Kemi Oloyede reflects on the importance of having LGBTQ+ STEM events, and their role in combatting inertia in the scientific community.

Governments worldwide are committing more funding for scientific research in the face of the ongoing pandemic and climate crises. However, the funding process must be restructured to remove the barriers arising from conscious and unconscious biases experienced by minoritized groups, including women, and particularly women of colour.

The time between accepting a position as an assistant professor and taking the role is exciting and unique. But how much work is required before you even start? Shira Joudan ponders which tasks are necessary and how many times one should interrupt a very well-deserved break.

Matthew Horwitz, creator of the Synthesis Workshop video podcast, talks to Nature Chemistry about using podcasting as a driver of professional-level education in the chemistry community.

In contrast to phosphine and arsine oxides, stibine oxides have been challenging to isolate in monomeric forms as they tend to polymerize. Now, such a SbO moiety has been kinetically stabilized using sterically bulky protecting groups, and its reactivity found to be substantially different to that of its lighter pnictogen counterparts.

Quasicrystals are intriguing structures that exhibit long-range positional correlations but no periodicity in real space. Now, T-shaped amphiphilic molecules featuring rigid cores have been found to self-assemble into a columnar liquid quasicrystal with dodecagonal symmetry. The honeycomb structure observed arises from a strictly quasiperiodic tessellation of square, triangular and trapezoidal tiles, rather than from random tiling.

Photochemical reduction of CO₂ is a significant challenge and many existing methods use catalysts containing rare metals. Now a metal-free version of this reaction—with high selectivity for formate generation over H₂ or CO—has been achieved that features a combination of carbazole photosensitizer and organohydride catalyst.

The structural analysis of small crystals has remained challenging. Now, the structure of a small organic molecule, rhodamine-6G, has been resolved from microcrystals using an X-ray free-electron laser and electron diffraction. The former showed better reliability for atomic coordinates, whereas the latter was more sensitive to charges; both techniques accurately determined the position of hydrogen atoms.

Crystals of hexachlorobenzene have now been shown to support the autonomous motion of water and particulate matter over their surface. Parallel microchannels present at the surface of the crystal gradually widen by sublimation, propelling droplets of condensed ambient water that can also transport microscopic amounts of material such as silver microparticles.

Stereogenic sp³-hybridized carbon centres are the principal building blocks of chiral organic molecules. Usually, these centres are configurationally fixed. Now, low-energy pericyclic rearrangements have been used to create rigid cage molecules with fluxional sp³-stereochemistry, influencing chiral information transfer. The sp³-carbon stereochemistry of the cages is inverted through strain-assisted Cope rearrangements.

The time between accepting a position as an assistant professor and taking the role is exciting and unique. But how much work is required before you even start? Shira Joudan ponders which tasks are necessary and how many times one should interrupt a very well-deserved break.

Rahul Dev Mukhopadhyay and Kimoon Kim consider how cucurbiturils — pumpkin-shaped macrocycles — went from curiosities to compelling cavitands for a host of applications.

Matthew Horwitz, creator of the Synthesis Workshop video podcast, talks to Nature Chemistry about using podcasting as a driver of professional-level education in the chemistry community.

Winter brings a spike in mortality rates, but rather than simply having more parties to divert our attention, Bruce Gibb suggests that perhaps we should be looking to the misunderstood mushroom to give us a boost.

Methane hydrate clogs pipelines, is difficult to extract profitably, and exists in quantities sufficient to screw up Earth’s climate. Brett Thornton and Christian Stranne consider this confounding cage compound.

Amilra Prasanna (AP) de Silva talks to Nature Chemistry about his path in chemistry, from photochemistry to sodium sensors to logic gates, through connections between people and between two places that share more than it may seem, Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland.