Andrew Bissette

Toxic formalin or something else? Shining a light on the University Museum’s mystery jars Chemist Wesley Browne came up with a way to figure out which of the University Museum's wet specimens have been preserved in toxic liquid.

Nice!
@wesleybrowne.bsky.social used Raman spectroscopy to check if old samples are toxic

ukrant.nl/magazine/tox...

It's biology, ofc.

<Attenborough voice> here we see, in the wild, a remarkable phenomenon: the Nat Chem desk reject. We can see that the editor - a rare but magnificent Bearded Cantrill - remains joyous, despite the predator circling behind him...

Interview with Professor Susumu Kitagawa CONTENT TYPES

From a 2019 interview with Kitagawa -- "it was common sense that organic materials could not make a stable porous structure. People thought we were doing “useless” research because they did not realize the potential of the seemingly trivial space inside the pores." pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

World’s most porous sponges: intricate carbon-trapping powders hit the market Metal-organic frameworks were the next big thing in chemistry when they were invented more than three decades ago. Now, these intriguing materials are becoming commercial tools for capturing carbon di...

Maybe one day soon we'll all be talking about MOFs and COFs. Interesting article.

I expected it'd get it sooner or later... but figured it'd be later. To my (non-expert) knowledge, commercialisation has been fairly limited, and given how long LIBs took I just figured it'd be a similar case here. But it's well deserved in any case, and makes future predictions trickier!

Well don't I look like a bloody idiot

Congrats to MOFs!

The bets of the 2025 chemistry Nobel

The group is ready :) #nobel #chemsky

A screenshot of text that reads: Fraser lived his life at a hundred miles an hour. But it wasn't always the best thing for him or for those closest to him. In an interview following the award of the Nobel Prize in 2016 he recalled his time growing up on a farm and said that that had instilled in him the work ethic of a honeybee. Nobody would doubt that he had that. He also talked about having the strength of a horse and the hide of an elephant; what he didn't mention is that he could also be as stubborn as a mule. He did things his way and was rarely persuaded to do otherwise. This bloody-mindedness undoubtedly contributed to his incredibly successful career. While those who didn't really know him will measure his contributions through the prizes he won, his real professional legacy is not those prizes, it is the people who passed through his lab and shared in his scientific journey. Yes, he changed science, but he changed lives too - including mine and many of those here today. I learned a lot from Fraser: some chemistry, how to make slides for presentations, how to always include a noun after the word 'this', and a few random Scottish words that I'm still not convinced he didn't just make up.

It’s #chemnobel day. For me, and for quite a few other people who spent time in the Stoddart group, it will hit somewhat differently this year.

Seems the right time to share a couple of passages from the eulogy I gave at Fraser’s funeral earlier this year.

How is this repeatedly made into a policy issue - by *all* parties - when the blunt fact of the matter is that grown adults who are obliged to pay for their own education, and relentlessly pursued to repay their loans, should be able to study whatever the fuck they want.

It's a popular one, along with "novel". Occasionally you find a chain of citations going back 20 years about some compound, in which every paper describes it as "novel" in the title.

Ooh, thanks! Maybe I can start recommending this instead...

I think I found your older CW piece via a citation in a paper by Blackmond, and it stuck with me.

"You recently called the shovel in my garden a shovel. Why?"
What an inane question.

Happy, er, Christmas. And for all those celebrate, follow along the #NobelPrize chat (and loads of other in-depth content) with Patrick and the team @chemistryworld.com ⬇️

(naturally a lot of work has been done in the nearly 20 years since that was written, but I still think it's a good starting point)

Giving life a hand Origin of homochirality sees two more explanations

This is pretty out of date but still relevant summary for the non-specialist by @philipcball.bsky.social. In a lot of origins of life-related work we're lacking really good ideas, I think, but here we're (as he put it) spoilt for choice. www.chemistryworld.com/news/giving-...

I still think that paper by Siegel will lead to something interesting experimentally one day

It's on a metal if it comes from the d-block of the periodic table. Otherwise it's just sparkling carbon.

Let this be a motto for all of us, when we peer review:
“Review the manuscript in front of you, not the one you wish existed.”
@earlkmiller.bsky.social

A remarkable transformation in @rsc.org prizes.
30% of prizes recognise teams rather than individuals (up from 5%).
36% of prize-winners are early-career (up from 4%)
38% of prize winners are women (up from 25%)
Twice as many prizes for work outside universities.
www.rsc.org/policy-and-c...

Congrats!

Post from Threads user rodneyowl: "Ireland has declared the Basic Income for Artists scheme permanent. This will be officially announced in tomorrow’s budget. Details to follow. Congratulations to all who fought for it and the present and future artists of all sorts in Ireland. That includes me 👌We’re just comin to the end of a 3 year pilot scheme. It’s been a roaring success. For every €1 paid out to the 2000 participants, the government got €1.46 back. Can’t argue with that. Other countries are already taking note."

Damn. This is amazing. £325 per week, paid monthly, for 3 years - and the result was a profit for the Irish economy:
www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employmen...

Final Nobel predictions:
- Installing a reactive handle in step 1, then calling it late-stage functionalisation after swapping some protecting groups around
- Adding a drop of water to your reaction mixture and calling it "green"
- Pioneering the use of "unprecedented" in paper titles

A Nobel medal

BREAKING: The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis "for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit"

Stay tuned for more.

it's actually not two Nobels for Josephson junctions, just one that tunnelled over a gap of 52 years

Thanks, that's helpful. I kinda figured this would be the rule but it's good to confirm!

Unravelling Westminster’s secret influence network | HOPE not hate An ex-Tory aide linked to race science has created a group of political allies to craft policy in the shadows

A very disturbing thing I missed in researching this week's column. Three of the four junktank ultras hired by Labour to groom civil servants are named in this investigation of a Westminster network involving the disgraced eugenicist Andrew Sabisky. investigations.hopenothate.org.uk/andrew-sabis...

Beach party!!

a close up of a man in a batman costume looking out of a window . ALT: a close up of a man in a batman costume looking out of a window .

Fantastic