Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t buy test-tube hot dogs for your Memorial Day barbecue, but maybe in a decade or so we’ll all be noshing on barbecued goodies raised in the sterility of a laboratory near you. Doesn’t that sound tasty? Or yucky? For me, it’s a little bit of both. I’m fascinated…
Most of my news articles don’t have a back story. But my most recent chemistry story combined food, molecules, animals. . . and a little bit of family. Dairy runs in my family. My grandfather ran a small dairy for more than 30 years, in and around his day job. My father has worked in…
These days the kitchen is my chemistry lab, and if I were back in college I’d probably be one of the students beating down the door to get in to a cooking science class like this one at Harvard. Despite my experience with chemical gadgets, the wildest item in my kitchen is a food processor. Watching…
My mother will get the joke. About 10 years ago, after a trip to Europe when my mother lost her luggage, I bet her a slice of decadent European cake that she’d get the suitcase back. She did. Though the stars haven’t aligned so that I can get my cake (in Europe, of course!), this…
I prefer my seaweed applewood smoked. However, truthfully, before yesterday, I’m not sure I could have told you whether I liked seaweed, smoked or otherwise. I do like sushi, but the seaweed within a maki roll has always seemed more functional than flavorful– a necessary material to keep the whole thing held together. But when…
Though the tryptophan rush from turkey is more hype than reality, Thanksgiving is the perfect time to put up the most structurally complex of the amino acids, tryptophan. The body uses it to make serotonin, and biochemists use its absorbance of ultraviolet light to determine concentrations of proteins in their samples. Today I’m thinking that…
Summer’s distracted me from blogging, but I just returned from the American Chemical Society meeting in Washington, DC. That meeting is a huge mishmash for me– a combination of catching up with former chemistry colleagues, meeting up with current writing colleagues, and getting myself back up to speed on what’s new with molecules. Though it’s…
It’s been a rainy week in New York City, and my office next to our front porch and my container garden has me thinking about that ubiquitous wetness. It’s been soaking my plants, and after a quick errand on Friday afternoon, its dampness lurked for hours on the hem of my jeans. It’s easy to…
Over the last several months I’ve gotten press releases just about every week about Vitamin D, usually talking about studies that show health problems connected to Vitamin D deficiencies. A lot of this discussion about “the optimal dose” of Vitamin D is still under debate, though. The main problem is that it is possible to get too much.…
Fleeting moments between spring and summer are magic in my little corner of NY harbor. Bikes and rollerblades speed by– walkers, joggers, and marathoners-in-training drink in the cool breeze laced with sweetness (honeysuckle?). And the hardy fishermen (with an occasional woman) cluster in cultural pockets, speaking Chinese, Spanish, or Brooklyn-drenched English. At another fisherman’s pocket,…