Mmmm..that smells gooood!

Let's take a moment to appreciate our sense of smell.  Think about the smells that we love:  the smell of Thanksgiving morning, freshly brewed coffee, a new book, a new car...doesn't it just make you feel happy?Isn't it also amazing how certain smells can trigger a certain memory?  My sister once had a very bad experience with deli turkey slices, where she had a turkey sandwich when she was sick and ended up throwing up shortly after eating it.  From that point on, even the smell of deli turkey meat will make her grimace and turn away.  As the most primitive sense we use, it does a pretty good job of affecting our moods, behavior, and memories.  Also, if we think about it, we can identify SO many things just by the sniff of our nose!  Foods, drinks, objects, and even people!

Speaking of smelling people, have you ever thought a hot guy or girl smelled awesome?  A college professor

mm sweaty t-shirt!

of mine once mentioned a very interesting experiment that involved a group of college ladies sniffing a bunch of guys' t-shirts also known as the "sweaty t-shirt study."  Claus Wedekind et. al. were trying to find a relationship between olfactory mechanisms and sexual selection.  Well, these researchers had a bunch of guys wear a plain white T-shirt for a day, and hung up these shirts in a room.  Then, they had a bunch of women come into the room and smell each shirt while rating which wearer she thought was more attractive.

i <3 my opposite

And the results???  It turns out that these women preferred guys that had dissimilar DNA to their own.  And why would this be important??  The DNA that the researchers examined were of the MHC (major histocompatability complex) which are cell surface molecules that mediate the interaction between our immune cells and help to recognize invaders.  And the more diverse the MHC genes of the parents are, the stronger the immune system of the offspring because the immune cells will be able to recognize a greater range of bacteria, viruses, etc.

Sooo ladies, our sense of smell can potentially affect our mate choice!  So go smell your boyfriend and if you don't like his "scent" maybe he's not the right choice for you!

As a Living Environment student teacher, I think that this experiment would be a great motivation piece for a lesson on body systems, immunity, or sexual selection.

Hello there all!! 
The purpose of this blog is to show how simply COOL biology (and science in general) is and how it affects EVERYONE (and to pass my class hehe).  As a teacher-in-training, I have definitely learned the importance of trying to get our kids motivated, but how with the smartphones, tablets, Facebook, and Twitter constantly feeding them with updates about where their friends are every second of the day and pictures of food, cats, babies, and what not?!  

Well, I believe that every single person is a scientist.  For some people it may be deep down inside them, but YES, you are a scientist. You just need some reminding.  If you've ever asked "why?" or "how?", you're a scientist.  Ever wondered about life on Mars or better yet, wondered about anything at all?  You're a scientist.  The need to know and to find out is in all of us ever since we were born!

One of my professors had told our class about how his 3 year old twin boys were using the scientific method! At the age of 3!  Basically, the boys wanted to test out whose hot wheels cars were faster.  So they had first tried to push them at the same time, but realized they needed to make sure that the cars needed to be released at the exact same time and place.  They went through many trials tweaking their method here and there and tried to create a fair test with accurate measurements of their results. They were totally being scientists!

Anyways, I feel like I've written enough! But I still want to reiterate (again) that we are all scientists whether you like it or not!  We need and want research and evidence so that we can confidently and satisfyingly say, "My hot wheels is better than yours."