A historic milestone has been passed. All the declared stockpiles of chemical weapons have been eliminated. The threat of industrial-scale chemical warfare that began during the first world war with chlorine, phosgene and sulfur mustard is over. When the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) was signed 30 years ago, the elimination of chemical weapons must have […]

US start-up Sóliome wants to produce a peptide-based sunscreen that can be entirely biodegraded by living organisms. Micah Nelp, Sóliome’s co-founder and chief executive, believes that the product could overcome some of the environmental and health-related problems of more traditional mineral and chemical sunscreens. Various different chemicals in sunscreen are used to absorb ultraviolet (UV) […]

When it comes to chemical regulation, data is key to decision making. An investigation by Swedish academics Axel Mie and Christina Rudén of Stockholm University, reported in the Guardian in June, suggested that several pesticide manufacturers withheld data from brain toxicity studies conducted in the 2000s from EU regulators (as it was not explicitly required at the […]

Many of the general histories of European science begin with the Ancient Greeks. They might give a brief nod to the earlier cultures from whom the Greeks borrowed such as the Egyptians and Babylonians, when dealing with astronomy or mathematics, but simply ignore other ancient civilisations such as India and Persia from whom they might […]

Academic staff who were female, Black or disabled were less likely to be submitted for assessment in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF), new analysis has found. The findings appear to reflect entrenched issues with inequality and underrepresentation in the higher education sector. The REF’s equality and diversity advisory panel looked at which staff were […]

A new type of fluorinated ammonium ligand stabilises the surface of lead halide perovskites. The work marks a key step in understanding how to increase the efficiency and durability of perovskite solar cells. One of the main causes of degradation to perovskite solar cells is ion mobility at surface defects. Such defects can also reduce […]

One of the principal advocates for establishing the American monetary system and one of its first printers of notes was the legendary scientist Benjamin Franklin, a statesman and a signatory to the US Declaration of Independence. Now, using both conventional and cutting-edge techniques, US scientists have gained new insights into his paper money and their […]

Portable x-ray fluorescence imaging has revealed hidden alterations in ancient Egyptian artworks.  By analysing elemental markers in pigments, researchers uncovered changes to an arm position, sceptre, necklace and headdress in paintings at the tomb chapels of Menna and Nakhtamun near the river Nile, which date back over 3000 years. Ancient Egyptian artists often used paints […]

US healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has launched a second lawsuit against researchers whose studies have connected talc-based powders and cancer, attacking the underlying science. Earlier this month, J&J’s subsidiary LTL Management, which was formed in 2021 to assume the company’s liabilities in talc litigation, sued two pathologists affiliated with Peninsula Pathology Associates in […]

In 1988 Nature’s editor John Maddox laid down the gauntlet to computational chemists when he said that ‘One of the continuing scandals in the physical sciences is that it remains impossible to predict the structure of even the simplest crystalline solids from a knowledge of their composition.’ In the ensuing decades, great strides have been […]