IN 1999, as a writer for The American Prospect, I went into a slaughterhouse undercover, with the help of some rebellious employees. The floor was slick with the residue of blood and suet, and the air smelled like iron. A part of my brain spent the whole time trying to remember which of Dante’s circles this scene most resembled.

In space, how quickly does grape juice turn to wine?

Some studies have suggested that consumption of diet soft drinks may be associated with Type 2 diabetes and development of the condition known as metabolic syndrome — high blood pressure,

The “fact” that junk food is cheaper than real food has become a reflexive part of how we explain why so many Americans are overweight,

For sharks, life at the top of the ocean food chain is becoming safer — at least from human predators.

BRILLIANT ideas sometimes arise out of pure necessity. Consider Piero Lugano, 63, the suntanned artist-turned-wine-merchant who opened a shop called Bisson in this town on the Italian Riviera in 1978.

IT’S the epitome of déclassé, the vinous equivalent of trailer trash, the wine snob’s worst nightmare.

The restaurant looks like so many others in the roiling heart of Chinatown, in Lower Manhattan:

ONE way to understand Emilio Estevez’s backyard vineyard might be to recall a scene from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

TORGIANO, ITALY — It’s not easy to describe something that appeals to the senses in cerebral terms.