Caffeine's effect on work ethic

Science News has an article about how rats are affected by caffeine. Scientists divided them into worker rats and slacker rats based on their characteristics. Slacker rats are affected quite differently than worker rats. Read and comment!

Pop = bone loss, flame retardant chemicals, hormone interference. Really?

The Today Health website has an interesting post about 5 reasons that you shouldn't drink a lot of pop, or soda if you're from farther north. Some of the reasons are chemicals that interfere with hormones in your body, accelerated bone loss, chemicals that have flame retardant properties, and some potential (in lab animals) cancer causing chemicals.

Read the article and let me know what you think and whether these risks are the result of people finding fault in minor matters or whether you think pop is a health risk. What studies could be done to find answers more conclusively?

Tumors evolve?

Scientists have determined that there is a significant amount of mutations within the cells of a tumor. They have determined that different parts of tumors are significantly different from each other. This could be very helpful in finding different treatments and hopefully more of a chance for cures.

So many things to comment upon. Have at it!

Marijuana affects memory!

Any student that has ever been in a health class knows that marijuana affects memory. Scientists have determined that the memory loss has less to do with the affect of the THC on the neurons than it does on the neuroglia. Those 'helper' cells have THC receptors and they are certainly affected.

AP Biology and anatomy students, this article is especially pertinent to you as we covered both the receptor molecules and cell signalling in AP Biology and neuroglia was a topic covered in anatomy.

Can PE change my DNA?

While exercise cannot change the DNA a person has, it certainly can have an effect upon what genes are turned on and off. Researchers have found that exercise has an epigenetic effect upon the DNA. Click here for the abstract of the research. Scientific American has a podcast about the same thing

AP Biology students can take this information and expand upon it based on what we learned in class. Biology students should think about how this can be used and what might occur with it in the future.

Exercise yields more mitochondria in the brain?

Researchers have long known that exercise is good for more than just muscular and cardiovascular health. It also can make a person's brain function better. Using mice as subjects they followed this hypothesis. 

Some questions to ponder as you comment: Why are the mitochondria so important in this research? How can the tell the mitochondrial DNA and nuclear DNA apart? How is this an example of homeostasis? How could this information be used to improve school performance?