“Why hyperdecant?” Myhrvold asked the audience in a plenary lecture here on Saturday at the annual meeting of AAAS (which publishes ScienceNOW). “To improve the flavor of a young red wine, it’s faster than letting wine breathe unaided,” because the mechanical agitating provides more surface area to aerate the wine more rapidly. “But the real…
Although the world produces enough food to feed everyone, two million children die of malnutrition every year. Food insecurity has become a symbol of inequity and remains the most crippling consequence of poverty. Campaigners for food security must include science in their goals — and in return scientists need to heed wider concerns around solutions.
In the period just before they went extinct, the American lions and saber-toothed cats that roamed North America in the late Pleistocene were living well off the fat of the land. That is the conclusion of the latest study of the microscopic wear patterns on the teeth of these great cats recovered from the La…
Forget beef or even milk. If you’re looking for a sustainable and substantial source of protein, mealworms may be the way to go. Compared to a kilogram of edible protein in meat from cows, chickens or pigs, production of the same amount of mealworm protein emits fewer greenhouse gases and requires much less land to…
The health of most of the planet’s population is rapidly coming to resemble that of the United States, where death in childhood is rare, too much food is a bigger problem than too little, and life is long and often darkened by disability. High blood pressure is now the leading “risk factor” for disease around…
For the first time in history, a study shows that the number of years of healthy living lost because of eating too much is higher than the number of years lost by people who do not eat enough food, according to NewScientist. Over 500 scientists in 50 countries contributed to The Global Burden of Disease…
The first direct signs of cheesemaking now seen in potsherds from Poland may help reveal how animal milk dramatically shaped the genetics of Europe, scientists reported. Although cheese may just seem to be a topping on pizza or a companion to wine, it may have shaped the evolution of Europeans, researchers say. Cheese evolved after…
The towering redwood forests along California’s coast are known for the clammy fog that rolls in from the ocean almost every night. Now scientists have discovered an unwelcome stowaway in these cloud banks: mercury. Previous research had shown that fog sampled in and around Santa Cruz, California, contained the heavy metal mercury but no one…
As food allergies become increasingly common, a new study offers the first proof that they may be linked to pesticides found in tap water. Researchers at the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology used existing government data to see whether people with more dichlorophenols in their urine were more likely to have food allergies….
Two major organizations released climate change reports this month warning of doom and gloom if we stick to our current course and fail to take more aggressive measures. A World Bank report imagines a world 4 degrees warmer, the temperature predicted by century’s end barring changes, and says it aims to shock people into action…