As though floppy disks couldn't get any floppier, a "partly accidental discovery" of new nickel-organic (carbon) compounds may one day yield malleable memory storage devices, or in layman's terms, plastic "not-so-hard" hard disk drives. (Hey, we had to layman-call it something.)

Scientific American reports that such compounds are magnetic at room temperature, and because they are carbon-based, they also have the potential to be linked to plastic chains.

The current compound these researchers have created from the University of Victoria in British Columbia currently cannot be used to form plastics because they do not dissolve, but they are magnetic. This means that there might be related compounds which also possess magnetic properties and can be successfully linked to form plastics.

The end result will be memory media that can be folded and bent like plastics.

Now, a bit of computing history - floppy disks were only called floppy disks because they could be flexed, bent, and so forth, but not because they were meant to be flexed. If you bent a floppy disk, you got disastrous results.

And we thought "super hard disks" were something.

Scientific American has come up with a list of the most promising pharmaceuticals this year, most of them targeting the world's biggest health threats such as HIV, malaria, and lung cancer. New treatments pass through a number of trials before they are distributed to the public, namely: phase I safety trials, phase II or III efficacy and toxicity trials, and finally, phase IV clinical trials.

The treatments listed below have all passed phase I. A point of note: any new treatment, drug, or therapy in development has a risk of failing, even after passing the three initials phases.

• Alzhemed - This new drug is designed to target the root Alzheimer's Disease, a degenerative disorder that has become more widespread as life expectancy increases.
• Live attenuated 17D yellow fever and dengue chimera - A vaccine for Dengue, a disease mostly afflicting the tropics generating larger and increasingly frequent epidemics, is also under way.
• Technosphere Insulin System - This one is for Diabetes, inhalable insulin to help regulate blood sugar levels.
• E1E2/MF59 - A preventive vaccine against Hepatitis C is under development, a world first.
• Naproxcinod - A promising replacement for Vioxx, a painkiller for Arthritis, contains nitroglycerin and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.
• Stimuvax - This one for Lung Cancer, a new vaccine that doesn't have the side effects of the traditional therapies.
• RTS,S/AS02A - If it goes the distance, it would be the first commercially available vaccine to combat Malaria.
• NicVAX - A drug that immunizes the body against nicotine, this might be the cure for smoking.
• Bevasiranib - Another world first, an interfering RNA drug which is a viable treatment for vision loss.
• HPTN 046 and Nevirapine - This treatment prevents the transmission of HIV from mother to child, probably helping in minimizing the epidemic in the long run.