The Science of Yawning
A While fatigue, drowsiness or boredom easily bring on yawns, scientists are discovering there is more to yawning than most people think. Not much is known about why we yawn or if it serves any useful function. People have already learned that yawning can be infectious. "Contagious yawning" is the increase in likelihood that you will yawn after watching or hearing someone else yawn, but not much is known about the under-lying causes, and very little research has been done on the subject. However, scientists at the University of Albany, as well as the University of Leeds and the University of London have done some exploration.
B It is commonly believed that people yawn as a result of being sleepy or tired because they need oxygen. However, the latest research shows that a yawn can help cool the brain and help it work more effectively, which is quite different from the popular belief that yawning promotes sleep and is a sign of tiredness. Dr Andrew Gallup and his colleagues at the University of Albany in New York State said their experiments on 44 students showed that raising or lowering oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the blood did not produce that reaction. In the study participants were shown videos of people laughing and yawning, and researchers counted how many times the volunteers responded to the "contagious yawns". The researchers found that those who breathed through the nose rather than the mouth were less likely to yawn when watching a video of other people yawning. The same effect was found among those who held a cool pack to their forehead, whereas those who held a warm pack yawned while watching the video. Since yawning occurs when brain temperature rises, sending cool blood to the brain serves to maintain the best levels of mental efficiency.
C Yawning is universal to humans and many animals. Cats, dogs and fish yawn just like humans do, but they yawn spontaneously. Only humans and chimpanzees, our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, have shown definite contagious yawning. Though much of yawning is due to suggestibility, sometimes people do not need to actually see a person yawn to involuntarily yawn themselves: hearing someone yawning or even reading about yawning can cause the same reaction.
D However, contagious yawning goes beyond mere suggestibility. Recent studies show that contagious yawning is also related to our predisposition toward empathy— the ability to understand and connect with others' emotional states. So empathy is important, sure, but how could it possibly be related to contagious yawning? Leave it up to psychologists at Leeds University in England to answer that. In their study, researchers selected 40 psychology students and 40 engineering students. Generally, psychology students are more likely to feel empathy for others, while engineering students are thought to be concerned with objects and science. Each student was made to wait individually in a waiting room, along with an undercover assistant who yawned 10 times in as many minutes. The students were then administered an emotional quotient test: students were shown 40 images of eyes and asked what emotion each one displayed. The results of the test support the idea that contagious yawning is linked to empathy. The psychology students—whose future profession requires them to focus on others—yawned contagiously an average of 5.5 times in the waiting room and scored 28 out of 40 on the emotional test. The engineering students—who tend to focus on things like numbers and systems—yawned an average of 1.5 times and scored 25.5 out of 40 on the subsequent test. The difference doesn't sound like much, but researchers consider it significant. Strangely enough, women, who are generally considered more emotionally attuned, didn't score any higher than men.
E Another study, led by Atsushi Senju, a cognitive researcher at the University of London, also sought to answer that question. People with autism disorder are considered to be developmentally impaired emotionally. Autistics have trouble connecting with others and find it difficult to feel empathy. Since autistics have difficulty feeling empathy, then they shouldn't be susceptible to contagious yawning. To find out, Senju and his colleagues placed 49 kids aged 7 to 15 in a room with a television. 24 of the test subjects had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, the other 25 were non-autistic kids. The test subjects were shown short clips of people yawning as well as clips of people opening their mouths but not yawning. While the kids with autism had the same lack of reaction to both kinds of clips, the non-autistic kids yawned more after the clips of people yawning.
F There also have been studies that suggest yawning, especially psychological "contagious" yawning, may have developed as a way of keeping a group of animals alert and bonding members of a group into a more unit one. If an animal is drowsy or bored, it may not be as alert as it should to be prepared to spring into action and its yawning is practically saying, "Hey, I need some rest, you stay awake". Therefore, a contagious yawn could be an instinctual reaction to a signal from one member of the herd reminding the others to stay alert when danger comes. So the theory suggests evidence that yawning comes from the evolution of early humans to be ready to physically exert themselves at any given moment.
The contribution of language to business
People say that business is all about relationships, but the truth is that business is really all about language communication. Languages make either a direct or indirect contribution to business and industry—from acquiring and retaining customers to improving employee engagement and performance. At the most fundamental level, business cannot happen without communication. This is even more true in the era of globalization. As geographic borders become porous and the world flattens, effective communication with customers, employees, partners, suppliers, and other stakeholders across the globe becomes essential to successfully running a company.
There is no universal agreement on how significant the language factor is; nor the degree of language proficiency in contribution to the success of business and industry. In large modern enterprises, people have the unique experience of working with thousands of organizations across different industries and sectors that are tackling this very problem. Companies adjust to these demographic, cultural, and economic trends and proactively build workforces with the skills and capabilities needed to grow and thrive in this multicultural and international economy. Although the combination of business functions and processes impacted by improved communication may vary from company to company, language skills consistently deliver tangible business value and result for organizations that invest in language training.
Although English is dominant for international transactions, many business people also think and deal in scores of languages. Companies that operate solely in English will miss opportunities to capitalize on the explosive growth in developing and untapped markets at home and abroad. These companies also run the risk of misunderstandings with customers, and with members of an increasingly global workforce. Moreover, travellers on business need to have different levels of language proficiency. On a basic level, they are able to use the language at the airport and to check in at the hotel. Besides, they need a high language proficiency to deal with workers at their offshore factories.
One of the biggest business advantages of a workforce that can effectively communicate in more than one language is the ability to reach new markets—both at home and abroad. On the domestic side, for example, the U.S. has become even more of a melting pot than in the past, with minorities accounting for a greater proportion of the total population. Accordingly, in domestic venues, the consumer contacts and service activities also ask for workers with good skills of different languages, such as at restaurants or in duty-free stores.
The language proficiency needed to hold a conversation is quite different from that needed for negotiating. Receptionists and telephonists are the first point of contact between firms. The language proficiency they need is to gather basic factual information. Yet negotiating well in another language is one of the most difficult skills, especially nowadays when it is often done at a distance by videoconference, teleconference or email. It is also one of the most important things to do well, with usually a clear financial penalty for doing it badly. To really master the negotiating skill, negotiators need a thorough understanding of the very many phrases they might hear during a negotiation and an ability to show fine shades in meaning in their own contributions. Similar to negotiating, certain occupations like shipping, also require unbroken and detailed communication between officials.
When it comes to negotiation, the interpreters and translators are needed. Interpreters and translators aid communication by converting messages or text from one language into another language. Although some people do both, interpreting and translating are different professions: interpreters work with spoken communication, and translators work with written communication. The selection of interpreters and translators is critical. Both the loyalty and accuracy of the interpreters and translators must be put at the top of agenda. Thus, loyalty to the speaker and the original appears to be a hallmark of professionals more so than of amateurs.
Who can judge the performance of the interpreters? A person with language proficiency is needed in the negotiating team to check on the interpreters, guaranteeing the quality and accuracy of the interpretation. Listeners are presumably listening only to the output and as such not aware of the structure of the source speech. Only an experienced expert will understand the constraints of any given situation and be in a position to judge. Only she (or he) can assess just how the speed, density and complexity of the speech will affect interpretation in any particular language combination. And even this task is not easy: interpreters are trained to listen and speak at the same time, not to listen to two different audio streams. Therefore, the check-on is best accomplished by those trained to teach or with enough experience to have mastered this skill.
Businesses may ask help from local consultants who are responsible for hiring local workers or train company managers to deal with local consumers. That was the case with CommScope, a multibillion dollars telecom equipment manufacturer with customers, employees, and partners in 18 countries across the world. In the wake of these transactions, the company began offering Jacqueline K. Crofton, a local resident, language training to key employees and executives. The goal of the training was not to make employees fluent in the new language, as much as to give them a degree of functional proficiency. "In order to advance well in new markets and with new customers, we had to be able to at least understand and communicate at a basic level, even with the use of interpreters," says David Hartsoe, manager of CommScope's Global Learning Center. In the long run, effective communication will definitely help their employees stay positive and productive.
The Fight Against Polio
A The poliovirus is one of the smallest and simplest viruses. It is usually spread by just dirty fingers and in most cases is confined to the gut. As the virus travels down the intestine, it induces the body to produce antibodies against it, which will protect the person against future attacks. In about one per cent of cases, the virus floods into the bloodstream and infects the nerve cells in the spinal cord that drive the muscles. This causes the characteristic paralysis, which can affect one or more limbs and/or the muscles of respiration, in which case artificial ventilation, for example with the iron lung, may be needed to keep the patient breathing and alive. The iron lung, which was officially known as a negative pressure ventilator, was invented hundreds of years ago, but was further developed in the 1930's to help with the world polio outbreaks. At one point, the need for iron lungs was so high that they were used with a patient within an hour of their manufacture.
B Polio originally caused sporadic clusters of paralysis, especially in children. For some reason, this pattern changed during the late nineteenth century into explosive epidemics, which swept through many countries each summer. The first major outbreak, on the East Coast of the USA in the summer of 1916, caused 25,000 cases of paralysis and 6,000 deaths. Draconian public health measures were powerless to prevent the spread of the disease, resulting in widespread panic across America. Each year, panic resurfaced as the polio season approached, with the wealthy leaving towns and cities in droves.
C This fear of polio was deliberately fuelled and exploited by the March of Dimes, an American fundraising organisation set up by President Franklin D Roosevelt, himself a polio survivor. The March of Dimes raised vast sums, and funded both practical support for polio victims and their families, and the research programmes that ultimately resulted in effective polio vaccines.
D Polio can be prevented but not cured. Treatments proposed for patients with acute polio have included barbaric measures, such as branding the child's back with a red-hot poker and 'brain washout therapy'. Less dramatic were massive doses of vitamins C and chemically modified cobra venom. None of these had any impact on paralysis or survival, and some were positively dangerous. The iron lung could rescue patients from suffocation if their respiratory muscles were paralysed, but the iron lung itself carried considerable risks. Until chest infections could be properly treated, seventy per cent of patients put inside the iron lung died there.
E Two rival strategies were used to develop vaccines to protect against polio. Jonas Salk (1914–1998) favoured an 'inactivated polio vaccine' (IPV), in which wild polioviruses are 'killed' with formalin, so that they can no longer replicate and spread into the spinal cord. IPV is injected into a muscle and causes protective antibodies to appear in the bloodstream.
The 'oral polio vaccine' (OPV) developed by Albert Sabin (1906–1993) relies on the fact that polioviruses forced to grow under unfavourable conditions in the laboratory will undergo mutation into forms that can no longer invade the spinal cord. The OPV virus is still 'alive' and able to replicate, but cannot enter the spinal cord and cause paralysis. OPV is taken by mouth and, like a wild poliovirus, induces immunity against itself in the gut wall as it travels through the intestine. It therefore provides a different type of immunity protection when compared with the Salk vaccine.
F Salk's IPV was the first polio vaccine to be tested on a large scale, in massive clinical trials in 1954 involving 1.8 million American children. Following the sensational declaration that his vaccine 'works and is safe', Salk became a national and international hero, and mass vaccination of children with his IPV began immediately. Vaccination continued despite a tragic outbreak of paralytic (and sometimes fatal) polio due to contamination of the Salk vaccine with wild poliovirus, which was the result of carelessness in the vaccine production plant.
Numbers of paralytic cases and deaths from polio fell dramatically in the USA over the next few years, and Salk's vaccine was taken up across the world. Sabin's OPV, being cheaper, more effective and easier to give, later superseded the Salk vaccine. Given correctly, both vaccines protect against polio and are overwhelmingly safe. There is an exceedingly low risk (one in 500,000 vaccinations) of Sabin's OPV reverting to a paralysing variant, a drawback that Sabin always refused to acknowledge.
G Polio vaccine not only protects individuals, but, if given intensively and on a massive scale, can prevent the virus from spreading and so stamp it out. In 1988, various organisations set out to clear the planet of polio through a worldwide vaccination campaign. The hope was that polio would follow the example of smallpox, which was exterminated by intensive global vaccination during the late 1970's.
Now, after 26 years, polio is tantalisingly close to being eradicated, with just 200 paralytic cases worldwide last year, as compared with over 300,000 in 1988. Tragically, though, endemic polio continues to cling on in three areas, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern Nigeria, largely because of anti-western ideology that is backed up by intimidation, death threats and the murder of many vaccinators and their supporters. Usually refugees, but also other travellers, have reintroduced polio to other countries, for example Syria, Lebanon and various African states, which had been previously cleared of polio.
Unfortunately, it is now very unlikely that polio will be eradicated within the next two to three years and it seems that the final extermination of the virus will depend as much on diplomacy as on medicine and science.
Glossary
Draconian – severe or harsh.
In droves – in large numbers.
