Slick Willy
Ads for commercial cleansers portray bacteria as ominous globs lingering in the darkened corners of our homes. Yet some strains of bacteria actually aid in greening our environment. “Slick Willy,” or...
View ArticleThe Torpedo
Bell Biv DeVoe, R&B spin-off group from the early 1990s, hit it big with smash single, “Poison.” Chances are that while the group crooned “Girl, I must warn you,” it was unaware of the predatory...
View ArticleThe Vibrio Family
The world is cold, bitter place for the unfortunate few who have not seen Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy. Parodies don’t quite make sense; quotations from the film echo in lost cause; and the...
View ArticleVanilla Ice
Who hasn’t heard of Vanilla Ice? Adapting the rhythmic underpinnings of the Queen/David Bowie duet “Under Pressure,” Mr. Ice created a snappy rap song destined for top 40 success, radio replay — and...
View ArticleLittle L
If the probiotic movement is a shiny discotheque, Lactobacillus, or Little L, would be the glamorous VIP whose celebrity moves velvet ropes.Lactobacillus is a gram-positive, rod-shaped bacterium native...
View ArticleSmelliot
“Hey, everybody! She’s cool with ‘Smelliot,'” chimes ne’er-do-well, John Dorian from TV’s Scrubs. Everyone knows a Smelliot. Smelliot was the social outcast in grade school burdened by his parents with...
View ArticleTop Ten Bacteria Working in the Shadows
Childhood was a hazy mix of lace and mud — an age of cookie time, horseplay and the occasional cootie shot. It seems like a far cry from the fettered world of adulthood. But there were darker forces at...
View ArticlePower Poses Really Work
How strong is the power of suggestion? For researchers in the field of embodied cognition—the study of the mind as it relates to and influences the body—suggestion is a force to be reckoned with....
View ArticleMore Reasons Not to Skip Your Broccoli
Though the upcoming holidays signal mass poultry-cide in the name of family togetherness, recent findings in the journal Food & Function might very well change the way we gobble, with more green...
View ArticleEnamored with Enamel
Having navigated Halloween and now facing Thanksgiving in the United States, and with the December holidays around the corner worldwide, the annual battle of tooth versus sugary treat has begun....
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