By: Ella Tabor

Colors may be a more influencing factor in our lives than we realize. The way your brain reacts to color can affect our minds, bodies, and mood.

A color’s tone, tint, shade, and brightness all affect the way colors can affect emotions. Let’s look at how warm colors can have an effect on how you feel.

Warm colors such as red, orange and yellow can evoke feelings of optimism, energy, joy, and happiness. These colors also have an attention grabbing element. Think of hazard signs; they are designed with colors like red, yellow and orange because they’ll attract your attention. Red also has the ability to increase hunger.

Cool colors like green, blue, and purple have a typically more calming effect. They can be used to express feelings of calm and sadness as well. Purple is a mixture of blue and red, which makes it a mixture of calmness and intensity. Purple is used to spark creativity.

Think about it; color importance is seen almost daily in fashion. We wear dark or black shades to a funeral to symbolize our grief. A typical wedding dress is usually white which can be associated with purity or innocence.

Companies use the fact that colors can speak to us as a way to market their brand’s core values or manner of business. For example, companies may use cooler colors to represent health, beauty, or security.

Jon, a graphic designer at CityGro says, “Color is one of the strongest non-verbal forms of communications that designers can use.”

Color even has been known to help with memory and attention. Sandra Rief, author of ‘ADHD and LD: Classroom Strategies at Your Fingertips’, writes about the use of color to help children stay attentive. For example, using different colors to highlight in math.

In ‘The Encyclopedia of Memory Disorders’, the authors, Carol Tarkington and Joseph Harris, note that colors can be used to aid in the development of memory.

Which is another reason why companies rely on graphic designers to use the perfect mixture of color and design to get everyone to think about their brand or product.

Perhaps you may use different colors to highlight notes, or use bright highlighters to help you remember the big ideas. Maybe you want to dye your hair into a color that feels more like you.

These are examples of how the importance of color plays into our daily lives.

By: Haroon Yonis

Radon, it is something we cannot see, we cannot smell, and is something that we simply cannot detect with our 5 senses. Yet, it continues to kill thousands every year, and thousands continue to succumb to this silent killer. 

Radon isn’t as known as cigarettes or vapes, but it causes as much damage as the two. 

Radon is gas that can lurk from the depths from your home, your school, or anywhere you go. It is a carcinogenic gas that causes 21,000 lung cancer deaths a year.

The scariest part is that this odorless gas kills 2,900 non-smokers a year. Even if you avoid smoking, you can still be ravaged by this carcinogenic gas.

Radon usually kills people in two ways, either you can be affected by the radiation in radon, and develop lung cancer, or you can die from radon poisoning. One affected by radon poisoning usually exhibits the following symptoms: wheezing, chest pain, coughing blood, a persistent cough, and even weight loss.

Radon has been proved to be associated with cancer, specifically lung cancer. There have been many studies and much literature that validates the correlation between cancer and radon.

So, now that you understand the lethality of this gas, how do you avoid this dangerous and deadly gas?

Radon is found everywhere, but it has extremely low levels outside. It is typically found in much higher concentrations in buildings, such as schools, homes, and stores. The reason for this is that the radon becomes trapped in these buildings, slowly accumulating over time. This is especially true, in urban areas, such as higher populated cities. 

To avoid this gas, you must first find out if it is lurking in your home, or your workplace. You can buy a testing kit online, or have a professional come and test your home. The first option is relatively simple and cheap, while the latter is a bit more expensive but overall more reliable.

If you find out your house has low radon levels, there is nothing to worry about. But if your house has dangerous levels of radon, you must call a professional to purify your home from the gas. Anything higher than 4 pCi/L, is dangerous according to the EPA.

Make sure to test your home even if you suspect there aren’t high levels of radon in your home. It is always better to be safe than sorry.

For more information, please visit:

• https://www.epa.gov/radiation/what-radon-gas-it-dangerous
• https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/radon-and-health
• https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/substances/radon/radon-fact-sheet

By: Reed Morris

NASA is currently working on returning American astronauts to the Moon. The Artemis Program is the follow up to the Apollo missions that first landed Neil Armstrong on the moon. The primary goal of these upcoming missions is to learn more about the geology and history of the moon, as well as to start treating the moon as a passageway for the human race to reach much farther into space.

The first launch of the Artemis program will take place in mid May 2022. NASA is sending the new crew capsule ‘Orion’ on an unmanned test mission to circumnavigate the moon once and return to earth as a safety test.

Assuming the launching and return of the spacecraft is successful, the following mission will be essentially the same except it will have a crew on board. The final launches, will be manned missions to the surface of the moon to establish surface living bases, and finally give humans a strong foothold on the lunar surface.

The next big step will be the construction of ‘the Gateway’. The Gateway will essentially be a smaller version of the International Space Station, but it will be orbiting the Moon, as opposed to Earth. The Gateway will allow an extremely efficient and repeatable way to execute missions on the moon.

The station will have two main purposes. The first is that Astronauts will be able to live and work on the station, allowing more detailed exploration of the lunar surface from above, and secondly it will act as a gateway (hence the name) for astronauts traveling from Earth to the Moon and back.

Finally, by 2024, Artemis will have landed it’s first missions on the moon. These missions mark the beginning of mankind’s colonization of our solar system, and a huge leap forward for human based space exploration.

By: Abdihakim Mohamoud

Environmental taxes, also known as carbon taxes, are fees companies are charged for every ton of emissions they produce in hopes of lowering emissions. The first country to implement these taxes was Sweden in 1991, and they have been very successful in doing so.

After countless studies and investigations about the impacts of environmental taxes, data shows that environmental taxes have positive effects on reducing emissions among companies. Research from Sciencedirect.com stated that sulfur dioxide, dust, and nitrogen oxide were significantly reduced from fossil fueled power plants when the environmental taxes policy was implemented.

After China implemented the Environmental Protection Tax law a few years ago, research began estimating the effects of environmental taxes and air pollution in China’s provinces. Compared to the pollution discharge fee policy (which was the previous law in place), pollutants decreased by 4.8 tons after the new policy was introduced.

While having a positive effect on city-level pollutants, environmental taxes were proven to have limited effects on larger, state-owned coal power plants. While the implementation of them may be beneficial for local firms, it is recommended that local governments seek other measures.

The main reason for environmental taxes being controversial is that individuals against them claim they would hurt countries GDPs. Although the tax would come back to consumers in the form of lower income taxes or a reimbursement check, others argue it would benefit bigger businesses rather than lower to middle class people.

In the end, multiple data statistics show environmental taxes having positive effects on a global scale. However, heated debates and controversy about what to do with tax revenues are still prominent. This leaves us with some questions—Should environmental taxes go back to the consumer? Or should it help us progress towards a bigger economy? These questions are yours to ponder upon.

For more information, please visit:

• https://www.oecd.org/env/tools-evaluation/48164926.pdf
• https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/sustainability/sustainability-14-00041/article_deploy/sustainability-14-00041-v2.pdf

By: Ava Bleifuss

What is Turner syndrome?

Turner syndrome is a genetic condition that only affects females. According to the National Organization for Rare Diseases, over 70,000 women and girls in the United States have Turner syndrome, which is about 1 in 2,500 female live births.

How does someone get Turner Syndrome?

Turner Syndrome occurs when one or part of an X chromosome is missing. An X chromosome could be missing from all, or only some, of a female’s cells. In a normal situation, a female child receives one X chromosome from the mother and one X chromosome from the father, meaning she would have all of the genes needed. However, since people with Turner Syndrome are missing part, or all, of the X chromosome, some of their genes are missing. Usually after finding a chromosomal error the body would not allow that cell to continue in the process, but in very rare situations somehow the cell does continue and eventually leads to Turner Syndrome. 

What are the symptoms of Turner syndrome?

The majority of babies with this syndrome are lost to miscarriages or still births. However, some babies with Turner Syndrome do survive. For them, the symptoms of Turner Syndrome are physical features revolving around development, because some of the genes are missing from the DNA, which is the genetic makeup of humans. People with this have slowed growth as well as developmental problems. Studies have often shown that people with Turner Syndrome have heart problems or if they don’t, have higher risk of heart disease. 

What is the history of Turner Syndrome? 

Turner Syndrome was first discovered by Dr. Henry Turner who was a physician based in Oklahoma. Turner was a pioneer endocrinologist who spent his whole life studying endocrinology. It was first described in 1938 in his manuscripts, but the cause was not identified until 1959. He presented his observations describing seven patients with the same developmental and physical features. These symptoms had never been reported before. Turner later wrote over 30 publications discussing Turner Syndrome. 

What is the treatment for Turner Syndrome?

While there is no cure for Turner Syndrome yet, there are ways to help control the symptoms. Turner Syndrome affects a lot of the body’s growth. Most of the treatments are there to help make up for what was lost. Common things to use as treatment are growth hormones to help with height, and estrogen therapy which helps with starting puberty. Surgeries and medications are also common treatments for Turner Syndrome, but only when needed or a problem occurs. 

For more information, please visit:

• https://www.chop.edu/conditions-diseases/turner-syndrome 
• https://www.healio.com/news/endocrinology/20120325/henry-h-turner-md-the-man-behind-turner-s-syndrome 
• https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/turner-syndrome/#:~:text=Turner%20syndrome%20affects%20approximately%201,United%20States%20have%20Turner%20syndrome