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Back to Basics In AIDS A New Twist Energetic Activity That's Edutainment Fullerene Bonanza On The Fly Chilling Results Although last month's 10th International Conference on AIDS in Yokohama, Japan, yielded little in the way of good news concerning progress to date in efforts to combat the pandemic, some researchers were able to leave the meeting with the hope that future gatherings will be less gloomy. William E. Paul, head of t

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Using a powerful supercomputer, two scientists are working on cracking the code of one of nature's most basic processes--photosynthesis. Chi Ho Mak, a chemist at the University of Southern California, and physicist Reinhold Egger of the University of Freiburg, Germany, used the computer to model the energy-conversion process--molecule by molecule--of bacterial chlorophyll. Their model relies on quantum mechanics to explain the flow of electrons that is responsible for converting solar energy to biochemical energy in plants and other photosynthetic organisms. Because the molecular structure of chlorophyll is so complex, applying quantum theory to explain the mechanism of photosynthesis is difficult, with calculations taking up to one month to run, say the researchers. Mak and Egger say that their work will provide insights into making solar cells with conversion efficiencies approaching that found in bacteria--almost 95 percent.

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