Category: Chemistry
What Is Chemistry?
Chemistry is the study of matter, its properties, how and why substances combine or separate to form other substances, and how substances interact with energy. Many people think of chemists as being white-coated scientists mixing strange liquids in a laboratory, but the truth is we are all chemists. Understanding basic chemistry concepts is important for […]
Jennifer Doudna: I have to be true to who I am as a scientist
Crispr inventor Jennifer Doudna talks about discovering the gene-editing tool, the split with her collaborator and the complex ethics of genetic manipulation. Jennifer Doudna, 53, is an American biochemist based at the University of California, Berkeley. Together with the French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier, she led the discovery of the revolutionary gene-editing tool, Crispr. The technology […]
Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?
The long read: It is an industry like no other, with profit margins to rival Google and it was created by one of Britain’s most notorious tycoons: Robert Maxwell. In 2011, Claudio Aspesi, a senior investment analyst at Bernstein Research in London, made a bet that the dominant firm in one of the most lucrative […]
Satellite Eye on Earth: May 2017 in pictures
Vesuvius in Italy and volcanoes in northern Tanzania, lights going out in Syria, and flooding in Sri Lanka are among images captured by Nasa and the ESA this month. A vertical view of Vesuvius in southern Italy, taken by the European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet from the International Space Station. The Proxima mission […]
Sci-fi forest tracks carbon impact – BBC News
An industrial-scale experiment in a Staffordshire forest will help fill gaps in knowledge about climate change. The project has created an outdoor laboratory by encircling trees with 25m masts gushing high levels of carbon dioxide. The site is surrounded by a 3m anti-climb fence, and silvery tubes snake along the forest floor in what looks […]