The 2022 chemistry Nobel prize – Live

9.03am: Women and the Nobel prizes With the Nobel Foundation’s tweet about Marie Curie – the first female winner of a chemistry Nobel prize – it seems like a good time to look at how women are doing when it comes to the prizes. After 2020’s chemistry Nobel prize where two women won, normal service […]

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Not with a bang but a whimper

Ethan Siegel is an astrophysicist, but he is better known as a highly successful science populariser, who even has his own Wikipedia page.  He first rose to fame as the author of the blog Starts With a Bang, which he launched in 2008. He expanded his brand, with the publication of popular books on physics. He expanded still […]

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Setting the standard for calculating indirect emissions

A group of chemical companies has developed guidance to help industry calculate the cradle-to-gate emissions of the chemical products it purchases. Together for Sustainability – which includes global players – said the ‘first of its kind’ guideline would harmonise product carbon footprint (PCF) calculation approaches across the industry, to provide quality footprint data that are […]

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Quantum technology pioneers win physics Nobel

Three scientists have won the 2022 physics Nobel prize for laying the foundations for quantum computing. Alain Aspect, from the University of Paris-Saclay in France, John Clauser at J F Clauser & Associates in the US and Anton Zeilinger at the University of Vienna, Austria, share this year’s prize for their pioneering experiments conducted between […]

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Call for chemists to reorientate chemistry as a sustainability science

Many of the world’s most used chemicals are transgressing one or more of the nine planetary boundaries. If we are to address this crisis, chemists at all levels must work to reposition chemistry as a sustainability science, an international team of scientists has said.1 Developed between 2009 and 2015, the planetary boundaries framework describes nine […]

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Blood could supply haem centre for biomass-supported catalyst

Researchers have repurposed iron complexes found in blood into a catalyst that can hydrogenate organic molecules.1 The catalyst, which is also made from xylose, is fully derived from biomass-based resources, and has excellent stability and potential for recyclability. The majority of vertebrates use the metalloprotein haemoglobin to transport oxygen around their circulatory systems. At the […]

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Sequencing of genomes of ancient human relatives takes medicine Nobel prize

The 2022 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo for research on the evolution of present-day humans. The Nobel committee awarded Pääbo the medicine Nobel prize ‘for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution’. He is credited with sequencing the genome of the Neanderthal […]

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Alzheimer’s antibody engenders anticipation

Another anti-amyloid antibody treatment for Alzheimer’s disease has hit the news this week. Eisai and Biogen have press-released top-line findings from a phase 3 trial of lecanemab. The results appear positive, showing a statistically significant slowing of cognitive decline measures over 18 months, compared with a placebo, as well as evidence that the drug reduces […]

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Heating homes with hydrogen is neither cheap nor environmentally friendly

When it comes to decarbonising domestic heating, hydrogen is worse than alternatives such as solar energy on every count: it’s less economic, less efficient, more resource intensive and has a larger environmental impact. This is the result of a review that analysed 32 independent studies. Providing heating for homes, industry and other applications accounts for […]

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I expect better of you Beinecke

The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library is the rare book library and literary archive of the Yale University Library. Yesterday their Twitter account posted a tweet entitled Galileo: Siderius Nunc, which linked to a blog post from July 11, 2022, by Raymond Clemens, Curator, Early Books & Manuscripts.  It featured one of Galileo’s famous washes of the Moon from his Sidereus Nuncius (1610) followed by […]

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