in a range of devices, including: optical systems; semiconductor nanolithography; and even vehicles for drug delivery. With an appropriate artificial selection procedure, diatoms that produce valves of particular shapes and sizes might be evolved for cultivation in chemostat cultures to mass-produce nanoscale components. It has also been proposed that diatoms could be used as a component of solar cells by substituting photosensitive titanium dioxide for the silicon dioxide that diatoms normally use to create their cell walls. Diatom biofuel producing solar panels have also been proposed. Forensic The main goal of diatom analysis in forensics is to differentiate a death by submersion from a post-mortem immersion of a body in water. Laboratory tests may reveal the presence of diatoms in the body. Since the silica-based skeletons of diatoms do not readily decay, they can sometimes be detected even in heavily decomposed bodies. As they do not occur naturally in the body, if laboratory tests show diatoms in the corpse that are of the same species found in the water where the body was recovered, then it may be good evidence of drowning as the cause of death. The blend of diatom species found in a corpse may be the same or different from the surrounding water, indicating whether the victim drowned in the same site in which the body was found. History of discovery The first illustrations of diatoms are found in an article from 1703 in Transactions of the Royal Society showing unmistakable drawings of Tabellaria. Although the publication was authored by an unnamed English gentleman, there is recent evidence that he was Charles King of Staffordshire. It is only 80 years later that we find the first formally identified diatom, the colonial Bacillaria paxillifera, discovered and described in 1783 by Danish naturalist Otto Friedrich Müller. Like many others after him, he wrongly thought that it was an animal due to its ability to move. Even Charles Darwin saw diatom remains in dust whilst in the Cape Verde Islands, although he was not sure what they were. It was only later that they were identified for him as siliceous polygastrics. The infusoria that Darwin later noted in the face paint of Fueguinos, native inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego in the southern end of South America, were later identified in the same way. During his lifetime, the siliceous polygastrics were clarified as belonging to the Diatomaceae, and Darwin struggled to