The subtleties of taste - Massive Danish Research

Who would tell that "Girls have a better sense of taste than boys", or that "every third child of school age prefers soft drinks which are not sweet". These are just a couple of facts which a massive Danish research in schoolchildren was able to determine. This research also demonstrated that "Children and young people love fish and do not think of themselves as being fussy eaters"; "Boys have a sweeter tooth than girls. And teenagers taste differently".

Last September, 8.900 Danish students participated in one of the biggest researches ever related with taste and taste preferences in children and teenagers, conducted by Danish Science Communication and The Faculty of Life Sciences (LIFE) at University of Copenhagen.

All the participating groups of students were sent a special kit, which included taster samples and detailed instructions. The purpose of such tests was to "quantify the ability of children and young people to discover and recognise sweet and sour tastes at varying intensities, to establish which sourness or sweetness they prefer, how many taste buds they have and, finally, the children answered a number of questions on their eating habits and fussiness over food". Surprisingly, the results are very clear and have a high quality.

Now, what new facts has this study brought us:

• Girls recognise tastes more easily and accurately than boys

They are better at recognising all concentrations of both sweet and sour tastes. The difference is not dramatic, but it is quite clear. It is also a known fact that women generally have a finer sense of taste than men. However, the experiment showed that boys and girls have largely the same number of taste buds, which means that what makes the difference is the way in which boys and girls process taste impressions.

• One third of the children would rather choose non-sweet food

The pupils were instruted to rate different variants of the same soft drink, blindfolded, and one third prefered those without sugar or very little sugar. In other words, soft drinks for children and young people do not always have to contain a lot of sugar.

• Boys are more into the extremes

Unlike girls, boys like more extreme flavours, giving top marks to the sourest samples. Furthermore, the research was also able to say that boys, and not girls, have a sweeter tooth.

• I do like fish mom!

When tasting the fish samples, 70% of the children declared they liked what they were tasting. This proves that the bulk of teenagers and children actually like fish, despite what most of us think.

• Wake up!

This study revealed that at 13-14 years teenagers become markedly more sesitive to sour tastes, hence more able to enjoy and experience the subtleties of taste.

So, wouldn't it be a nice time for the food industry to broaden their horizons concerning clhindren and teenagers food preferences?


Adapted from Genengnews website


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E. Coli can create high-energy biofuel

Since 1970s it is possible to alter cell's genome by inserting foreign DNA into a cell. This recombinant technology has been widely used in medicine. The most meaningful example is the production of insulin. This technology allows to insert the human gene for a determined protein in E. Coli (for example) and this bacteria started to produced the protein with is own machinery.

Recently, some researchers took one step further. They aim to designed one "assembly line" to produce a high-energy alcohol. This alcohol as they want to make it is not naturally synthesized and that is why this is quiet an achievment.


The process of producing a alcohol is also far more complex than producing a protein as insulin. In the cell there are several proteins involved in this process and they aim to extend it to in the end have a more energetic alcohol.


Researchers were already capable of producing alcohols containing between five and eight carbons whereas ethanol only has two. Larger molecules are more energetic which is the big goal here.

Physical catalysts can make this process too but biologically the process is more controlled and can happen at lower temperatures and pressures. Biologically, once the correct genes are designed (the difficult part) and in place in the bacterial genome it is just necessary to the feed the bacterias; they do the rest of the work. This high-energy molecule can substitute petroleum as a raw material for different industries suppressing our fuel necessities.

Brain images extracted

Researchers from Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor. The research results appeared in the December 11 issue of US science journal Neuron. According to the researchers, further development of the technology may soon make it possible to view other people’s dreams while they sleep.

The scientists were able to reconstruct various images viewed by a person by analyzing changes in their cerebral blood flow. Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, the researchers first mapped the blood flow changes that occurred in the cerebral visual cortex as subjects viewed various images held in front of their eyes. Subjects were shown 400 random 10 x 10 pixel black-and-white images for a period of 12 seconds each. While the fMRI machine monitored the changes in brain activity, a computer crunched the data and learned to associate the various changes in brain activity with the different image designs.

Then, when the test subjects were shown a completely new set of images, such as the letters N-E-U-R-O-N, the system was able to reconstruct and display what the test subjects were viewing based solely on their brain activity.

For now, the system is only able to reproduce simple black-and-white images. But Dr. Kang Cheng, a researcher from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, suggests that improving the measurement accuracy will make it possible to reproduce images in color.

These results are a breakthrough in terms of understanding brain activity. In as little as 10 years, advances in this field of research may make it possible to read a person’s thoughts with some degree of accuracy.

The researchers suggest a future version of this technology could be applied in the fields of art and design — particularly if it becomes possible to quickly and accurately access images existing inside an artist’s head. The technology might also lead to new treatments for conditions such as psychiatric disorders involving hallucinations, by providing doctors a direct window into the mind of the patient.

This technology can also be applied to senses other than vision. In the future, it may also become possible to read feelings and complicated emotional states.

However, some scientists are skeptical. Unlike a polygraph, an fMRI uses powerful magnetic fields to detect tiny changes in blood oxygen levels in the brain that are believed to be signatures of cognitive processes. But last year was published a study in the American Journal of Law and Medicina questioning whether fMRI scans are reliable markers of veracity. It reported that fMRIs are open to broad interpretation, and, as such, could provide images that suggest but do not really confirm if someone is lying, which could subject innocent victims to aggressive interrogation tactics.

Adapted from Japanese blog Pink Tentacle

Is breast density related to cancer?

Doctors know that women with dense breasts have as much as six times the risk of breast cancer than those who have less dense breasts, but why that happens is yet to be explained.

However, a new research offers possible clues: Biopsies of healthy women showed differences in the cells of dense and non-dense tissue that may contribute to the development of tumors.

American doctors performed mammograms and biopsies on 60 women ages 45-85 with no history or symptoms cancer. The results showed that dense breast tissue was composed of 6 percent epithelial cells, which line the milk glands and ducts, compared to just 1 percent in the non-dense tissue. 64 percent of the dense tissue was made up of stroma (connective, non-functional supportive framework tissue), compared to 20 percent in the non-dense tissue. And dense tissue was comprised of 30 percent fat, versus 80 percent in non-dense tissue.


Breat tumors tend to originate in the epithelium, so having more of those cells may up a woman's risk of cancer. And areas surrounding the stroma produce growth factors that may stimulate the epithelium to turn cancerous. More expression of the aromatase enzyme, which converts the hormone androgen into estrogen, was found in the dense breast tissue. Estrogen drives most breast cancers, so drugs known as aromatase inhibitors are a common treatment choice.

If larger studies confirm their findings, doctors may be able to use density to determine how well such treatments are working.

Worldwide, breast cancer is the second most common type of cancer after lung cancer (10.4% of all cancer incidence, both sexes counted) and the fifth most common cause of cancer death. In 2005, breast cancer caused 502,000 deaths worldwide, almost 1% of all deaths.

Adapted from Scientific American Website

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Eating wheat triggers type 1 diabetes?

Patients with type 1 diabetes have been known to be more susceptible to another autoimmune disorder, the celiac disease, in which gluten in wheat, rye and barley triggers an immune response that damages the small intestine or gut. Now there’s evidence that the two diseases have a genetic link: they share at least seven chromosome regions.

The discovery, indicates that both diseases may be triggered by similar genetic and environmental mechanisms, such as certain foods, that cause patients' immune systems to become overactive and destroy healthy instead of infected tissue. Previous research has found that celiac disease is five to 10 times more common in people with type 1 diabetes than in the general population. These findings suggest common mechanisms are causing both celiac and type 1 diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes occurs when a person’s immune system mistakenly attacks healthy cells in that produce the hormone insulin, which is needed to convert glucose into energy. In celiac disease, a similar attack occurs on the small intestine when sufferers eat gluten-rich grains, causing inflammation in the gut that can lead to bloating, abdominal pain, nausea, constipation, diarrhea, fatigue, anemia, headaches, weight loss and failure to thrive in children. Whereas diabetes 1 patients must inject insulin daily to make up for their deficiency, people with celiac disease can avoid damage and symptoms by sticking to a gluten-free diet.

The finding raises the question of whether eating cereal and other gluten products might trigger type 1 diabetes by altering the function of the gut and its interaction with the pancreas. Specialists says it would be premature to assume from this study that gluten is also a diabetes trigger.

Scientists fear the newspaper headlines in the popular press will be something like:‘Eating wheat will cause type 1 diabetes’.

Adapted from Scientific American Website

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Amish gene protects their heart

Researchers investigating heart disease factors in an Amish community found some of them had a gene variant that seemed to keep down levels of triglycerides or blood fats, and may also be involved in keeping arteries clear of blockages since only those who had it were relatively free of arterial calcification.

Different people have different responses to fatty foods. Unused calories become triglycerides, which increase the risk of heart disease and stroke, and some people have much higher levels of these blood fats. Although diet is an obvious factor, some genes are also thought to play a major role. For example, when mice don't have the AP0C3 (short for Apolipoprotein C-III) gene they have low levels of triglycerides, regardless of what they eat. And coronary artery disease is thought to be related to this gene because it inhibits hydrolysis of triglycerides (their elimination).

800 healthy adult male and female members of the Old Order Amish in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania took part in a genome-wide association study where they had short term exposures to a range of environmental factors, such as eating a high salt diet, and then underwent a range of clinical exams.

This Amish community is quite cut off from the outside world and members tend to marry each other, creating an interesting population for geneticists because of the relatively higher proportions of people with the same gene variants compared to the world at large, making it easier to search for particular disease genes.

About 5 per cent of the Amish had one of their inherited AP0C3 genes switched off (they were heterozygous), which meant they had only half the AP0C3 expression of most other people.

They found that compared to non-carriers, the carriers of the switched off AP0C3 variant:

• Had lower levels of triglycerides (fasting and post-prandial), higher levels of HDL cholesterol (the so-called "good" cholesterol) and lower levels of LDL cholesterol (the so-called "bad" cholesterol), and


• Were less likely to have coronary artery calcification, an early sign of blocked arteries or atherosclerosis.

The researchers said these results suggested that "lifelong deficiency" of AP0C3 had a "cardioprotective effect". However, the Amish population is unique, so the mutation they found is probably not a mutation that you're going to find in other populations.



Adapted from Medical News Today website

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Birth Control Pills Affect Women's Taste in Men

Nowadays the divorce rate is raising in every corner of the world. Recent studies have shown that birth control pills could alter which type of men women like.

Normally, women tend to prefer men with a different major histocompatibility complex (MHC), a group of genes involved in the immune system. This is probability relate with the fact that children whose parents have a different MHC have a better immune system. Women can have a clue to a man's MHC by scent.

However, when taking the pill that simulates pregnacy, women's taste is affected. Recent studies reveled that women on the pill find more atractive men with similar MHC.

So, if during a relationship women start or stop to take the pill the relationship could be in trouble. Moreover, there are studies that state that women coupled with men with similar MHC are more likely to cheat and less sexualy satisfied. To sum it up, a woman taking the pill will more likely choose a MHC-similar man. If she stop taking it, she could be less sexualy satisfied, her taste would change, and she would be more likely to cheat.

Adapted for Scientific American

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