Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
Influenza (or flu) is a huge global problem, one billion people—1/7th of the world’s population get infected with it each year. The virus does not only infect people it also infects many different animals including chickens and pigs and can have devastating effects on farms where these animals are raised. Our body has evolved ways (called the immun...
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
Art materials are used by individuals of all ages. Certain chemicals found in art materials have potential to cause health problems, especially if used over a long period of time. The risk can be greater for children, individuals with mental or physical challenges, and people with certain genetic diseases and/or unhealthy lifestyles. However, there...
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
Have you ever wondered what happens in your brain when you think about your favorite songs? Recent research has revealed an area of the brain that is active when we listen to music that we know. This musical memory area is separate from the parts of your brain you use to remember things you have learned in school or details about events that happen...
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
If we walk down a street where we were once bitten by a dog, we feel fear. This is because our brains are great at creating associations. The street and the dog bite become linked in the brain’s information storage. Our brains can even remember this linkage forever! But, how is the lifetime of memories adjusted? The fearful experience leaves a trac...
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
Some diseases affect many people and are of course very bad. Some other diseases affect just a few people and are called rare diseases. This sounds like a good thing but… if you are one of the few people affected by a rare disease, this is not a good thing! It is actually very bad because, often, pharmaceutical companies are not interested in devel...
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
Our sense organs, along with our brains, give us a detailed understanding of the world around us. If something goes wrong with any of the sense organs, it will affect our everyday functioning. An example of this is hearing loss and tinnitus. Hearing loss is defined as the loss of auditory (sound) information due to damage to the hearing system. Tin...
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
Do you like to stay at the beach on a hot summer day? Sun bathing, chilling, and playing beach games? If it gets too hot, you can quickly cool off in the lukewarm ocean. Can you believe that there are living organisms on our planet that would still freeze on the hottest day of the year? These tiny creatures are called heat-loving microbes, and they...
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
Some bacteria can enter the human body and make people ill. Usually, these diseases can be cured by antibiotics, but sometimes bacteria are resistant to them, meaning that the antibiotics do not kill the bacteria. In these cases, bacteria become very dangerous. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria but are harmless to humans. To reproduce...
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
You have probably heard it before. “The bug was huge!” (said your friend who is afraid of bugs), or “The needle was so big!” (said another friend who is afraid of shots). Can such statements be more than just figures of speech? We asked if fear could change the way people estimate size. To answer that question, we asked people who were afraid of sp...
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
When a baby will not stop crying, it can be frustrating. One well-known trick parents use is holding the child and walking around for a while. We are just now finding out why this trick works. It has to do with what happens in two different parts of the brain: the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) and the cerebellum. The PNS is the brain’s relax...
