Beer has been important throughout human history. Given how dangerous water was in the past, it is arguably true that civilization would not exist without beer. Yet if you make your own, you have to…

Before 2020, it’s likely the word “antimicrobial” did not often cross your mind. Perhaps you walked down the cleaning aisle in the grocery store and saw a disinfectant with the phrase “Kills 99.9% of…

“A theory that explains everything, explains nothing.” ― Karl Popper1 A column by Nick Kristof in the New York Times first alerted me to a newly published book entitled Count Down: How Our Modern…

Imagine you hire a plumber and he needs to work on your plumbing and instead of coming over to fix that he sends his cousin who owns a lawn service. That is analogous to what is happening at EPA…

Antibiotic resistance is a serious problem. Nature constantly evolves new ways to kill, which means pathogens will develop new methods of resistance to current treatments, but pharmaceutical…

In the modern world of chemistry, where we can detect parts per billion, trillion, and even quadrillion, we can detect anything we want in anything else. In the modern world of epidemiology, we can…

Mosquitoes spread malaria but because wealthy nations wiped it out before declaring insecticides bad, it's easy to forget that insecticides are the only effective way to control the mosquitoes that…

On Sept. 14, 2020, a new planet was added to the list of potentially habitable worlds in the Solar System: Venus. Phosphine, a toxic gas made up of one phosphorus and three hydrogen atoms (PH₃),…

You can't market a "Tennessee whiskey" unless it goes through charcoal filtration called the Lincoln County Process, named such after the locale of the original Jack Daniel's distillery. …

Sour beer is not a defect. Some people like the tart, tangy brew which results when wild yeast and bacteria are allowed to grow in freshly brewed beer (wort) and then ferment. It's the opposite…