Biology
Do humans have more than five senses?
A common misconception that’s being propagated even by most schools is that human beings only have a total of five senses. Actually, schools are mainly responsible for spreading this outdated information, but then again, they often tend to do that. I spent most of my life believing this until one faithful day a couple of years back when I decided to do what any responsible young adult does when he or she wants to learn something new or make sure that what they know is in fact correct. I Googled it. I can’t remember why I decided to question my knowledge of the human body that day, but I’m certainly glad I did. Sure enough, my good friend Google brought up a plethora of results and among them were various articles and videos talking about more than five sense. How could this be?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUn7zy8Ya20
Well, it turns out that I already knew some of the stuff I was reading and listening to, and you know it as well. For example, when you’re feeling cold or hot that’s another sense in and of itself called thermoreception. Aside from being able to sense temperature, your skin can also feel pain (also known as nociception), pressure, and I’m sure you’ve felt itching more than a couple of times. All of these might seem to be related to the sense of touch, but according to scientists each of them is a distinct sense, which actually makes sense (pun intended) when you think about it. So, right off the bat we can see that there are more than the five senses taught in school, namely smell, touch, hearing, taste, and sight. Speaking of the latter, researchers have found that there are three types of receptors in our eyes, two of which directly contribute to sight. Specifically, brightness is detected thanks to the rod photoreceptors while color comes courtesy of the cone photoreceptors. I’m mentioning this because it’s generally considered that each of them is technically a distinct sense.
The remaining “traditional” senses are pretty straight forward, although there are some disagreements in regards to taste. Similar to how eyes have different receptors for color and brightness, the tongue has different receptors for various flavors such as sweet, salty, sour, bitter, or umami. That said, these receptors – or taste buds – are different in the sense that they can each taste all the flavors, so they’re no specialized like the rods and cones. Granted, some taste buds are more sensitive to certain flavors than others depending on where they’re located on the tongue, but I’ll talk a more about that in a moment. Here I would just like to mention that it is generally accepted that the tongue is not responsible for four or five senses despite featuring all the different receptors. With that out of the way, let’s talk a bit about a taste-related fun fact.
According to the tongue map, you shouldn’t even be able to taste umami.
Since I’ve already mentioned something about false information being taught in schools, there is yet another misconception that I would like to address. Legend has it that certain parts of your tongue are solely responsible for allowing you to taste one of the aforementioned flavors. For example, the tip of the tongue is responsible for sweet while the back of the tongue is responsible for bitter. It goes without saying that this can’t be true as that would mean that you wouldn’t be able to taste something bitter if you were to put in on the tip of the tongue, which you most certainly can. In other words, the taste map is just as false as the idea that we only have five senses.
One of the main goals of this article thus far has been to share a bit of interesting info about the “traditional five senses” in order to prepare you for some of the more less known senses you may not know about, or may not have considered to be senses before. Oh yes, we’re getting to the good stuff now. One of these senses goes by the name of proprioception and it’s being described as being your ability to perceive your own body parts, specifically arms and legs. If you want to experiment with it, just close your eyes and wave your arms a little. Now see if you can figure out where your arms are while your eyes are still closed. Of course you can. Whether you look at them or not, you always know where your arms and legs are in relation to the rest of the body.
You’d better hope that your proprioception is up to par if you’re undergoing a field sobriety test.
Similar to all the other senses, there are instances when you can lose your proprioception, in which case you’ll have a very difficult time performing virtually any action. Completely losing this sense happens very rarely, but partial loss of proprioception happens on a daily basis for many people if they’re drunk or on drugs. If you’ve ever experienced one of those states you likely know that even walking straight can become problematic. In fact, that’s exactly what the cops are testing for when they tell you to walk in a straight line or touch your nose with your finger. Easy for a sober person, not so much for someone who partially lost their sense of proprioception due to alcohol or drugs. Proprioception aside, those substances, as well as various medical conditions can also affect you sense of equilibrioception, more commonly referred to as the sense of balance. Otherwise known as the vestibular sense, equilibrioception is tied to the inner ear but has little to do with hearing. Instead, it helps you sense direction, acceleration, movement, walk upright, and as its many names suggest, also helps you keep your balance while walking.
The next sense I want to talk about can be just as useful as all the others that were already mentioned, although it’s a bit more situational. Magnetoreception is being described as one’s ability to sense magnetic fields around them. A number of animals use magnetoreception for the purposes of navigation as it gives them a better sense of direction and altitude. Some examples include bats, homing pigeons, and various species of invertebrates. Generally speaking, this sense is most useful for flying animals, however, some land ones are known to use it as well. Humans also have this sense to a lesser extent, although only some can make good use of it. Just like some people are able to see or hear better than others. those with a strong sense of magnetoreception are better at knowing where North is without looking at a compass, which can come in handy if you’re lost in the woods and don’t have a map. As mentioned, it’s pretty situational.
Magnetoreception might come in handy if you can learn how to harness it.
Unlike magnetoreception, thirst and hunger are not a mystery to most human beings and they count as senses, too. Generally speaking, you can sense when your body needs food or water and you can also sense when you’ve had enough. There is some debate regarding this seeing as how you can often ignore this sense and go days without eating or eat even some more after your body tells you that you’re full. Although sometimes enjoyable, I don’t advise the last past as it lead to vomiting, which comes as a result of yet another sense called the chemoreceptor trigger zone. Sure enough, that was just as example as this sense can be triggered by various other factors as well. Aside from all of those, there are a few other non-traditional senses according to my other good friend Wikipedia, such as the sense that controls your breathing frequency, or the one that causes your cheeks to blush. I’ll skip a couple of them in order to touch upon something that’s a little bit more interesting.
An often debated topic when it comes to the senses is time, or rather, how we perceive it. Scientists have come to the conclusion that our ability to sense the passage of time is governed not by one, but multiple mechanisms that can be found throughout various parts of the brain. Though we’ve yet to fully understand these mechanisms, we do know that one of the components is responsible for our circadian rhythms, or 24-rhythms. Known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus, this component is located in the hypothalamus. Much like all of our other senses, the sense of time – or chronoception – can also be distorted by a variety of factors such as drugs or medical conditions like Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia. Interestingly, our perception of time can also change based on our emotional states or when we’re in a fight-or-flight situation. Age also plays an important role when it comes to chronoception, with young people generally being better than older ones at estimating time intervals. The reason why many young adults often complain that some days seem to last “forever” is because they do in fact experience time at a slower rate. By comparison, older people are often heard saying things like “where have the years gone?”. In short, if you feel like time is running faster as you get older, it’s because it does. Tick tock.
The bottom line is that humans do have more than five senses even though some are less obvious while others are not yet fully understood. The traditional five senses model is believed to have been proposed by Greek scientist Aristotel or one of his contemporaries back in the day. Aristotel was undoubtedly a smart guy, but he also lived between the years 384–322 BC, so many of his theories have become a bit outdated by now. We’ve learned a lot about the human body in the meantime and we’ll continue to learn even more as time passes. Perhaps some day we’ll even come up with ways of adding even more senses, or enhancing the ones found in our already impressive repertoire. I don’t know about you, but I could really go for some better hearing or vision, especially in the dark. Echolocation would be nice to have, too.
Sorry Aristotle, but your five senses model is a bit outdated now.
Biology
A new study shows that the Atlantic Gulf Stream was surprisingly strong during the last ice age
The world was stuck in a big ice age 20,000 years ago. Ice sheets that were two miles thick covered a large portion of North America, Scandinavia, and the British Isles.
Greenhouse gas levels were much lower, it was 6 °C colder, and the sea level was at least 120 meters lower because of all the water trapped in ice sheets. This made the land that is now underwater visible. From France to London, you could have walked through Doggerland. From Russia to Alaska, you could have walked through Beringia.
But our study, which is now out in Nature, has found at least one surprising thing about the climate during the ice age: the Gulf Stream, which moves warm water north through the Atlantic, was stronger and deeper than it is now.
As paleoceanographers (scientists who study the past of the oceans), we wanted to find out how the oceans behaved during the last ice age to get a sense of how climate change might change things in the future.
Water that is warm, from Mexico to Norway
As part of the Gulf Stream, warm, salty water from the Gulf of Mexico flows north today. It keeps the weather in western Europe very mild because a part of it flows through Europe and gives off a lot of heat.
Then, when the surface water goes north of Iceland, it loses enough heat to make it denser, which makes it sink and form deepwater. At depths greater than a mile below the surface, this process starts the global deepwater conveyor belt, which links all of the world’s oceans and moves heat slowly around the planet.
Scientists used to think that the Gulf Stream and other deep and surface ocean currents in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation were weaker during very cold times, like the last ice age. More sea ice in the Arctic should have cut down on the amount of water sinking from the surface to the deep ocean, which would have slowed down the global deepwater conveyor belt.
Our new study, on the other hand, shows that the Gulf Stream was much stronger and deeper during the last ice age. Even though it is cold because of glaciers and there are huge ice sheets around the northern parts of the Atlantic, this is still the case.
According to our research, the climate during the glaciers may have made the Gulf Stream stronger. During the ice age, winds were much stronger in some parts of the North Atlantic. This would have made the Gulf Stream stronger. So, even though less water was sinking from the surface to the deep ocean, the Gulf Stream was stronger and still carried a lot of heat north, though not as far as it does now.
Putting together how the oceans moved in the past
So we could not use data from weather buoys or satellites to figure out how the ocean would have moved during the last ice age. Instead, we used marine sediment cores, which are long tubes of mud from the ocean floor, as a substitute.
The cores we used were made of mud that had been building up on the seafloor for 25,000 years. They were collected from different spots along the east coast of the US by research vessels from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, where some of our team is based.
We looked at the size of the sediment grains in the mud to figure out how strong the Gulf Stream was during the ice age. Bigger grains meant faster flow, and smaller grains meant slower flow.
We also looked at the shell chemistry of foraminifera, which are tiny organisms with only one cell. We found the line between foraminifera that used to live in warm subtropical waters and those that used to live in colder subpolar waters by comparing data from a range of depths at different sites in the Northwest Atlantic. We were able to figure out how deep the Gulf Stream was when those organisms were alive.
This makes climate predictions less certain
According to our study, changes in wind speed and the melting of the Greenland ice sheet have an impact on the Gulf Stream and the larger network of Atlantic currents. This is a big deal for climate change in the future.
Climate models say that the Gulf Stream will get weaker in the 21st century, partly because there will be less wind. This would make the sea level rise even more along the east coast of the US and make Europe warmer than the rest of the world. If climate change changes the way winds blow in the future, the Gulf Stream will also change. This makes it harder to predict what the weather will be like in the future.
Also, our results show that we shouldn’t say simple things about Atlantic currents and how the climate will change in the future. There are many currents in the Atlantic, and each one has its own behavior and way of reacting to climate change. So, when we talk about how human-caused climate change affects the climate system, we need to be very clear about which part we’re talking about and what that means for different countries.Talking About It
David Thornalley is a professor of ocean and climate science at UCL, and Mark Maslin is a professor of natural sciences there. Jack Wharton is a postdoctoral research fellow in paleoceanography.
This article was taken from The Conversation and shared with a Creative Commons license. Read the first article.
An ancient wolf that has been frozen like a popsicle for more than 44,000 years has been analyzed by scientists in Russia. The results will give us a lot of information about how it lived as a top predator during the Ice Age.
Over 40 meters (131 feet) of permanent ice covered the Tirekhtyakh River in the Abyysky District in the Far East of Russia in 2021. This is where the wolf was found.
The body was taken to the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Since then, scientists from the Mammoth Museum of the North-Eastern Federal University and the European University at Saint Petersburg have been busy examining it.
Under clean conditions, the team cut open the body and took samples of the organs inside as well as the food that went through the digestive system. The germs in a wolf’s gut might help us figure out what it eats and how healthy it is.
“His stomach has been kept in a pure form, with no other substances present, so the job is not easy.” After the preparation, we hope to get a picture of the plants and animals that lived in the Pleistocene era. We have the chance to find out what it ate because it was a big, busy predator. Albert Protopopov, head of the department for the study of mammoth fauna at the Academy of Sciences of Yakutia, said in a statement, “The things that his victims ate also ended up in his stomach.”
“Also, we chose one premolar tooth to figure out how old the find was biologically.” We can tell that this is an adult male because the teeth are worn down and the sagittal ridge has grown, said Maxim Cheprasov, who is in charge of the lab at the North-Eastern Federal University Mammoth Museum.
Researchers are hopeful that some of the germs that live inside the animal might still be alive after being frozen in a state similar to hibernation for tens of thousands of years at temperatures below zero. We might even be able to use them to help with science today if they have survived.
“Working with the NEFU Mammoth Museum on science projects has helped us learn more about the bacteria that lived in the mammoth steppe during the Pleistocene period.” Expert in the study of diseases and infections at North-Western State Medical University, Artemy Goncharov, said, “We see that living bacteria can survive in fossil animal finds for thousands of years, which are a kind of witnesses of those ancient times.”
“We are hoping for good results that will help us learn a little more about what ancient microbial communities were, what they did, and how many dangerous pathogenic bacteria were in their structure. “Maybe microorganisms will be found that can be used in medicine and biotechnology as promising sources of substances that have biological activity,” Goncharov said.
The North-Eastern Federal University also has another interesting specimen. They just bought a frozen wolf from the Nizhnekolymsk area of Yakutia, Siberia, and they plan to start studying it as soon as they finish studying this one.
This part of the world has a lot of permafrost, which is a layer of forever frozen soil below the Earth’s surface. It is perfect for storing and preserving living things from the Ice Age. In recent years, a wide range of ancient animals, including a 49,000-year-old bird and a beautifully kept puppy named “Dogor,” have been found in this very cold part of Siberia.
Artificial Intelligence
Eric Lefkofsky, the billionaire founder of Groupon, has launched another initial public offering (IPO),tempus is an artificial intelligence (AI) health technology company
Eric Lefkofsky is no stranger to the world of public listings, and he’s gearing up to embark on his fourth venture. With a net worth of nearly $4 billion, this serial entrepreneur has successfully taken three of his own businesses public.
Today, he is the founder of Tempus, a genomic testing and data analysis company that is preparing to go public. However, he gained significant recognition as one of the co-founders of Groupon, a daily deal pioneer. Groupon made headlines in 2011 when it went public with a valuation of nearly $13 billion, marking one of the most notable debuts of that year.
Groupon’s initial public offering (IPO) and the subsequent years were notoriously challenging. However, the public listings of Lefkofsky’s other two companies, InnerWorkings in 2006 and Echo Global Logistics in 2009, didn’t cause major concerns for investors and performed successfully. InnerWorkings, a supply chain startup that was founded in 2001, was recently sold to private equity for a significantly lower amount than its initial public offering market capitalization.
Throughout its 11-year tenure as a publicly traded company, the stock of Echo Global Logistics experienced a consistent increase in value. Eventually, a private equity firm bought it for a significant 50% premium over its closing trading price in 2021.
There were some controversies surrounding Groupon, including a situation where Lefkofsky allegedly took a significant amount of money from the company’s pre-IPO round. This left the company with limited working capital and resulted in a significant decrease in reported revenue after regulators examined the financials. This unconventional decision has also revealed another transaction based on his previous experiences. He successfully sold his dot-com-era business, Starbelly.com, in 2000, but regrettably, the company that bought it filed for bankruptcy a year later, according to some sources.
Lefkofsky has gained a reputation for having a knack for success, although it may not always translate to long-term gains for investors in his companies.
Tempus is Lefkofsky’s latest endeavor in building a company that will stand the test of time and provide significant value. His wife’s successful breast cancer treatment reportedly inspired him to establish Tempus in 2015.
He expressed his surprise at the lack of data involved in her care during an interview with Forbes last year. “I became obsessed with the notion that there existed a wealth of technology designed for various industries that could be utilized in cancer care to empower physicians to make informed decisions based on data.”
He resigned as Groupon’s CEO in 2015, at a time when the company’s value had dropped to $2.6 billion. Groupon currently has a market capitalization of approximately $600 million. During that period, Lefkofsky directed his attention towards Lightbank, an early-stage venture firm.
It is worth noting that, according to the Tempus S-1 filing, he has not received any salary in the past two years. Unfortunately, the S-1 did not disclose more than two years’ worth of executive compensation for any named officer. Additionally, the filing states that he is entitled to receive a payment of $800,000 and a $800,000 bonus commencing in 2025. Furthermore, despite not receiving a salary, he received a substantial $5.3 million dividend from company stock this year, as indicated in the prospectus. In addition, the filing revealed that Tempus has taken care of the expenses related to $7.5 million worth of preferred shares and has also covered his private plane costs, amounting to $200,000.
Tempus saw a significant increase in revenues, with a growth of 66% from $321 million in 2022 to $531 million in 2023. However, the company continues to experience significant financial losses, with net losses of $290 million in 2023 and $214 million in 2022. Despite the challenging financials, there is a positive development in the operating loss margin, which has decreased from 83% in 2022 to 37% in 2023, as stated in the S-1 filing.
Additionally, Lefkofsky-founded Pathos AI and Tempus have a partnership. Pathos AI is a drug discovery platform that was established in 2020. Pathos compensates Tempus for the privilege of licensing its data. Meanwhile, Ryan Fukushima, the COO of Tempus, also takes on the role of CEO at Pathos and divides his time between the two companies.
There are additional signs that suggest Lefkofsky has a greater level of influence at Tempus than is typically seen.
Tempus has not yet disclosed its principal stockholder’s chart, but it is evident that Lefkofsky, a billionaire, is among them and owns a minimum of 5% of the company. It is clear that he is determined to maintain complete control of the company once it becomes publicly traded. Tempus has given his shares an impressive 30 votes per share. It is not uncommon to have super voting shares, but typically 10 votes per share is more common, while 20 votes is considered to be on the higher side. It is noteworthy that the CEO of a healthcare company has a significantly high level of shareholder influence. It remains to be seen if this influence will be diminished in future S-1s, which would indicate potential investor concerns.
However, Tempus’ S-1 filing makes it abundantly clear that Lefkofsky plays a crucial role in the company’s future. According to a healthcare VC interviewed, Tempus owes much of its growth and success in raising capital to Lefkofsky’s impressive marketing and fundraising abilities.
Tempus secured an impressive $1.42 billion in funding from a range of investors, including Lightbank, NEA, Revolution Growth, T. Rowe Price, Novo Holdings, Franklin Templeton, and Baillie Gifford. The company’s most recent valuation was $8.1 billion in October 2022. Tempus’ S-1 filing disclosed a recent $200 million investment from SoftBank.
No matter the amount of capital raised in its IPO, Tempus’ prospectus clearly states that the company is still a long way from reaching breakeven and will require additional capital in the future. Typically, unprofitable companies make sure to include this information in their prospectuses. However, it is important to note that investors may anticipate Tempus to have a follow-on public offering in the future, which could potentially impact their share price negatively.
Despite generating only $5.5 million in revenue from AI, which represents approximately 1% of its total revenue in 2023, Tempus is actively positioning itself as an AI company.
“Tempus is taking a risk by betting on their growth and the opportune moment for AI in the life sciences industry. However, the company’s current offering has yet to demonstrate its effectiveness,” commented the healthcare investor.
The company stated in its S-1 filing that its AI product line is still in its early stages, but it intends to incorporate AI, including generative AI, into all of its diagnostic tools. Tempus has chosen not to provide any additional comments beyond the information stated in the S-1.
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