Stoichiometry is really cool-sounding word. Well, it’s also a fascinating and subtle study. Any given chemical can participate in a range of reactions with different reactants and result in different products. The ratio of those compounds — the number of each you start with and end with — is the stoichiometry. But it really gets Read More

Freshwater mussels have two unique characteristics: they have up to a 50-year lifespan and they have a motile larval form that exists as a parasite on fish gills. Some mussels are dependent upon a single host fish species, while others can host in multiple fish species. So they’re susceptible to changes in the environment that Read More

I recently had an editor give me grief for not defining “nanotechnology” with sufficient precision for the introductory audience. I managed to convince her that nanotechnology is about as loosely defined a term as you’ll find in technical circles. Essentially, it applies to anything designed with features more or less around a nanometer (or ten Read More

“Experimental endpoints in biomedical research should be determined on the basis of a combination of scientific, ethical, legal, practical, and humane considerations.” Any paper that starts with that sentence is bound to be at least somewhat interesting.  In this case, researchers were investigating markers of imminent death in inbred lab mice. They weighed the mice Read More