The Early Modern period is full of disputes between scholars about questions of priority and accusations of the theft of intellectual property. One reason for this is that the modern concepts of copyright and patent rights simply didn’t exist then, however, that is not the topic of this post. One of the most notorious disputes […]

A computational study has revealed the nature of quantum tunnelling that occurs in a reaction linked to the ozone hole in Earth’s stratosphere.1 The OH + HCl → H2O + Cl reaction is important because it releases chlorine atoms, which catalyse the destruction of ozone. Classically, a chemical reaction takes place if there is enough […]

GSK’s consumer health spin-off, Haleon, has begun trading as a separate company, after the pharmaceuticals giant’s shareholders approved the split in early July. The business covers a broad portfolio of brands such as Panadol painkillers and Sensodyne toothpaste. This split is symptomatic of a drive by big pharmaceutical firms to rethink a long-time strategic trend […]

Enzymes speed up reactions by lowering the energy barrier between substrates and products and determining the origin of this catalytic power has long been of interest to scientists. Now, researchers in China and the US have addressed the debate on whether enzyme catalysis occurs via transition state stabilisation or ground state destabilisation, by looking at […]

Seventy-five years after strychnine’s structure was first characterised, researchers have discovered the complete biochemical pathway that enables nature to produce this highly poisonous and complex molecule. The work could help scientists bioengineer potent drug candidates, as well as better understand how plants make other complex chemicals. Strychnine, an alkaloid found in the seeds of the […]

An investigation into a neutron-rich isotope of indium using a cutting-edge nuclear physics technique has begun to unravel the mysteries of how single particles behave inside the nucleus. We have known that a nucleus is comprised of protons, which give an element its atomic number, and neutrons since the early 1930s. But how an individual […]

Over a series of episodes, we have followed how the Renaissance Humanists introduced materia medica into the university curriculum developing it from a theoretical subject to a practical empirical field of research and then over time, how the modern scientific study of botany developed out of it. We have also seen how some of the same energy […]

The US state of California is advancing plans to produce its own insulin. Governor Gavin Newsom has committed $100 million (£84 million) of the state’s new budget to support the plan. The move builds on an executive order Newson enacted upon taking office in 2019, that aimed to put California on the path toward creating […]

The world’s most powerful space science observatory has released its first full-colour images and data that have so far yielded the unambiguous signature of water on an exoplanet, and the chemical composition of a galaxy and the gas surrounding a black hole. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international programme led by Nasa in […]

A US federal jury has found former Theranos president and chief operating officer Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani guilty on 12 counts of fraud, for conspiring to defraud both investors and patients about the capability of the company’s blood testing technology. In January, Elizabeth Holmes – Theranos’s founder and former chief executive, and Balwani’s ex-girlfriend – was […]