Yawning

Next time you're in a meeting, try this little experiment: Take a big yawn, cover your mouth out of courtesy and watch to see how many people follow suit. There's a good chance you'll set off a chain reaction of deep breaths and wide-open mouths. And before you finish reading this article, it's likely you'll yawn at least once. Don't misunderstand, we aren't intending to bore you, but just reading about yawning will make you do it, just as seeing or hearing someone else yawn makes us do it, too. So what's behind this mysterious epidemic of yawning? First, let's look at what this bodily motion is: Yawning is an involuntary action that causes us to open our mouths wide and breathe in deeply. We know it's involuntary because we do it even before we're born: According to Robert Provine, a developmental neuroscientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, research has shown that 11-week-old fetuses yawn. And while yawning is commonly associated with relaxation and drowsiness, your heart rate can rise as much as 30 percent during a yawn, and yawning is a sign of arousal, including sexual arousal [sources: Alexander, The Stress of Life]. Many parts of the body are in action when you yawn. First, your mouth opens, and your jaw drops, allowing as much air as possible to be taken in. When you inhale, the air taken in is filling your lungs. Your abdominal muscles flex, and your diaphragm is pushed down. The air you breathe in expands the lungs to capacity and then some of the air is blown back out. Now that we know what a yawn is, let's look at what causes us to do it. On the next page, we'll discuss four popular theories that explain why we open wide and breathe deep.

Royal national College for the blind

The Royal National College for the Blind (RNC) is a co-educational residential college of further education based in the English city of Hereford. Students who attend the college are blind or partially sighted. Alongside regular further education subjects and vocational training, the college offers training in independent living and personal development. Founded in 1871 in London as The Royal Normal College and Academy for the Blind, the college had a number of homes before moving to its campus in Hereford, and was renamed Royal National College for the Blind in the late 1970s. It has been a pioneer in the education of visually impaired people in Britain since the Victorian era, and, as of 2010, is the only college for visually impaired students in the United Kingdom to have been awarded Beacon Status in recognition of its outstanding teaching and learning. The college is actively involved in the development of assistive technology to help visually impaired people in their day-to-day lives. The campus, located on College Road, Hereford, is home to RNC's teaching, residential and leisure facilities. Students live in halls of residence or on-campus houses which enable them to gain a level of independence within the college environment. (more...) Recently featured: Alexandre Banza – Crown Fountain – Hermann Detzner Archive – By email – More featured articles...