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Chemistry suffers from multiple image problems. Chemists working at its boundaries should acknowledge and celebrate their roots, while those at its core have much to celebrate too.
In the melting pot of modern science, chemistry's cutting edge is being rebranded as biology or nanotechnology. David Adam wonders if false modesty is leaving chemists to pick up the crumbs from their own periodic table.
Gene therapists used to talk about permanently fixing 'broken' genes. But the emphasis has now shifted to treating conditions such as coronary disease and cancer using transient gene expression. Alison Abbott reports.
Optical and infrared observations of a bright object in the outer Solar System reveal it to be surprisingly large — almost as big as Pluto's moon. It could be the first of many such discoveries.
A crystal structure helps us to understand how an enzyme works. Better yet are crystal structures of the enzyme in different states of activity, which have now revealed the intricate workings of a molecular motor.
Creating a quantum fluid from a gas of excited helium atoms is not easy — the atoms tend to self-destruct. But two groups in France have pulled it off.
As the oldest, naturally occurring, treatment for malaria, quinine has been a target for synthetic chemistry for 150 years. At last, modern techniques provide full control over the synthetic molecule.
Long-term experiments under realistic conditions are beginning to deliver data on how forests — or at least some forests — will react to increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Two facets of learning are the formation and the retrieval of memories. Genetic manipulation of the fruitfly's brain allows them to be dissociated, and may lead to a better understanding of memory.
In a magnetic field, a superconductor is threaded by swirling whirlpools of electric current. Understanding these magnetic vortices is important because they control the flow of current through the superconductor.
Waste disposal is a dirty science in more ways than one. DREADCO engineers are designing a combustion device that could solve many domestic waste problems.
Co-discoverer of superfluidity, and one of the last of a generation of 'classical' physicists who delighted in explaining phenomena that could be seen.
