Teaching an old chemical new tricks

Chemists have put a new spin on an old catalyst called ‘Barton’s base’ to invent a faster, ‘greener’ chemical reaction. Their new chemistry speeds up molecule synthesis used for discovering new materials and drugs.

Common Arctic finches are all the same species

New research could ruffle some feathers in the birding world. It finds that Redpolls, a bird found in the Arctic that will sometimes come to the Southern latitudes during the winter and can be hard to differentiate, aren’t actually multiple species, ge…

Big gaps in quest to sequence genomes of all animals

Efforts to sequence the genomes of the world’s animals tend to focus on those that most resemble humans with the work conducted almost entirely in the Global North, according to new analysis. Researchers warn current efforts are overlooking huge swathe…

X-ray laser reveals how radiation damage arises

An international research team has used the X-ray laser European XFEL to gain new insights into how radiation damage occurs in biological tissue. The study reveals in detail how water molecules are broken apart by high-energy radiation, creating potent…