News
Peer review frozen, meetings cancelled: Trump administration leaves it mark on NIH
Chaos ensues following suspension of grant reviews, travel, meetings and public communications at funder
Tuning polymer microstructure produces adhesive stickier than super glue
Red 3 dye banned in US food and drugs
Is hydrogen the future for cars? Manufacturers haven’t given up on it yet
Simulations suggest why highly unsaturated molecules are so abundant in the interstellar medium
Fuel cell scientist loses over a decade of work in suspected arson attack
In depth
Is hydrogen the future for cars? Manufacturers haven’t given up on it yet
Zero-emissions cars are dominated by batteries but some carmakers think hydrogen still has a part to play
Chemicals industry roundup 2024
Europe continues to struggle with high energy and feedstock costs, while US and Asia negotiate supply gluts
Explainer: what is ricin?
The poison found in castor beans so deadly a single molecule can kill a cell
Explainer: Why athletes are taking sodium bicarbonate supplements
Why runners are taking pills containing a common kitchen ingredient
Explainer: Why drug shortages happen and how can we reduce them?
Record-high numbers of drugs are in short supply, from chemotherapy and antibiotics to hormone replacements
Explainer: How is the US pharmaceutical patent system being misused?
What are ‘evergreening’ and ‘thicketing’ and what is being done to reform the system and aid competition?
AI can tell Scottish and American whiskies apart
Machine-learning method identifies prominent aromas
GPT-based AI tool predicts inorganic crystal structures
CrystaLLM uses GPT to arrange atoms, turning text-based data into numerical tokens
AlphaFold developer says AI is just getting started in science
Chemistry Nobel laureate John Jumper says latest version of AlphaFold is making good progress on interactions between molecules and protein
Large language models are better than humans at answering chemistry questions
AI models outperform human chemists in every topic area. But are they really better chemists?
AI robots work together to perform autonomous synthesis and analysis
System offers route for rapid testing, analysis and interpretation of a wide range of chemistries
Twenty ways AI is advancing chemistry
List reveals how machine learning is already changing the central science
Explainer: Why have protein design and structure prediction won the 2024 Nobel prize in chemistry?
Research that has taken us from sequence to structure and back again
Protein design and structure prediction wins chemistry Nobel prize
David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper were rewarded for creating computational tools to design proteins and predict their structures that have ‘revolutionised biological chemistry’
Worldwide
Isotope analysis reveals ‘mundane’ origins of remarkable dinosaur fossil site
Collapsing burrows, not volcanoes, killed the dinosaurs in China’s Yixian Formation
Scientific freedom lacking in Africa, Unesco finds
Africa represents 12.5% of world’s population but less than 1% of its research output
Dirty secret of mysterious ‘tar balls’ washed up on Sydney’s shores uncovered
Scientists unite to investigate objects that shut down beaches in New South Wales
Peer review frozen, meetings cancelled: Trump administration leaves it mark on NIH
Chaos ensues following suspension of grant reviews, travel, meetings and public communications at funder
UK ‘on a good track’ one year after rejoining Horizon Europe
Early figures suggest UK researchers are benefitting from the resumption of European research collaboration
High profile chemistry journal removed from Web of Science index
Elsevier journal delisted over editorial quality concerns
One Nation One Subscription sees India grant researchers access to 13,000 journals
Thousands of published studies may contain images with incorrect copyright licences
Chemist found to have falsified data in 42 papers has notched up 13 retractions so far
Open letter from fraud sleuths raises concerns over research integrity at Scientific Reports
Peer review frozen, meetings cancelled: Trump administration leaves it mark on NIH
Chaos ensues following suspension of grant reviews, travel, meetings and public communications at funder
Rapid action needed to stop the UK falling behind in synthetic biology
House of Lords science committee urges government action to allow the field to flourish
Materials strategy for UK needs chemistry to succeed and create new industries
Ten-year plan proposed by Henry Royce Institute aims to boost productivity and support the circular economy
Horizon Europe reopens to Swiss researchers after three-year hiatus
Chemicals industry roundup 2024
Pharmaceuticals roundup 2024
China bans sale of three critical elements and ‘superhard materials’ to the US
Plastic treaty negotiators fail to reach agreement
After years of negotiations, a global agreement to tackle plastic pollution is within sight
New recommendations to assist UK move away from animals in chemical safety assessments
UK proposes expansion of Emissions Trading Scheme to maritime sector
Shipping would need to purchase allowance for carbon dioxide emissions
Carbon capture making slow progress in UK and Europe
Government funding welcomed, but issues over strategy and CO2 purity persist
Catalyst uses electricity to convert carbon dioxide into methane
Acting at the gas-liquid-solid interface to permit carbon dioxide and water to react, the catalyst achieves 80% efficiency
Carbon capture gets personalised touch to match best tech with right location
Holistic analysis combines models and experiments to find the sorbent that works for each industrial site
New year honours recognise chemists’ services to inclusion and diversity
Services to biogeochemistry, science in government, and science and technology also rewarded in annual list
Nobel prize winners far more likely to come from wealthy families highlighting inequality in the sciences
Winners today come, on average, from less wealthy families than when the prize began but there is still a long way to go
Women stay in science far longer than thought, study of OECD countries suggests
Analysis of publications reveals that, on average, women ‘survive’ as long as men across 16 scientific disciplines
Next president of the Royal Society of Chemistry will be Robert Mokaya
Gender equality report highlights progress and challenges for women in research
Humphry Davy’s whole story – warts and all – deserves to be told
Universities in the UK beat national average on gender pay gap but large discrepancies remain
UKRI investigation clears diversity panel following science minister’s accusations of extremism