Prashant Kamat

Original (left) and corrected (right) Fig. 4a in the paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10305-0 showing the chemical structures of amino acids (only the right one) the left figure is just an embarrassment

I wonder... 🤔🤔🧪 #chemsky

a) what program did the authors use to make the original (left) figure in the paper? Wild guess, ChatGPT

b) how such high school science level of disgrace pass peer review in @nature.com?

Note this was Fig.4.a NOT in SI

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Bidding goodbye to a dear friend

Dave was a great friend and an exceptional scientist. We will miss him dearly. Our condolences to his family and thos at @pittchemistry.bsky.social

Thanks for letting us know. We were good friends since 1990s.

If you look at his publication profile, no one would have suspected that he was sick. What a great contribution till the end. The news of his death is a shocker
scholar.google.com/citations?hl... (10 articles in 2025 in leading journals and one in 2026)

Five ways to spot when a paper is a fraud Science sleuths share their common-sense tips for sniffing out fishy articles.

Five ways to spot when a paper is a fraud www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Sad to hear this news. I have interacted with Dave since 1980s. His innovative ideas inspired many.
Good Bye my friend

Oh No!
So sad to hear. David was a great scientist and inspired many.
Good bye my freind.

The Impact of Chirality on Singlet Fission and Triplet Fusion: A Molecular Twist for Photon Management Chirality has recently emerged as a new means to profoundly impact the properties of organic semiconductors for spin-optoelectronic applications. Yet, a clear mechanistic understanding of chiral structure–property relationships remains absent to date, particularly for photon interconversion processes such as singlet exciton fission and triplet fusion. In this perspective, we highlight recent work that investigates chiral structures for these processes. We discuss the various ways in which chirality can impact such conversion processes and suggest ways to leverage it to improve photon management for both energy applications and quantum information science.

The Impact of Chirality on Singlet Fission and Triplet Fusion: A Molecular Twist for Photon Management | A Perspective by Sascha Feldmann in ACS Energy Letters pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Major Chinese funder to stop paying fees for 30 pricey open-access journals | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...
Countries with highest number of publications in Nature Communications in 2025 (Total 12569 articles in 2025) include China, and USA, followed by Germany, England and France

Will self-driving ‘robot labs’ replace biologists? Paper sparks debate AI-driven autonomous robots are coming to biology laboratories, but researchers insist that human skills remain essential.

A single grad student achieves 600% improvement in 4 months, then an entire lavishly funded team achieves a further 40% improvement in 6 months.

Nature says the latter has "eclipsed" the former.

This is so dumb.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Nanoscience is latest discipline to embrace large-scale replication efforts A European project calls for help to verify whether carbon quantum dots are really able to sense chemicals in cells.

Nanoscience is latest discipline to embrace large-scale replication efforts
A European project calls for help to verify whether carbon quantum dots are really able to sense chemicals in cells.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Disentangling Environmental Effects on Perovskite Solar Cell Performance via Interpretable Machine Learning Despite the rapid increase in efficiency of perovskite photovoltaics, poor reproducibility remains a barrier to their commercialization. Film processing and device performance are highly sensitive to environmental factors during fabrication, yet these interactions are not well understood. Here, we present a systematic methodology to investigate the direct and coupled effects of environmental variables on the perovskite solar cell performance. To do this, we developed an integrated fabrication platform to independently control solvent partial pressure, absolute humidity, and temperature during spin-coating and thermal-annealing of perovskite films and combined it with a closed-loop Bayesian optimization framework to efficiently explore the multidimensional processing space. Efficiency maps reveal coupled nonlinear effects of these variables on device performance, validated by in situ structural characterization, which showed that humidity–solvent interactions affect film crystallization. To overcome the limitations of conventional SHapley Additive exPlanations in disentangling strongly coupled variables, we distilled the knowledge of a Gaussian teacher regressor into multiple student models within an interpretable machine learning framework that employs Shapley interaction analysis to decipher these coupled interactions. This study demonstrates active learning with interpretable machine learning as a powerful tool to explore complex processing landscapes and highlights the importance of environmental control for robust and generalizable processing protocols to accelerate scalable, high-performance, and reproducible perovskite solar cell manufacturing.

Disentangling Environmental Effects on Perovskite Solar Cell Performance via Interpretable Machine Learning | ACS Energy Letters pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
From Tianran Liu, Nicky Evans, Kangyu Ji, Moungi Bawendi,Vladimir Bulović, Tonio Buonassisi and other MIT researchers

Room Temperature Size Tuning of CsPbI3 Quantum Dots Size quantization in halide perovskite nanocrystals provides a versatile strategy to tune their optical and electronic properties. We have now synthesized CsPbI3 quantum dots (QDs, 5–13.5 nm) by first...

Room Temperature Size Tuning of CsPbI3 Quantum Dots | ACS Materials Letters
We have CsPbI3 quantum dots (5–13.5 nm) are synthesized by first preparing CsPbBr3 QDs at room temp., followed by halide exchange with iodide ions and characterize excited state properties.
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Opinion | Don’t Trust the Rankings That Put China’s Universities on Top

Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/o...

Opinion | Don’t Trust the Rankings That Put China’s Universities on Top

Don’t Trust the Rankings That Put China’s Universities on Top www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/o...

Is “THIS WORK ★” Really the Best?
The Trouble with Figure-Driven Claims of Excellent Performance | Editorial by Phil Christopher in ACS Energy Letters pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
Why authors should not feel that every paper must show champion performance without standardization in measurements

As we celebrate "International Day of Women and Girls in Science" today, ACE Energy Letters recognizes these outstanding scientists for their impactful contributions to energy research. Read their inspiring stories
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
pubs.acs.org/page/aelccp/...

Measuring pH Changes Inside a Bipolar Membrane Junction The local pH environment within bipolar membrane (BPM) junctions is complex and not well understood, yet it is important to control for advancing the performance of BPM-based electrochemical systems. We report a voltammetric strategy using an ultrathin Ni mesh pH probe to spatially resolve pH changes in the BPM junction during model BPM electrolyzer operation. Under reverse bias, we observe depletion of OH– at the anion-exchange layer (AEL) interface, with a degree diminishing with increasing distance from the AEL. These gradients correlate with current-dependent water dissociation (WD) and are modulated by the electric field and the surface charge state of the catalyst. By correlating spatial pH profiles with the surface-charging behavior of WD catalysts, we explore a mechanism of catalyst-mediated H+ and OH– transfer facilitated by hydrogen-bonding networks. These findings highlight the role of local chemistry and electrostatics in BPM performance and offer new methods to probe and engineer catalytic junctions in electrochemical energy devices.

Just published from @boettcherlab.bsky.social
Measuring pH Changes Inside a Bipolar Membrane Junction | ACS Energy Letters pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Citation cartels use fake author names to target chemistry journals Dubious entities masquerade as researchers in war zones or low-income countries to obtain journal fee waivers

Citation cartels use fake author names to target chemistry journals cen.acs.org/research-int...

Pressure-Aware Operando X-ray Methods Reveal True Mechanistic Pathways in Solid-State Batteries Operando studies of solid-state batteries (SSBs) must capture device-relevant stack pressure and temperature, since uncontrolled conditions can cause relaxation artifacts and lead to false mechanistic...

Pressure-Aware Operando X-ray Methods Reveal True Mechanistic Pathways in Solid-State Batteries | ACS Energy Letters pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

The Tsunami of AI generated articles is coming! Majority of the reviews submitted for publication contain significant amount of AI generated text. Often these articles slip through the review process and get published! Even if they are rejected by one journal, there is another one to publish them.

🤭

Check Google Scholar -Very Prolific author
scholar.google.com/citations?hl...

Engineering Excited-State Dynamics in AgInS2 Quantum Dots by Gallium Incorporation and GaSy Shell Passivation Ternary I–III–VI semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) are being explored as nontoxic alternatives to Cd- and Pb-based QDs for light-harvesting applications. Incorporation of Ga into AgInS2 reduces the num...

Engineering Excited-State Dynamics in AgInS2 Quantum Dots by Gallium Incorporation and GaSy Shell Passivation | Chemistry of Materials
The photocatalytic properties of ternary QDs suggest the importance of the GaSy shell in suppressing back electron transfer. pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....

huh

Has anyone done analysis to check how many more CO2 molecules will be released into the atmosphere to capture one molecule of CO2?

Peer Review and AI:Your(Human)Opinion Is What Matters
ACS Nano Editorial pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
"No LLM can replicate critical thinking and experience of researchers. Editors specifically chose you because of your expertise; we value your unique perspective and evaluation,not that of an LLM"

The Strategic Role of 2D Nanomaterials in Grid Modernization

The Strategic Role of 2D Nanomaterials in Grid Modernization |Energy Focus discusses challenges, and opportunities related to 2D material utilization for energy generation, storage, transmission, and distribution that support grid efficiency and energy security
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Science journals retract 500 papers a month. This is why it matters A small team of volunteers is tracking thousands of falsified studies, including cases of bribery, fraud and plagiarism

SUNDAY TIMES: Science journals retract 500 papers a month
www.thetimes.com/uk/science/a...