HAPPY BIRTHDAY, YEUNG! i don't even know if you read this, but oh well. hope you like the e-card i sent...hahaha.

hey, today we learned about stress in bio. rather interesting...there was this study done on lab rats in which one rat was electrically shocked very often, in effect stressing the rat out. however, it was shown that if the rat has some outlets, the stress response was next to none (measured by glucocorticoid levels). one such outlet was giving the rat a wooden bar to gnaw on after being shocked, and another was sticking the rat in with a second rat so that after each shock, the first rat would just bite the crap out of the second--and voila, no stress response! one of the other methods was giving the rat a "friend" in the same cage. now this confused me a bit because how did they know this rat was a friend of the first one? and why didn't the first rat just bite the crap out of the "friend" to relieve stress too?

anyway, i want to see justin lin's better luck tomorrow.