BIOL1020 Scientific Paper Summary PDF

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BIOL1020 Year 1 Scientific Paper Summary Semester 2...

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BIOL1020 Assignment: Scientific Paper Summary - Ryan Yoo Author(s): Mark E. Beecher, Dennis Eggett, Davey Erekson, Lawrence B. Rees, Jennie Bingham, Jared Klundt, Russell J. Bailey, Clark Ripplinger, Jessica Kirchhoefer, Robert Gibson, Derek Griner, Jonathan C. Cox, R.D. Boardman. Year: 2016 Title: Sunshine on my shoulders: Weather, pollution, and emotional distress Journal name: Journal of Affective Disorders Volume & Page number: Volume 205, Page 234-238 Reference: Beecher, M., Eggett, D., Erekson, D., Rees, L., Bingham, J., Klundt, J., Bailey, R., Ripplinger, C., Kirchhoefer, J., Gibson, R., Griner, D., Cox, J. and Boardman, R., 2016. Sunshine on my shoulders: Weather, pollution, and emotional distress. Journal of Affective Disorders, 205, pp.234-238.

The media story titled, Sunshine matters a lot to mental health; temperature, pollution, rain not so much, introduces the readers to a somewhat surprising factor for one’s mental health and its rather unpretentious origin. Narrated from Brigham Young University, the article unfolds the development of study sparked from a casual conversation between Prof Mark Beecher and Prof Lawrence Rees, and ultimately led to unveiling the most influential weather variable for people’s mental states. We often assume accentuated distress on rainy, cloudy, cold days, yet it is not the observable patterns and climates but actually the amount of sunlight we experience.

The general correlation between weather and people’s mental health was well known from before, however the specifics on which factor was the most significant was still mixed in confusion. Hence, the research paper aimed to analyse and compare many different weather features and their individual effects on people’s mental health in order to find a clear answer for the question at hand. Participants were sought from the BYU counselling centre over a period of 6 years and were asked for a 45 item self-report score out of 180 based on three domains; discomfort, relationships and social role. This score was directly proportional to the mental stress of participants. The weather and pollution data of corresponding days were then collected from the university Physics and Astronomy weather station and the US EPA database respectively to be analysed. Researchers compared distress and suicide ideation against the variations of weather features to seek correlation, which overall concluded that it was the time of sunlight experienced by people which had the biggest impact on mental health. This result was of great significance as for the first time, the study’s impressive precision of data and broadest coverage of variables was able to identify the

most influential weather feature for people’s mental state, and was also able to add many pathways of research, such as branching deeper into sunlight analysis and studying which aspects of it are the most impactful.

Due to the difference in platforms, there was decreased specificity and more narratives presented within the media story compared to the research paper, however this was expected as different mediums are adjusted to suit their differing audiences and demands. Otherwise, the media story accurately reflected the published science paper in that the most relevant information was factually informed; the research paper’s context and aim to resolve the lacking specificity on the most important factor of weather for people’s mental health and the study’s results were truthfully presented. The media story further reflected the reasons why this study was more trustworthy than others like the research paper, providing a clear and accessible insight to the extensive precision and coverage of this study for the audience. A potential issue may be that limitations of the research study could have also been discussed as reported by the research paper so that it could abbreviate the imperfect nature of this research and all researches in general....