Author Archives: inhye kim

Tragic Island Threatening Our Marine Life

Have you heard about a huge floating island of plastic? You may not believe it, but there it is in the central North Pacific Ocean, called the Great Garbage PatchThe size of the garbage patch is enormous estimated about twice the size of Texas! Charles Moore, the scientist who first discovered the garbage patch, mentioned that the garbage island will even likely double in size in the next ten years. The Great Garbage Patch has become a discourse of environmental debate for its adverse effects on marine life.

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Source: Flickr Commons

Though there are various types and sizes of debris, the majority of the marine debris consists of plastics. Algalita Marine Research Foundationan organization that studies sampling the marine debris to determine the density of plastic debris in the pacific garbage patch, analyzed the increasing ratio of plastic to zoo plankton by weight. This means that the concentration of plastic debris is increasing, contaminating the largest biome on Earth. Increasing accumulation of plastic debris leads to the biological loss by entanglement and ingestion. Every year, over 100000 ocean animals become trapped in marine debris and unfortunately, many of them die. In addition, many marine organisms ingest plastic debris, mistaking them as their food source, being poisoned and starved.

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Author: Chris Jordan Source: Wikimedia Commons

The chemical toxicity in plastics is another factor that deteriorates marine ecosystem. Plastic debris not only contains organic contaminants, but it also contains persistent organic pollutants such as pesticides and petroleum hydrocarbons, which are resistant to environmental degradation: they will remain in the water, aggravating and propelling the speed of contamination of marine life. Also, the high concentration of contaminants causes lethal threats to marine ecosystem as they accumulate in their body through ingestion. Contaminants, such as phthalates and Bisphenol A (BPA), adversely affect reproduction in many marine animal groups, disrupting the development of amphibians and inducing genetic abnormality. BPA acts as a feminizing agent that produces an estrogenic effect in fish. It also affects the processes of sex hormones and disrupts growth, insulin signaling, bone development and brain development. Furthermore, bioaccumulation of chemicals can occur; persistent organic pollutant can accumulate in the fatty tissues of organisms and higher the trophic level, the greater potentially the negative effect on birth or mortality of marine animals.

From the serious damages caused by the garbage patch, people have to be aware that we have caused the destruction of marine life. The environment constantly lets us know through diseases or disasters that it needs care, and people must pick up on the cues and change their behavior in order to save the world from a dark future!

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YouTube video courtesy of: National Geographic

By InHye(Lisa) Kim

I commented on :

Adrian Li’s post on Vitamin C. Miracle Cure or Wannabe Dud or Neither?

Grace Kim’s post on Almost there! Universal blood for all.

Julia He’s post on My Grandma Can Become Stronger by Eating Apples and Tomatoes.

Tomato juice tastes better on airplanes

Have you ever had a tomato juice during a flight? If you have, you should like it because tomato juice actually tastes better on flights!

Generally speaking, tomato juice is not that popular compared to other juices. However, in flights, tomato juice is one of the most popular drinks. The Lufthansa Airline which is a German airline serves almost the same amount of tomato juice as beer to passengers. How could tomato juice be selected as a popular drink at 35000 feet above ground?

tomato juice

Source: Flickr Commons

Researchers have recently found that there is a relationship between sound and taste. Prof. Dr. Charles Spence at Oxford University explained that, “noise suppresses people’s ability to taste sweetness and saltiness, but it actually enhances people’s ability to taste umami.” Therefore, it is true that the airplane’s engine noise influences the way people taste food and beverages. Furthermore, his study also proved the better taste of tomato juice in flights as tomato contains the umami flavor.

Source: Flickr Commons

Umami is one of the five tastes which was identified in 1908 by Kikunae Ikeda, a professor of the Tokyo Imperial University. It is difficult to describe how umami tastes since it is sensed when glutamate binds to specific receptors on your tongue. Various types of food such as seaweed, pork, soy sauce, cheese, and mushrooms have umami taste.

Research from the faculty of food and nutrition in Cornell University stated that people prefer umami taste in the environment with high-decibel noise. The researchers conducted an experiment on a flight. Eleven men and thirty seven women aged from 18 to 55 were asked to taste liquid with each basic five tastes (sweetness, sourness, saltiness, bitterness, and umami), first time with headphones and second time without headphones. The result showed that people with headphones claimed the four flavors except umami were strong. On the other hand, people without the headphones stated that they could taste the umami flavor to be much stronger than the people with headphones did.

Therefore, studies mentioned above on the effects of sound on taste prove the reason why tomato juice actually tastes better on a flight.

Here’s an interesting video of short experiment about the effect of sound on taste:

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YouTube video courtesy of: Brit Lab

– Lisa Inhye Kim