Category Archives: Uncategorized

Do periods really sync between women?

Posted on March 26, 2018 by moneek gill | Leave a comment

Many people in society still shy away from talking about a women’s menstrual cycle, aka periods. Even though there is a general awkwardness around talks about periods, there are some really cool facts about them too. Besides being the by-product of a woman not getting pregnant, there has been an on-going theory that women’s cycles can actually synchronize with one another.

Menstrual cycle start date. Photo Credit: Unknown

Why did people originally assume that women’s menstrual cycles synchronize with one another over time? To answer this question, one needs to consider the pheromones that women release. It was originally believed that women give off pheromones and when women are in one another’s presence, these pheromones cause their periods to synchronize.

Women embracing. Photo Credit: Unknown

Another reason people may have believed this is due to a study conducted in 1971, which is further explained in the video below. This study claimed that menstrual cycle synchronization was in fact real and that collected data supported this. Unfortunately, when more scientists tried to replicate this experiment in the future, they were not able to get the same results.

After hearing this, many people wonder if menstrual cycle synchronization is just a myth or a fact about the female reproductive system. Based on a more recent study conducted at the University of Oxford, the synchronization of periods is in fact a myth. The study was conducted using an app called Clue to collect data regarding participants cycles. Furthermore, 360 women participated in the study and 273 pairs of women had differing menstrual cycle times compared to one another. Based on this data, the researchers concluded that women’s periods do not sync with one another, proving the age-old myth wrong.

Why do some people continue to claim their periods are in sync? According to the study, women’s cycles are different time lengths compared to one another and this can result in an overlap of two women’s cycles at a certain time. This random overlapping may be the reason people still believe their periods become in-sync with one another.

Even though periods don’t really sync with one another, the theory of it was really neat. It would have been awesome to have someone binge-eat chocolate with me!

Author: Moneek Gill

The importance of social interactions

Posted on March 12, 2018 by dong yan | 3 comments

Have you ever felt lonely? Have you ever felt the need to talk to someone? Has the company of someone else ever brighten a day of yours that was not going so well?

Source: Youtube/Whats Up Dude

We have all experienced this feeling at some point in our lives. We constantly need to interact and share our feelings with other people. It is extremely common for people to feel helpless and closed-up if they have not been exposed to human interaction for a long period of time.

Scientific research indicates that social interactions are vital to good health. Good social support from your friends and family help with difficult situations and unexpected changes in life. Scientific research provides support for the idea that lonely people are more likely to suffer from depression and cardiovascular problems. Knowing that we are valued by someone else can help us forget about the negatives and obtain a positive outlook in life.

Social Interaction http://www.apa.org/action/science/social/index.aspx

This concept is particularly evident with seniors that lack human interactions. The health of these seniors is at risk since they experience a higher likelihood of depression, limited motivation to engage in physical activity and experience higher blood pressure. Consequently, these factor could contribute to pre-mature death.

The risk of Alzheimer’s disease has been shown to decrease with increased social interaction between seniors, this is not yet to be explained but scientists theorize that the brain develops more cell-to-cell connections from social interactions, therefore protecting it from the impacts of Alzheimer related changes.

Source: Youtube/Vidya-mitra

Although there are many benefits to social interactions, there are also negative impacts, this is especially the case if the reference group exhibits anti-social behaviour, including drug and alcohol abuse. This type of toxic relationship can lead to devastating outcomes on a person’s mental and physical health, which could lead to depression, and premature death.

Anti-Social Behaviours Source: https://psychlopaedia.org/society/what-is-anti-social-behaviour/

Staying socially active and maintaining your relationships are an important part of healthy aging. Reach out to your loved ones—neighbors, friends, family members—and stay as vibrant, active, and social as you’ve always been.

-Cyndi Yan

3 Comments

Posted in Issues in Science, Public Engagement, Science Communication, Uncategorized

Tagged alzheimer's, anti-social behaviour, cardiovascular diseases, depression, premature death, social interactions

The Truth of Dressing to Impress

Posted on March 9, 2018 by aaron yen | 4 comments

In many aspects of the personal and professional world, visual impressions matter. Appearing to own expensive clothes, cars, or cellphones may seem shallow, but we are hardwired to express ourselves to signal status, group membership, individuality, or style. The expressions and responses to the way we showcase ourselves in public determine the two-fold relationship between our internal selves and our relationships with others.

Source: diylol.com via Pinterest

Barney Stinson was right to feel powerful when following the mantra to always wear a suit. Just as the show, How I Met Your Mother, displays Stinson’s personality shift from confident and ambitious while “suited up” to childish and insecure when dressed casually, real world situations are surprisingly similar. Researchers from Columbia University in New York and California State University have extensively proved that wearing formal clothing enhances abstract cognitive processing. All five studies within the paper show evidence that people feel more positive about themselves when wearing a suit or dress.

As we become more confident in how we look, we are able to transition more easily into roles that are unfamiliar by first dressing the part. Power roles known as powerful or wealthy in our modern society are perceived to be represented with people wearing suits or formal clothing. When we wear the clothes of people seen in power roles, we fit the mindset of what we see in them when in public. The theory here, known as Symbolic Interactionism, works on a subconscious level that matches our expectations of reality and success in the personal world we live in.

Source: AMC Opensource for Mad Men

Just as we judge ourselves, judging others aligns with our attention to expectations. When we are wearing formal clothing, we are more attentive to being in a cognitive position of power. Just as business people focus on connections and network value, we are more critical of the positions that other people fill when dressed in public. We are more open towards associating with people who are on a perceived equal level by the way they dress, regardless of the surroundings or occasion.

Source: Shutterstock Image Library

So is the solution for all of us to start wearing suits every time we leave the house to make ourselves feel better? The answer is not that simple. Psychology Today defines confidence as a belief in one’s ability to succeed. However, invoking confidence through symbolic measures, such as wearing a suit, can be an act of insecurity that masks the reality of incompetence.

Source: Getty Images

Especially when unsure of the ability to perform a role, appearing to be wealthy results in overcompensation that penalizes you in social situations. For instance, a trendsetting poor individual would feel the need to spend more money buying expensive accessories, where a self-confident wealthy individual would not focus on appearances and wear clothes that are more comfortable.

All in all, the clothes may make the person, but it’s the person wearing the clothes. Though there are benefits beyond how others see you, the truth of dressing to impress is that working toward your ideal role is equally important to how you appear to others. A suit and tie cannot solve all of your problems, but being honest with yourself just might.

– Aaron Yen

4 Comments

Posted in Public Engagement, Uncategorized

Tagged brain, fashion, health, Mental health, psychology, social psychology

Science is failing women. But there is hope.

Posted on March 8, 2018 by koby michaels | 1 comment

Award winning mathematician and UBC professors, Dr. Stephanie van Willigenburg. The Ubyssey/Koby Michaels

Actua, a Canadian STEM education non-profit, recently released a study about coding education in secondary school. Unsurprisingly and disappointingly, young women were less likely to be interested in computer science. As Actua CEO Jennifer Flanagan explained in an interview with Toronto Star columnist Shree Paradkar, young women were less likely to be interested in computer science not because they were less skilled, but because they were less confident in their abilities. This unfortunate trend is seen across basically all STEM fields and is even more disappointing for women of colour.

The roots of this lack of confidence in STEM has a complex and tangled history. However, opportunities and role models for young women who have an interest in STEM are severely lacking. Although women make up half of the US college-educated workforce, they are vastly underrepresented in STEM fields. Women are consistently not given opportunities to rise in the racks of scientific academia and industry even though they equally qualified for these positions. As you look at the gender breakdown of people enrolled in undergraduate, graduate and Ph.D. degrees, you can see a steady falloff of the number of women. When you get to the level of tenured professors, the numbers are depressingly low.

Former UBC Faculty of Applied Science Associate Dean, 
Dr. Elizabeth Croft, invites everyone to be an engineer and 
recounts one of her toughest days as a female engineer. 
Engineering Stories/YouTube.

These problems aren’t just an American problem, or a few bad-apples problem — they are everywhere and UBC is no exception. UBC’s Faculty of Applied Science is trying to increase the number of women enrolled in engineering program to 50 per cent by the 2020. Today, around 25 per cent of engineering students are female. Only 20 per cent of the faculty’s tenured professors are women.

How can these problems be overcome? Let’s start with a little exercise. Grab a blank piece of paper and a pen. Write down the name of a scientist.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Let me guess: you wrote down Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton or Charles Darwin. Or, if you were feeling a little more daring, Alan Turing.

Now write down a female scientists. I’ll wait.

Still waiting.

Yup, still waiting…

How did Dr. Stephanie van Willigenburg overcome prejudice as a 
female mathematician? She did it by becoming one of the world's 
best. Engineering Stories/YouTube

I bet it, if you could think of even one, it was Marie Curie. Congratulations. And herein lies a problem.

There are many ways to bridge the gender discrepancy in STEM, but having better representation would go a long way. As a kid fascinated in biology, I imagined myself as Charles Darwin, sailing through the Galapagos, searching for new and undiscovered sequences. I saw myself exploring the cosmos as Carl Sagan and chasing after dinosaur fossils as Dr. Alan Grant. If I had been a young girl, who would I have looked up to?

Giving aspiring scientists someone they can look up to, see themselves as, and reach out to for support would be invaluable in encouraging more women to become scientists.

So, next time you’re telling a story about science, make sure to include a fantastic scientists who just happens to a woman.

Further reading:
The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM, The Atlantic, Olga Khazan
I Spent Two Years Trying to Fix the Gender Imbalance in My Stories, The Atlantic, Ed Yong
UBC Student Demographics Breakdown, UBC
Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?, New York Times, Eileen Pollack

and so, so many more.

UBC professor, BCCDC senior scientist and CBC host Dr. Jennifer 
Gardy discusses how she became interested in science and how her 
creativity makes her a better scientist. Engineering 
Stories/YouTube

– Koby Michaels

1 Comment

Posted in Issues in Science, Public Engagement, Science Communication, Uncategorized

Tagged diversity, education, opinion, outreach, STEM education, women in science

Kepler: A look into the past to focus on our future

Posted on February 12, 2018 by Ryan Berg | 1 comment

Where would modern astronomy be without scientists like Galileo Galilei, Nicolaus Copernicus or Johannes Kepler? We probably would not be scanning the stars of the Milky Way Galaxy for exoplanets only 450 years later. We owe a lot to these scientists for their ingenuity.

NASA Exoplanet Exploration

We have moved on from handheld telescopes in the 1600’s to ones that now orbit the Earth and our Sun. More specifically, I am referring to the Kepler Space Telescope which has been operated by the National Aeronautical & Space Administration since its launch in March 2009. In the earliest days of astronomy, scientists exploration of the cosmos was limited by the technology at the time. The first handheld telescope was created by Hans Lippershey in 1608, and it wasn’t until 1990 when the Hubble Space Telescope was launched that we could begin to learn more about our past. Kepler took to the skies 19 years later for a precise mission to understand more about our Milky Way Galaxy.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Kepler’s job is simple. Launch up from Earth and orbit around the Sun where it will scan the same 150,000 stars in the Cygnus constellations. In doing so, NASA is hoping to confirm the existence of exoplanets orbiting stars outside of our solar system. It is remarkable, to think that in just over 400 years we have progressed from an Earth-centric model of our solar system; to understanding and accepting that we revolve around the Sun and finally to confirm the existence of thousands of planets orbiting hundreds of thousands of stars. This is just the tip of the iceberg to discovering life on other planets.

Kepler uses what is known as the transit photometry method to discover exoplanets. This means that Kepler stares at the same 150,000 stars looking for a decrease in the amount of light produced by any star in its field of view. When these dips in light have been recorded various times astronomers can confirm the existence of an exoplanet using data analysis. The following video demonstrates the transit photometry method at an accelerated rate.

Youtube NASA Video Channel

The transit photometry method is currently our best opportunity for discovering more exoplanets. We have seen a tremendous increase in confirmed discoveries since its launch, and Kepler is consistently delivering more confirmed exoplanets every day. Unfortunately, Kepler encountered technical difficulties in 2014 and its mission was restructured and released as K2. Its mission has been altered but currently remains in service.

The scientific advancements made by the Kepler team at NASA are on the cutting edge of astronomical discovery. Due to low federal funding in space exploration, I believe this is a subject that deserves more of the public’s attention. There was a time when we thought we were alone in the universe, it is becoming abundantly clear we may have had neighbours the entire time.

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” – Arthur C. Clarke

Author: Ryan Berg

1 Comment

Posted in Outreach Project, Public Engagement, Science Communication, Science Communicators, Science in News, Uncategorized

Tagged astronomy, exoplanet, kepler, NASA, Physics, space, Technology, telescope, UBC, UBCscience

Revised: Cell-stretching robots and the importance of revisiting old ideas with new technology

Posted on February 6, 2018 by koby michaels | 2 comments

Science Magazine/YouTube

People are great at coming up with terrible ideas, even when those people are scientists. Bad ideas can be harmless, like Lamarck’s theory of inheritance, or more sinister, like eugenics — an idea which inspired forced sterilizations. The beauty of science lies in how these bad ideas are replaced by better ideas. All old ideas in science, are bad ideas right?

Wrong. The history of science is overflowing with terrible ideas but a few gems remain hidden among the asininity.

A new robot, designed by Dr. Dana Damian at the University of Sheffield, is based on one of these gems. The robot connects to a pig’s esophagus — the muscular tube connecting the throat to the stomach — with two rings. Soft, wrinkled skin protects the robot’s position sensors and motors that slowly stretch the robot and the tissue it’s attached to. The robot was built with diseases like short bowel disease or esophageal atresia (a disease that causes the esophagus to not develop properly) in mind. The robot elongated a pig’s esophagus by 77% over nine days and this elongation was almost entirely due cell division, not cells being stretched. By stretching the pig’s tissue, the robot encouraged cells to divide and build a longer esophagus.

Dr. David Mooney, a professor of Bioengineering at Harvard University, explained the ideas behind Dr. Damian’s robot are not new.

Science Friday/SoundCloud

“We have long appreciated physical forces regulate biology,” he said in the Science Friday interview. He cites prescribing weight lifting regimen to osteoporosis patients as lifting weights has been shown to increase bone density and strength, helping combat the disease.

Robots like this could be implanted into newborns to treat physical ailments like atresia but the possibilities these robots raise are more far more exciting and wide reaching.

Robots applying steady and long-lasting mechanical stress could be used to stimulate stem cells to divide and specialize. This would simplify processes required to work with stem cells today which are expensive and potentially dangerous. A robot that could mechanically stimulate new stem cells, while years away from clinical use, now has proof of concept.

National Geographic/YouTube

What other ideas has science relegated to dusty book shelves that could prove to be revolutionary today?

Using leeches and maggots in medicine are the best known examples of science breathing new life into old ideas. Scientists need to look back at old ideas, theories, and research with the benefits of modern knowledge and technology. Retrospective research could lead to new (but old) ideas of how our world works, avenues of research, or treatments for disease.

Oliver Sacks, the late neurologist and writer, ended his essay Scotoma: Forgetting and Neglect in Science by exploring the nature of ideas in science. “Ideas, like loving creatures, may arise and flourish, going in all directions, or abort and become extinct, in completely unpredictable ways,” he wrote. “[This] brings home a sense that science is not an ineluctable process but contingent in the extreme.”

– Koby Michaels

2 Comments

Posted in Biological Sciences, Issues in Science, Public Engagement, Science in News, Uncategorized

REVISED: Our Modern Silent Pandemic: Social Media Effects and Prevalence

Posted on January 22, 2018 by aaron yen | Leave a comment

For millenials, the driving force behind entertainment and productivity is social media. Canadians’ growing usage of mobile phones is reaching wider audiences, but as with all good things, is too much dangerous?

Source: Shutterstock Image Library

Habits are what define us. As smartphones become more convenient and available to us, so does the itch to check every few minutes. But why are we so inclined to see a screen, even solely as an impulse? Harvard scientists answered the discussion with a groundbreaking discovery: “individuals place high subjective value on opportunities to communicate their thoughts and feelings to others and that doing so engages neural and cognitive mechanisms associated with reward”. Though we are social beings, the proof of our intrinsic feelings of reward when showcasing ourselves means our lives are dependent on approval, whether we want it or not. Social media amplifies the reward while conveniently placing public metrics to invoke a deeper dependence. The article implies that as social media becomes more integrated with our lives, our dependence could potentially be on the level of necessities, such as food or shelter, to sustain our lives. As news of the study came out, social media usage transformed from an activity to a concern.

Source: American Marketing Association

Research spawned from social media like wildfire into the neuroscience community, with experts piecing together the science behind the effects. Brain imaging directly relates viewing photos on Facebook with activity across the amygdala and striatum, which hold control over our emotions and impulses. These sections are most active when our nerves receive rewards in the form of dopamine, which codes for happiness. Although there is nothing wrong with feeling happy, continuously feeling this way will polarize how you may normally act, whether with greater motivation or less. Just think of dopamine as a drug; in natural amounts, dopamine allows us to be more active and positive, but when taking too much, we can become so overloaded with emotion that we may become too euphoric or too depressed.

Source: Huffington Post India

Alongside neurological changes, behavioural changes are just as prevalent. When we are locked into needing the attention of others, we are locked into a cycle of wanting to feel happy and feeding our emotions. With each successive post or comment, meeting the dopamine needs becomes more challenging. In between intervals, the lack of engagement can lead to depression and loneliness.

Source: Statista Analytics Portal

Social media is here and it is spreading. Statista puts the pandemic in perspective. The number of social media users worldwide from 2010 to 2021 will grow from 0.97 billion to 3.02 billion within a decade. If you can just imagine what one billion means, multiply that by three. The spread, the growth, and the scale means you can guarantee the world is affected in a major way.

As prevalent a problem as social media addiction is in our world, there is no recognized treatment. Research in the past year has spiked to address the issue, including formally defining the problem as a start. There are more questions than answers, but for now, all we can really do is hold tight and keep our real friends close.

– Aaron Yen

One longer inspirational seminar about this topic can be found below. Simon Sinek approaches the societal problem of social media in much greater detail, and addresses everyone with “the millenial question”.

Buffet? Think again…

Posted on January 22, 2018 by dong yan | 1 comment

Do you enjoy eating food? Do you enjoy being able to indulge on numerous varieties of food all in one place? Well a Buffet restaurant or an All-You-Can-Eat (AYCE) restaurant has been invented due to this demand. Ever since the buffet style restaurants have been pushed out in 1939, it has grown immensely in popularity. However, many people are not aware of the health risks associated with these meals.

The AYCE buffet restaurants has one main crude goal, it is to fill the customers’ stomach as cheaply and as quickly as possible. This is called the “Fill the Customer Belly Cheaply” metric. In order to do this, these restaurants provide the perception that the food is high quality and attractive to the customers, while minimizing food waste. The menus are usually flexible, featuring many different cuisines and cooking techniques, but these are usually saturated with cheap vegetables and meats, and they mainly use seasonal ingredients. Because of this, people not only over-indulge on the food but they are also taking in foods with minimal nutrients.

There are two reasons why people overeat at buffet tables. The first reason is that they have a mindset that they must eat the amount of food equivalent to the amount of dollars they spent. The second reason is “ingestion analgesia”, the role of this is to defend eating from ending. Even when your stomach has reached its maximum capacity, you still keep eating. You block out the painful feedback from these feelings by releasing endogenous opiates into our brain and body. This is also the reason why people tend to eat dessert after their meals, the reaction to stomach pain due to overeating is reduced when you eat something sweet. The negative effects of overindulging on food includes: sugar level spikes, which could lead to Type 2 diabetes; expansion of waist size, building fat on your waist area is extremely dangerous and is the cause of many cancers and health issues; and the acidity level in your body increases and can cause a serious condition called reflux.

In conclusion, it is important to note the negative effects of overeating, not only in buffets, but also on an average day. It is the best when you eat to the point that you are 80% full per meal, with an optimal diet having well-balanced portions of each food category. The next time you go to an All-you-can-eat restaurant, remember the negative impacts overeating has and control your portions as appropriate.

-Cyndi Yan

1 Comment

Posted in Public Engagement, Science Communication, Science in News, Uncategorized

Tagged diabetes, ingestion analgesia, overeating, reflux

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Do periods really sync between women?

Science is failing women. But there is hope.

Kepler: A look into the past to focus on our future

Revised: Cell-stretching robots and the importance of revisiting old ideas with new technology

Buffet? Think again…

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