"The combined work of Kagan and Soai demonstrates that it is possible to convert a near-equal mixture of two mirror-imaged molecules – or enantiomers – into only one form. Crucially, Soai discovered a reaction where the product was also the catalyst."
"Microplastics are a source of extreme concern for health: the presence of these tiny pieces of plastic has been linked to heart attacks, stroke, dementia and brain tumors. But what drives these associations is unclear. Now a study published in Nature offers a tantalizing clue: microplastics interact with water, generating highly reactive molecules."
"An emotional scene of an elephant carrying a deceased calf has earned Italian photographer Federico Veronesi the title of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026."
Pet Shop Boys have released an album that follows the life of Alan Turing.
"A Man from the Future (stylised in sentence case) is the sixteenth studio album by Pet Shop Boys, released on 9 October 2026 through the band's own label x2 and Parlophone. It is a concept album that follows the life of Alan Turing and his legacy and is a collaboration with Turing biographer Andrew Hodges. The album is credited to Tennant/Lowe/Hodges."
"The rings mark the site of the Amazon Free-Air CO2 Enrichment Experiment (AmazonFACE), which is set to launch in the next few months. The decade-long project will test how the forest might respond to atmospheres of the future, when rising carbon dioxide levels are likely to affect plant growth and carbon storage."
https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-026-02909-3/index.html
"Some molecules, such as amino acids, exist as two variants that are each other’s mirror image. However, living organisms only contain one of these mirror images. How chemical asymmetry such as this could have emerged was long a mystery to chemists. Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2026 for discovering a solution to this puzzle."
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2026/press-release/
"Scientists from Yibin University and collaborating institutions have formally described Indotyphlops gyirongensis, the Gyirong blind snake, a discovery that adds a new member to one of the least understood branches of the snake family tree."
"The goal for these kinds of organization, says Fan Xiudi, an educational-policy specialist at Tongji University in Shanghai, China, seems to be to build a facade of legitimacy, and then use that to sell memberships and awards to early-career researchers, particularly in China."
From @jgeekstudies
"The objective is not to propose an experimentally reproducible formulation of grog, an endeavour that would be both inadvisable and potentially disappointing to pirates, but to determine which chemical characteristics are necessary to reconcile its behaviour with known corrosion science."
"You do not have two brains. It’s a silly way to look at the results of the new paper.
But there are far better ways to look at the results, ways that can help us understand how the brain gets put together and illustrate some of the general ideas behind developmental biology. So let’s take a look at what the research actually shows and place it in the context of brain development."
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/09/contrary-to-some-reports-you-dont-have-two-brains/
Lots of lovely shots.
"For three weeks in February 2026 I was in the highlands of Angola — the plateau that feeds the Okavango, Zambezi, Congo and Cuanza rivers — on a biodiversity survey called the Cassai Life Atlas. […] Most of this plateau has never been surveyed, and not for lack of interest — it’s been sitting behind decades of landmines left over from Angola’s civil war."
https://www.nickybay.com/cassai-life-atlas-angola-2026/
#Africa #Angola #Spiders #Insects #Snakes #Surveys #Biodiversity
"Hornbills are among the most charismatic, fascinating and awesome of birds, yet surprisingly little is known about them, dedicated studies are few, and they’re incredibly elusive and hard to study. Approximately 60 hornbill species occur across tropical Africa and Asia, and also in the Middle East and Australasia."
https://tetzoo.com/blog/2026/9/22/remarkable-anatomy-of-hornbills
"A battery made with a substance resembling edible rice paper can power swallowable electronic medical devices. And after the battery has been safely digested, its broken-down ingredients can be absorbed by the body."
"The faster the insects wriggle, the more the fluid resists, courtesy of long strings of sugars it contains.
After years of study, scientists are still learning new things about how Raffles’ pitcher plants weaponize this strange fluid."
https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/living-world/2026/how-pitcher-plants-trap-their-prey
"A major new memorial celebrating Tolkien’s creative vision and storytelling by artist Stephen Broadbent will be revealed at a dedication ceremony in Spring 2027, which is also the 90th anniversary year of The Hobbit and 50th anniversary year of The Silmarillion."
https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-news/abbey-to-honour-jrr-tolkien
"The new species, Leopardus tilcayo, is a type of tiger cat, a group of small felines in the genus Leopardus that are native to South America. In a paper published on Thursday in Current Biology, the researchers identify five distinct species of tiger cats in South America, including the tilcayo."
Interesting infographic by @compoundchem on friction-erasable pens.
Original link at C&EN [ https://cen.acs.org/physical-chemistry/periodic-graphics-erasable-pen-ink/104/web/2026/09 ]
"A new artificial-intelligence tool quickly transforms a research paper into a bespoke AI agent that serves as a “virtual corresponding author”. The agent can respond immediately to questions about the paper, providing a convenient way for scientists to grasp advances in unfamiliar fields. It can also apply the paper’s methods to a fresh data set and even collaborate autonomously with agents for papers from other scientific disciplines."
Looking forward to reading this book by Ed Yong next year.
"The book, then, is about life at every possible scale. It’s about what it’s like to be as large as a whale or as small as a bacterium, to repeatedly travel across the world like a migrating bird or to be rooted in place like a tree, or to live barely a few months like some coral reef fish or to endure for millennia like a bristlecone pine."
https://buttondown.com/edyong209/archive/the-eds-up-life-beyond-measure-cover-and-release/
"The Journal of Lost Species (JLS) is a peer-reviewed record of the contemporary biodiversity crisis. Our goals are to advance scientific understanding of extinction, support the development of methods for biodiversity documentation, and facilitate the rediscovery of lost species.
We publish papers on declining, lost, and extinct species from across the tree of life and anywhere in the world."