Tag Archives: Cycle

Do periods really sync between women?

Posted on March 26, 2018 by | 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.

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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

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How Does Carbon Dioxide Cycle Through the Oceans?

Posted on January 27, 2018 by | Leave a comment
Have you guys ever wondered where carbon dioxide (CO2) molecule goes after you exhale? A lot of carbon dioxide on the Earth, including what we exhale and carbon from our factories or cars, actually ends up in the ocean. Once CO2 molecule is in the ocean, it might travel in through the surface for a while before going back to the air above or it can travel deep down into the ocean and stay there for hundreds of years. A computer model was made to track CO2 in the ocean in order to find out where it travels and the time duration it stays at the bottom of the ocean. Research has shown that carbon dioxide cycles in different levels of the ocean. This information enables us to find out how the ocean responds to and contributes to global climate change.
 
The oceans play an important role to the Earth’s climate change because it can take in a huge amount of carbon above and store carbon in the atmosphere. In fact, more than 93% of the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the world is stored in the oceans. Fortunately, most of the CO2 is stored in the oceans, which leaves less CO2 in the atmosphere. The reason is that Greenhouse gases such as CO2 can trap heat that is radiated back to the Earth, which can overheat our planet. Thus, oceans help to store a large amount of CO2.
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Tiny plants called phytoplankton live on the surface of the water where they can be exposed to sun. They gather CO2 from the atmosphere to build their bodies. When they die, phytoplankton sink into the bottom of the oceans and bacteria break them down to release the stored carbon dioxide back into the seawater. This process is called biological carbon pump, which pumps carbon dioxide into the bottom of the oceans for many years.
 
Study has shown that phytoplankton are usually bigger in colder areas compared to warmer areas and stick together into large clumps when they die. This will make them heavier and sink down into the ocean further and faster before they get decomposed by bacteria. The colder area of the oceans also slows down the bacteria growth, which allows phytoplankton to sink further down before their carbon dioxide be decomposed and released by bacteria.
If humans keep continuing to pollute the Earth and emit CO2 to the atmosphere, the oceans and the world will become warmer. The warm oceans can not store more CO2, which will cause CO2 to be released into the atmosphere and further heat up the Earth. In order to break this cycle, humans need to work together to save our planet and reduce the use of fossil fuels and factory waste into the atmosphere. Also, human beings can avoid many natural disasters such as hurricane, blizzard, and volcanic eruptions resulted from the effect of Global Warming.

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