Something that I always want to know more about are dreams. Why do people have dreams? Where do we get these images? Does our dreams mean anything? Through my research I found out that dreams are hallucinations that occur during certain stages of sleep. There’s a bunch of theories suggesting that dreams may or may not be associated with conversations, recent activities or other issues in your life. Your amygdala is a part of the brain that associates with the fight or flight response, one theory is that it may be more active during your sleep rather than the daytime. People dream between 3 and 6 times per night, and 95% of dreams are forgotten by the time a person gets up.  What goes through our minds before we go to sleep could affect what we dream about. The left side of your brain provides the dream origin while the right side gives the dream vividness, figurativeness and activation level. It’s not known why people forget dreams or why they are so hard to remember. Dreams can have images or symbols in them that have meaning to the person, people have to make sense of their own dreams to see what it means to them. There are some people that can dream in black in white, but most people dream in color. Most people have dreams about their personal experiences, but many people all over the world have some common dreams that other people have experienced too. 

https://www.healthline.com/health/why-do-we-dream#what-influences-dreams

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/284378#who-dreams

In the picture we can see one kangaroo standing in the middle of a damaged forest that was affected by a forest fire. This picture was taken in Kangaroo Island Wilderness Retreat Australia, where thousands of native animals and farming livestock were killed. Kangaroo Island has lost about 90% percent of koalas living in the National Park due to forest fires. This park attracted many tourists and was a home for many animals, since the fire the parks economy plummeted and now they are trying to retrieve all the money and slowly start rebuilding a home for the animals again. Since this place was a heavily tourist attraction, they are trying to encourage tourists to visit the bushfire affected areas, in order to raise money. The Australian forest fires were devastating to hear about, many animals are now at a threat of extinction, and many acres of habitable land was  lost. These fires rapidly spreaded across the whole country very quickly and were hard to get them under control, many homes were affected and some people lost their lives. Over social media I saw many donation pages and awareness of this problem which was very helpful in raising money and providing the necessary resources people needed in Australia. It will take many years for this country to recover from this horrible situation and rebuild the vegetation and ecosystems. But if we continue to spread awareness of the countries state then we can positively help the situation slowly become better and refill the land with animals and vegetation once again. 

My family and I decided to go to Chicago and explore the Museum of Science and Industry.  There were so many different exhibits ranging from tornados, ships, to genetics and many other ones. The museum was huge with many exhilarating  demos, pictures and hands on activities that everyone can try on their own. I learned a lot of stuff about so many things. My favorite parts in the museum was the big tornado and that whole exhibit  and the chickens that were hatching, and also the Yesterday’s Main Street exhibit where it takes you back to the 1900s.I think that this is a great museum to learn many different things since there’s a variety of exhibits that can interest anyone. I liked how it was very interactive in each exhibit and the pictures and explanations were simple but very informative. You need the whole day to walk through the museum if you want to go at a nice slow pace ,since there’s so many different things to look at and it’s so big. They are always changing the exhibits by taking out the old ones and inserting new ones that would interest people more,  so if you go at different times of the year there will be new things to look at. Overall I really enjoyed the experience, since I like science and all the science exhibits were very interesting and I learned so many cool facts. I would totally recommend going there if you don’t have anything else to do because it’s so fun and you can learn a lot of new cool things.

Jasmine Crowe is a founder and CEO of an app called Goodr, she volunteers and is a strong advocate in ending world hunger. Her beliefs are not just giving random food items to the homeless, but to give them actual meals and give back their dignity. She was inspired to pursue ending world hunger through her much work in volunteering and researching how much edible food we waste daily around the world. The occasion would be the rise of homelessness and poor people not having enough money to pay for a meal. The audience was everyone who was at that Ted Talk, and the secondary audience would be people who are into environmental science. The purpose of the Ted Talk was to inform people of the issue of global hunger, and to promote her new app to restaurants and businesses. The app that Crowe created is intended for restaurants to give their food that they waste at the end of the night to people in need. Crowe believes that the link between modern day technology can influence and help many problems. Through promotion of her app we can give people meals that they need and we can get rid of edible foods in landfills which contaminate the earth. Crowe is a greatly strong leader that can help this issue, if more people start to notice this problem and take advantage of her app, then instead of giving random food items to the homeless they can make and cook actual meals for themselves. In her presentation she stated that more and more restaurants are using the app, and she already has helped so many people. Hopefully by the end of this decade her app is greatly used in the US and that  we helped reduce the problem of hunger in our countries.

The speaker in this cartoon are the two guys that are talking to each other about the state of union speech and also the couple that walked by and made a comment. The occasion would be what went down during the state of union speech between Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi. The audience would be congress and the secondary audience would be everyone else who tuned in and watched the state of union speech. The purpose of this cartoon was to inform people of what happened during that speech between Trump and Peolsi. The secondary purpose would be to exemplify and make fun of what most people talked and argued about after the speech. What I got from the cartoon was that I thought it was funny since the couple that walked by stated that is how America looks right now, by referring to the two guys arguing.  Which represents how Americans always argue and exaggerate things to get their point across. The cartoon is in an office space, which shows that even people at work are arguing and talking about what happened during that speech and whose actions were justified. The cartoon even pokes more fun at America through the guy carrying a donut box and the typical office setting with two white men dressed 

up casually, since that’s what most people think of America. Overall, this cartoon is mostly just a representation of America after the State of Union speech and informing people of what happened during it. 

Should the Week be Four Days Instead of Five

I believe that schools and workdays should be shortened to four days instead of five, since in the article it stated that it increased productivity about 40% percent. Which is beneficial for the workplace and even students in school, because they will be more motivated and focused on their work, since they get that extra day to rest and accomplish whatever they need to do. Some advantages would be that people will be well-rested and more focused on work or school. People’s lives wouldn’t be that stressful since they have that extra day to do whatever they want. A disadvantage would be that people would have to work extra long hours to make up that fifth day. Also over the years people might return back to their old ways and still not think that a 3 day weekend is enough, and people won’t be as well rested anymore. If we shortened the week into four days, I think that I would be more productive during the week since the weekend is much closer. I would also spend more time doing what I want outside of school, but also I would waste time and not be as productive on the weekends. In today’s society it’s mostly well set that you have to get good grades in order to go to a nice college and get a good paying job. I think most people believe it, until they actually experience going to college and finding out what they actually want to do in life.  Once people are stable in life they will start to realize that what their past self thought mattered in life for the future , didn’t actually matter. 

In the article “How Exercise Affects Our Memory” by Gretchen Reynolds, she tells us about a study that was done, where scientists found out that exercising can lead to remembering more things faster at an older age. She goes on to explain that regular exercise over time  can improve a person’s thinking abilities, and can be involved with a person’s semantic-memory processing. A new study was done where scientists found that right after exercise, in an older group of people, their memory was still the same, which surprised the scientists. They came into conclusion that when people use their muscles more often they respond more efficiently and they use less energy. This goes the same for the brain, with continued exercise the functions in the brain will improve due to it using less work. I believe that exercise is a good way to improve your overall health, you don’t even need to do a whole workout, just do an activity can speed up your heart rate. If “regular exercise over time increases the volume of the hippocampus, a key part of the brain’s memory networks. It also improves many aspects of people’s thinking.” (Reynolds) Then we should advocate more towards older people or even people at any age to complete some form of exercise since there’s so many benefits that can improve your health and can help you in the future. Source: Gretchen Reynolds, New York Times, May 1, 2019 https://emilysblog.politics.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/28c5e-aow1819_35exerciseandmemory.pdf

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

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