Data storage system employs a resonance effect to do work.

Ulf Leonhardt is riding high these days, with a new award from the Royal Society of Great Britain to further develop his ideas on how to make things in plain sight disappear. Born in East Germany and now occupying the theoretical physics chair at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews, Leonhardt is among the leaders of the worldwide race to realize an old dream of science fiction: cloaking devices. They would steer light or other electromagnetic waves around them like water around a stone in a smooth stream, leaving nary a ripple of difference in the flow. Such things, letting light swish ... (p. 18)

Tiny metal nanoparticles can damage DNA, essentially by triggering toxic gossip.

A NASA model incorporates how atmospheric aerosols and greenhouse gases interact, yielding better estimates of the gases' warming and cooling effects. (p. 5)

Trees near high-traffic areas accumulate tiny particles.

Quantum effect allows light to carry information farther for computing and encryption (p. 11)

Some cash register receipts offer the potential for relatively large exposures to an estrogen mimic.

Ada Yonath, Thomas Steitz and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan will share the prize for unmasking the structure of the ribosome. (p. 14)

Charles K. Kao wins for discoveries enabling fiber-optic communication, and Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith win for inventing the charge-coupled device (p. 14)