±«ÓăÖ±˛Ą

Subscribe to the OSS Weekly Newsletter!

Register for the Trottier 2024 Symposium!

Babies, Botulism and Honey

25 May 2022

The young mother was surprised by the doctor’s question. “What does your little girl eat for breakfast?” “Only hot oatmeal with milk,” she answered. “Does she put any sugar on it?” the doctor...

Salon-Free Highlights are Just a Spray Away

19 May 2022

Summer is almost here! Tans will get darker and hair will get lighter. If you really want to get blonder this year, many brands sell hair lightening sprays – a way to heighten the sun’s natural...

What’s the Difference Between Baking Soda and Baking Powder?

19 May 2022

What if your significant other gifted you baking powder instead of chocolates? What if they invented baking powder? In 1843, British chemist Alfred Bird did just that for his lucky, yeast-allergic,...

“Forever Chemicals” Seem to be Forever in the Spotlight

17 May 2022

One of the questions I’ve been asked recently with increasing frequency is how to avoid exposure to those “forever chemicals” that we are being warned about in numerous newspaper articles, books,...

I’m Allergic to Nuts, Pollen, and Montreal Winters

13 May 2022

As strange as it sounds, being allergic to the cold is a real thing, and it’s called “cold urticaria.” Compared with nut or pollen allergies, an allergy to cold temperatures is much less common,...

Brightening Up Traffic

13 May 2022

Red signifies danger in many cultures. From a distance, green is highly visible by day. At night, yellow is easier to see. That briefly explains the choice of colours on every traffic light. But...

Gynecomastia and Booby Traps

11 May 2022

One of my favourite Seinfeld episodes is “The Bro.” On discovering that George’s father, Frank, has “man-boobs,” Kramer concocts a male version of a bra, that he calls “The Bro.” Frank, who prefers...

Attacking the Windmills

4 May 2022

Don Quixote mistook windmills for giants and attacked them. That actually seems rational when compared with the attacks launched by Donald Trump against wind turbines, or “windmills” in Trump-speak...

“Pasteur’s Bacterial Culture” and “Coley’s toxins”: Anomalies and Landmark Discoveries

26 Apr 2022

By 1878, Louis Pasteur had formulated his germ theory of disease and had turned his attention to chicken cholera, a problem that plagued the French poultry industry. He managed to isolate a microbe...

Pages

Back to top