WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 -- The U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology issued the following news: JILA researchers have made a long-lived, record-cold gas of molecules that follow the wave patterns of quantum mechanics instead of the strictly particle nature of ordinary classical physics. The creation of this gas boosts the odds for advances in fields such as designer chemistry and quantum computing. As featured on the cover of the Feb. 22 issue of Science, (ht  more