Water droplets direct self-assembly process in thin-film materials

(University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a technique for fabricating 3-D, single-crystalline silicon structures from thin films by coupling photolithography and a self-folding process driven by capillary interactions.

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You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have really lived, are the moments when you have done things in a spirit of love.
 - Henry Drummond

Just like old times: Generating RNA molecules in water

(American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) A key question in the origin of biological molecules like RNA and DNA is how they first came together billions of years ago from simple precursors. Now, in a study appearing in this week’s JBC, researchers in Italy have reconstructed one of the earliest evolutionary steps yet: generating long chains of RNA from individual subunits using nothing but warm water.

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EurekAlert offers several feeds for breaking science news headlines. As part of the Reactive Reports chemistry news aggregation service, otherwise known as Reactor, we offer the chemistry, materials, nano and related feed here for RR readers. You can find out more about Eurekalert here.

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All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious institution.
 - Thomas Jefferson

Hydrophobic Water

That old truism about mixing oil and water can apply to water and water, according to researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington State.
Greg Kimmel and colleagues have thrown out the textbook description of how water molecules readily come together with open hydrogen bonding arms to show that “wetness” is not a universal property [...]

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Post by David Bradley Science Writer. You can get in touch with David via email or check out his CV on the Sciencebase.com site.

If you're lucky, the following quote may be relevant in some way to the post above, but then again...

Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here.
 - Paul Davies