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Do We Love Mum’s Cooking Because She Made Us as Well as Dinner?
In our popular culture we have a complicated relationship with mutants. For every Teenage Mutant Turtle and Wolverine, there is a Magneto, a Jason Vorhees or a Thing. The hillbillies from Deliverance probably qualify as mutants but I’m not sure whether Godzilla is a good guy or a bad guy? Are zombies mutants? Regardless, it… Continue reading
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Darwin, Lamarck and the Murder Scientist
One day, years ago, when I was a cocksure university undergraduate, I was chatting to some Jehovah’s Witnesses who had come to the door of the share house I lived in. We discussed a few things but at one point the guy I was talking to said that when it came to evolution he didn’t… Continue reading
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Quick Bite: Can an asthma drug really protect people from food allergies?
Scientific discovery is very much a story of anomalies. An observation that just doesn’t fit the theory or some small detail that needs an explanation the resolution of which unravels into a scientific discovery. A good scientist values anomalies, they are a sign that there is an opportunity, a guide to something just sitting there… Continue reading
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Quick Bite: You say tomato, I say potato
On the face of it a tomato and a potato are two very different things. One a fruit, soft and bursting with juice and flavour. The other a tuber that grows underground, hard but packed with starch ready to become a delicious source of nutrients after some judicious cooking. Despite this some new research shows… Continue reading
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What is a Redox Reaction? Chemistry and Your Health
Discover how reduction-oxidation (redox) reactions work, from browning fruit and iron smelting to free radicals, antioxidants, and everyday kitchen science. Continue reading
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Eugenics and Genetic Diversity: What Bananas Can Teach Us
Discover why the Cavendish banana is vulnerable to extinction. Learn how genetic diversity, polyploidy, and monoculture shape modern food security and biology. Continue reading
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Understanding Emulsions I: The Science Behind Your Favourite Sauces
Learn the science of food emulsions! Discover how oil and water mix, why vinaigrettes split, and the physics behind stable kitchen sauces. Continue reading