Chemistry

I'm not much of a drinker, never have been. I have always assumed it was because I did competitive athletics until I was about 25, which means I was outside the age where you 'learn' to like the…

The world wastes 1.3 billion tons of food per year.  If only scientists could create a "biorefinery" that could change food waste into a key ingredient for making plastics, laundry detergents…

Drug discovery projects often require analysis and visualization of large number of chemical structures to identify new drug candidates. Growth of chemical databases (Ref. 1) has made millions of…

Organisms can be divided into autotrophs, which can synthesize their own food using inorganic minerals, and heterotrophs which require organic food.  Plants produce organic compounds from simple…

Viscous materials do not follow standard laws - below a sub-melting point threshold, anyway.  Glass-formers are a class of highly viscous liquid materials that have the consistency of honey and…

Even though arsenic is toxic for many organs in the human body, it is used in therapeutic medicine and the treatment of some forms of cancer, and is an active component of drugs against parasitic…

A new study shows that ursolic acid, a natural substance found in apple peel, can partially protect mice from obesity and some of its harmful effects. Obviously ursolic acid, a lipophilic…

What do diamonds and chocolate have in common?  Well, urban legend says girls love them both.  Maybe we can add volcanoes if we are using correlational woo. A previously unrecognized…

If you're an anti-science hippie obsessed with the notion that 'natural' is always superior to whatever 'inorganic' means to people who know nothing about science or medicine or food or generally…

In my ever-continuing quest to become an actual adult, I have recently begun to cook. I use a real oven and everything! In my usual encounter with the oven it takes just a few minutes of pre-heating…