Chemistry

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 pentacyclic triterpenoid that contributes to the waxy coats on fruits and various herbs, can't be a license to eat ice cream and pizza every day but it seems to increase the amount of muscle and brown fat, two tissues recognized for their calorie-burning properties. Until recently, it was believed that only infants had brown fat, which then disappeared during childhood, but improved imaging techniques…

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 volcanic process similar to one used in chocolate manufacturing is important in the dynamics of volcanic eruptions. 'Fluidised spray granulation'  is a type of gas injection and spraying process used to form smooth coatings on confectionaries but it can also occur during kimberlite eruptions to produce well-rounded particles containing fragments from the Earth's mantle - most notably diamonds…

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 what carbon-based life means, I have good news for you; you may soon be able to determine if that caffeine in your Organic, Free-Range Red Bull is really natural. What? Organic, Free-Range Red Bull doesn't exist?  Well, it should. Farmer's Market shoppers will dutifully line up for that, I can just feel it. Caffeine drinks are big business. Coffee, tea, sodas, it's all doing brisk sales, even in…

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 before I realize that I have yet again left the big skillet inside. Panicked, I pull it out of the oven, and notice something weird! Finally I decided to repeat the skillet-in-the-oven experiment and document my findings. Here we go! Step #1--observe the condition of the skillet before its trip into the oven. Step #2--place the skillet in the oven. Conducting experiments gets me super…

Perfluorinated Polar Bears!   No, this is not an exasperated exclamation by Captain Haddock, but might well be a shout of surprise at learning that Canadians have been searching for compounds of that nature in these snowy animals.  But why should Scott Mabury and his group at the University of Toronto be looking for them? The simple answer is that they are terribly persistent in the environment.  Bit odd, one might link, considering that Fluorine is the most reactive of all the elements in the periodic table.  So reactive[1], in fact, that Pure fluorine gas may…

Champagne, unlike other wines, undergoes a second fermentation in the bottle to trap carbon dioxide gas, which dissolves into the wine and forms the fabled bubbles in the bubbly. More than 600 different chemical compounds join carbon dioxide in champagne, each lending its own unique quality to the aroma and flavor of champagne.  But even with all of that flavor, champagne would be just another white wine without those tiny bubbles. As the bubbles ascend the length of a glass in tiny trains, they drag along molecules of those 600 flavor and aroma substances. They literally explode out of…

Glow-in-the-dark stickers are nothing new; they emit visible light after being exposed to sunlight.  A paper just published in Nature Materials emits a long-lasting, near-infrared glow after a single minute of exposure to sunlight. Why is that good? It has the potential to revolutionize medical diagnostics, give the military and law enforcement agencies a 'secret' source of illumination - because the near-infrared range can only be seen with the aid of night vision devices - and maybe even provide a foundation for solar cells that aren't complete rubbish. The starting point is the…

Researchers have discovered how Golden orb web spiders (Nephila antipodiana) add a chemical to their web silk to repel invading ants, which means spider silk is even more awesome than it was before; it was already strong, elastic and adhesive, and now it can improve pesticide design. The researchers found that only large Golden orb web spiders produce the defensive compound, suggesting that the younger, smaller spiders could rely on their thinner web silk to physically prevent ants being able to climb into their webs. They made the discovery by allowing the Golden orb web spider to spin webs…

Insects who can scale walls are able to do so because of the thousands of tiny hairs that cover their feet and legs. The hairs have flattened tips that can splay out to maximize contact, even on rough surfaces.  The ability of insects to run up walls and hang from ceilings have fascinated humans for centuries. Scientists from the Zoological Institute at the University of Kiel, in Germany, have created a dry tape similar to the hairs on insects that can be repeatedly peeled off without losing its adhesive properties. They presented their work at the AVS Symposium held last week in…

Ice cream is big business in America.  Sales of ice cream and frozen desserts top $20 billion annually, according to the International Dairy Food Association, which is about 1.6 billion gallons per year or 23 quarts per person per year. It's consumed by nearly 90 percent of households (vegans - bah).  According to the National Ice Cream Retailers Association, ice cream consumption grew nearly 25 percent from a year ago and nearly 10 percent of American milk goes into frozen treats.It's too late for this summer, but some time soon you could be enjoying an experimental ice cream that…