News & Comment

As compared to the drug discovery process, the development of new ¹⁸F PET tracers lacks a well-established pipeline that advances compounds from academic research to candidacy for (pre)clinical imaging. In order to bridge the gaps between methodological advances and clinical success, we must rethink the development process from training to implementation.

Imagine a class without lessons, tests and homework, but with missions, quests and teamwork. Video games offer an attractive educational platform because they are designed to be fun and engaging, as opposed to traditional approaches to teaching through lectures and assignments.

Chemistry education and research in Africa is challenging — a fact that is clearly reflected by publication metrics. Yet this is far from the full story on a continent that has youth on its side, a cultural link to chemistry through its strong interest in plants and indigenous medicine, and an increasing number of ways forward.

The practice and overarching mission of chemistry need a major overhaul in order to be fit for purpose in the twenty-first century and beyond. The concept of 'one-world' chemistry takes a systems approach that brings together many factors, including ethics and sustainability, that are critical to the future role of chemistry.

Of all the things humans can bestow names upon, new chemical elements are about the rarest. Our group of periodic table experts attempts to read the tea leaves and predict the names for elements 113, 115, 117 and 118.

Publishing the wrong interpretation of experimental data can result in an immediate horde of chemists feeding on the error like vultures. On rare occasions, this phenomenon can open up an entire new field of science — and the structure of ferrocene is a case in point.