It’s been an egg-frying-on-the-sidewalk kind of summer here even for the nation’s capital, but the other day, we got a refreshing break as the temperature mercifully stayed in the 80s. But when I got out of the car and hit the black asphalt in the parking lot of a local shopping center, I swear the temperature jumped 10 degrees. ...

I have a kind of funny relationship with fish. So far, I’ve never met one I didn’t like for dinner. On the other hand, I have never had much patience to spend the day on the water, trying to catch one. Until I was about 13, though, I tried. ...

My first memory of eating eggs as a child is not a happy one: I clearly remember gagging on them. To persuade me to eat soft-boiled eggs, my parents would add some pieces of toast and serve the mixture to me in a brightly-colored egg cup. I don’t know if they sell these cups today, but we still have one at home, though we never use it. I forced myself to eat some of this concoction, but it was never a favorite of mine.

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The nation’s commercial airlines deserve a little credit for consistently carrying out their jobs. Rain or shine, their 35,000 daily flights ferry people of all kinds — the college graduate, the business executive, the vacationer — throughout the country and around the world.

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Some years ago, goaded on by some of my high school buddies, I wrote a letter to the editor at the National Enquirer in response to a story about a clothing store owner in Canada named Stanley Plomish, who claimed he was from the planet Venus. In a nutshell, my letter said this man was a fraud because I was from Venus and, to quote myself, “I never heard of any Plomish family.”  Well, they printed my letter and when you read the next sentence you probably will be convinced I knew what I was talking about. I can live without coffee.

With the number of coffee corners around this country in particular, I have the feeling I must be one of five people on the planet who can take or leave this ubiquitous beverage. Now, I do appreciate a good cup of Joe, but I have never craved it or needed it to wake up in the morning as so many people do. Not that there’s anything wrong with a wake-up jolt. It’s just that I can’t really identify with coffee-lovers in general. I can, however, appreciate what yesterday’s ACS Weekly PressPac had to say about what some imaginative chemists in Brazil have been doing with unroasted coffee beans.

The scientists are reporting for the first time that these beans contain proteins that can kill insects and might be developed into new insecticides for protecting food crops against destructive pests. Their study, which suggests a new use for one of the most important tropical crops in the world, appears in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication.

Peas, beans and some other plant seeds contain proteins, called globulins, which ward off insects. Coffee beans contain large amounts of globulins, and Paulo Mazzafera and colleagues wondered whether those coffee proteins might also have an insecticidal effect. The high heat of roasting destroys globulins, so that they do not appear in brewed coffee.

Their tests against cowpea weevil larva, insects used as models for studying the insecticidal activity of proteins, showed that tiny amounts of the coffee proteins quickly killed up to half of the insects. In the future, scientists could insert genes for these insect-killing proteins into important food crops, such as grains, so that plants produce their own insecticides, the researchers suggest. The proteins appear harmless to people.

To read more about this innovation, go to beans. 

Image courtesy of Fernando Rebelo, Wikimedia Commons

When I was a child, my mother used to frequently remind me to wash my hands before eating dinner. Sometimes I ignored her advice. It seemed hard for me to believe at the time that there were “invisible” germs that lived on my hands that could potentially make me sick. My mother was a school nurse and was always giving me advice about my health that bordered on nagging. Today, I know that Mother was not only right about handwashing, but that her advice may have saved my life.

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I recently began cleaning out the clutter in my small apartment in Alexandria, Va., where I have lived for the past decade. Over this time, I accumulated a lot of junk: Old magazines, clothes, and spare parts for my car. One of the things that surprised me was the number of unused computers and other discarded electronic equipment — also known as electronic waste (e-waste) — I had collected. I counted at least three computers that I was no longer using, a couple of cell phones, and various other items. My apartment had become a potential environmental hazard!

I am inspired to blog about this topic because of an article I read recently in the American Chemical Society’s weekly PressPac. The article indicates that the developing world will produce double the e-waste of developed countries, like the United States, by 2016. The article, based on a study published in ACS’ journal Environmental Science & Technology, predicts that by 2030 developing countries will discard some 400 million – 700 million obsolete personal computers per year compared to 200 million – 300 million in developed countries. That’s bad news, considering that this e-waste contains potentially toxic substances. The study highlights the need to develop better ways of disposing of this waste.

I’m not anywhere close to accumulating that amount of e-waste. But I know that I need to do a lot more to help improve the planet. I pledge that when I get rid of all of my e-waste, I will do so in an environmentally-responsible manner. It won’t go to the trash bin. I will give my computers to someone else who can actually use them or send them to an e-waste collection program in my area. For more on this, visit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Web site. I’ll be happy knowing that I’m contributing to a cleaner environment….and uncluttering my apartment in the process.

Image courtesy of iStock

I’m sitting in my cousin’s living room in the beautiful hills of Hillsborough, Calif., outside of San Francisco and my wife and I agree we must do the unthinkable: We must ask him to turn the heat thermostat higher. This request is coming from two people who hate hot weather and, in the winter, keep their home at 67 degrees by day and close to 60 at night. It is now noon in my cousin’s living room and the indoor thermometer is frozen at 62.
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Don’t ask me why, but I’m suddenly thinking about my vegetable garden. For the past few weeks our backyard and my garden have been sitting there under a three-foot blanket of snow. Here in the nation’s capital metro area we’ve had the greatest snowfall for an entire winter already. I’ve measured more than 60 inches at our house. The average is 15 for winter season. Maybe I’m thinking ahead because by this morning, I almost can see the earth in the garden plot.
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