teens are becoming more tired?

I am a teen and I have a common problem. No, not bullying or peer pressure, but being able to get the sleep I need to function everyday. I end up falling asleep in class, which is not good for my grades, and doing poorly in after school activities. Today I decided my readers might like to know that they are not the only ones who might have trouble sleeping or feel tired often.

Almost 80%  of teens do not get the recommended amount of sleep, reports a recent National Sleep Foundation poll. The ideal amount of sleep for kids ages 11-17 is between 8 1/2 - 9 1/4 hours a night.

Parents would know if their teens were getting too little sleep, right? Possibly, no. It's easy for parents to miss the cues. The top sign of lack of sleep is irritability, a common mood amoung teens. WebMD states: "In fact, as many as half of the teenagers we study are so sleep deprived they look as if they have narcolepsy, a serious neurological disorder that leaves people excessively tired. kids who are sleepy are more likely to drift off in class, miss school entirely, and have trouble with learning and remembering. In some cases, a teen's mood disorder is a direct result of poor sleep." So not only can sleep effect school life, but it can effect mental health."As kids mature, melatonin is secreted later and later in the evening. At the same time, during adolescence there's a slowdown of the "sleep pressure" rate-the rate at which sleepiness builds up over the course of the day. This also makes it easier for teens to stay awake longer and later.Studies show that high school students' natural time to fall asleep is around 11 p.m.-partly because they're so revved up from all their evening activities. This isn't a problem when they're able to sleep in." 

 Some tips WebMD gives to help wake up in the mornig for a better nights sleep:

1. Make sure your exposed to light as soon as possible after rising. Taking the dog for a walk, going for a jog, or just throwing open the curtains signals the brain that it's daytime; it activates the internal clock and programs the sleep system to slow down by evening.

2. It's also really important to get the caffeine out of diets. Ideally, you need 10 hours without caffeine for  good sleep, which means no caffeinated soda or energy drink after noon.

3. It's fine to sleep an extra hour or two on Saturday and Sunday mornings. But "binge sleeping" can backfire: If a teen goes to bed late, then sleeps until 1 p.m. on weekends, come Sunday night, the body and brain aren't going to be ready for an earlier bedtime

http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/is-your-teen-too-tired

More than 90 percent of teens in a recent study published in the Journal of School Health reported sleeping less than the recommended nine hours a night. In the same study, 10 percent of teens reported sleeping less than six hours a night

it's all about PANDA'S?

Pandas bears are my all time favorite animal. They are beautiful with their black and white fur, look so fluffy and adorable, and are just so cute! Sadly the area they live in has been decreased by great amounts. It is also considered endangered :(. Poor pandas!
They can be any where from about 4- 6 feet tall and weigh about 154-275 lbs. Strangely, pandas are mainly vegetarians and rarely eat meet. Their diet consists of mainly bamboo and sometimes other plants. Since the panda bear is a ,in fact, a bear, it has a carnivore digestive system and only digests very little of the bamboo it eats. An adult giant panda therefore needs to spend most of it's waking hours feeding and must consume between 20-40 lbs. of food a day to get enough energy.
The giant panda is currently restricted to six separate mountain ranges in western China, on the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, and in the provinces of Gansu, Shaanxi and Sichuan.
The panda also does not hibernate during the winter months like most bears. They move to a lower elevation where the weather is nicer.


http://lumq.com/03/giant-panda/



The female giant panda usually give birth to a single cub between July and September. The pregnancy period is highly variable, ranging from around 3-6 months, but this is due to a  delay between fertilisation and implantation, and the true pregnancy length is closer to about 1 and a half months. Although twins are sometimes born, the female rarely raises more than one of the cubs . The young giant panda is born at an extremely immature stage of development, weighing only a tiny fraction of the female’s weight .



http://scenery.cultural-china.com/en/22Scenery52.html



The giant panda cub is helpless after birth, and for the first few weeks of its life the female cares for it in a den located in the base of a hollow tree or in a cave. After four to seven weeks, the young panda is carried by the female to travel. When the baby panda is about 5-6 months old, it can move around by itself, but stays dependant on it's mom until at least 18 months. Female giant pandas usually give birth only once every two years. The giant panda reaches sexual maturity at around 5.5 to 6.5 years old, and may live for around 14 to 30 years in the wild.

http://www.arkive.org/giant-panda/ailuropoda-melanoleuca/#text=All

Panda's might have thumbs in the future too. They have a "pseudo thumb". An elongated and enlarged wrist bone covered with thick fleshy skin to help them grip the bamboo and eat.

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/giantpandas/pandafacts/default.cfm

Pandas are amazing animals! I love pandas, and i wish i could have one as a pet.

What's your all time favorite animal?

the world is supposed to end soon?

Whether you believe it or not, you can always start a conversation about how the world is supposed to end on December 21, 2012 (only 15 days from now). But have you ever wondered why people say that? Why this date? Well hopefully I can answer these questions for you.

I went to the experts in space for the scientific answers. NASA of course. Here's how the answered:
Q: What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in 2012?
A: The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012 and linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 -- hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.
Q: Is there a planet or brown dwarf called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction?
A: Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist. Eris is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles.
Q: Is NASA predicting a "total blackout" of Earth on Dec. 23 to Dec. 25?
A: Absolutely not. Neither NASA nor any other scientific organization is predicting such a blackout. The false reports on this issue claim that some sort of "alignment of the Universe" will cause a blackout. There is no such alignment (see next question). Some versions of this rumor cite an emergency preparedness message from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. This is simply a message encouraging people to be prepared for emergencies, recorded as part of a wider government preparedness campaign. It never mentions a blackout.
Q: Could planets align in a way that impacts Earth?
A: There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. One major alignment occurred in 1962, for example, and two others happened during 1982 and 2000. Each December the Earth and sun align with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy but that is an annual event of no consequence.

There are many more questions answered by NASA so here's the site:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012.html

Next i decided to go to a website i found that is dedicated to December 21, 2012 and the world ending. On this site there is some debate on why the world is supposed to end on this day a little debate too.
http://www.december212012.com/articles/general_information/index.shtml
One article i found quite interesting was on the Mayan aspect. The Mayan Mysteries by James Donahue states:
"One of the great mysteries of modern times is the Dresden Codex, one of the few surviving books from the ancient Mayan civilization that existed in Central and South America.
This book, decoded by a German scholar in 1880, opened a door to discovery of the brilliant minds of the Mayans. The Codex is filled with numeric equations based upon the movement of the planets, the sun and the stars. The book and other encoded inscriptions on buildings and surviving stone monuments found mostly in the ruins of the Yucatan Peninsula, include a calendar that is so accurate it puts our present system of measuring years to shame." It then describes how the Aztecs were conquered by Cortes, but had Mayan texts with them and hid them so they weren't destroyed. The text then continues to state:
"The Mayans were master mathematicians who tinkered with calendars that depicted cycles of the planets. They took a special interest in the movements of the planets Mars and Venus, and knew the cycles of the Sun. They believed that the Earth would reach some kind of synchronization with the universe by Dec. 21, 2012. One Mayan prophecy is that the current Age of Materialism will end on this date.
Since the Winter Solstice occurs at this time each year, when the Earth is tipped to its extreme axis, some people wonder if the Mayans did not foresee a polar shift that would cause a major apocalyptic event, destroying civilization as we know it."
http://www.december212012.com/articles/general_information/6.shtml

Now me? What do i believe? I DO NOT believe the world will end and civilization will die. I DO believe that something major will happen that changes the earth and how humans live. Maybe not on this specific date, but in the near future. Whether it be we lose electricity and our living styles dramatically change, the world has a major shift, or maybe a war will begin (let's hope not). We will not know until it happens. But let me know what you think will happen.

aliens might have been around for hundreds of years?

What would you do if you knew aliens (from space) existed? Or that aliens might be living on/visiting our planet? And have been for hundreds of years?Do you believe they exist? I do. And after looking at this I'm even more convinced.

Past: “The Madonna with Saint Giovannino” dates back to around the 15th century. The painting depicts the Virgin Mary, and in the background is what appears to be a man looking up at an object that is similar to a UFO. In the Old Testament, The Book of Ezekiel discusses an encounter with a strange flying object made of metal that took the shape of a wheel. Inside were four living creatures that looked like humans.*
Etched into a high plateau in Peru’s Nazca Desert, are a series of ancient designs stretching for more than 50 miles. They include drawings of animals, birds and humans, some measuring more than 600 feet across. Because of their colossal size, the figures can only be appreciated from way up in the air—with no evidence that the Nazca people, who inhabited the area between 300 B.C. and 800 A.D., had invented flying machines. According to ancient alien theorists, the figures were used to guide spaceships as they came in for a landing, and the lines served as runways.**
Statue of Akhenaten - Akhenaten ascended to the throne as the 10th Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty in 1352 B.C. He is depicted in paintings and carvings with an elongated skull, which some ancient alien theorists see as a sign of extraterrestrial heritage***


The picture on right shows a helicopter on the left and a spaceship on the right, but these are ancient hieroglyphs***

 The Mayan ancient texts say:   The Mayan  Popol Vuh states, "Men came from the stars, knowing everything, and they examined the four corners of the sky and the Earth's round surface."The Mayan  Chilam Balam states,  "Beings descended from the sky in flying vessels... white men in flying rings, who can touch the sky."***

The Sumerians are one the oldest civilizations known to man.  Here are pictures of the Annunaki  -   The Sumerians believed they were created by the Annunaki.  The Sumerians believed the Annunaki came from the stars to planet earth to mine for gold.  The Annunaki needed workers to mine for gold, so they genetically engineered and created the Sumerians(or humans).***

Recent: In 1977, at Ohio Sate University, The Big Ear radio telescope picked up an unusual signal. Big Ear used numbers and letters to determine the strength of a signal, 0 being meaningless noise and Z being a strong radio signal. An astronomer, Dr. Jerry R. Ehman, studying the data from the telescope was shocked when a radio signal clocking in at ‘6EQUJ5’ came from a seemingly empty spot in space. Ehman was so shocked that he circled the signal on the data sheet and simply wrote ‘Wow!’.

The transmission lasted 37 seconds and came from the Sagittarius constellation. Even more interesting is the fact that the nearest star in that specific direction is 220 million light years away. In other words, the signal came from an empty spot in space. Also, the signal had all the characteristics of an interstellar broadcast*

In 2003, astronomers with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) used a massive telescope to examine sections of the sky where they had previously found unexplained radio signals. They found another radio signal that was even stronger than what they had previously found.

The signal came from an area in space where there are no planets or stars, and strangely was at a frequency that hydrogen absorbs, ensuring that the signal would be strong and could travel great distances. The signal was detected on three separate occasions.*

You can find tons more evidence from these websites i used. I can't put everything up here.

http://www.paranormalhaze.com/5-pieces-of-evidence-that-suggests-intelligent-alien-life-exists/*
http://www.history.com/shows/ancient-aliens/articles/evidence-of-ancient-aliens**
http://www.alienswerehere.com/AncientAlienEvidence.html***

how the full moon might effect you?

Did you know the full moon might effect the way you act and think? Some scientists don't believe this because the evidence is not that hard. I believe it may affect people, because they seem to act crazier when the full moon is out. Whether it be, maybe, they decide its a bright night so they can do more crazy irradical acts, or they're just like, "hey, look, a full moon!" and decide to try and do something crazy and it has nothing to do with the full moon.

Greek philosopher Aristotle and Roman historian Pliny the Elder suggested that the brain was the “moistest” organ in the body and more likely to the influences of the moon, which influences the tides

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=lunacy-and-the-full-moon

Dana Gerhardt wrote this about full moons on her website Mooncircles:

"What’s empirically true shows up in research reports.  Imaginative truth comes out in rumors, myths and stories.  Scientific truths happen to a statistically significant portion of us.  Imaginative truths can capture an equally significant percentage, even though they occurred among only a handful of people, or never even happened at all.  Imagination responds more to image than literal incident.  And its force can shudder through millions at once.  Empirical facts we can count, but of imaginative ones, we need to ask:  What does this story serve?  What is it trying to tell us?"

http://mooncircles.com/moon-astrology-articles/does-the-full-moon-make-you-crazy/

With how much research I do, I find more and more contradictory evidence. Some studies say yes it does, while others say it has no effect what-so-ever on people or animals acting crazy on full moons. Some say people might just remember it better because they see a full moon, others say its the mind looking for something to blame (even if it's mythical).

I think the moon might have an effect on some people, but not all. The majestic moon might be able to cast a magic spell on us that no scientist will ever be able to prove. What do you think? Do you think the moon has an effect on crazies?