The Nobel prize in chemistry has been awarded to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich, and Aziz Sancar for their research into the mechanisms that cells use to repair DNA.

The three scientists, from Sweden, the US, and Turkey, respectively, received an equal share of the prestigious 8m Swedish kronor (£631,000) award for "mechanistic studies of DNA repair." Their research mapped and explained how the cell repairs its DNA in order to prevent errors occurring in genetic information.

Announcing the prize in Stockholm, Göran K Hansson, the secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said: 'This year's prize is about the cell's tool box for repairing DNA."

In a call to the Academy, Lindahl said of winning: "It was a surprise. I knew that over the years I have been occasionally considered but so have hundreds of other people. I feel very lucky and proud to be selected."

From the moment an egg is fertilized, it begins to divide. Two cells become four, four cells become eight. After one week a human embryo consists of 128 cells, each with its own set of genetic material. Unravel all that DNA and it would stretch for 300 meters (984 feet).

But many billions more divisions take place on the path to adulthood, until we carry enough DNA in our trillions of cells to reach 250 times to the sun and back. The most remarkable feat is how the genetic information is copied so faithfully. "From a chemical perspective, this ought to be impossible," the Nobel committee said.

"All chemical processes are prone to random errors. Additionally, your DNA is subjected on a daily basis to damaging radiation and reactive molecules. In fact, you ought to have been a chemical chaos long before you even developed into a fetus," they added.

Lindahl, Modrich and Sancar worked out how cells repair faults that inevitably creep in when DNA is copied time and time again, and mutations that arise under a barrage of environmental factors such as UV rays in sunlight.

Towards the end of the 1960s, many scientists considered DNA to be incredibly stable. But working at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Lindahl worked out that there must be thousands of potentially damaging attacks on the genome every day – an onslaught that would make human life impossible.

Working with bacterial DNA, Lindahl began the search for enzymes that repair faulty genetic mateial. He focused on a weakness in the way the DNA letters, G, T, C and A, pair up. Normally, C (cytosine) pairs only with G (guanine), but C can lose an amino group which makes it pair up with A ( adenine) instead. If the mis-pairing stands, it creates a mutation the next time it is copied. Lindahl realised that cells must have a way to protect themselves from such a fate, and published details of the enzyme responsible in 1974.

Lindahl moved to the UK in the 1980s and became director of what is now Cancer Research UK's Clare Hall Laboratory, a place known for its scientific creativity. There he worked out, step by step, the DNA repair processes in humans.

But DNA can also be disrupted by environmental factors, such as UV radiation. How organisms survived these mutations piqued the interest of Sancar who noticed that bacteria exposed to deadly doses of UV could repair themselves if lit up with blue light. At the University of Texas in Dallas, he discovered an enzyme called photolyase that repairs UV-damaged DNA.

At Yale University, Sancar went on to identify enzymes that spot UV damage and then cut the DNA to remove the faulty genetic code. Later, at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, he mapped the equivalent repair process in humans.

In an interview with the Academy, Sancar told how he heard the news in a phone call. "My wife took it and woke me up. I wasn't expecting it at all. I am very surprised. I tried my best to be coherent, I was sleeping, it was a pleasant experience," he said.

"I am of course honored to get this recognition for all the work I've done over the years but I'm also proud for my family and for my native country and for my adopted country. Especially for Turkey, it's quite important," he said.

Modrich was set on his path to Nobel fame when a biology teacher told him in 1963: "You should learn about this DNA stuff." It was the year after James Watson and Francis Crick won the Nobel prize for elucidating the structure of DNA. Modrich spent more than a decade mapping out enzymes involved in what is called DNA mismatch repair – another way that DNA can be mangled through faulty pairings of Gs, Cs, Ts, and As. Mismatch repair turned out to be a major process for protecting DNA. Of the thousand errors that occur when the human genome is copied, all but one are corrected by mismatch repair.

Together, the repair mechanisms discovered by Lindahl, Sancar and Modrich fix thousands of DNA faults caused by UV rays, cigarette smoke and other toxic substances. They are constantly at work to repair copying errors as cells divide. Without these repair mechanisms, the genomes would be riddled with errors, and cancer would be rife.

"Their systematic work has made a decisive contribution to the understanding of how the living cell functions, as well as providing knowledge about the molecular causes of several hereditary diseases and about mechanisms behind both cancer development and aging," the committee said.

Sir Martyn Poliakoff, vice-president of the Royal Society said: "Understanding the ways in which DNA repairs itself is fundamental to our understanding of inherited genetic disorders and of diseases like cancer.

"I am delighted to hear that Dr Lindahl has been awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry and offer the Royal Society's congratulations to him, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar on this very great achievement."

Last year's chemistry prize went to Stefan Hell of Germany and Americans Eric Betzig and William Moerner for finding ways to make microscopes more powerful than previously thought possible.

Only four women have won a chemistry Nobel, including Marie Curie (who also won the physics prize) and Ada Yonath, who was the last female winner in 2009. One person, Frederick Sanger, has won the award twice.

The Nobel in medicine or physiology was awarded on Monday to Tu Youyou, William Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura for advances that led to treatments for diseases caused by parasites, including malaria. On Tuesday, Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald won the physics prize for their work on subatomic particles called neutrinos.

The winners of the literature and peace prizes are to be announced later this week. The economics prize will be announced on Monday 12 October.

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk.

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Everything coffee lovers associate with a freshly brewed cup of joe, such as its flavor and aroma, comes from the roasting process.

When a raw, green coffee bean is picked, it contains the precursors to, but doesn't yet exude, those complex flavor profiles that give coffee its quintessential smell and taste.

It's the roasting process that imparts a flavor explosion of chocolates, caramels, flowers, and fruits.

Once a green coffee bean is exposed to the extreme heat of a roaster, a green bean's complex makeup of minerals, carbohydrates, amino acids, proteins, lipids, water, and caffeine meld together in chemical reactions that give way to that nutty and irresistible smell and taste of coffee.

Unfortunately, like most products of living organisms, coffee beans are highly susceptible to aging. The moment a roasted coffee bean is exposed to air, it immediately begins to degrade and lose its tasty flavor. This is why many roasters — but not necessarily all— suggest that you brew your coffee beans as soon as possible after roasting so that you can get the freshest, most delicious drink.

But how do you know if your store-bought beans were recently roasted? Here are four ways to find out.

Look for a glossy appearance

Coffee grounds are chock full of oils, acids, and other compounds. All of these chemicals, referred to collectively as "solubles," give coffee its flavor — they are what is extracted from the grounds during the brewing process.

When coffee beans are roasted, the intense heat evaporates moisture out of the heart of the bean and simultaneously draws out the volatile, oil-like substances, which then coat the outside of the bean.

This substance is not technically an oil, though. It readily evaporates after being exposed to the air, which is why the longer it sits out, the less oily it becomes.

Not all beans produce the same mount of oil, however, so be careful when using oiliness as a proxy for freshness. A light roast won't be as glossy-looking as a dark roast because it wasn't roasted as long. (Light-roasted beans should still have a dull shininess, though.)

Beans decaffeinated with the Swiss water process, a procedure that draws caffeine out of coffee beans using water instead of chemicals, will also produce much duller-looking beans.

Check for residue

If you pick up a handful of coffee beans and they leave a residue on your hands — or if you can see residue on the inside of a bag of beans — that means they are oily, and hence, freshly roasted.

Lighter roasts aren't as oily, so don't expect as much residue as you'd find with a darker roast.

Check for a valve in the sealed bag

When beans are roasted under high heat and then cooled, they release a ton of carbon dioxide (CO₂). This release of gas can last anywhere from a few days to several weeks after roasting, during what's called the degassing period.

In the first few days after roasting, the beans rapidly release CO₂, then taper off to a more gradual release over the rest of the period.

When actively degassing coffee beans are vacuum-sealed in a bag, that CO₂ needs somewhere to go, or else the bag will blow up like a balloon and potentially pop. So manufacturers insert one-way air valves into tightly sealed bags to allow the CO₂ to escape.

If your sealed bag does not have one of these valves, that likely means that your coffee beans aren't actively giving off CO₂— and aren't likely to be fresh.

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“One of the many focuses in the John’s Lab at the City College of New York is to clean up oil spills using chemicals made from renewable resources like fruits and oil.

First we do a bit of good old organic chemistry and link fatty acids from edible oils and sugars from raspberries or monkfruits. This creates what we call an ester, a bond strong enough for the applications to come, but not too strong.

We do this using nature’s most efficacious workers (enzymes) to speed things up and make a product that will easily break down after it’s done being used.

Here, not only is the product environmentally friendly, but so too is the low energy catalytic process which we use to make it.

Next, we do a little supramolecular chemistry, or to put it another way: Lego with molecules. Because the forces between the molecules we make are so specifically tuned, they are capable of stacking like the bricks into long strings in solution, which then entangle like a sponge to form a gel and trap liquid around it.

While most gels are used to trap water (like Jello), these gels because of their composition are best at turning water-fearing, or apolar liquids into gels. Examples of such liquids include cooking oils for trans-fats replacements, hydrocarbons for next-generation fuels which don’t spill, and, particularly importantly, crude oil.

This means they can be used to turn spilled oils and fuels into gels that then can be easily scooped up and taken out of the environment after a devastating oil spill.

Taking this even one step further, these gels can be squeezed or distilled to give you back your spilled liquid, and this should prove to become a much better way to clean up oil spills.

By doing a little bit of chemical engineering and materials science we can make sure these gels are strong enough to be taken out of aquatic environment, or in the case of thickened edible oils, soft enough to be spread easily but retain their shape.

By being both the designer of the molecules and also the engineer who tailors them to applications we have a complete control over the design process, which allows us to create sustainable solutions to a variety of problems.

As these molecular gels are made of small molecules (not much bigger than table sugar) our work qualifies as nanotechnology, which focuses on systems that are a billionth the size of, for example, yourself.

Though this work jumps between sub disciplines in chemistry and engineering, by leveraging out tools in each we can strive to solve the complex problems of today, and perhaps prepare ourselves for those of tomorrow.”

Julian Silverman is currently researching how compounds obtained from fruits and oils can be utilised in a number of applications, including helping to clean up oil spills at sea. Here, he explains the chemistry behind the process and how it works.

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One thing that many ancient, mummified bodies exhumed from bogs have in common is that they suffered violent deaths.

They can have slashed throats, broken noses, shattered skulls, sliced abdomens, missing bowels — all signs of deliberate violence inflicted upon them before they were cast into their soft, muddy graves.

Experts know this because bog bodies, which often date back thousands of years and have fascinated scholars and writers for centuries, are extremely well-preserved.

The chemical properties of the soft, mossy, oxygen-poor environment allow a body to be so extremely unspoiled that "you feel he will open his eyes and talk to you," Karin Margarita Frei, a bog body research scientist at the National Museum of Denmark, told National Geographic. "It's something that not even [the mummified body of Egyptian king] Tutankhamun could make you feel."

The corpse that Frei is describing is a body named Tollund Man, perhaps the most popular bog body. He was discovered by two brothers who were trimming peat from a bog in Tollund village in Denmark in 1950.

After uncovering the man, they found that he was so carefully preserved that he "looked as though he had only just passed away," journalist Kristen C. French wrote for Nautilus. "His eyelashes, chin stubble, and the wrinkles in his skin were visible; his leather cap was intact. Suspecting murder, the brothers called the police in nearby Silkeborg, but the body wasn’t what it seemed."

After a careful chemical analysis of the man's stomach, experts confirmed that the body had been lying, untouched, at the bottom of that bog for more than 2,000 years. He was from the third century B.C., French reports, and had lived during the pre-Roman Iron Age.

And conforming to the trend of many bog bodies, he appeared to have been hanged, and then tossed into this mossy grave.

While it seems improbable that a several thousand-year-old body can remain delicately preserved — often with its intestines, skin, nails, hair, stomach contents, and clothes in exquisite condition — it makes sense that the conditions are just right for body conservation.

Bogs harbor brown, soil-like, spongy deposits of peat, acidic water, and thick carpets of sphagnum moss. When a person dies and is deposited in a regular grave, bacteria and maggots feast on the flesh and tissues. This is what causes the body to decompose quickly. In fact, maggots can consume 60% of a body within a week.

But the conditions in a bog are unforgiving for these body-munchers. Bacteria and maggots generally need oxygen and, in the case of bacteria, a high pH to survive. Deep down in bogs, oxygen is scant and the pH tends to be low (acidic). This, along with a naturally antimicrobial molecule found in dying peat moss, called sphagnan, provides the quintessential recipe for bog body preservation.

When bacteria decompose dead bodies, they leach enzymes which then react with sphagnan. This causes the pH within the area to drop, making it more acidic, which then kills the bacteria.

The sphagnan also pulls calcium from bones, which leaves them with a bendy, rubbery consistency. It also has the ability to dissolve bones completely, according to Nautilus. In addition to the sphagnan, humic acid in peat moss also pulls water from the soft tissues of the body, turning them into a tough, hide-like material, furthering its preservation.

Nearly 1,000 bodies have been pulled from bogs, and a couple hundred have been carefully analyzed, according to Nautilus. Scientists believe that many were brutally sacrificed or murdered and intentionally thrown into bogs, creating mass graves, though some appear to have passed away peacefully.

However the details of their death, bogs serve as inquisitive tombs, expertly preserving the curious lives of those who lived thousands of years before our time.

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Each one of us will shuffle off this mortal coil at some point. What happens next is a fascinating — if frightening — natural process.

After your heart stops beating, your body slowly begins to decay without preservation techniques like embalming or mummification.

It starts small, down at the cellular level. Then bacteria, animals, and even the body itself begins to digest your organs and tissues.

Here's how the complete process of decay plays out.

Sources: Nature (1), Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (2), Microbiology Today (3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11), EPEC Participant’s Handbook (5, 6), BMJ, Australian Museum (10), Decomposition of Human Remains (12)

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I bet you didn't know those dollar bills in your pocket have a hint of cocaine on them. Or that there are hidden inks and features to prevent counterfeiting. These are just a couple fascinating facts about money to make you scientifically richer.

Written and directed by Kirk Zamieroski. Video courtesy of the American Chemical Society.

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Each one of us will shuffle off this mortal coil at some point. What happens next is a fascinating — if frightening — natural process.

After your heart stops beating, your body slowly begins to decay without preservation techniques like embalming or mummification.

It starts small, down at the cellular level. Then bacteria, animals, and even the body itself begins to digest your organs and tissues.

Here's how the complete process of decay plays out.

Sources: Nature (1), Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (2), Microbiology Today (3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11), EPEC Participant’s Handbook (5, 6), BMJ, Australian Museum (10), Decomposition of Human Remains (12)

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Science and humor go surprisingly well together, and scientists love studying it.

For example, scientists have figured out there are big health benefits from laughter, psychologists conducted a huge survey to figure out the funniest joke in the world and why people found it funny, and there's even a Humor Research Lab in Colorado. 

We can learn a lot from studying humor, but science also makes a great subject for a lot of jokes.

Here are 31 science-themed jokes and puns and their explanations.

Warning: Some are so cheesy, it's possible only scientists will find them amusing. 

Q: Did you hear oxygen went on a date with potassium? A: It went OK.

Explanation: The atomic symbol for oxygen and potassium are "O" and "K," respectively. They get together they spell OK. Find the joke here.

If the Silver Surfer and Iron Man team up, they'd be alloys.

Explanation: In chemistry, an alloy is a mixture of metals. Silver and Iron are both metals, so if these guys teamed up they wouldn't just be allies, they would be alloys too. Find the joke here.

The optimist sees the glass half full. The pessimist sees the glass half empty. The chemist sees the glass completely full, half with liquid and half with air.

Explanation: The glass is always completely full of something, be it a solid, liquid, or gas — unless the entire thing is in a vacuum and all the atoms are removed. Find the joke here.

The key to making the perfect grilled cheese sandwich is first picking the cheese that will give you that delicious gooey consistency. Here's the chemistry behind picking the perfect cheese. 

Video courtesy of the American Chemical Society

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Above all else, Marie Curie was a scientist with remarkable insight. But to the science contemporaries of her time, Curie was a woman, who happened to study science.

At times she was overlooked for her achievements, which were laying the foundation for what we understand about radioactive behavior that, today, runs nuclear reactors, powers deep-space exploration, and drives an entire field of medicine, called radiology.

Through the shameful, sexist-derived neglect, Curie's intellect, wit, and drive pushed her toward miraculous discoveries that even the scientific community could not ignore for long.

Curie became the first scientist to earn two Nobel Prizes, had three radiology institutes erected in her honor, saw her eldest daughter win a Nobel Prize, and was revered by the most brilliant minds of our time, including Albert Einstein.

Today, she's celebrated as one of the greatest scientists in history. In honor of Madame Marie Curie's birthday this month, here's the incredible story of her struggles and victories in a world where women were shunned.

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Maria Salomea Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, Poland on Nov. 7, 1867. Here's one of the earliest known photos of her at the age of 16.

Born in Warsaw, Poland as Maria Salomea Skłodowska, her middle name originates from the Polish word "Salome," which is traced to the Hebrew word for "peace."

Maria would later adopt her husband's last name as well as the French translation of her first name, to become known as Marie Curie.

Source: NobelPrize.org

The Curie sisters were determined to study despite government bans on higher education for women.

Russia-dominated Poland was in the midst of a feminist revolution, but changes were slow-going.

Since women were still banned from higher education, Curie and one of her sisters joined the Flying University — an educational institution that admitted women— in the mid 1880s.

Source: American Institute of Physics

She eventually moved to Paris in 1891.

To continue her studies in chemistry, math, and physics, Curie studied at Sorbonne — the University of Paris at the time — where she eventually became head of the Physics Laboratory.

Source: NobelPrize.org

Diamonds are a girl's best friend, but they don't grow on trees.

Or do they?

The Santa Clara-based startup Diamond Foundry claims it can grow diamonds in a lab that are as high-quality as natural gems, minus the exploitation of the mining industry.

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, along with 10 billionaires, have already invested in the company, which says it can make hundreds of diamonds in two weeks, weighing up to nine carats each.

But how exactly are these diamonds made, and how does it differ from existing synthetic methods?

The company's website is short on details, but here's what we know:

They start with a real diamond as a seed crystal. (This is what make their product different from other synthetic diamonds, according to a company spokesperson.) Then, using a super heated plasma, they build more atoms onto this seed, layer by layer, until they have a diamond.

The gems are grown in chemical reactors that can reach a scorching 8,000 degrees Celsius (more than 14,000 degrees Fahreneit) — hotter than the surface of the sun, which is about 5,500 degrees Celsius.

We chatted briefly with Catherine McManus, chief scientist of Materialytics, a company that specializes in distinguishing natural, synthetic, and fake diamonds, to find out what separates Diamond Foundry's gems from other synthetic diamonds.

How to make a diamond

Diamonds are made of carbon, the same material found in pencil graphite. In nature, geologists believe diamonds are created over millions of years under intense pressure and temperature in the Earth's mantle, and then regurgitated onto the surface by volcanoes.

By contrast, synthetic diamonds are made in a lab. Chemically, natural and synthetic diamonds are almost identical, but they can vary in the trace elements found inside.

The two most common techniques for making synthetic diamonds are known as high-pressure high-temperature (HPHT) and chemical vapor deposition (CVD).

In HPHT, a carbon seed crystal is placed inside a device called a press with a metal solvent and subjected to immense pressures at temperatures around 1,400 degrees Celsius (about 2,250 degrees Fahrenheit), which melts the metal. The molten metal dissolves the carbon crystal, and it solidifies into a diamond.

In CVD, a carbon-hydrogen gas mixture is deposited on a surface layer-by-layer. This process usually takes place at about 800 degrees Celsius (1,470 degrees Fahrenheit).

Diamond Foundry's method seems to be a combination of HPHT and CVD, said McManus. It's basically the latter method, but at much higher temperatures, she said.

The result are diamonds that are as pure as natural ones, the company claims, "But ethically and morally pure as well."

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While the world mourns those who died in the November 13 Paris attacks, investigators are hard at work piecing together the terrorist plot that has killed at least 129 people and seriously injured 99 others.

One question Parisian authorities have answered, however, is what explosives the attackers set off during the attacks.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters on November 14 that seven of eight attackers set off shrapnel-packed bomb vests designed for causing the "maximum number of casualties while committing suicide."

The key ingredient in the bombs, Molins said, was a compound called triacetone triperoxide, or TATP — a crystalline powder that is a nightmare to terrorists as well as authorities.

An unstable white powder

TATP is easy to make and hard to detect, but is also incredibly unstable. In fact, all it takes is a firm tap to explode TATP with a force that can be 80% stronger than TNT. (Which is why it has gained an infamous reputation as "the Mother of Satan" among terrorists who make it, according to The Future of Things.)

The infamous "shoe bomber" used TATP in 2001, as did terrorists in London in 2005 and 2006. The chemical was also in bombs detonated at the University of Oklahoma in 2005 and Texas City in 2006, according to explosives researchers at Northeastern University.

"TATP and other explosives of the peroxide family are used extensively by terrorist organizations around the world because they are easy to prepare and very difficult to detect," Ehud Keinan, a chemist at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, said in a 2005 press release about his research of the chemical.

You might recognize two chemicals in TATP's full name — triacetone triperoxide— because they're ingredients you can find in your local pharmacy's cosmetics and first aid isles.

"TATP can be easily prepared in a basement lab using commercially available starting materials,"according to GlobalSecurity.org, which also notes "it's easy to blow yourself up when you make it."

Jimmie Oxley, an explosives researcher at the University of Rhode Island, told Tech Insider by email that making TATP is as easy as "baking a cake."

"We have done a lot of work trying to prevent its synthesis," wrote Oxley, who has experimented with adding trace chemicals to hydrogen peroxide in hopes of foiling TATP's homemade production. "It isn't easy to do and the ingredients are very common."

Chemistry of a nightmare

One reason TATP is difficult to detect is because it does not contain nitrogen, a key component of homemade "fertilizer" bombs that security scanners are now very good at finding.

Each molecule contains only hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon — some of the most common elements on Earth — shaped in a ring.

The explosive power of TATP has puzzled scientists since its discovery in 1895. Unlike nitrogen-based bomb materials, which store up energy as they're cooked into explosive form, TATP can be made at room temperature — no flames required.

So where does it get its explosive energy, if not by heating?

It wasn't until 2005 that Keinan figured out detonating TATP is more like a massive air blast than a fire bomb. When a crystal of the explosive is rattled hard enough, each solid molecule instantly breaks into four gas molecules.

"Although the gas is at room temperature, it has the same density as the solid, and four times as many molecules, so it has 200 times the pressure of the surrounding air," according to the release about Keinan and his colleagues' 2005 study of TATP.

"This enormous pressure — one-[and-a-half] tons per square inch — then pushes outward, creating an explosive force 80% greater than that of TNT," states the release.

"In a TATP explosion, the gas molecules give up their energy of motion to the surroundings, in the process creating the shock wave that does the damage."

Can we detect it?

Scientists are now working feverishly to create practical ways to find TATP before it can be used to kill innocent people.

ACRO Security Technologies, a company founded by Keinan, has created a disposable marker-size "peroxide explosives tester," or ACRO-P.E.T.

"The ACRO-P.E.T. provides an immediate answer to whether a suspicious material that has been discovered somewhere ... contains even minute quantities of a peroxide-based explosive," Keinan told The Future of Things.

Other researchers are working on ways to find TATP when it's being transported, and without the need for a direct chemical test like Keinan's device.

In 2011, for example, scientists at Hitachi in Japan created a machine that sucks in air from around a passenger and — in two seconds — can sniff out minute traces of TATP.

A German research group also announced this summer that large amounts of TATP can be detected in transit. Because the chemical is so touchy, they say in their study, it's usually dissolved in a special liquid before being moved around — and that fluid's unique odor is what they hope security scanners of the future could sniff out.

Warning: We have purposefully ommitted key details about TATP's manufacture. Do not attempt to make it or any other explosive, for that matter.

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Do you know which popular holiday spice can help soothe a toothache? Or why chocolate is toxic to dogs and cats?

By digging deep into the molecular chemistry of everyday foods and spices, Cambridge-based chemistry teacher Andy Brunning has the answers.

And you don't have to be a chemistry-expert to understand them.

Brunning heads the popular science website Compound Interest and recently published the book "Why Does Asparagus Make Your Wee Smell?: And 57 other curious food and drink questions."

Here are 15 of Brunning's amazing graphics about the chemistry of asparagus, cloves, coffee, nutmeg, and much more:

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When your doctor says don't eat grapefruit, she means it! Grapefruit contains compounds that can prevent your body from breaking down certain medications, including some statin drugs to lower cholesterol, like Lipitor, and some antihistamines, like Allegra.

Additional source: FDA

Clove oil is rich in a compound called eugenol, which has antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties that can ease dental pain.

Leaves from the coriander plant are a popular ingredient in Indian cuisine. But the leaves can sometimes taste soapy. That's because they contain similar aldehyde compounds found in many soaps and lotions.

You drank booze. You ate stuffing. You passed out.

Sound like your Thanksgiving? Sounds like mine, too.

We're all familiar with the desire to kick off the dress shoes and curl up on the couch after eating two-days'-worth of calories.

But what's really going on inside your body that brings about that inevitable food coma?

For years, people believed that this sleepy feeling you get after eating — which scientists officially call postprandial somnolence— was due to blood being shunted from the brain to the gut to digest your food. But studies, such as this one from 2003, have shown that blood flow in the brain and in the gut do not change after a large meal.

The turkey isn't only to blame, either. The chemical tryptophan, which is present in turkey and does contribute to making you feel sleepy, is actually present in other meats and dairy products in the same, if not higher, concentrations.

The likeliest answer, then, lies not only in how much you eat, but in the number of blood sugar-spiking foods, such as simple carbohydrates, you consume. While scientists aren't exactly sure how these types of foods trick the brain into making you sleepy, they can muster a guess.

Carbohydrates are the starches, sugars, and fibers that you get the most of from things like grains, fruits, vegetables, and desserts. They come in two categories, simple and complex, which pass through your body at different rates.

Simple carbohydrates, such as those typically associated with a Thanksgiving meal — white breads, potatoes, pumpkin, and refined table sugars — are said to have a high glycemic index because they're absorbed through your intestines into your blood stream much more quickly than complex carbs (such as whole grains, brown rice, and quinoa). 

When the chewed up food passes into your gut, your body breaks the carbs down into glucose, a type of sugar that provides fuel for your brain and cells. After a heavy meal, levels of glucose in the blood spike upward. Simple carbs cause this spike to happen much more quickly than complex carbs. This then prompts your pancreas to produce the hormone insulin, which shuttles sugar from the blood into cells for use as fuel, keeping concentrations of glucose in the blood low.

High glycemic meals, with a ton of simple carbs (cranberry sauce, anyone?), can give you a quick energy boost — but then you crash. They can also actually indirectly increase your levels of tryptophan. 

A study from 2007 found that eating a meal with a high glycemic index shortened the time it took for people to fall asleep by about 50% when compared to those fed a low glycemic index meal. The researchers note that the exact mechanism is unknown. 

But there's likely more than one reason a Thanksgiving feast can end in sleepiness. A study from 2009 suggests that cross-talk between the gut and the brain after a meal activates the hypothalamus, which indirectly stimulates regions responsible for sleep while simultaneously suppressing regions responsible for wakefulness.

So there you have it. Go forth. Eat some leftovers. Fall asleep again. You deserve it.

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The pub at the end of my block has a lot going for it. It boasts a huge variety of craft beers, a beautiful patio, and a killer Monday night trivia.

But every time I order a fancy brew at a great bar like this, I wonder, is their glassware clean?

Luckily, there's a super easy way to tell. If the inside of your pint glass is dirty, one main thing will happen: Streams of bubbles will flow from the walls of your glass.

I know, it sounds weird because — unless your beer is flat — there are going to be bubbles dancing all over the place. But if the fizz is originating from the inside walls, your cup likely has some gunk in it.

Here's why: The tiny layers of grime are creating rough spots on the glass that agitate the beer. These are called "nucleation points," which provide a place for the dissolved gas in your beer — usually carbon dioxide — to grab onto and promote bubble formation. This makes your beer fizzy.

The physical process is similar to what happens when you drop a Mentos tablet into a can of Diet Coke. The dissolved gas in the soda gives the drink its bubbles. The liquid is bottled under pressure to keep the bubbles in, and when you open the can or bottle, those bubbles start to make their way out of the liquid, creating the beer's distinctive fizz.

While the gas will create bubbles naturally, this process can be sped along by giving the bubbles something to latch on to. An object with rough ridges or a bumpy surface — the Mentos, for example, or grime on a glass — can catalyze bubble-making.

In the classic Mentos and Diet Coke experiment, the mint drops into the soda and forms so many bubbles that it creates intense pressure. Those bubbles have nowhere to go but up, causing an eruption.

Nucleation is generally a good thing when it comes to beers. More and more, brewers and glass manufacturers designing glasses with lasered etchings onto the bottom of the cup to agitate the beer and promote fizziness and a frothy head.

But if this fizziness is coming from a dirty glass, then you should definitely bring it back and demand a new one. There's no shame in becoming even more of a beer snob than you already are.

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This "iodine clock" experiment is so cool, we feel cheated that we never got to do it in high school chemistry lab.

But it turns out the popular experiment is so simple to do— involving only a bit of water, liquid iodine, potato starch, and a few other common reagents — that it can be done at home or even at work.

That is, if your bosses don't mind having their minds blown in the company kitchenette.

First, observe how magical this looks. In this IncredibleScience YouTube video, inky black liquid is poured into a cup, where it instantly turns clear:

The same chemistry can make the liquid clear one minute, then just go "poof!" into darkness the next.

This happens because different forms of iodine reflect light in different colors.

Iodine dissolved in a liquid becomes iodide (I^-) and is clear, for example, while gaseous iodine (I₂) looks purple.

When iodine and starch are dissolved together in water, gooey starch molecules instantly trap iodine ions close together to create a dark, blueish-black color. (Dripping liquid iodine onto a potato will turn it the same color, due to all of the spud's starch.)

But you can slow down or reverse the reaction by adding a bit of sulfite (SO₃) — common in most vinegar— which is used up at a very consistent rate. The moment it runs out, it's every iodide ion for itself; the starch immediately nabs the ions, complexes them, and goes dark.

The coolest part, though, is that increasing the concentration of sulfite can lengthen "clock," making science look more like magic in the hands of a practiced chemist.

Sir Martyn Poliakoff, a world-renowned chemist at the University of Nottingham, explains in more detail how the reaction works in this Periodic Videos clip.

Sir Poliakoff and his video crew show the set of reactions that use up the sulfite:

And they also recorded the reaction with a high-speed video camera, which reveals the moment the sulfite runs out in slow-motion:

To try this at home, you can buy a $10 kit that's made for doing this experiment from Incredible Science. The instructions are included.

Or, you can go the DIY route using materials found at the grocery store or pharmacy. Here's what you need, according to Curiosity.TV:

Materials

• liquid iodine
• potato flour
• water
• vinegar
• Vitamin C tablet
• hydrogen peroxide
• 3 glasses

Steps

1. Add 1 tsp. of potato flour to a glass of water.
2. Crush up the Vitamin C tablet and dissolve it in a second glass of water.
3. Add a few drops of iodine to the third glass of water. It should be organgeish-brown.
4. Add 2 tsp. of vinegar to the glass of iodine. It should still be brown.
5. Pour the Vitamin C glass into the iodine glass. It should turn clear!
6. Pour the potato flour glass into the iodine glass.
7. Finally, add about 4 tsp. of hydrogen peroxide to the iodine glass.
8. Wait about 1 minute. It should turn blueish-black!

You can play with adding the ingredients at different times and in varying concentrations to control when the solution changes color.

No matter what, you'll look like a magician — but you'll know it's just cool chemistry.

Here's the full video from Curiosity.TV showing how you can do the experiment using materials you could find at the store:

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Sometimes when you open a brand-new bottle of wine, it can smell like rotten eggs.

This obviously ruins the entire drinking experience, since a wine's smell is such a big part of how it tastes.

But there is a weird, almost free trick to fix the smell, and keep you from having to throw out that bottle.

All you need is a penny.

I know it sounds weird, but stick with me here — there's a chemical reason why this works.

During the fermentation process, when yeast turn grapes into wine, sulfur can sometimes get turned into compounds called thiols that can make your wine smell terrible.

Winemakers often spray sulfur on vineyards so mildew doesn't grow on the grapes. Most of the time, they'll stop doing this a few weeks before the harvest so that excess sulfur doesn't make its way into the fermenting wine.

Some of the sulfur can also come from sulfites that winemakers add as a preservative (you've likely seen "contains sulfites" that's required for labeling in the US).

Our noses are so sensitive to hydrogen sulfide — the source of the rotten egg odor — that we can even smell concentrations as low as one part per billion.

So if your wine smells bad, author Jeff Potter suggests in his book, Cooking for Geeks, that you get a penny, wash it, and plop it in your glass. As you mix it around with a spoon, the copper from the penny will bond with the stinky thiol molecules, resulting in odorless, harmless copper sulfide crystals.

Remove the penny, and drink up! (Responsibly, of course.)

This trick, sadly, doesn't work on a bottle of wine that has gone bad from being left open for too long.

You can see the full explanation from the American Chemical Society here:

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My ultimate go-to cookie recipe is the one on the bag of Nestlé Toll House chocolate chips. It never disappoints.

Phoebe Buffay's grandma knew it was the best choice, too.

Of course, I've added my own tweaks to the recipe over the years. Baking, after all, is just chemistry you can eat. It takes a little experimenting to get things just right.

Just in time for the holidays, the American Chemical Society's Reactions YouTube channel has put out a video on cookie science.

Here are some of the highlights to making cookies just the way you like them, using the power of science:

Chewy

The interaction between gluten and water determines how chewy your cookies will be. If you want chewier cookies, use bread flour. The higher amount of protein will help develop the gluten.

Cakey

For fluffier cookies, add baking soda. It releases carbon dioxide gas in the oven so your cookies aren't as dense.

Caramelized

When sugar breaks down under high heat, it turns into caramel. But this reaction only begins above 356 degrees Fahrenheit. So bake your cookies at 375 degrees Fahrenheit instead of 350 to get caramelized cookies.

Crispy

Adding the butter at different temperatures can result in cookies of different sizes. Using chilled butter, for example, will make smaller cookies because it has less time to melt and fan out. If you want larger, thinner, crispy cookies, melt the butter before you add it to the batter. (I've been doing this for years, and it makes really tasty cookies.)

Good luck out there! To see the entire cookie experiment, watch the full video from the American Chemical Society:

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Diamonds might purportedly be ‘a girl’s best friend’, but they’re also quite interesting from a chemical perspective.

You could be forgiven for thinking that there’s not a whole lot to them; after all, they’re simply one of the possible forms of carbon, formed at high pressure beneath the Earth’s surface.

However, there are a number of factors that can affect their appearance, and several of these are rooted in chemistry.

If you’ve never had the occasion to purchase a diamond ring, you might be unaware of the system diamond manufacturers and sellers use to classify diamonds.

This system is referred to as the four Cs of diamond quality, the eponymous ‘Cs’ being cut, carat, colour, and clarity. These different attributes are usually given a form of shorthand to communicate a particular diamond’s characteristics, so trying to purchase a diamond-containing ring quickly becomes an exercise in cracking a cryptic code that relates the diamond’s quality.

The first of the Cs, the diamond’s cut, has the least to do with chemistry – but does have links with physics. The cut of the diamond is important in order to obtain the best sparkle from the gem.

The ideal cut allows for total internal reflection of the light hitting the diamond, reflecting it back out of its face; if the cut of the gem is too shallow, or too deep, then this internal reflection is disrupted, and the stone appears less brilliant.

The diamond carat refers to the mass of the diamond. It’s a unit that’s used for other gemstones too; 1 carat is equal to a mass of 200 milligrams, or 0.2 grams. Typical diameters for a range of different carat weights are given in the graphic, though these can vary depending on the cut of the diamond.

Generally, higher carat diamonds are predictably higher in cost, though some of the other ‘4 Cs’ can also have an influence.

It’s when we get to our remaining factors, colour and clarity, that the chemistry comes in. The colour of diamonds is graded on a scale that runs from D to Z – apparently, it starts at D rather than A to avoid conflict with other systems that were in use when this particular system was introduced.

D represents a completely colourless diamond, with an increasing yellow hue as you move towards Z. This colouration is derived from impurities in the diamond’s structure.

As well as this colour classification used by jewellers, diamonds can also be placed in one of four major categories which are perhaps more useful to us when discussing their chemistry. These are type Ia, type Ib, type IIa and type IIb.

Type I diamonds contain nitrogen impurities. For type Ia diamonds, which make up 98% of all natural diamonds, this is in the range of 0 to 0.3% nitrogen, which is present in the crystal in clusters.

Type Ia diamonds have a colour ranging from near-colourless to yellow. Why though, does the inclusion of a small number of nitrogen atoms change the colour of diamonds in this way?

To explain this, we have to talk about band gaps. A band gap is the energy gap between the energy level of the outermost electrons of a material, and the next unoccupied energy level above this level. In diamond, this energy gap is pretty big.

What this means is that when visible light photons hit the diamond, they don’t have enough energy to allow electrons to jump up from the highest energy level and across the band gap. Therefore, none of this light is absorbed by the diamond, and it appears colourless as the entire spectrum of visible light is transmitted.

However, when nitrogen atoms are present in diamond, a donor energy level is created, at a higher energy than diamond’s electrons are usually found.

The band gap between this donor level and the unoccupied levels is now smaller, and so the absorption of some of the visible light spectrum provides enough energy for electrons to bridge this gap. As some of the spectrum has been absorbed, the diamond does not transmit all of the visible light that hits it, leading to the yellow colouration.

If the nitrogen impurities are more spread out than in the clustered type Ia diamonds, then we have ourselves a type Ib diamond.

These are rarer than type Ia, making up just 0.1% of all naturally occurring diamonds. Their yellow colouration is also more intense. Synthetic high temperature, high pressure diamonds also tend to be of this type.

Type II diamonds differ from type I in that they contain no measurable nitrogen impurities. Type IIa, which make up 1-2% of all naturally occurring diamonds, are often completely colourless, though structural anomalies in the tetrahedral structure of the carbon atoms can themselves produce a range of colours.

Synthetic diamonds can be produced using chemical vapour deposition (CVD), and these diamonds are usually type IIa. Type IIb diamonds may not contain nitrogen impurities but they do contain impurities of a different element: boron.

These diamonds are relatively rare, making up only 0.1% of all naturally occurring diamonds. Absorption of visible light as a result of these impurities leads to the diamond having a prized blue colouration.

The final C, clarity, also has links with the impurities found in diamonds. These impurities can manifest themselves as cloudiness or imperfections in the diamond, which can vary in how noticeable they are. Part of a diamond’s ‘code’ refers to these imperfections.

Diamonds which contain no imperfections are designated ‘flawless’, with those containing only minor surface blemishes designated ‘internally flawless’.

The scale then continues with increasing numbers of imperfections; through ‘very very slightly included’, ‘very slightly included’, and ‘slightly included’, to the lowest grade, ‘included’. At this final stage, imperfections (or inclusions) are likely to be visible to the naked eye.

Moving away from diamonds, we can also examine the ring’s chemical composition. Today, you can choose from a range of metals: gold, silver, platinum, and more. Gold itself is actually too soft to be used in its pure form, and so it’s commonly alloyed with other metals.

White gold is an alloy of gold with palladium, nickel, and zinc, which is often plated with rhodium to increase its durability. The more stereotypical yellow gold is still an alloy, in this case with copper and silver. Silver itself is commonly alloyed as well; if you have a silver ring, it’s likely also got copper and possibly some other trace metals present.

Away from the traditional metal choices, and other metals have been putting in appearances. Platinum is now a popular choice due to its similarity in appearance to white gold, but greater durability; palladium is being increasingly used for similar reasons.

Another metal used in rings, though perhaps more for wedding rings than engagement rings, is tungsten in the form of tungsten carbide.

(Finally, in case you’re wondering what prompted this decidedly non-festive post… it’s exactly what you suspect, and she said yes! In fact, the pictured ring is THE ring.)

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