Is There More to Taste Than Simple Preference?

 

It seems like everyone these days can agree on what tastes good and what tastes bad –for example the cake on the left looks delicious, but the baby mouse donut on the right - although most of us have never tasted it before - doesn’t seem to trigger our appetite, no matter how hungry we may be. 

So what exactly drives our taste perception and preferences?

Huff Post article-evolving past simple reproduction?

In this blog, we've mostly focused on evolution as it relates to physical characteristics of humans. The article linked below gives a really interesting perspective on an aspect of human evolution that is not an outward physical characteristic. Essentially, the author argues that, while the opponents of gay marriage try to convince people that it will somehow break down the reproductive family unit, our evolutionary role as humans is, these days, widened beyond simple reproduction. He argues that we clearly have the reproductive capacity to keep the human race going-this is our animal side. Our evolutionary responsibilities now include more than this-our human side. It's not a scientific article, but an interesting thought.

Click here for the article!

-hannah

“The testicle is the future.” – Harry Fisch

According to a few recent studies, human sperm has been decreasing in quality for over a century. Men are making less sperm on average; furthermore, the sperm that are produced swim poorly, are oddly shaped, come in low concentrations, and have a lower success rate of impregnating an egg. Low sperm counts are linked to factors of men’s health such as aging, being too fat or too thin, exercising too much or too little, poor diet, toxins in food and the air, and drugs including tobacco and alcohol. The urologist and researcher Harry Fisch of Weill Cornell Medical College believes that in most cases, improving a man’s health will solve his fertility problems. He encourages taking men off testosterone supplements, which can actually shrink the testicles and decrease sperm count.

Sperm stained to test semen quality. (from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Sperm_stained.JPG)

The Spark of Life: A Novel Perspective on Human Evolution

“The US fire departments responded to 386,500 home fires. Home fires killed 2,755 people and injured 13,160. Someone was injured in a reported home fire every 40 minutes. Roughly eight people died in home fires every day. A fire department responded to a home fire every 82 seconds.”

If you pay close attention, this gives only the statistics for US home fires in 2008. Expand this to the rest of the world including the third world countries that do not have the same firefighting and safety precautionary systems, we can only start to imagine the damage fire can cause. Fire is dangerous. A spark is all you need to ignite a whole city and to rob 142,807 people of their lives.