Dr. Jeffrey Moore and coworkers have developed a fundamentally different way of initiating or accelerating a reaction. In the March 22 issue of Nature (Volume 446 Number 7134 page 423) they report the use of force to deform reacting molecules along a specific direction of the reaction coordinate. You may watch on-line videos of the investigators describing their ground breaking work, download a podcast, see the cover art, or read the actual article here