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Natural Sciences

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Lactose Tolerance and Human Evolution

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Sugar on Snow

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Maple Sugar Season Is Here

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Hot Off the Presses: What’s So Hot About Chili Peppers?

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Science, Yes!

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Sweet Potatoes in Space

Scientist Joseph Priestly is best known for discovering oxygen but his contributions were much larger.

The Inventor of Air

Known for discovering oxygen, scientist Joseph Priestly also influenced the beliefs of our founding fathers

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Wing Shortage Looms On Eve of Super Bowl

About 5 percent of the nation’s chicken wings are eaten on that day - the product of a staggering 300 million chickens

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Sugar-coated Mercury Contamination

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Early Humans Left Trails of Ulcers

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Caffeine Linked to Hallucinations

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A Field Guide to Sugars

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Cochineal Coloring: Is That a Bug in Your Food?

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Yummy: The Neuromechanics of Umami

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Food Stuck in Teeth for 8,000 Years Alters View of Early Farming

John White likely did this study of a male Atlantic loggerhead on a stop in the West Indies en route to "Virginia" in 1585. "Their heads, feet, and tails look very ugly, like those of a venomous serpent," wrote Thomas Harriot, the expedition's scientist, of New World tortoises. "Nevertheless they are very good to eat, as are their eggs."

Sketching the Earliest Views of the New World

The watercolors that John White produced in 1585 gave England its first startling glimpse of America

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It All Comes Out in the Wash

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How Taxonomy Helps Us Make Sense Out of the Natural World

We all have a need to classify plants and animals, which is what the National Museum of Natural History does on a grand scale

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Pliny’s World: All the Facts and Then Some

In A.D. 77 a workaholic called Pliny the Elder published the first encyclopedia, Natural History. Headless people were among the many marvels

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