Here’s a rather nauseating, if not scary, tidbit about an artificial sweetener beloved to humankind. And also to Monsanto. Aspartame. The second most used artificial sweetener in the world, next … [Read full article]
Tag: sugar
Celebrating a Terrorist's Death – The Psychology & Biology of Revenge
Psychologists and biologists who study the phenomenon of revenge from an evolutionary point of view will acknowledge that the impulse for taking revenge is pervasive in human societies, but will also add that this impulse is constrained, and has its costs. It is natural to have feelings of revenge, but to act on those feelings may cost inclusion in the social group. But vengeance towards someone outside one’s group is another matter.
'Woody' Biomass Breakthrough: Fungus is the Key
The resurgent interest in alternative fuels has propelled interest in using biomass “feedstocks” as an energy source for liquid fuel and bio-electricity generation. But bio-fuel (and other ‘commodity chemicals’) derived from biomass faces one big technical challenge: how to separate the useful constituents of cellulose-based biomass (i.e., its its six-carbon, building block sugars) from the not so useful ones (such as lignin and hemicellulose)? REcetn research has confirmed that the key to biomass conversion to fuel is a fungus with the less-than-appealing name of brown rot fungus.