  We review the recently discovered ansatz that describes non-extremal charged
dilatonic branes of string/M-theory with a transverse circle. The ansatz
involves a new coordinate system that interpolates between the spherical and
cylindrical case, and reduces the equations of motion to a set of equations on
one unknown function of two variables. The function is independent of the
charge, so that the ansatz can also be used to construct neutral black holes on
cylinders and near-extremal charged dilatonic branes with a transverse circle.
The construction enables us to argue that, for sufficiently large mass, there
exists a neutral solution that breaks translational invariance in the circle
direction, and has larger entropy than that of the neutral black string of the
same mass.
