Chemistry features and long reads

Keeping cell therapy under wraps

Materials to safely encapsulate transplanted cells for could enable a revolution in the treatment of diabetes and a wide range of other diseases. James Mitchell Crow reports

The science of breast milk and baby formula

By Nina Notman

Nina Notman reveals how breast milk research is inspiring a new generation of infant formulas and opening the door to therapeutic advances

How ammonia could decarbonise shipping

By Andy Extance

Andy Extance discovers why the compound best known as a fertiliser is a surprising candidate to power enormous container ships

The RSC’s climate challenge

By Rachel Brazil

The Royal Society of Chemistry aims to use Cop26 as a springboard to a more sustainable future. Rachel Brazil reports

mRNA vaccines for Covid and beyond
By Clare Sansom
Already hailed as a miracle, the new vaccine technology could protect us from other diseases, Clare Sansom finds
Four years of chemistry preprints
By Nina Notman
Nina Notman takes stock of how preprint severs have settled into the chemistry community
The name’s bond, chemical bond
By Kathryn Harkup
Kathryn Harkup explores the poisons – real and fictional – used in Bond films

How organocatalysis won the Nobel prize

2021-10-15T09:29:00+01:00By Jamie Durrani

Jamie Durrani tells the story of how two young upstarts, Ben List and David MacMillan, created a whole new field of catalysis

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Long reads

A typographic image highlighting issues around research culture

What’s wrong with research culture?

An image showing ingredients for a home experiment

Experimenting in a pandemic

An illustration showing a blackboard with aromatic compounds written on it

The search for the grand unification of aromaticity

The rise of ferrofluids

Computer-guided retrosynthesis

Why do people believe conspiracy theories?

What’s wrong with research culture?
Experimenting in a pandemic
The search for the grand unification of aromaticity
The rise of ferrofluids
Computer-guided retrosynthesis
Why do people believe conspiracy theories?

Careers

Chemistry career options in sustainability
By Aisha Al-Janabi
There’s a wide variety of jobs that place the environment at their core
Interactive science communicators make work fun
By Dinsa Sachan
Careers in inspiring the public
Doctoring the doctorate
By Kit Chapman
There are now more ways than ever before to complete your PhD, finds Kit Chapman

What’s wrong with research culture?

By Rachel Brazil

A knotty mess of problems affects people doing academic research in the UK. Rachel Brazil tries to untie the tangle

The name’s bond, chemical bond

By Kathryn Harkup

Kathryn Harkup explores the poisons – real and fictional – used in Bond films

Experimenting in a pandemic
By Clare Sansom
Chemistry teachers have faced extraordinary challenges in preparing and running practicals in the past 18 months. Clare Sansom investigates how they have fared
How a virus ancestor powers our memory’s chemistry
By Andy Extance
Andy Extance tells the astonishing story of the Arc protein and its capsid forms, and the questions it poses
How the power of smell could identify new medical tests
By Ian Le Guillou
Diagnosis by odour is nothing to be sniffed at, finds Ian Le Guillou

News and business

US programme targeting researchers with China links crumbling under intense scrutiny

By Rebecca Trager

Academics are demanding that the Justice Department end the ‘China Initiative’ as cases collapse amid accusations of racial profiling

Merkel era ends leaving German science with a bright future

By Maria Burke

Outgoing German chancellor’s background in chemistry and physics gave her unique insight into the importance of stable funding

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 search for the grand unification of aromaticity

By Katrina Krämer

Researchers have been trying to find a full definition of aromaticity for almost two centuries, and yet keep discovering new types

One hundred years of insulin

By Mike Sutton

Mike Sutton looks at the journey the diabetes treatment took from the Toronto miracle to mass-production – via a controversial trip to Stockholm

The long road to sustainable lithium-ion batteries
By Katharine Sanderson
Lithium-ion batteries could save the planet from petrol-driven cars, but do the batteries themselves live up to their sustainable reputation? Katharine Sanderson investigates efforts to make batteries better
Supermetals versus superbugs
By James Mitchell Crow
With pathogenic bacteria rapidly overcoming our arsenal of organic antibiotics, James Mitchell Crow asks if it is time to revisit metal-based antimicrobials
The rise of ferrofluids
By Hayley Bennett
Magnetic liquids are taking off, Hayley Bennett reports, but not as their inventor once imagined