A team of scientists based in Sweden and the UK has developed a synthetic screening method that uses stopped-flow chemistry and machine learning to accelerate drug discovery through diversity-oriented synthesis.1 Stopped-flow chemistry is an alternative method to traditional batch and continuous flow processes. By arresting the flow of reacting materials within the system, the platform […]

Is academia becoming a ‘genteel hobby’ once more, rather than a way to make a living? That is the concern of one respondent to the first University and College Union (UCU) survey on social class in post-16 education. While some from working-class backgrounds may be put off entering the sector by low pay and job […]

Researchers in China have devised electrocatalytic nanomaterials consisting of vanadium oxide cores within a vanadium nitride shell for reducing nitrogen to ammonia. The team found they could tune the nanomaterials’ core-shell structure to optimise the process’ efficiency and yield. As one of the most produced inorganic chemicals, ammonia plays an important role in agriculture (for […]

Abdul* fled Afghanistan with his family age six, and grew up in Iran as a poor refugee, but, against all the odds, he won national science competitions and became one of the first Afghans to study chemistry at an Iranian university. After returning to his homeland and using his expertise to better the country for […]

Photochemistry can be used to separate plutonium and uranium, new research shows. By showing that photochemistry can replace harsh redox agents during actinide separations, the work could benefit nuclear processing facilities and environmental remediation efforts. The redox chemistry of the actinides plays a vital role in the chemistry of separating them. The near overlapping energies […]

On Monday I wrote a quick blogpost on the not insubstantial errors in the description of one of Galileo’s lunar washes posted on the Beinecke Library blog. I was somewhat pleasantly surprised when with a day the description had been heavily edited, romovi9ng all the sections that I had criticised even if no acknowledgement was […]

After three months without a dedicated science minister, the UK government has handed the role to Conservative MP Nusrat Ghani. The appointment comes at a time of deep uncertainty for UK science, with the government having just scrapped its cabinet science committee and continuing doubts surrounding the country’s involvement in Horizon Europe. Ghani has been […]

What won this year’s prize? The 2022 Nobel prize in chemistry is all about a particular type of reaction that can join molecules together quickly and predictably, and which is so precise it can even be used to perform chemical reactions safely inside living cells. It’s called click chemistry – a concept that describes reactions […]

This year’s chemistry Nobel prize is shared equally between the click chemistry pioneers Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal, and Carolyn Bertozzi, who shaped the field of bioorthogonal chemistry. For Sharpless, this is his second chemistry Nobel prize – he’s only the second person after Frederick Sanger to receive two chemistry prizes. ‘I’m absolutely stunned, I’m […]

11.03 Bertozzi is on the line The bioorthogonal chemistry pioneer is talking the chemistry prize committee. It’s the middle of the night where she is and the shock has left her ‘barely able to breathe’ she says. 10.57am: Two wins So Barry Sharpless becomes the fifth person to have won two Nobel prizes. He is […]