Volume 5 Issue 11, November 2010

It is essential to recognize the heterogeneous nature of 'the public' in engagement activities and to treat people as citizens rather than as mere laypersons, consumers or stakeholders.

A DNA walker moving along a DNA track can perform a series of organic reactions in a single solution without external intervention.

A phase transition at the surface of a thin film of iron can be exploited to create a metallic non-volatile memory.

Arrays of metallic nanostructures allow chiral biomolecules to be detected and characterized with increased sensitivity.

Ideas about angular momentum that have been borrowed from optics could allow the magnetic and spin structures of materials to be studied on atomic scales with electron vortex beams.

An atomic force microscope with antibodies attached to its tip can be used to determine methylation patterns in individual DNA strands by making hundreds of force spectroscopy measurements.

Solutions of DNA-based molecules can be taught to play a simple game in a process that does not require the operator to be familiar with the underlying molecular programming.

The unexpectedly low electron mobility in titania nanotubes is due to exciton-like trap states, rather than to grain boundaries or disorder as in other nanomaterials.

Nucleic acid catalysts can be used to build a multipurpose molecular automaton that can be programmed by example.

A DNA walker moving along a DNA track can perform the multistep synthesis of an oligoamide in a single solution without any external intervention.

Superchiral electromagnetic fields can be used to detect adsorbed biomolecules at the picogram level and to probe their chiral supramolecular structure.

An atomic force microscope can measure the distances between 5-methylcytidine bases in individual DNA strands with a resolution of 4 Å, which should prove useful in studies of gene expression.

The magnetic state of a thin film of iron can be controlled by an electric field, demonstrating that high-density non-volatile information storage in metals is possible.

The replication of individual DNA templates catalysed by DNA polymerases at the orifice of an α-haemolysin nanopore allows the synthesis of DNA to be monitored in real time.

Synthetic nanopores can count individual microRNA molecules that have been isolated from cellular RNA with a protein-based enrichment method.

Confining gadolinium-based contrast agents inside the porous structure of silicon microparticles can improve their T₁ contrast, offering a general approach for developing highly efficient MRI contrast agents.