April 2009 - Posts - Lab Rats

April 2009 - Posts

The soundtrack(s) in your brain

Posted by Seema Singh at 
Did you know that every brain has a soundtrack? Not only that -- its tone and tempo varies according to your mood, frame of mind and, of course, other features of your brain. Research shows when that soundtrack is recorded and played back to people under stressful jobs, it can sharpen their reflexes. While a lot of professions can use this knowledge...

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Good looks and good grades

Posted by Seema Singh at 
In his book The Picture of Dorian Gray (which is a great read, full of quotable quotes) Oscar Wilde famously said, "Beauty, real beauty, ends where intellectual expression begins", somewhat implying that brain and beauty don't go together. This is a highly debatable subject (which has led me into many verbal duels), but let me first begin...

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How will you honour the Earth Day?

Posted by Seema Singh at 
...If you aren't already dismissing it as a media event, with much ink and airtime devoted to it. No doubt there will be some media hoopla, but due to the elections and IPL matches, I suspect the ‘one-day' green debate will be muted this time. But I think by now there is consensus, even globally, that climate change is anthropogenic, i.e. man...

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Does technology help or hinder driving?

Posted by Seema Singh at 
Every time a cell phone or a blaring radio distracts a driver, causing either an accident or a recklessness on road (which obviously irks other drivers), technology gets cursed. At the same time, the auto world is awash with new technologies, of course, some in the pipeline, some on drawing boards which might never reach the manufacturing plant. So...

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Missing Nehruvian romance for science

Posted by Seema Singh at 
Two big events are lined up for the nation: the 15 th Lok Sabha election and the Joint Entrance Examination for 15 IITs where some 360,000 students are slugging it out for 7500 odd seats. There maybe no apparent common thread between the election and the IITs, yet there is a strong connection. P Balaram, director of the Indian Institute of Science ...

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Cardiac patients: Now no excuse not to exercise

Posted by Seema Singh at 
Millions of heart patients worldwide live with the dilemma - to exercise or not to exercise. These include patients treated with drug or device who still have some problems like breathing difficulties and fatigue, diminished exercise tolerance, reduced quality of life, etc. Even though existing guidelines recommend exercise training for medically stable...

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Sleeping is cool, at least for your brain!

Posted by Seema Singh at 
Why do we need sleep? This question has been one of the most enduring puzzles of biology; some scientists proposing that sleep helps in memory and learning, others arguing that it conserves energy. One of the more recent hypotheses has been of the so-called ‘synaptic homeostasis’ in the brain which means sleep cools down synapses – junctions in the...

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What does your mouth have to do with your heart?

Posted by Seema Singh at 
Besides, of course, the fact that the things we eat and the words we speak, directly or indirectly, affect the health of our (and others’, in the case of the words) heart! In the past, studies have established the connection between dental health and the development of heart disease, showing that bugs that cause gum disease also harm the heart. The...

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