3 new stories have been added to the Intute hot topics service; these articles are written exclusively for Intute by David Bradley Science Writer.

This month’s features include:

Golden Cat
http://www.intute.ac.uk/hottopics/2010/02/golden-cat/
This feature looks at the use of a gold complex in the synthesis of ethylene; this confers significant environmental benefits over the current method of cracking crude oil.

Black Hole
http://www.intute.ac.uk/hottopics/2010/02/black-hole/
The furthest-known black hole was recently observed by astronomers using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the European Southern Observatory. The black hole resides in Sculptor, over 6 million light years from Earth.

Black Gold
http://www.intute.ac.uk/hottopics/2010/02/black-gold/
A study of the heavy oil reserves residing in the Orinoco Oil Belt in Eastern Venezuela.

An archive of over 400 hot topics is available on Intute.