Just three articles for this month.

• This is an amusing article that appeared in The Economist. It’s about research that demonstrates that dogs have lateralized brains, meaning that the left and right sides of their brains work differently. The specific claim is that dogs wag their tails to the right when they encounter something that they like, which should be interpreted as a friendly greeting and to the left when in the presence of potential threats, which could be interpreted as a warning. Not only was this difference in behaviour observed under controlled conditions, but measurements of anxiety levels also correlated with this finding. As you might expect, I immediately tried to note if I could detect such differences in behaviour in my own dogs but I must report failure. It is simply too difficult to consistently determine which side a dog is wagging the tail towards.
• The next article is from the MIT Technology Review and talks about how quantum mechanical effects come into play in photosynthesis, or light harvesting, as this article seems to want to call it. Specifically this article covers the transformation of light into chemical energy inside the reaction centres of pigment proteins in green sulfur bacteria. The interesting part is that the transformation cannot occur under classical physics because it would take too long for the light to find the reaction centre by randomly bouncing around inside the protein network. So instead, the light travels a variety of routes through the network at the same time and the superposition collapses at just the right time to deposit the energy at the reaction centre, which is why the process is so energy efficient.
• Finally, here’s a great feature article on the origins of umami from Smithsonian.com. As the article points out umami is chemically very similar to the sodium salt of glutamic acid, better known today as monosodium glutamate. However while MSG has a terrible reputation among the health conscious, most people do not seem to regard umami in the same way. The article also points out that the poor reputation of MSG is probably undeserved. While people can be allergic to MSG, and these people should certainly avoid it, studies have failed to consistently find evidence of deleterious effects and the consensus today is that it is generally safe despite early results indicating that it may cause brain lesions. The article even goes on to suggest that its poor reputation may be linked to racism since many people in the United States first came to know of MSG due to its prevalent use in Chinese restaurants.