A combined desalination–electrolysis system that can produce green hydrogen directly from seawater has been developed by a team in China. This integrated process uses a low-energy method to purify seawater, making it one of the first viable approaches to use salt water as a source of hydrogen. The purification step uses phase transitions to remove […]

US President Joe Biden has stepped in to avert a national freight rail strike by compelling union members to accept a deal agreed between union leaders and their employers in September. Had the strike gone ahead, the chemicals industry had warned it would have severe economic impacts and render manufacturers unable to transport substances needed […]

A clam has been found to be synthesising erythromycin, making it the first known animal to make such a complex antibiotic. Erythromycin had been thought to be made by only actinobacteria. Now, it seems that the Asiatic hard clam Meretrix petechialis can make it to defend itself from infection in its muddy marine habitat. The […]

More than two weeks after nearly 50,000 academics went on strike at the University of California (UC) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory over pay and conditions, UC has reached a tentative agreement with academic researchers and postdocs. The strike continues, however, as union sections representing academic student employees and student researchers negotiate with the university. […]

The eruption of the world’s largest active volcano earlier this week, Mauna Loa on Hawaii’s Big Island, has disrupted monitoring of global carbon dioxide levels. The Mauna Loa observatory has tracked rising levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere for more than six decades without interruption. The observatory’s manager, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography […]

The pathway used by coca plants to produce the tropane alkaloid cocaine has remained a mystery since it was first isolated in 1855. Now, two groups have reported the missing steps in its biosynthesis. Tropane alkaloids are secondary metabolites produced in multiple species of plants. Cocaine from Erythroxylum coca and nicotine from multiple species in […]

Ukraine’s four operational nuclear power plants all have access to the national grid again following a complete loss of off-site power last week. It was the first time that all the plants suffered a loss of external power at the same time since the conflict began nine months ago. They relied on diesel generators for […]

Waste PVC can be recycled into an easy-to-use chlorinating reagent, with electrolysis releasing chlorine from the polymer chain in a controlled manner. This process was then used to chlorinate aromatic compounds, transformations that are frequently used in the production of drugs. PVC (poly(vinyl chloride)) is an extremely versatile plastic with applications ranging from construction to […]

Two weeks ago, I wrote a short piece explaining why I hadn’t posted my usual weekly blog post the day before and warning that I might not have recovered enough to write one for the following Wednesday, and so it came to pass. Much too late, I noticed through the general fog of a heavy […]

The European Space Agency (Esa) has announced that its record-breaking €16.9 billion (£14.6 billion) budget will cover building the lander that will get the Rosalind Franklin rover to the surface of Mars. The ExoMars rover was due to launch aboard a Russian rocket in September to search for signs of life on Mars, but it […]