The Mystery of Sleep
~ Rest for the body, Activity for the brain ~
Everyone sleeps. While humans sleep, they do not procreate, protect, or nurture their young, gather food, earn money, write papers, etc. Surely, at least once, most people have wondered why they sleep in spite of these disadvantages. According to Greier (48), it is hard for scientists to answer the seemingly simple question of what, exactly, sleep is good for. Sleep occupies one-third of humans' lives, which seems like a waste of precious time; however, no one can survive without sleep. According to Shelton (5), sleepy drivers in the U.S. cause approximately 56,000 car accidents every year. Also, Wolfson and Carskadon (875) report interestingly that the students who achieve good grades sleep longer than the students who are struggling or failing in school. Furthermore, the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, the near meltdown at Three Mile Island, the environmentally disastrous oil spill by the Exxon Valdez, and the loss of the space shuttle Challenger were all caused by people who made mistakes because of too little sleep (Coren 1). Sleep deprivation seems to cause detrimental effects to humans' daily lives.
Sleep is a state marked by reduced consciousness, diminished activity of the skeletal muscles, and depressed metabolism. Humans normally experience sleep in patterns that follow five observable, progressive stages (stages 0~ 4) of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and a separate pattern of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep (Coren 31). An electrical encephalogram (EEG), devised by Hans Berger in 1919, is used to measure electrical activities of neurons during the stages: Stage 0 is not real sleep, but going to bed and preparing for sleep. During stage 1, th...
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Shelton, Deborah L. "Sleep-Deprived Drivers Linked to Highway 'Carnage'" {American Medical News} 38.26 (1995): 5-6.
Stampi, Claudio, ed. {Why We Nap: Evolution, Chronobiology, and Functions of Polyphasic and Ultrashort Sleep}. By Jurgan Arnoff. Boston: Birkhauser, 1992.
Wolfson, Amy R., and Mary A. Carskadon. "Sleep Schedules and Daytime Functioning in Adolescents." {Child Development} 69.4 (1998): 875-89.
Haemophilia is used to describe a collection of hereditary genetic diseases that affect a mammal’s body’s capability to control thrombogenesis. Thrombogenesis is the way in which blood clots which is an important role in haemostasis. Two common forms of haemophilia are A and B. (1) Someone with A (otherwise known as classic haemophilia), clotting factor VIII is does not exist enough or is entirely absent. A person with haemophilia B (otherwise known as Christmas disease), clotting factor does not exist enough or is also entirely absent. Those with the disorder do not bleed a lot they just simply bleed for a longer period of time. All people with haemophilia A or B are born with the disorder as it is a hereditary disorder and passed down through generations very few cases of haemophilia are not genetic and are therefore rendered a spontaneous gene mutation which is then passed down.
Imagine a world where you are working overtime, seven days a week, yet your kids are starving. You can’t get the education you need because you don’t have the time and money to afford it, and you can’t change jobs because this is the only one you can get. Unfortunately, this is the reality for millions of Americans living today. The federal minimum wage is too low to help families, and actually mathematically speaking, too low to survive on. The quality of life for minimum wage families is terribly low, and that is unacceptable. As humans, we should be looking after others and helping the poverty come out of their continuous cycle. Raising the minimum wage would not only help families be able to afford a better quality of life, but help them to afford healthy food, get an adequate education, and invest in the necessary health care they need.
eventually made it’s way down to the Russian Czar’s family. Hemophilia does not target anyone nor race in particular. It’s only because men have only one X chromosome there isn’t another one like women have to offset it. Women can experience problems from being carriers, but not nearly as extreme as men with it do. Having severe Hemophilia has a huge impact on a man’s life. He cannot think or act rash. If he chooses to, he is risking his life. From a bloody nose to a pulled out tooth, it will take longer for the bleeding to reduce and stop. Due to the fact that Hemophilia is only on the X chromosome the chance a boy will get it all depends on his mother. If she doesn’t have it he is safe, but if she does he has a fifty percent chance of getting it. Awareness about Hemophilia is continuing to be spread just like treatment continues to advance.
The gene for hemophilia is carried on the X chromosome. The gene for hemophilia is
There’s to major forms of hemophilia much more communing to in occur in males then females, hemophilia A is much more common ,1 in 4000 to 1 in 5000 males worldwide is born w. this condition. Hemophilia B appixmately in 1 to 20,000 newborn males worldwide. (U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2012)Although the numbers may .seem rare it is still an extreme serious condition not to be taken lightly.
In normal sleeping patterns a person usually passes through five phases of sleep, the fifth being REM. The sleeping human passes cyclically through these five phases throughout a night's rest. These phases can be defined in electrical activity of the brain; much like the activity of the heart is often defined. The technique of measuring the electrical activity of the brain is call Electro-encephalogram, or EEG. When the electrical events of a person's brain are graphed on a electrical magnitude versus time axis the graph of a person who is in different stages of being asleep or awake appear to have different levels of electrical activity occurring in the brain. (See (14))
There has been a lot of talk in the newspaper, political speeches, online and even on the news about how minimum wage should be higher. The minimum wage starts at $7.25-$9.15 depending on what state you live in. A lot of people can’t live on this type of salary and afford to feed their family. Society has felt the increase cost of living and a lot of middle class with no education have a lot of financial difficulties. States say how they are creating jobs, but nothing has been done for those that start out on minimum wage. Wendy Morrison who wrote “Raise the Wage” states that “The decline of Historical Consensus states that there was a substantial divide between public opinion and opinion with the economics profession on minimum wage.” She
Sleep is a necessary, regularly repeating occurrence of rest defined by decreased motion, decreased consciousness, and distinguishing stages of activity in the brain. (189)
Hemophilia is an inherited disease which slows the blood clotting process due to missing or reduced clotting factor proteins. Although uncommon, it is possible for Hemophilia to be acquired if the body produces antibodies that attack clotting factors. Only 30% of Hemophilia cases are due to spontaneous mutations. Hemophilia is a rare disorder. Approximately 1 in 5000 males has Hemophilia. The disorder is much more common in males than females. It is estimated that over 400000 individuals worldwide (.006% of the world’s population) have Hemophilia (National Hemophilia Foundation). Individuals with Hemophilia do not lose blood at a faster rate than others but they do bleed for longer. Small cuts and bruises are not usually life threatening but any serious injury or invasive surgery has the potential to be life threatening because of this disorder. Hemophilia can also cause internal bleeding, which can cause organ or tissue damage. This can be life threatening as well. There are two types of Hemophilia. Hemophilia A is due to the individual producing low levels of clotting factor VIII while Hemophilia B is due to the individual producing low levels of clotting factor IX. Clotting factors are proteins which interact with platelets so that clots can be formed. Clotting factors allow the platelets to clump together to seal cuts and tears in blood vessels to prevent excessive bleeding. Hemophilia can be mild moderate or severe depending on the amount of clotting factor in the blood. Individuals with mild Hemophilia have 6% to 49% of the normal amount of clotting factor. Individuals with moderate hemophilia have 1% to 5%, while those with severe have less than 1% of the normal clotting factor (National Hemophilia Foundation). Indivi...
Severe bleeding. That's what happens when a person has Hemophilia. "More than 25,000 people in the United States have Hemophilia" (Description of Hemophilia 1). "Hemophilia is an inherited deficiency of a blood-clotting factor that results in episodes of dangerous bleeding" (Hemophilia 1). As you read through this essay, you will learn more about the disease. Some characteristics should be. First you will learn about the diagnosis and prognosis of Hemophilia. Second you will learn the causes and incidences of Hemophilia. And finally you will learn about the treatments and ways of life for the people with Hemophilia.
Many times people think they can accomplish more if they could eliminate so much sleeping time. However, they are only hurting their productivity if they lose sleep. Two articles deal with the issue of sleep deprivation. The College Student Journal published an article about the grade-point average of college students and sleep length, while U.S. News & World Report produced an article dealing with the lack of
Hemophilia was also historically coined the ‘royal disease’ due to its prominence in European royalty. Queen Victoria of England (r. 1837-1901) passed down the mutation of Hemophilia B to her son Leopold, and through several of her daughters, the gene mutation was passed to various royals across the continent. The influence of hemophilia eventually spread to royal families in Spain, Germany, and Russia. In Russia, Tsar Nicholas II (r. 1894-1917) had a hemophiliac son that claimed to be treated by the controversial figure and friend of the royal family, Grigori Rasputin. The possession of hemophilia in European royalty suggests that this genetic disorder can affect any human, their ethnicity and social status being irrelevant.
Minimum wage was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938 when congress passed The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. He intended to help the low skill factor workers from being over worked and under paid. A country founded on capitalism, created a safety net to keep the able and willing from bottoming out. Fast-forward to the 21st century where an abundance of jobs exists, legal and illegal. Minimum wage today is used to give even the lowest of the willing and able a job that isn’t illegal. Most peer reviewed, unbiased, data (even from proponents of increasing minimum wage) suggests that a loss in jobs is inevitable. Research from Dr. Steve H. Hanke while at Johns Hopkins University had a scope of 21 different European Union countries and their respective unemployment rates versus the countries’ minimum wage laws. He found that, “the 21 European Union (EU) countries that have a minimum wage and found they had an average unemployment rate of 11.8%, about a third higher than the 7.9% average unemployment rate in the seven EU countries that have no minimum wage” which reveals an unsettling reality of minimum wage (Hanke, Cato.org). Moreover, the reality of living in a set minimum wage society is the importance of teaching our youth budgetary responsibilities. Responsibilities like saving for important things, the difference between want and need, and
Lack of sleep may cause an accident. As you get drowsy, your reaction becomes slow as much as driving drunk.
Important public policy issues have arisen in our modern 24-hour society, where it is crucial to weigh the value of sleep versus wakefulness. Scientific knowledge about sleep is currently insufficient to resolve the political and academic debates raging about how much and when people should sleep. These issues affect almost everybody, from the shift worker to the international traveler, from the physician to the policy maker, from the anthropologist to the student preparing for an exam.