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March 9th is Stanley Thompson's birthday. Thompson was an American nuclear chemist when nuclear chemistry was a brand new subject. In the early days of the Manhattan Project plutonium was produced in very small quantities, typically on the order of micrograms. Thompson was the chemist who developed the process that allowed the refining of plutonium on an industrial scale to amounts that would enable practical applications.

Did you know bananas are slightly radioactive? Bananas contain high levels of potassium. Radioactive K-40 has an isotopic abundance of 0.01% and a half-life of 1.25 billion years.

ScienceDaily reports that University of Florida engineers have made a flat surface that is so hydrophobic that it basically won't get wet. The water-repellent surface was formed by arranging microscopic plastic fibers such that they mimic the the hairs of spiders. The hairs of water spiders are both long and short, with varying degrees of curvature, and arranged chaotically over the spider's body, enabling the spider to trap air bubbles so that it can breathe underwater.

It's not very often scientists get to say they have found a new way to generate electricity, but that's exactly what researchers at MIT have done. An Inhabit.com article and PhysOrg.com article describe the discovery of thermopower. MIT chemical engineer Michael Strano and mechanical engineering student Wonjoon Choi and their team produced thermopower waves by coating a carbon nanotube with a fuel and igniting the fuel.