The field of solid lubricant research has received a boost with the development of elastic, hollow nanoparticles of tungsten disulfide that are structurally related to nested fullerenes (June 19 issue of Vol. 387, pp 791-793; see also the "News and Views" article on pp 761-763). Rapoport et al. believe that the superior properties of the new material can be attributed to the chemical inertness of the round particles, which prevents their interaction with the lubricated surface, and to their rolling motionsimilar to tiny ball bearings, as opposed to the sliding motion of their layered conventional counterparts. Projected applications of the new solid lubricants lie in areas where liquid lubricants cannot be used, such as in the temperature extremes and vacuum found in space, and in automobile technology.

Since the publication in Nature of the successful cloning of the sheep Dolly (as reported in our previous column, J. Chem. Educ. 1997, 74, 490), almost every issue of the journal has featured reports of political action under consideration in the U.S. to ban cloning of humans, and discussions about the ethics and implications of the process for humans.

An interesting commentary by Axel Kahn on these issues appeared in Nature 1997, 386 (March 13), 119). No end seems to be in sight for debates about the ethical, legal, and moral aspects of generating human clones in the future!

Among the books recently reviewed in Nature, the following caught our attention as being particularly interesting to the chemistry educator. In A History of Chemistry, historians Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Isabelle Stengers trace the changes of the discipline from the days of alchemy to the present (March 6 issue of Vol. 386, p 34). The Neutron and the Bomb: A Biography of Sir James Chadwick, by Andrew Brown, details Chadwick's scientific life from the discovery of the neutron (which earned him a Nobel prize) to his involvement in the Manhattan Project (Vol. 387, May 29 issue, p 467). The March 27 issue (Vol. 386) contains the annual Spring Books supplement with reviews of many interesting books from all areas of scienceamong them two highly entertaining accounts of the dawn of molecular biology: The Double Helix, by James Watson, and The Eighth Day of Creation, by Horace Freeland Judson, which are now available in new editions. Finally, in the April 10 issue (Vol. 386, pp 566-567), Talking about Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences, by Elaine Seymour and Nancy M Hewitt, was reviewed. The book seeks to determine the factors that contribute to the frequently observed change in career goals of many U.S. students, especially women and ethnic minorities, who had begun their college careers majoring in the sciences.

Finally, we would like to direct readers' attention to a commentary by physicist Paul M. Grant (March 13 issue of Vol. 386, pp 115-118). The article recounts the history of superconductivity since its discovery a little more than a decade ago, summarizes recent advances towards developing high-temperature, processible (i.e., less brittle) second-generation superconducting materials, and outlines future practical applications of this technology.