Thanks to the proliferation of semiconductor chips and cell phones—the number of U.S. cell phones grew from essentially zero in 1983 to nearly two hundred million by the end of 2004, and as of 2003 over one billion cell phones were in use worldwide, so by the time the high-tech bubble approached its bursting point in 2000 and 2001, coltan had become an extremely hot commodity.

No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than—as if a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of silver—I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic and clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation.

I stole quietly to the combings of the hatchway, which was open, and we looked down into the 'tween decks.

They also illustrate the advantage of biological synthesis to achieve bifunctionalization, as exemplified by several of our bi-halogenated compounds.