By Jessica Sierocki, photo editor.
Meningitis immunization for college students
Colleges are recommending students to get a meningitis B, or bacterial meningitis, vaccination. According to Pittsburg Post-Gazette, an estimated 60 teens a year take ill from the B strain.
Meningitis B is a serious illness. It spreads directly from person to person during close encounters. An example of this would be the exchange of saliva when coughing or kissing an infected person. Symptoms may include:
Nausea
Vomiting
Increase in sensitivity to light
Confusion
If you think you may have bacterial meningitis, contact your doctor as soon as possible.
Can using Facebook mean living longer?
If you can’t seem to stop scrolling through Facebook or think by using the notorious networking site you’re wasting your time, think again. A recent study was conducted by researchers William Hobbs and James Fowler from the University of California San Diego that links using Facebook to living longer.
The study was covered over a six month period. The subjects were born between the years of 1945 and 1989 and data was compared between those who were still alive during the study versus the deceased.
Facebook users were 12 percent less likely to die versus someone who doesn’t use Facebook. People with larger social networks lived longer than those who have fewer social network relationships.
Do you have a lot of selfies you want to post, but are afraid to annoy your friends? Post them anyway because the study concluded those who post more photos have the greatest longevity. Researchers also noted that Facebook users who accepted more friend requests, even if the user didn’t know the person, lived longer than those who chose not to expand their social network circle.
It is unclear if being more popular on a social network site is the direct link to living longer, but it seems the more a person interacts with Facebook the longer they live. Hobbs and Fowler plan to conduct follow up studies in the near future.
Scout program saves Earth from possible impact
An asteroid potentially colliding with Earth seems like a fairly significant event right? Did you know that an asteroid passed Earth on Nov. 5? Don’t freak out too much because the potential disaster didn’t catch astronomers from NASA off guard thanks to a new program called Scout.
According to CNN, Scout scrolled through a multitude of data caught from telescopes and saw an asteroid that was going to pass by Earth. Scout was able to determine the object would travel at a safe distance of 310,000 miles from the planet we call home.
Scout is used to locate small celestial objects. It is expected that Earth will eventually come in close contact with an asteroid, but this new technology better prepares scientists to work out emergency plans.