Environmental and public health groups have sued the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), accusing it of unlawfully reapproving two Corteva herbicides, Enlist One and Enlist Duo, which contain 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D). The Center for Food Safety, Pesticide Action Network North America and Alianza Nacional de Campesinas argue that the EPA’s January 2022 decision to renew […]

The Renaissance is a period of intense mathematical activity, but it is not mathematics as somebody who has studied mathematics at school today would recognise it but rather practical mathematics, that is mathematics developed and utilised within a particular practical field of work or study. It should be emphasised that this is not what we […]

A leaked document has revealed that the European Commission is set to recommend a radical rethink of how the EU regulates some genetically engineered crops. This would mean light or no regulation for gene-edited crops with DNA changes that could have occurred in nature. The commission had previously concluded in 2021 that current EU legislation […]

Ultrashort laser pulses can predictably induce crystallisation in supercooled water solutions, allowing scientists to accurately image the formation of ice crystals over microsecond timescales. The dynamics of ice crystal formation is central to cryobiology and has widespread implications from the industrial processing of frozen food to understanding some organisms’ tolerance for being frozen. However, typical […]

Swiss Nobel laureate, Kurt Wüthrich, has been challenged over claims that he had experienced ‘male discrimination’ at the annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. During his five-minute address to delegates on the future of structural biology, the topic of the meeting, Wüthrich drew attention to a newspaper interview with Germany’s only female Nobel laureate, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. […]

A Chinese researcher at one of the largest public research organisations in Japan has been accused of leaking sensitive technological information to a Chinese company. Quan Hengdao, who is a 59-year-old senior scientist researcher at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), was arrested in Tokyo on 15 June for allegedly disclosing […]

An artificial intelligence (AI) model has identified potential antiviral molecules that inhibit the Sars-CoV-2 virus, from only the sequence information of target proteins – without any knowledge of the proteins’ 3D structure or known binding sites. Researchers from IBM and the University of Oxford, UK, trained a generative AI called CogMol, part of IBM’s MolFormer-XL […]

Despite tighter safety rules at the University of California (UC) following the death of UC Los Angeles (UCLA) research assistant Sheri Sangji in January 2009, there has been no significant decline in research output at chemistry labs there. That’s the finding of a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research that debunks […]

A new point-of-care assay to detect human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA requires just six user steps, gives results in under 45 minutes and costs less than $5 (£3.90) per test. Its developers hope it can fill a critical gap in resource-limited settings where the HPV rates are highest. Despite the existence of a highly effective HPV […]

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has recently started tests on new facilities for discharging treated radioactive wastewater into the sea for decades to come. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) plans to start discharging it this summer, a controversial move which is opposed by local fishing communities, environmental groups and neighbouring countries […]