Each week SPL produces news and feature stories covering the latest developments in science, medicine and technology. The stories comprise an easy-to-read article written by a professional science writer together with a selection of relevant pictures. To receive news and updates on the most recent feature stories, please email us features@sciencephoto.com Modelling Nature's Deadly Machines These exquisite images are 3-D models of viruses at near-atomic resolution. They are constructed from real data captured by high- powered microscopes and processed by computers running specialised software. Because these 'virtual viruses' can be manipulated in ways that real viruses cannot – they can be rotated, sliced, even peeled apart - scientists are hoping to gain new insights into viruses' structure and behaviour Batteries From Bugs In 1987, biologist Derek Lovley discovered a new species of bacteria, later named Geobacter metallireducens, in the muddy shallows of the Potomac River, Washington DC. Now, 21 years and 230 research papers later, Lovley is still fascinated by his discovery. In fact, he's built a career around it, because the Geobacter species have an intriguing and potentially useful characteristic: they can generate electricity. Lovley and his team have already built microbial fuel cells powered by Geobacter. They don't produce much electricity enough to power children's toys - but they run continuously on a simple solution of organic material. Lovely, who is Professor of Microbiology at the University of Massachusetts, believes microbial fuel cells could have applications ranging from implanted medical devices to powering sewage treatment plants. Superfuel From Superbugs There is a race to develop renewable, clean and carbon-friendly alternatives to fossil fuels. With a few exceptions, the initiative is with small start-up companies rather than the petrochemical giants. But these new companies have some of the world's leading researchers on their boards. And they are ambitious: quite simply, they want to replace today's 'big oil' by biofuels made by microbes like algae and bacteria. Whalesong Art The haunting beauty of the songs of whales have been captured in visual form by sound engineer Mark Fischer. Using a clever field of mathemtatics known as wavelets, he has transformed simple sound frequency graphs into images that reveal a deep level of structure hidden in the songs.