
The honeycomb lattice is one of nature’s favorite patterns. In the two-dimensional crystal of carbon atoms known as graph­ene, for instance, the honeycomb structure arises from bonds among the atoms. Kenjiro K. Gomes of Stanford University and his colleagues have learned to make a honeycomb material in a striking new way. They place carbon monoxide molecules at regular intervals on the surface of a copper crystal, creating an imitation graphene layer. (The added molecules appear as black dots.)

Band's Saturday-night set was lively and loose, capping a day that also saw spirited sets from Mac Miller and Skrillex.By James Montgomery Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers performs at the 2012 Hangout Music Festival Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/ Getty Images GULF SHORES, Alabama — Having been at this for more than two decades now, the Red Hot Chili Peppers clearly know how to headline a fest: play the hits, thank the crowd, occasionally swat at a beach ball, exit stage right. Maybe work a few well-placed curse words in there too. These things tend to be the same. So it's a testament to both their versatility and their dedication that the Chili Peppers' Saturday-night set at the Hangout Festival was anything but by the numbers, as the band jammed long and hard, stretching songs to the breaking point (and beyond), much to the delight of the raucous, sun-baked crowd. Perhaps it was because their headlining slot kicked off just minutes after seasoned jam-meisters the String Cheese Incident finished their two-and-a-half hour set (which, for them, was basically just a warm-up), or maybe they were taking their cues from Friday night's headliner, Jack White, but from the minute the Peps strode on stage, they were playing fast and loose. Drummer Chad Smith, bassist Flea and guitarist Josh Klinghoffer started things off with a reverb-heavy psych jam that only morphed into "The Monarchy of Roses" when frontman Anthony Kiedis bounded on stage, then kept that momentum rolling into "Can't Stop," with the trio trading solos while Kiedis nodded in time to the beat. There were, of course, more straightforward moments too: the Peppers tore through a string of hits, including "Dani California," "Under The Bridge" and "The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie," and attacked songs like "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" and their version of "Higher Ground" with impassioned pounding. Flea was his usual non-sequitur self, spouting stuff like "Sweet Home Alabama, motherf---er!" and "Forgive your parents!" into the mic, and Kiedis was, as always, the warrior-shaman showman, posing and preening, always in motion (he and Flea also made the rather interesting decision to wear pants with one leg cut off above the knee). But there was a general, genial looseness throughout their two-hour set, showcasing Smith's lock-step drumming, Flea's precision playing and Klinghoffer's wild, winding fretwork. At several points, they seemed to be making it up as they went along, gleefully turning a few stray notes into lengthy, twisting jams: Klinghoffer would summon a solo from his guitar, while Flea would flail and pound along, Smith and touring percussionist Mauro Refosco kicked off the band's encore with a twisting back-and-forth exchange, and after blasting through "Give It Away," the band closed their set with a lengthy, voluminous instrumental. The Peppers have always drawn from funk, and Flea's dabblings in Jazz have paced them for nearly twenty years now, but on Saturday night, the improvisational nature of both were readily apparent. Rather than do the usual headlining set, the band wanted to just play. It seems to be a recurring theme of the Hangout fest ... and it served as a perfect capper on a day that also saw lively and loose sets from the likes of Gogol Bordello, Mac Miller and Skrillex (who, in a bit of inspired scheduling, kicked off opposite Randy Newman). The Red Hot Chili Peppers breathed new life into time-tested favorites — "Suck My Kiss" was pounding and primal, "Californication" soared to new heights, "Soul to Squeeze" was sanguine and sweet — and appeared to have a blast whilst doing so. You can't teach old dogs new tricks, but, if you bring them to the beach (and scheduled them after a jam band), well, you can certainly make them push things to the limit ... with fantastic results. If this whole "world-famous rock band" thing doesn't work out for RHCP, their Hangout set was proof that they'd make a killing on the jam circuit. Your move, String Cheese. Related Photos Rockin' Out At The 2012 Hangout Music Festival Related Artists Red Hot Chili Peppers

'Love To Love You Baby' singer dies on Thursday (May 17) after long battle with cancer.By Gil Kaufman Donna Summer Photo: Fotos International/Getty Images Donna Summer, the powerhouse singer known as the "Queen of Disco," died on Thursday (May 17) in Florida after a battle with cancer, according to TMZ. The five-time Grammy winner who set dance floors ablaze in the 1970s with such anthems as "Last Dance," Hot Stuff" and her most iconic hit, "I Feel Love," was 63-years-old. In a genre that was filled with many one-hit wonders and fly-by-night studio acts that were unable to keep the disco inferno stoked after scoring hits, Summer was a lifer, consistently charting even after the dance craze faded in the late 1970's. For photos of Donna Summer through the years, click here. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Summer set herself apart with strong vocals backed by her songwriting skills, as well as some creative luck in hooking up with producers/songwriters Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. The pair helped her pumped out hit-after-hit and provided her with a sensual, almost ethereal sound on tracks such as "I Feel Love," which seduced both on and off the dance floor. Born LaDonna Adrian Gaines on December 31, 1948 in Boston, Massachusetts to a butcher father and schoolteacher mother, Summer showed promise as a singer from an early age. She made her public debut at age 10 at her church when the scheduled singer didn't show up and she filled in. After appearing in a number of musicals and plays in high school and singing with the psychedelic rock band The Crow, she joined the cast of German production of the musical "Hair" in 1967 at age 18. She stayed in Munich after the show's run ended and recorded her debut solo album there in 1974, Lady of the Night. Though it spawned a hit overseas with "The Hostage," she didn't crack the U.S. market until a year later with the song that would make her an international superstar, the seductive disco anthem, "Love to Love You Baby." The tune she created with Moroder and Bellotte was a #2 hit in the U.S. and landed her an American record deal with the it label of the era, Casablanca Records. The 17-minute club remix of the single, which featured such real-sounding ecstatic moans that some radio stations refused to play it, became a huge hit and set a new standard for sophisticated arrangements in a genre often marked by cheesy sounding instrumentation and lazy songwriting. She released two albums in 1976, A Love Trilogy, which featured the nearly 18-minute epic "Try Me (I Know We Can Make It Work)," and the winter/spring/summer/autumn-themed Four Seasons of Love. In a singles genre where the song as the thing, Summer continued to put out consistently artistic albums, including 1977's I Remember Yesterday, which featured the song that would secure Summer's place at the top of the disco diva pecking order, "I Feel Love." That hypnotizing song was also the first one recorded with a backing track made up entirely of synthesized sounds. This being the era of excess, her second 1977 album, Once Upon A Time, was another concept disc, this one retelling the Cinderella story in the disco era on tracks like "Once Upon a Time," "Fairy Tale High," "Working the Midnight Shift" and "Queen for a Day." She transitioned into acting in 1978 in the disco comedy "Thank God It's Friday," which earned her a Grammy for Best Female R&B Vocal for the hit "Last Dance." By 1979's two-album Bad Girls she was indisputably a star, logging six weeks at #1 and scoring hits with the sexy "Bad Girls" and more rock-oriented "Hot Stuff." When Summer released a double-album greatest hits disc later that year she became the first artists to ever score three #1 albums in a row with double-disc releases. She went on to score hits with a Barbra Streisand duet and moved over to the then-new Geffen Records, where her success began to wane a bit. By 1983, she'd moved past the disco sound and into a synth-heavy R&B/new wave sound with the female empowerment anthem "She Works Hard For the Money." That song, though, would effectively mark the end of her hit-making days. Summer continued to release albums through the late 1980's, but was never again able to capture her disco peak. In fact, by the end of the decade she spoke out against the "sinful" nature of her disco hits and turned her back on her earlier material and focused on painting. After a 17-year break, she released her first studio album of original material, Crayons, in 2008. Related Photos Donna Summer: The Queen Of Disco Related Artists Donna Summer

Guinness spokesperson explains why they refused to recognize a White Stripes show as 'the shortest concert of all time.'By James Montgomery Jack White Photo: WireImage Over the years, Jack White has taken umbrage with overzealous radio programmers, the Internet and, uh, Jason Stollsteimer (to name just a few) but in the new issue of Interview magazine, he lashes out at a new foe: The folks at Guinness World Records. Yes, in what could only be described as the latest step in his ongoing transformation into the music world's foremost eccentric — sorry, Kanye — White has lashed out at the venerable record-keeping institution, calling them "a very elitist organization" after they refused to acknowledge the White Stripes' one-note performance in Newfoundland (seen in their 2010 doc "Under Great White Northern Lights") as "the shortest music concert ever." "I was thinking that afterwards we could contact the Guinness World Records people and see if we could get the record for the shortest concert of all time. So we did it, but ultimately, they turned us down," White tells astronaut Buzz Aldrin (for real) in the Interview piece. "[They're] a very elitist organization. There's nothing scientific about what they do. They just have an office full of people who decide what is a record and what isn't ... so something like the shortest concert of all time, they didn't think [it] was interesting enough to make it a record. I don't know why they get to decide that, but, you know, they own the book." Well, yes, they do own the book ... and, as it turns out, the Stripes' Newfoundland concert was featured in the 2009 edition of it, as a spokesperson for Guinness World Records pointed out to MTV News on Thursday (May 17). Of course, they'd subsequently remove the notation in later editions, though it had little to do with elitism and more to do with the simple fact that Guinness had no way of qualifying what actually counted as a performance. "We received a large volume of applications from bands and performers seeking to beat this record. We got an influx of individuals claiming that simply appearing on stage was enough to qualify them for this record," the spokesperson wrote in an email to MTV News. "It became increasingly difficult for us to measure this objectively (for example, how many members of the crowd need to be able to see the performer before they disappear off stage?) "The nature of competing to make something the 'shortest' by its very nature trivializes the activity being carried out, and Guinness World Records has been forced to reject many claims of this kind," the spokesperson continued. "As such, we have closed record categories for similar designations such as the shortest song, shortest poem, and also the record of shortest concert currently in question." Of course, the spokesperson was quick to add that Guinness World Records "admires the band and we encourage them to attempt any of the 40,000 active records currently housed in our database." And knowing White, we're pretty sure he'll take them up on that offer. Soon. Related Artists White Stripes Jack White

By Maggie McKee of Nature magazineSome middle-aged stars burn and rave like newborns, producing flares thousands of times as energetic as those we see on the Sun, according to the first large survey of these events.Solar flares occur when magnetic-field loops threading through sunspots get twisted and break, releasing massive amounts of radiation and accelerating charged particles into space.

Spears says she wants to 'inspire' contestants on the Fox show. By Jocelyn Vena "X Factor" judges L.A. Reid, Demi Lovato, Simon Cowell and Britney Spears at the FOX Upfront Photo: Desiree Navarro/ Getty Images Britney Spears seems poised and ready to sit beside her fellow "X Factor" judges on the revamped second season of the show. At the Fox upfront this week, the singer appeared alongside fellow newbie Demi Lovato, as well as returning judges Simon Cowell and L.A. Reid, and gushed about the Fox reality show. "Just really being able to be there and inspire the other contestants ... they're so young and they're trying to fulfill their dreams," she said at the event. "It's just a whole beautiful concept. It's just really cool." While her negotiations with the show had been making headlines in the weeks leading up to the official announcement, Cowell brushed off all the hoopla, which includes a rumored $15 million payday for joining the show. "A force of nature, I was somewhere in the middle, but I'm thrilled. I love these guys," he said of getting everyone, including Spears, on board. "I charmed her." Spears seemed equally taken with the prickly Brit. "He's adorable. He's completely adorable. He didn't have to try hard," she admitted. Spears' addition to the show is hardly the only casting making news: Lovato also opened up about having the "X Factor." While little is known about the final hours going into locking Lovato in for the show, she's rumored to be taking in $1 million, according to Gossip Cop. Lovato was on a short list of possible contenders to appear on the show that also reportedly included Miley Cyrus and Avril Lavigne. "I'm so excited to be here," she said. "I guess you called," she added with Simon by her side. "And that's how it got set up, just a phone call." In addition to getting warm and fuzzy about each other in the interview, Cowell shared that the judges will be filming in the next couple weeks when they hit up Austin, Texas, to begin scoping out talent. And if you think the claws might come out then, Reid assured viewers that that won't be the case. "Oh no, we're gonna be really sweet to each other," he said. "Nothing controversial. It'll be perfect." Related Artists Britney Spears

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