trails in order to surpass the melting and this has not been easy on them. The trails are essentially unmaintained but are essential for them to use as they gather their food and hunt in these areas. However, one surprising finding in a recent study is that the people are moving around a lot more, just in different means. Instead of using the sea ice trail, they are now using the open water to their advantage.

When fear strikes your body, you react almost instantaneously. What happens is first, the amygdala activates right before you consciously process the problem and begins the fight-or0flight response. The hippocampus and frontal cortex then kick in which are the rational center of our brain and help analyze whether the input is a true danger. The cardiovascular system increases the breathing rate and heartbeat while dilating and allows more oxygen to reach your muscles. The signals then reach the endocrine glands where a surge of adrenaline and cortisol are the result. The endocrine signals push glucose and other molecules out of reserve and into the blood which rushes into the muscles and you respond with a fight or flight.

Recently, scientists observed a meteor exploding over the Bering Sea with the energy adding up to approximately 10 atomic bombs. It is the second largest meteor of its kind and had the third largest impact. Scientists were not expecting this to happen at all. The meteor exploded not even 16 miles above the surface. Military and civilian instruments were able to spot the explosion right after it happened with many monitoring stations around the world. This type of meteor with this size only happens two to three times in a century. The article pointed out the fact that we’re rather lucky the meteor hit the sea rather than land/over a populated area. We need to develop better technology to map out objects in the solar system so we know far in advance when things may hit us.

There are many ways that this data could be analyzed and classified. Some options being:

• Create a plot such as a stacked bar graph to visualize and compare data side by side
• Find averages for each set of data for each gender to compare
• Create a scatter plot of all data

There is an outstanding question posed by scientists: Can any animal survive without sleep? The facts are, scientists have not been able to truly find a sleepless animal but are not convinced that sleep is necessary for survival. A scientist conducted the first sleep-deprivation experiment in animals (ethical? definitely not.) The scientist kept puppies continuously awake and found that they died after a few days of sleep deprivation. Similar studies were performed on rodents and cockroaches and they all had similarly fatal results. Scientists, however, do know that multiple species can get very short amounts of sleep and be okay. For example, some flies hardly sleep, some averaging 72 minutes of sleep per day.

There are multiple volcanoes deemed as high risk in California which may erupt in the next decade. A report stated that within the next 30 years, there is a 16% chance of a small to moderate size volcanic eruption somewhere in California. This prediction was based on 5,000 years of volcanic activity records. In comparison, there is a 22% chance that an earthquake, known as “the big one” will also occur during that time. California acknowledges all of these potential natural disasters. However, the residents may not be as understanding of the potential volcanic eruption because of the low probability of it occurring. They want their residents to take this information seriously so precautions can be taken in terms of reducing both damage and loss of life from these events.

Recently, astronomers have discovered a galaxy that is blowing gas bubbles. These gas bubbles stretch a couple thousand light-years across and are crackling with charged particles 100 times more energetic than anything on earth. These bubbles were detected in the galaxy NGC 3079 which is 67 million light-years away from earth. The bubbles that are spewing are known as superbubbles because they are quite large. Superbubbles form when shock waves shove gases released by stars far into space leaving a “bubble-shaped” cavity behind. It is still unknown about how these cavities are truly formed but scientists intend on finding out more about them and the possible dangers they could pose.

Off the coast of Belize, there is a large sinkhole known as the Great Blue Hole. Explorers recently reached the bottom of this sinkhole and made some interesting discoveries. They found new mineral icicles, dead mollusks, and plastic bottles. To make these discoveries, the scientists used sound waves to get a feel for sizes and shapes of objects in this sinkhole. With their discovery of multiple plastic bottles, it is safe to assume that plastic is a big concern for the planet. Their findings are being featured in an upcoming documentary that will be released in the spring.

A cognitive distortion that a person who has panic disorder may experience falls under the idea of "all-or-nothing thinking." All or nothing thinking is when an individual looks at something as all goods or all bads with no in between. People with panic disorder often see themselves as overly nervous or frazzled. When they see themselves this way they go without noticing the times they're calm, cool, and collected. They will either see themselves as a huge success or a huge failure.