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Nov 15, 2009 — Biomimetics is the new science of imitating nature – but why not save a step, and just copy the design directly?  That’s what Aussie and British researchers did.  They wanted a self-cleaning surface that could repel moisture and dust, so they made a template of an insect wing.  And why not?  “Insects are incredible nanotechnologists,” reported Science Daily.  Their wings are self-cleaning, frictionless and super-water-repellant. Insect wings have these properties due to their properties at the scale of billionths of a meter.  “For instance, some wings are superhydrophobic, due to a clever combination of natural chemistry...

Scientists from Germany and Israel have caught a fleeting glimpse of carbonic acid, the simple yet elusive molecule that plays a key role in nature, from regulating the pH of blood to mediating crucial events in the global carbon cycle. And it appears that the acid is not as weak as the textbooks would have us believe.Carbonic acid, the hydrated form of carbon dioxide, is an important molecule that is involved in buffering biological fluids such as blood and is a key intermediate in the exchange of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and the oceans. However, it is so short-lived in solution...

Sir Ambrose Fleming: Father of Modern Electronics --snip-- Sir John Ambrose Fleming was a leader in the electronics revolution that changed the world. As a professor at a major university, he carefully researched the evidence for Darwinism, concluding that the theory is not supported by science. He also influenced hundreds of students to evaluate the evidence in science for Darwinism. An outstanding scientist and creationist, he played a significant role in the development and maturation of the early creation movement. As Travers and Muhr wrote, he "had an unusually long and active life," and his life changed the world as...

A new molecule that detects and destroys lethal nerve gases has been developed by researchers in the US. It is hoped that the research will help develop new early-warning systems against chemical weapon attacks, and possibly give rise to an effective antidote. Originally developed during the lead up to the second world war, organophosphorus nerve gases such as sarin, tabun and soban are odourless and colourless - and exposure to even a small amount can be fatal within minutes. Despite being outlawed by chemical weapons conventions in the 1990s, their relatively straightforward chemical structure means they could conceivably be deployed by...

US scientists have confirmed the discovery of element number 114, first made over a decade ago by a team in Russia. By smashing a high energy beam of calcium-48 ions into a plutonium-242 target, the US team managed to detect two nuclei of element 114, which is predicted by some to be bordering the so-called 'island of stability' for superheavy atoms.Yuri Oganessian and his team at Dubna, Russia, were the first to claim to have created nuclei of element 114 - but any such claim has to be thoroughly verified and the experiments repeated independently before the element can be considered for admission...

Researchers have established the conditions that foster formation of potentially dangerous levels of a toxic substance in the high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) often fed to honey bees. Their study, which appears in the current issue of ACS' bi-weekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, could also help keep the substance out of soft drinks and dozens of other human foods that contain HFCS. The substance, hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), forms mainly from heating fructose. In the new study, Blaise LeBlanc and Gillian Eggleston and colleagues note HFCS's ubiquitous usage as a sweetener in beverages and processed foods. Some commercial beekeepers also feed...

Chemistry may help scientists improve control of invasive fire ants A fire ant’s weapon is also its weakness. The insect’s venom attracts parasitic flies, which bring about a slow ant death that ends in decapitation, scientists report in an upcoming Naturwissenschaften. By identifying venom alkaloids that attract the flies, researchers may be able to better monitor populations of the pests and their enemies and to design improved fire ant control strategies. Fire ants were imported from South America in the early 20th century and, with little competition and no natural enemies, quickly became a major pest in the southeastern United...

American chemists have made molecular 'daisy-chains' containing threaded rings that can be pulled taut or slackened by chemical stimuli. The polymers are a step towards making materials that stretch or contract on demand, and show great potential for applications such as actuators in nanomachinery or designing artificial muscles. 'Artificial muscle tissue is still a long way off, but we are starting to demonstrate the kind of systems where it could be possible,' says Robert Grubbs, who led the work at the California Institute of Technology, US. Grubbs won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2005 for his work on olefin metathesis reactions, which allow carbon-carbon...

USresearchers have made nano-sized boxes from nickel and tin - marking the first time that patterned 3D structures have been built on the nanoscale. The boxes and fabrication process could have great potential for making interesting nanostructures, for applications ranging from electronics to drug delivery.'I'm interested in miniaturising the world,' says David Gracias, who led the research at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US. 'We have a lot of nanotechnology techniques that allow us to build very well in 2D - but building in 3D is more difficult.'The cubes resemble tiny dice around 100nm in size - patterned on each side with the university initials,...

Researchers will soon have a new dedicated home for presenting findings of exceptional significance from across the chemical sciences. Announcing the launch of Chemical Science at the ACS Fall 2009 National Meeting in Washington, Editorial Director Dr James Milne described this new venture as a milestone in the development of the RSC publishing portfolio. "During recent years, RSC journals have attracted significant growth in submissions, while journal Impact Factors have increased to now lead the field." Dr Milne continued: "the launch of Chemical Science, with Professor MacMillan as Editor-in-Chief, will truly complement RSC Publishing's world renowned communications and review flagship titles, and...

This message, made up of tiny crystals suspended in a gel, was created using a series of laser pulses scanned through a template.A. Alexander / U. Edinburgh A technique that creates crystals on demand using laser pulses could make it easier to prepare the high-quality crystals needed to study protein structure.Chemists and biologists need crystals of proteins and other chemicals to analyse their atomic structure using X-rays, while many industrial processes rely on triggering crystal formation at precisely the right time and place during the production of drugs and other useful compounds.Yet "crystallization still remains largely a black art," says...

Scientists in Germany have observed a single molecule of HCl dissociating into its component ions in water - and have discovered that just four water molecules are needed for complete dissociation of the acid. The team say that their findings, made under ultracold conditions, should help scientists understand nanoscale chemical transformations at very low temperatures, including those occurring in stratospheric clouds and interstellar media. Previous studies into the dissociation mechanism of the strong acid HCl at ultracold temperatures had left a puzzle. Normally, such reactions require thermal energy, but at ultracold temperatures this thermal energy is not available. Now, Martina Havenith and...

ChemSpider, the open-access online database of structure-searchable chemical information, has found a new home with the UK's Royal Society of Chemistry. The move is hoped to enable ChemSpider to expand in scope and become a primary resource for online chemistry data.The acquisition of ChemSpider builds on an existing partnership between the two organisations, which last year saw the launch of a web-based resolver for the IUPAC's International Chemical Identifier (InChI) and its more streamlined cousin, the InChIKey, which allow chemical structures to be associated with strings of text. Graphical representations of chemical structures, while a valuable means of communication between human chemists,...

Materials displaying 'self-erasing' colour images have been created by chemists in the US, who have studied how certain nanoparticles can assemble and disassemble themselves under different wavelengths of light.The materials, which are printed with ultraviolet (UV) light and erased with visible light, could one day be used for self-expiring bus tickets or for carrying secret messages.'Self-erasing papers are important for time-sensitive materials and secure communications,' said study leader Bartosz Grzybowski of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. 'On the fundamental level, what we describe is also a very different way of looking at the concept of information storage. We're not using traditional coloured inks per se,...

Pirates can now trade in their peg-legs for real legs as scientists transform wood into bone.In a Royal Society of Chemistry journal Italian chemists show that ordinary wood can be turned into bone suitable for repairing damaged limbs.It brings a whole new meaning to the term "tree surgery".The microstructure of the wood is the perfect natural template for making bone as it allows growth of blood vessels and tissues, Anna Tampieri and colleagues report in the Journal of Materials Chemistry.By treating wood with a fairly simple set of chemical processes, the natural structure of the wood is retained.The wood is...

French and Italian scientists have analysed a meteorite and discovered that it contains a unique and primordial rock fragment that is thought to have remained largely unaltered since the solar system formed around 4.6 billion years ago. The scientists believe the xenolith, which shows unprecedented isotopic variations of nitrogen, may offer insight into the solar system's formation and say it poses serious problems for current models of light element isotopic fractionation.  Light element isotopic ratios are the result of formation mechanisms and particular physical and chemical conditions. Understanding them can therefore help determine whether extraterrestrial materials formed in the solar nebula...

Enlarge ImagePre-RNA? Hybrids between proteins and nucleic acids may have helped genetic molecules evolve.Credit: Science/AAAS Researchers pondering the origin of life have long struggled to crack the ultimate chicken-and-egg paradox. How did nucleic acids like DNA and RNA--which encode proteins--first form, when proteins are needed for their synthesis? Now, scientists report that they've cooked up molecular hybrids of proteins and nucleic acids that skirt the dreaded paradox. Although it's unknown whether such molecules existed prior to the emergence of life, they offer insight into a chemical pathway that might have helped life arise. DNA and RNA sport a backbone...

American chemists have developed an 'electronic glue' to link nanocrystals together - allowing groups of the crystals to be highly conductive. Since nanocrystals have unique optical and electrical properties, this research could provide some exciting new materials for use in light-emitting devices or solar cells.Nanocrystals are crystalline nanoparticles of metals ranging from cadmium to silicon, and can be grown with precisely controlled size and shape. But despite their exciting range of optical properties, they have found few applications so far. 'The problem is getting the crystals to 'talk' to one another,' says Maksym Kovalenko, lead author on the project at the...

BERLIN (Reuters) – A new, superheavy chemical element numbered 112 will soon be officially included in the periodic table, German researchers said. A team in the southwest German city of Darmstadt first produced 112 in 1996 by firing charged zinc atoms through a 120-meter-long particle accelerator to hit a lead target. "The new element is approximately 277 times heavier than hydrogen, making it the heaviest element in the periodic table," the scientists at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research said in a statement late on Wednesday.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A new, superheavy chemical element numbered 112 will soon be officially included in the periodic table, German researchers said. A team in the southwest German city of Darmstadt first produced 112 in 1996 by firing charged zinc atoms through a 120-meter-long particle accelerator to hit a lead target. "The new element is approximately 277 times heavier than hydrogen, making it the heaviest element in the periodic table," the scientists at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research said in a statement late on Wednesday.

Since its discovery in 2004, the carbon-based material known as graphene has revealed a stream of attractive properties. Now, researchers in the US have shown that a two-layer version can deliver yet another: a wide, tunable bandgap. The discovery paves the way for new electronic devices, from lasers that change colour to electronic circuits that rearrange themselves. Graphene is a sheet of carbon just one atom thick, with a structure that resembles chicken wire. Single sheets of the material have proved to have record-breaking strength, high conductivity and high transparency. But recently some scientists have come to suspect that the most interesting...

Researchers in the US have come up with a cheap, environmentally friendly way to kill termites and other pests. The method involves the applying a sugar derivative, which inhibits an anti-microbial protein normally secreted by the insects, thereby leaving them open to disease.Insects have efficient immune systems, although much of their workings are still unknown. Nevertheless, one aspect that is well-understood is the existence of proteins called pattern-recognition receptors, which can spot microbes that should not be present. Such receptors come under a class of 'gram-negative bacteria binding proteins', or GNBPs.Ram Sasisekharan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, together with colleagues...

The discovery of a bimetallic palladium(III) complex that can catalyse formation of carbon-heteroatom bonds adds a new facet to our understanding of the chemistry of one of the most widely-used metals in catalysis, say US chemists.Tobias Ritter and David Powers from Harvard University, Massachusetts, have shown for the first time that a palladium(III) complex is responsible for conversion of a C-H bond to a C-Cl bond. While such reactions were known before, the nature of the catalyst had not been studied in detail. 'This work was about analysis of how this kind of transformation works,' says Ritter, 'and we found this Pd(III)...

Enlarge ImageSomeday solution. Fiddling with atmospheric pressure may be one way to prevent a future apocalypse. Credit: Photos.com Sometime between 100 million and 1 billion years from now, Earth will have lost so much carbon dioxide from its atmosphere that plants and trees will literally begin suffocating, eventually taking all life with them. In a new study, researchers propose one way to delay this Armageddon: reduce the pressure of the atmosphere, effectively creating conditions where we all feel like we're living at high altitudes. Over the geologic history of Earth, CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been dropping. Today,...

In the year that sees the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, a previously untold story has emerged of how, through a "miracle" chemical breakthrough, Spitfire and Hurricane fighters gained the edge over German fighters to win the Battle of Britain. An American scientist and author has claimed that the famed pair of war-winning aeroplanes gained superior altitude, manoeuvrability and rate of climb by a revolutionary high-octane fuel supplied to Britain by the USA just in time for the battle. Books, documentaries, and movies have chronicled the brilliant contribution of UK designers and engineers behind the...

UK and Dutch scientists have mimicked an ancient Chinese culinary technique of preserving eggs to study how proteins cause disease. Erika Eiser from the University of Cambridge and colleagues looked at how proteins in egg whites altered during this preservation process. The Chinese method involves wrapping raw eggs in an alkaline paste of lime, clay, salt, ash and tea and storing these so-called century eggs for several months. Eiser modified the method by incubating a boiled egg in a strong alkaline sodium hydroxide-salt solution for up to 26 days. Hard boiled egg whites become a transparent gel in an alkaline...

Biologists’ favorite glowing marker may play a role in cellular business Green fluorescent protein, the darling of cell biologists and biomedical researchers, may do more than give off light. When the protein fluoresces — allowing researchers to see where cells and proteins boldly glow in petri dishes and living organisms — it also gives up electrons, a team reports online April 26 in Nature Chemical Biology. The research suggests a possible new function of the protein; its normal role has remained a puzzle despite its widespread use in laboratories. “This is a totally unexpected twist,” comments Mikhail Matz of the...

Soaring above the Mississippi River just east of downtown Minneapolis is one remarkable concrete job. There on Interstate 35W, the St. Anthony Falls Bridge carries 10 lanes of traffic on box girders borne by massive arching piers, which are supported, in turn, by footings and deep pilings. The bridge, built to replace one that collapsed in 2007, killing 13 people, is constructed almost entirely of concrete embedded with steel reinforcing bars, or rebar. But it is hardly a monolithic structure: the components are made from different concrete mixes, the recipes tweaked, as a chef would, for specific strength and durability...

Flexible display screens and cheap solar cells can become a reality through research and development in organic electronics. Physicists at Umeå University in northern Sweden have developed a simple method for producing cheap electronic components, writes Cellular-News.

Relying on principles similar to those that cause Jell-O to congeal into that familiar, wiggly treat, University of Michigan researchers are devising a new method of detecting nitric oxide in exhaled breath. Because elevated concentrations of nitric oxide in breath are a telltale sign of many diseases, including lung cancer and tuberculosis, this development could prove useful in diagnosing illness and monitoring the effects of treatment. Assistant professor of chemistry Anne McNeil and graduate student Jing Chen will discuss the work at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society in Salt Lake City, Utah. McNeil and Chen work with...

Skin is spectacular stuff. Nick it with a razor or scrape it on the sidewalk, and it heals itself quickly. Synthetic materials are another story, although it’s not for lack of effort on the part of scientists. Chemists have tried for years to develop self-healing polymer coatings for use on cars, furniture and other objects. Recent efforts use microspheres containing bonding chemicals. These tiny capsules are embedded in the coating. When a crack or scratch occurs, the spheres break and the chemicals flow into the void, patching it. Biswajit Ghosh and Marek W. Urban of the University of Southern Mississippi...

A group of researchers in Tennessee and Denmark has discovered a way to sensitively detect explosives based on the physical properties of their vapors. Their technology, which is currently being developed into prototype devices for field testing, is described in the latest issue of the journal Review of Scientific Instruments, which is published by the American Institute of Physics. "Certain classes of explosives have unique thermal characteristics that help to identify explosive vapors in presence of other vapors," says Thomas Thundat, a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the University of Tennessee who conducted the research with his...

HR 875 The food police, criminalizing organic farming and the backyard gardener, and violation of the 10th amendment This bill is sitting in committee and I am not sure when it is going to hit the floor. One thing I do know is that very few of the Representatives have read it. As usual they will vote on this based on what someone else is saying. Urge your members to read the legislation and ask for opposition to this devastating legislation. Devastating for everyday folks but great for factory farming ops like Monsanto, ADM, Sodexo and Tyson to name a...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--A chemist who led to the invention of the birth control pill says he regrets the demographic catastrophe that has resulted from people using the contraceptive device to separate reproduction from sexuality. Carl Djerassi, the 85-year-old Austrian chemist who was one of three whose formulation of synthetic hormones paved the way for the pill, wrote an opinion piece in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard lamenting the way the pill has been used. Austria's population now includes more people over age 65 than under 15, and Djerassi said the country soon will face an "impossible situation" as the working...

Wobbly cantilevers 'feel' pathogens lock onto their targets. The new microcantilevers detect viruses binding to membrane proteins.Martin Hegner Viruses can now be detected directly in fluids, thanks to microscopic diving boards that vibrate when the pathogenic particles stick to cellular proteins. The findings could eventually lead to better blood tests and more sensitive ways of measuring whether new drugs are binding to their targets.Microcantilevers — which look like springboards but are only 0.5 millimetres long and just 1 micrometer thick — wobble and bend in response to different forces. By measuring changes in the frequencies at which these tiny planks...

How Joseph Priestley inspired early America. And why he's needed now more than ever The next time you take a deep breath, think for a moment of Joseph Priestley, the 18th-century British scientist widely credited with discovering oxygen.As Steven Johnson explains in his engaging study of Priestley, The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America,  the circumstances surrounding Priestley's signature achievement are "far more vexed than the standard short-form biographies suggest." That's because "discovering 'oxygen' is not like 'discovering' the Dead Sea Scrolls....It is closer to, say, discovering America: the meaning of the phrase...

A group of researchers led by Peidong Yang, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, have recently created nanoscale particles that can self-assemble into various optical devices. These include photonic crystals, metamaterials, color changing paints, components for optical computers and ultrasensitive chemical sensors, among many other potential applications. The new technology works by controlling how densely the tiny silver particles assemble themselves.   Professor Peidong Yang (Credit: University of California, Berkeley) The nanoparticles have been used to increase the sensitivity of arsenic detection by an order of magnitude. Researchers also made a very robust kind of photonic...

A Canadian college student majoring in chemistry built himself a home lab - and discovered that trying to do science in your own home quickly leads to accusations of drug-making and terrorism. Lewis Casey, an 18-year-old in Saskatchewan, had built a small chemistry lab in his family's garage near the university where he studies. Then two weeks ago, police arrived at his home with a search warrant and based on a quick survey of his lab determined that it was a meth lab. They pulled Casey out of the shower to interrogate him, and then arrested him. A few days...

2 Seeing Exoplanets SeeWeb links on exoplanets Seeing might be believing, but for scientists belief rarely depends on seeing. The right squiggles coming out of an instrument are usually enough to confirm that they have caught their quarry, however infinitesimal, insubstantial, or bizarre. Astronomers searching for planets circling other stars, however, may have been getting just a tad impatient with their progress toward their ultimate goal: recognizing a habitable, even an inhabited, planet beyond our own solar system. For that, they'll need to see their target. But all exoplanet detections had been of the squiggly variety. Now, astronomers have seen...

Enlarge ImageHumble beginnings. An experiment in the 1950s with primordial gases and sparks produced some of life's building blocks.Credit: Ned Shaw/Indiana University/Science A once-discarded idea about how life started on our planet has been given a new life of its own, thanks to a serendipitous find. The story traces back to the early 1950s, when chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey of the University of Chicago in Illinois tried to recreate the building blocks of life under conditions they thought resembled those on the young Earth. The duo filled a closed loop of glass chambers and tubes with water...

Geckos have long inspired scientists and super-hero fans alike with their ability to scamper up vertical walls and cling to ceilings with a single toe. In recent years, people have attempted to create materials that match those spectacular abilities, in the hope of creating new advanced adhesives, or even car braking systems.Now US chemists claim to have made one based on nanotubes that it is 10 times stickier than some gecko feet. Even more impressively, like a real gecko foot, it can also be easily unstuck with a tug in the right direction.Gecko's superhero toes are covered in microscopic hairs,...

Green fluorescent protein bags the biggest gong in science. Aequorea victoria, source of the green fluorescent protein.G. OCHOCKI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY The molecule responsible for a jellyfish's glow has won its discoverer and developers this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The green fluorescent protein (GFP) has revolutionized medical and biological science by providing a way to track the activity of individual proteins within a living cell, and thereby monitor how genes are expressed. The prize is shared equally between three scientists: Osamu Shimomura, now an emeritus professor at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Martin Chalfie of Columbia University...

Stockholm, Sweden (AHN) - Another trio of scientists were recognized by the Nobel Foundation for their discovery of the mystery behind the green glow of jellyfish. The past two days saw trios also being awarded the Nobel laureates for Medicine and Physics. For this finding, Osamu Shimomura of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, Martin Chalfie of Columbia University and Roger Tsien of the University of California at San Diego will be awarded the Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.

Switchgrass could be an excellent source of biofuels - if only it were easier to break down its cellulose.US Govt A genuine revolution in biofuels is currently hindered by the difficulty of converting the most recalcitrant parts of plants, primarily the cellulose of their fibres, into useful fuel. Two chemists in California now claim that it might be remarkably easy to do just that with little more than a strong acid to break down the cellulose. Mark Mascal and Edward Nikitin of the University of California, Davis say their new process is the most efficient way yet described for...

RedXDefense of Rockville, Maryland has recently developed a portable kit that could provide a quick and simple visual diagnostic for detecting plastic explosives favored by terrorists. The device, which was designed to be used by in security checkpoints and under harsh conditions, is currently undergoing field tests in Iraq. While most explosives-detection methods look for vapors coming from the explosive metrical, the plastic explosives often used by terrorists such as like Richard Reid (the notorious “shoe bomber”) are not very volatile, and technologies for their detection usually require dislodging the explosive before running a chemical analysis. Unfortunately, these systems are...

Home Science Under Attack In Massachusetts An anonymous reader tips a guest posting up on the MAKE Magazine blog by the author of the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments. It seems that authorities in Massachusetts have raided a home chemistry lab, apparently without a warrant, and made off with all of its contents. Here's the local article from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. "Victor Deeb, a retired chemist who lives in Marlboro, has finally been allowed to return to his Fremont Street home, after Massachusetts authorities spent three days ransacking his basement lab and making off with its...

No extreme hazards found in basement workshop that alarmed authorities MARLBORO— Victor Deeb, the retired chemist who stored hundreds of chemicals in his house, was allowed to return home yesterday after authorities spent three days dismantling his basement laboratory. None of the materials found at 81 Fremont St. posed a radiological or biological risk, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. No mercury or poison was found. Some of the compounds are potentially explosive, but no more dangerous than typical household cleaning products.

New studies with different fuel cell catalysts show promising results As the automotive industry is betting that hydrogen can become the fuel of the future, technology is taking steps to bring that hope closer to reality. Three papers being published by the journal Science promise to fill some of the most significant gaps in what could someday be an environmentally friendly cycle of hydrogen production and consumption. --snip-- Platinum is also commonly used on the consumption side, in the fuel cells that turn hydrogen back into water and produce electric currents. In Science‘s August 1 issue, researchers at Monash University...

It is well known that panes of stained glass in old European churches are thicker at the bottom because glass is a slow-moving liquid that flows downward over centuries. Well known, but wrong. Medieval stained glass makers were simply unable to make perfectly flat panes, and the windows were just as unevenly thick when new. The tale contains a grain of truth about glass resembling a liquid, however. The arrangement of atoms and molecules in glass is indistinguishable from that of a liquid. But how can a liquid be as strikingly hard as glass? “They’re the thickest and gooiest of...

Electron microscope spots hydrogen atoms resting on invisible carbon sheet. The smallest of atoms can now be seen sitting in splendid isolation with a standard transmission electron microscope, thanks to the most fashionable form of carbon, graphene. The technique, developed by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, could help to produce images of individual molecules in atomic detail using relatively conventional laboratory kit. The research is reported in this week's Nature1. A transmission electron microscope (TEM) works by firing a beam of electrons through a very thin sample supported by a scaffold....