In 1994, a paper on pudding was published by a party of microbiologists plying their trade in South Africa. They were interested in the occasional tendency of normally dark brown instant chocolate pudding to turn green within days of being revived from a powder by adding milk.I may have altered this chocolate pudding photo a...

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Look everybody, it's a Christmas-themed blog post in late January! There's no possible way this was started in early December but forgotten about until now.*Cough*Ah, let's get right to it. European mistletoe (Viscum album) is a strange plant. Instead of being satisfied with perfectly good soil, it puts down roots inside trees and shrubs, feeding...

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While working on my doctorate, I lived for a time in an apartment just down the street from a small wastewater treatment facility. I never noticed a bad smell, but if I stayed up too late I'd end up having to fall asleep to the very low pitched rumble of gallons upon gallons of poop...

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In the early 20th century, the scent of freshly made pencil shavings in classrooms across North America changed ever so slightly.Prior to this time, wooden pencils were predominantly made using Juniperus virginiana (eastern red cedar), a juniper tree found in eastern parts of Canada and the US. Its fine-grained wood smells nice and doesn't easily splinter...

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Silicon, a metalloid situated just beneath carbon in the periodic table, is the second most abundant element in the Earth's crust after oxygen. These two elements join together in all sorts of interesting ways to form silicate minerals, which collectively comprise the vast majority of the Earth's rocks and minerals. One of the major forms...

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