Free Republic

Here’s some food for thought about what’s in your pantry. And that’s blueberries. Or “little blue dynamos”, as the folks at the US Highbush Blueberry Council like to call them. Not only are they blue, but they are good for you, too. Good for your heart, good for your brain, good for your liver, and may reduce your risk for cancer. But that only works if they are the real deal, and you probably will not find them in that blueberry muffin mix on your pantry shelf. The Food Identify Theft blog claims most mixes are “just plain awful.” But...

Scientists have found further evidence for the existence of an elusive intermediate implicated in chemical reactions that degrade atmospheric pollutants. A new method of directly detecting the simplest form of this intermediate, as well as more measurements of the intermediate’s reactivity, provide indications that atmospheric models need to improve how they account for them.More than 50 years ago, German chemist Rudolf Criegee proposed that alkenes in the atmosphere, released either by plants or human activities, degrade by reacting with ozone to form a cyclic ozonide. One of the products formed when this ozonide falls apart is a carbonyl oxide called...