A new class of molecular ‘photoswitch’ – stable in the solid state – can store solar energy upon excitation with visible light. This overcomes some critical challenges of conventional energy storage structures, such as thermal stability and optical sensitivity beyond the UV spectrum – both attractive properties towards scale-up and commercialisation. ‘Our compounds store solar […]

Levels of potentially harmful organic compounds in the dust aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are higher than those found in US and western European homes. It is the first time persistent organic chemicals have been detected in a non-terrestrial environment, and the team that carried out the analysis says that the findings will inform […]

Rising energy costs, supply shortages and extended delivery times triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia–Ukraine war have had a ‘profound effect’ on science facilities across Europe, according to a key body that advises European policymakers on research infrastructure. The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructure (Esfri) notes in its latest report that synchrotrons have been […]

A sudden increase in Earth’s atmospheric oxygen content occurred around 2.4 billion years ago and is known as the great oxidation event, but its origin remains an open question. Now, researchers in China have confirmed that the vacuum ultraviolet (UV) dissociation of sulfur dioxide into molecular oxygen and a sulfur atom was probably an important […]

The last third of the sixteenth century and the first third of the seventeenth century saw the emergence of published handbooks on the art of navigation in England. This trend started with the publication of Richard Eden’s translation into English of the Breve compendio de la sphere y de la arte de navegar (Seville, 1551) by Cortés […]

A new, publicly available database has been created that contains the thousands of proteins encoded by genes in the human genome whose function remains a mystery. Dubbed the ‘Unknome’ database, the goal of this repository is to promote more rapid exploration of understudied proteins. It assigns a ‘knownness’ score to each of these proteins and […]

A noticeable number of researchers are misusing x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) when analysing perovskite solar cells, according to a team in China. Perovskite solar cells are susceptible to environmental degradation so many research teams are investigating how they can limit this using surface passivation strategies. The past 10 years has witnessed a rapid increase in […]

A new class of cyclic compounds features repeating units of sandwich complexes in closed, circular rings. The German research team that discovered them hope that ‘cyclocenes’ will open the door to new functional organometallic materials. The isolation of the very first sandwich complex, ferrocene, was a major milestone for organometallic chemistry. Now the team led […]

Hungarian students look set to miss out on Erasmus+ scholarships this year, as negotiations between their government and the European Commission remain stalled. The commission says Hungary has failed to deliver the reforms necessary and it is too late for funding to be approved this coming winter, despite multiple meetings since February between the two […]

Incorporating nanoparticles of carbon black into wet cement can transform it into a supercapacitor electrode once the cement has cured, US researchers have shown. The team says that the material could be used to store renewable energy and find more exotic applications such as roads that can wirelessly charge electric vehicles. Production of cement and […]