David Bradley

Synthetic poison comes in with the tide

Crystals bid for diamond's crown

Ants get their marching orders

Quick-fix catalysts pull themselves together

Altered enzyme heralds greener chemistry

Technology

The cowbone's connected to the jawbone

Life is just a buckybowl of cherries

Christmas trees provide pollution solution

Molecular sex and free radicals: Designing the Molecular World: Chemistry at the Frontier by Philip Ball, Princeton University Press, pp 376, £19.95

Science: How ripening fruit invite fungal attack

Solvents get the big squeeze: Compress carbon dioxide enough and it will decaffeinate your coffee, improve the flavour of your beer and help chemists find safer ways to make new molecules. David Bradley reports on the strange world of supercritical fluid

Science: What gives a cornflower its blue hue?