In the early 1900s, scientists were just beginning to understand the diversity and importance of steroids—a group of molecules made in the body that includes the sex hormones (progesterone, estrogens, and testosterone) and the hormones involved in promoting inflammation (cortisol). In addition to natural hormones, steroids can also be used as therapeutic drugs. But at the time, steroids had to be isolated from animal sources to be used as drugs, which was an expensive and low-yield process. During his career as a chemist, Percy Julian discovered a method for synthesizing these unique molecules from abundant plant sources, like soybeans, enabling…
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During the American Prohibition, moonshine was responsible for over 750 deaths and more than a hundred thousand cases of blindness or paralysis in New York City alone. Over eighty years later, in early 2019, several outbreaks of toxic alcohol poisoning lead to hundreds of deaths and injuries in northeast India. The culprit in both of these cases was methanol contamination. Chemically, the only real difference between methanol and ethanol is the number of carbons (two in ethanol and one in methanol). Methanol and ethanol taste about the same and produce about the same initial intoxicating effect. The only difference is…
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