HEAVY-ELEMENT CHEMISTRY. Scientists at the GSI lab in Darmstadt, Germany not only have made most of the heavy elements (up to element 112) in recent years, but have also performed some nimble chemical tests on the short-lived atoms. For instance, with only seven atoms of seaborgium (element 106, living for mere seconds) GSI researchers have established that Sg behaves chemically much like the elements lying directly above it in the periodic table, tungsten and molybdenum. This is not the case for the seaborgium's horizontal neighbors, hahnium (element 105) and rutherfordium (104). (Nature, 3 July.)