Guillermo Restrepo

Industry and academic leaders urge UK government to recognise chemistry’s strategic importance Amid uncertainty in higher education, experts highlight subject's vital contributions

In the face of mounting financial pressures in higher education and industry, the UK government is being urged to take action to protect the chemical sciences. #ChemSky #ScienceSky

Excellent experience at S-DISCO Days in Gdańsk. Beyond the superb scientific programme, it was inspiring to witness the next generation of drug discovery scientists in action—what energy!

Bumble bees damage plant leaves and accelerate flower production when pollen is scarce Bumble bees manipulate plants to bring about earlier flowering.

Facing a scarcity of pollen, bumblebees will nibble on the leaves of flowerless plants, causing intentional damage in a way that speeds up the production of flowers, according to a Science study from 2020.

Learn more on #WorldBeeDay: scim.ag/45hwgqy

The Molecular Bond That Helps Secure Your Memories | Quanta Magazine How do memories last a lifetime when the molecules that form them turn over within days, weeks or months? An interaction between two proteins points to a molecular basis for memory.

Why can you still remember things that happened ages ago? You can thank a two-protein team in your brain.

A recent PNAS paper discusses the use of digital tools in historical research. I complemented the story by highlighting new questions that computational history enable us to ask (examples are provided). www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #History #computers

How the Nobel Committee for Chemistry Has Shaped the Nobel Prize: Historical Trends Based on the Nobel Prize Nomination Archive The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is governed by the Nobel Foundation’s rules and managed by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences via its Nobel Committee for Chemistry. Despite 125 years of awarding these prizes and increased transparency from the Nobel Foundation, many aspects of the selection process remain obscure. Our analysis of the Nobel Prize Nomination Archive from 1901 to 1970 reveals that the decisions were heavily influenced by the personal and professional biases of the members of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, who were not only responsible for inviting and assessing nominations but also for presenting recommendations to the Academy. Nobel laureates also significantly influenced the process due to their right to make ongoing nominations. The study suggests ways to improve the nomination and selection process to better reflect the evolving nature of chemistry in the 21st century.

The Nobel Committee for Chemistry has strongly shaped the outcome of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, at least during its first 69 years. After all, it is an award that is difficult to decouple from our human biases and interests #chemistry #NobelPrize pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Social media use in adolescents with and without mental health conditions - Nature Human Behaviour Using a nationally representative UK sample of adolescents with clinical-level mental health symptoms, this Registered Report examined differences in social media use. The results suggest that adolesc...

Further evidence highlights the urgent need to regulate teenagers' use of social media www.nature.com/articles/s41... #teenagers #socialmedia #mentalhealth

Sulfenylcarbene-Mediated Carbon Atom Insertion for the Late-Stage Functionalization of N-Heterocycles Late-stage functionalization (LSF) is a crucial strategy in drug discovery, allowing the modification of complex molecules, including pharmaceuticals, to enhance chemical diversity in drug libraries. ...

A nice and clean methodology to add carbon atoms in the late stages of drug discovery processes. If widely adopted, this approach could significantly reduce the environmental impact of chemical research. #chemistry #drugdiscovery

AI drug development’s data problem The future of drug discovery may be artificial intelligence (AI), but its present is not. AI is in its infancy in the field. To help AI mature, developers need nonproprietary, open, large, high-qualit...

A recent Science paper www.science.org/doi/full/10.... discusses data challenges in AI-driven drug development. In an e-letter responding to the paper, I briefly complemented the authors by highlighting the importance of publishing negative results. #chemistry #drugdesign #AI

A nice piece by @chrisnsimms.bsky.social in the @newscientist.com featuring a few of my thoughts on fascinating new research uncovering forbidden electronic transitions — a development that could enhance atomic clocks and, in turn, our precise sense of time. #periodictable #chemistry #physics

It was a real pleasure. Thank you for reaching out, and congratulations on the excellent piece!

Professor Answers Supply Chain Questions

An excellent video about supply chains, where Willy Shih
answers interesting and topical questions. wired.com/video/watch/... #Economy #Politics

It would be very interesting to determine the minimal social 'circuit' that allows for cultural anticipation. Clues in that direction are addressed here for biological systems. Nice @ricardsole.bsky.social paper.

Happy to see ChemRxiv now has a Bluesky button! #chemsky

A Deep-Sea Mining Operation Is Underway, and Almost No One Knows about It The owners of a controversial mining license have begun extracting valuable metals from the ocean floor

In our endless hunger for metals, we began to mine the sea. www.scientificamerican.com/article/mine... #metals #sea

Climate crisis on track to destroy capitalism, warns top insurer Action urgently needed to save the conditions under which markets – and civilisation itself – can operate, says senior Allianz figure

Could this be what finally pushes us to take climate change seriously? www.theguardian.com/environment/... #climatechange #economy

Winner, winner, lab-made dinner! Team grows nugget-sized chicken chunk Artificial circulatory system enables feat by delivering nutrients to growing tissue.

A small but significant step toward reducing our polluting and suffering footprint associated with food production. www.nature.com/articles/d41... #food #science

This and other news on rare earths (REE) turn these results very topical. China more than extracting REE, leads their chemical innovation. #rare-earths #chemistry #geopolitics

Mario Vargas Llosa: Giant of Latin American literature The Peruvian was called a "divinely gifted story-teller" when he won the Nobel in 2010.

The last of the Latin American Boom's great stars has gone www.bbc.com/news/article...

Is chemistry really dying in the US and Europe? Not so fast Chinese universities completely dominated one recent ranking of the chemical sciences

A Chemistry World piece featuring some of my thoughts on the current state of chemistry amid rising geopolitical tensions. #chemistry #China #US #Europe #politics #economy www.chemistryworld.com/news/is-chem...

An example of how chemical ingenuity can circumvent geopolitical tensions and contribute to circular processes #chemistry
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

‘Shocking’ signs of damage in plastic-eating chicks Proteins in the seabirds’ blood reveal markers of neurodegeneration and multiorgan dysfunction

Plastics could literally driving us crazy cen.acs.org/environment/...
#chemistry #plastics #anthropocene

Excited to speak at this interesting event! #chemistry sustainabledrugdiscovery.eu/s-disco-days...

Looking forward to getting it in Spanish

Indeed an excellent book!

Meet ‘qudits’: more complex cousins of qubits boost quantum computing Working with multi-dimensional entities could make calculations more efficient and reduce errors.

An instance of the importance of higher-order structures www.nature.com/articles/d41... #hypergraphs

Artificial intelligence learns to reason Julia has two sisters and one brother. How many sisters does her brother Martin have?Solving this tiny puzzle requires a bit of thinking. You might mentally picture the family of three girls and one b...

"Julia has two sisters and one brother. How many sisters does her brother Martin have?" This is a kind of question AI can now solve. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #AI #LLM #LRM

At the level of chemical knowledge on rare earths (REE) -essential for new technologies-, China has also surpassed the US. Here we show that today 38% of new REE compounds are produced by Chinese teams, while only 8% by US teams chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr... #AI #rareearthmetal

Highly recommended!

Your brain is full of microplastics: are they harming you? Plastics have infiltrated every recess of the planet, including your lungs, kidneys and other sensitive organs. Scientists are scrambling to understand their effects on health.

Discussions on the Anthropocene revolve around the effects of humans on Earth. But here we see the effects of humans on ourselves. If the Earth is full of plastics, we are not that different www.nature.com/articles/d41... #plastics #anthropocene