When former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers was pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman he described as a mentee, he turned to a longtime associate for guidance: convicted sex offender Jef...

House of Lords committee urges government to stem exodus of science and technology companies

Melanins are a diverse family of natural pigments with a unique combination of optical, electronic, redox, and structural properties that challenge conventional chemical characterisation. Here, the au...

Synthetic polymers are a broad and versatile class of soft materials covering a large chemical space. “Computational microscopy” approaches such as atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are an effective tool to validate and rationalize experimental data for structure–property characterization. The predictive quality of MD simulations and the properties derived from them are primarily driven by the accuracy and relevance of the force field used to represent the system. While biomolecular simulation (nucleic acids, proteins) workflows benefit from dedicated toolkits and domain-specific force fields, the modeling of synthetic polymers has not progressed to the same extent. This perspective will discuss recent efforts to improve system building and parametrization workflows for synthetic polymers, and the unique challenges differentiating them from biopolymers. We will outline shortcomings in established workflows, review best practices for FAIR polymer simulations, and highlight new tools/workflows leveraging cheminformatics, direct chemical perception, and neural networks.

Royal Society is warning that the high upfront costs are putting off talented researchers

Supervisors who invest in positive mentoring relationships with their PhD candidates also reap the benefits for their own research.

Scientists, research institutions, funders, libraries and publishers must all improve software practices.

This physical chemist studies ionic liquids while making space in research for students with marginalized identities

The future of science will be written by humans and machines together. Awards should reflect that reality.