One worker was killed in an explosion and fire at a chemical plant on the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia, on 12 October, according to ABC News reports. The fire was brought under control by Fire Rescue Victoria and the building’s sprinkler system. A second employee was treated for minor injuries at the scene. The plant […]

Angewante Chemie has partnered with environmental organisation Trees for the Future to plant a tree for every submission the journal receives until the end of 2023. The journal, which is published by the German Chemical Society, claims that over 2500 trees have been planted since the scheme launched on 1 September. The tree planting initiative […]

Researchers have created a subset of rhodamine-based structures bearing 3-phosphonates that plugs a gaping hole in the literature on these important fluorophores.1 The new compounds are also much more water soluble than conventional 3-substituted rhodamines used for cellular imaging. Since their discovery in 1887, rhodamines’ applications have evolved from paint manufacturing and fabric dying to […]

Scanning tunnelling microscopy has enabled researchers to directly image important sugar molecules attached to lipids and proteins. The experiments provide a picture at the single-molecule level of the sequences and locations of glycans bound to important biomolecules, offering new insight into the role they play in biology. Glycans are carbohydrates that play critical roles in […]

The genome of the humble chicken has been edited to protect them from avian influenza. When the edited birds were then exposed to avian flu they were largely resistant to it, with nine in 10 birds uninfected. ‘This promises a new way to make permanent changes in the disease resistance of an animal,’ says Mike […]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is suing eBay, alleging that it has sold more than 343,000 ‘rolling coal’ devices and other equipment that deliberately pollutes the environment and violates the Clean Air Act. The retailer, reportedly facing a fine of more than $5000 (£4000) for each alleged transaction adding up to potentially $1.9 billion, […]

Coating electrodes with a an aerophobic gel significantly enhances the efficiency of gas evolution reactions by preventing bubble coalescence. These bubble-repellant electrodes could find applications in electrochemical devices like water electrolysers and fuel cells. During reactions that form gases, bubbles sticking to electrode surfaces can obstruct catalytic active sites, hinder mass transport and exert mechanical […]

The governor of California Gavin Newsom has signed into law the first ban in the US on brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben and erythrosine in food uses. The new law, which goes into effect in January 2027, prohibits the manufacture, sale, and distribution of food products that contain any of those four substances. Together, […]

Small consumer items often not recognised as electronics, such as hairdryers, speakers and vapes – classified as ‘invisible’ electronic waste – amount to 9 billion kilograms of e-waste every year. That’s according to the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Forum, a multinational association of WEEE producers, which commissioned the United Nations Institute for Training […]

Researchers in the UK and US have formally laid out the foundations of a theory that they claim has the potential to solve the long-standing puzzle of how life arose from non-living chemicals. The team behind it says it could also help detect signatures of possible life beyond Earth, how to evolve chemicals in order […]