Sameer PadaniaScientist @sellathechemist.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy takes a stand on scientific #disinformation:
www.ft.com/content/8778...
#science #ethics
Royal Society prize winner ret...
Royal Society prize winner ret...
UCL Chemistry
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The Official Mastodon account for the Department of Chemistry at UCL.
SellaTheChemistIt is with great sadness that I am doing what I would once have thought unthinkable. Following Salim Abdool Karim's superb Faraday Lecture 10 days ago, i have decided to return my own Faraday prize, awarded in 2014.
The silence of the Royal Society in the face of Elon Musk's rampage (a member of the RS since 2018) across US science is incomprehensible to me.
We must all draw the line somewhere in the face of authoritarian attacks and this is mine.
https://www.ft.com/content/877853df-1687-4d1f-940b-9eefc0cf69c0?accessToken=zwAAAZdYtYr2kdOHeFPfFodNH9OUC57vwM9pwA.MEUCIQDNG6kcQyHa-g6Kx4G9NHE2ofD36kR8OX0yEu-KfXlV0QIgcmMFKTaT90y42QfwQTWb05khk6thpQPe-JvIGkaZzQY&segmentId=e95a9ae7-622c-6235-5f87-51e412b47e97&shareType=enterprise&shareId=5fbecded-0dc9-419a-b064-cda0dee0d73a
David HoThe FT article about @sellathechemist.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy returning his Royal Society is the most shared article on Mastodon.
Interesting mini-review from our new lecturer, Julia Rho. How to characterise polymer nanoparticles for drug delivery, using a combination of advanced microscopy, light scattering and fluorescence. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2025/nr/d5nr00071h
It's all about the edges! A remarkable bit of science has emerged from a really broad collaboration between scientists here at UCL and others in Cambridge, Berlin and Paris: phosphorus nanoribbons (made by reducing black phosphorus with alkali metals in liquid ammonia) turn out to be magnetic semiconductors that link some of the weirdest phenomena in current physics, and open the door to very efficient nano-electronic devices. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08563-x
Magnetically and optically active edges in phosphorene nanoribbons - Nature
Phosphorene nanoribbons demonstrate extraordinary magnetic properties, ranging from large internal fields in films to macroscopic alignment in solution, which can be coupled to photoexcitations that localize to the magnetic edge of these ribbons.
@helenczerski Gerunds be damned! I have always feared being identified with the master who says "And when I asked him the supine stem of confiteor, the fool didn't know". (or fule didn't kno)
A beautiful and evocative description of the little, almost instinctive, but learned, tricks of the synthetic chemist as they go about their business. If you're a chemistry lab-rat how many of these little things are familiar to you? You might even pick up a clever trick or two from this list. As always Derek Lowe gets you thinking!
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/lab-motions
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/lab-motions
Remarkable analytical chemistry of some ancient gunge in a 9,000 year old arrow quiver - there's clear evidence for a cocktail of very nasty poisons that people were using to take down antelopes and other quarry out in the bundu. Beautiful use of LC and GC-MS to identify a mix of molecules from multiple plants. And it makes you wonder whether they might have used this against their enemies. Chemical warfare goes back a long way. @bwiedwards https://c.im/@RadicalAnthro/113539017557820699
Radical Anthropology (@[email protected])
Identification of 7000-year-old #arrow #poison in Kruger Cave, South #Africa. 'This is the oldest unequivocal complex hunting poison recipe yet identified, notwithstanding the many chemically unsupported assertions of older examples. Furthermore, the identification of ricinoleic acid points to the possibility of ricin as a third toxin, and lends credence to the 2012 interpretation of this compound’s presence on a 24 000-year-old wooden applicator at Border Cave, South Africa' #huntergatherers https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(24)02663-4
Our Department has a new two year research fellow position in enzymatic #plastics degradation working directly in Helen Hailes' lab, but part of the wider UCL P3EB Plastics Hub project that involves Mark Miodownik. You "will investigate enzymatic systems for the breakdown of plastics, help discover and improve enzyme performance, optimise enzyme efficiencies and perform plastic degradation reactions under a range of reaction conditions". Links from here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/chemistry/vacancies #catalysis #
Vacancies
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Amid all the sadness about the sudden death of Michael Mosley, this photograph from the BBC website suddenly brought memories flooding back. It was taken in the @uclchemistry Graham Lab where Michael came to film a bunch of stuff with me about 15 years ago when he was in his history of science phase. We had a lot of fun. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1wwv0405wyo
