A few weeks back we noted a trend that had textbook publishers concerned. It seems that many college students, faced with exorbitant textbook prices, had begun the process of sharing materials on line.

As teachers prepare for the new school year -- buying school supplies, picking out wall posters and combing through textbooks to create lesson plans -- there is one more item they can add to their back-to-school list: Thinkfinity.org.

Like the surface motif of a bubble bath, the spatial distribution of a magnetic field penetrating a superconductor can exhibit an intricate, foam-like structure. Ruslan Prozorov at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory has observed these mystifying, two-dimensional equilibrium patterns in lead samples when the material is in its superconducting state, below 7.2 Kelvin, or minus 446.71 degrees Fahrenheit.