American Families Shelter Too Much

It seems like parents spend forever bathing their kids, dragging them out of the mud, and scooping sand out of their mouths at the playground. The mother of a family that I babysit is so paranoid about her kids getting sick from being dirty that she won't let her kids play in their own backyard without taking a bath immediately after. This made somewhat sense to me because I had always heard that infants are most susceptible to disease because their immune systems were so weak, so they should be kept clean and out of the dirt and mud.

I was surprised when I read a recently published article in Science Daily that infants that are exposed to many kinds of household bacteria, pollen, and pet dander are actually less likely to develop asthma and allergies. According to a study "infants who grew up in homes with mouse and cat dander and cockroach droppings in the first year of life had lower rates of wheezing at age 3". Now, all these "cockroach droppings" and "dander" in our homes sounds absolutely repulsive, but they actually improve the average infant's health in ways that you would not expect.

As it turns out, only 8 percent of children that suffer from athsma and allergies were exposed to allergens and bacteria in their childhood homes. This means that children that were exposed to what we think of as things that make kids sick are actually MUCH less likely to develop sicknesses.
I find this extremely interesting because it just shows how much parents shelter their kids in America. Earlier this year, we listened to a podcast about how parents these days are much too protective of their children and don't let them take physical risks. We can see that there is an actual health benefit of letting your kids fool around in the mud.

Women Can't Handle Men's Jobs

Recently, the Huffington Post published a piece about a New Hampshire state Rep., Will Infantine (R), who believes that the gender gap between women and men's paychecks stems from the fact that women are "lazier" than men. While debating the Paycheck Equity Act in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, Infantine gave a speech that may have gotten a little too heated. He claimed men are "more motivated by money" and "don't mind working nights and weekends" or "overtime, or outdoors in the elements", and mens' jobs are "more [sic] riskier".  Women have a long history of working nights and weekends and "overtime", maybe not for a paycheck, and they are definitely motivated by money!

This parallels the research that I've been doing regarding my Junior Theme paper about women's rights and marriage. I've found that the cause of this gap between paychecks stems from the fact that men believe women are less capable of working at the high paying jobs like men can. What makes them unequal? I'd like to know. I wonder what the two women senators in New Hampshire and the woman governor think about his comments?

These types of comments are unlikely to draw positive attention from other politicians that are on his side of the debate.  Infantine's party peers are likely to cringe at his comments, and this will probably even backfire on him in his future debates.

Brains Are More Active During Meditation

For thousands of years, people have been meditating. For just as long, scientists have wondered what actually happens in your brain during meditation. But recently, research of meditation has sharply increased. To me, mediation seems like a waste of time. Many more important things could be getting done and I would rather be doing something productive than sitting with my eyes closed.

I recently read this article and it turns out that your brain is actually extremely active during meditation. Jian Xu, a physician researching meditation, states, "I was surprised that the activity of the brain was greatest when the person’s thoughts wandered freely on their own, rather than when the brain worked to be more strongly focused."

Judging from Xu's research, when you just sit thinking, dazing off, your brain is actually doing more than when you're concentrating on solving a math problem. This reminds me of freshman year when KW classes had "relaxation days" where you could just lay in silence. Sometimes I would sleep, and other times I would just lay there thinking. These days would leave me feeling so relaxed and rested. But little did I know that my brain was most active during these "relaxation days".

How will education, test taking, and school in general change now that we know this? It is possible that this newfound research will stimulate schools to incorporate some sort of relaxation/free period into students' schedules. Though this seems bizzare and unlikely, it will probably have positive effects on stress levels of students and, ultimately, their grades 

Further research on the effects of meditation on academics will almost surely take place within the next couple of years and I look forward to the results of this research