Reticular chemistry—stitching molecular building blocks with strong bonds to produce extended, crystalline, porous frameworks—has enabled a new paradigm in materials design. This article traces the field’s evolution from early molecular hosts to the discovery of metal-organic framework (MOF)-5 and an expansive family of MOFs and covalent organic frameworks (COFs) characterized by ultrahigh surface areas and tunable pore chemistry. Selected examples (MOF-808, MOF-303, MOF-LA2-1, COF-999) demonstrate excellent performance in CO 2 capture and atmospheric water harvesting and show great potential for addressing environmental challenges. The article highlights scale-up and commercialization efforts and outlines the “Digital Discovery Cycle,” where AI, robotics, and data-driven synthesis accelerate crystallization and screening. The piece concludes by situating reticular materials as promising, scalable solutions for climate challenges and by mapping directions for future research and deployment.

I learned so much from Stan Cohen, my tennis partner in the summer of 1977. He was funny and wise. His account of how he purified and characterized epidermal growth factor, using the time of opening of baby mice’s eyes as the assay, opened my eyes too, previously blinded by spectrophotometric biochemical assays. As long as you can measure something quantitatively, it really doesn’t matter what it is. Two years later in Woods Hole I learned from John Gerhart about MPF (Maturation Promoting Factor), apparently the enzyme that catalyzes entry into mitosis. Again, a far cry from the Krebs cycle and the details of bioenergetics that generations of biochemists grew up with. Years later, after he had won a Nobel Prize for his work on EGF and its receptor, I visited Stan Cohen at his laboratory at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He was 75 years old, but I found him dressed in a lab coat in his cold room. “Stan,” I said, “What are you doing—you don’t need this!” “Tim,” he answered, “It’s pain and suffering, pain and suffering. I can’t stand not knowing the answer. And I putschke around, and every ten years of so I find out something interesting.” Indeed, he had just published a paper in Science describing the behavior of what came to be known as Stat5. In this talk, I want to explore and describe the variety of approaches to finding out how the world works and how to get at the answer.

Helices are ubiquitous in art and nature. Independent of their pitch and sense of rotation (handedness), helices in sculpture, painting, architecture, scientific illustrations, conference announcements, logos, and advertising are eye-catching and aesthetically pleasing. Helices can turn either clockwise (right-handed helix) or anti-clockwise (left-handed helix). The [Formula: see text]-helix formed by l-amino acids and the double helices formed by [Formula: see text]-d-2′-deoxyribonucleic acid (A- and B-form DNA) and [Formula: see text]-d-ribonucleic acid (A-form RNA) are all right-handed. Artistic license provides the freedom to create helices of any shape and sense; indeed, many helical sculptures do not follow the natural convention observed in proteins and DNA. What is more surprising, given that models of the [Formula: see text]-helix and the DNA double helix were published over 70 years ago, is how common left-handed DNA double helices are in the context of scientific papers and books as well as in popular science writing and reporting. In all cases except for left-handed Z-DNA, the use of left-handed helices in scientific illustrations or models is incorrect. Here, we revisit the helix types adopted by peptides, DNA, and RNA, and review examples of right and wrong helical models in science, art, and elsewhere.

The following theses are claimed, several contrasting current climate policies and taxonomies. Analysis, based on solely carbon dioxide emission and energy budget, concludes a set of concrete solutions for mitigating climate change effects. Some of the theses violate more orthodox policy which is thus protested against in order to move forward.• Our long-term goal must be to stop using all carbon-containing fuels, including natural gas and other fossil products as well as biofuels. • We must electrify society and industry, with electricity from only non-carbon-based power including nuclear power, hydro-electric, wind and solar power. • We must prepare ourselves for changes. Even if the present emission volumes of carbon dioxide were possible to stop immediately, various lag effects are inevitable and negative development will therefore continue for considerable time. • We must count with continued melting of land ice, the complete liquifying of the Antarctica ice expected to lead to a global sea level rise by some 60 m, flooding most capitals. Among various solutions to mitigate the effects of ice melting, including lowered global temperatures, the following is proposed. • To mitigate sea level rise, stationary water reservoirs should be built around the world. With estimated melting rates it would require ca 1 million reservoirs be deployed or expanded during the next 20-40 years. • Such reservoirs could also solve the emergent problem of lack of fresh water in many places. They could also be used for local storage of hydroelectric energy by using pump storage hydroelectric (PSH) technology. • All energy production sources should be analyzed according to a Total Balanced Energy Budget (TBEB) with the main objective of minimizing the emissions of greenhouse gases. • For each region/country, a table of available or conceivable complementary electric energy sources should be made and ranked according to TBEB—the sources given priority weights depending on feasibility, significance, and environmental friendliness. Tables are presented for Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France, Ukraine, California, Massachusetts, Maine, Peru, Australia, China and Japan. Generally, we find the following rank of priority applicable. • Solar energy from desert arid areas is given highest priority in replacing carbon-based forms of energy. Submarine electric cables may be deployed along the Australia-Singapore model, if the available power grids are insufficient for the energy transport. • Electrolysis of water producing clean hydrogen gas is given very high priorityboth for using hydrogen as fuel as well as for energy storage. Improved efficiency should be achieved by the development of electrolysis catalysts. • Hydroelectric power in combination with PSH is given high priority to mitigate both grid power fluctuations as well as source (solar and wind) intermittence. • False hope should not be seeded among society and politicians by inflating projects that are less realistic or suboptimal for technological, economic or other reasons. Here, probably most forms of “biofuels” (which although being “carbon neutral” do produce carbon dioxide) and “carbon capture” (catching carbon dioxide gas at the combustion site, compressing it to liquid and depositing it in salt mines or empty oil fields) are considered less significant compared to other more direct solutions. Both biofuels and carbon capture may be associated with social and environmental issues. • Political legislation and instruments (“taxonomy”) invented with the original objective of mitigating negative climate change effects should be reanalyzed and changed if not functional. The EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS)—a market for outlet rights, for example, is a local initiative which despite its valuable ambition might be suboptimal with respect to goal of efficient decrease of carbon dioxide emission globally. Similarly, “climate taxonomy” can create loopholes bypassing a sound TBEB. • Science-based targets (SBT) to decarbonize the private sector as part of global efforts to achieve the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement should be further encouraged. • Solve economic and political challenges allowing and promoting establishment of required international energy collaborations (e.g., for solar energy cross-continental transport programs).

In the 68 years between the first human solid organ transplant and the present, the number of these transplanted organs has reached one million, tracking at about 40,000 more annually. Looking ahead are the prospects for growing transplantable organs outside the body. The arc of this story extends from Alexis Carrell and Charles Lindbergh’s experiments with tissue culture, to Joseph Murray and Thomas Starzl’s surgical trials, to Jean Dausset and Peter Medawar’s discoveries about immune tolerance and rejection, and pushing into the future of regenerative medicine, to bioengineers Shinya Yamanaka, James Thomson, Anthony Atala, and Toshiro Sato– highlighting a few among many.

Millennia separate smallpox, the oldest pandemic, and COVID-19, the newest. Both calamities arose from an opportunistic virus amid human crowding. A vaccine for smallpox existed since the late 18th century, but it took worldwide public health strategy to eradicate it. COVID-19 proceeds against a hive of scientific collaboration, but succeeds, so far, from weak containment policies. COVID-19 was first identified in China, but it rose to become the American pandemic.

SolarStratos is developing a solar powered airplane to fly in the 2020/2021 timeframe to the stratosphere. The goal is to demonstrate that renewable energy, namely solar energy allows flight at altitudes where no internal combustion engine or jet engine can operate, providing for sustainable flight.

Not satisfied with nature’s vast enzyme repertoire, we want to create new ones and expand the space of genetically encoded enzyme functions. We use the most powerful biological design process, evolution, to optimize existing enzymes and invent new ones, thereby circumventing our profound ignorance of how sequence encodes function. Mimicking nature’s evolutionary tricks and using a little chemical intuition, we can generate whole new enzyme families that catalyze important reactions, including ones not known in biology. These new capabilities increase the scope of molecules and materials we can build using biology.