CLAY OSCILLONS. Nature often sorts energy into certain preferred forms such as the unique spectrum of colors emitted by heated atoms or the characteristic note sounded by an organ pipe. This energy sorting can even turn up in a granular material. For example, a few years ago (Update 286) scientists discovered that collections of tiny metal balls, when shaken slightly up and down, vested some of their energy in the form of tiny waterspout heaps called "oscillons" Now physicists at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (Jay Fineberg, jay@vms.huji.ac.il) have observed a similar effect in a colloid, a fluid material (e.g., milk) in which tiny particles (in this case small bits of clay) are suspended in a solvent (see figure at Physics News Graphics). Granular media and suspensions are very different in nature---grains are discrete objects that collide directly with each other whereas the particles in colloids interact via the medium of the solvent fluid---so the appearance of oscillons in both materials might represent some universal manifestation of driven nonlinear systems. The researchers are not yet sure where localized oscillon states would turn up in the natural world. One possibility is earthquakes. Oscillon-like states may explain the localized and highly variable damage (or intense ground acceleration) which, in many cases, occurs in poorly consolidated sediments (in analogy to the clay sediments used in the experiments) at relatively large distances from an earthquake's epicenter. (Lioubashevski et al., Physical Review Letters, 18 Oct.)