Archive by category | Chemistry

The deck stacked against women in science

The deck stacked against women in science

The player on my left has the biochemist Maud Menten’s career well on track. Suddenly another player slaps a “stupid patriarchy” card on Menten’s head, and she has to earn her doctorate all over again. So goes a novel card game devoted to women in science and engineering, designed to highlight these unsung researchers and the barriers and boons that women in these fields experience.  Read more

Oliver Sacks: an appreciation

Oliver Sacks: an appreciation

“Not quite salve et vale yet,” Oliver Sacks signed off a letter to me at the end of June, expressing the hope that he’d visit London again in the time he had left. The treatment he received earlier in the year had, he said, done “a very good job clearing out the majority of the metastasis in my liver”, and I allowed myself to be optimistic about seeing this remarkable, terminally ill man once more.  Read more

World’s first ‘clean coal’ commercial power plant opens in Canada

World's first 'clean coal' commercial power plant opens in Canada

The world’s first commercial coal-fired power plant that can capture its carbon dioxide emissions officially launched today in Canada – marking a milestone for so-called ‘clean coal’ technology.  Read more

Schön loses last appeal against PhD revocation

 Schön loses last appeal against PhD revocation

The German Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe has confirmed on 1 October that the University of Constance was within its rights to revoke the PhD thesis of physicist Jan Hendrik Schön, who was dismissed in 2002 from Bell laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, for falsifying research results.  Read more

First boron ‘buckyball’ could be used to store hydrogen

First boron 'buckyball' could be used to store hydrogen

Just in time for the World Cup final, researchers have succeeded in building the first “buckyballs”  made entirely of boron atoms. Unlike true, carbon-based buckyballs, the boron molecules are not shaped exactly like footballs.  But this novel form of boron might lead to new nanomaterials and could find uses in hydrogen storage.  Read more

How to make graphene in a kitchen blender

How to make graphene in a kitchen blender

Don’t try this at home. No really, don’t: it almost certainly won’t work and you won’t be able to use your kitchen blender for food afterwards. But buried in the supplementary information of a research paper published today is a domestic recipe for producing large quantities of clean flakes of graphene.  Read more