Chemistry

Award winning wines tend to have high ethanol and sugar levels. according to a recent paper in the Journal of Wine Research that sought to know what characteristics were prevalent in the wines that won the top awards at an international wine competition. They crunched several years of data from the Mundus Vini Challenge, which is held twice a year in Germany, and found that large wine challenges tend to favor wines with high alcohol and sugar levels. Flavors often associated with sweetness, including exotic fruits in white wines and dried fruit and spiciness in reds, also increase the chances…

A new study worries that teabags containing plastic come with a dose of micro- and nano-sized plastics. It's in Environmental Science&Technology, ironically published by the American Chemical Society, which once upon a time knew what peasants 500 years ago knew - the dose makes the poison. But they wave their own scaremongering away with "possible health effects of ingesting these particles are currently unknown" when what studies really show is that there is zero evidence trace amounts are harmful. However, chemophobia sells, and even ACS wants to sell itself to media outlets. There is a…

Cuticular structure in a Late Maastrichtian crab, Costacopluma mexicana, from deposits near the town of from near Paredón, Ramos Arizpe in what is now southern Coahuila (formerly Coahuila de Zaragoza), north-eastern Mexico. We see this same species in the Upper Cretaceous Moyenne of Northeast Morocco and from the Pacific slope, Paleocene of California, USA. This beauty is in the collection of José F. Ventura‎. While the crustacean cuticle has been the subject of study for over 250 years (Reaumur, 1712, in Drach, 1939), the focus of that early work has been the process of moulting. Because…

After Friedrich Wohler accidentally synthesized urea in 1828, chemical synthesis - and organic synthesis for that - has been a driving force in pharmaceutical innovation. We live longer and better than ever and we can thank the continuous advancement of synthetic chemistry, which allows scientists to design and build new molecules. A new reaction even allows for the edition of organic molecule's skeletons, opening up new avenues of research. In a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society a team present a new reaction able to edit the skeletons of organic molecules by…

First discovered in 1947 by Bedouin shepherds looking for a lost sheep, the ancient Hebrew texts now known as the Dead Sea Scrolls are some of the most well-preserved ancient written materials ever found. And among the roughly 900 full or partial scrolls found in the years since that first discovery, the best preserved is the Temple Scroll, at almost 25 feet also among the longest. It is the best-preserved even though its material is the thinnest of all of them (one-tenth of a millimeter, or roughly 1/250th of an inch thick). It also has the clearest, whitest writing surface of all the…

Urban beards are all the rage this decade, often worn by men in Euroweenie tight suits who want to hearken back to older times, when men were manly and not afraid of science. Not so today. If you wear a beard now, it means you want to look masculine while virtue signaling that removing certain chemicals in soap will prevent your erectile dysfunction. In reality, such men probably needn't worry, women are swiping left because most don't want to date someone who looks ready for a Civil War re-enactment but they suspect has a bathroom filled with vegan skin care goop. Not a Dr. Yet this is…

eyesalve. It consists of two species of onion, wine, and cow bile.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11504166/Anglo-Saxo...

SmirnoffDrake's  Woo meter: 6, for vegan, gluten-free, kosher, Non-GMO Project, USDA Organic, and suggesting they are healthy alcohol. Square One Cucumber Vodka, which is their regular rye vodka mixed with, you guessed it, cucumber.  There is no GMO rye so I can't figure out what makes this organic.  Are they claiming that a toxic chemical weedkiller with an organic sticker, like copper sulfate, is better for the environment than a less toxic 2,4-D chemical that is conventional?  Rye's allelopathy means it is weed control, that was one reason to study soil-active…

Another paper has disqualified claims by organic industry trade groups, sympathetic academic journalists, and trial lawyer organizations that the weedkiller glyphosate, which acts on plants, somehow causes human cancer Thee researchers evaluated as yet unpublished data from the Agricultural Health Study (AHS) in the USA, the observation period of which had been extended by eleven years. Through the extended follow-up of the AHS, they come to the conclusion that no connections could be established between applications of plant protection products containing glyphosate and the occurrence of…

Bisphenol S (BPS) and bisphenol F (BPF) are chemicals used in the lining of aluminum-canned food and drinks (to prevent spoilage). They were rolled out as a replacement for bisphenol A (BPA), a compound targeted by activists under claims it might statistically be an "endocrine-disrupting chemical." Exhaustive studies later found overwhelming scientific evidence that was not so. As American epidemiologists have become increasingly political and disenfranchised from the science community they have become more available to allies in environmental lawyer groups, using low-level chemical exposures…