´óÏó´«Ã½

Microbiologist Peter Piot is one of the world's foremost campaigners in the fight against HIV infections and now the Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He was in Zaire when the first reported epidemic of the Ebola virus was unfolding there and he explains why some 40 years after the wider world first became aware of the virus there are continuing outbreaks of the disease in humans.

Photo credit: Getty Images

The work of Angela Belcher, Professor of Energy in Materials Science and Engineering and Biological Engineering at MIT takes viruses to another level and into another domain: she alters natural viruses, usually bacteriophages, in a way that allows her to build nanoscale tiny structures that can be used to ‘grow’ novel hybrid organic-inorganic materials on new length scales for the likes of solar cells or batteries. The advantage of these batteries is that they could be manufactured at near room temperature, using no harmful solvents or toxic materials.

Abalone seashells inspired Angela Belcher with her work. She mentions that they consist primarily of calcium carbonate, but because of how abalones synthesize the soft calcium carbonate with proteins, the shells form the resilient and beautiful sheen we see above.

Psychologist Susan Blackmore says that we now talk about ‘viruses’ that ‘infect’ computer programmes, or ‘viral advertising’ on social networks,  or  ‘contagion’  across global financial networks: so we’ve become quite comfortable with the analogy between the spread of microbes and ideas, or memes. But are we now entering a world where techno-memes, or temes, begin to replicate outside of human control?