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David Grier is a physicist at the University of Chicago, Illinois. Peer through Grier's microscope and you would see hundreds of glass beads tumbling in formation, doing an eightsome reel or shimmying through a bath of solution. Grier's precision choreography is on the point of revolutionising how scientists handle objects on the microscale. He has invented computer-generated holograms that can split laser light into any number of different beams and use them to move cells around at will.

BBC teletext announced on 13 February that an amateur astronomer has discovered a young star emerging from a dust cloud. Jay McNeil made the rare discovery from his observatory in Kentucky, next to the well-known gas cloud, Messier 78. An unusual phenomenon of optical transference seems to be at work in Sefton Park Asda store in Liverpool, Great Britain. Reader Lew Hunt was surprised to see a sign in opticians' department that advised "Contact lens patients should remember to bring their lenses with them or we will be unable to see them."