In 2022, US president Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) introduced a mechanism for the state-backed health insurance programme Medicare to negotiate drug prices directly with pharmaceutical firms. The industry’s response was scathing, with lawsuits claiming the move was unconstitutional, and dire warnings of stifling innovation and R&D investment. With negotiations on the first batch […]

Nearly 15,000 substances are thought to belong to the family of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which have been linked to a range of environmental and health problems. However, these compounds have become a vital, but largely unsung, part of modern life and are used in a vast array of ways. Plans are afoot in […]

This year’s chemistry Nobel prize was awarded to three scientists working in the field of protein design and structure prediction. One half of the prize was awarded to David Baker at the University of Washington in Seattle, US, while the other half was awarded to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, both from Google DeepMind, based […]

The developers of computational tools that can be used to accurately design and predict protein structures have been recognised with this year’s Nobel prize in chemistry. The Nobel committee noted that these tools have led to a revolution in biological chemistry and are today used by millions of researchers around the world. Demis Hassabis and […]

In the last episode of this series, we looked at two popular sixteenth century texts on statics, the oft published and widely read pseudo-Aristotelian Questiones Mechanicae, and Guidobaldo dal Monte’s highly influential Mechanicorum liber. Today we are going to leave Italy and travel to The Netherlands to look at the work on statics of the Flemish polymath, […]

8.37am Crystal-ball gazing At this time in the morning, we always take a look at who’s the hot tip for this year’s chemistry prize. Number crunchers at Clarivate have been looking at which researchers in chemistry are in the top 0.01% when it comes to citations. Their ‘citation laureates’ this year are John Jumper, director […]

The 2024 Nobel prize in physics has been jointly awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffery Hinton ‘for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks’. Hopfield from Princeton University, US and Hinton from the University of Toronto, Canada were praised by the Nobel committee for ‘using fundamental concepts and methods from […]

A gold cluster catalyst developed by researchers in China can selectively hydrogenate nitrobenzene to make p-aminophenol. The reaction proceeds through a previously unidentified mechanism that is completely distinct from typical industrial routes. p-Aminophenol is an important intermediate for preparing paracetamol – the most prescribed drug globally – and other drugs. Current methods for producing p-aminophenol […]

The 2024 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded jointly to two US-based scientists for the discovery of microRNAs – a class of tiny RNA molecules, around 22 base pairs long, that play a crucial role in gene regulation. The Nobel committee awarded the prize to Victor Ambros from the University of Massachusetts’ […]

Nobel prize medals are not just awards. They carry rich histories that reflect the lives and times of their recipients. In some cases, the Nobel prize medals have not remained with their owners, or even the wider family. In 123 years of the Nobel prize, medals have been stolen, confiscated, dissolved, met with controversy and […]