Cheney Free Press -

The name “natural gas” might be a puzzle. After all, how could there be such a thing as unnatural gas? The reason we call natural gas what we do has to do with history. There was a day that people made burnable gas by heating coal. The gases...

Modern veterinary science is a technically advanced field. Some animals receive not just X-rays, but sophisticated scans like MRIs. If you visit a large veterinary hospital you will find cats getting chemotherapy and dogs on the receiving end of...

As any child can tell you, the Mesozoic Era ends with the extinction of the dinosaurs. Most geologists think the cause of that extinction was the impact of an enormous meteorite that hit the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. As the theory goes, the...

Today there are lots of options in the grocery store when it comes to apples, from the traditional varieties like Jonathan and McIntosh to newer varieties like Honeycrisp and Jazz. Where do all these new varieties come from? The answer is that there...

Sometimes “solid rock” turns out to be anything but sturdy stuff. Limestone and a couple other related sedimentary rocks are common in some parts of the country, including in Florida. The chemistry of limestone and groundwater can combine to...

There are two features of this time of year that make my heart glad. One is the rapidly increasing length of the day. In September we lose daylight quickly, but in the spring we gain it all back just as rapidly. Although the same pattern is repeated...

There’s a new debate in paleontology, one that took me by surprise but that shows nicely how some science works. There’s a particular type of ancient fossil called the “Ediacara fauna” found in rocks about 550 million years old. The term Edia...

By Dr. E. Kirsten Peters Contributor A friend of mine recently returned to the U.S. from deployment with the National Guard in Afghanistan. One of the first things he did when he reached a military base in Texas was to buy a cup of espresso. He even...

Eighty years ago my mother was in grade school where schoolroom paste was made by mixing a little flour and water together. Memories of that simple glue came back to her when she and I recently stood in my kitchen, mixing two small batches of flour...

BA few weeks ago I lost the use of my toilet and learned firsthand just how much I missed it when it wasn’t there. My plumbing went out of order when the pipe between my house and the city’s sewer line in the street collapsed. Pipes like that bel...

We Americans are often told to eat more fruits and vegetables. Particularly this time of year, when New Year’s resolutions are still in strong force, a lot of us are trying to do better about what we eat. A breakfast of half a grapefruit and some p...

By Dr. E. Kirsten Peters Contributor To a geologist like me, it was most notable by its absence in the political campaigns that lurched to their conclusions in November. I’m talking about an energy plan with real teeth, one that addresses everythin...

Medical science increasingly has some evidence of a principal your mother warned you about: there really is too much of a good thing. A few folks throw themselves headlong into aerobic exercise. Most of these hard-core endurance athletes start...

I don’t know about you, but I find it all too easy to sometimes come up with a reason I just can’t exercise on a given day. I tell myself that my life is too crowded with work and meetings, or that I’m too tired from sleeping poorly the night...

Lots of us have observed that foods that are good for us – broccoli and bean sprouts – don’t trigger intense cravings. In the late afternoon, when my energy is low, I want a cookie or a piece of chocolate, not a green pepper. Similarly, when I...