Articles to check out

How little sleep can you get away with?: This New York Times article discusses sleeping studies and PVM (psychomotor vigilance task) studies, testing humans' abilities to function on various sleep cycles if their bodies adjust to six, eight or ten hours of sleep per night. They come to interesting conclusions about impairment and results.

This weather application introduced on Mashable- Weddar- lets the application's users rate what the weather feels like in a certain location, so rather than seeing 68 degrees, you can hear about if the weather is "perfect, hot, hell, ok, great, windy, fresh, cloudy," the list goes on. It's self-funded and plans to allow photo uploads in the future, but is a cool concept. In a world where everything we do is based on others' opinions (questioning Tweets, Facebook statuses, surveys, etc.), it's cool to offer the opportunity to take something like the weather and make it mean something to everyone, rather than just meteorologists.

Making sure you're on people's Newsfeeds: This Buddy Media article discusses how Facebook ranks certain posts to put them on "Top News," appearing on your Facebook friends' news feeds. As anticipated, posts with multiple comments and "likes" make it to the top, but see what you can post to obtain these.

Oprah tickets excuse woman from Blagojevich trial: This Chicago Tribune article makes me laugh. A woman was chosen for the Blagojevich trial, and her way out of it was because she had tickets to the final showing of the Oprah Winfrey show. I find it pathetic how much this means in our society enough that the courts would excuse it, regardless of the money spent.

Five words for PR interns to live by: LinkedIn sent this story out in its weekly newsletter, and it's a good resource for anyone studying journalism, communications or public relations!

Why having fun makes you forgetful: I've shared a study similar to this before, but now it's published in the form of an article in TimeHealthland! It discusses how socializing and attending parties (regardless of alcohol consumption, with a focus on mental health) affects your ability to forget the information you hear or discuss there, such as the names of people you meet. What I particularly enjoy about it is that it was facilitated by two University of Missouri psychologists. Props for attending an institution with a strong emphasis in research!

My friend Laura Davison is a convergence journalism major, and created this project as a group story on Project Sol. Read the information and check out the variety of journalistic pieces included on this website!