Andy Extance

Analysis: UK newspaper editorial opposition to climate action overtakes support for first time - Carbon Brief Nearly 100 UK newspaper editorials opposed climate action in 2025, a record figure that reveals the backlash against net-zero in the right-leaning press

Great @carbonbrief.org analysis. The shift is political, not factual, including attacks on Ed Miliband from papers he tried to get more tightly regulated.

Also, the right opposes net zero but doesn't deny climate change, so what are they going to do about it?

www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-...

Opaque UK funding changes herald cuts to facilities and research programmes paused Projects face withdrawals and delays as UKRI prioritises economic growth and applied research over curiosity-driven areas

My new @chemistryworld.com story reports shift in UK funding away from curiosity-led research towards more applied, strategic projects. That threatens some large facilities and emphasises fewer, larger projects over small organisation support. Read more at www.chemistryworld.com/news/opaque-... 🧪

ECSJ2026 : call for session proposals It’s time to contribute to the next European Conference of Science Journalism (ECSJ2026), which will take place from 14 to 16 October in Hanover, Germany. It will be held jointly with the annual Wisse...

One more week to send in your session proposals for the European Conference of Science Journalism! Hurry! Hurry! efsj.eu/2026/01/05/e...

Parliamentlive.tv Science, Innovation and Technology Committee

Some thoughts on the select committee appearance by the boss of UKRI, Ian Chapman yesterday. It’s a long watch but can be seen here: parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/...
Thread 🧵

When we hear about the chemical industry we’re used to thinking about large, dirty oil processing facilities. But can Scotland make chemicals from…. whisky? Read more in my @chemistryworld.com World story at bit.ly/whischem 🧪

Flood-prone Ynysybwl homes to be bought and bulldozed by council Homes on a street at severe risk of flooding will be bought by a local council.

We are now bulldozing houses in the UK to make way for climate change.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It's slow to figure out how to make the molecules you want, speeding it up would be a big deal. I used to work in drug discovery, it's what happens in the first stages of finding molecules to target a specific biochemical system.

#ABSWmembers #Elections

@andyextance.bsky.social has been ABSW Chair since 2020, completing his 3rd term in the role.
Andy speaks about how much ABSW has transformed his career, and how being chair was a great way to pay that back.
He encourages other members to join the Board.

zurl.co/NXEgU

Applications for the internship are open now!

AI and the rise of intelligent sensing - Nature Sensors From wearable health monitors to autonomous robots, AI is reshaping how sensors collect, interpret, and act on data, with co-design and benchmarking key to their success, finds Andy Extance.

If that link doesn't work, then I've run out of unpaywalled access via my gift link, but you can access the paywalled version here www.nature.com/articles/s44...

AI and the rise of intelligent sensing - Nature Sensors From wearable health monitors to autonomous robots, AI is reshaping how sensors collect, interpret, and act on data, with co-design and benchmarking key to their success, finds Andy Extance.

Privileged to write the lead feature for the first issue of Nature Sensors. Sensors are increasingly everywhere, and paired with AI they bring great opportunities, challenges and threats. Glad I could discuss how to carefully harness their promise. 🧪

links.springernature.com/f/a/gmUCNCNE...

January saw a couple of amazing events in London with @absw.bsky.social The launch of the World Conference of Science Journalists at the Royal Society was amazing, as was the ABSW 'missed the deadline' Christmas party the following week. I had such a great time I barely remembered to take photos!

@altmetric.com I noticed that often when a paper only has one item under "news" coverage on Altmetric, it's often from the same site that seems to cover *every* paper in certain journals. I strongly suspect that these are AI generated and question whether they should be highlighted as media coverage

This AI has chemical expertise — and helps synthesize 35 new compounds An open-source program helps researchers bypass a major bottleneck in the process chemical synthesis.

In my @nature.com story, I explain how chemists at Yale have created a chemistry AI tool by fine-turning the LLAMA LLM to create 2,498 expert models. Their system can judge which of the different experts to refer a query about reaction conditions to. Impressive! 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I assume you've tried Becky Chambers? The Monk and Robot books are great. To Be Taught if Fortunate too, though it might be a but much like work.

Earth-size planet spotted with yearlong orbit Long-overlooked Kepler signal discovered by citizen scientists reveals promising world worth a closer look

New planet just dropped and it

1) is almost exactly Earth-sized

2) has a year that's almost exactly 1 Earth year.

3) orbits a star that is not a 💢temperamental little shit M-dwarf 💢but is instead a 🧡 good orange boi 🧡

Me for @science.org based on results presented at #RockyWorlds4: 🔭🧪

Watch this video if you want to:

A) Find out how much protein you actually need 🍗
B) You want to see me dress up as a German Chemist from the 1840s 🧪
C) You're a fan of @lizziegibney.bsky.social's amazing presentation style 💃
D) All of the above

How to Think Like a Chess Player and Win at Life - an interactive ABSW event A free in person event for ABSW members and Kings College London staff and students

⚠️NEW INTERACTIVE EVENT⚠️

#ABSWmembers and @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social are invited to a unique opportunity to meet and play with chess champion @jenshahade.bsky.social
Chaired by @alexobrienuk.bsky.social

Book now! 👉 zurl.co/qeTyd

Number of UK newspaper editorials arguing for more (blue) and less (red) climate action, 2011-2025. Some editorials also present a “balanced” view, which is categorised as advocating for neither “more” nor “less” climate action. These editorials are not represented in this chart. Source: Carbon Brief analysis.

NEW – Analysis: UK newspaper editorial opposition to climate action overtakes support for first time | @joshgabbatiss.bsky.social @sylviahayes.bsky.social

Read here: buff.ly/eAPkvkx

Progress Despite Fragmentation: The Energy Transition to 2030 | BloombergNEF The second half of the decade will not be straightforward, but count on more progress being made.

This is a really useful and cogent analysis of where we are with the clean energy transition. It's not all doom and gloom, but it's not hopium either. Look forward to the climate scenario due to come out of it. about.bnef.com/insights/cle...

Great opportunity for student science journalists here => 🧪

Coal power generation falls in China and India for first time since 1970s ‘Historic’ moment in biggest coal-consuming countries could bring decline in global emissions, analysis says

Good news 🙌 ‘Historic’ moment in biggest coal-consuming countries could bring decline in global emissions, analysis says.

#climatechange

Police chief admits misleading MPs after AI used in justification for banning Maccabi Tel Aviv fans An intelligence report referred to a football game that never existed - Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will make a statement later today.

Why yes, it's an excellent idea to base our economy on an engine of misinformation www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c3...

Thanks for explaining

The strike price looks a lot higher for the floating farms. What's the thinking there? Presumably this undermines the "cheaper than gas" argument?

Good news for the offshore windustry!

Record breaking new offshore wind results arrived this morning, in the latest UK CfD auction. Eight new projects supported, two new floating sites, 8.4 GW altogether!

Intrinsically Bifunctional and Tunable Tungsten Carbide Catalysts Enable Efficient PVC-Compatible Polyolefin Hydrocracking Hydrocracking is a promising route for the chemical recycling of polyolefins (PO), converting them into short hydrocarbons over bifunctional catalysts with metal sites for hydrogenation and dehydrogenation, and Brønsted acid sites (BAS) for isomerization and C–C bond cleavage. However, PO feedstocks containing polyvinyl chloride (PVC) can release chlorine (Cl) under reaction conditions, deactivating conventional noble metal/zeolite catalysts. Moreover, the lack of site intimacy and the presence of micropores within conventional catalysts create challenges around the transport of high-molecular-weight, sterically encumbered polymer intermediates. Here, we report tungsten carbides (WxC) as a novel type of bifunctional catalysts that address these challenges. W/W2C phases on WxC offer “metal” sites, and −OH on WOx species introduces BAS in close proximity. The “metal”:BAS ratio can be tuned through carburization temperature, leading to a volcano-shaped activity trend reflecting the requirement for metal–BAS balance. Kinetic data demonstrate that each PO chain undergoes sequential cleavage, while trends in cracking ideality and selectivity follow those in short-alkane hydrocracking. On the per-BAS basis, WxC is more efficient than conventional bifunctional catalysts by more than an order of magnitude, due to enhanced polymer transport. They maintain or show increased activity with 10 wt % PVC in the substrate. This work establishes transition-metal carbides as earth-abundant bifunctional catalysts with unique site proximity and heteroatom compatibility. These features, along with the broad structure space for rational tuning, make them promising options to tackle specific challenges that polymer feedstocks present in hydrocracking.

US researchers have developed cheap catalysts that could enable chemical recycling through a well-established approach currently used in oil and gas refining. They can withstand exposure to chlorine, commonly released by waste plastic in such processes🧪https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.5c11845

Shell plans pilot hydrogen project using start-up’s ultra-efficient novel electrolysers Oil giant and UK-based Supercritical Solutions sign collaboration agreement

Great to see Supercritical Solutions' technology being used in a pilot - getting the amount of energy needed to make green hydrogen down is a vital part of defossilising fuels and chemicals www.hydrogeninsight.com/innovation/s...

Ray Nayler predicted this with "point-five" artificial companions in "The Mountain In the Sea": "They want to be the complete one, the person who controls the relationship—and they want the other person to be half a person. You know, someone who gets them, but who doesn’t have their own demands.”

Really pleased to see defossilisation being covered by Nature and raising the need for more investment in this area. www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪