Carl Sagan's The Pale Blue Dot

I blogged this the first time over a year ago...Somehow I thought of his speech again this morning. One of the best speeches of all time. A great reminder.

The Brain in Love

10 Things You Didn't Know about Orgasm

:)

Top 10 Most Common Ingredients in Fast Food

Clearly, fast food is more complicated than it looks. Many menu items contain processed foods, which have been modified from their natural state for safety or convenience. Processed foods tend to have multiple additives to keep them fresher longer. Across an entire fast-food menu, there are thousands of ingredients, ranging from the commonplace (water) to the exotic (xanthan gum).

Considering that some of these ingredients have been implicated in serious health issues, it would be good to know which are the most common.

10. Citric Acid: The Most Common Preservative
9. High-fructose Corn Syrup: The Most Common Sweetener
8. Caramel Color: The Most Common Color Additive
7. Salt: The Most Common Flavor or Spice
Most health experts warn against eating too much salt, pointing to studies that show a link between sodium and high blood pressure. The government recommends a maximum of 6 grams of salt per day for adults, 5 grams a day for children between ages 7 and 10, and 3 grams for children between 4 and 6. Compare that recommendation to a typical family meal from KFC, which delivers a whopping 5.2 grams of salt per person [source: BBC News]!
6. Monosodium Glutamate: The Most Common Flavor Enhancer
5. Niacin: The Most Common Nutrient
4. Soybean Oil: The Most Common Oil or Fat
Soybean oil contains several unsaturated fatty acids, which means their component molecules have fewer hydrogen atoms. Unfortunately, unsaturated fats don't have long shelf lives. Hydrogenation, or forcing hydrogen gas into soybean oil under extremely high pressure, eliminates this undesirable characteristic. But it also leads to the creation of trans fatty acids, which have been linked to heart disease.
3. Mono- and Diglycerides: The Most Common Emulsifiers
Mono- and diglycerides allow smooth mixing of ingredients, prevent separation and generally stabilize food. You can find them in ice cream, margarine, baked goods, whipped topping and certain beverages. Luckily, glycerides pose no serious health threats, although they are a source of fat.
2. Xanthan Gum: The Most Common Stabilizer or Thickener
Xanthan gum also creates a smooth, pleasant texture in many foods. For this reason, it appears in ice cream, whipped topping, custard and pie filling. And the really good news: It's not associated with any known adverse effects.
1. Chicken: The Most Common Meat Product



Via HowStuffWorks

So You Think You Know? : Wildlife

To switch from male to female and back again without the help of surgery is a feat that only a handful of organisms can accomplish, including some types of fish, shrimp, snails and worms. Now, a new study adds mushroom corals to the list.

It is the first study to show that any coral can change sex in either direction, let alone both.

Understanding why and when some corals make the switch may eventually help scientists protect them from the stresses of a changing environment. For now, the study remains a fascinating window into the biology and evolution of these corals.

Mushroom corals belong to a family called Fungiidae. They are solitary, mobile species that live throughout the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Mushroom corals are abundant and diverse, but how they reproduce is something scientists haven't known much about.

The transition from male to female seems to be a natural progression with growth, van Woesik added. But the fact that the corals sometimes switch back from female to male, might be a sign that they are in distress and need to conserve resources.

The oceans face a lot of stressors these days, from pollution to climate change. If environmental pressures push too many mushroom corals towards maleness, a skewed sex ratio could threaten their future.

Via Discovery Channel

Top 10: Steps to a better brain

It doesn't matter how brainy you are or how much education you've had - you can still improve and expand your mind. Boosting your mental faculties doesn't have to mean studying hard or becoming a reclusive book worm. There are lots of tricks, techniques and habits, as well as changes to your lifestyle, diet and behaviour that can help you flex your grey matter and get the best out of your brain cells. And here are 10 of them.

1. Smart drugs

2. Food for thought

3. The Mozart effect

4. Gainful employment

5. Memory marvels

6. Sleep on it

7. Body and mind

8. Nuns on a run

9. Attention seeking

10. Positive feedback

Via New Scientist

Improve Your Eyesight with Games

Doctors may start prescribing a dose of violent conflict, if a trial confirms evidence that computer gaming improves eyesight.

Six years ago Daphne Bavelier at the University of Rochester, New York, exploded the myth that gaming is bad for your eyes by showing that expert gamers outperform non-gamers at a variety of visual tasks. Now she has demonstrated that playing action-packed video games improves a person's ability to perceive contrast, a skill we rely on in dark conditions.

The finding raises the prospect that people with amblyopia, sometimes known as "lazy eye", could be treated with games.

Bavelier's team randomly assigned 13 healthy young adults, who did not previously play video games, to play either action games like the first-person shooter Unreal Tournament or more sedate titles such as The Sims for 50 hours over nine weeks.

Tests before and after showed that the contrast perception of both groups improved - the action-game group improved by 43% and 11% in the other group. The effect persisted for months, even when people didn't play games at all.

The study is the first indication that contrast sensitivity can be altered without corrective lenses or surgery, says Bavelier. Her work has inspired Dennis Levi and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, to begin a trial to see whether gaming can help people with amblyopia.

Bavelier's results show gaming's potential for clinical treatment, says Lotfi Merabet, a neuroscientist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who uses games for visual rehabilitation. He predicts gaming will become increasingly common as a clinical tool.


Via New Scientist

Darwin's Dangerous Idea Part 3: Life and Death

Part 1/6

Darwin's Dangerous Idea
BBC2 Thursday 19th March 2009

In the final episode of this ground-breaking series about Charles Darwin's legacy, Andrew Marr discovers how Darwin's ideas are helping us to save ourselves and all life on earth from extinction. Marr argues that Charles Darwin is the father of ecology. The modern environmental movement was built upon his insight that all life on earth is linked by a delicate web of connections. He also discovers that Darwin's dangerous idea is inspiring scientists to create a 'flotilla of Darwinian Noah's Arks' to help save life on earth from disaster.

Exploring the impact of industrialisation, intensive farming and our growing hunger for meat, Marr tells the story of our slow awakening to the full implications of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection and our own destructive powers as a species. After showing how Darwin developed his ideas by digging up fossils, exploring coral reefs and studying the habits of the humble earthworm, Marr explains how Darwin's dangerous idea was launched into the space age. He discovers the mysterious movements of the 'mouse society', snorkels over a coral reef and visits a 'boiling cauldron of evolution' - the tropical rainforest - which is now threatened by the shadow of mass extinction.

Over the last 150 years, the combination of Darwin's ideas with politics has often had disastrous social consequences. In this programme, Andrew Marr argues that our failure to combine politics with Darwin's insights into the delicate connections between all life on earth could be accelerating the countdown to our own extinction.

Darwin's Dangerous Idea Part 2: Born Equal?

Part 1/6

Darwin's Dangerous Idea
BBC2 Thursday 12th March 2009

Andrew Marr discovers something surprising about his own evolutionary history as this epic series continues with an exploration of Darwin's impact on politics and society.

Under the banner of Survival of the Fittest, Darwin's theory of natural selection has been used to justify imperial expansion and the oppression of indigenous peoples; to inform the science of eugenics - the selective breeding of humans which was implemented in the United States in the early 20th century; and to provide a veneer of scientific respectability to Nazi plans to create an Aryan master race. It was also used quite explicitly to explain the twisted logic of the final solution.

But Andrew Marr also finds a kind of redemption for Darwin's theory of evolution. After the Second World War, it was a founding idea behind the democratic, anti-racist values of the United Nations. More recently, it has also been used to help eliminate a fatal genetic disease from the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn. Marr goes on to consider the difficult social and political choices presented by predictive DNA testing - the final frontier of Darwin's Dangerous Idea.

Darwin's Dangerous Idea Part 1: Body and Soul

Part 1/6

Darwin's Dangerous Idea
BBC2 Thursday 5th March 2009

In the first episode of the three-part series, Andrew Marr explores how Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection has taken on a life of its own far beyond the world of science.

He argues that Darwin's theory has transformed our understanding of what it means to be human. Over the last 150 years, Darwin's ideas have challenged the need for a creator, undermined religious authority, and provided new ways of looking at the origins of human morality.

Marr's journey begins following Darwin's footsteps in Tierra del Fuego at the southernmost tip of South America where Darwin first encountered an 'uncivilised' native tribe. This began to raise questions in his mind about the origins of the human race. The answers to these questions would emerge over the next 30 years, culminating in the publication of On The Origin of Species in 1859.

Marr then traces the development of Darwin's idea in the years since then and finds a range of influences that Darwin could never have imagined: from the existential philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche to the battlefields of the First World War; from the Freudian psychoanalyst's couch to the Vatican; and from the genetic logic of kindness to an Islamic creationist's claim that Darwin is to blame for modern terrorism. Darwin's dangerous idea is as influential and challenging today as it was 150 years ago.

Richard Dawkins on "Enemies of Reason"

Last week I was watching the documentary called "Religulous". It's the Bill Maher's take on the world's religions. It's brilliantly funny. Some clips will make you say WTF in your head, or out loud. Anyway, it reminded me about an amazing documentary below of Richard Dawkins...

Sweaty T-Shirt Experiment

An interesting experiment proving that beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder, but also in the nose.



Also, check How Perfumes Work, A Scent of men.

10 Evolution Stories Darwin Would Love

1. Sexy Bugs – tiny blister beetles have evolved a trick to survive their infancy in the scorching Mojave desert. They band together and emit phermones to attract male bees that they then ride like a taxicab to shelter and food. (full web article here)

2. Evolving Brain – Are people still evolving? Yes indeed, and it’s happening in the organ that sets us apart from the other species. (full web article here)

3. Shrinking Fish – Why would certain fish evolve to become smaller and weaker? Evolutionarily it’s in their best interests, because fishermen throw those fish back rather than eat them. (full web article here)

4. Romance Genes – When it comes to mating and dating, smell matters. An evolutionary psychologist showed how humans can basically sniff out a mate with the appropriate genetic make-up – or at least sniff out the bad ones. (full web article here)

5. Walking Whales - What ran like a wolf, but is related to the hippo, and now lives in the ocean? A Whale! (full web article here)

6. Hot Chili Secret – the heat in hot peppers is actually an evolutionary defense mechanism aimed at stopping fungus, as hole-poking insects also play a role. (full web article here)

7. Vampire Bats Run – Aside from the incredibly amusing video of vampire bats on a mini-treadmill, the story of how bats lost and regained (”devolved and revolved”?) the ability to run is pretty awesome. (full web article here)

8. Straight Corn Rows – How humans have shaped the evolution of a plant’s, um, shape. Or, why corn used to look really nasty. (full web article here)

9. Mating Trick – Cross dressing among invertebrates? Not quite. Small male cuttlefish who are masters of disguise put a brains-over-brawn twist on the survival of the fittest. (full web article here)

10. Reverse Evolution – scientists reconstructed a single gene that existed more than 500 million years ago, by reverse engineering it from the many genes it has since split into. (full web article here)

Source: Science Central

Richard Dawkins on "The Genius of Charles Darwin"

This is part 1 of 10. Do check the rest esp. part 2, 1:00 min Dawkins was reading the hate mails. LOL

Tree of Life

Celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth on February 12, I would like to post a few interesting clips on evolution...starting off with this one:


More details on the evolution...

Thanks Taro for reminding me about the clip.

How Perfumes Work

"...There are three broad theories of perfume use. One is that people employ it to mask body odours that they perceive as bad. The second is that some perfumes contain chemicals that mimic human pheromones—elusive, mysterious (and possibly mythical) substances believed by some to play a role in mating. The third is that people use it to heighten or fortify natural scent, and thus advertise sexual attractiveness or availability...

...As to pheromones, whether humans have these is questionable. A pheromone is a chemical that elicits a specific behavioural response at a distance. Some insects, for example, can release sex pheromones that will attract a mate from many kilometres away. The most likely human candidate is a substance called androstadienone. This is a derivative of testosterone that is found in men’s sweat and is known, from brain-scanning studies, to promote activity in parts of women’s brains. That this results in changes in behaviour has not, however, been clearly demonstrated.

Terri Molnar, a spokeswoman for the Sense of Smell Institute, a research organisation in New York tied to the fragrance industry, says of human pheromones, “I think we believe they exist but they do not function as an attractant. They will elevate one’s mood but not attract a mate."...

...people are able to sniff out suitable MHC genomes in prospective partners. A woman, for instance, will prefer the smell of T-shirts that have been worn by men whose MHC genes are appropriately different from her own. Dr Milinski and Dr Wedekind also found an association between a woman’s MHC genes and some of her preferences for perfume. Perception of musk, rose and cardamom is correlated with the MHC. Perception of castoreum and cedar is not."

Read the full article...

The Pale Blue Dot

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe:, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves..." - Carl Sagan