My wife has been kidding me about my memory for as long as I can remember. This could go back more than 17 years, but I can’t be sure. The good news is that I have never had a photographic memory. Not even close. She, on the other hand, remembers things. She always has, always will.

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. ...

What exactly is the deal with green chili peppers? They totally confuse me. I like Mexican food very much, but I have a problem with those green chilies. One time I eat them and they are red hot. Another time they are not. I never like super-hot foods because to me the heat masks the flavor. So I have a need-to-know rule when I order food in general.

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. ...

I have very strong feelings about Jell-O®. I have had them since I was a child.  I like virtually all of the flavors but one: green. I find artificial green flavor in just about any food or candy is, well, too artificial. To me, it just doesn’t come close to emulating the taste of lime. Yellow, red or orange Jell-O®, on the other hand, is flavorful.

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.

Know this: I’m no computer geek. Oh, I love checking the Web for ACS news stories,  I’m on Facebook and some other social networking sites, and I can be found busily typing on my keyboard most of the day during working hours. The Net is a Godsend when I need information for a reporter.

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

Please hurry! Please hurry! Time is running out. In about two weeks I will once again become a human pincushion and I would love to avoid the needle. You are my only hope, you scientists at the University of Minnesota. Without you, on June 2 I will settle into the dentist’s chair and get my full dose of topical anesthesia –– right in the cheek and gums when I have my first tooth pulled to make way for a dental implant.

How can these scientists help me? They have just announced a breakthrough: An anesthesia inhaler that could one day replace that needle.

I know it’s impossible that the device could miraculously make it into the health care delivery system, in the next two weeks, but you can’t blame me for dreaming…

Scientists are reporting evidence that a common local anesthetic, when administered to the nose as nose drops or a nasal spray, travels through the main nerve in the face and collects in high concentrations in the teeth, jaw, and structures of the mouth.

The discovery could lead to a new generation of intranasal drugs for noninvasive treatment for dental pain, migraine, and other conditions, the scientists suggest in American Chemical Society’s bi-monthly journal Molecular Pharmaceutics. The article is scheduled for the journal’s May-June issue.

William H. Frey II, Ph.D., and colleagues note that drugs administered to the nose travel along nerves and go directly to the brain. One of those nerves is the trigeminal nerve, which brings feelings to the face, nose and mouth. Until now, however, scientists never checked to see whether intranasal drugs passing along that nerve might reach the teeth, gums and other areas of the face and mouth to reduce pain sensations in the face and mouth.   

Neil Johnson, working in the labs of Frey and Leah R. Hanson, Ph.D., at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minn., found that lidocaine or Xylocaine, sprayed into the noses of laboratory rats, quickly traveled down the trigeminal nerve and collected in their teeth, jaws, and mouths at levels 20 times higher than in the blood or brain. The approach could provide a more effective and targeted method for treating dental pain/anxiety, trigeminal neuralgia (severe facial pain), migraine, and other conditions, the scientists say.

To read more about this innovation, go to painless.     

Image courtesy of iStock