Axel Straube

Much looking forward to be, more closely than ever, working with the European & global inorganic chemistry communities!

More musings on #EurJIC, its legacy and my biggest thanks to my predecessor, Preeti Vashi, in my inaugural editorial: chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... 🧪

Mist, direkt verpasst. War trotzdem schön.

A reminder to please not use the JIF as an indicator of quality or at least consider presenting the metric in the context of a variety of journal-based metrics www.oajournals-toolkit.org/indexing/jou... @dorassessment.bsky.social and @coarassessment.bsky.social can provide guidelines here.

🚨 Early-bird extended!
Don’t miss the 25th Anniversary Symposium of ChemBioChem & ChemPhysChem:
📅 Oct 23–24, 2025
📍 Charité, Berlin 🇩🇪
✨ Cutting-edge talks, posters, networking & celebrations!
Register now → cbc-cpc2025.org
#ChemBioChem25 #ChemPhysChem25 #StructuralBiology #Biomolecules

Screenshot von Deutschlandfunk.de vom 8. August 2025: Weimer: Wer öffentliches Geld erhält, soll nicht gendern. Nach dem Genderverbot in der eigenen Behörde drängt Kulturstaatsminister Weimer alle öffentlich geförderten Institutionen, dieser Linie zu folgen. Es gehe dabei um eine gemeinsame Verantwortung für die Verständlichkeit staatlich geförderter Kommunikation, sagte der parteilose Politiker der Deutschen Presse-Agentur.

Das letzte Mal, dass mir jemand vorschreiben wollte, wie ich zu sprechen habe, waren es DDR-Bonzen. 1989 bin ich auch für die freie Rede! auf die Straße gegangen. Wenn jetzt sogar öffentliche Förderung daran hängen soll, ob Herrn Weimer die Sprache gefällt, schränkt das Freiheit massiv ein. 1/2

Die Logik: Du darfst gendern – aber dann bitte ohne Subvention, Forschungsgeld, Theaterförderung, Projektzuschuss.
Das nennt man auch: indirekte Zensur durch Geldentzug.
Verfassungsrechtlich: höchst fragwürdig.

4/9

In Praise of Weirdness

In praise of the strangeness of scientific research, which these days I think could use a few good words said for it:

ChemRxiv logo in yellow and white text on a dark gray background

Hello #ChemSky! We're the open preprint server for the global chemistry community and we're glad to be here.

Follow along as we share exciting preprints and engage with the community. Learn more about us: chemrxiv.org

💬 🧪 Behind the Science Interview with B. Terzi and W. Teich (@rentmeisterlab.bsky.social LMU Munich): Light-Activated mRNA Cap Analogs Allow Timed Control of mRNA Translation
Their work is published in @ChemistryEur - flagship journal of @ChemEurope
www.chemistryviews.org/light-activa...

Meet the speakers of our symposium in celebration of the 25th anniversaries of ChemBioChem and ChemPhysChem. Register today to take advantage of our Early Bird offer! www.cbc-cpc2025.org/registration

#ChemBio #ChemSky #Chemistry

Did My Father’s World Die with Him? Grieving the Incalculable Costs of “STEM.” - The Scholarly Kitchen Grieving my father's death feels inextricably tangled with grieving the catastrophe overtaking the whole of our research infrastructure.

“gravity itself the physical force isn’t political, but how we come to research and understand and then harness it absolutely is political, distributed by human relationships and negotiations of power” - @kawulf.bsky.social @scholarlykitchen.bsky.social scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/06/26/d...

Stir Bars Can't Be Ignored

Great article highlighted here by dereklowe.bsky.social on stirbar effects - hits home when your scale up doesn’t work because the K2CO3 wasn’t ground to powder with overhead stirring on large scale like it was with a stirbar in a flask or vial

Excited that we will have a "Scientific Publishing and Presenting" Workshop on June 26th. Thank you very much to David Peralta and Lisa Smith of Wiley-VCH for making this possible.
If you are a PhD or postdoc at @leidenscience.bsky.social, register for free: www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/20...

Looking forward to meeting you in person, then, and to listen in on all the exciting developments in the nucleic acid community!

A six panel cartoon. Panel one: Title: Learn to read with Physics Lesson One: two and three-letter words (image of a smiling book and particle) Panel two: A friendly scientist enters a colourful lab carryinh a coiffee and papers. Text: The Doc is in the lab. Panel three: She has put on eye protectors and started a machine Text: She put on the ion ray. Panel four: The machine has caused a small fire. She looks aghast. Text: Pop! The ray lit the gas. Panel five: She runs from the burning lab Text: The lab is too hot! Panel six: She sits on the grass. In the background the ruins of the lab smoulder. Text: The Doc is sad.

My cartoon for this week’s @newscientist.com

Call me old-fashioned, aber ich mags ja wenn meine Schokolade nicht komplett aromenfrei ist. Bisschen langweilig.

YouTube video by hr-Sinfonieorchester – Frankfurt Radio Symphony Moussa: Elysium ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester ∙ Manfred Honeck

#TimelineCleanse - and a clear recommendation of Samy Moussa's "Elysium", here performed by hr Symphony:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpaR...

#ClassicalSky

BEFORE THE BATHROOM SCALE WAS INVENTED, THE ONLY WAY TO WEIGH PEOPLE WAS MASS SPECTROMETRY.

Love today’s #xkcd comic on
#MassSpec
🤣

European Citizens' Initiative Give your support !

If you're an EU citizen, please consider supporting this initiative on banning Conversion "Therapy" in the EU:
eci.ec.europa.eu/043/public/#...

The petition is open until May 17 and is just shy of 700k signatures (needed: 1000k).

I'm really excited to seeing all the great Gold chemistry - such a versatile element!

🚨 10 Ways to Lose Your Research Data
All cases are real-life, verified, and foolproof.
By @nfdi4chem.de — a must-read for every chemist.
👉 www.chemistryviews.org/10-ways-to-l...

Die Verkrempelung der Welt: Das Buch ist da In “Die Verkrempelung der Welt” frage ich, was eigentlich mit den Alltagsdingen los ist. Werden sie wirklich wieder schlechter? Ein Auszug aus dem ersten Kapitel.

»Die Verkrempelung der Welt« erscheint morgen. In dem Buch frage ich, was eigentlich mit den Dingen des Alltags los ist. Werden sie wirklich schlechter? Und wenn ja, warum?

In meinem Newsletter gibt es einen Auszug aus dem ersten Kapitel.

steadyhq.com/de/gabriel-y...

Saturday, making good use of the choir break reading the new @yoran.com and great coffee ☕

This week I joined the German Chemical Society @gdch.bsky.social as a coordinating manager of its divisions and I am very excited. This also means that my time at Angewandte @angewandtechemie.bsky.social is over, so in this thread I would like to look back at the past six years. (1/22)

👀

A map of the hike including an elevation profile and basic stats (total time including breaks, total distance [34.3 km], total elevation up and down)

Photos of white and blue sprongflowers

A sunglassed selfie in front of blooming cherry trees

More hiking, making use of the almost summer-like weather: Weinheim to Heidelberg through the Odenwald and over Heidelberg's house peak, the Königstuhl (they way down is not more fun than up...) 🥾
#TheEditorIsHiking

Open letter: Food and nutrition science should avoid using the term “ultraprocessed foods” and the "NOVA classification" Science must be objective, neutral, and verifiable. As outlined in the "Open letter" (see below), the NOVA classification and the term "ultra-processed foods" do not meet these criteria. We therefore ...

Open letter calling to refrain from using the (by now rather toxic) term "ultraprocessed food" and the NOVA classification. I very much agree that the classification is deeply problematic, both in scientific discourse and public perception of food and food processing.

Beyond excited to announce our in-person symposium to celebrate the 25th anniversary of ChemBioChem/ChemPhysChem!

Advances in Structural Analysis of Biomolecules
From Subcellular Imaging to Drug Design

October 23-24, 2025, Berlin

Please like and share: cbc-cpc2025.org

🧪✨ March 28, 2025, marks the 100th anniversary of the passing of Lydia Maria Sesemann, the first woman to earn a PhD in chemistry
www.chemistryviews.org/lydia-sesema...