Chemistry

By Brian Owens, Inside Science (Inside Science) -- Sampling the waste in a city's sewage system can be a good way to study the microbes that live in the population's guts – and could even offer a way to monitor public health issues such as obesity, according to new research. The community of microbes that live in a person's gut, known as the microbiome, is intricately tied to that person's health. The microbiome can influence, and be influenced by, a range of characteristics such as weight, disease, diet, exercise, mood and much more. But it can be difficult to draw large-scale conclusions…

I am writing a book on mitochondria and after a few months of research you begin to see a common thread - serendipity.  Sometimes big things happen because of what seems to be luck, a group of people all happen to be in one place at one time, they are all spurred on by each other and then dramatic things occur.  In the 17th century we had the Geniuses of Britain, with Newton, Halley, Hooke, Boyle and Wren, and then we had the Founding Fathers in America, and recently on a smaller scale, in the 1960s, we had The Beatles and The Beach Boys, where Brian Wilson essentially lost his mind…

Soybean oil accounts for more than 90 percent of all the seed oil production in the United States and genetically modified (GM) soybean oil, obviously made from seeds of GM soybean plants, was recently introduced into the food supply with the benefit that it is healthier than conventional soybean oil. Is it true? It is true, at least in the way all food marketing, including conventional and organic, is done. Soybean oil is actually unhealthy and GMO soybean oil is identical to soybean oil made from a conventional or an organic soybean - overused, it leads to obesity, diabetes and fatty liver…

Though people selling alternatives to science will use labels like "chemical-free", that is not really the case. Our world is entirely chemical. 'Chemical' has simply been turned into a bad word in 'if I cannot pronounce it, it must be bad' modern environmentalism catered toward wealthy elites. Are green alternatives actually less toxic? No, it turns out, and even worse is that because they claim a 'natural' basis, they are exempt from the labeling requirements of traditional products, so green consumers don't know the extent of the risk they are undertaking. A new study in Air Quality,…

The Paleo diet is all made up, organic food just accepts one kind of genetic modification in its modern food over another, but booze? Yeah, scientists can really show how that was different in the past. The oldest known recipe is for alcohol, the oldest song is about alcohol and it is well established that we probably only got to the top of the food chain by drinking a lot of alcohol instead of the polluted water neanderthals were peeing in. Recently, scientists got to examine direct evidence and answer important questions, like if Vani Hari, The Food Babe™, should really forbid her husband…

For almost a century, scientists have been puzzled by a process that is crucial to much of the life in Earth's oceans: Why does calcium carbonate, the tough material of seashells and corals, sometimes take the form of calcite, and at other times form a chemically identical form of the mineral, called aragonite, that is more soluble -- and therefore more vulnerable to ocean acidification? Researchers had previously identified variations in the concentration of magnesium in the water as a key factor in that process, but had never been able to explain why that produced such a dramatic effect.…

Emulsifiers, which are added to processed foods to aid texture and extend shelf life, can alter the gut microbiota composition and localization to induce intestinal inflammation in mice that promotes the development of inflammatory bowel disease and metabolic syndrome, according to a new study. The team fed mice two commonly used emulsifiers, polysorbate 80 and carboxymethylcellulsose, at doses seeking to model the broad consumption of the numerous emulsifiers that are incorporated into almost all processed foods. They observed that emulsifier consumption changed the species composition of…

For exposed skin, there really isn’t an alternative to topical insect repellents. LoloStock Mosquitoes need blood to survive. And what better place to get a good meal than a slow, tasty human? Mosquitoes aren’t just annoying, every year around 5,000 Australians get sick following a mosquito bite. Most commonly the infection is  Ross River virus but there is annual activity of dengue viruses in north Queensland and there are occasional cases of the rare, but potentially fatal, Murray Valley encephalitis virus. Spraying insecticides may kill some mosquitoes around our backyards but it won’…

A new research project looked at how to create various non-spherical particles.  Non-spherical particles have a great deal of potential uses in industry because associated with their different shapes are properties such as large surface areas, high packing densities and unique responses to external electric and magnetic fields. Such properties can lend themselves to applications ranging from food processing, consumer goods such as cosmetics, absorbents, and drug delivery systems. Their answer: releasing droplets of molten wax into a cool liquid bath. The physics behind this research…

Toxic Cloud In Spain Caused By Rocket Fuel A toxic orange cloud hanging over Igualada was caused when two chemicals being delivered to the Simar S.A. storage facility were accidentally mixed. The chemicals being delivered were nitric acid and ferric chloride.  These are the sole ingredients of the WW2 S-Stoff hypergolic rocket fuel.  Two civilians and three firefighters suffered minor injuries, The Guardian reports.  The orange cloud which was created by the explosion stayed in the air a long time. Screen grab from The Guardian. S-Stoff, a WW2 German rocket fuel, is made by…