World’s smallest container made

The smallest containers in traditional laboratory equipment hold billions of molecules of a given chemical each, far too much for work in nanotechnology. Researchers at the University of Nottingham in Britain have manufactured the world’s smallest containers, each only 20 atoms across. The nanoscale buckets were created by heating melamine and perylene molecules together. These molecules self-assemble into a honeycomb formation. Each cell of the honeycomb can be used to hold molecules for very precise experiments. Being able to isolate and work with molecules at such a scale is crucial to developing nanotech applications like molecular-based computing.
Source: BBC News
-Qing Hua Wang

High school student ruins ten second rule for all

If you drop food on the floor, it’s safe to eat as long as you pick it up within 10 seconds, right?. A high school student from Chicago working at the University of Illinois has shown using environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM) that bacteria can actually transfer from a floor surface to food in less than five seconds. But Jillian Clarke’s work also showed that university floors-at least at U of I-are very clean, microbially speaking. Clarke also found that women are more likely to eat dropped food than men, and that treats like cookies and candies are more likely to be retrieved than cauliflower or broccoli. The 10 second rule, according to Clarke’s investigations, originated with Genghis Khan who estimated that it would take about 12 hours for food to become unsafe.
Source: University of Illinois
-Q. H. W.

Airlines to carry anti-missile systems

The American government is planning on equipping more than 6,800 airliners with anti-missile defence systems, at an estimated cost of $10 billion. British Airlines also announced last week that it is considering outfitting civilian aircrafts with anti-missile systems, and El Al, an Israeli airline, is believed to have already equipped it’s aircraft with anti-missile technology. Surface-to-air missiles were launched at an El Al flight on Nov. 28, 2002, as it was leaving Mombassa, Kenya. The shots missed, but at the same time a car bomb exploded at a hotel in Mombassa, killing three Israelis and 10 Kenyans. There could currently be thousands of Soviet SA-7s available on the worldwide arms market-heat-seeking rockets capable of hitting aircraft within a three mile radius.
Source: Associated Press
Zoe Cormier