By simulating extraterrestrial impacts on Earth, researchers are firing away at the question of how life started. (p. 317)

In a new twist to the puzzle of how life developed from only left-handed amino acids, researchers have found that the common mineral calcite can segregate the molecules into their left-handed and right-handed varieties. (p. 276)

Researchers have used wheat to make a biodegradable hamburger carton. (p. 237)

Researchers have coaxed finicky liver cells to grow on porous silicon chips, a feat that could lead to new medical treatments. (p. 230)

Researchers have stumbled upon the first all-metal, aromatic molecules. (p. 111)

Cooking will kill almost any microbe. But when it comes to serving raw foods, such as the vegetables in a garden salad, neutralizing germs with heat is not an option and washing the greens doesn't reliably disinfect. Although raw produce can be sanitized in a bath of dilute bleach, a team of Georgia scientists is developing an alternative--acidic electrolyzed water--that appears to kill microbes even more effectively and could be just as cheap and easy."The technology is not new," explains Yen-Con Hung of the University of Georgia in Griffin. It relies on an electric current between two electr...

Some chemists are sharing their research results more quickly and broadly as they begin to venture into electronic archives, where they can immediately post new, unreviewed papers, as physicists have done for a decade; others think such archives could mean the end of reliable chemistry research. (p. 76)

A newly developed process encourages water droplets at the hydrophobic center of a wafer to speed outward to a water-friendly edge. (p. 55)