Readers of Eric Appel’s academic profile will note appointments in materials science, bioengineering and pediatrics, as well as fellowship appointments in the ChEM-H institute for human health research and the Woods Institute for the Environment. While the breadth of these appointments does not leap to mind as being particularly consistent, the connections quickly emerge for those who […]

People with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder act out their dreams. While sleeping safely in bed, for example, they might throw up their arms to catch an imaginary ball, or try to run from an illusory assailant. Such actions are more than just a nuisance. People with the disorder have a 50 to […]

The amount of data produced each year by scientific user facilities such as those at national labs or government organizations can range up to several billion gigabytes per year. This massive amount of data generation has now begun to exceed researchers’ capacity to effectively parse this data in order to accomplish their scientific goals — a supersized […]

The term the Republic of Letters is one that one can often encounter in the history of Early Modern or Modern Europe, but what does it mean and to whom does it apply? Republic comes from the Latin res publica and means res “affair, matter, thing” publica “public, people.” However, here it is the “people” or “men”, as they mostly were, […]

In an effort to effectively deal with a changing climate, there is no question humans are making progress. Yet, at the same time in this global fight, anthropogenic forces are facing some strong headwinds. Many argue it’s a race against the clock. Experts have warned and are warning us that if we don’t head off […]

Research into new, environmentally friendly ways of making molecules has won the 2021 Nobel prize in chemistry. Benjamin List and David MacMillan were recognised by the Nobel committee ‘for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis’. Announcing the award, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ secretary general Göran Hansson described organic catalysts as ‘an ingenious tool for […]

Prize-winning topics produce more papers and are better able to retain talent and attract new researchers than non-prizewinning fields. The finding comes from an analysis by researchers in the US and China, who looked at the role prizes play in propelling scientific fields to new heights. A team led by Brian Uzzi from Northwestern University, […]

8.14am Poll position And Nature Chemistry editor Stuart Cantrill has run his annual who will win the chemistry Nobel on Twitter. With almost 2500 votes it’s a pretty decent cross section of the chemistry Twitterati. A month tomorrow (Oct 6th), the 2021 #chemnobel will be announced, so it’s time for the annual #ChemTwitter poll! What […]

Researchers at MIT and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have developed a new way to determine whether individual patients will respond to a specific cancer drug or not. This kind of test could help doctors to choose alternative therapies for patients who don’t respond to the therapies normally used to treat their cancer. The new technique, which […]

The 2021 Nobel prize in physics has been awarded to three scientists who improved our understanding of the complexity of systems that range in scale from atoms to our planet’s climate. Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi’s research provided fundamental insights that underpin much of our knowledge of climate change. Half of the prize […]