One year in high school I was a ‘secret Santa’, where I was anonymously responsible for getting presents for another person. Last year in the NPG office we had a gift exchange where people randomly got silly things and then we played an elaborate game to decide who got what. There are many kinds of these little holiday adventures, yet none to do with science. Why not?

I could imagine a lab surprising another lab by cleaning all their glassware, or the delivery of a big drum of silica with a red bow on top. What about people getting each other gilded, monogrammed pipettes? Or making up those paper coupons that are alternately endearing and/or scream out ‘I didn’t know what to get you’ that are good for one hour of literature searching, or one extraction, or the use of the last unbroken, unscratched 50 mL RBF (if there is even such a precious, precious thing)? Perhaps graduate students could arrive to find tiny presents in their lab coat pockets from the science Santa? Maybe that only works if you leave them by the hood…

Anyway, I was thinking recently about what science presents I wanted for the holidays, and suddenly realized

“What could be better than the ”https://www.nature.com/nchembio/journal/v5/n1/index.html">January issue of Nature Chemical Biology?!?"

We’ve got not one, but now two pages of research highlights. We’ve got 10 crystal structures, 8 protein blobs, and 2 mice on our table of contents. We’ve got single amino acids, peptides both short and long, and proteins doing all kinds of cool stuff. Not only is the issue full of goodies, but we give you a couple of other things to look forward to in the year to come.

With all this inspiration, I think it’s time to look for packages of reagents that will fit on a sleigh…

Catherine (associate editor, Nature Chemical Biology)

Hello from a very pleasant and sunny Boston (Massachussetts, not Lincolnshire). I’m here at the fall meeting of the Materials Research Society.

I have just arrived at the meeting, but check back for regular updates on what’s going on in the materials world. I am looking forward in particular to seeing what advances have been made in silicon photovoltaic technologies. Someone here in this meeting must surely be able to improve on efficiencies of converting sunlight into electricity, currently languishing around 11%, which is never going to be enough to wean people away from petrol.

This year could also see materials scientists expanding their horizons beyond the atomic scale tinkering that they are famed for. This evening will be the first plenary session, and it is by atmospheric chemist Susan Solomon. Solomon works for the National Oceanic and Atmopsheric Administration, and is most well known for being one of the first to suggest that CFCs were causing the ozone hole to grow. I am not sure what materials science will be in her lecture, so I am looking forward to finding out. More on that tomorrow.

There are many more materials treats in store, including a debate about how materials science will be able to help push forward a nuclear power renaissance in the US. Some big wigs are taking the floor tomorrow evening for the debate, including the High Commissioner for Atomic Energy for the French Atomic Energy Commission. Materials science mingling with politics – could be interesting…