When I eat the food, some foods taste good only in hot temperature and some other foods taste pretty nice even in cold temperature. Obviously, serving temperature of the food has a close relationship with the taste of the food. Some foods are good or better when they are served with the right temperature. It is hard to tell that hot serving temperature is always better than cold serving temperature. So, I’m going to explain why foods have different taste in different serving temperature.

According to Karel Talavera Perez, at the University of Leuven in Belgium, human’s perception of taste decreases when the food serving temperature rises higher than 35C because human’s body accept this high-temperature food as a hazard. So, we can feel a taste like burning. He also said that perhaps we do taste at such high temperatures but we don’t pay attention to it because there is a burning feeling. Simply, a burning taste is a kind of our body alarm to notify the dangerous and it makes us unable to feel the taste.

In 2005, Journal of Sensory Studies found that the taste of cheddar cheese was perceived differently in different serving temperatures. Researchers prepared the cheese with different serving temperatures which were 5C, 12C and 21C. They found that the taste of sourness increased as the serving temperature rose. They also found that it is much harder to evaluate the taste of cheese when it was served with hotter temperatures. Other types of food also showed differences in their tastes when they were served with different temperatures. For example, ice cream gets sweeter when the serving temperature rises, the beer tastes more bitter with warmer serving temperatures and ham tastes saltier in cold serving temperature.

According to a study published in the journal Nature in 1999, temperature changes in certain part of human’s tongue can create an illusion of the taste. Heating the front part of the tongue can cause an illusion taste of sweetness and cooling the front part of the tongue can evoke a taste of sourness and saltiness.

Overall, if you want to have a certain type of taste or you just want to enjoy your food, this can be a helpful information for you. I think I will use some of them to make my food more delicious.

Images: digital.vpr.net

www.thinkstockphotos.ae

Thanks to the well-developed technology, the population is still growing and will grow in the future. However, food which is also a resource has a certain limit and we need to think about what are we going to eat in the future. Maybe this is not a problem that is close to us, but nobody knows about the future. Also, environmental issues are related to the production food. So, it will be great if we can find some better alternatives for our regular meal. There are many on-going studies about the new food. Also, there are some alternatives that we can choose. I’m going to introduce some of those options that we can choose in the future.

I prepared a short video about eating insects for food.  The insect can be an option for the future food because insects provide similar nutritional value with the real meat. Also, according to the researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, they cost less to raise compare to the livestock and also a good source of the protein. Moreover, there are many kinds of insects which are edible for the human. Some of the world’s population already started to eat insects for their regular meal. Including African countries, Japan and Thailand. But kind of disgusting image of insects is a thing that we need to overcome.

The meat produced in the lab also can be an option. In 2012, Dutch scientists made the cultured meat (lab-grown meat) successfully. They grew muscle tissue of cow by using stem cells and resembled it with calamari. According to the study from Oxford University, they found that lab-grown meat can reduce greenhouse gases and also can save energy and water. Those are advantages that we can’t get if we keep growing livestock for the meat. Moreover, we can add healthy nutrients to lab-grown meat.

Many studies are still ongoing and there will be more studies about this topic. If we successfully replace our regular meal with those new alternatives, it will be great for all of us.

Images: www.theatlantic.com

Tim Wakefield, Phil Niekro, Charlie Hough, Tom Candiotti, and R.A Dickey. Did you recognize what is a common ground of them? Yes, all of them are famous for throwing knuckleball throughout their careers. The knuckleball is still one of the toughest pitches for hitters to hit because it just randomly changes its direction. So, it is simply unpredictable. Most of the pitches that are thrown by pitchers have certain types of movements, but knuckleball doesn’t have one. If you never heard about the knuckleball before I prepared a video for you.

The video is about 230 strikeouts that Dickey had in his career high 2012 season (Cy Young Award winner for 2012 National League). You can easily notice that pitches in the video look like different types of pitches, but most of them are a knuckleball. The knuckleball is continuously and randomly changing its direction on the way to the hitter. Therefore, knuckleball often considered as an unhittable pitch for hitters.

Why does knuckleball move like the video? It is related to its spin. A normal type of pitch, for example, fastball rotates about 16 to 17 times on its way to the hitter from the pitcher. That fast rotation of fastball and seams on baseball created an air flow which is evenly spread over the entire ball. That helps baseball to travel steadily to the catcher’s mitt. However, knuckleball usually rotates about 1 to 1.5 times on its way to the hitter from the pitcher. Simply, it barely rotates. So, the airflow stays on one side of the baseball for a while before it started to move to the other side of the baseball. That slow rotation of baseball makes the baseball drift in the direction of the leading seam for the first time and then makes erratic moves.

The knuckleball is also the hardest pitch to master because of its grip and special traits. Moreover, if pitcher made a mistake with a knuckleball, that is going to be a disaster for the pitcher because that is exactly same with just a batting ball. So, to be a knuckleball pitcher in professional baseball leagues is a really hard thing to do and requires a massive amount of practice.

Images : switchpitching.blogspot.com

We normally just live our daily lives without knowing that there are some particular time slots, which can maximize the effectiveness of certain activities. For example, activities like take a nap, read something, see a doctor, do workout and etc. So, I’m going to introduce some of those time slots which can maximize the effectiveness of certain activities.

The best time for taking a nap is 1 PM to 2:30 PM. According to the Michael Smolensky, a professor of environmental physiology at the University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston, in the early afternoon there is a dip in body temperature and that causes sleepiness. Also, he said that an ideal nap should last 15~20 minutes. If a nap lasts more than 30 minutes, that may end up with sleep inertia and makes people more tired. Richard Schwab, at the University of Pennsylvania Penn Sleep Center, said that early afternoon is a time that your circadian rhythms (your body) want to get some rest. So, having a nap in early afternoon can help your body to work more properly.

The best time for reading something is 8 AM or 10 PM. According to the Smolensky, memorizing ability depends on nucleic acids and those are closely related to circadian rhythms of our body. So, human’s brain does not accept information with the same efficiency through the day and 8 AM and 10 PM are periods when human’s brain can store information most efficiently. I think it would be great for college students to have a review at 8 AM before having a test.

The best time for doing a workout is 5 PM to 6 PM. According to the Matthew Edlund, head of the Center for Circadian Medicine, early evening and late afternoon are the time that body’s fitness increasing and decreasing the chance of injury. Also, in the late afternoon and early evening, human’s lungs can use oxygen more efficiently and muscles are warmed up because of activities that people had in the day time. So, workout in those time can reduce the chance of having sprain and strain and can work as a stress reliever.

There is no 100% perfect time to do something, but if you want to do things more effectively and successfully. using changes of our bodies can be a solution for you.

Images :  www.brainscape.com

www2.palomar.edu

fitnesspatterns.com

when I laugh, questions like why do we laugh? and is it good for our health? are always floating around my head. Laughter is considered as a part of the universal human vocabulary. We don’t need to learn how to laugh. All members of the human beings can understand what it is, regardless of where they came from.

According to the Robert Provine from the University of Maryland, laughter occurs unconsciously. So, we don’t have to decide to do it. We can consciously suppress a laugh, but we do not consciously make laughter. That is why it is hard for us to make fake laughter. Even today, there is no clear explanation about why do people laugh. We just know that laughter is caused by thoughts, situations, and words. Also, we know that laughter is a form of a message that we send to other people because we do not laugh much when we are alone.

Robert Provine and his undergraduate research assistants started a research about when and why people laugh. To figure out this, they went to malls and city sidewalks and they recorded what happened just before people started to laugh. They studied this over 10 years and more than 2,000 cases of naturally occurred laughter were included. The finding of the research was pretty interesting because they found that most of laughter does not have any relationship with humor. They found that people tend to laugh when they are normally talking. For example, conversations like Hey John, where ya been?” “Here comes Mary,” “How did you do on the test?” and “Do you have a rubber band? make people laugh, not jokes. Robert Provine said about his research “We don’t decide to laugh at particular moments. Our brain makes the decision for us. These curious “ha ha ha’s” are bits of social glue that bond relationships.” So, it is hard to say that laughter follows after certain situations. Laughter is more like unconscious and automatic behaviors of people.

In an evolutionary perspective, Robert Provine, at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County said that we believe laughter evolved from the panting behavior of our ancient primate ancestors, because when we tickle chimpanzees and gorillas, they also make a sound of a laugh (which sounds different from human’s laugh). Those apes laugh in situations like a tickle, play and chasing games, which are almost similar with the human. Also, other animals like rat also make laugh (high-pitch vocalizations) in similar situations. So, those findings may have relationships with why do people laugh.

Still, there is no enough or clear explanation about why do we laugh, but series of findings and researches are getting closer and closer for a clear explanation. I think laughter is part of our life and a form of a positive message that our body can use.

Images :  http://m.simon.com/aboutmall.aspx?id=189

http://walkingcatfish.blogspot.com/2011/06/laughing-gorilla.html

Have you ever thought about your birth month may have influences on diseases that you can have? New research reveals that there are some correlations between the birth month and particular diseases.

Nicholas Tatonetti at Columbia University Medical Center and his team started the research about whether birth months has relationships with disease risk. They started their research in 2000 and it lasted more than 14 years. They analyzed a massive database of the patient from Columbia Medical center (which were about 1.7 million patients) and 1688 diseases were examined with the patient database. This research is different from previous studies because most of the previous studies were focused on individual conditions, not the disease itself. The founding was also interesting. Tatonetti’s team found 55 diseases are showing a strong relationship with birth month and those relationships cannot be explained by coincidence.

With the wheel above, you can check which disease is at high risk in which month, divided by months. The most interesting finding is that many of those 55 diseases are related to the heart. Especially for the people who were born in late winter and early spring tend to have increased the lifetime risk of heart disease. But still, Tatonetti and his team don’t have a clear explanation about why those people tend to have increased the lifetime risk of heart disease.

This chart is showing which birth month is at low and high risk for diseases. Overall, May and July are at the lowest risk for diseases and October and November are at the highest risk for diseases they examined. However, Tatonetti said, “The risk is not that great that you should worry about when you are baby is going to be born. Also, there are many other variables.” He also said, he wants to help doctors to solve important clinical problems using this new wealth of data.

It is really interesting that birth month and particular diseases have meaningful relationships and it needs mores studies to figure out why those diseases are having relationships with birth months. Even if, the risk and influence related to birth month are minor compared to more influential activities like exercise, diet and life pattern, it will be good for you to think about diseases related to your birth month.

Images: Dr. Nick Tatonetti, Columbia University Medical Center

Refrence: http://time.com/3913118/birth-month-disease-risk/

Hello, my name is JaeHong Lim and I’m from Seoul, South Korea. Honestly, I’m not interested in science and I’m taking this class for my GN requirement. Simply, I’m not familiar with science. For me, science has always been the hardest course. The other reason that why I’m not planning to be a science major is related to my dream. I’m a big fan of Major League Baseball and my dream is to be a sports journalist. It is hard to tell that Journalism and Science have no connection, but they don’t have much connections also.

I want to introduce Edwin Encarnacion, who is my favorite baseball player in MLB. Here is his picture and some playing highlights

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