With only two weeks left until the 2022 chemistry Nobel prize is announced, Web of Science provider Clarivate has published its citation laureates – researchers whose work ranks among the 0.01% of most highly cited publications. Zhenan Bao from Stanford University, US, was selected for her work on flexible electronics and electronic skin, organic and […]

The European commission has proposed legislation to secure the supply of crucial minerals such as lithium and rare earth elements (REEs) to the EU. The European Critical Raw Materials Act was announced by Ursula von der Leyen, commission president, during her state of the union address earlier this month. She noted that almost 90% of […]

Bulk properties have an unexpected impact on surface reactivity, new research has shown. With applications as wide-ranging as catalysis, energy storage and structural engineering, this new mode of reaction control could have significant implications across the applied sciences. Despite their ubiquity in everyday life, surfaces present an interesting chemical problem. ‘We can define the bulk […]

The US Department of Agriculture has approved a genetically modified purple tomato. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s regulatory status review states that the plant ‘may be safely grown and used in breeding in the [US]’. The ‘nutritionally enhanced’ purple tomatoes were created by the UK’s first GM crop company, Norfolk Plant Sciences (NPS). […]

In the normal blog post rotation, a book review should be due today. However, instead today’s post is a literature review, listing and describing books on the histories of the theories of vision, spectacles, and telescopes, with the latter coming first as they are the actual main theme of the review. I announced my intention […]

Research explaining why research funds should be distributed on a random basis was honoured with the Ig Nobel prize in economics at an online ceremony on Thursday 15 September. The Italian team behind the work developed a mathematical model showing why success is often more down to luck than talent. Alessandro Pluchino, Alessio Emanuele Biondo […]

A probe instigated by the French health ministry has found ‘serious malfunctions’ in the laboratory of Didier Raoult, a microbiologist who rose to prominence after suggesting hydroxychloroquine could treat for Covid-19. Based on Raoult’s small March 2020 study, the then US President Donald Trump repeatedly endorsed hydroxychloroquine, a decades-old cheap malaria drug as a treatment […]

The world has been full of sound since the Earth first acquired an atmosphere at least 3.8 billion years ago. Sound is the principle means with which humans communicate with each other. Hearing is one of the five senses with which humans perceive and explore the world in which they live. Sound in the form […]

Sandeep Verma belongs to the generation of chemists that came of age in a post-liberalised Indian economy. Verma, who heads one of India’s premier funding agencies, the Science and Engineering Research Board (Serb), says that the ascent of Indian science, in particular chemistry, has him excited to see what is next. ‘Most of our younger […]

Researchers have developed a lead- and palladium-free alternative for the Lindlar catalyst. The cobalt-based heterogenous catalyst proved to be efficient for catalysing the semi-hydrogenation of alkynes and exhibits high selectivity, mitigating some of the problems encountered when using the traditional Lindlar catalyst. ‘The Lindlar catalyst is a special catalyst which allows the selective hydrogenation of […]