Cannabis increases the noise in your brain

A new study, published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, reports that cannabis increases random
neural activity, hear higher noises, in the brains of healthy human subjects. The findings suggest
that increased neural noise may play a role in the psychosis-like effects of cannabis.
"At doses roughly equivalent to half or a single joint, cannabis produced psychosis-like effects and
increased neural noise in humans," explained senior author Dr. Deepak Cyril D'Souza, a Professor
of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine.
"The dose-dependent and strong positive relationship between these two findings suggest that the
psychosis-like effects of cannabis may be related to neural noise which disrupts the brain's normal
information processing," added first author Dr. Jose Cortes-Briones, a Postdoctoral Associate in
Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine.
Cannabis increases the noise in your brain

Juan F. 3º Yellow

Glass or wood?

Wood is useless for lots of things, for glass too. Lignin is the brownish substance in wood that makes it opaque. It’s made of many small repeating building blocks, Lignin, in turn, bonds tightly to the cellulose and other substances in a plant’s cell walls.

Removing lignin from wood is part of the process of making paper. In general, the more lignin you remove, the whiter the paper becomes.

This opens up many possible new uses for wood. Engineers and architects could use the new material to make large window-like panels that would let lots of natural light into buildings, for example. This might cut down the need for indoor lighting during the day.

Álvaro S. 3º Yellow

Brace yourselves...SUMMER IS COMING!

After a rainy few weeks the sun has decided to reappear over Barcelona, which is great! But it can cause some problems....

Here are some things you should do to help prevent these problems:

1.       Stay hydrated!

In summer it’s hotter and your body needs to cool down. It does this by sweating- the sweat evaporates from your skin and cools you down. You need to drink lots of water to replace the water that you sweat.

If you don’t, your body will become dehydrated, which will give you a headache. If you get severely dehydrated it can damage some of your organs. You don’t want this!

2.       Wear sun cream!

Sunlight contains UV radiation; we need some of this to produce vitamin D to make our bones strong, but too much can cause sun burn. This is bad because sun burn can increase your risk of skin cancer.

Tanning is the melanin in your skin cells turning darker because of the UV radiation, this reduces how much the UV rays can penetrate your skin and potentially damage the DNA in your cells.  Paler people have less melanin, so are more likely to burn.

Sun burn is when your skin has received too much UV radiation and it starts to damage the DNA in the skin cells on the surface.

Sun cream can prevent this from happening. SPF (sun protection factor) is how many times longer you can stay in the sun before you burn. So if you use a low SPF (like factor 15) you need to apply it more often than if you use a high factor (like factor 50). It needs to be applied regularly to work and if you wash it off by going in the sea or in a pool then you should reapply it.

Last year #SunburnTattoo was trending. Don’t do this.... It’s really dangerous and will increase your risk of skin cancer!!

https://www.buzzfeed.com/augustafalletta/people-are-now-purposely-getting-sunburned-for-sunburntattoo?utm_term=.qjXjebd0D#.gijL20zN9

      

Wear sun glasses!

Buy a pair that protects against both UVA and UVB radiation to completely protect your eyes. The retina at the back of your eye can be damaged by exposure to UV radiation, which can cause blindness, so never look directly at the sun- even with sunglasses on!

4      

Wear a hat!

This can stop your head from getting too hot, which could cause heat exhaustion or- worse- sun stroke. The symptoms of heat exhaustion are weakness, nausea, vomiting, feeling light-headed and muscle cramps. This can be treated by going to a cool, shaded place and drinking water or a sports drink. If it is left too long and the body temperature is more than 41ºC it can progress to sun stroke, which is life threatening and needs emergency medical attention.

Follow these rules and you’ll be fully prepared for the summer sun! Happy tanning...

Oak House Science Fair version 3.0

Coming soon to a Bachillerato building near you…….it is the third installment of the Oak House Science Fair.

On Wednesday April 20^th, students of year 7 and 2^nd ESO will present their Science Fair projects that they have been diligently working on for the past 6 months. Parents, students and teachers are all invited to come and see what our students have discovered and learned in their respective research.

Teams of judges comprising of teachers from the Science department and students from 1^st Bachillerato and IB1 will decide whose projects will receive the awards on offer.

The Oak House Science fair is designed to instill research techniques in students from an early age and prepare them for these demands later in their educational career. It is also designed to show students the benefits of a scientific approach to problem solving.

Watch this space next week for more details and clear your diaries for April 20^th!!

Oak House School Science Fair

Estereotips

Hedy Lamarr el 1944

Hedy Lamarr va ser actriu pels volts de la primera meitat del segle XX a Hollywood, resulta que a banda d'actriu era enginyera, i una de les seves patents i idees està integrada dins sistemes de comunicació sense cable (Bluetooth o WiFi).

Ho acabo de llegir.

En una targeta que indica fets curiosos i sorprenents. 

Kaley Cuoco com a Penny a la sèrei Big Bang Theory

En aquest cas és sorprenent per que la imatge més comú d'una actriu és la de Penny a Big Bang Theory, una cara maca amb pocs coneixements tècnics i científics. De fet durant les primeres temporades pràcticament era l'únic personatge femení de la sèrie. Els nois també representaven estereotips de físics o d'enginyers, però això és prou comú en les sèries d'humor, ajuda a situar als personatges.

El problema dels estereotips és que, quan són prou estesos, ens fan jutjar algú abans de conèixer-lo, i ja ens predisposa a alguns comportaments, i el que potser és pitjor, a vegades poden allunyar a algunes persones d'algunes professions.

Que una dona fes contribucions a l'enginyeria als anys 40 no era gaire habitual, ni gaire fàcil, tenint en compte la societat d'aquella època. Avui en dia continuent sent minoria, ja que per algun motiu, el percentatge de dones a la majoria de les carreres tècniques és inferior al d'homes. Moltes universitats estan fent campanyes i estudis per intentar modificar aquesta tendència. 

IGCSE Combined Science

3rd ESO sit one of their IGCSEs in preparation for the many IGCSEs they will sit in 4^th ESO.

This exam is in Combined Science. This subject looks at the fundamental aspects of the three Sciences: Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Studying for Combined Science and sitting the external IGCSE exam gives our students a great foundation from which they can build on in subsequent years of scientific study.

As part of the syllabus and exam procedure, students must prepare to sit a 1.5 hour practical exam in which they have to carry out three experiments in each of the three Sciences. In preparation for this, the students sat a mock (practice) practical exam recently to get used to what an exam like this entails. Some of the students did very well and all of the students have taken some very valuable lessons from this exam.

The actual exam is on Thursday May 12^th so wish them luck.

Here are some of the students in action during their mock practical exam.

Science Fair Project - the final sprint

 

It's that time of year, we're entering the final few weeks before the finished projects are displayed to the Oak House world. The playgrounds are amok with activity with students beginning to carry out their experiments using the other students as their participants. Some of the most interesting projects include:

• Do different types of chocolate affect our ability to learn new abilities using hand-eye coordination?

• How many values can you understand at a glance (without counting) and what affects this? 

• When should we add the milk to a coffee to ensure it stays warm for longer?

• Will smaller children endure a choice they dislike to gain a greater reward, or will they choose something they prefer to gain a smaller reward.

• What affects a person’s ability to repeat musical notes?

This last project was inspired by the famous experiments on learning:

One of the findings was that chess masters have an amazing memory for patterns on the chess board – able to recall the positions of all the pieces after only a brief glance. Follow-up work showed that they only have this ability if the patterns conform to possible positions in a legal game of chess. When pieces are positioned on the board randomly, however, chess grandmasters have as poor memories as anyone else.

What will the outcomes be? Come to visit us on the 20th of April for the Science Fair day when the students will present their experiments to everyone in the school and visitors.

Ones gravitatòries

Per començar us farà falta una mica d'imaginació:

Imagineu-vos una pantalla negra, de sobte apareix una data (com ho faci depén de la teva imaginació)

11 de febrer de 2016

Desapareix la data i entra una frase, acompanyada de música, o no, (aquí torna a dependre de la teva imaginació)

Una nova fita a la física experimental.

La frase canvia i es pot llegir (sí, un altre cop has d'utilitzar la imaginació):

Equiparable al primer ús astronòmic del telescopi.

I finalment, ...

S'ha anunciat la detecció d'ones gravitatòries al LIGO.

The birth of gravitational wave astronomy! pic.twitter.com/UbMcJvOnHw— LIGO (@LIGO) February 11, 2016

És un primer pas que ens permetra conèixer millor l'Univers, tot i que pot portar un temps. Des de l'ús del telescopi per Galileu fins als telescopis actuals han passat 400 anys. I cada millorar en aquest aparell va portar un millor coneixement del que ens envolta: primer les llunes de Júpiter, la Lluna, els anells de Saturn, les galàxies, les supernoves, ... l'astronomia en el rang del no visible, ...

Les ones gravitacionals, predites a la Relativitat General fa 100 anys, mai detectades fins ara, ens podrien permetre observar els primers instants de l'Univers, comprendre millor alguns fenòmens astrofísics, ...

La seva detecció ha estat possible gràcies a un dels aparells més precisos dels que disposem, el LIGO. Aquí podreu seguir les darreres notícies


Aquí va una explicació per tots els públics.

Visiting MIT student to Oak House

For the last two and a half weeks we have had the pleasure of the help of a University student from MIT. Deepti Raghavan, from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has been helping us with classes of Physics, technology, Maths and Chemistry. She has also been relating her experiences to our students to help them in their choices for University. This is Deepti telling us about herself:

I am a university student from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, here at Oak House School, for a teaching program for 3 weeks. I am participating in a program called “Global Teaching Labs” where students from MIT get to travel to various countries and teach STEM subjects at schools abroad. I have been lucky enough to be able to participate here in Barcelona, helping the teachers with various math, physics, chemistry, and technology classes at Oak House for students in 4^th ESO and older.

I am currently in my 3^rd year of university, out of 4, majoring in computer science. The MIT curriculum requires students to take physics, chemistry and math classes to graduate. I was able to draw on my courses and MIT and my high school to help with these classes. I have also had the chance to teach Python Programming with some of Mr. Raig’s technology and math classes. I only started to learn how to program 2 years ago at MIT, so I am really excited to see high school students starting at a younger age!

In particular, I have been working with the students in both the HL IB1 Math class and 4^th ESO technology classes on writing some Python code. I have never taught programming before, so part of this experience involved figuring out the best way of explaining some harder concepts in computer science to the students. Luckily, at Oak House, the class sizes are quite small, so I could give a lot of personal attention to the students to help them debug their programs.

I started with some concepts in computer science: what is a computer language, why do we use them, how variables and types work, how functions work. I chose to do the tutorial in Python because Python is very readable compared to other languages, so it would be easier for students to grasp. The students seem to be interested in coding and the applications of computer science in general! They are working on writing functions that apply some of the mathematical concepts they have been learning: to solve for the roots of a quadratic equation, or to approximate sine and cosine using the Maclaurin series. The next task involved writing an encoding and decoding scheme for words based on shifting the alphabet, a problem that applies knowledge of all the data structures the students have learned about.

I have also tried to introduce them to some other aspects of computer science that I have learned over the years. Last January I participated in a web design competition, so I have told them a little about how websites work. In one session we talked about algorithms – and sorting algorithms, in particular. Initially, at the university level, I struggled because I did not have any computer science background. I believe it can help in any industry to have some knowledge of programming/software. I hope they continue to work on their own when I leave!