Sa Malayang Diwa para sa Sikolohiya:) mula sa pikamakulit sa klase (next kay Jr at Erik, so ako, Ace) hahha

SIR DIWA MALAYA.


SALAMAT.


Sa Pasensya
Sa Considerations
Sa Talento
Sa Mga Mahihirap ng Essay Exam
Sa Mga Exam Foods
Sa Mga Bonus Points
Sa Haggard na Paper Requirements
Sa Quizzes
Sa Pagiging Game Sa Kalokohan
Sa Lahat Lahat. OMG. 
Senti Mode. 


Kami ay Super Happy Kami sa Class Niyo.:)

hahahhha:) Super senti na song. Woot Woot!:)


At ang SONG NAMIN PARA SA INYO AY:)

PARTY and PARTY and YEAH

FUN FUN FUN.

we we we so excited 

we we we so excited

Friday - Rebecca Black Lyrics

(Yeah, Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Ark)
Oo-ooh-ooh, hoo yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah-ah-ah
Yeah-ah-ah
Yeah-ah-ah
Yeah-ah-ah
Yeah, yeah, yeah

[Rebecca Black - Verse 1]

7am, waking up in the morning
Gotta be fresh, gotta go downstairs
Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal
Seein’ everything, the time is goin’
Tickin’ on and on, everybody’s rushin’
Gotta get down to the bus stop
Gotta catch my bus, I see my friends (My friends)

Kickin’ in the front seat
Sittin’ in the back seat
Gotta make my mind up
Which seat can I take?

It’s Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Gettin’ down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend

Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin’ forward to the weekend

[Rebecca Black - Verse 2]

7:45, we’re drivin’ on the highway
Cruisin’ so fast, I want time to fly
Fun, fun, think about fun
You know what it is
I got this, you got this
My friend is by my right
I got this, you got this
Now you know it

Kickin’ in the front seat
Sittin’ in the back seat
Gotta make my mind up
Which seat can I take?

[Chorus]

It’s Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday

Gettin’ down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend

Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin’ forward to the weekend

[Bridge]

Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday
Today i-is Friday, Friday (Partyin’)
We-we-we so excited
We so excited
We gonna have a ball today

Tomorrow is Saturday
And Sunday comes after...wards
I don’t want this weekend to end

[Rap Verse]

R-B, Rebecca Black
So chillin’ in the front seat (In the front seat)
In the back seat (In the back seat)
I’m drivin’, cruisin’ (Yeah, yeah)
Fast lanes, switchin’ lanes
Wit’ a car up on my side (Woo!)
(C’mon) Passin’ by is a school bus in front of me
Makes tick tock, tick tock, wanna scream
Check my time, it’s Friday, it’s a weekend
We gonna have fun, c’mon, c’mon, y’all

[Chorus]

It’s Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Gettin’ down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend

Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin’ forward to the weekend

It’s Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Gettin’ down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend

Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin’ forward to the weekend

:)

135. SIR!135! Yeah!

AMPALAYA ANONYMOUS by Ace Ligsay

According to Knorr, the largest brand of Uniliver, good food matters. True to its objective, Knorr captured the taste buds of Filipino family with their Knorr cubes, flavor mixes and instant soups. The most successful campaign of Knorr came into life last 2007, revolutionizing sinabawang gulay as an enjoyable meal for children.

Vegetable consumption among children is normally unpopular. As opposed to the crispy fried chicken, savory barbecue or juicy hotdogs, sinabawang gulay is unlikely a choice for a typical home packed lunch. Vegetable taste is commonly associated with bitter taste and scientists have long presumed that bitter taste evolved as a defense mechanism to detect possibly harmful toxins in plants. And the research, published in the September 19 issue of the journal Current Biology (Vol. 16, R792-R794), claims to be the first paper to provide direct evidence in support of this hypothesis (Daniells, 2006).

Lead researcher Paul Breslin remarked that the sense of taste enables us to detect bitter toxins within foods, and genetically-based differences in our bitter taste receptors affect how each perceived foods containing a particular set of toxins.

Bahay kubo vegetables can be noted as the most popular vegetables found in the Philippine market. Okra, ampalaya, pechay, sigarilyas, bataw, patani and other green leafy vegetables are among the least like.
The researchers established thatTAS2R38 can detect glucosinolates, a class compounds with potentially harmful physiological actions, in natural foods. Brocolli, watercress, bok choy, kale, turnip and other American-raised vegetables are confirmed to be glucosinolate- containing vegetables. Many of these vegetables are recorded to be high in nutritional value and contain cancer fighting compounds. However, studies have shown that many people are falling short of their fruit and vegetable quota, perhaps due to dislike of certain vegetables. 35 healthy adults were selected and classified according to their hTAS2R38 bitter taste receptor genotype: PAV/PAV (sensitive to the bitter-tasting chemical PTC), AVI/AVI (insensitive), and PAV/AVI (intermediate). The participants were then asked to rate the bitterness of different vegetables, some glucosinolate-containing, other were non-glucosinolate-containing. According to results, vegetable resistance is due to the bitterness receptors in our taste buds heavily contributed by our genes and experiments confirmed that bitterness is evident in high glucosinolate-containing vegetables (Daniells, 2006).

Knorr, as part of their nationwide advertising campaign for their KNORR pork and shrimp cubes, tried to expand their target market to the top non vegetable eaters- the pre-schoolers and elementary students. They experimented on the children’s sense modalities. The campaign was popularized by their colorful and visually stunning advertisement with a catchy novelty jingle Makulay ang Buhay. The power of advertising blue-penciled through senses, capturing the visual and auditory senses.

The campaign got notable attention, having almost 300,000 + views and product sales propelled into high monthly average.



Danielle, S. (2006). Dislike of Veggies in Genes. Food Navigator-USA. Retrieved at http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Science-Nutrition/Dislike-of-veggies-is-in-the-genes, updated September 26,2006.

BITTERSWEET TRUTH by Vhina Sison

                    We all know that cigarette smoking is dangerous for our health and it is already a common fact that it affects the lungs which may cause a couple of detrimental diseases. Chain smokers wow I dunno how they can put up with smoking for such a long time. Their addiction to its taste is quite evident, but hmmm I wonder wont it also affect their taste perception since they are already habituated to the taste of nicotine? Well I cam across this intriguing article on how smoking can affect one's taste perception. 

 

Enoch, Harris and and Goldman (2001) explored smoking and sensitivity to the bitter taste. Participants were filtered into two categories based on questionnaires which explored background history, given as smokers and non-smokers. Different thresholds for the bitter taste were accounted for through use of respective solutions (in this case PTC) which contained increasing concentrations of compounds. Results revealed that bitter taste threshold was found to be higher in smokers and even more evident in those to have reported to smoke for a longer time. Interestingly, this study also emphasized how reduced sensitivity to bitterness can increase nicotine addiction. 

  WOW! So smokers can withstand bitterness more than non-smokers do. A lot of ideas came mind when I read this. Is this why some of the people I know would say that it feels good to smoke while having beer? Beer is so bitter, I hate beer! But some people still like it they're so weird, but perhaps their bitter threshold is greater. No wonder most people who smoke also have a preference for alcohol or maybe its just me stereotyping.

Also I can't help bu think: If those people addicted to smoking can have there taste receptors for sweetness increased, would it help them be less addicted to nicotine? hmmmmmm. I probably should read on more stuff about effects of smoking on taste :P

I dont ever wanna smoke! I mean can't imagine myself not being able to detect the bitter taste as well as one normally should. Most gross things,i mean those not good for us like poison and stuff are bitter. What if someone puts poison or other harmful compounds in what im eating/drinking and it would be hard for me to detect it? OMG that would be dangerous, I could die!! (sorry paranoid much haha)

            However on lighter note, I could only think of a few couple of things that may be good from increased threshold for bitter taste. AMPALAYA is bitter but it is also good for one,s health. SO maybe smokers can take advantage of their high thresholds for bitterness and eat more of this healthy vegetable!

Oh and most pills/medicines that I know of have bitter tastes. Maybe it wont be aversive as much ( well me taking medicines, pills are quite aversive because of the bitter taste that may accompany them) may and thus be more tolerable for smokers.

            BUT HEYYYY STILL, WE MUST ALWAYS TAKE NOTE : the overall health risks involved in smoking is way way way worse and still overrides any possible positive attributes involved in the alteration of bitterness threshold. Maybe perhaps if it was higher threshold for bitterness in one,s heart hihihi joke :))) BASTAAAA NO TO SMOKINGGG OK GUYS! or basta easy on the sticks ok :P Stay Healthy! :D

SIR DIWA! HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! thanks for everythinggg!! masaya ang 135, marami po ako natutunan!! May life be always sweet and less of those bitter encounters for you :D see you around po! ( may paper pa nga pala pa haha) Godbless! Peaceeee :D

  

Reference:

Enoch, M., Harris, C. and and Goldman. D. (2001). Does a reduced sensitivity to bitter taste increase the risk of becoming nicotine addicted?Addictive behaviors 26; 399-404

Future -Ge

Olfaction and taste are definitely two of my favorite senses, not only because I love food and they create flavor, but also because taste is a sense I associate with interacting with others, and smell is a sense that is closely related to memory.

As graduation draws nearer and nearer for us seniors, the reality of having to decide what we really want to do with our lives can’t be avoided. While some want to be doctors or lawyers or bankers or business people, I wonder if any of us gave any thought to how these professions and their work environments can affect our bodies.

I just recently came across a study about the taste and smell perception of sewage treatment and landfill workers. Using the Börstein gustometry method to test for smell sensation and the Elsberg-Levy olfactometry method to test for taste sensation, researchers tested landfill workers, sewage treatment workers, and laboratory workers before and after their working hours. As it turns out, those who worked in landfills and sewage treatments plants usually reported having higher thresholds for tastes and smells. The researchers concluded that these workers were more likely to develop taste and smell disorders than laboratory workers, perhaps because of the constant exposure to hazardous agents such as heavy metals, methane, carbon dioxide, and organic dusts in the work environment of waste management.

I know, I know, it’s not like any of my batchmates aspire to work at sewage plants or landfills, but it’s interesting to think about how the environment that we work in can affect our health and well being. Maybe in terms of stress level or temperature or workload or shift time or work space? Its important to think about how we’ll be able to deal with the environment we have to work in everyday.    

Kind of weird how college is ending and we’re thinking about careers now (AND THIS IS OUR LAST JOURNAL ENTRY FOR 135!). I wish life had a pause button, so I could click it whenever I felt like it was going by too quickly. I lost a friend last Monday, and I’ve been thinking about her all week. How she didn’t even get the chance to make it this far, and how amazing she would have been at anything she wanted to do with her life. But I guess that’s just how it is, sometimes. I miss her a lot and as I sit here thinking about my future, I am inspired to do my best at whatever I end up doing because she would have liked that :) And hopefully I don’t end up working at a sewage plant or landfill.

Bye sir! Thanks for a great sem and I’m sorry I won’t be seeing you guys in class next Wednesday. I’m sure everyone will do great :)

P.S. Follow my real blog at itsge.tumblr.com HAHA

Dżaman, K., Wojdas, A., Rapiejko, P., & Jurkiewicz, D. (2009). TASTE AND SMELL PERCEPTION AMONG SEWAGE TREATMENT AND LANDFILL WORKERS. International Journal of Occupational Medicine & Environmental Health, 22(3), 227-234. 

On Malodorants, as Narrated by Alexander Leandro Dela Fuente

I had wanted a copy of Jon Ronson's The Men Who Stare at Goats for quite some time now, but only caved and bought a copy fairly recently; a paperback version had been released and the lower price assuaged any issues I had with the high monetary cost of so-called 'novelty' books. On page 156, a single passage caught my interest:

"...that houses an array of pepper sprays and stun guns and malodorants - tiny capsules of powdered 'faecal matter, dead mammals, sulphur, and garlic' which are great at 'crowd dispersement' and 'will gag a maggot.' " (Ronson 2004)

I thought it would be worth writing about, if ever our Psychology 135 class got around to discussing the importance of smell.

Clearly I hadn't been paying enough attention.

That was around a month ago; tonight, I finally got the chance I'd been waiting for. I eagerly dug up my copy of Ronson's opus, powered up my computer, and started sniffing around. Unfortunately, the results were rather discouraging; I hadn't considered that the book I had been reading was primarily about the US military's more unconventional secret projects. A dearth of reviewable articles was to be my Waterloo and that plain stank.

Like water in the loo.

My first stop on the road to disappointment was Google Scholar. An initial search on non-lethal weaponry produced Nick Lewer and Neil Davison's overview of non-lethal technologies; while this initially excited me, proper reading revealed that only a third of the eight page had been dedicated to malodorants; moreover, the paper itself had been assembled for a forum on disarmament by professionals with no direct connections to military research. The overview's objective was to enumerate, not to describe; as such, I could glean no information about how the US military operationalized research on malodorants.

A subsequent search, this time on non-lethal malodorants, led me to a patent for malodorant compositions. While the References section contained URLs, trying to follow up on these was a dead end for me; working from the bottom of the list, I came up with two Error 404: Page Not Found results and a notice that the US Naval War College's website was taking too long to respond. Rather than attempt to search further and place myself at risk for inclusion on a foreign government's watch list, I decided to retreat and look only at the patent for answers.

I do not want this man to know what I do with my Internet connection.

In that regard, the patent was very forthcoming with both casual and technical descriptions of malodorant compositions; to my distress, however, no mention was made of either the methods or the participant pool with which the claims made in the patent were verified.

Dejected, I turned to Wikipedia. The article on malodorants had been flagged for lacking either references or sources, but it did link to something called Skunk. Ostensibly an Israeli riot-control weapon, Skunk was first used on protesters gathering at a security barrier in the village of either Naalin or Bilin, to reportedly great effect.

Participant pool? A crowd of protestors. Methodology? Sprayed from a water cannon. Informed consent? I doubt it.

All the same, I've got to hand it to the Israelis. As far as efficiency's concerned, their scientific practices merit only one response:

Oh Great Baby Poo-bah! by Mikki Miranda

I love children - neonates and babies, in particular. As a way to comfort myself during my Mum's cancer battle a decade ago, my sister and I would usually visit the hospital's nursery and look at the newborns. Babies signify a new life and a new opportunity to see the world in another way. Indeed, they are helpless creatures who need someone to take care of them and lead them until they are finally ready to become independent. Holding these ideas and experiences, I know I am looking forward to two goals in the future: (1) to become a neonatologist, and (2) to become a mother. I am quite reluctant of the second one because of a few particular, and some rather shallow, things; aside from giving birth, I am scared of babies' poo and changing dirty diapers. 

Thanfukfully, researchers from Macquarie University in Sidney and University of Washington in Seattle studied disgust in terms of how mothers' react to the smell of poo of their own infants and to other peoples'. Disgust, as the researchers said, is a powerful behavioral adaptation that can act as a signalling force against pathogenic and infectious agents. Although disgust may serve as a behavioral guard against diseases, it is true that there are many circumstances in which disgust may come as a disadvantage. One of them is that a mother's disgust towards her baby's poo can pose a risk by obstructing her ability to care for her baby. (Case, Repacholi & Stevenson, 2006)

Their research consisted of two studies. In their first study, they administered a "Baby smell questionnaire" to 42 mothers of infants. The participants rated their reactions (with a 7-point scale) to questions relating to the last time they changed their baby's diaper. The responses ranged from "didn't feel sick" to "felt very disgusted" to "found the smell intolerable". Furthermore, the participants rated their reactions to the last time they changes the feces-soiled diaper of someone else's baby using the same scale. As the researchers predicted, the mothers rated the smell of their own baby's feces-soiled diapers less disgusting than those of someone else's.

Actually I have a greater aversion to adult diapers.

Their second study is basically a practical application of the first. The researchers presented mothers with actual feces-soiled diapers and they hypothesized that a bias would emerge even when mothers are blindly presented with the odor of their own baby's diaper and the diaper of another baby insofar as the mothers would label the former as less disgusting as the latter. With 13 mothers participating in the "Baby smell study", the experimental results supported the researchers' hypotheses. Even when the mothers were blind to the source of the diaper and social desirability was controlled, the mothers found the smell of their own baby's feces-soiled diaper as less disgusting compared to someone else's.

One possibility for this is the factor of repeated exposure which may subsequently result in selective habituation to a specific odor quality. Another possibility, the researchers claim, may not be because of exposure but rather a "detection of some quality that signals relatedness". Putting it in an evolutionary perspective, the idea that there are specific odors that signal kinship (even if they are disgusting) is a plausible way in maintaining genetic survival. 

It's such a comfort to know that changing dirty diapers is not as smelly as it seems, as long as it came from one's own. As a future doctor, I'm pretty reluctant to handle fecal material coming from children, or generally people, that I do not even know. All for the sake of science and goodwill, I guess I do have to face them with courage and dignity.

Yes.

Reference:
Case, T., Repacholi, B. & Stevenson, R. (2006). My baby doesn't smell as bad as yours: The plasticity of disgust. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27(5),357-365. 

RED AND BLUE TIDBITS by Ace Ligsay (Retrieved: February 6, 2011)

aSUNDAY, 6 FEBRUARY 2011

Election season is taking UP by storm. Hundreds of students package themselves in the best way possible and campaign from rooms to rooms, buildings to buildings. And I, as a part of the most exciting play annually staged in UP, feel the great divide among the three folds of the political spectrum-ALYANSA, STAND UP and KAISA. These political parties/social formations brand their leadership with strong and solid colors. ALYANSA banners a decent and passionate blue, and STAND UP chooses to be with the aggressive and color red. KAISA packages itself with a happy and burning yellow. 
This blog will focus on the comparison between the colors BLUE and RED (not the political party).

The researchers from Rochester and the University of Munich found out that color red has an effect on intellectual performance and it reveals that color associations are so strong and embedded so deeply that people are predisposed to certain reactions when they see red. Red is associated to red or failing marks in our high school test and research papers.

Elliot and his colleagues didn't use just any color of red. He assessed the colors using guidelines for hue, saturation, and brightness, and purchased a high-quality printer and a spectrophotometer for the research. He was stunned to learn that results from earlier work on color psychology by others didn't control for saturation and brightness.

The experiment banked on the hypothesis that color evokes motivation and has an effect without the subject knowing it. "It leads people to do worse without their knowledge," says Elliot. when it comes to academic achievement. The research shows that in one of the six tests given, for example, people were allowed a choice of questions to answer. Most of the participants decided to answer the easiest question, a classic example of how to avoid failure.

Studies by Andrew J. Elliot also found out that when people see even traces or spots of red red before being tested, they associate the color with mistakes and failures. In turn, they do poorly on the test. Red may be associated with the error marks within our high school test papers.

Another research spearheaded by scientists at the University of British Columbia studied more than 600 people as they performed various tasks, usually on a computer. Sometimes the screen's background color was red, sometimes it was blue.

These are the results of the experiment:

The experiments showed that with the red background, people did as much as 31 percent better at tasks like proofreading or solving anagrams, which require attention to detail. But for creative tasks, like designing a child's toy, a blue background improved performance.

New research shows that the color red makes us more cautious and attentive to details, while blue makes us more creative and receptive to new ideas.

The new research is exciting, but may be hard to apply to real-world decisions, says Nancy Stone at Missouri University of Science and Technology. For example, she says, it's not clear whether you should paint a library red or blue.

A blue environment might attract more people, she says, but a red one might help them focus.

In a nutshell, blue and red are strong colors. Advertisers and marketing practioners use blue and red to package their products. It gives an appeal to the human motivations and emotions. And as for this campaign season, the battle of blue and red continues. And as part of the blue team, I hope it’s true that blue attract more peopleJ.

University of Rochester (2007, March 1). Research On The Color Red Shows Definite Impact On Achievement. ScienceDaily

John Hamilton (2009, February 6). Study: Seeing Red, Blue Affects Outcome Of Tasks. NPR