Playing ball A MOLECULAR "softball" with room for two smaller molecules inside has been developed to speed up reactions. Julius Rebek and his colleagues at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, made the complex from two curved molecules stitched together with hydrogen bonds, like two halves of a softball. The softball opens and closes once … News
Miracles on demand AS ALTERNATIVE therapies for illnesses both serious and slight boom in the West, there is growing pressure for governments to pay up for treatments of unknown efficacy and for testing the latest "miracle"—just in case there is something to it. It would be nice to think that these changes signal the emergence of a more … Opinion
Chocket man ONE warm day in July last year, Derek Willis was in his garage in Newcastle upon Tyne pondering a nasty problem. As a passionate rocket enthusiast, he had designed and built dozens of small rockets. But he was fed up with handling the dangerous propellants that blasted them into the sky. If he spilt a … Features
AT THE end of June, in the Danish city of Aarhus, members of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) signed a protocol banning certain chemical pollutants. The protocol obliges members to eliminate or control 16 organic chemicals, or groups of chemicals, that can travel through the atmosphere and cause pollution far away from where … Forum
Feedback TWO WEEKS ago we listed some of the abstruse error messages that long-suffering readers have been receiving from their computers. Now we find that these have been elevated into an art form. A compilation of error-message haiku poems is circulating on the Internet. Here are three of our favourites: A file that big? It might … Regulars