Halloween is a time when witches fly, black cats prowl and zombies rise from the grave. But it is also a time for magic. No, not supernatural charms, spells or incantations but the time honoured...
Smells of course are caused by volatile compounds which stimulate receptors in our nose. There is a large variety of such compounds with a great diversity of molecular structures. But many of the...
"That's the way the cookie crumbles!" How often have you heard that expression? It is usually a statement of disappointment which may be paraphrased as "tough luck." But why does a cookie...
“Laughter is the best medicine!” That’s an old adage, maybe even dating back to the biblical era. The book of Proverbs in the Old Testament proposes that “a merry heart doeth good like a medicine:...
When John Milton wrote in Paradise Lost that the mind can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven, without realizing it, he was talking about the “placebo” and the “nocebo” effect. “Placebo”...
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