Plastics are everywhere in our modern world, largely due to properties that render the materials tough and durable, but lightweight and easily workable. One of their most useful qualities, however - the ability to bend rather than break when put under stress - is also one of the most puzzling.

Scientists have detected an organic sugar molecule that is directly linked to the origin of life, in a region of our galaxy where habitable planets could exist. The discovery, part funded by the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), is published today (25th November) on the Astro-ph website.

A Purdue University researcher has created a compound that prevents replication of the virus that causes SARS and could lead to a treatment for the disease.

Materials science and the pharmaceutical industry could soon be revolutionized by emerging nanotechnologies based on designer molecules with long complex tree-and branch structures.

Johns Hopkins scientists were dubious in the early 1980s when they stumbled on small sugar molecules lurking in the centers of cells; not only were they not supposed to be there, but they certainly weren't supposed to be repeatedly attaching to and detaching from proteins, effectively switching them on and off.

Dutch researcher Jeroen Bominaar has developed a new measurement technique based on following molecules in a (turbulent) airflow. Its main advantage is that no measuring instruments or small particles, such as glass beads, need to be inserted into the flow. These techniques fail if, for example, the particle density is too low or the measurement techniques influence the flow. Bominaar's research was part of a project funded by Technology Foundation STW.

It's not easy to see a single molecule inside a living cell.

As the summer approaches most of us rejoice, reach for the sunscreen and head outdoors. But an ever-growing number of people reach for tissue instead as pollen leaves eyes watering, noses running and spirits dwindling.

View a video representing a collision between a molecule of deuterium and a radical hydrogen atom.

When chemists want to produce a lot of a substance -- such as a newly designed drug -- they often turn to catalysts, molecules that speed chemical reactions.

The ability to see is based on molecules in the eye that flip from one conformation to another when exposed to visible light. Now, a new technique for attaching light-sensitive organic molecules to metal surfaces allows the molecules to be switched between two different configurations in response to exposure to different wavelengths of light.

Chemists in Ohio have discovered that half of all of the known chemical compounds in the world have an amazing similarity in sharing only 143 basic molecular shapes.