In the years following the publication of De Magnete in 1600 and the death of William Gilbert in 1603 a dispute developed between two leading English magnetists, William Barlow (1544 – 1625) and Dr Mark Ridley (1560–c. 1624), as to which of them was Gilbert’s true disciple.  We have already met William Barlow, son of a bishop, who […]

The National Institutes for Health (NIH) has announced that it will substantially increase pay for the more than 17,000 early-career researchers supported by the agency’s National Research Service Awards (NRSAs), as well as increasing childcare subsidies. The stipends for predoctoral scholars will rise by approximately 4% to $28,224 (£22,517), and those for postdoctoral scholars will […]

Diamonds have been synthesised at atmospheric pressure by researchers in South Korea. The researchers do not yet fully understand the underlying mechanism that forms these diamond films, but it involves passing methane over liquid gallium. They are working, however, to optimise the synthesis to produce higher-quality diamonds that they hope could find a range of […]

A natural protein has been reported to self-assemble into one of the best-known regular mathematically complex fractals – a Sierpiński triangle. This is the first time such a discovery has been made at the molecular scale in nature. Fractals are geometric shapes that are made up of repeating smaller structures that resemble the whole. These […]

By screening 407 compounds directly in cells scientists in Austria and the US have found that they bound with 2305 proteins not previously known to have any such interactions. Georg Winter at the Centre for Molecular Medicine (CEMM) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and colleagues used the large compound collection to create […]

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has announced the first round of projects that will receive funding under its Sustainable Laboratories programme. The initiative, which aims to make chemistry research greener, was launched in 2022 following a global survey that found that 84% of chemical scientists in industry and academia wanted to do more to enhance […]

Cell culture media used for testing nanomaterials does a poor job of simulating an in vivo environment and could be preventing scientists from understanding how nanomedicines respond in the body, new research shows. ‘We believe this is a key reason why accumulated knowledge on nanomaterials has not yet been translated into successful clinical applications,’ says […]

An international team of scientists has created a liquid metamaterial, or ‘metafluid’, which can be manipulated to change its properties, like its viscosity and transparency. The creators of the material found that it behaved like a Newtonian liquid in its normal state – when its viscosity is proportional only to its temperature – but as […]

Byproducts from the manufacturing industry can be converted into electrodes for water splitting, new research shows. The intrinsic nanotextured surface of the waste metal means single atoms can bind to it to form effective electrocatalysts. Producing hydrogen through water splitting is set to be fundamental for addressing future global energy demands. However, the environmental impact […]

An excess of fragments of amyloid precursor protein (APP), called APP-CTFs, can trigger a mechanism that occurs at the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers say understanding the role of APP-CTFs could open avenues for early intervention therapies that could stop or even prevent Alzheimer’s disease. For the past two decades, Alzheimer’s research has […]