Final exams and Stress!!

December 9, 2011 at 11:29 pm (Uncategorized)
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This is going to be the second last blog for the course and I thought I would choose a research article that can be helpful and related for end of semester. I choose two research articles about stress and University and Dental school examination. We all know that exam has a fear and as far I know all students even the ones that always get A’s in their tests stress before taking an exam. The most stressful week for University or college students is the finals week. In this week most students do not get enough sleep, yet they eat mostly junk food like sugars, crabs, caffeine.  

I found another statistical fact about final exams and students suicidal rate. In few research articles that I review it was written that many students can’t take the stress of final exams especially in medical schools and kill themselves. It is a harsh truth because few years ago my cousins classmate in medical school in Virginia suicide because she was not ready for the end final exam. There are many ways to find solutions for stress for example in our school the health center offers stress management seminars. Also it would help to study in a study group to talk with other students.  I know that many families are helpful during final weeks and try to call or get in touch with their son or daughter, but many families pressure the student to get good greats or to pass all classes and that was the case with the medical student I mention above her family pressured her to pass all courses or they won’t pay her fees for next semester.

It relates to essay “The Doomed in their Sinking,” by Willam H Gass because his mother did suicide to be free from miserable life she had, but he calls it murder. I thought maybe in this case then the death of this student can be called murder since her family warned her and pushed her. I still think suicide is not answer to any kind of harsh problem because all problems have solution. We need to work harder than find the easy way out. Gass said, “Yet my mother wasn’t what we call a suicide eve thoug she died as though she’d cut her throat when the vessels burst there finally.. since the murderer who arsenics his wife little by little is a murderer [..]”(p. 374). I still think she could have left her husband and lived her life freely, but we know it was written many years ago and back then women did not have rights as now and men were the dominant ones in the society so made the decisions. What do you think about the suicide of the medical student? Is she in same situation as Gass mother?  

The first research article titled, “Nonlinear Heart Rate variability features for real-life stress detection, Case study: student under stress due to university examination,” talks about stress and it is relationship cardiovascular diseases. They take EKG or ECG of students after final exams and as control after holidays. The result shows that the stress levels in students are much higher during examination and it could cause heart disease in long run. 

The researchers’ state, Stress has been investigated as risk factor for cardiovascular disease [1] and for reduced human performances, which in some situation, such as dangerous works or driving a car, may result in negative consequences. Stress influences the balance of Autonomous Nervous System ANS [2].

The second article is about dental school students in their third year in Singapore and they were asked to rate their stress before taking the exam from 1-5 and 5 being extremely stressed , where; most students chose 4 or 5 after exam their saliva sample was taken for level of  cortisol, Immunoglobulin A( IgA) , and chromogranin A ( CgA).  Their findings were that these hormones levels in saliva were higher before taking exam. These are hormones that are secreted more from hypothalamus to cope from stress and bring body back to it is normal physiological level.

 

            It is hard for me to summarize the articles without using scientific terms, but below is links for both articles and it is very helpful to read them and Good Luck everyone with your finals do not stress too much. Let me know what do you do to during final weeks to study better or to lower your stress level?  

 

English: Principle of ECG formation, slow Deut...

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http://www.biomedical-engineering-online.com/content/pdf/1475-925X-10-96.pdf

 

 

http://www.jdentaled.org/content/67/10/1091.long

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My weekend

December 4, 2011 at 4:20 am (Uncategorized)

This week I won’t write about a research paper because I am sick. I have the flu and all my body aches I have been in bed since Tuesday night. I can not open my eyes because the light feel like sharp pins. I had the worst flu and I never had this kind of flu in my life. On other hand, I had a biochemistry midterm and it was very hard for me to study. I could not drive to school , but friday hasband drive to take my test and I can’t wait for breaks. I love school and when I miss a day of class I feel very guilty like when I was a child and did something wrong and hide it from my mom. Since this is my last semester I feel sad not that I won’t come to school and sit in class room. Well I guess this is life and we have move on to next step. I will miss school and I am excited for dental school and I recently I found a job in standford mdical center which is great I enjoy it a lot. I hope until monday I feel better and finish this semester with good grades. I really enjoy.this class and I learned from everyone in the class. Well I guess this is enough I am tired of cleaning my nose and my eyes are also tired of the light of laptop.

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Addition in First and Second Language

November 19, 2011 at 12:02 am (Uncategorized)

 

I learned English when I was fifteen years old and I still need improve my writing and speaking.  Few weeks ago we were told to comment on Mikeel’s blog I read some of the comments about our class. I think some of them were good criticism, but some were mean and I decided to look for research articles that were about learning second language. I found many research articles about learning second language.  Some then were hard to summarize without using scientific terms, I like that one since about learning second language at different age. The article said the best time to learn second language is before age six and after that it would be hard for a person to learn another language since his or her brain already stored the first language’s terms and grammars.

I found this article “Mental Addition in Bilinguals: An fMRI Study of Task-Related and Performance-Related Activation,”  it is very interesting even though it is not about learning , but it is a research that was done with 11 Chinese speaking students. These subjects were given two or three digit numbers to add in their language and then in English their second language. The research saw a very interesting result by taking their fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) that their brain’s activity was slow when they added these numbers in English and the subjects later said that they first added the number in their first language then translate the result in English. This proves that when writing or adding in a different language our brain gets slower and many times confuses the terms or words. I always have hard time writing some of my thoughts in English first of all my first language alphabets are different than English. Also we writ from right to left which is opposite of English so not just for me , but for all students that English is there second language is hard maybe some students are very smart and learn faster. I am a fast learner, but I don’t learn everything at once little by little.

            As the researchers of this article says, Behavioral studies have shown poorer performance when bilinguals are tested in their less preferred language (L2) compared with their preferred language (L1). However, little is known about the neural correlates of such performance differences. The present study examined mental calculation in Chinese–English bilinguals by presenting multidigit addition problems auditorily in their L1 and L2 because current models predict that these conditions should be most relevant from a theoretical perspective.Our results demonstrate that 1) cortical areas involved during auditory multidigit addition in bilinguals’ L1 and L2 overlapped largely with areas reported in previous studies for single-digit addition. Moreover, we show that activation in thefrontal and parietal areas during mental addition in bilinguals’ L2 overlapped largely with activation in L1. 2) Activation differences between participants’ L2 and L1 were observed inthe left IFG in exact addition. 3) Activation differences between approximate versus exact tasks were found in the frontal and parietal areas. Lastly, 4) a new finding in the form of a negative correlation was observed in the left inferior parietal region in L2 addition linking higher accuracy scores in L2 addition tasks with lower activation levels in these regions. Findings from our present study provide neuroimaging evidence of the performance differences observed between bilinguals’ 2 languages observed at the behavioral level and are consistent with current brain models of mental calculation.

This is a short summary of this article and their findings. As all other articles this was interesting for me and I find each research unique and this research has some weak point , but this is start for another research to investigate further with more subjects with different languages as their first language. Please check this article if you’re interested in learning in reading the methods and procedures.  What do you think after reading this article? Is English your first or second language? What difficulties do you face even if it is your first language?

Animation of an MRI brain scan, starting at th...

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A fMRI scan showing regions of activation in o...

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http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/09/28/cercor.bhr263.long

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Second Langauge

November 7, 2011 at 6:50 am (Uncategorized)

First of all I am sorry for posting my blog late and it is because I had some problem with my blog and my husband spend few hours I do not know what he did to fix it .  I cant see what I am writing , but I can read it after I post it so hopefully I can fix it later I was going to write about learning second langauge , but I wrote my post three times , but my post did not published after trying three times I give up. I will post it soon thanks guys.

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Men and Women shopper

October 28, 2011 at 8:58 pm (Uncategorized)
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Today I want to write about men and women shoppers because for last few weeks during grocery shopping I saw healthy or unhealthy items in the cart based on the gender of the shopper. I start notching that when the shopper was a man he would buy mostly healthy groceries like vegetables and fruits.  On other hand, women shopper buys a lot of junk food and sweets with few healthy items like milk or egg which, are necessary items of a household. First, I thought I must notice a lot of women buying unhealthy things since women do most of the grocery shopping for each household, but I went to different grocery stores such as Safeway, Safe-mart, whole foods, and Lucky to see if my observation was right and I counted equal number of male and female in the shop and I went to grocery shops at different times and different days of week. 

My observation was right because women bought the most sweets, ice creams, and junk food even mothers with their children or child had same things mostly junk like chips and ice cream. I then search for research article that can explain this trend because it has to do with our brain and hormones. Today I saw Dr. Oz show in TV and it was about the same topic and all his participants for junk food, insomnia, and other emotional problems were women. I think it is because women are different physically and mentally.  Men usually take their emotion off by doing exercise, play with sports with their friends.  Women usually eat junk food when their emotional and have some stress. I myself eat a lot sweets during final exam even my healthy friend who eats only organic food and no junk, but during final even she eats chocolates and sweets.  I am not saying that men are not obese only women are, but women are mostly obese because they are physically much different and usually after childbirth it is hard to get back to the usual weight.

The research article, “Obesity-related differences between women and men in brain structure and goal-directed behavior,” this research article explains how men and women brains control them when they eat junk and unhealthy. The researchers say that eating unhealthy food is like a drug because it makes the brain addictive to the food and always the person craving for junk food.  These are the images of from this research article that shows differences between brain of men and women.

 

 

 

 

The article is excellent research  article I had hard time summarizing it because it had a lot of science terms and I thought if I put those in my blog I need to define each of them so the readers can understand my summery. It would made my blog very long and boring so I here I added the link if you’re interested in reading the article. Do agree with my observation or not? What is your take about men and women obesity?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3114193/pdf/fnhum-05-00058.pdf

 

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Self-Reflection

October 21, 2011 at 9:03 pm (Uncategorized)

Firstly, I would like to start my self-reflection with my experience as a first time blogger. I was very nervous and confused when I started my blog because I heard about blogging a lot from my friends, but never got involved in it. I am very private person and I was not comfortable with blogging in this class. I must say that blogging is fun even though I am still learning and not yet advanced, but I really enjoy it especially with my group members. My group is the best group and their comments encourage me to improve my next blog and research for new topics. My writing I think it improved from before much better since I am not strong writer and I usually confuse my readers when I change a sentence from my language to English it usually becomes not clear. I did not write to this level for few years except since analysis; which is very different with scientific vocabulary. I got better with my grammar too since we reviewed some common mistakes I mostly make like fused or fragments sentence. I still need to improve my writing style, grammar, and vocabulary still I feel that I learned much from blogging from this class than my English classes. I believe it is because it is fun to blog and comments from my classmates. Also Professor, Saltmarsh is very friendly and I feel very comfortable asking her question because she is more like a friend and her comments on my writing really help me to improve. She pinpoints exact problems I have and she suggests some ways to fix them. My blogging topic improved much from beginning I was not even sure what to blog at first , but with help of wordpress and my classmates comments I decided to write about different research topics in science and after few blogs my blogging group asked very good question that made me research more about some topics than others. I believe my blogging group questions help me to improve my blogging topic as well and narrow it down. I will keep the same topic for my blogging and I will write about some new interesting research articles that my blogging group shows interest. I would like to learn about new research with my blogging and I would also like to improve my writing style from grammar presentations of my classmates. I would like to suggest to other students that just starting to blog first go through wordpress or any other blog sites tutorial and it is good to make list of things that one like to blog. Also it will help to get in a group with other students and get their suggestions about his or her blog. The class readings all of them have been very well since their all different from each other. I like that each students chose since one student has different choice from other. It gives more verity of essays to read as we did so far in the class. The class readings had different levels like some were difficult to read compare to others and some of them had very nice writing styles like Zora Neal’s essay “No Name Woman”. The last essay that Krystal chose was hard to read and too graphic I could not finish it since it was about suicide and made me uncomfortable to read since it remind me a incident that happened with my cousin. Anyways, the class discussions are helpful when students present it. It is helpful to have both student-led and teacher-led discussion. I was not very comfortable presenting in front of the class, but it helped when everyone took part in my topic I felt much better. Also Professor, Slatmarsh’s comments and more detailed explanation of presentations helped me much. I am very happy to be in this class with very energetic and intelligent classmates and friendly teacher.

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Sun and Skin Cancer

October 14, 2011 at 10:57 pm (Uncategorized)
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The weather was very nice today and everyone in school was very active. Many students were playing in grass or just laying down in grass to get some sun and relax. I noticed that in sunny day many students lay down in grass and gets direct contact with the sun. I thought to write my blog about causes of skin cancer from the sun. I wrote about sun before in my blog which, is the main source of vitamin D. The research article that I used in my old blog about advantage of sun and it did mention the causes of skin cancer from the sun too. Today I want write about skin cancer from sun and how much direct sun can cause skin cancer?

Moeness M. Ashishtaway in his article “To Be or Not To Be Exposed to Direct Sunlight: Vitamin D Deficiency in Oman.”  The article talks about the vitamin deficiency in women in Oman which is one of “the sunniest countries in the world”.

Ashishtaway says, sun education started to emphasise the importance of protection from harmful ultraviolet rays (UVR), especially after the strong involvement of the United Nations (UN) in work to understand the health effects of UVR exposure. This was established at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. The trigger for that was the recognition that the ozone layer was being depleted and that the risk of diseases resulting from excessive exposure to UVR, particularly skin cancers, would probably increase.

Many studies have confirmed that exposure to environmental levels of UVR alters the action and supply of some of the cells responsible for causes immune responses in humans. As a result, sun contact may increase the risk of infection with viral, bacterial, parasitic or fungal infections, which has been verified in a array of animal models. The known health effects of UVR include also photokeratitis and photoconjunctivitis. Also, sun exposure, in particular contact to UVB, appears to be a main risk factor for cataract development.

  Body parts that are usually exposed to the sun such as ears, face, neck and forearms  and this implies that long-term, repeated UVR exposure is a major causative factor. Moreover, there is a clear relationship, in some countries, between an increasing incidence of non-melanoma skin cancers and decreasing latitude, i.e. higher UVR levels. On the other hand, the causes of malignant melanoma (MM) are not fully understood.

 But, some epidemiological studies support a positive relationship with a history of sunburn, mainly sunburn at an early age. Tumor growth may be linked to high, irregular exposure to solar UVR, such as at weekends or on holiday.

I wrote summery of the article above of course I did not included all important points that article mentions about skin cancer since it would make my blog very long. The article was not a research article, but it was written using several research articles. The article does not gives many prove, but it talks in general. It is a good article still it did not say to what extend sun exposures can cause skin cancer? Also it did not say the degree of sun burn that can cause skin cancer? I know that in the summer in California many people goes to beach and most of them get sun burn even thought, they put sun screen. It is another discussion that most of us do not put sun screen when going outside in daily basis. The amount of vitamin D we get from sun is not as much important because Daniel commented last time that vitamin D deficiency can be full filled by supplements. Skin cancer is more dangerous even article says the same.  

 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3121023/?tool=pubmed

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My Cooking Journey

October 9, 2011 at 7:39 pm (Uncategorized)
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This friday I couldn’t write my blog on time because my car had some problem and I spent all day in mechanic shop. I should have taken my notebook so I could write my blog while waiting there, but I didn’t. I was very tired at night that I decide to write my blog on Saturday , but my friends from Sacramento came as a surprise and spend all day. I was tired of cooking and preparing food for everyone. When I was cooking I remember when I was young and my mom used to cook and she would call me ” come help me here and learn something”. I always made excuses and told her that I am busy with school work or I had to watch something on TV. She would say  ” one day will come to me to teach you” and I told her no mom I will never come to learn cooking what a boring thing and waste of time. My sister on the other hand , was very interested and learned everything from my mom. By the way, my mom is the best Afghan chief and she makes the best Afghan foods. Four years ago I got married and I love my husband to death and he loves Afghan food. One day I decided to make an Afghani dish called ” Mentu” which, is his favorite dish I had to call my mom more than 20 times to ask her how to prepare the recipe , spices, and for every little thing. She told me “I really do not want to tell you because when I asked to come and learn you never show interest”.  I was making the same dish this Saturday ” Mantu” I don’t know that anyone in our class ever eat this Afghani dish it is very testy. The recipe is very easy , but preparing it is hard and time-consuming. To make ” Mantu” we need onions, ground beef, cabbage, cilantro, dough, sour cream, and some spices. Everything is cooked and filled in the dough then it is steamed for 20 or 30 minutes. Take it out in a plate and pour sour cream on the top and eat.

 On Wednesday in class we did had to write about a memory and if we can change it what would I change. While I was cooking on Saturday I thought about my cooking experience and how much I give my mom hard time by calling her every time I made something. I really like to cook now to keep my husband happy because I love him and I want to cook for him his special dishes when I am free. I am now learning  not just Afghani dishes, but Pakistani or Indian recipes too. If I could go back in time and change something in my memory I would change my cooking experience and listen to my mother. I regret not just learning cooking , but also baking from my mom. My mom thought many people my cousins, my neighbors, and I learned now. Well as they say ” late is better than never” and I learned late from my mom cooking and now my husband is very nice that he eat my hand cook food and make good complaints too. I do not think it is that good when I eat it myself. Now I am still learning cooking to become better cook and it is actually fun not boring as I thought. I love my mom she still teach me and eat my bad cooking with so much happiness like it was the best in world she had well mothers are best I can’t imagine life without her.

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Sunny or Cloudy ?

September 30, 2011 at 9:41 pm (Uncategorized)
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What do you like sunny or cloudy sky? Well, I asked this question because this morning when I saw cloudy sky from window of my bedroom made me really lazy and almost went to sleep again. I felt little depressed and while I was driving to school I was constantly yawning.  When I got to school I thought about it is really the weather that made me depressed or something else.  When it is sunny in the morning I really enjoy my fifty minute drive to school by watching the green trees, hills and blue sky.  I thought then I will search for an experiment that shows this effect of weather on our mood.

Penckofer and colleagues did an experiment, “Vitamin D and Depression: Where is all the Sunshine?”  This is the research article I chose because it explains not only  lack of vitamin D causes depression , but also many other mental disorders. The article first defines depression and it says that depression in its own right is a disabling condition impairing all aspects of human function. Most individuals in this country have insufficient levels of vitamin D. This is also true for persons with depression as well as other mental disorders; whether, this is due to insufficient dietary intake, lifestyle (e.g., little outdoor exposure to sunshine).  The article gives some good facts too such as this one that in the United States, 14.8 million (or about 6.7%) adults have depression. Depression is the leading cause of disability for Americans between the ages of 15 and 44. The article goes on and says that exercise involving exposure to natural sunlight is a new development in alternative treatment to depression. Combining exercise and light therapy can easily be accomplished by encouraging people to exercise outdoors during daylight hours. However, the benefit of exercise with natural sunlight exposure needs to be compared against the risk of skin cancer if sun exposure is significant. Therefore, additional research is needed in this area. The article give many good examples with their research , but it is very long that I include everything , but it is very useful and maybe surprising to some since it give many important function of vitamin D in regards to our health.  It even mentions that one cause of obesity can be deficiency of vitamin D.  

We really do not appreciate a lot of things in our life like sun it has a very important role in our health. While I was writing this I remember that one of my group member mentioned that people in bus station are very rude and mean. I was wondering that San Francisco has cloudy and depressed weather most of time except the few weeks. I thought maybe people of San Francisco could be depressed because of lack of sun and vitamin D. I love biology because from one study we can start many more to proof all possibilities that can be in for or against of our hypothesis. As it mention above that there has to be done another research to compare benefit of sunlight and skin cancer. What do you feel depressed when it is cloudy? Can you study well in a sunny or rainy day?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2908269/?tool=pubmed

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Excercise and Neutrophil

September 23, 2011 at 9:14 am (Uncategorized)

The research article I am writing about this week is exercise related since I learned few new exercise moves from Daniel’s post. I thought this is interesting because it actually talks about benefit of exercise for immune system. It research was done in   Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, National Cheng Kung University Medical College, Tainan, Taiwan. The focuses of this experiment was Neutrophil which is one of the component of blood. It plays a very crucial role in keeping immune system strong and fights inflammations and viruses.  Neutrophil is mainly controlled by alterations in reactive oxygen species (ROS) and mitochondria integrity. Exercise has been proposed to be a physiological way to modulate immunity; while acute severe exercise (ASE) usually impedes immunity, chronic moderate exercise (CME) improves it. This study aimed to investigate whether and how ASE and CME oppositely regulate human neutrophil apoptosis. In this experiment thirteen sedentary young males underwent an initial ASE and were subsequently divided into exercise and control groups. The exercise group (n = 8) underwent 2 months of CME followed by 2 months of detraining. Additional ASE paradigms were performed at the end of each month. Neutrophils were isolated from blood specimens drawn at rest and immediately after each ASE for assaying neutrophil spontaneous apoptosis (annexin-V binding on the outer surface) along with redox-related parameters and mitochondria-related parameters. Our results showed that i) the initial ASE immediately increased the oxidative stress (cytosolic ROS and glutathione oxidation), and sequentially accelerated the reduction of mitochondrial membrane potential, the surface binding of annexin-V, and the generation of mitochondrial ROS; ii) CME upregulated glutathione level, retarded spontaneous apoptosis and delayed mitochondria deterioration; iii) most effects of CME were unchanged after detraining; and iv) CME blocked ASE effects and this capability remained intact even after detraining. Furthermore, the ASE effects on neutrophil spontaneous apoptosis were mimicked by adding exogenous H2O2, but not by suppressing mitochondrial membrane potential. In conclusion, while ASE induced an oxidative state and resulted in acceleration of human neutrophil apoptosis, CME delayed neutrophil apoptosis by maintaining a reduced state for long periods of time even after detraining (Guan and colleagues).

            There are many interesting and an unexpected result in this experiment first one which was the main point of the research was the affect of high intensity exercise and moderate intensity exercise. I thought that high intensity exercise should increase the activity of neutrophil compare to moderate. It was the opposite acutally if regular high intensity exercise slows immune system and causes inflammation including respiratory inflammation. The subjects for the experiment were all male and this experiment was done in Taiwan. What will be the result if subjects were females? What changes will it bring if the subjects were in the U.S? I still think it is a different a new research that shows a small cell in the body changes entirely.

 

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