China has supplanted the US as the world’s top contributor to natural science research published in the 82 high-quality research journals that the Nature Index tracks. As a fractional count of author affiliations in these publications, researchers from China had a share of more than 19,300 from January to December 2022, compared with about 17,600 […]

Renaissance Mathematicus friend, Michael Barton, expert for all things Darwinian, drew our attention to a new piece of history of science hot air from the HISTSCI_HULK’s least favourite windbag, Neil deGrasse Tyson. This time it’s a clip from one of his appearances on the podcast of Joe Rogan, a marriage made in heaven; they compete […]

An optical-microscopy technique has been created that can distinguish between tiny objects less than 1nm apart. The technique could enable living cells to be viewed in greater detail than ever before. The new method, dubbed resolution enhancement by sequential imaging (Resi), means the resolving power of fluorescent microscopy can now operate in the Ångström range […]

A team of engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has achieved a remarkable feat by demonstrating that virtually any material can be transformed into a device capable of continuously harvesting electricity from the surrounding humidity. This groundbreaking discovery hinges on the ability to incorporate nanopores, each less than 100 nanometers in diameter, into the […]

Researchers in China have shown that one metallaaromatic framework can transform into another via a ring contraction reaction. Haiping Xia of Xiamen University, who led the work with Ming Luo of Southern University of Science and Technology, says this is the first aromatic framework rearrangement to be reported in an organometallic system. The framework starts […]

A promising new stroke drug that temporarily inhibits a key protein in the brain without causing lasting harm may significantly change the future treatment of cerebral and global ischemia, according to a new study by scientists at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. The study appears in the May edition of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. “We are […]

A US supreme court ruling that invalidates two of Amgen’s patents relating to blockbuster cholesterol drug Repatha (evolocumab) is sparking concern among legal experts. On 18 May, the court’s nine justices unanimously upheld a lower court’s decision that Amgen had failed to provide sufficient information to allow others to recreate the full scope of its […]

This is the fifth in a series of discussion of selected parts of Paul Strathern’s The Other Renaissance: From Copernicus to Shakespeare, (Atlantic Books, 2023). For more general details on both the author and his book see the first post in this series. Today, I’m looking at Strathern’s chapter on Vesalius. It goes without saying that Strathern […]

Policies that aim to cut methane cover just 13% of global emissions. Even then, their impact is uncertain because they largely rely on estimates of emissions rather than direct measurements. That’s according to a review of over 250 energy, waste and agriculture policies currently in force, ranging from economic, such as emission trading systems, to […]

Scientists have created a guanidinium sulfate salt that can capture and store carbon dioxide at ambient pressures and temperatures, with little energy input. The strategy could change how industry captures, transports and stores the gas. An international team of scientists charged an aqueous Gua2SO4 solution with carbon dioxide and saw a single-crystalline guanidinium sulfate-based clathrate salt […]