For anything Chemistry related that doesn’t require its own separate discussion.

Despite the 125 years that have elapsed since Ernest Rutherford first figured out that the particles emitted during alpha decay amounted to a helium nucleus comprising two neutrons and two protons, researchers are still making new revelations about what happens during the decay process itself. Researchers led by David Moore, a physicist at Yale University in the US, conducted experiments using optical traps where optical fields from a laser control the position of microparticles and are also exquisitely sensitive to…

The borole compound 1,2,3-triphenyl-1-boraindene has been made by researchers in Germany for the first time. Its borole ring is fused with a single aryl ring and has 1,2,3-triphenyl substituents. The structure has been overlooked until now because research has mainly been directed towards non-fused and doubly-fused borole systems. Boroles are antiaromatic and therefore highly reactive species. They have unusual electronic and optical properties that arise from the vacant pz-orbital on boron overlapping with the diene system in their five-membered ring.…

A computer program has been created that can ‘paint’ molecules in the style of Piet Mondrian – a Dutch artist known for his unique and simple artworks. The researchers hope that both artists and scientists will appreciate this novel visual representation of molecular structure demonstrating a development in the interface of the two disciplines. Mondrian’s art can be instantly recognised by blocks of primary colours separated by black lines on a white background. His art not only inspires modern culture…

Following a five-year legal battle, Chinese-born former University of Kansas chemistry professor Feng ‘Franklin’ Tao, who was arrested and convicted under the former Trump administration’s now-defunct ‘China Initiative’, has been vindicated. An appeals court in Denver, Colorado has acquitted Tao of his one remaining conviction that he made a false statement about his relationship with a Chinese university. In April 2022, Tao – a permanent US resident who before his arrest in 2019 had served as a tenured associate professor…

A new algorithm can predict the bitterness of a compound using only mass spec data, without knowing the chemical’s structure. The team from Hebrew University in Jerusalem says this new tool, dubbed BitterMasS, could streamline compound screening processes in food science, drug development, metabolomics, and other areas. The scientists also say it marks a significant improvement over traditional methods that rely on structural data. The team trained a machine learning algorithm on a dataset of more than 5400 mass spectra…

I once worked on an industrial research project that aimed to develop a carbon fibre reinforced polymer composite with exceptional mechanical properties. After spending around two years working on different formulas and generating a ton of results, it started to become obvious that the envisioned targets were still far out of sight. A decision was taken to cut the losses and scrap the project. If the target mechanical properties could have been realised, the discovery would have been a major…

In the summer of 2023, British cyclist Lizzy Banks faced every professional athlete’s worst nightmare – she was notified by UK Anti-Doping (Ukad) that she had returned an Adverse Analytical Finding (AAF) – a positive test. Ukad had identified two substances in her samples, the asthma medication formoterol and the diuretic chlortalidone. While her asthma medication was something she had taken for years and was known to Ukad, the additional presence of the diuretic – which can be used to…

I’m supposed to be a chemist. Yet over the past year I have found myself spending more and more time travelling down a rabbit hole of electrical engineering and building services. The reason is climate change. The cataclysmic fires of the Greek islands, Siberia and Canada or the devastating rains that have engulfed Brazil, Kenya and Papua New Guinea, just in the last year, may seem far away. But the systemic nature of the climate system means that the reality…

Solve this ‘wordoku’ in the same way as sudoku with letters instead of numbers (the nine letters once in each row, column and nine-square cell). Once solved, one of the overall diagonals can be rearranged into an element. This week’s letters are: A C E I M R S T U    

China’s science and technology ministry has prohibited all clinical research involving germline genome editing, describing the approach as ‘irresponsible’. Germline genome editing involves making edits to DNA in egg, sperm or early embryos to introduce changes that can be inherited by future generations. The South China Morning Post reports that the new Ethical Guideline for Human Genome Editing Research are China’s latest effort to tighten regulations following the case of Chinese researcher, He Jiankui, who claimed to have created the…