Re-analysis of tissue and sediment collected from a mass crustacean mortality event in late 2021 and early 2022 in northeast England has found low levels of pyridine in the samples. Some scientists had blamed historical industrial discharges of the chemical for the die-off. In the autumn of 2021, a mass mortality event began that led […]

Soaring demand for new hormone-mimicking diabetes and anti-obesity drugs, coupled with difficulties in scaling up supplies, have led to severe shortages. Both Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have taken legal action to try and limit efforts of compounding pharmacies and wellness spas making copycat versions of their drugs in the US, while outright counterfeits are […]

I like the word hiatus. I like the feel of it, the sound of it, the shape of it. To my ears it is full, round, smooth but pregnant with meaning. But what does it mean?  Hiatus: noun hiatus (countable and uncountable, plural hiatus or hiatuses) A gap in a series, making it incomplete. An interruption, break or pause. An unexpected break from work. […]

Analytical chemist Heather Desaire and her team at the University of Kansas (KU) have created a detector they claim is 98–100% effective at identifying chemistry papers generated by large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT.1 The researchers argue that their tool can help scientific publishers detect and prevent improper use of artificial intelligence (AI) in academic […]

Show Fullscreen A strain of yeast that has a genome that is more than 50% synthetic DNA has been produced in the lab for the first time. This is the latest milestone in a 15-year effort to design and build an entirely synthetic eukaryotic genome from scratch that the team hopes to finish within the […]

Lithium-ion batteries are an indispensable part of the transition away from fossil fuels thanks to their high voltage output and long cycle life, but their tendency to overheat and catch fire is a serious problem. Now two different papers have tackled different aspects of the problem: in the first, researchers in the US have imaged […]

Back in June of 2018 I wrote a blog post entitled: History of Astronomy – reading the classics, which opened with the following: Most non-specialists get their knowledge of the history of astronomy from general surveys of the subject or from even more general surveys of the history of science. The information contained in these on […]

For the first time, researchers have monitored a solute ion binding to its surrounding solvent. The experiments could offer a route towards being able to track important transformations like cation–molecule complex formation in real time. [embedded content] A team led by Henrik Stapelfeldt from Aarhus University, Demark, designed an experiment to follow what happens as […]

The chemical industry has welcomed a government proposal that would require it to submit less hazard information than originally feared to register substances under the UK regulatory regime for chemicals. Following the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is establishing a stand-alone system for how companies will […]

Bench scientists go through a lot of disposable plastics in the lab. Most end up in landfill, but there is a growing recognition that more can be done to recycle plastic research waste. A lab glove recycling movement is one way to tackle the problem and it has been gaining momentum across research universities in […]