Chemistry features and long reads

Atmospheric water harvesting

With drought threatening many parts of the world, Nina Notman explores technologies for sucking water out of thin air

Metalloenzyme mastery

There are natural metalloenzymes that make difficult chemistry look easy. James Mitchell Crow talks to the bioinorganic chemists figuring out how to copy them

Clearing the air

By Nina Notman

Nina Notman explores the role technology can play in cleaning pollutants out of air before we breathe them in

The difficulties of drugging our brains

By Andy Extance

Following the withdrawal of many large pharma companies from central nervous system research, Andy Extance finds new drug development patterns are emerging

Drugging the gut microbiome
By Clare Sansom
Treating the bacteria that live inside us can improve our own health. Clare Sansom meets our tiny friends
Do asteroids hold the key to life on Earth?
By Nina Notman
A series of missions are set to reveal the hidden secrets of the asteroids. Nina Notman explores the science of space rocks
The plastic sorting challenge
By Angeli Mehta
Before we can recycle many plastics, they must be sorted into separate streams. Angeli Mehta finds out how

Supporting the chemistry community

2020-06-01T07:07:00+01:00By Rachel Brazil

The Chemists’ Community Fund – formerly the Benevolent Fund – has been helping people for 100 years. Rachel Brazil looks at how it works, now it may be more needed than ever before

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Long reads

Plastic recycling heading for the mainstream

The weirdness of water

A vintage-style poster showing sustainable labs

Sustainable lab buildings

An illustration showing the process of recycling fabrics

Recycling clothing the chemical way

Polly Arnold’s diversity of interests

An image showing hands placing spices into a pan of curry

The chemistry of a curry

Plastic recycling heading for the mainstream
The weirdness of water
Sustainable lab buildings
Recycling clothing the chemical way
Polly Arnold’s diversity of interests
The chemistry of a curry

Careers

UK universities prepare for a new academic year
By Rachel Brazil
Much uncertainty remains as chemistry departments plan how they’ll resume undergraduate teaching
Looking after children and your career
By Dinsa Sachan
With the right support, a research career and childcare can be balanced – even in lockdown
The rise of the virtual chemistry conference
By Dinsa Sachan
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, online talks and poster sessions are moving to the mainstream

The plastic sorting challenge

By Angeli Mehta

Before we can recycle many plastics, they must be sorted into separate streams. Angeli Mehta finds out how

The plastics problem

By Chemistry World

How chemistry is providing solutions to the issue of plastic waste

Plastic recycling heading for the mainstream
By Nina Notman
Nina Notman talks to some of the companies launching chemical recycling technologies for single-use plastics
The birth of the polymer age
By Mike Sutton
Mike Sutton unravels Hermann Staudinger’s long hunt to understand macromolecules, which began 100 years ago
The weirdness of water
By Rachel Brazil
Can we explain the strange properties of water by thinking of it as two different liquids? Rachel Brazil dives into the ongoing debate

News and business

Scrambling and gambling to scale up Covid-19 medicines

By Andy Extance

Organisations work towards making billions of doses of products not yet proven to work

This little Crispr went to market

By Sarah Houlton

Gene editing technology heading towards commercial reality in pharmaceuticals, food and organ transplant

3D printing in pharma

2018-04-27T10:30:00+01:00By Nina Notman

Nina Notman explores how 3D printing is carving out a niche for itself in the pharmaceutical industry

The Middle East’s synchrotron is open Sesame

By Kit Chapman

How difficult is it to build a world-class research facility in the Middle East? Kit Chapman investigates

Uncovering how the spliceosome makes the cut

By Clare Sansom

Clare Sansom looks at the complex world of the spliceosome, a molecular machine in all our cells

Sustainable lab buildings
By James Mitchell Crow
After a decade of grassroots growth, the laboratory sustainability movement is bursting into the mainstream finds James Mitchell Crow
3D printing the future
By Kit Chapman
Kit Chapman takes a tour of a US Department of Energy lab, where 3D printing is performed on a massive scale
Adjuvants: vaccines’ hidden helpers
By Anthony King
Anthony King examines a crucial part of vaccines that can significantly boost their performance, but which often go unrecognised