On Tuesday a week ago, I started my second attempt to cure my middle ear inflammation with a new antibiotic and other bits and pieces. By then the symptoms of my original virus infection had largely disappeared. As the week progressed, I felt fairly optimistic, the pressure in my forehead began to disappear and the […]

A combined desalination–electrolysis system that can produce green hydrogen directly from seawater has been developed by a team in China. This integrated process uses a low-energy method to purify seawater, making it one of the first viable approaches to use salt water as a source of hydrogen. The purification step uses phase transitions to remove […]

US President Joe Biden has stepped in to avert a national freight rail strike by compelling union members to accept a deal agreed between union leaders and their employers in September. Had the strike gone ahead, the chemicals industry had warned it would have severe economic impacts and render manufacturers unable to transport substances needed […]

A clam has been found to be synthesising erythromycin, making it the first known animal to make such a complex antibiotic. Erythromycin had been thought to be made by only actinobacteria. Now, it seems that the Asiatic hard clam Meretrix petechialis can make it to defend itself from infection in its muddy marine habitat. The […]

More than two weeks after nearly 50,000 academics went on strike at the University of California (UC) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory over pay and conditions, UC has reached a tentative agreement with academic researchers and postdocs. The strike continues, however, as union sections representing academic student employees and student researchers negotiate with the university. […]

The eruption of the world’s largest active volcano earlier this week, Mauna Loa on Hawaii’s Big Island, has disrupted monitoring of global carbon dioxide levels. The Mauna Loa observatory has tracked rising levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere for more than six decades without interruption. The observatory’s manager, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography […]

The pathway used by coca plants to produce the tropane alkaloid cocaine has remained a mystery since it was first isolated in 1855. Now, two groups have reported the missing steps in its biosynthesis. Tropane alkaloids are secondary metabolites produced in multiple species of plants. Cocaine from Erythroxylum coca and nicotine from multiple species in […]