A 2024 essay explores how different plastics—polyethylene, polypropylene, nylon, glass-fiber-reinforced nylon, and polycarbonate—have distinct physical and chemical personalities, comparing each to human archetypes like Snow White or Arnold Schwarzenegger. It explains their composition, uses (from chemistry beakers to bulletproof windows), and trade-offs such as UV degradation or structural weaknesses, while debunking the marketing term 'polymer' as a euphemism for premium plastic.
yarchive.net
· 2026-10-03
Nature has released an interactive quiz asking readers to identify women who have won Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry and physiology or medicine. The feature accompanies the publication's broader look at the long-standing gender gap among science Nobel winners since the prizes began in 1901, and will be updated once this year's winners are announced.
nature.com
· 2026-10-02
Researchers led by James Buchen at the University of Delaware have developed an electrochemical carbon-capture device that uses a battery-like setup instead of conventional filters. Hydroxide generated at the cathode reacts with CO2 to form carbonate, which crosses a membrane to the anode where a lower pH reverses the reaction, releasing pure CO2 gas.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-28
An analysis published this month in Angewandte Chemie examined 1.3 million chemical reactions recorded in patents over four decades and found that hazardous solvents were used in about 60% of reactions in 1976, rising to over 70% by 2016. The study was co-authored by Helen Sneddon of the University of York and Maarten Dobbelaere of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, and is described as the largest survey of its kind.
nature.com
· 2026-09-25
A researcher at the University of Groningen's ENTEG Institute has published an analysis examining the chemistry behind grog, the fictional corrosive drink from the 1990 adventure game The Secret of Monkey Island. The study looks at whether a beverage made from the game's listed ingredients—including sulfuric acid, battery acid and rum—could plausibly dissolve a metal mug and lock as quickly as depicted in the puzzle-based gameplay.
jgeekstudies.org
· 2026-09-23
Researchers led by Xiang-Feng Zhou at Yanshan University created a previously unknown form of pure boron, called Imma-B60, using a two-step high-pressure synthesis involving sodium followed by vacuum heating to remove sodium impurities. The resulting material is deformable and has an electrical conductivity over a million times greater than that of typical, poorly conducting boron phases, according to a study published in Nature Chemistry.
nature.com
· 2026-09-23
A research team synthesized a series of short peptides—including DILT1 through DILT5 and related sequences—using automated solid-phase peptide synthesis to create multichannel nanofibrils. The peptides self-assemble into structures whose lattice geometry is dictated by their specific amino acid sequences, producing hexagonal channel arrangements at the nanoscale.
nature.com
· 2026-09-23
Researchers introduce RetroChimera, a retrosynthesis model that combines two neural architectures with different inductive biases through a learned ensembling method. It outperforms existing baseline models across varying data scales and generalizes well even with limited examples per reaction type. In blind evaluations, professional chemists preferred RetroChimera's suggested synthesis routes over both published reference reactions and predictions from other AI systems.
nature.com
· 2026-09-21
Researchers running UCL's chemistry department fellowship support scheme have published guidance drawn from helping more than 40 early-career researchers win independent fellowships. The advice covers assessing whether a candidate's track record fits a target fellowship, shaping a competitive research proposal, and choosing the right host institution. The authors stress that early planning during a PhD and postdoc, including mapping publication milestones, is critical to building a strong application.
nature.com
· 2026-08-25
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