Tag Archives: Chemistry

Scientists offer a miracle cure for the effects of alcohol poisoning: strawberries [Chemistry]

Drinking can wreak havoc on your insides, and not just the relatively short-lived brand of havoc brought on by a one-night drinking spree. We’re talking long-term damage to the mucous membrane of your stomach that can give rise to all manner of gastroi… Continue reading

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Scientists offer a miracle cure for the effects of alcohol poisoning: strawberries [Chemistry]

Drinking can wreak havoc on your insides, and not just the relatively short-lived brand of havoc brought on by a one-night drinking spree. We’re talking long-term damage to the mucous membrane of your stomach that can give rise to all manner of gastroi… Continue reading

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Why does eating a spoonful of this powder turn sourness to sweetness? [Food Science]

Miraculin is a special protein that makes people perceive sour tastes as sweetness instead. At least, for a limited time. Now we know why it works.
Taste adventurers will be interested in a little chemical named miraculin. It was used in West Africa a… Continue reading

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The molecule "arsole" is named for exactly what you imagine it is [Chemistry]

Science yields many rewards. There’s the awed hush at nerd cocktail parties when you mention what you do, the sweet smell of urea in the morning, and the ability to name, or nickname, the things that you discover. Plenty of people name things after the… Continue reading

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Can you pee in a pool without getting found out? [Mad Science]

It is my sad duty to tell you that you can. You can now change your name to I.P. Freely. Fear should not keep you from peeing in a pool – just shame.
Most of us have heard, at some point during our childhood, that before we go in the pool there was … Continue reading

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The mystery behind history’s most important isotope is solved at last [Physics]

Most radioactive isotopes of the lighter elements decay in minutes or less. But one particular isotope of carbon takes 6000 years to decay, and that fact has revolutionized archaeology. But why it does that has long been a complete mystery.
This isn’t … Continue reading

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10 Food Additives That You’re Eating . . . Right . . . Now. [Daily 10]

When it comes to our eating habits, we’ve been living in the future for quite some time. Compared to food of the past, ours is sweeter, its colors are brighter, and (if it’s bread) ultra-fluffly-er. Find out about all the neat things that you’re eatin… Continue reading

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How copper kills flesh-eating bacteria [Mad Science]

Recently scientists staged a demonstration in which flesh-eating bacteria died off in droves when placed on a copper surface. Find out why copper engages in bactericide.

Hospitals are necessary and efficient institutions meant to gather and train a va… Continue reading

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Your eyes have heat sensors [Optics]

Purple is hot. Rhodopsin, or visual purple, doesn’t just let you know when Prince is performing or when the Joker is about to gun you down. Recently, scientists discovered it’s also a heat sensor.

Rhodopsin is one of the pigments in the eyeball which… Continue reading

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There’s a scientific reason why a pinch of salt makes things sweeter [Food Science]

Ever wonder why salted chocolate and caramel taste even better than unsalted? Or why adding a pinch of salt to cookies makes them sweeter? A group of researchers has found evidence that it’s because you have intestinal cells in your taste buds.

That’… Continue reading

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Alan Turing’s Patterns in Nature, and Beyond

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Everything you need to know about NASA's "completely new form of life" [Io9 Backgrounder]

NASA scientists have just announced the discovery of life fundamentally different from anything else we’ve ever seen before. Here’s what this discovery means for our understanding of biology, the search for extraterrestrial life, and even how this coul… Continue reading

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The explosive that became a heart medicine [Mad Science]

Nitroglycerin destroys lives by exploding, and saves them by stopping heart problems. How can it do both?
Most moviegoers have watched a scene or two where nitroglycerin has been used to blow the doors off of a bank vault. They’ve also seen scenes when… Continue reading

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Why hot sauce cleans pennies

I was thoroughly entertained by this bit of hobby chemical sleuthing from Michael August Pusateri, who observed years ago, while bored on-shift, that the hot sauce at the fast food joint where he was working would clean the oxide off a penny. My imm… Continue reading

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"Dry water" could be the next storage medium for dangerous chemicals [Mad Science]

Despite the oxymoronic name, ‘dry water’ is very real. This bone-dry water-silica compound could provide a way to transport dangerous liquids and gases safely – inside trillions of water-drop sized packages.’Dry water’ is comprised of 95% water, with … Continue reading

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The Sun is changing the rate of radioactive decay, and breaking the rules of chemistry [Mad Science]

The Sun is changing the supposedly constant rates of decay of radioactive elements, and we have absolutely no idea why. But an entirely unknown particle could be behind it. Plus, this discovery could help us predict deadly solar flares.It’s one of the … Continue reading

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Electrons viewed in real time for the first time ever [Mad Science]

In an unprecedented achievement, physicists have managed to directly observe electrons moving about the outer orbit of an atom. It’s all thanks to some nifty quantum trickery and a machine that measures time in quintillionths of a second.The actual pro… Continue reading

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The Disappearing Spoon

The title for Sam Kean’s new book, The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements, comes from a prank that scientists sometimes play: they make a spoon out of gall… Continue reading

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New ultra-battery is the most powerful non-nuclear energy storage ever [Mad Chemistry]

What do you get when you combine some xenon, some fluoride, and pressures similar to those found at the center of the Earth? You get an ultra-battery, capable of storing more condensed energy than any other battery ever built.The material used to make … Continue reading

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