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It’s A Chemical World!

6 Mar 2024

It’s a chemical world out there! We are awash in some fifty million known chemicals, the majority of which are created by nature, a minority by chemists. They’re not good or bad, not safe or...

How to Keep Cut Flowers Looking Fresh, With Science

23 Feb 2024

It's a lovely feeling to wake up in the morning and be greeted by a beautiful bouquet artfully arranged in a vase. But it's a far less pleasant one when you start to notice their petals falling,...

Phenylethylamine is Said To Stoke the Fire of Love. Here Comes the Water Bucket.

14 Feb 2024

American humorist James Thurber reputedly once remarked that “love is a strange bewilderment which overtakes one person on account of another person.” Anyone who has ever been in love will agree....

The Science Journals That Will Publish Anything

26 Jan 2024

When Dr. Anna O. Szust emailed all of these academic journals to join their editorial boards, she did not anticipate that so many of them would approve her application within hours. In fact, she...

Faraday, Dickens and Lighthouses

22 Dec 2023

I have a longstanding fascination with Victorian arts and sciences. It was the era when Darwin published the “Origin of the Species,” Perkin synthesized dyes, Lister introduced antiseptic surgery,...

The Power of Belief

20 Dec 2023

Scientifically speaking, it’s not very pleasing....

Seeing is Believing. Right?

15 Dec 2023

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Israel rally in Ottawa. The afternoon on Parliament Hill was set to be a day of hope, commemoration, unity, and…. cold. The first of the major snowfalls was set...

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