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Luciferin and GFP: The Fluorescent Chemicals Used by Insects, Sea Creatures and Humans!

11 Aug 2022

Eons ago in a remote village in China, a promising young lad was studying for the almighty civil service registry exam. His parents were too poor to afford an oil-burning lamp so that he could read...

Do our brains see what our eyes see?

10 Aug 2022

For the past month, I have been road-tripping across Canada. Along the way, I’ve seen vast grasslands, snow-capped mountains, and beautiful lakes. And mirages! A mirage is a type of optical...

Nail Polish that Smells like Cheese

9 Aug 2022

Food-scented beauty products first appeared in the late 1930s when customers were enticed by Harriet Hubbard Ayer’s clove-scented lipstick, Demeter’s pizza-scented perfume, and banana-scented...

The World’s First Commercially Available Laundry Powder

28 Jul 2022

It was a scientific breakthrough. Persil, introduced by the German company Henkel in 1907 was the world’s first laundry powder. The name derives from perborate and silicate, two key components in...

La Cucaracha

27 Jul 2022

“Crazy bug!” That’s what the Spanish "cucaracha" means. Why crazy? Because when these darkness-loving bugs are surprised by a light being turned on, they scamper away in a wild, crazy, zig-zag...

Fire Up That Barbecue!

20 Jul 2022

The word “barbecue” derives from the ancient Caribbean tradition of supporting food over a fire with a scaffolding made from green wood which in Spanish was called "barbacoa." The technique itself...

What Makes the Perfect Polish?

13 Jul 2022

I got my nails done for my convocation ceremony. My friends and I were greeted with a number of options: basic, shellac, acrylic… not to mention the selection of colours we had to choose from as...

The Gold Plating on the James Webb Space Telescope is Much Thinner than Human Hair

12 Jul 2022

The date is December 25th, 2021. You may have been ripping open gifts, putting the turkey in the oven, or spending time with your family. But in Kourou, French Guiana, the James Webb Space...

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