Seed oils are better than beef, actually.
STAT shared the words of a frustrated cardiac dietitian who is personally exhausted by the public panic over seed oils, which, depending on how you […]
chemistry
A new (easier) way to detect alien life.
Mashable reports on astrobiology research that may have found a simpler (and, importantly, more portable) way to detect traces of life on alien planets … […]
Trees grow six times taller in strange Amazonian soil.
BBC’s Science Focus is digging in the dirt to get inside the mystery of “dark earth,” which seems to make the Amazon as fertile as […]
Fire-nadoes to clean the ocean
BBC’s Science Focus imagines a brighter future … brighter from the blazing fire-tornadoes used to clean plastics and oil from our over-polluted oceans: Taking inspiration […]
Octopus color-changing pigment is recreated.
Science Alert reports on the latest superpower to be replicated in the lab with a UC San Diego team producing xanthommatin, the pigment chemical responsible […]
Science Art: Ribbon schematic of the 3D structure of the protein triose phosphate isomerase
Jane Richardson drew this by hand and then colored it in back in 1981. It’s a protein molecule, or a diagram of how things move […]
Science Art: Bisphenalenyl Biradical Ball, by Jynto, 2011
I found this illustration in the Wikimedia Commons “Category: Radicals” collection – it stood out from the other diagrams and models. Maybe because it looks […]
A self-healing rechargeable battery made of cheap elements.
Ars Technica reports on a new sort of cathode that’s made of materials that are abundant (therefore cheap), that store electrons and let them move […]
Hungry caterpillars eat plastic pollution
IFL Science introduces us to “plastivores” — a species of waxworm caterpillars (often thought of as beehive pests) that get fat gorging themselves on plastic […]
SONG: Bed Chem (a penitential Sabrina Carpenter cover)
SONG: “Bed Chem” (a penitential Sabrina Carpenter cover). (OGG version here.) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: This wasn’t based on any scientific research. It’s a cover of […]
The smell of Venus de Milo
NPR reports on new findings for classical works of art. It’s pretty well known now that the stark white of ancient Greek marble statues was […]
Krill sniff penguin poop
And, says National Geographic, it makes them take evasive maneuvers, ready to dodge their Antarctic predators: In Antarctica’s Palmer Station lab, scientists put wild-caught krill […]
So here’s *why* vaccines don’t cause autism.
We are at a point where this had to be published, but Stat has here gathered the actual data into one easy-to-read explainer for why […]
Asteroid Bennu rich in ancient life-sustaining stuff.
IFL Science reports on the 121-gram sample that NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe collected from Asteroid Bennu — a handful of dirt that shows a wealth of […]
Sustainable superglue.
Science Daily has news from Colorado State chemical researchers, who’ve found an adhesive that does the work of superglue, but is “biodegradable, tunable, and reusable”: […]