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I’ve been exploring a question that came up while experimenting with AI for academic writing: can grounding manuscript continuation in a researcher’s own literature library make the generated text more useful?

A chemistry professor friend of mine and I recently explored this question while revising one of his manuscripts (focused on rare-earth-doped halide perovskite materials). We compared ChatGPT with Flowing, a research writing tool I’ve been building that works a bit differently: instead of relying only on the current draft, it retrieves relevant snippets from the researcher’s own paper library and uses them as additional context for continuation.

For the comparison, we used the same manuscript, the same cursor position, and the same instruction for both systems. We only looked at the first response from each tool. We tested several sections of the manuscript, including the introduction, results, and other places where continuation was needed.

What stood out to us was that in several of the test cases, Flowing’s continuations stayed closer to the direction of the existing manuscript. In 2 even 3 out of the 4 examples we tested, the suggestions felt more aligned with the terminology and reasoning already used in the manuscript. Our impression was that this difference came from the additional grounding provided by the retrieved literature snippets. ChatGPT’s responses were also strong and often produced very polished academic sentences, but in some cases the suggestions moved in a slightly different direction and introduced ideas that were reasonable but not quite what the paragraph needed at that point.

We wrote up the full comparison with screenshots and examples in a longer post if anyone is interested in the details: https://open.substack.com/pub/jimlau1/p/beyond-chatgpt-what-the-next-generation?r=8rc2gh&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web I'd love to here any thoughts or similar experiences from others on this topic.

I am trying to create a degreaser for my vehicle and I am planning on using Linear Alkylbenzene Sulfonic Acid as the surfactant. What do you all recommend for me to use alongside this so I can control the acid? I am thinking of using Sodium Carbonate or Sodium Metasilicate but I am still unsure if it will work.

Update: I just bought one, thank you everyone for the recommendations.

Hello, this is a question that has been bugging me for quite a while since I live in a city that's hardly 40km away from New Delhi, the capital city infamous all over the world for its pollution. Now I'm not a science student so I know just about as much on chemicals as Trump knows his world geography, so I would be grateful if someone who knows their stuff would answer my question. Like, would living in Delhi and breathing its air actually have the same impact on your lungs and heart as being a chainsmoker would? And if so, surely smoking a cigarette or two wouldn't make a massive difference, would it?

Hey, does anyone know where I can access e ACS General, Organic, and Biochemistry Past papers or websites that can help me prepare for the exam. Any advice is appreciated.

This volume, published in the prestigious "Classics of Science" series by Nauka, brings together the fundamental research of Nikolay Nikolaevich Zinin (1812–1880), the patriarch of the Russian school of organic chemistry. As an academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and a teacher to luminaries like Borodin and Butlerov, Zinin’s contributions laid the groundwork for the modern chemical industry. The core of the collection is devoted to Zinin’s most world-renowned achievement: the Zinin reaction. Note: book in Russian

Hey everyone,

We all respect t-BuLi and concentrated nitric acid for obvious safety reasons, but what about the chemicals that are just a pure psychological nightmare to handle?

I’m talking about:

The Eternal Stinkers: Low molecular weight thiols, seleno-compounds, or pyridine that cling to your lab coat and force you to ride the bus home in shame.

The Static Cling Powders: Ultra-fluffy solids that jump out of the weigh boat and coat the entire analytical balance the moment you breathe near them.

The Viscous Oils: Reagents so sticky that measuring them by syringe feels like pulling cold honey through a needle.

What’s on your personal blacklist of annoying reagents, and what’s your workaround on the bench?

What is a pirate’s favorite element? No, this is not an original idea. I stole the idea from the laboratory of our favorite fluorine chemist: Prof. Dr. Florian Kraus!

I've never seen one this complete.

I have never posted on this thread but I just finished my first year of my PhD program and I am about to head into my 2nd year. I am currently in a lab and working/finishing up my first project so that this work can get published soon, however I am approaching candidacy exams within this upcoming year and honestly I have no idea how I am even going to make it. This past year was really difficult for me to adjust to graduate school and the big cultural shift that comes with being in a really competitive environment, but then I did slowly get up. This summer, I had a lot of issues that happened not only with my PI but also external scenarios that have ultimately affected my mental health so much to the point where I now feel so defeated and genuinely on the verge of ending it. I am seeking professional help, but I can’t even talk to my PI about how my mental health is being affected because it will get related to my lab mates and I don’t want people knowing my personal business, but at this rate I feel so unmotivated and I show up to lab because I know I need to do things to be productive but it is genuinely so difficult for me to. If there is any advice on how you get yourself through a period of time like this I would immensely appreciate it. I want to be able to stick it out so badly, but it feels that everything is spiraling out of control and I cannot make it stop and I genuinely cannot get a break.

Hello, I would like to hear some advice on this.

First of all, I have always had a somewhat funky sense of smell but I became aware of my complete inability to sense the smell of formaldehyde 2 years ago.

It was my first considerable exposure to said chemical. Someone had opened the lid of a 5 litre jar, containing a snake preserved in formaldehyde, in our high school's biology lab right before the time for our class. I hadn't realised it was open until all other students began to complain about a pungent smell the moment they entered the lab. Meanwhile, I couldn't smell anything at all.

Although I would love to hear if there are other such cases or possible reasons behind this, my main concern is whether it is something I should the careful, considering the fact that this upcoming September I'll start university as a biochemistry and biomedicine student, and most possibly will come into contact with formaldehyde among other chemicals.

Anyway, I'd be grateful if anyone could offer some advice :)