Magnetic Boron Nitride and CrO2 Nanorod Devices

This past week wasn't free enough for me to read around to find out what cool things were out but I realize now that there wasn't much exciting stuff either. Except these:

• Magnetic Boron Nitride! Barone et al. (Peralta group at Central Michigan) did a theoretical study and suggesting that BN must have tunable electronic properties.
• CrO2 nanorod devices: Song et al. (Jin group at U Wisconsin Madison) synthesized this awkward but known metal oxide in single crystal nanorods and then used it in devices. Evidently CrO2 is ferromagnetic, has a (relatively) high curie temperature of 395 K and predicted to be half-metallic. Good data but not so interesting to read if you're not into this stuff.