Why do we like particular food? Science may have the answer:

The researchers set up trials to look at how organisms learn and on what basis they choose. They manipulated the preferences of the locusts: the insects met peppermint-flavoured grass when they were hungry and lemon-flavoured grass when they were not so hungry, and later behaved as if peppermint-flavoured grass was preferable. When they reversed the treatments, the locusts reversed their preference.

Professor Alex Kacelnik in Oxford’s Zoology Department, one of the authors of the study alongside Spence Behmer and Lorena Pompilio, said: ‘This is interesting because value depends on the condition of the organism at the time it learns, and thus what the animals learn depends on their condition and not only the properties of the food. We call this learning mechanism “state-dependent valuation”.’

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From the website:

The universe went through a traumatic growth spurt before it was a billionth of a billionth of a second old, according to the latest data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).

The probe has also given physicists their first clues about what drove that frantic expansion, and revealed that the cosmic "dark age" before the first stars switched on was twice as long as previously thought.

On Thursday, the WMAP team revealed the best map ever drawn of microwaves from the early universe, showing variations in the brightness of radiation from primordial matter. The pattern of these variations fits the predictions of a physical theory called inflation, which suggests that during the first split second of existence the universe expanded incredibly fast.

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The Fireman’s Fund Image Bank has a very cool collection of vintage photos of olden days San Francisco. Link

Photographer Zoriah, who took these amazing then-and-now pictures of the tsunami in Thailand, said:

As an ex disaster specialist I still have many friends working in the field all over the world and in the year following the Asian Tsunami I kept in close contact with them. Just as I expected I soon began to hear stories of how western money coupled with the tourism industry was rebuilding Thailand in record speed while Sri Lanka was still struggling and Banda Aceh was left only with resources for making baby steps. Slightly ahead of the one year anniversary of the Tsunami I decided to return to Thailand and shoot every image taken the year before from the exact same angle.

Link (via Presurfer)

A fantastic visual guide of where your tax dollars go (militarily). Artist mibi writes:

Most people are unaware of how much of their taxes fund our military, and those aware are often misinformed. Well here it is. Laid out, easy to read and compare. With data straight from the White House.

Link (via Boing Boing)