The 2009 chemistry prize goes to Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga, and Victor M. Castaño (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) for creating diamonds from liquid — specifically from tequila.

Reference
"Growth of Diamond Films from Tequila," Javier Morales, Miguel Apatiga and Victor M. Castano, 2008, arXiv:0806.1485.

In honour of scientist and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), the discovering team around Professor Sigurd Hofmann suggested the name copernicium with the element symbol Cp for the new element 112, discovered at the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung (Center for Heavy Ion Research) in Darmstadt. It was Copernicus who discovered that the Earth orbits the Sun, thus paving the way for our modern view of the world. Thirteen years ago, element 112 was discovered by an international team of scientists at the GSI accelerator facility. A few weeks ago, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, IUPAC, officially confirmed their discovery. In around six months, IUPAC will officially endorse the new element's name. This period is set to allow the scientific community to discuss the suggested name copernicium before the IUPAC naming.

Darmstadt, June 10, 2009

The new element 112 discovered by GSI has been officially recognized and will be named by the Darmstadt group in due course. Their suggestion should be made public over this summer.

This picture (click it to enlarge) is a wordle. This shows the chemical elements in proportion to pages viewed for each on the WebElements periodic table web site. Hydrogen is the most viewed element. The question is, I suppose, is whether any useful information is conveyed? Read on....

I have restructured WebElements. The restructuring is all style at the front-end and reorganisation at the back-end, meaning all the errors in data are still there but they are displayed more beautifully and efficiently. Fixing some of those errors is now a priority.

Hard to know what to make of this as it is not my field. But here is a claim for element 122, or maybe 124, detection in thorium by a mass spectrometric method. The authors have claimed previously the observation of very heavy isotopes, for instance Rg isotopes in the mass spectra of natural gold (http://arxiv.org/abs/nucl-ex/0702051).

Full reference

I would like to add that Erbium is used as a dopant in optical fiber amplifier for telecom wavelength (1500-1600 nm).
It is also used with a much more concentration in optical fibers for fibre laser.

I was wondering if any one out there could tell me a efficient way to produce photons. I want to produce lithium from beryllium [photon+Be=Li+H]. I know you can produce neutrons with aluminium or beryllium and a alpha emitter but I can not find a way to excite atoms to produce photons. I know if you run a electric arc across mecury vapor which discharge ultraviolet photons I'm wondering if these will do the same thing as normal photons if not what will.

The table in a bathroom