Nanotechnology is steadily moving from the laboratory to the marketplace and is now enabling or enhancing products in a variety of sectors, including clothing, electronics, clean energy technologies, and automobiles. Although a great deal of progress has been made in expanding our fundamental understanding of nanoscale materials and devices, there are still challenges associated with designing and fabricating
integrated nanosystems. [ NNI 2016 Strategic Plan ]

These days, a scientist has to publish a steady stream of research articles to be “successful.” But two new studies argue that that kind of pressure promotes sloppy science at the expense of careful work. “The problem that we face is that the incentive system is focused almost entirely on getting research published, rather than on getting research right,”  “Once you have bad practices they can propagate and ruin the scientific process and become dominant. And I think there’s some truth to it, unfortunately.”  The publish-or-perish culture may be having negative consequences already. [ view more ]

The research sector loves talking about excellence but is it best for science? It is almost impossible to work in research without hearing the word excellence. Universities use it in their mission statements and funding agencies name programmes after it. In a forthcoming paper, a group of open access researchers and advocates, have taken a sharp look at the science world’s pervasive use of the word. They go so far as to call it a fetish and conclude that it’s having negative consequences for research. “Excellence is not excellent, it is a pernicious and dangerous rhetoric that undermines the very foundations of good research and scholarship,” [ view more ]

Did you ever measure a smell? Can you tell whether one smell is just twice strong as another? Can you measure the difference between two kinds of smell and another? It is very obvious that we have very many different kinds of smells, all the way from the odour of violets and roses up to asafetida. But until you can measure their likeness and differences, you can have no science of odour. If you are ambitious to find a new science, measure a smell.

Dogs’ sense of smell is more amazing than we thought – Knowing the importance of smells in general — and my smell, in particular — to my dogs has changed our lives together. In the morning they sniff me awake; I let them lick (a way for them to absorb molecules for smelling). When I return home from a trip, I reach down to greet them — and let them smell me back. Now I even take a sniff of them myself. What I would do to see the world they smell. [ view more ]

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2016 was awarded jointly to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa “for the design and synthesis of molecular machines”. [ view more ]