Song Lin receives 2026 MacArthur Fellowship

Via a Stanford press release: 

Song Lin, a professor of chemistry in the School of Humanities and Sciences, has been awarded a 2026 MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

The fellowship recognizes Lin for his frontier research developing electrochemical methods for building large, complex organic molecules. Conventionally, electrochemistry—which employs electricity to drive chemical reactions—is used for applications such as energy storage in batteries and various industrial processes. Lin’s research seeks to bridge electrochemistry and the life sciences, ultimately offering more efficient, sustainable ways to synthetically create drugs.

Congratulations to Professor Lin - this is pretty cool. 

C&EN: "Former Asahi Kasei employee arrested in Japan"

Via C&EN, this news (by Alex Tullo): 

Police in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, have arrested a former Asahi Kasei employee for stealing confidential information and passing it to a Chinese company. The information was related to an Asahi latent curing agent, used to harden epoxy resins, and was given to Shandong Shengquan New Materials, Asahi says. The company promises to start civil proceedings against the former employee and Shandong Shengquan, demanding that the firm destroy and restrain from using the confidential information. Asahi also plans to implement greater controls over its trade secrets.

Well, at least it's not American companies losing their trade secrets. 

The Daily Californian: "UC Berkeley professor Kwabena Bediako under investigation for sexual harassment allegations"

Written by Emily Hamill, this news from The Daily Californian: 

UC Berkeley associate professor of chemistry Kwabena Bediako is under investigation by campus following accusations of sexual harassment and discrimination from a graduate student, detailed in a widely circulated letter.

The letter has amassed 786 signatures from science students, researchers and faculty from universities across the country, including UC Berkeley, Stanford University, Harvard University and Columbia University.

During his time at UC Berkeley, Bediako has won various awards and honors, including the Heising-Simons Faculty Fellowship, Philomathia Prize and the NSF CAREER award. He also runs the Bediako Lab, which conducts research at the intersection of chemistry and physics. He is a tenured professor and bears the official title of the Cupola Era Assistant Professor, a prestigious position in UC Berkeley’s chemistry department.

Since the allegations were publicized, nearly every graduate and undergraduate student in the Bediako Lab has left the laboratory.

...The student alleges in the letter that Bediako “initiated repeated, inappropriate attempts to pursue a romantic relationship” with her, often during “scientific and professional engagements.” The student described being placed in “increasingly intimate and personal situations” that were “difficult to navigate” due to the “power imbalance involved” in their adviser-mentee relationship.

In the letter, the student said during a meeting in his office about her manuscript, Bediako directly asked her to have a “more personal, presumably romantic, relationship” with him. She said she was “visibly distressed, silent, and once again fearful for (her) professional standing.”

“The interaction ended with him angrily asking whether all I wanted from him was a PhD; I responded that he should not ask graduate students questions like that,” the student said in the letter.

The student added that one week after the meeting where he “solicited a romantic relationship” with her, they both attended the Gordon Research Conference in Barcelona. She also alleged that he “continued to engage in frequent, unsolicited, persistent, and overly familiar communication that (she) experienced as coercive and intimidating.”

This sounds like quite a list of bad facts. If they are true, Professor Be\diako needs to go. 

BBC: "The mushroom making people hallucinate dozens of tiny humans"

Via Bluesky, this wild story: 

Every year, doctors at a hospital in the Yunnan Province of China brace themselves for an influx of people with an unusual complaint. The patients come with a strikingly odd symptom: visions of pint-sized, elf-like figures – marching under doors, crawling up walls and clinging to furniture.

The hospital treats hundreds of these cases every year. All share a common culprit: Lanmaoa asiatica, a type of mushroom that forms symbiotic relationships with pine trees in nearby forests and is a locally popular food, known for its savory, umami-packed flavor. In Yunnan, L. asiatica is sold in markets, it appears on restaurant menus and is served at home during peak mushroom season between June and August.

One must be careful to cook it thoroughly, though, otherwise the hallucinations will set in.

"At a mushroom hot pot restaurant there, the server set a timer for 15 minutes and warned us, 'Don't eat it until the timer goes off or you might see little people,'" says Colin Domnauer, a doctoral candidate in biology at the University of Utah and the Natural History Museum of Utah, who is studying L. asiatica. "It seems like very common knowledge in the culture there."    

Read the whole thing. Very curious to know what the compound is. 

Washington University (St. Louis) chemistry professor charged with fourth-degree assault for 2024 accusations

Via Student Life, the newspaper of Washington University, this news:

Associate Professor of Chemistry Jonathan Barnes was removed from teaching after multiple female students accused Barnes of inappropriate touching during private meetings with him in the fall of 2024. Anonymous allegations against Barnes were initially publicized in a post by MeToo WashU, an Instagram account raising awareness about sexual violence on campus.   

Over a year later, Barnes faces three class C misdemeanor counts of fourth-degree assault referred by the Washington University Police Department (WUPD) to the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. A trial date for the case has not yet been set, and the maximum sentences on each charge are 15 days in jail and a $750 fine. 

The filing describes the experiences of two anonymous female students in October 2024 who attended one-on-one office hours for the organic chemistry course he taught. Barnes’ alleged contact includes touching their shoulders and lower backs, as well as placing his hand and cell phone on the thigh of one student. 

These descriptions are similar to the experiences four female students recounted to Student Life in November of 2024.  

The charges were referred to the prosecutor’s office by Jeri Hokamp, a WUPD officer. Hokamp’s statement alleges that Barnes poses “danger” to the community and that WUPD believed at the time of the filing Barnes planned to move to Texas.

Barnes’ attorney, Christopher Combs, denied all misconduct allegations and alleged that one of Barnes’ complainants stated she did not believe a crime had occurred.  

The charges were filed in October 2025. The Student Life article was published on January 15, 2026. Read the whole article here.

Media report: "Israeli chemist faced unrelenting antisemitism at Stanford lab, lawsuit alleges"

Via the Jewish News of Northern California, this report: 

An Israeli scientist who came to Stanford as a postdoctoral fellow is suing the university, alleging it failed to take seriously the extreme antisemitic discrimination he said he experienced while researching treatments for diabetes from April 2024 to February 2025.

The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Los Angeles-based law firm Cohen Williams filed the suit on his behalf Thursday morning in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The lawsuit makes 17 allegations of discrimination, retaliation, harassment, defamation, withholding pay and breach of contract. The allegations include violations of both the federal Civil Rights Act and the state Unruh Civil Rights Act.

Shay Laps, a chemist from the Haifa area, said he faced hostility “from the moment of his arrival” in April 2024 at the Stanford Diabetes Research Center, which is part of Stanford’s School of Medicine. According to the lawsuit, as the months went on Laps was subjected to attempts at intimidation by his supervisor and efforts to remove him from the lab.

On reading the lawsuit, it appears that neither his coworker nor his PI was particularly friendly nor professional. Here's hoping that he ends up in a better laboratory. 

Domestic saffron?

For the first post of 2025, an exploration of saffron via the New York Times: 

...In 2021, Peace and Plenty harvested 700,000 flowers, which yielded about 3.5 kilograms of saffron. Ms. Price sold it to home cooks, and to chefs.

...Despite her success, Ms. Price now cultivates a smaller saffron crop. She has battled weeds and aggressive gophers. Harvesting saffron is backbreaking work. First, the tiny flowers are picked on hands and knees in the dark; saffron crocuses are best harvested before the sun rises and the flowers open. Then each stigma must be meticulously removed by hand.

“I was doing one flower per five seconds at my fastest, which sounds good,” she said. “But when you have 50,000 to do, it’s daunting.”

$10,000/kilogram for the global price, wow! Pretty interesting - read the whole thing.

NYT: "Mexican Cartels Lure Chemistry Students to Make Fentanyl"

Via the New York Times, this story: 

American law enforcement officials also said that many young chemists had been swept up in arrests at Mexican fentanyl labs in recent years. The arrested chemists told the authorities that they had been working on developing precursors and making the drug stronger, according to the officials.

A chemistry professor at a university in Sinaloa State said he knew that some students enrolled in chemistry classes just to become more familiar with skills needed to cook synthetic drugs. The professor, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, said he had identified students who fit that profile by their questions and reactions during his lectures.

“Sometimes when I am teaching them synthesis of pharmaceutical drugs, they openly ask me, ‘Hey, professor, when are you teaching us how to synthesize cocaine and other things?’” he said.

...But as the cartels gain greater control of the fentanyl supply chain, U.S. officials say, it will become more difficult for law enforcement in both countries to stop the industrialized production of synthetic opioids in Mexico.

The cartels “know we are now focused on the illicit trafficking of these precursor chemicals around the world,” said Todd Robinson, the State Department’s assistant secretary of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

Those efforts are driving the cartels “to try to bring this thing in-house,” Mr. Robinson said. “The practical result of that is their ability to more easily and quickly transfer those drugs to the United States.”

That the cartel is hiring chemists and chemistry students isn't news, I suppose, but I do think it is interesting that they are attempting to recruit undergraduate students for this work (especially the practical and economic manufacture of fentanyl precursors.) The cartel seems to have a fairly sophisticated ability to perform chemical manufacturing in Mexico*, so it seems to me that they would not be so naive as to be hiring brand new students into such economically important work for them. My gut feeling tells me that the cartels are consulting more experienced chemists. 

*I can't find the link to the evidence that they've been using catalytic techniques to epimerize their discarded D-methylamphetamine to a mixture that can be re-resolved to the tartrate salt.

Washington University (St. Louis) chemistry professor accused of sexual harassment

Via a Google News search for "chemistry", this news via Student Life, the newspaper of Washington University: 

Amidst allegations of inappropriate, non-consensual touching from multiple students, Associate Professor of Chemistry Jonathan Barnes is no longer teaching his section of organic chemistry for the rest of the semester, as of Nov. 14. 

Student Life spoke to four students who allegedly experienced non-consensual touching from Barnes on the arms, lower back, and upper thigh. Three of the students are currently enrolled in Barnes’ organic chemistry class, and one took the same course two years ago. Barnes has taught the class three times prior to the Fall 2024 semester since his hiring in 2016. 

Three of the four students have been granted anonymity due to concerns for their safety. Sources referred to throughout the article exclusively by their first name have been given pseudonyms to protect their identities. 

According to Barnes’ attorney, Christopher Combs, Barnes was temporarily relieved of teaching duties, following University policy, in order to “ensure all parties feel safe and supported,” but Barnes is still employed by the University and is continuing to carry out his research with students. Neither the University nor the Chemistry Department wished to comment on why Barnes, who was given tenure last year, is not teaching the organic chemistry course anymore.

Read the whole article here.

The craziest hybrid sheep story you will hear today

Via Twitter and the Department of Justice: 

Defendant Worked to Traffic Marco Polo Sheep Parts from Kyrgyzstan, Clone Sheep, Illegally Inseminate Ewes to Create Hybrids and Traffic Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep Parts

A Montana man pleaded guilty today to two felony wildlife crimes – a conspiracy to violate the Lacey Act and substantively violating the Lacey Act – as part of an almost decade-long effort to create giant sheep hybrids in the United States with an aim to sell the species to captive hunting facilities.

Arthur “Jack” Schubarth, 80, of Vaughn, Montana, is the owner and operator of Sun River Enterprises LLC – also known as Schubarth Ranch – which is a 215-acre alternative livestock ranch in Vaughn. The Schubarth Ranch is engaged in the purchase, sale and breeding of “alternative livestock” such as mountain sheep, mountain goats and various ungulates. The primary market for Schubarth’s livestock is captive hunting operations, also known as shooting preserves or game ranches.

According to court documents, Schubarth conspired with at least five other individuals between 2013 and 2021 to create a larger hybrid species of sheep that would garner higher prices from shooting preserves. Schubarth brought parts of the largest sheep in the world, Marco Polo argali sheep (Ovis ammon polii), from Kyrgyzstan into the United States without declaring the importation. Average males can weigh more than 300 pounds with horns that span more than five feet. Marco Polo argali are native to the high elevations of the Pamir region of Central Asia. They are protected internationally by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, domestically by the U.S. Endangered Species Act and are prohibited in the State of Montana to protect native sheep from disease and hybridization.

Schubarth sent genetic material from the argali parts to a lab to create cloned embryos. Schubarth then implanted the embryos in ewes on his ranch, resulting in a single, pure genetic male Marco Polo argali that he named “Montana Mountain King” or MMK.

Court documents explain that Schubarth worked with the other unnamed coconspirators to use MMK’s semen to artificially impregnate various other species of ewes – all of which were prohibited in Montana – and create hybrid animals. Their goal was to create a larger and more valuable species of sheep to sell to captive hunting facilities, primarily in Texas.

Presuming this is true, I can't feel very sorry for Mr. Schubarth. I do wonder if the people who were doing the cloning knew what he was doing, and if they knew it was illicit.  

NSF: 1% fewer postdocs in academia in 2022

Via Science's Katie Langin, this news from NSF's Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering: 

New data released by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) reveal a sharp drop in the number of U.S. citizens working as postdocs, especially in the biological and biomedical sciences. The trend underscores concerns that the academic community is facing a postdoc shortage and that early-career scientists are increasingly favoring higher paid positions outside academia.

“It’s an unfortunate situation if domestic researchers are turning down postdoctoral positions because they’re inferior to positions in government or in industry,” says Tom Kimbis, executive director and CEO of the National Postdoctoral Association. “It’s not a situation that’s good for the country.”

The data come from NSF’s Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering, which compiles employment data from academic institutions and estimates the number of STEM graduate students and postdocs across the country. According to the latest data release, 62,750 postdocs were employed at U.S. institutions in the fall of 2022, a 1% drop compared with the year before. But the trend diverges sharply by citizenship. From 2021 to 2022, the number of U.S. citizens and permanent residents working as postdocs dropped from 29,755 to 27,289. The 8% change is the largest year-to-year percentage-wise drop in the history of the survey, which has collected data since 1980. Meanwhile, the number of postdocs with temporary visas increased by 6%, from 33,573 to 35,461, about the same number as in 2020.

This is pretty interesting news. I'm genuinely interested to see if this trend continues, if it indeed is a trend. I'm generally skeptical of narratives that there is a "shortage" of postdocs. I think there is a perceived shortage of candidates from professors, or (another way to put it) the relative desirability of these postdocs has fallen. I have long asserted that postdocs are inferior goods, and this doesn't change my position.  

Science: USC neuroscientist faces research integrity questions

Via Derek Lowe, this rather shocking story: 

In 2022, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) placed a large bet on an experimental drug developed to limit brain damage after strokes. The agency committed up to $30 million to administer a compound called 3K3A-APC in a study of 1400 people shortly after they experience an acute ischemic stroke, a perilous condition in which a clot blocks blood flow to part of the brain.

The gamble seemed warranted. Lab studies, most by a longtime grantee, prominent University of Southern California (USC) neuroscientist Berislav Zlokovic, had generated promising data. A small safety study of the drug, sponsored by a company Zlokovic co-founded called ZZ Biotech, was also encouraging. Analyses of data from the phase 2 trial hinted that the treatment reduced the number of tiny, asymptomatic brain hemorrhages after stroke patients received either surgery to remove the clot, the clot-busting drug tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), or both.

...But a 113-page dossier obtained by Science from a small group of whistleblowers paints a less encouraging picture. The dossier, which they submitted to NIH, highlights evidence from the phase 2 trial that the experimental remedy might have actually increased deaths in the first week after treatment: Six of the 66 stroke patients who received 3K3A-APC died within this period, compared with one among 44 in the placebo group, although the death rate evened out after a month. Patients who received the drug also trended toward greater disability and dependency at the end of the trial, 90 days after treatment....

...But speaking to Science anonymously, four former members of Zlokovic’s lab say the anomalies the whistleblowers found are no accident. They describe a culture of intimidation, in which he regularly pushed them and others in the lab to adjust data. Two of them said he sometimes had people change lab notebooks after experiments were completed to ensure they only contained the desired results. “There were clear examples of him instructing people to manipulate data to fit the hypothesis,” one of the lab members says.

Seems real bad! 

Science: "Co-developer of Cassava’s potential Alzheimer’s drug cited for ‘egregious misconduct’"

I haven't been following the Cassava Biosciences story, but this Science news report (by Charles Piller) seems pretty damning: 

...AFTER ORI REACHED OUT TO CUNY, the school’s investigators examined Wang-authored papers published from 2003 through 2021, a conference poster, and a grant proposal to NIH. Many of the 31 allegations the panel reviewed involved apparently improper alterations of Western blots, a technique to distinguish distinct proteins within a tissue sample. Such manipulation can significantly alter the interpretation and validity of experimental findings. The committee said it “found evidence highly suggestive of deliberate scientific misconduct by Dr. Wang for 14 of the 31 allegations.”

To check for doctoring of those data, Shafer and his colleagues sought raw-data images to compare against published versions. Wang provided none of those, the report said, adding: “It appears likely that no primary data and no research notebooks pertaining to the 31 allegations exist.” The panel also found that Wang “starkly siloed” Western blot preparation in his lab, apparently preparing nearly all such images himself—a highly unusual practice for a lab’s principal investigator.

Among his defenses, Wang told the investigators that “at least one hard drive” containing key data was destroyed by CCNY officials when they sequestered his materials for review. Wang also accused the committee of bias against him, “failing to follow the CUNY guidelines for this investigation, and of lacking a basic understanding of Western blot analysis.” The committee noted in its report, however, that three of its members “routinely conduct experiments involving protein biochemistry and two out of four routinely conduct and publish western blot experiments.”

It seems surprising when a PI solely prepares Western blot data - that genuinely seems pretty alarming. 

(After working for 10+ years in chemical manufacturing, that there isn't a basic quality assurance function in academic science is kind of amazing. If I were a PI, I could easily imagine double-signoffs required for providing key spectra and supplemental information...)

What's in an asteroid?

Via Ars Technica, this fun news: 

When the spacecraft departed the roughly 1,600-foot-wide (500-meter) asteroid Bennu in 2020, engineers estimated the probe had gathered around 250 grams, or 8.8 ounces, of specimens from Bennu's porous surface. The spacecraft sampled the asteroid by extending a robotic arm out in front of it, then essentially pogoing off the surface, only contacting Bennu for a few seconds. When it touched the asteroid, the spacecraft released a burst of gas to funnel loose rocks into a collection chamber shaped like an air filter on the end of the robot arm. This device is called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism, or TAGSAM.

Scientists discovered the collection chamber's door was wedged open with larger rocky material, with some fragments of rock leaking out into space, so they decided to quickly stow the sampling device inside the return capsule to avoid losing more material. That led some scientists on the OSIRIS-REx team to wonder whether the spacecraft might come back to Earth with even more than the 250-gram estimate, which was four times the minimum requirement for mission success.

Researchers likely won't know for sure how much material OSIRIS-REx brought home until next month. That will require the lab team in Houston to remove the TAGSAM sampling mechanism from its restraint inside the canister, which protected it for the journey back to Earth like a nested doll. Then they will open up the device and hopefully find larger chunks of rock. All of this should happen in the next couple of weeks.

There is always that moment when you're taking the flask off the rotovap, or you're taking the lid off the plant sample, and you get this news: 

“We opened up the canister today, and we did see that there is some black dust-like material that's visible," Lauretta said Tuesday. "We're hoping that's from Bennu. We expect that we'll be collecting a portion of that tomorrow morning, and that'll go right into laboratories."

"This is our first glimpse of what we might have," said Lauretta, the OSIRIS-REx mission's principal investigator. "There's good indication that we might have sample." 

Best wishes to the OSIRIS team, and it will be really cool to see what chemicals are a part of asteroids. 

Science Magazine: Cheeky Scientist Targets Students and Postdocs for High-Interest Loans

An important article by Catherine Offord of Science: 

When Sara saw a LinkedIn ad earlier this year for a company promising to help science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) Ph.D.s transition into lucrative industry careers, she thought she had nothing to lose by finding out more. With her postdoc coming to an end and her efforts to find a job and secure financial stability falling short, she was feeling desperate, she says. So she agreed to an introductory video call with a “transition specialist” at Cheeky Scientist, which bills itself on its website as the “world’s premier career training platform for PhDs” and claims to have helped “thousands of PhDs” move from academia to industry.

Sara describes what transpired as an aggressive sales pitch that played heavily on her anxiety about unemployment. The representative made her an offer: Cheeky Scientist’s Diamond Program, an online mentoring package, for a little over half what he said was the standard retail price of $9998—provided she sign up immediately. He had a solution for financing, too: a high-interest loan he could help her apply for through another company, there and then. Under pressure, Sara says, she signed up, but regretted it as soon as she was off the call. She contacted Cheeky Scientist within hours to request a cancellation. Now, she’s saddled with thousands of dollars of debt and is no closer to reclaiming her money—despite not using the company’s services.

I've long been skeptical of Cheeky Scientist's practices, and this seals it for me. Their practices are untrustworthy, and this organization should be stopped wherever possible. 

If you are a professor who reads this blog, I respectfully ask that you speak with your career services people to ask that your institution not work with Cheeky Scientist. There are plenty of free career resources for early-career researchers in science, and if you cannot find ones that you like, I will help you try to find them. Let's help make the science community a better place, and drive predators like Cheeky Scientist away. 

Retraction Watch: former chemistry professor receives NIH sanction

Via Retraction Watch: 

A former chemistry professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville admitted to reusing data in grant applications to the National Institutes of Health while claiming that it came from different experiments, according to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.

Surangi (Suranji) Jayawardena, who joined the UAH faculty in 2017 following a postdoc at MIT, “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly falsifying and/or fabricating data in twelve (12) figure panels” in four grant applications in 2018 and 2019, the ORI said. All of the applications were administratively withdrawn by the agency, one in 2019 and three in 2021.

Jayawardena studied ways to rapidly diagnose tuberculosis, and to deliver drugs to treat various bacteria. She does not appear to have had any papers retracted.

She agreed to have any federally funded work supervised for four years by a “committee of 2-3 senior faculty members at the institution who are familiar with [her] field of research, but not including [her] supervisor or collaborators.”

When she left UAH is unclear. Neither UAH nor Jayawardena immediately responded to a request for comment from Retraction Watch.

It's clearly a good thing that people who fabricate data are caught and sanctioned. It genuinely makes me wonder if this is a rare thing (it feels like it) or that this is simply the tip of the iceberg. 

UNC shooting

The news from the Daily Tarheel: 

Updated Aug. 28 5:42 p.m.: One faculty member was killed in today's shooting in Caudill Laboratories, according to a campus-wide email sent by Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz. The University will operate under Condition 2 until midnight tomorrow, meaning all classes and campus activities will be canceled. 

It was clearly near/around the chemistry building. Best wishes for the UNC chemistry and APS community. May these shootings stop. 

RIP Albert Eschenmoser

Via the Twitter account for the chemistry department at ETH Zurich: 

In deepest grief, the Laboratory of Organic Chemistry at @ETH_DCHAB at @ETH_en announces that our friend and colleague, Prof. em. Albert Eschenmoser passed away peacefully, at the age of 97, on July 14, 2023. Albert #Eschenmoser shaped organic chemistry as did few others. 1/3

A brilliant mind gave rise to masterpieces of total synthesis – #Vitamin B12 as a particular landmark in the history of #chemistry – hand in hand w the development of synthetic methods, the unraveling of fundamental mechanistic problems in biosynthesis and organic chemistry. 2/3

His knowledge and interests extended outward from chemistry and the natural sciences to literature, music, and the arts. He was a towering figure in the global success story of @ETH_en and its Department of Chemistry & Applied Biosciences @ETH_DCHAB. He will be sorely missed. 3/3

Best wishes to his family and friends.  

 

NASA successfully alters asteroid orbit

Via the New York Times: 

NASA took aim at an asteroid last month, and on Tuesday, the space agency announced that its planned 14,000-mile-per-hour collision with an object named Dimorphos made even more of a bull’s-eye shot than expected...

...The spacecraft not only connected with Dimorphos, it altered the space rock’s orbit, shortening its trip around a larger asteroid by 32 minutes.

That time shift was exactly what the DART mission aimed to accomplish. Scientists hoped the collision would push Dimorphos closer to Didymos and speed up its orbit, and they have been crunching data and taking more observations of the double-asteroid system to understand how effective this particular defense mechanism was. Scientists, according to Mr. Nelson, would have considered DART a huge success if it had only shortened Dimorphos’s orbit by 10 minutes. The reality — around three times that shift — delighted the team that managed the mission.

This seems like good news all around, although I presume that the trick will be spotting the relevant asteroid in time. It will be interesting to know if the United States Space Force will spend its future years standing on guard for asteroids approaching Earth...

RIP David Evans

Via Chemical and Engineering News, this sad news (article by Bethany Halford):

David A. Evans, the Abbott and James Lawrence Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, died April 29 at the age of 81.

Former students and colleagues remember Evans as a dedicated educator and a creative force in organic synthesis. He is best known for devising a way to use chiral oxazolidinone auxiliaries to control a target molecule’s stereochemistry. “That changed the whole mindset of how people thought about going about building molecules stereoselectively,” says David W. C. MacMillan, a chemistry professor at Princeton University who worked with Evans as a postdoctoral fellow in the late 1990s. Before Evans’s work, chemists used a small number of building blocks known as the chiral pool. “When Dave came along, he upended all of that thinking,” MacMillan says.

As a former total synthesis guy, I can't imagine what organic chemistry in the aughts would have been like without the Evans oxazolidinone. Best wishes to his family and friends.