This week, ready to use chemical capsules could make chemists' lives a lot easier.

You have a jar of said capsules filled with whatever reagents that were previously sensitive,

just now they're on the bench top, you can remove them and add them to your reaction mixture at will.

And plant scientists asked to open their inboxes to anti-GM activists.

The response was pretty hot and heavy. I think people are passionate and polarized about GM technology.

This is the nature podcast for August 13th, 2015. I'm Adam Levy. And I'm Kerry Smith.

It's a shorter show than usual this week as we reach the height of summer, but I'm Adam Levy. And I'm Kerry Smith. It's a shorter show than usual this week as we reach the height of summer,

but I'm sure many scientists are still slaving away in the lab.

A new report this week strives to make lab life, for chemists at least, a little bit easier.

Jeff Marsh has been to a lab in London to find out more.

Some of the more useful reactions that chemists perform these days

require catalysts that are sensitive to the different components of the air,

like water and oxygen, for example.

This means that chemists have to do these reactions in an unreactive atmosphere.

And to do that, you've got to use something called a glove box.

It's called that because it's basically a giant cabinet filled with an unreactive gas like nitrogen,

which you stick your arms in through a set of long rubbery gloves from the outside.

Not every chemistry department has a glove box,

and even if you do have access to one, they're not without their difficulties.

Aaron Sathers at MIT and his colleagues have just published a paper this week in nature,

detailing a new idea about how to work with these sensitive chemicals.

Before I spoke to Aaron about his team's new innovation,

...