Plans to move the Parisian building in which Marie Skłodowska-Curie and her colleagues prepared and stored radioactive material brick-by-brick to a nearby location have been scrapped. The Pavillon des Sources is one of three buildings that made up the Institut du Radium, which has since merged with the Curie Foundation to form the Curie Institute […]

A sheet of gold just a single atom thick has been created for the first time using a method employed in Japanese forging art. The researchers, based at Linköping University in Sweden, hope that the properties of the material, which they have dubbed goldene, will open up new applications including carbon dioxide conversion and water […]

The University of Maryland in College Park, US has inaugurated a new state-of-the-art chemistry building that will be a hub for quantum chemistry, molecular nanoscience and sustainability research. The $132 million (£106 million), 9756m2 facility will house research on antibody-based therapeutics and HIV vaccine development, new materials and technologies for energy conversion and storage or […]

Several big firms have rolled back their targets, saying governments need to set pace with policyAlmost a decade on from the Paris agreement, made by governments around the world to restrain global warming, the world’s largest oil and gas companies have still not aligned to its goal. Despite a plethora of ‘net zero’ targets, companies […]

An unusual ‘quasi-benzyne’ radical anion generated from water microdroplets could represent a new substrate class in catalyst-free Diels–Alder reactions. The easy formation of this versatile intermediate and other similar species could provide an alternative strategy for green synthesis of high-value chemicals. Water microdroplets are opening up exciting new possibilities for organic chemists. They exhibit a […]

At COP28 over 20 countries pledged to triple the world’s nuclear energy capacity by 2050 in another step towards net zero. For many, this was a controversial declaration: the devastating consequences of nuclear accidents are well-documented and the fission process generates worrying quantities of long-lived radioactive waste with the potential for use in chemical weapons. […]

It is quite common that people get asked what they think is the most import development in technology or the most significant technological invention in human history. Apart from the ubiquitous wheel, which is almost certainly the most common answer, unless they are historians, they will almost always name something comparatively modern and usually big […]

Current monitoring practices are likely to be underestimating the levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in the environment. That’s the conclusion of a new study that also found more work was needed to develop analytical techniques to quantify PFAS in the environment, as well as their impact on people and ecosystems. The researchers assessed […]

In a recent excellent video on Hypatia – Myths and History, Tim O’Neill  correctly pointed out that the claim that Hypatia created the astrolabe was rubbish, going on to claim that it had existed for at least five centuries before she lived. Tim’s second claim is in fact wrong but is just one of many commons claims about the […]

Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) structures of a human taste receptor have revealed new information about the mechanisms that enable us to perceive bitter flavours. Our ability to taste bitter flavours is the result of complex interactions between over 1000 compounds and a suite of 26 receptors, called type-2 taste receptors (TAS2Rs). However, understanding of these interactions […]