Chemistry Health 

How Nonsugar Sweeteners Affect Gut Health

By Brittany Trinh 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 and…

Read More
Flow Cytometry Going With the Flow Biology Get to Know a Scientist New Technologies 

Flow Cytometry: Going with the Flow

By Cathy Seiler Sara Bowen, PhD, is a biochemist with what can only be described as a giddy excitement for her job. She runs the flow cytometry facility at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Barrow Neurological Institute in Arizona, and she positively lights up when talking about “flow” and her lasers. An analogy to understand flow cytometry is to think about a stream filled with lots of different fish: big fish and small fish, black fish and white fish. To better understand the characteristics of the fish in the stream, you…

Read More