Get to Know a Scientist: Chemical Engineer Haotian Wang
An interview with the chemical engineer developing new nanomaterials for clean energy, climate change mitigation, water treatment, and more.
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How a Green Tea Antioxidant Helps Fight Cancer
Green tea has many health benefits, but how does it work? New research reveals one mechanism behind green tea’s anti-cancer properties.
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The Science of Making a Wild Sourdough Starter
Want to make sourdough starter? The Wild Sourdough Project can help you understand yeast and microbes while helping home bakers create delicious bread.
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Revisiting Use of Psychedelics in Psychiatry
A resurgence of testing of psychedelics, which fell from grace in the mid-twentieth century, sheds new light on their therapeutic benefits.
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Wash Your Hands, Fight Covid-19
When you wash your hands with soap and water, the process doesn’t just wash away germs, it breaks them open. It actually explodes the germ cells. Boom!
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Diverse Scientific Superstars
Diverse scientific superstars: Chemistry and computer science have historically excluded women and minority groups from their sphere of privilege.
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How Nonsugar Sweeteners Affect Gut Health
By Brittany Trinh (@brttnytrnh) Do you take your coffee with a spoonful of sugar or use a nonsugar sweetener such as Sweet’N Low or Equal? These nonsugar sweeteners are called nonnutritive sweeteners because they contain little to no calories per gram, compared with nutritive sweeteners such as sucrose or high-fructose corn syrup. Common nonnutritive sweeteners are saccharin and aspartame. Nonsugar sweeteners are often hundreds of times sweeter than sucrose—125 mg of aspartame can replace 25 g of sugar. They have been recommended by medical professionals as sugar substitutes in food…
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Artificial Sweeteners Affect Our Bodies and Environment
Artificial sweeteners may have unintended effects on the body and the biosphere, so it is worth looking into natural sugar alternatives.
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Learning Where Water Comes From, With Isotopes
Researchers track the origins of water across the world, and how it varies over time and place, by analyzing its hydrogen and oxygen isotopes. by Nicholas Dove and Alyssa Abbey Did you ever wonder where your water is coming from? For many of us, drinking a glass of water is as easy as turning on the tap. But, the journey of water from a single raindrop to your drinking glass starts long before then. Water can actually travel hundreds of miles or take hundreds of years before it finally reaches…
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Microbes Help Plants Survive Heavy Metal Stress
By Radhika Desikan When you hear the term heavy metal, what do you think of? Music or chemistry? Exposure to heavy metal music can cause stress in some humans. But what about chemical heavy metals? Are they good or bad for the environment and living organisms? In chemical terms, heavy metals are elements in earth’s crust that have a high density (weight), and they include zinc, copper, iron, silver, gold, arsenic, lead, and cobalt, to name a few. While trace amounts of heavy metals such as copper, iron, cobalt, and…
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