The Latest Internship Trip

The graduate student I usually work with was not able to be here last week and not much was going on in the lab so I just labeled test tubes for the TV experiment subjects' saliva. They will be watching a movie in different colored light: the TV's light will be changed from warm colors to cool colors for different subjects. Then we will test the melatonin levels in their saliva to see if the levels decreased or increased as the night progressed.

Also I read an article from my mentor on the impact of light from computer monitors on melatonin levels in college students! I haven't been able to attach the article but it's results were that exposing college students to light from computer screens monitors (delivering 30 lux) for 2 hours will result in small melatonin suppression. The problem was that they thought the computer monitors they were using were delivering less light than they actually were. This complication changed the actual results; the college students were exposed to more light than predicted and so their melatonin levels decreased more. Overall I think that this is a really interesting study because we have to make sure how much light you're exposed to before assuming how much your melatonin levels will decrease. 

iPad Results and The New TV Project

Back from winter break! I came back to my science internship just in time to look over some of the results on how much iPads, looked at while wearing different color glasses, affect your melatonin levels or the hormone that helps you fall asleep. The first results were for people who wore glasses with blue lights attached; they had the greatest decrease in melatonin levels. After that, wearing no glasses and looking at an iPad had the second greatest decrease. Lastly, those who wore orange goggles had a small decrease percentage in melatonin. Looking back on the post before this, I discusses predictions about this experiment and it seems that my hypothesis was correct! Right now, the lab is testing how much wide screen TVs affect melatonin levels so I'll probably learn more about that next week. After looking over results, I helped set up for this TV experiment by labeling test tubes for the subjects' saliva. I learned that the lab also takes the subjects' blood during certain projects because blood samples are more accurate with melatonin levels than saliva samples are.