On the fictional cop show Blue Bloods, in the appropriately titled episode “Pain Killers,” detective Maria Baez picks up a tray containing drug paraphernalia and a white powder and is soon seen on...
Divide some laboratory rabbits into three groups. Feed one group normal rabbit chow, the second group a high cholesterol diet, and the third group a high cholesterol diet supplemented with 0.2%...
The word “quantum” derives from the Latin word for “amount,” so that if something is “quantifiable,” it means that it can be measured. Although I think I have a reasonably good grasp of chemistry,...
The wall above that photocopier located at the University of Pennsylvania may eventually feature a plaque that reads something like “it was here that Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman met in 1998...
As we approach the week during which the 2023 Nobel Prizes will be announced (October 2-9, 2023), it is perhaps timely to consider the events that surrounded the first Nobel Prize awarded to a...
There is no shortage of stories professing the existence of a Fountain of Youth somewhere in the world, always just out of reach. Bathing in its water was claimed to undo the damage of old age....
Serendipitous discoveries are legendary in science. Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, Perkin’s of mauve, Silver’s of post-it notes, Roentgen’s of x-rays, Fahlberg’s of saccharin, Plunkett’s of...
The history of science is full of disproved experiments, revised textbooks, and rewritten hypotheses. Even Nobel prize-winning research, which is often viewed as the best work science has to offer,...