Tabata: A fancy sounding word for just four minutes of  high intensity interval training (HIIT).

A tabata is eight rounds of 20 seconds of work + 10 seconds of rest. Tabatas are a great way to increase your fitness in a short amount of time. During the 20 seconds of work, you’re going all out. This type of program is high intensity, so make sure you have a decent fitness base before trying some of the more difficult exercises.

The eight rounds add up to just 4 minutes, which means that it’s really easy to squeeze them into your day. They’re the perfect break from studying to get your heart rate up and clear your head. If you don’t have time to get to the gym one day, you definitely have a few four-minute breaks here and there to fit a tabata in. (more…)

—Julianna Foster

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The alarm goes off at 7 a.m. and it feels like 6 a.m. You feel like a zombie.

Or instead of actually waking up, you forget to move your clock forward and your alarm goes off at the wrong 7 a.m. This is when you jump out of bed and run to class in your pajamas.

You look outside to see the sun shining through your window hoping it will wake you up, when you realize it is still dark.

Soon it starts to feel like lunchtime and your stomach is growling, but technically it’s not lunch yet and you are still in class.

You soon start to feel the effect of waking up an hour earlier. Your whole day seems to be ruined from missing one hour of sleep. This is when you start cursing the world.

Finally as you walk back home at 6 p.m. feeling super dead and drained, you see the sun is still out. Now you realize daylight savings time isn’t that bad after all, right?

It seems we will forever have a love-hate relationship with daylight savings time. Remember to set your clocks forward this Sunday at 2 a.m.

—Sarah Greenwald

Tags: daylight savings time day

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What do you do when you see a friend on campus?
A. Ask them if they’re coming to the party/social/movie night/group dinner that night.
B. Avoid them and snapchat a photo of them with the caption “look who it is.”
C. Tell them about your exciting life.
D. Make brunch plans with them.
E. Complain about your midterm/lack of sleep/hunger.
F. Make a comment about the weather. (more…)

—Iris Goldsztajn

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Having a paper as a final is a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you don’t have to stress out about studying and studying to take a three hour in-class exam. On the other hand, this paper could be worth a whopping fifty percent or more of your final grade. It needs to make your TA laugh, cry, appreciatively nod and use your works cited page as an example for every future section he teaches. The secret to this? Impressive vocabulary:

1. Instead of using “criticize,” try using “decry” (verb)

• to openly criticize or belittle
• My roommate often decries her statistics professor because he refuses to provide a formula sheet for midterms. (more…)

—Stephanie Orpilla

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In Dr. John M. Olson’s laboratory in the Life Sciences building, you can find an abandoned keyboard, a broom named Nimbus 2000 (as written in silver Sharpie) and a ball of multi-colored tape larger than your head. It’s larger than three heads combined, actually. This ball of tape, affectionately named “Gaffney,” represents the agony and stress of over 200 students who have taken Life Sciences 10H, one of the available prerequisite courses for the minor in Biomedical Research offered by UCLA’s Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology. LS10H strives to give first- and second-year students an early introduction to research through discovery-based education.

This week, I interviewed Dr. Olson, one of LS10H’s instructors, with whom I have been taking LS10H with this winter quarter. Currently, the project is focused on identifying genes of interest to fruit fly blood cell, lymph gland, and heart formation. Dr. Olson, a Drosophila researcher and current educator to many tens of students, has been involved since the beginning of the project, which is funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. We sat down with him for a quick Q&A on undergraduate research and the topic of academia in general. (more…)

—Kelly Yeo

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