ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA-Nearly 10,000 scientists gathered for the 209th national meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), held from 2 to 6 April. One piece of unwelcome news was that the ACS governance boards approved hikes in journal subscription prices for 1996. But researchers considered matters more physical than fiscal, listening to presentations on substances that self-construct, molecules that clean up after themselves, and DNA recovered from a stone, among other topics.