This article was originally posted on RealClearScience.
Wherever you live, bacteria live. Wherever you can’t live, bacteria live. From hydrothermal vents to acid mines, microbes have the planet covered. They also have your Nespresso machine covered. Recently, Spanish researchers decided to inventory the microbial community that dwells inside George Clooney’s favorite coffee maker. Continue reading
THE coffee-berry borer is a pesky beetle. It is thought to destroy $500m-worth of unpicked coffee beans a year, thus diminishing the incomes of some 20m farmers. The borer spends most of its life as a larva, buried inside a coffee berry, feeding on the beans within. To do so, it has to defy the toxic effects of caffeine. This is a substance which, though pleasing to people, is fatal to insects—except, for reasons hitherto unknown, to the coffee-berry borer. But those reasons are unknown no longer. Read the rest at The Economist.
This article was originally published on RealClearScience.
The most interesting man in the world has nothing on coffee, which is the most interesting beverage in the world. Coffee continues to be the subject of countless studies, some more serious than others. Thanks both to science and intrepid entrepreneurs, for instance, we have learned the chemistry of perfect coffee, thebest time of day to partake, and why drip coffee is likelier to spill than a latte. You may think that coffee and pooping have nothing in common, but you would be wrong. Again, thanks to science, we know why it is worthwhile to pluck beans out of elephant dung, why coffee makes you poop, and why coffee should go in your mouth, not your butt. If all of that isn’t enough, you can now take coffee classes at some universities. Continue reading
