Author Archives: clair yoon

The Therapeutic Power Of Dogs

Posted on November 6, 2017 | 5 comments

Dogs, with their unconditional love for us, have a huge impact in our lives. They make us feel loved and secure at all times. But did you know that their love can be used in therapies?

Fig 1. Image of a Golden Retriever, from flickr

Dogs are commonly used in therapies, namely in the animal assisted therapy (AAT), to benefit human’s mental health. Hoffman and his team claim that dogs help us reduce anxiety in particular.

To determine how dogs can help reduce anxiety, Hoffman and his team carried out an experiment on a group of participants with depression. They were provided with two 30 minute interaction with a dog and a research assistant. During each session, they talked with the research assistant, such as about their hobbies, and their previous experience with pets. They could pet or hug the dog during the session.

Their state anxiety was measured for data analysis by having the participants complete the state anxiety inventory (STAI) before and after each session.

It turns out that the participants showed significantly reduced anxiety when a dog was present, which was not the case for when the dog was not present. As shown in the graph below, there was a significant decrease of -2.402 in mean STAI score after the dog assisted condition, while the controlled condition showed statistically insignificant change in score of -0.981.

Fig 2. STAI score before and after the therapeutic session with a dog

Hoffman’s team concludes that even a short 30 minute interaction with a dog is highly effective in reducing anxiety. Clearly, dogs are not only the best companion, but also a powerful therapeutic source. Having realized how much impact dogs have in our lives, I wish more people could recognize their importance and treat them better.

-Clair Yoon

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The “Beats” To Success

Posted on October 16, 2017 | 4 comments

Everyone wants to excel at work; for instance, students want to ace their exams, and program developers want to finish their projects on time. What if there is a simple way to help enhance your work performance? Wouldn’t that be awesome?

According to Beauchene and her team, listening to binaural auditory beats has a significant effect on information transfer and visuospatial working memory. 

But what is a binaural auditory beat? Here is a clip of a 15 Hz binaural beat:

A binary auditory beat occurs when one hears two tones with different frequency on each ear and perceives as a single tone with frequency of the difference between two tones. So the beat you heard from the clip above, being 15 Hz, means you were listening to two beats with frequency difference of 15 Hz.

Fig 1. Example of a 15 Hz Binaural Beat

To find out what type of binaural beats has the most effect on brain activity, Beauchene and her team carried out an experiment on a group of participants. They were provided with 6 different conditions: 3 with either no beats, pure beats, or classical beats, and 3 with different types of binary beats (5 Hz, 10 Hz, and 15 Hz). They were also given a working memory task – a delayed match-to-sample visuospatial task – to carry out while under 6 different conditions.

Fig 2. Delayed match-to-sample visuospatial working memory task

The electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings were taken while the participants performed the experimental tasks for data analysis.

It turns out that the participants who listened to 15 Hz binaural beats had the most accurate performance in working memory task, compared to any other conditions. As shown in the graph below, there was a 3% increase in Δ Accuracy over 5 minutes for participants who listened to 15 Hz binaural beat, while all other beats made negative changes.

Fig 3. Δ Accuracy

In addition, Beauchene says listening to 15 Hz binaural beats showed “the least change in network connection strengths between the maintenance and retrieval portions of the working memory trials.” This tells how the networks were better preserved throughout the working memory task while they were under the condition of 15 Hz binaural beats.

Beauchene’s team concludes listening to the 15 Hz binaural beats is effective in retrieving better and more accurate memory. This answers the question in the beginning – yes, there is an easy way to augment your work performance. So why don’t you give it a try listening to the 15 Hz binaural beats while studying for the next exam? Who knows, it could boost up your marks by helping you memorize more easily yet accurately.

-Clair Yoon

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No More Battery Explosions!

Posted on September 18, 2017 | Leave a comment

Remember how recently Samsung had to discontinue their sales of Galaxy Note 7 because of their lithium battery explosion? It had been quite an issue for the world, Samsung being one of the top companies for mobile phone sales.

Battery Explosion of Samsung Galaxy Note 7, Image from flickr

However, there is no more need to worry about your phone exploding in your hands thanks to Dr. Suo and his team – they have found a way to make both safe and high-voltage lithium battery.

Originally, for high-voltage batteries (>3.0V), flammable and non-aqueous toxic electrolytes were used. They had a huge downside of causing safety and environmental concerns, especially in large-scale applications. The idealistic non-flammable and green aqueous electrolytes were too low in voltage (1.50V), reduction of water leading to hydrogen evolution being the main problem.

Suo and his team came up with another type of electrolyte called a “water-in-bisalt” (WIBS) electrolyte that fixes the problem at a wide 3.0V stability window. Suo says, “In such a concentrated environment of electrolyte, the salt anion decomposes on the anode, forming the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) before the hydrogen evolution. SEI formation in aqueous electrolytes decreases the amount of water molecules around the Li+ molecules, reducing the electrochemical activity of water. This maximizes the full cell energy density, as Li+ is a limited resource within the battery cell.”

In short, the SEI layer formation in the WIBS electrolyte enhances the battery power and ability to repeat the cycle, as it prevents any side reactions occurring at the anode.

The team has concluded that the electrochemical coupling of electrolyte of LiMn2O4 and C-TiO2 through the carbon coating and super-concentrated aqueous electrolyte could stabilize the cycling ability of the lithium battery.

Carbon, being catalytically inert, introduces extra kinetic barrier to water splitting; and being highly conductive, it also reduces charge transfer resistance and polarization. Also, WIBS electrolyte being high in ionic density, it terminates hydrogen evolution and enhances the formation of more protective SEI.

This is the first time to propose the new non-hazardous electrolyte battery. With this, there could be many more improvements made to commercial applications from small items like cellphones, to big items like cars. Despite this new proposed electrolyte, there still needs to be more work and refining done to the power and energy density of the new battery before it can be commercialized. Hopefully in a few years the world could be using safe, non-explosive phones.

Clair Yoon

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