Shortly after the restaurant is named tops in the entire world, inspectors find S. aureus (a favorite topic here lately) and other undesirables in the pork and ice cream.

The self-taught chef made the necessary adjustments , and now the Fat Duck has risen like a phoenix from its skirmishes with the hygiene police.

Scientists arm a naturally occurring chemical found in garlic and onion to fight cancer cells.

Glazed. Chocolate covered. Raised. Cake. Glazed with sprinkles. Powdered sugar ones. Jelly-filled. Warm. Just out of the fryer. With a cold glass of milk. With coffee. With hot cocoa. Stan’s. Lou’s. Winchell’s. Krispy Kremes. A terrible sugar rush. The heart beats faster.

Uh, we have figured out that they’re not good for us. But they do make us happy, just like ice cream. Are they also making us stupid, so we need MRIs to tell us we get pleasure from these foods?

Most of the world is safe from the ravages of polio, but a young girl in Java has been found to have Indonesia’s first case in almost ten years. Nigeria, and other African countries also report cases due either to war conditions or a false belief that the vaccine would cause AIDS, cancer, or infertility.

Other hazards of volcanos are discussed at this USGS page.

When conditions are right, the meeting between two substances that flow can be explosive .

Listening to Ray Charles and Betty Carter, Baby, It’s Cold Outside.

It’s balmy out there, actually, the monarch that refuses to be photographed is sailing around lazily, the broken sprinkler heads that were leaking water are more or less fixed. For a while, there were puddles big enough for small birds to bathe in. The male robin of the nesting pair kept dipping his beakfulls of dry grass into the mud. Naturally, he, too, declined to have his picture taken.

It is no mystery to the moms of young college-age men whose quarters are frequently infested. But if your home is kept in pristine condition, and you suddenly have fruit flies, they did not really emerge fully formed from the fruit you just brought back from the store or farmers’ market.

It could start out innocently, like a cold. Then Staphylococcus aureus (discussed in an earlier post about mrsa) steps in, and all hell breaks loose. The word purpura refers to the dark lesions that develop quickly into gangrenous tissue. More information here .

Researchers at UCSD discover a critical point in blood vessel formation that has major medical significance in both diagnosing and stopping tumor growth.

At last, after a long campaign by his friends and supporters, an image of physicist Richard Feynman will appear on stamps. Scientists are not honored in this manner very often. Appearing with Feynman on this postal run are Barbara McClintock, geneticist, John von Neumann, mathematician, and Josiah Willard Gibbs, thermodynamicist.

When Denny’s Beer Barrel Pub offered a 6-lb burger some time ago, it was quite a challenge for most. Obviously, it was the signal for another eating emporium to step up and offer a 12.5-pounder which took the attention away from DBBP.

In an excessive show of proportions, DBBP now boasts a 15-lb behemoth of a burger, which is hard to wrap a bun around, much less the mind.

I have a suggestion. I feature science/art collaborations in the art category. How about a food/art entry in the escalating beef patty battle, where someone is asked to sculpt an entire steer in ground beef. Life-sized, superrealistic, with some sort of rigid framework to keep it upright. The cooking method is best left to the imagination, and the donation of a walk-in grill the size of a modest cave. The smell alone will bring in the curious from three states over.

Then we’ll see how many it will feed. People will actually be able to say, ‘I ate a cow.’ Buns and condiments on the side.

In parts of the U.S.,notably Appalachia, spring means the appearance of ramps , a scallion-like vegetable that grows wild. Having grown up in a community that ate raw green onions as an important part of a meal, I can understand the enthusiasm (and the odor).