Molecular gastronomy is a branch of food science that explores how chemical processes transform ingredients. Chefs like Wylie Dufresne apply this research from the lab to the kitchen, creating dishes that are both inspired and informed. At this month’s Adventures in the Global Kitchen event, The Magical Meal with Wylie Dufresne, Dufresnse will discuss how to alter the texture, viscosity, and appearance of food with the Museum’s Provost of Science, Michael Novacek. Below, Dufresne answers a few questions about his cooking inspiration.

While “snake oil” is shorthand for false cure, snake venom may have real healing power. At March 7’s SciCafe, From Poison to Panacea: Using Snake Venom to Combat Cancer,University of Southern California biochemistry professor Frank Markland will share his research on a protein found in snake venom and how it’s being used to combat cancer in the lab. Below, Markland answers a few questions about his research.

How are you using snake venom in cancer research?

Frank Markland: We injected contortrostatin, a protein found in southern copperhead snake venom, directly into the mammary glands of mice where human breast cancer cells had been injected two weeks earlier. Not only did the injection of this protein inhibit the growth of the tumor—it also slowed angiogenesis, the growth of blood vessels into the tumor that supply it with nutrients and allow the tumor to grow and spread. The protein also impaired the spread of the tumor to the lungs, one site where breast cancer spreads effectively.

For over 30 years, Museum naturalist and diorama master Stephen Quinn has shown students the art of drawing animals—from their skeletal composition, to their musculature, to the nuanced patterns of their coats and gaits. The course always draws students with a range of backgrounds, including expert medical illustrators and comic book artists as well as enthusiastic beginners. And every year, Quinn sees a few familiar faces.

One belongs to George Corbin, who has taken the course five times and has already signed up for Animal Drawing’s spring session, which will run for eight weeks beginning on Thursday, March 15. 

On Monday, March 5, join John Logsdon, space history and policy expert and former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, as he traces the factors leading to President John F. Kennedy’s decision to send astronauts to the Moon and the steps Kennedy took to turn that decision into reality. The program, hosted by Hayden Planetarium DirectorNeil deGrasse Tyson, begins at 7:30 pm and concludes with a signing of Logsdon’s book John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon. Below, Logsdon answers a few questions about Kennedy’s legacy in the field of space exploration.

Not long ago, a descendant of John William Draper, a celebrated 19th-century naturalist, gave the Museum Draper’s collection of fossils from Whitby, England. The set, mostly ammonites, was neatly stowed in a wooden box along with a handwritten list of contents dated 1844 and a price stamp of 28 shillings.

“It’s a lovely cabinet of curiosities,” says Neil Landman, curator in the Division of Paleontology, who suspects Draper bought the collection whole, perhaps as a gift for his children or because it was “the kind of thing any respectable naturalist would have owned.”

Born in England in 1811, Draper emigrated to the U.S. in 1832 and rose to prominence as a chemist, botanist, historian, and pioneering photographer. He served as president of New York University from 1850 to 1873 and was a founder of the NYU Medical School, where he taught chemistry until a year before his death in 1882.