I thought this was a very intriguing article. I definitely would have thought that people were faster in shoes than barefoot. The only problem is that running completely barefoot is near impossible. There must be almost no obstructions in your path and the path must not be made of asphalt or a black material. So while running barefoot may be faster scientifically, I doubt that marathon runners will start running barefoot even after this research.

Q 4-4

Chornock and his colleagues were able to catch an occurrence like this from beginning to end. The brightness flared up and then died away over the course of a year.

During that year, researchers were able to do plenty of studies on the black hole itself. Along with the location, they were able to detect that its mass is about 3 million times that of the sun’s. They were also able to assume that the star gobbled up by the black hole was in its late red giant stage, which wandered within 1/3 of an astronomical unit of the black hole.

Scientist Gezari claims that this is the first “space feast” they were able to witness from beginning to end. This gives scientists a huge advantage they didn’t have before. They can now use this information to continue research.

Q4-C-2

Along with brain damage, fructose can also cause diabetes, obesity, and fatty liver.

High-fructose corn syrup is a sweetener(six times sweeter than cane sugar) that is added to every day foods such as soft drinks, condiments, applesauce, baby food, and plenty of other processed foods.

Gomez-Pinilla, a member of UCLA’s Brain Research Institute and Brain Injury Research Center clarifies that natural fructose, such as that found in fruits, isn’t a threat, because of the important antioxidants that come along with it.

Researchers did a study of fructose with two groups of lab rats. One group consumed a fructose solution as drinking water for six weeks. The other consumed the same solution for the same amount of time, only these rats also received omega-3 fatty acids in the form of oil and DHA, which helps prevent damage that could be done to the chemicals that allow your brain to learn and remember.

Before going on these new diets, the rats were trained on a maze twice daily for five days. They observed and recorded how well they were able to navigate their ways through the maze. After the diets, the rats were tested on the maze again. Those that received the DHA were able to make their way through much better than those that didn’t. The fructose had caused their brains to forget their routes.

So, if you’re one to consume high-fructose foods, maybe consuming some omega-3 acids should be high on your priority list.

Q4-C-1

Q4-2

Q4-1

I agree that constantly trying to find life on other planets and only coming up with the ‘possibility of it’ on each one is not very productive. However, I think it’s very interesting to see how other planets function, what they’re made of, what their weather is like, etc. I’m sure we will be discovering many new planets in the years to come of space research and exploration.

Q4-1

I’d like to point something out in the article that I thought was a cool way of testing these helmets. It’s called the STAR Evaluation System, or the Summation of Tests for the Analysis of Risk. The system pretty much tests each helmet and determines how productive the helmet is as well as how safe it is–which is extremely accurate because they tested it with eight years of football head impacts (1.8 million impacts). I believe a system like the STAR is very important and it can give consumers a company they can trust when buying helmets for their competitors. I hope to see head injury risk decrease and safety to increase for all athletes some day.

Q4- P2 (C1)

It told us that the tank contains two electrodes, and one of which is insulated from the surrounding water by a clay tube. The high voltage causes enormous currents of up to sixty amps – over two hundred times those needed to cause death – to flow through the water for a fraction of a second. Additionally, “The balls survive up to 0.3 seconds after the current is switched off – far longer than normal plasmas, which decay away far more quickly,” says Fussmann. To determine exactly what happens when ball lightning occurs naturally, he hopes to compare the properties of his ball lightning with existing theories about where it comes from. One theory is that the persistent glow is produced by dusty plasma, generated by lightning striking the ground, melting it locally and ejecting fine nano-particles of sand into the atmosphere.

While this improvement in solar energy sounds great in theory, it is not likely to cause such drastic change as mentioned in the second paragraph above. The average efficiency of a solar panel is only 10 to 15 percent; so if this new solar panel increases the efficiency by 47 percent… the solar panel would only be, at most, 22 percent efficient. Hardly enough to power a car or be called “a super amazing revelation that will make this earth a better place.” Another major problem with solar is that the weather isn’t always going to be sunny. I don’t think cars will ever be able to run on solar energy because I think people will still want to go places when the weather isn’t sunny. While I appreciate the idea behind solar energy, it is never going to be THE solution to our energy problems since it always has to be paired up with another energy source.

Q 4-3