For years scientists have been touting a disease-fighting technique called RNA interference. The idea behind it is pretty simple: By piggybacking on the body's own system for silencing genes, researchers think they could stop troublesome proteins from being produced, and, as a result, halt the damage those proteins cause. The trick, though, is that scientists have had a hard time figuring out how to make RNAi, as it's known, work on specific tissues.

Steve Boggan has written an excellent article today in the Guardian on nanotechnology and its implications in the industrial food market. The first five paragraphs are as good a primer on nanotech as you’re likely to find—send this one to your mom if she has any questions. The rest of the article is a closer look at its future in our food supply, particularly in light of consumers’ recent widespread distaste for genetically modified goods. The bottom line: the industry is outwardly hopeful about the technology’s promise, but inwardly cautious about the public response. Oh, and we have no idea what it’ll do to us when we eat it.

Granted, it will be far too small for her to show off to her friends, but if your potential fiancée has a love of science, she just might accept this bauble over something flashier. It’s the world’s smallest diamond ring, created by a group of Australian physicists. The ring measures just 5 microns wide and 300 nanometers thick. And no, it’s not really for advertising your engagement. The ring is actually part of a device used to produce and detect single photons.

Launch the slideshow to see how titanium oxide reacts with light to zap dirt at the molecular level

Not so long ago, chemical engineers discovered how to use titanium dioxide to keep buildings free of discoloring pollution.

The most prolific car manufacturer on the planet resides in a Rice University laboratory in Houston, where chemist James Tour and his colleagues have built one trillion trillion nanoscopic cars. The tiny four-wheeled vehicles are only four billionths of a meter wide-25,000 of them parked side by side would be about as thick as a piece of paper. Not just another nano-gimmick, Tour´s cars could one day carve tiny channels in silicon, creating more-powerful computer chips.