Pay and pensions for academics on permanent contracts compare well to those in other sectors, while sick pay is significantly more generous, according to a new report by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI). They also fare well when it comes to annual leave, maternity and paternity arrangements, and sabbatical opportunities. However, newer academics can […]

Regular readers of my series of posts on English mathematical practitioners in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries might have noticed the name John Davis popping up from time to time. Unlike most of the other mathematical practitioners featured here in the early modern history of cartography, navigation, and scientific instrument design, who were […]

A new technique for producing silicon solar cells that are more than 24% efficient and yet can be rolled up like a sheet of paper has been demonstrated. The work could allow solar cells to be used in applications that currently use more expensive thin-film alternatives. Crystalline silicon is an indirect-bandgap semiconductor, which means a […]

A new organocatalyst could cut the energy use of a vitally important chemical process – the chlor-alkali process. Yadong Li from Tsinghua University in China, and his team found that relatively cheap organic quinazoline-2,4-diones reduce the energy consumption of the process compared with expensive metal catalysts. If such a catalyst were adopted worldwide by the […]

A founding investor in the biotechnology company Moderna has donated $210 million (£170 million) to the Institute for Protein Innovation (IPI) in Boston, US.  Billionaire Tim Springer, who has been a professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School for 46 years, cofounded the IPI in 2017 and previously donated $40 million […]

Researchers in China have revealed a new relaxation-related mechanism in a material with negative thermal expansion (NTE). The group introduced organic linkers into the skeleton of a metal–organic rotaxane network to construct a flexible NTE material, which they envision will aid the design of other types of metal–organic materials with controllable thermal responsive behaviour.  Thermal […]

When I first started delving into the history of astronomy there was a pantheon of the great historians, who ruled over the discipline far above us mere mortals–for example, I. Bernhard Cohen, Edward Rosen, Robert S. Westman, Richard S. Westfall, and others. One of those giants, Owen Gingerich, died 28 May at the grand old […]

A simplified experimental approach for studying liquid metallic hydrogen has been developed by an international research team.1 The scientists claim they’ve turned plastics into hydrogen and carbon using an intense laser beam that produces crushing pressures and high temperatures that transforms these elements into diamonds and a liquid metal. The new results could have important […]

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing to halt Amgen from acquiring Horizon Therapeutics. Amgen had announced in December that it would buy the Irish-headquartered biopharma company for almost $28 billion (£22 billion). The FTC is seeking a preliminary injunction from a federal court to stop the merger on the grounds that it would […]

A lot is hanging on the outcome of the presidential elections in the Turkey this weekend, many academics in the country are saying. At stake are issues like the governmental appointment of university rectors, the reinstatement of professors expelled during the 2016 state of emergency, control of academia by the Council of Higher Education (Yök) […]