Health
Sex and Aging: The Social Stigma
Many people find the idea of older people having sex disgusting to the point of absurdity. Older people’s sexuality is often exploited for laughs on television or casually mocked. While it is true that sex often becomes more difficult as one gets older, and the level of desire for sex often changes, the need for [...]
Methods for Educating Special-Needs Students
Special needs students are often the most challenging to teach yet also the most neglected by politicians and government educational policymakers. The number of students in special education has skyrocketed since the 1980s and only stabilized in the last few years. During the 2008–2009 academic school year, about 6.5 million students aged 3 through 21 [...]
Hidden Stress: Parental Burdens Caused by Autism
If you ask some friends for the first thing that comes to mind when you say “autism”, many will respond “Rainman” or “Forrest Gump” (even though Forrest was, in fact, not autistic). Many people have an idea of what autism is, and to a lesser extent, know how it affects an individual’s communication and social [...]
Medicare: “Generational Divide” and the Future
In April of this year, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) of the House Budget Committee released a proposal for the 2012 federal budget. While Ryan’s budget would reduce spending by $5.8 trillion over the next ten years, Republican leaders backed down from the proposal in May, mainly because it included a controversial plan to completely overhaul [...]
Lurking Dangers in Everyday Goods
The chemicals known as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) belong to a class of chemicals known as perfluorinated chemicals. From recent studies it has been seen that the concentration of these chemicals has been increasing in both our water supplies and our blood serum. Studies in the University of Exeter, United Kingdom, indicate that [...]
Methylation: The Cause of Brain Tumor?
When one thinks of the word “cancer” breast cancer, lung cancer, and skin cancer are among the various types that first come to mind. One type of cancer that is often neglected is Brain Tumor. According to the National Tumor Society, more than 500 people per day are diagnosed with primary or metastatic brain tumor [...]
Documenting Intimate Partner Violence
One in four women in the United States reports experiencing violence by a current or former spouse or partner at some point in her life. Although women of all ages are at risk for domestic and sexual violence, those ranging from 20 to 24 years old (prime childbearing years), face the greatest risk of experiencing [...]
Dying Without Sleep: Insomnia and its Implications
Ideally, humans sleep for at least eight hours every day, meaning that we spend about a third of our lives “unconscious.” Scientists have yet to agree on why this unconsciousness is vital, but we know that without sleep, all mammals and birds would die [1]. Because sleep has only become the subject of research in [...]
Facts for Digestion: The Negative Effects of an Animal-Heavy Diet
A jet plane streaks across a caerulean backdrop, expelling a stream of smoke as it goes. An SUV cruises along the road, leaving a quickly dissipating trail of carbon dioxide in its wake. A coal factory darkens the sky view, interrupting the blue patches with plumes of smog. These are the typical images which come [...]
Epigenetics: What It Means and Why You Should Care
Fundamental shifts in the way we understand our world and ourselves are rare, and when they do happen it is often with uproar. When discovery of the DNA double helix by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953 showed us that all of nature was bound together by a common molecular mechanism, it was assumed [...]
Hidden Obstacles in Cancer Research
While undeniable strides in medical research over the past few decades have proven invaluable in the search for a cancer cure, there is no shortage of obstacles that remain to be addressed. Perhaps the most evident are complications in the biology of the disease itself: among these, problems pertaining to cell identification and treatment specificity. [...]
Is All Fair in Love and Sport?
In the world of competitive sports, one hundredth of a second – the time it takes for lightning to strike – can define an athlete. One hundredth of a second can mean the difference between winning or losing, fame or anonymity, millions of dollars in endorsements or none. Because we handsomely reward strength, speed, and [...]
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