Synthetic nanoscale motors are much slower than their biological counterparts, but incorporating carbon nanotubes into the platinum component of asymmetric metal nanowire motors speeds them up considerably.

The two-step synthesis of β-aminoarylphosphines—promising bidentate ligands for metal centers—currently requires heating at high temperatures for ~10 days. This microwave-assisted method takes only 3 h.

The first technique for imaging carbohydrates as they are produced on cell surfaces of live animals has been developed by glycobiology specialist Carolyn R. Bertozzi and coworkers at the University of California, Berkeley.

The authors demonstrate a bootstrap-based consensus scoring method that improves the performance of the scoring function in a protein–ligand docking program used for lead compound discovery.

Consumption of fluorescently tagged natural products helps to reveal the sensory mechanisms of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Dauer-state–inducing products appear to accumulate in the organism’s pharynx.

The authors use first-principles calculations to show that four types of single-walled AlGaN₂ nanotubes are semiconductors with band structures that depend on their chirality and size.