     <2Computerised flights of fancy>2

AFTER the razzmatazz of Information
      Technology year comes the sober
   assessment of how Britain can
remain a force in this discipline. Over the
coming weeks the government will make
up its mind on a programme of computing
research that could cost #350 million. This
R&D effort was proposed by a group of
electronics experts, headed by John Alvey,
technology director at British Telecom.
   More important than the cash itself,
which would be spent over five years, with
the taxpayer providing two thirds, is the
suggestion that within the Department of
Industry (DoI) there should be a small
commercially-minded unit to run the
project. The unit would supervise research
contracts in academia and industry--but
especially in the latter, thus breaking
important new ground in the way Britain
conducts its R&D. As the House of Lords
Select Committee on Science and Tech-
nology points out this week (p 634), the
amount of money spent by government on
R&D in industry is "pitifully low".
   Officials at the Treasury are now exam-
ining Alvey's proposals. Their counterparts
at the Department of Education and
Science. DoI and Ministry of Defence
support the project. But any government
hesitation in approving the programme
may have been reinforced by comments
last week by Frank Land, professor of
systems analysis at the London School of
Economics. Land suggested that Alvey's
group did not consult enough of the people
who would use advanced computers; that it
had     paid     too     little     attention
to international collaboration; and that the
committee focused on too narrow an area
of activity. The proposals, according to
Land, add up to "what is probably the best
possible programme for building an
information-technology Concorde".
   There is a shred of substance in these
claims. In particular, the programme, as it
is set out, perhaps puts rather too much
emphasis on "knowledge-based systems".
These are computers containing sets of

rules that approximate to those people use
during the thinking process.  The other
areas earmarked by Alvey's group are: soft-
ware engineering; ways of making it easier
for people to communicate with com-
puters; and methods of cramming more
electronic components onto a chip. Land
says that programmes should include work
in telecommunications. It is difficult to
disagree with him for the conjunction of
computers and communications is perhaps
the most important aspect of information
technology.
   Perhaps too, Land is right in suggesting
that computer users should have been
brought more into the argument. Japan's
plan to build "fifth-generation" computers,
which started the British debate, was
formulated only after discussions with
people representing many sectors of society
who have nothing directly to do with
computers.
  But Land's central thesis--that there may
simply not be much of a market for the
products from the work recommended by
Alvey--does not stand up. Whereas very
few people want or need to travel across the
Atlantic in Concorde, hundreds of millions
of people use computers or related equip-
ment. The numbers have grown from next
to nothing just 30 years ago.
  It is sometimes easy to deride work in arti-
ficial intelligence--and some researchers
are their own worst enemies when it comes
to persuading people to back their efforts--
but there is every sign that advances in this
discipline will play a large part in the kind
of machines that tomorrow's computer
users will buy.
  Certainly we must hope that the govern-
ment in its final response will take the argu-
ments put forward by Alvey somewhat
further; after all it has had the best part of
six months to consider them. There can be
no doubt that if Britain wants to look
forward to a level of economic health even
approaching that to which it has grown
accustomed over the past 50 years, it must
back Alvey's proposals.                 []


        <2Interferon busybodies>2

THE only surprise in the history of
  interferon is its meteoric rise to fame
as a cancer cure, after its earlier promise as
an anti-viral agent.  It is certainly no
surprise to learn that it is not a cure for all
cancers. As a recent review points out, in
the early days researchers were hampered
because they could not obtain sufficient
quantities of pure interferon, and in any
case there is no such thing as "inter-
feron"--there are at least three families of
interferon <1(British Medical Journal,>1 5
March, p 739).
  It is thanks mostly to the press and a
handful of biological entrepreneurs that
this "wonder drug" has been elevated to the
status of a modern-day penicillin. For the
media, interferon was a glamorous new
arrival on the pharmaceutical scene. Not
only could it cure cancer, but it was also
"natural", and not one of those chemical
horrors dreamed up by juggling with mole-
cules. Add to that the fact that the new
techniques of genetic engineering were
invoked in the manufacture of interferon
and you almost have the makings of a script
for a soap opera.
  Now, it seems, interferon is less than
perfect. It does not immediately cure all
known cancers--something that no one
with a modicum of medical knowledge
would have expected in the first place
given the different causes and the versatility
of cancer--nor is it without undesirable
side effects.
   As yet the only people to suffer from this
setback are the investors. For interferon has
been dangled as a bait before investors with
more money than scientific sense. Many
millions of dollars have flooded into new
biotechnology companies in pursuit of
interferon and other potential money-
spinners. So far the new companies have
produced few products beyond the glossy
financial and other potential money-
wealth, one day. They may be right, but it
will certainly be a long hard road for
interferon at least. []
<2THIS WEEK>2
            <2Battle rages over fusion contracts>2

THE FIASCO that has
   surrounded     Europe's
Super-SARA experiment
into nuclear safety--a project
that has cost #100 million but is
now to be abandoned part-
built--is spilling over into
another arena of big-budget
research, nuclear fusion.  An
international row is brewing
among scientists who say that
the EEC's ISPRA establishment
in Italy is trying to make up for
its loss of Super-SARA by steal-
ing other plum research
contracts for which it is ill-
equipped from specialist fusion
laboratories throughout West
Europe. One principal casualty
could be Britain's chances of
building the prestigious succes-
sor to the JET fusion project,
based at Culham in Oxfordshire.
   At the centre of the new storm
is a document prepared by the
European Commission. It will be discussed
by research ministers at their meeting today
(Thursday). The document sets out a strat-
egy for Europe's nuclear research after the
expensive and embarassing demise of
Super-SARA <1(New Scientist,>1 27 January,
p 215 and 10 February, p 354).
   ISPRA, the EEC's main nuclear research
establishment, is now certain to be a
"favoured competitor" in an orgy of
bidding for some #300 million worth of
EEC-funded    research   into   fusion-
technology that is now getting under way.
   The first round of tenders from Euro-
pean fusion laboratories is now in. And
some scientists are angry that ISPRA seems
certain to grab a large slice of the action, at
the expense of the other laboratories. The
pressure to find work for the 2260 staff at
ISPRA is intense because of a commitment
by research ministers to keep on all of
ISPRA's nuclear scientists--even though
their biggest project, Super-SARA, has
been abandoned.  But many scientists
spoken to by <1New Scientist>1 believe that
ISPRA is ill-equipped for the work. One
fumed: "We never in our wildest dreams
associated this work with the capabilities of
ISPRA". Now it threatens to become the
cuckoo in the nest of European Fusion
research.
   Nuclear fusion is becoming an ever-more
important aspect of the EEC's research
programme. It seems set to grab a large part
of the 15 per cent gap in the EEC's joint
research programme left by the demise of
Super-SARA.
   Among the Commission's proposals
outlined to ministers this week are:
   <2o>2 More cash for the technological prepara-
           tion for NET, the Next Euro-
           pean Torus that will follow on
           from JET, the Joint European
           Torus which should be switched
           on in May.
           <2o>2 More work on fusion-safety in
           preparation for giving ISPRA a
           key role in licensing future
           fusion reactors in Europe.
             <2o>2 The Commission has also
           lined up ISPRA for a major
           study into the handling of
           tritium, the radioactive isotope
           of hydrogen.
           <2o>2 It also suggests that, in the
           long term, ISPRA might be
           turned into Europe's premier
           location     for     big-science
           machines.
             <2o>2 And there is a speculative
           project to investigate the Ignitor-
           fusion concept. This idea is for a
           much smaller fusion reactor of
           the Tokamak design, but with a
           much higher magnetic field.
   But at the back of everyone's mind is the
coming battle for the site of the biggest
project on the horizon, NET. Everyone
wants to avoid the chaos that surrounded
its predecessor JET. The JET project was
delayed for several years in the 1970s, while
the council of ministers vacillated between
giving the project to ISPRA, Garching in
West Germany and Culham.
   Already the signs for Culham winning
NET do not look good. The Commission
says that, if the Community decides to
build the NET machine, it could be
expected to be built on a Community site.
That probably means the ISPRA facility.
   But, after the fiasco of Super-SARA, the
British are not alone in asking whether the
cumbersome bureacracy and politicking of
European Community big-science, is
providing value for money.             []


   <2Line-up for Europe's space-boss>2
 A LEADING West German scientist is
   the front runner for the post of coordi-
nating Western Europe's efforts in space,
when the job becomes vacant next year.
Up for grabs is the post of director-general
of the European Space Agency, the
11-nation "club" that spends about #400
million annually. The issue will be resolved
at a meeting of the agency's
council next month.
  Only two serious candi-
dates have emerged to
replace Erik Quistgard, a
Dane. Britain has proposed
Sir James Hamilton, a
career civil servant who is
an under-secretary at the
Department of Education
and     Science.     West
Germany has put forward
Reimar Lust.  He is a
distinguished astrophysicist
with a lifelong interest in
space. Moreover, he com-
mands respect as the head
of a body that coordinates some 50
German research institutes. By contrast, Sir
James is relatively little-known in inter-
national circles.
   If he gets the job, Lust can be expected to
follow German policy and steer the agency
towards scientific and technical research
rather than commercial projects, such as
               the development of com-
               munications satellites. West
               Germany believes that the
               agency should leave com-
               mercial projects to indi-
               vidual nations.
                 Complicating the whole
               issue Quistgaard, who
               joined the agency in 1980
               from a career in industry,
               but is reluctant to step
               down. He could stand for a
               second four-year term. But
               other nations are likely to
               opt for a change; as long as
               four vote against him, Quist-
               gaard must go. Peter Marsh   []


     <2The trade winds die .  .  . and the Queen gets a soaking>2

 WHAT LINKS the storms
   that soaked the Queen in
   California last week: the bush
fires that scorched Australia last
month, famine in Indonesia, a
state of emergency in Ecuador
and the collapse of the Peruvian
anchovy fisheries? The answer,
according to climatologists, is
the return of the EI Nino.
  The EI Nino is a massive surge
of warm water that, once every
decade or so, builds up in the
eastern Pacific along the South
American seaboard. It happens
when the southeast trade winds
that blow for thousands of kilo-
metres across the equatorial
Pacific unaccountably lose their
force or,   as happened last
summer, give out altogether.
  Together these events disrupt
the climate and sea currents
across wide areas of the Pacific, causing
havoc to animal, fish, and bird life as well
as to humans. Some climatologists say that
this year's El Nino outbreak could be the
worst for 100 years.
  El Nino ("the child", because it first
becomes apparent around Christmas) is a
warm ocean current that recurs every seven
to 14 years. It sweeps southward from the
Pacific coast of Central America, diverting
the cold, nutrient-rich Humboldt Current
away from the South American mainland,
or sometimes forcing it as much as 50 m
beneath the waves. In any event, the fish
(especially the anchovies) either die or
become unavailable to man and wildlife.
  EI Nino seems to result from a reduction
in strength of the prevailing southeast trade
winds that sweep across the Pacific. As
these winds fail the mass of ocean water
that is piled up in the far western Pacific
(where the sea level is several centimetres
higher than in the east) comes flooding
back.
   Whatever the exact cause, the effects are
clear.  In the Galapagos Islands water
temperatures reach 30oC (86oF)--five
degrees higher than usual. Sealions have
departed for cooler waters and in some
places seals lie dying on the rocks in their
fur coats. Blue-footed boobies have virtu-
ally given up nesting.  Enormous waves
batter the archipelago's western shores,
destroying beaches.
   Ornithologists on Tower Island report
hat, at the end of January, more rain fell in
two-week period than in the whole of the
previous six years. The heavy rains have
brought luxuriant green vegetation to these
normally arid islands. Land birds and
reptiles, like giant tortoises and land
iguanas, are having a field day. Butterflies,
moths, mosquitos and horseflies, are all
abundant.
  On the mainland huge areas of coastal
Ecuador are under water, with food and
medical supplies ferried in by air. Heavy
rains have swept northern Peru, and in

           Lima, where it rains so seldom
           that the city's roofs are not
           designed to withstand more than
           a mild shower, the inhabitants
           are anxiously awaiting the
           worst.
             Farther south, the millions of
           seabirds that normally nourish
           on the famous guano islands are
           being decimated. Hardest hit is
           the guanay cormorant, the most
           numerous species. Perhaps most
           important from the human
           point of view, the Peruvian
           fishermen face disaster as the
           anchovies disappear.
             The effects of the EI Nino
           extend far from the coast of
           South America, however. As the
           trade winds give out, atmo-
           spheric pressure over Australia
           and Indonesia rises bringing dry
           weather, bush fires and, in the
case of Indonesia, famine <1(New Scientist,>1 9
December 1982, p 628). This wider effect is
known as the Southern Oscillation.
  The northern hemisphere suffers too.
The seas around California are today
warmer than at any time since 1957 and
there are record high tides.
  According to Dr Eugene Rasmusson, of
the Climate Analysis Center in Silver
Springs, Maryland, very warm sea-surface
temperatures in the eastern Pacific are also
associated with a deepening of the semi-
permanent low pressure in the Gulf of
Alaska. This typically brings storms to
California.  So the weather conditions
disrupting the Queen's visit could have
been predicted.
  One final conundrum concerns why the
EI Nino chose this winter to make its
return--the first since 1972.  There is
intense speculation that the massive cloud
of dust and debris that shot into the upper
atmosphere last April when the Mexican
volcano, the EI Chichon erupted may be to
blame. This volcanic cloud could have
warmed the upper atmosphere in the tropi-
cal latitudes and blotted out the differences
in temperature between surface and upper
air that when combined with the effects of
the earth's rotation, cause the trade winds.
But it could be a coincidence.           []
             <2Manchester trams are set for a return trip>2
MANCHESTER is considering rein-
introducing trams--34 years after it
scrapped them. The plan is the result of a
joint study of the future of the city's rail-
ways by British Rail and the Greater
Manchester Council.
   Some of the lines urgently need
modernising. The Bury line for example
has an archaic four-rail electrification
system. The study identifies three options.
One is to run half a dozen of the city's
suburban railways as a limit rapid-transit
system,   with    light-weight   vehicles,
described as a cross between a tram and a
light train. In the city centre these vehicles
would run on the streets. This option would
cost #85 million, or if the trains were put in
tunnels through the city centre, #105
million.
   A conventional railway service, includ-

ing a link between the Piccadilly and
Victoria stations (a plan which has been
dearly cherished by local politicians for
many years) would cost # 156 million.
   The study is also considering ripping up
all the railway lines and converting them to
busways.  This it estimated would cost
between #120 million and #225 million
because it would need major civil
engineering works.
   Greater Manchester's transport chair-
man, Andy Fender said that the cost of
these schemes would be compared with the
"many tens of millions" it would cost to
replace the existing rolling stock.
   British Rail is to install modern electric
power lines on a milway line which it
described as "totally unsuitable" for
modernisation two years ago. Then, BR
told a public inquiry that it would cost #5
million to convert the line, which runs
from Manchester east to Hadfield and
Glossop. Now it puts the bill at #700 000.
And that sum will be paid for out of the
scrap value of the old thick copper cable
used in the original 1950s electrification.
   The line was once part of a longer route
that ran to Sheffield, using the Woodhead
tunnel under the Pennines. This main line
was shut two years ago. BR's claim that it
might cost #33 million to convert to a
modern power system was a crucial
element in the decision to close the tunnel.
The Glossop to Manchester run was only
kept open to carry a passenger service
subsidised by the county council.
   The line was first electrified in the 1950s,
but at 1500 volts DC it is very different
from today's standard of 25000 volts AC.
                             Mick Hamer   []


     <2EPA purges its best scientists>2

  NOTHING, not even science, is sacred
   any more at the embattled US En-
vironmental Protection Agency. Now the
object of a handful of inquiries into
influence-peddling and the mismanage-
ment of taxpayers' money, the EPA has at
least been able to claim that its science is
pure. No longer.
   An incriminating document, apparently
pilfered from EPA's files, casts the agency's
attitude toward science in a new light.
Ninety independent scientists who advise
the agency part-time are listed, along with
pithy recommendations on what to do with
them.
   Matthew Meselson, a leading toxi-
cologist from Harvard University, is
described as "poison".  Lester Lave, an
acknowledged master of cancer risk assess-
ment, earns the commendation: "Deepsix
him". Others of varying eminence in the
scientific community win eulogies such as
"bleeding heart liberals"; "very defi-
nitely out"; "invidious environmental
extremists"; or simply "get him out".
   EPA officials say they don't know who
prepared what's come to be known as the
EPA's hit-list. As for the list's members,
who serve terms at the pleasure of the Presi-
dent, many have not been asked back. With
budget cuts slicing the agency's own
scientific staff to the bone, that leaves the
agency with plenty of bureaucrats, but
fewer experts than ever.                []


           <2Hunt for the last wolf in Norway>2

WHAT MAY be the only wolf in
Norway now has a #2000 price on its
head. The Norwegian fish and game direc-

torate, based in Trondheim, has authorised
a five-man team to shoot the wolf, which is
accused of killing 140 ewes and lambs in
the hill pastures of Vegarshei, 160 km
southwest of Oslo.
   Wolves have been protected in Norway
since 1973. But last month, hunting by
special licence was approved where too
many livestock have been killed--provided
that the population of wolves remained
viable. Opponents of the change were
assured that permits would be issued only if
wolf numbers suddenly improved.
   Now, the directorate's chief, Helge
Vikan, claims wolves are increasing, that
they total 18 animals, and that a viable,
breeding population may already exist near
Vegarshei. Figures from his own depart-
ment, however, do not support these
assertions. Scientists have only managed to
find at most seven wolves, and there is no
evidence that pups were born in 1982.
Wolves have not bred in neighbouring
Sweden since 1978.
   Norwegian conservationists are furious
that the directorate, which is reluctant to
fund studies of wolves, is authorising the
hunting of the endangered species on the
basis of so little information. The direc-
torate, they say, has incited the popular
press to fanticise about vast packs of wolves
ravaging Norway's countryside. They also
suspect that the move against wolves is part
of a wider campaign against predators.
   Plans are under way to license the killing of
wolverines and eagles.  Meanwhile, the
conservationists have until 14 March to
persuade Norway's environment minister,
Mrs Wenche Frogn-Sellag, to commute the
sentence on Vegarshei's lone wolf.       []


      <2Congress seeks science teachers>2

THE US Congress last week made its
  pitch for a massive increase in spending
on maths and science education.
  The House of Representatives passed a
$425 million bill that would increase ten-
fold the spending proposed by President
Reagan.
  Though Reagan and Congress may
disagree over the amount of money that
government should spend, alarm over the
present state of US science education is
general. The worry in Washington is that
the economy and national defence are
suffering because young Americans have
neither the technical skills of the Japanese
nor the linguistic and scientific proficiency
of Russian students.
  Recent surveys by the National Science
Teachers Association (NSTA) show an 80
per cent decline over the past ten years in
the number of maths and science teachers
turned out by colleges and universities. The
result, according to the NSTA's Bill
Aldridge, is that fifty per cent of new
science and maths teachers in elementary
and secondary schools are unqualified in
those subjects.
  Reagan's original proposal allowed $50
million dollars in grants for teacher-
retraining. The House Bill sets aside $250
million in 1984 to retain teachers and
improve schools' equipment and services--
particularly access to computers. Another
$20 million goes in scholarships for
students and non-science teachers who
agree to train as science teachers.
  An aide to representative Don Fuqua, a
leading sponsor of the bill, said he expects
the more conservative Senate to offer a
$250 to $300 million programme.  But
President Reagan could still veto my
science-education bill that appears too
expensive for his taste and priorities.
         Nancy Heneson, Washington DC   []


            <2Boffins battalion>2
THE FRENCH have called in the troops to
  speed up the spread of computer learning.
Instead of square-bashing around their Berlin
baracks, 500 graduates will do their military
service teaching the young jobless how to use
computers.
  The first battalion of boffins will swing into
action this August. By the end of next year, the
government hopes 10 000 national servicemen
will be mobilized. The aim is to reduce the ranks
of the young unemployed who now account for
more than half the nation's two million jobless
and to give them an added skill which will help
them find work when the training is over.
  Each teacher should be able to train 40 pupils
in a year. If the targeted 10 000 is achieved,
France will have 400 000 more youngsters a year
with computer skills.
  One problem the French planners have still to
solve is the role of female graduates, some of
whom have requested to take part in the new
scheme. There is as yet no national service
women. []
<2Another pain-killer withdrawn>2

             ZOMAX, a new pain-killing drug given to a
         million people in the UK over the last two
     years is being withdrawn by the manufacturers,
     pending changes in the prescribing information
     issued to doctors. A severe allergic reaction to the
     drug has killed five Americans. The American
     manufacturers, Johnson and Johnson, ad asking
     American doctors to stop prescribing the drug.
     Ortho-Cilag Pharmaceuticals, which markets
     Zomax in the UK, has followed suit.
        The manufacturers plan to emphasize their
     earlier warning to doctors that the drug should
     not be given to patients allergic to aspirin or
     other non-steroid anti inflamatory drugs. Two of
     the deaths occurred in patients known to be
     sensitive to aspirin. Zomax, the trade name for
     zomepirac sodium, is one of some 20 similar
     drugs widely used to treat arthritis. No deaths
     linked to Zomax have been found in Britain. But
     severe side-effects have been reported.       []


            <2Agent orange was safe>2

     FRESH evidence that there is not a link

     to toxic chemical sprays, such as Agent Orange,
     and increared birth defects in veterans' children
     has been provided in a study by the Australian
     Commonwealth Institute of Health.
        It examined the records of 8517 deformed
     children born at 34 hospitals between 1966 and
     1979. Each child born with a defect was matched
     as closely as possible to a healthy infant born in
     the same hospital, at the same time. The study
     found that 127 of the deformed infants were
     fathered by Vietnam Veterans while 123 of the
     healthy children were also fathered by veterans.
     This, the study concluded, indicated that there
     was no evidence that army service in Vietnam
     had increased the risk of birth defects in veterans'
     children.
        Members of the Vietnam Veterans Associ-
     ation have rejected the findings and called for a
     Royal Commission into the issue.           []
        <2Choosy over Chooz>2

THE BELGIAN government has put off a
decision on whether to stump up cash for the
nuclear plant being built by France at Chooz--a
finger of France sucking into Belgian territory.
The project is part of a two-way deal, in which
France would have a chunk of a Belgium reactor,
Doel 5. The arrangement is the brainchild of
Etienne Knopps, the Belgian energy minister.
But his environment colleague, Finnin Aerts,
wants a moratorium on further nuclear plants.
Aerts is backed by miners in Limburg, the Flem-
ish part of the country. They say that the French
cannot be trusted to maintain safety at a plant
which, though on French soil, is surrounded by
Belgium.                               []


        <2Lords call for engineering universities elite>2

THE BRITISH government should
  increase its support for industrial R&D
by between two and three times to keep the
country abreast with its competitors. But
Whitehall should contract out as much as
possible of this research to industry itself
rather than giving it to government estab-
lishments. These are the main conclusions
of the House of Lords' select committee on
science and technology in a report this
week <1(Engineering research and develop->1
<1ment,>1 HMSO, #6. 10).
    The committee also calls for stronger
links between industry and universities. It
says the Department of Industry (DoI) and
Department of Education and Science
should earmark at least six universities as
bodies especially suitable for doing indus-
trial R&D. The cash would be channelled
from the government to the universities via
a commercial company so that in the words
of the report, "industrial commitment and
market considerations are guaranteed".
  According to the committee, the govern-
ment should be more imaginative in
supporting research. Under existing grants
schemes, the Dol contributes between 33
and 50 per cent of the cost of individual
research projects.  But the government
should put up 90 or even 100 per cent of the
cash in cases of long-term R&D that are by
nature speculative.  "When Dol grant
schemes require detailed proof that appli-
cations for grants are soundly based,
they prejudge the conclusions to which
the R&D is directed and this can be
self-defeating."
    Like many similar inquiries in recent
years into Britain's research spending, the
 report points out that the UK is unusual
among many Western nations in the way it
allocates its R&D. Of the total research
budget, the government contributes about
half (the rest coming from private com-
panies). But of the government's share,
about half goes on defence activities. Other
large proportions go to space and civil
aviation, leaving little left over for indus-
trial R&D.
     According to the report, the British
government spent #85 million on industrial
R&D in 1980. The comparable figures for
research connected with defence, space and
civil aviation were #1343 million, #52
million and #69 million. In government-
supported industrial R&D, Britain laps
behind other European nations (see chart).
        The committee takes the view that
government research projects carried out
by private industry have a better chance of
leading to commercial rewards in terms of
new products and processes. Yet it says that
the amount of government research cash
spent by industry is "pitifully low". In the
area of civilian (non-defence) R&D funded
by Whitehall, only 16 per cent is spent in
industry and over half of this concerns
aerospace.  When it comes to defence
research, the picture is very different: 64
per cent of this slice of government R&D is
carried out in industry.
  Even here, however, the outlook is none
too rosy, according to the committee. The
government's military-related research
work is done by a small group of generally
large firms which form a closed commu-
nity. Therefore "spin-offs" into the econ-
omy as a whole from advances in military
R&D, in telecommunications or electron-
ics from are few and far between. The
committee believes this is "disruptive to the
UK's competitive position". One proposal
is a series of tax incentives that would
encourage defence contractors to share the
benefits of military R&D with firms
connected with civilian technologies.
The report points out the dominance of
Britain's big firms in the area of industrial
R&D. In 1978, companies with 10000 or
more employees performed 79 per cent of
the total.  But useful product develop-
ments--undertaken outside conventional
R&D units--often take place in small
firms.  A study at the Science policy
  Research Unit at the University of Sussex
found that 37 per cent of innovations in
mechanical engineering between 1969 and
1980 were made in firms with fewer than
1000 employees.                       []


    <2One language for>2

    <2government computers>2

   THE British Government is taking the
    first tentative steps to standardise the
computers and computer equipment that
are bought by civil servants. The latest
move is the introduction of a scheme to test
whether computers can handle a standard
version of Cobol, a language used by
business.
  This scheme follows the publication last
year of 32 other standards, mostly to do
with methods of storing and capturing data.
Government suppliers do not have to
follow these standards, which are inter-
national ones rather than the government's
own. But those that do will get preference,
other things being equal.
  The Central Computer and Tele-
communications    Authority   (CCTA),
which advises government departments on
information technolgy, says there are no
plans to set compulsory standards. But a
French report on the "economic impact or
the absence of standard in informatics"
estimated that savings of up to 30 per
cent could be made by standardising.
  The drawback is the cost of insisting that
everyone goes for the same type of equip-
ment. A survey conducted in 1977 by the
US federal government concluded that it
costs as much to change from one
computer to another as to buy the machine
itself.                              []


        <2Cloud find shrouded in mystery>2

  LAST WEEK'S announcement that a
    gigantic cloud of dark gas has been
    found in space is leading to speculation
about an "invisible mass" hidden within it.
Astronomers from Cornell University in
the United States identified the cloud of
neutral hydrogen in January, using a radio
antenna in Puerto Rico.
  "Nothing like this has ever been seen
before," says Dr Yervant Terzian, chair-
man of the university's astronomy
department and head of the research team.
It is the first example of such a cloud found
outside a galaxy. "It is as large as a galaxy
itself and may be the original material of a
potential star system that never really
formed," says Terzian.
  The cold neutral hydrogen, radiating
energy at its characteristic wavelength of 21
centimetres, shows the cloud to be about 30
million light years away from the earth. It is
300 000 light years long and 100 million
times more massive than our Sun.
   The extremities of the cloud are rotating
so fast that the cloud would disperse if it
were not held together by some force of
gravity. "We must assume there is some
invisible mass, approximately 100 times
larger than the mass of the gas cloud itself,"
says Terzian.
   Scientists agree this is an exciting pros-
pect to pursue. Harvard radio-astronomer,
Dr John Ball, says: --An invisible galaxy is
reasonable but it is unreasonable that no
mass can be seen."
   The discovery was made almost by acci-
dent. The Cornell team was searching for
neutral hydrogen inside other known galax-
ies. "When we moved the telescope off the
galaxy to what we expected to be blank
sky," Terzian explained, "we got a signal
instead. We thought it was interference but
when it continued we mapped the entire
area."                                  []


                               <2US takes pot luck on cancer risks>2

  GIVE a rat formaldchyde to breathe
   and it will get cancer. Three years
ago enough laboratory rats devel-
oped malignant tumours from the chem-
ical to convince a US consumer protection
agency to ban urea formaldehyde foam
insulation in homes. But when Ronald
Reagan came to Washington a year later,
another government department, the Envi-
ronmental Protection Agency (EPA),
looked at the same evidence and decided
not to limit most other, potentially higher
human exposures to the chemical.
   The fortunes of formaldehyde are an
example of how cold, hard science can turn
to putty in the hands of public officials. As
one of the scientists who vetoed foam insu-
lation told <1New Scientist.>1 "The differences
(of opinion) come in the superimposition
of the political process, and as a result,
there appears to be significant scientific
disagreement when there really is not".
   What might otherwise be a dry debate on
science policy has raised a hue
and cry among the American
public, for the issue is which of
the 70000 chemicals on the
market may cause cancer. In
the US, there is no single set of
rules to judge carcinogenicity.
The agency that approves new
pesticides, EPA, uses a differ-
ent set from the agency that
regulates household goods, the
Consumer Product Safety
Commission.  Chaos some-
times results, as in the regu-
laton schizophrenia over
formaldehyde.
   Recently, an expert panel of
the august National Academy
of Sciences (NAS) tried to
weave some consistency into cancer risk
assessment. The panel found that govern-
ment gets into trouble when scientists get
intimate with those who regulate.  "It
puzzles the public and the scientific
community", notes one panel member, Dr
Morton Corn of Johns Hopkins School for
Hygiene and Public Health, "that you can
hire your own gun nowadays and get the
results that you want".
   The NAS panel would like to see a single
set of rules for drawing scientific
"inferences", or conclusions, from
frequently confusing and inconclusive
data. For example, a massive dose of the
pesticide permethrin (a suspected carcino-
gen recently used on vegetable crops) of
say, 5000 parts per million, causes a 60 per
cent incidence of liver tumours in mice.
What mathematical model should be used
to determine the safe level for bean-eating
humans, who would never eat anything
near 5000 ppm at one sitting? Or how
important are liver tumours, which often
appear spontaneously in certain types of
lab mouse?
   The NAS's panel wants an independent,
non-governmental Board on Risk Assess-
ment Methods to answer these questions
with some sort of rulebook for cancer. But
attempts at writing rules of thumb are
already underway at the White House, and
the task has proven a lightning rod for
complaints that politics are corrupting
science.

   Last year, health scientists at government
agencies tried to put together a paper
outlining the state-of-the art of identifying
possible carcinogenic substances.  Entitled
"Potential human carcinogens: methods
for identification and characterisation", it
was promptly kicked back through the dcor
by several well-respected cancer specialists
who were asked to review it. Critics view
the paper, and similar drafts at the EPA, as
back-door attempts to "fuzz up" the
science to justify relaxed rules for industrv.
John Todhunter, who runs EPA's pesticide
programme denies any hidden agenda for a
new view of cancer risk. He admits,
however, that attitudes under Reagan have
undergone a "continuing evolution".
   Some scientists claim the White House's
cancer paper mirrors views toward carcino-
genesis that chemical companies have
pushed unsuccessfully, for years.  For
example, the report appears to distinguish
between "genotoxic" substances, which are
mutagenic and directly damage DNA,
and "non-genotoxic" or "epigenetic"
substances, which apparently act indirectly
on the genome. The distinction would give
the latter types freer rein, since they are not
"complete" carcinogens and their effects
are not as patently threatening.
   Last year, the head of EPA's Carcincgen
Assessment Group, Dr Roy Albert,
proposed a new risk assessment system for
water pollutants that revolves around just
such a distinction. For genotoxic chem-
icals, risk to the public would be calculated
traditionally--that is, one assumes that
even the smallest exposures pose risks of
excess cancer, and that any increment of
the chemical in an organism increases risk
of cancer in a linear fashion.  But for
epigenetic chemicals, Albert would use a
combination ofthis method and the system
used for simply toxic, non-carcinogenic
substances, like cyanide, that are poisonous
but have a one-time effect only. Toxic
chemicals are assigned a "no observed
effect level", a dosage that produces no
apparent harm in a certain percentage of
lab animals. That level is then divided by a
"safety factor" for humans, usually 1000,
and the result is considered safe.
   The trouble is, Albert admits,  this
method would allow anything from 10 to
369 times higher concentrations of danger-
ous substances like chloroform, benzene or
DDT in water supplies, compared to the
traditional form ula.
   Research scientists hacked Albert's idea
to pieces. Dr Umberto Saffiotti, an experi-
mental pathologist at the National Cancer
Institute at the time, said that type of
no-effect level toxicology posed was
"developed during the Stone Age of
toxicology", and has nothing to do with
self-replicating effects of carcinogens.
   Dr Arthur Upton, formerly director of
            the NCI and now with New
            York University Medical
            Center, was gentler, but agreed
            with many others that the
            distinction between genotoxic
            and epigenetic is useless for
            judging risk to humans.
               Recent research in tumour
            promotion backs up this objec-
            tion. Tumour "promoters" are
            substances such as the phorbol
            esters that aren't carcinogenic
            by themselves but encourage
            the growth of malignant
            tumours in cells that have
            previously been exposed to a
            low dose of a true carcinogen
            (known   as   an   initiator).
            Researchers have now discov-
ered that even by themselves, promoters
can stimulate cells to produce activated
forms of oxygen, known as "free radicals".
These can damage DNA.  Promoters
presumably would fall within Albert's non-
genotoxic or epigenetic category, a daunt-
ing prospect to those who favour erring on
the side of safety.
   Albert's philosophies crop up in the
White House's cancer policy paper, which
is to be as a blueprint for everything from
pesticides to pills.  Dr Frederica Perera,
professor of public health at Culumbia
University and senior scientist for a promi-
nent environmental group, says the govern-
ment is also playing down <1in vitro>1 tests of
chemicals in cell cultures. These are often
the earliest warning that a substance may
be mutagenic.
   Also, says Perera, the government tends
to play down the importance of prevention
and of synergism (different chemicals in the
environment working together), while they
call for more epidemiology--or, as many
environmentalists put it, "counting the
bodies".
  The storm of objections seems in have set
Reagan's science policymakers back on
their heels for the moment.  They are
rewriting the White House draft, while
Congressional investigators are prying
open the doors at EPA, where officials have
been quietly setting ad hoc cancer policy in
the interim                            []
                <2Sizewell's computerised safety system is not ready>2

                DOUBTS about the
                unique     computer
                package planned by the
                Central Electricity Gener-
                ating Board to prevent an
                accident in the reactor of
                its PWR station have been
                voiced by the Nuclear
                Installations Inspectorate.
                   Last week the Sizewell
                inquiry, at the Snape
                Maltings was assured by
the board that the issues "can be left for
resolution in the normal way at an appro-
priate time in the project, since they do not
require any fundamental system re-design
to accommodate them".
  The safety watchdog is not so sure. In a
new report it complains that "it is disap-
pointing that much of the information the
Inspectorate has expected to receive by
now is not yet available to it . . . . the
Inspectorate is still finding it particularly
difficult not having a schedule and specifi-
cation for the complete protection system;
this is basic information which should have
been provided in the Pre-Construction
Safety Report (PCSR) which will not be
available until September 1983".
  A feature of the safety approach favoured
by the CEGB is the use of microprocessor
technology in a bid to side-step the errors
by operators which helped cause the
Three Mile Island accident in the US
four years ago.
  Reactor protection systems are designed
to limit releases of radiation during nuclear
plant accidents. Crucial factors are the effi-
ciency of reactor shut-down, emergency
cooling by flooding the reactor with water
and containment of any release from the
reactor. All this should be controlled and
monitored by a system which keeps tabs on
the state of the reactor and responds when
a fault occurs.
  Microprocessors have not been used for
this work up to now and the first-ever
system for a PWR is currently being
installed by the French at their new power
station at Paluel. Known as SPIN (Systeme
de Protection Integre Numerique) the
French system is similar to a Westinghouse
design of microprocessor-based system,
called the Integrated Protection System
(IPS). It is likely to be used for Sizewell B.
"Considerable operational experience with
SPIN will be available before Sizewell B
could be put into service" says the generat-
ing board.
  The NII accepts that, at this point in the
safety assessment, all the details of the
protection system will not be decided.
"However it does expect that all elements
of the system should be identified and a
specification provided", says its report.
  The question mark over the reactor-
protection system is one of a queue of
unresolved issues which now do not look
like being settled before the public inquiry
ends in the autumn. Hopes that the NII
would have completed the work needed to
give the PWR a nuclear site licence by the
time the hearing opened have long-since
evaporated.
  Ron Anthony, the Nll's chief inspector
made it clear last week that delays over
settling the safety case were largely the
fault of the CEGB, it was 10 months late
with its PCSR and is still filling in gaps in
key areas, like the integrity of steam-
generator tubes and the issue of fuel-clad
ballooning.
  This week the hearing reached a mile-
stone with the first session of full cross-
examination--a baptism of fire for the
Department of Energy, which surprised
everyone by agreeing to be interrogated on
the full gamut of Whitehall's current think-
ing on energy policy.   []
<2Claylands of England can take nuclear waste>2

                                   <2THE CLAY lowlands of southeast>2
                                          England should prove suitable for
                                   burying  the   operating   wastes   from
                                   pressurised-water reactors like that planned
                                   for Sizewell, says the National Radiological
                                   Protection Board in a report published
                                   today (Thursday). The plans, which will be
                                   announced later this year, are to bury a
                                   variety of sludges, filters and other materi-
                                   als from PWR stations in shallow "graves"
                                   in clay. The waste is less dangerous than
                                   that intended to be buried in deep tunnels,
                                   <1(New Scientist,>1 24 February, p 503). But
                                   even so, says the NRPB, the burial grounds
                                   should be safeguarded from building or
                                   farming for up to 150 years.
                                   The burial trenches will be 18m deep and
                                   110 m long.  They will be lined with
                                   concrete and covered with 11m of clay.
                                              A risk assessment by the NRPB
                                   concludes that the risk to individuals from
                                   radiation from the trenches wil be greatest
                                   450 years after their closure. From 200
                                   years on, risks are mainly from con-
                                   taminated water infecting crops.       []

                                <2Child-killer was loose on cardiac ward>2

                                   FOR ALMOST a year, the world-famous
                                     Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto
                                   had a murderer loose in its cardiac wards. It
                                   may still have.  That's the inescapable
                                   conclusion of months of investigation by
                                   police and doctors into the mysterious
                                   deaths of children at the hospital two years
                                   ago.
                                    The story begins in early 1981 with the
                                   deaths of 46 child patients, most of them in
                                   the hospital's paediatric cardiac wards. A
                                   local coroner on a routine inspection
                                   became suspicious when he discovered that
                                   one baby had unusually high levels of a
                                   potent heart drug, digoxin, in its tissues.
                                   The police opened an inquiry and ordered
                                   the exhumations of several bodies. Before
                                   long their list of suspicious deaths had
                                   grown to more than two dozen. Meanwhile
                                   the deaths stopped. The police charged a
                                   young nurse with four murders. But the
                                   charges were thrown out.
                                    At the same time, the medical detective
                                   work   threw   up   new   uncertainties.
                                   Autopsies showed levels of digoxin ranging
                                   from 16 to 39 times those expected from
                                   the doses prescribed. In some children the
                                   drug had not been prescribed.
                                       Yet virtually nothing was then known
                                   about how digoxin reacts in tissue after
                                   death. Did the drug decompose or spread
                                   through the body or accumulated in certain
                                   organs? How did the drug react with
                                   embalming or preserving fluids?
                                     Although digoxin is easily detected in
                                   fresh blocd it is far more difficult to trace in
                                   fresh body tissue and harder again to detect
                                   in old samples of either flesh or blood.
                                      The police called in Alois Hastreiter, a
                                   retired paediatric cardiologist from the
                                   University of Illinois.  His preliminary
                                   findings and those of the hospital differed.
                                   Hospital studies indicated that normal
                                   doses of digoxin could produce the high
                                   body-levels found. Dr Hastreiter felt "it is
                                   unlikely that any explanation could be
                                   found other than overdose."
                                      A further study was set up involving two
                                   Canadian speciatists and doctors from the
                                   Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta,
Georgia. Digoxin levels were taken in more
than 400 cardial patients to provide further
data. Several things became clearer. Before
death, the drug accumulates in the heart
muscles, the kidneys and the liver. But after
death the muscles release the drug into the
blood stream, thus raising pcst-mortem
levels. But in the 24 "suspicious" deaths,
levels were still above those predicted.
  To further complicate this medical
nightmare the hospital was aleady under
scrutiny for a death in which a patient had
been given the drug epinephrine instead of
vitamin E.  It is known that, when
epinephrine is given at the same time as
digoxin, it can upset heart rhythms.
  In a final report, which has not yet been
made public the Atlanta group concludes
that seven babies died of deliberate
overdoses and that another 2 I deaths could
have been avoided if the hospital had been
better equipped to spot trouble.  But,
despite the new medical findings, police
appear to be no closer to finding the
murderer.           Doug Payne, Toronto


      <2Hawke eyes Tasmanian dam scheme>2

  THE UNEQUIVOCAL promise from
Australia's new prime minister, Bob
Hawke, last weekend that he will stop
construction of the dam across the Franklin
river in south-west Australia, is by no
means the end of the matter. He still faces
obdurate opposition from the premier of
Tasmania, Robin Gray, who claims that a
swing away from Hawke's Labor Party in
Tasmania (against the trend throughout the
rest of Australia during Saturday's general
election) shows Tasmanians want the dam.
  Moreover there is, at present, no consti-
tution way that the federal government can
stop the dam. That awaits the passage of the
World Heritage (Properties Protection)
Bill, which has already been passed by the
Senate and is now guaranteed an easy
passage through the House of Representa-
tives. But meanwhile clearance for the dam
continues and the likely new environment
minister, Barry Jones, says he may attempt
to get a court injunction to halt work.
The normally unpolitical and reticent
Australian Academy of Science has come
out strongly against construction of the
dam.  The President of the Academy,
Professor Arthur Birch, last week appealed
for a stop on construction. The dam would
deprive science of a number of unique
biological and archaelogical opportunities.
  He described the region as one of the few
remaining pristine areas of the world,
which must be retained for long term
investigation.  Little was known of the
microflora or invertebrate populations of
the area.
   Last week a structural geologist, Ron
Peters, claimed that the proposed dam
would leak. He said he had spent four days
taking rock samples in the area of the dam
and had found that there were inter-
connected limestone layers above and
below the dam site through which the water
might leak away. He claimed that thc site
was geologically unsound and any stress
caused by a shift in water levels could cause
an earthquake.       Jane Ford, Canberra   []
               <2Swedish tax men breach data secrecy>2

THE SWEDISH government is in open
conflict with the country's data protec-
tion committee over the individual's right to
secrecy on money-matters.
  Swedish courts will soon decide whether
a bank is within its rights in handing over
details of the finances of their clients to the
local tax authorities, in defiance of a ban
imposed by the data protection committee.
The Jamtlands Folk Bank was approached
by the tax authorities for details of the
balances of account holders and of interest
receipts. The committee refused its permis-
sion. "They asked us twice and twice we
told them no," says Jan Freece, the chair-
man of the committee.
   But the bank went ahead and legal
proceedings began last month. In another
case, the committee has refused permission
for health authorities to link their computer
files with personal tax records. The author-
ities want to make wealthy pensioners pay-
their hospital costs. The government is still
planning to go ahead with the link.      []


                                                 <2Diamond: strength in symmetry>2


   <2Pick up a diamond and the play of light on its clear multifaceted surface will hold you fascinated.>2

                     <2That, though, is far from the only reason for contemplating this remarkable substance>2

                                                                  <2Gordon Davies>2


  DIAMONDS are magnificent jewels, once thought to
    have magical powers. The power of the diamond is
indeed fomidable, but there is no need to invoke the
supernatural to explain its
modern    uses.         Diamond
combines strong bonds with
  simple stable structure: this
recipe   accounts   for     its
remarkable strength as a
cutting    tool,     and    its
resistance to extremes of
temperatures and pressure.
The full implications of these
remarkable properties are
only now being exploited, in
applications ranging from
cooling semiconductor chips
to exploting the atmosphere
of  Venus.   Mankind        has
marvelled at diamonds for
at least 2000 years.  Some
natural diamonds are found
as      perfectly        formed
octahedrons, with a consid-
erable visual appeal. Stones
like these began to be highly
valued in India, the earliest
source of diamonds, about a
few   hundred   years       BC.
Merchants carried diamonds
from India along trade routes
through the Middle East. They sold the best
diamonds <1en route.>1 so that by the time the
eastern goods reached the Mediterrnean
only the most uninspiring of the diamonds
were left.  Consequently in the western
world diamonds were at first not regarded
as objects of beauty--other stones such as emeralds and
red garnets were preferred.  Even so, in Roman days
diamonds had a far greater monetary value than gold,
because they were reputed to be indestructible, and, more
important, they would safeguard their wearer against a whole
range of misfortunes, from poison to madness.
                                 These magical attributes
                              persisted through the ages
                              and died out only with the
                              rise of scientific investiga-
                              tions in the 16th century. By
                              this time diamonds were
                              well-known    to    western
                              Europe, and were worn as
                              jewels, but even so it was not
                              until as late as 1796 that the
                              chemical nature of diamond
                              was finally established.  In
                              that year a London chemist,
                              Smithson Tennant, burned
                              diamonds and found that
                              carbon dioxide was the end
                              product; the same amount of
                              carbon dioxide was produced
                              by burning equal weights of
                              diamond   and    charcoal.
                              Evidently diamond was
                              another form of carbon.
                                   To many 19th century
                              chemists the fact that
                              diamonds were made of
                              carbon had the appearance
                              of a blank cheque. By crys-
                              tallising    cheap    carbon,
                              fortunes would be made. The
                              reality was very different.
                              Despite     an     enormous
                              amount of effort it was not
                              until   the    1950s    that
                              diamonds were successfully
                              synthesised. Earlier workers
                              failed; one reason was that
                              they did not have the tech-
                              nology to reach the necessary
                              high temperatures and pres-
                              sures. Another was the lack
                              of an accurate theory to help
                              them estimate those condi-
                              tions.
                                 The discovery of X-ray
                              diffraction in 1912 made a
                              significant difference too: it
                              then became possible to
                              determine unambiguously
                              whether a small, hard crystal
                              was indeed a diamond.
                              Many of the early experi-
                  menters spent a lot of time trying to
                  improve the tiny transparent crystals they
                  had made--crystals which they erroneously
                  believed were only silica or other hard but
                  non-diamond crystals.
                    Two of the pioneers of X-ray diffraction
were William Bragg and his elder son, Lawrence. In their first
joint publications in 1913 the Braggs described the atomic
structure of common salt and diamond (Figure 1). They
chose to work on diamond
because it contains only one
species of atom, and because
highly perfect crystals were
easily available.  They ex-
pected diamonds to have a
single   atomic    structure.
Their choice of diamond was
significant: it was one of the
first scientific studies of crys-
tals to exploit the simplicity
of diamond: a property we
will retum to later.
   The structure of graphite,
the other common crystal-
lographic form of carbon,
was finally established in
1924 by the crystallographer
J. D.  Bernal. For the first
time the problem of syn-
thesising diamonds could
now be expressed in terms of the ways the atoms were
arranged and rearranged (Figure 2).
   Although graphite and diamond both exist at ordinary
temperatures and pressures, diamonds are actually unstable
and are continuously reverting to graphite. If a group of car-
bon atoms are detached from the diamond and allowed to
re-crystallise, they will rebond not as diamond but as graph-
ite. Fortunately the energy required to break the atoms away
from the diamond is very large, and so this process occurs
very slowly at room temperature. In fact at room temperature
a diamond will survive for longer than the present age of the
Universe. But nevertheless diamond is the unstable form and
if we crystallise carbon at atomospheric pressure it will form
as the more stable graphite. To make diamond the crystal-
lisation must be done at high pressure, at several tens of
thousands of atmospheres. High pressures are essential be-
cause graphite is less dense than diamond. By changing from
graphite to diamond, the carbon lowers its volume, and so
reduces one of the contributions to its energy: the con-
tribution given by the product of pressure and the volume. As
long as the pressure is large, this energy saving is sufficient to
tip the balance in favour of diamond making it the more
stable form of carbon.
   In modern commercial synthesis graphite is mixed with a
metal solvent--cobalt or nickel is used today. When the tem-
perature is high enough to melt the metal, it dissolves carbon
atoms from the graphite. Suppose now the pressure is in-
creased so that diamond is the more stable form of carbon:
that is, so that carbon has less energy when bonded as dia-
mond than is eraphite. It is now energetically favourable for
the solvent to dump its carbon as diamond, and dissolve
more of the graphite. Using a solvent, the conditions, for
synthesis are temperatures of about 1 600 K and pressures of
about 60 000 atmospheres. These can be obtained easily in
production line equipment. Today synthetic diamonds are
commercially available in a range of sizes up to the present
maximum, the de Beers "Synthetic Rotary Dresser" stones,
which have a weight of 2 milligram, (equivalent to a cubic
diamond of 0.8 mm edge).
   Some 20 tonnes of synthetic diamond are now being pro-
duced annually throughout the world. Exact figures are not
available, either because of commercial secrecy or, in the case
of the USSR, "state security". Most of this production is
bought for working materials. For example, tungsten carbide
tools, used extensively for machining steel, are themselves
shaped by diamond tool-pieces. Slabs of rock cut from quar-
ries arc formed into building materials using diamond-tipped
saw blades.  Diamond-tipped milling wheels are used to
groove airport runways and station platforms to improve
their friction when wet, thus preventing slipping. The high
efficiency of diamond drill bits for cutting through reinforced
concrete walls has even resulted in their being chosen for
obtaining illegal entry into bank safes!
   The most important single reason why diamond is a good
abrasive material is that the individual carbon atoms in a
diamond are bonded together extremely strongly. In abra-
sion, the strongest material survives. A diamond, mounted on
a spinning saw-blade, slams into the workpiece at a speed
comparable with the cruising speed of a car. A chunk of the
workpiece is either knocked off as a result of fracture along a
weak fault, or a layer of atoms is stripped away from its
surface. The diamond survives the impact, usually, because
its chemical bonding is far stronger than the bonding in the
workpiece.
   The strength of bonding in diamond derives from the small
size of the carbon atoms. When small atoms bond together
through ionic or covalent chemical bonds, the compactness
of the bond makes it extremely strong. Larger atoms, in less
initmate contact, tend to have weaker bonds. Carbon is the
smallest atom in the fourth column of the periodic table of
elements. The next elements in this column are the semicon-
ductors silicon and germanium, with larger and less strongly
bonded atoms. The difference in strength of the bonds in
these elements has a practical use: silicon wafers, used in
integrated circuits, are sliced from large ingots of silicon using
diamond-tipped saws. The silicon ingots are highly perfect
single crystals and on the atomic scale the cutting has to
proceed through breaking bonds. The success of diamond in
cutting silicon is a measure of diamond's extreme resistance
to abrasion.
   The strong bonds in diamond are also responsible for many
of its non-abrasive uses. For example, the strong bonds allow
the atoms in diamonds to vibrate at very high frequencies.
The frequency of any vibrating system is governed by two
factors: the forces pulling it back into the equilibrium posi-
tion, and its mass. In diamond, the chemical bonds are
strong, favouring high frequencies of vibration. Also, the
atoms are light with mass number 12 compared, for example,
with 28 for silicon, the next column four element. Again this
favours high vibrational frequencies. In fact the atoms in
diamond can vibrate at about 40 x 10 Hz. For comparison,
atoms in silicon are limited to less than half that frequency
while atoms in a crystal of common salt have a maximum
frequency of only 6 x 10 Hz.
  Several things will make the atoms in a crystal vibrate.
Shining infrared radiation on the crystal is one. How the
radiation is absorbed depends on the crystal. For a crystal of
common salt the frequency of the radiation has to equal the
frequency with which alternate ions vibrate against each
other (Figure 3). The electric field of the radiation can then
resonate with the vibrations of the charge ions, transferring
energy to them. Diamond absorbs infrared radiation by a
slightly more complex process. The atoms are not charged as
in common salt. They are all chemically identical, and in
equivalent lattice sites, so there is no reason why charge
should be transferred between them. Consequently in a static
diamond there are no charged atoms to interact with the
electric field of infrared radiation. Diamonds can, however,
absorb radiation by a two-stage process. (These stages occur
simultaneously, but it is convenient to think of them as being
sequential.) The first step is to create a vibration in the dia-
mond so that the carbon atoms are no longer in equivalent
positions in the lattice. Charges can now be transferred
between them. The electric field of the radiation can interact
with these charges and so radiation can be absorbed, as in
common salt.
   Infrared radiation is absorbed by a diamond in a process
that involves the creation of two vibrations, not just one as in
common salt; the frequency of the radiation equals the com-
bined frequency of the vibrations. The light, strongly-bonded
carbon atoms can vibrate at unusually high frequencies, so
the frequency of the radiation absorbed is very much higher
for diamond than for other materials. This result has ex-
tremely useful applications.
   If we want to study the way some material absorbs infrared
radiation we can put it into a cell fitted with diamond win-
dows. The low frequency radiation absorbed by the material
cannot be absorbed by the diamond: the diamond acts as a
perfectly transparent window. Diamond forms a good win-
dow for infrared cells, because it is highly transparent, chem-
ically non-reactive and exceptionally strong. The cell can
therefore be pressurised to study how materials behave under
high pressure. Cells fitted with diamond windows have been
operated at pressures of over one million atmospheres at the
Carnegie Institute in Washington.
   The same qualities--mechanical strength, chemical inert-
ness and infrared transparency--were the reasons why dia-
mond windows were selected for the NASA space-probes sent
to Venus in 1978. As the probes descended to the surface of
the planet, arrays of detectors measured the infrared radiation
being emitted at different wavelengths by the atmosphere.
From the measurements scientists could assess the tem-
perature and the chemical composition of the atmosphere.
The windows covering the detectors had to withstand
decelerations of over 500 times the acceleration due to gravity
on Earth. They also had to survive the effect of a highly
corrosive atmosphere at red heat and a hundred times the
atmospheric pressure on Earth, and of course they had to be
transparent to infrared radiation. Only diamond could meet
this specification.
   The high frequencies of vibration in diamond has other
consequences too. According to quantum theory, a micro-
scopic system will only vibrate if it is given an amount of
energy at least equal to the frequency of vibration multiplied
by Planck's constant. Vibrations with very high frequencies,
such as can occur in diamond, require such a large amount of
energy that they are unlikely to occur at room temperature.
Consequently, at room temperature diamond is a relatively
static crystal. When something hot touches diamond, the
atomic vibrations that constitute the passage of heat pass
through the crystal undisturbed by local virbrations due to
the crystal's own finite temperature. The relatively static
lattice in a diamond ensures that the scattering is at a
minimum and the thermal conductivity is exceptionally
good. As a result, diamond is an excellent conductor of heat.
In fact, at room temperature a diamond has a thermal
conductivity about six times higher than a piece of copper.
   This high thermal conductivity gives diamond a small but
useful role in the semiconductor industry. As electronic
components become smal-
ler and more powerful
it becomes increasingly
important to extract waste
heat   from    them.   For
example, one type of silicon
diode used in microwave
communications can operate
at a power density of I
kilowatt per square milli-
metre of base area.  By
mounting the diodes on
diamond blocks, the heat
generated at the base of the
diode can be conducted
away far more rapidly
than by mounting it directly on a copper heat sink.
   There is another way of looking at how stable the structure
of diamond is--that is by asking how easy it is to break the
bonds that hold it together. ln fact, breaking one of the bonds,
by pulling an electron out of it, requires a lot of energy.
   Electrons, being charged particles, interact readily with
electromagnetic radiation. An electron can be given enough
energy to break out of its bond if the frequency of the radi-
ation is high enough--quantum theory tells us that, as with
atomic vibrations, the energy in a light wave comes in
increments of its frequency multiplied by Planck's constant.
To excite an electron out of its bond requires high frequency
radiation, falling in the ultra-violet part of the spectrum. To
the joy of jewellers visible light has too low a frequency to
excite an electron in a perfect diamond. It passes straight
through without absorption and the diamond looks bright
   and clean.
   ln fact, the diamonds we see in jewellers' windows are
typical of only a small percentage of natural diamonds. Most
diamonds are brown or yellow with little visual appeal and
are fit only for industrial use. The colour is produced by
imperfections and impurities in the diamond, for example, a
yellow colour results when the diamond contains nitrogen
atoms clustered together in equilateral triangles with each
nitrogen atom replacing one carbon atom of the perfect
diamond (Figure 4). At these defects the electron orbitals are
very different from those found in the perfect regions of the
diamond. The electrons may be excited from one orbital to
another, still localised at the nitrogen impurity, by much less
energy than is required in the perfect diamond: in fact, blue
light has sufficient quantum energy. Because the diamond is
absorbing blue light, it appears yellow in ordinary light.
   The colours produced by different atomic sized defects are
specific to the particular defect. Diamonds may be brown,
mauve, green or blue. These colorations are by no means
mere curiosities. Atomic-sized defects in covalent semicon-
ductors are conceptually very simple, but currently there is no
reliable way of predicting their properties by calculation from
first principles. This is a serious problem, for defects like these
have a dramatic effect on the functioning of an electronic
device, and it would be desirable to be able to predict their
properties. Diamond, the simplest of the elemental semicon-
ductors, is an obvious test material for these calculations.
   This brief article has necessarily picked out only a few
aspects of diamond. We have seen that diamonds are now
essential tools in heavy engineering, infrared optics, elec-
tronic heat sinks and basic solid state research. They also
perform surgery, detect radiation and play records. But curi-
ously, as in Roman days, diamond is still best known as a
Mystical symbol: as a symbol of everlasting          love. []


                                 <2The search for a viral penicillin>2

          <2Because viruses replicate by hijacking the genetic machinery of host cells, it becomes extremely>2
  <2difficult to make effective anti-viral drugs. Inhibiting the turnover of viruses often means inhibiting>2

                     <2the host cells too. But some new anti-virals are overcoming these obstacles>2

                                                    <2Andrew Scott>2

     THE arrival of effective
     anti-viral drugs has
     been eagerly awaited
ever since penicillin began its
war against bacterial infec-
tions during the 1940s. Since
then a host of antibiotics
have been developed to fight
bacteria but in the battle
against viral infections we are
still largely dependent on the
body's imperfect natural de-
fences.   The    continuing
search for drugs to combat
viral infections presents
modern medicine with one
of its greatest challenges.
Much has been written about
the potential of genetic en-
gineering to provide plentiful
supplies of interferon and new vaccines. But the challenge is
also being met in more conventional ways, and many chem-
icals look promising as potential anti-vira agents.
   There are good biological reasons for why it is so difficult
to produce drugs that will knock out viral infections. Viruses
multiply inside cells by hijacking the cells' own molecular
machinery and forcing it into the service of the viral life-cycle.
Some viruses rely entirely on the enzymes of the infected cell
to catalyse every step in the production of more viruses. Other
viruses make many of their own enzymes but still depend on
cellular proteins to perform some essential taslks. This in-
sidious behaviour means that many drugs which interfere
with the life-cycle of the virus, for example by inhibiting the
activity of crucial enzymes, will do the same to normal host
cells. The toxicity of such drugs severely limits their use in
anti-viral treatment.
   Drugs that are selectively toxic, affecting only viruses or
cells already infected with a virus, have proved extremely
hard to find. Nevertheless, as more is learnt about the molec-
ular details of viral infections, points at which viruses might
be vulnerable to selective attack are being uncovered.
   Obvious targets would be the unique viral enzymes, coded
for by the genes of the virus.
  Viruses can contain from one to over 200 genes, many
coding for enzymes which perform highly specialised tasks in
the viral life-cycle. If chemicals can be found that inhibit the
activity of these viral enzymes, while leaving cellular enzymes
unaffected, then the path to anti-viral drugs will have been
cleared. Alternatively a drug might be ineffective until con-
verted into an active form by a particular viral enzyme, thus
restricting the action of the drug to only those cells that are
infected with the virus.
   One of the most publicised of the new anti-viral agents (and
one of only three anti-viral, drugs currently listed for pre-
scription in the UK Monthly Index of Medical Specialities) is
acyclovir--the trade name for 9-(2-hydroxyethoxymethyl)
guanine. Acyclovir's anti-viral activity is based on just the
kind of selective enzyme interactions outlined above.
   The structure of acyclovir shares crucial features in com-
mon with two of the precursors of DNA-thymidine and
deoxycytidine (Figure I). Before these precursors can be in-
corporated into viral DNA, they must be phosphorylated
                               Certain viruses (the herpes
                               group for example) produce
                               an enzyme called thymidine/
                               deoxycytidine kinase, which
                               is responsible for adding a
                               phosphate group to these two
                               precursors.  Because of its
                               similar structure acyclovir
                               can also receive a phosphate
                               group from the thymidine/
                               deoxycytidine kinase en-
                               zyme. This is the first step in
                               the conversion of acyclovir
                               into its anri-viral form.
                                 In the next step enzymes
                               native to the infected cell add
                               two more phosphate groups
                               to make acyclovir triphos-
                               phate.  Acyclovir triph-
                               osphate has a very similar
structure to deoxyguanosine triphosphate (dGTP), the direct
precursor of one of the four nucleotide "building blocks" that
are linked together in precise sequences to make DNA. This
similarity allows acyclovir triphosphate to bind to the enzyme
(called DNA polymerase) that links the nucleotides together
during the replication of viral DNA. This somehow inhibits
copies of viral DNA being made, and is the basis of acyclovir's
anti-viral activity.
    Binding of acyclovir triphosphate with DNA polymeras
could inhibit viral DNA synthesis in two ways.
First, acyclovir triphosphate might simply compete with
dGTP for a binding site on the polymerase enzyme, and so
prevent the proper incorporation of dGTP into DNA.
Second, acyclovir triphosphate might itself be mistakenly
incorporated into DNA, in place of dGTP. If this occurs the
chemical structure of the drug makes further growth of the
DNA chain imposible, and so the copies of viral DNA would
never be completed.
   Acyclovir is a specifically anti-viral drug because the
enzyes of normal healthy cells cannot efficiently perform
the initial phosphate addition achieved by the viral enzyme.
So acyclovir phosphate and triphosphate are not formed in
healthy cells, whose DNA synthesis is therefore not affected.
Also, the drug seems to inhibit the viral DNA polynerase
enzyme much more effectively than it does the DNA poly-
merase used by the cell to copy its own DNA.
    Acyclovir has been developed and marketed by the Bur-
roughs Wellcome company, and while it is certainly not an
anti-viral panacea it is proving of definite benefit in the treat-
ment of herpes virus infections. Herpes viruses cause many
diseases in humans, including genital herpes shingles and
cold sores. In patients whose immune system is deficient for
any reason (after transplant surgery or anti-cancer therapy for
example) herpes virus can cause very serious infections
which can occasionally prove fatal. Acyclovir given intra-
venously, orally or applied directly at the site of infection can
accelerate healing and restrict the spread and recurrence of
many herpes infections (<1British Medical Journal, 1982, vol>1
285, p 1223.).
Because of its selective anti-viral action acyclovir treatment
avoids many of the toxic side-effects found with earlier drugs.
According to Professor Morag Timbury of Glasgow Royal
Infirmary "acyclovir seems
set to become one of the first
effective anti-viral agents
that can be given systemi-
cally in safety."
  Many other chemicals that
act in a similar way to acy-
clovir are under in-
vestigation.  They all have
structural similarities to the
nucleotide building blocks of
DNA (or RNA), allowing
them to interfere with the
replication of viral genetic
material. Of course in order
to be effective anti-viral
agents they must at some
stage be dependent on a viral
enzyme to convert them into
their active form, or they
must selectively inhibit viral
enzymes directlvy. Another of
the three anti-viral drugs
currently prescribed, called
vidarabine, shares several
structural features with
acyclovir but the precise
mechanism of its action has
not been worked out.
  One viral enzyme that is
an obvious target for selec-
tive attack is "reverse
transcriptase" found in the
RNA--containing     retro-
viruses. This enzyme copies
the viral RNA genetic mate-
rial into DNA, which is then
integrated into the cell's~
chromosomes as an essential
step in the viral life-cycle. A
wide range of chemicals have
been shown to inhibit the re-
verse transcriptase enzymes
but their medical value has
not yet been determined.
  An alternative to attacking
the enzymes that catalyse im-
portant steps in the viral life-
cycle is to try and interfere
with the viral genetic mate-
rial directly. One possibility
is to make a short section of
DNA or RNA that can bind
to a particular region of viral
genetic material to form a
double-stranded   complex,
just like the familiar double-
helix of cellular DNA. In order to be able to bind in this way
the sequence of nucleotides in the synthetic piece of DNA or
RNA needs to be complementary to the viral sequence.
This means that it must be capable of forming the weak hyd-
rogen bonds between the two strands which hold together all
double-stranded forms of DNA or RNA. The formation of
such complexes might prevent the viral genes from being
replicated, or from being used to direct the manufacture of
viral proteins.
   Paul Zamecnik and Mary Stephenson of Harvard Univer-
sity have used this approach to interfere with the activity of
Rous sarcoma virus (a retrovirus that causes cancer in ani-
mals). The sequence of nucleotides at each end of the single-
stranded viral RNA was worked out in 1976. Zamecnik and
Stephenson linked together 13 nucleotides to produce an
"oligonucleotide" <1(oligo=>1 a few) that was complementary to a
short region found at both ends of the viral RNA. They added
this oligonucleotide to cultured chicken embryo cells infected
with Rous sarcoma virus and found that the production of
new viruses within the infected cells was strongly inhibited
<1(Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences .>1 1978.
vol 75, p 280). Presumably the synthetic oligonucleotide was
taken up by the cells and became bound to the com-
plementary sequence on the viral RNA.
   There are several stages at which binding of the oli-
gonucleotide could inhibit virus production. It could bind to
the viral RNA (Figure 21), preventing it from being copied
into the double-stranded DNA which later integrates into the
host chromosomes. Secondly, it could bind to the DNA copy
of the viral RNA. This might prevent the integration process
(Figure 2.2) or interfere with the copying of integrated DNA
into the messenger RNA molecules that are used to direct
protein synthesis (Figure 2.3). Finally, the oligonucleotide
might bind to the messenger RNA, preventing protein
synthesis from taking place (Figure 2.4).
   Working out the nucleotide sequence of viral genetic mate-
rial and making oligonucleotides of specific sequences is
steadily becoming easier, more efficient and more accurate.
This opens up the prospect of developing the preliminary
work done bv Zamecnick, Stephenson and others into a
general strategy for anti-viral therapy. The success of this
approach will depend on finding sequences for oligo-
nucleotides that bind sufficiently well to viral genetic mate-
rial to cripple the virus, and yet do not bind to normal cellular
DNA or RNA.
   The approaches to anti-viral drugs discussed so far have
concentrated on interfering with viruses once they have
entered cells and the process of infection has begun. Some
research teams are trying to prevent viruses from getting
inside cells in the first place.
   Particular regions on the coat proteins of viruses must bind
to receptor molecules in the cell membrane before the viruses
can enter animal cells. Professor Purnell Choppin and his
colleagues at the Rockefeller University in New York have
made peptides (short sections of protein) with a similar struc-
ture to the regions of virus proteins that bind to membrane
receptors. The hope is that these peptides might compete with
the virus proteins for binding to the receptor molecules. If
enough of the synthetic peptide molecules are supplied then
there might be very few free receptors left for the viruses to
bind to.
   Some preliminary trials of this approach have been en-
couraging. When appropriate peptides are added to cultured
animal cells the ability of viruses such as measles and influ-
enza virus to infect the cells is considerably reduced
( <1Virology,>1 1980, vol 105, p 205). Of course the true potential
of these synthetic peptides will be revealed only when they are
tried out against infections in live animals, and Professor
Choppin's research group is currently performing such tests.

                <2Stop viruses disrobing>2
   When viruses succeed in binding to cell membrane recep-
tors they still have to enter the cell and break up into sepa-
rated proteins and genetic material before they can replicate.
Dr Kai Simons of the European Molecular Biology Labora-
tory has found that at least some animal viruses enter the cell
surrounded by an envelope of cell membrane. This mem-
brane then fuses with the membrane of a cell body called a
lysosome and the virus is eventually released from the
Iysosome to initiate infection (see <1New Scientist,>1 10 February,
p 372). Simons has suggested that drugs preventing the fusion
between the lysosome membrane and the piece of membrane
surrounding entering viruses might be very effective anti-viral
agents. It remains to be seen whether or not this idea can be
put into practice.
   The final chance of preventing virus replication beginning,
is to inhibit in some way the uncoating stage where coat
proteins of the virus dissociate from the genetic material they
surround, The third anti-viral drug available now is a cage-
like hydrocarbon amine molecule called amantadine, which
seems to inhibit the uncoating of influenza viruses in some
way. Although the details of how amantadine works are un-
known, the drug does seem to accumulate inside lysosomes.
Perhaps it acts at the lysosomal stage of the entry process
outlined by Simons.
   Another possible point of attack is the final assembly of
new viruses and their release from the infected cell. During
these final stages host enzymes attach carbohydrate groups to
certain viral proteins, converting them into glycoproteins.
Drugs that interfere with this process (called glycosylation
inhibitors) have been found to inhibit the production of
several kinds of virus.  Two examples of promising
glycosylation inhibitors currently under investigationn are
2-deoxyglucose and glucosamine, but again the mechanism
of their anti-viral activity is not fully understood.
   The most publicised aspect of recent anti-viral research has
of course been the work on interferon--part of the body's
natural defence against viruses. The interferons are a series of
small glycoproteins whose synthesis is induced by many
viruses. At least one trigger of interferon production appears
to be the double-stranded RNA molecules that are formed
during the lifecycle of many viruses (including the DNA-
containing viruses).
   After it is released from the cell, interferon becomes
attached to neighbouring cells and converts them into an
"anti-viral state" in which the multiplication of viruses is
strongly inhibited. The mechanism of this anti-viral effect is
still not fully worked out, but it certainly involves the
increased production of two particular enzymes.
   The first of these enzymes makes an unusual series of oligo-
nucleotide molecules with the general name of 2',5'-oligo-
adenylate. These molecules go on to activate a "nuclease"
enzyme that breaks down messenger RNA molecules used to
make viral proteins. The second interferon-induced enzyme
adds a phosphate group to a protein that is essential for the
synthesis of new proteins to begin. Addition of this phosphate
group impairs the function of the essential protein, and viral
protein synthesis fails to begin. Both enzymes appear to be
activated by viral double-stranded RNA. But exactly how
viral protein synthesis is selectively inhibited, leaving cellular
protein synthesis relatively unaffected, is still not clear.
   The great appeal of interferon as an anti-viral agent is its
effectiveness against a wide range of viruses of varied struc-
ture and containing different types of genetic material. This is
in contrast to most potential anti-viral agents, whose action is
usually restricted to only a few of the many different types of
viral agents that cause disease.
   Interferon is of course not a new discovery--it was first
reported in 1957 by Alick Isaacs and Jean Lindenmann work-
ing at the National Institute for Medical Research in London.
The recent upsurge in interest has been generated by the
possibility of producing large quantities of interferon using
modern techniques, including genetic engneering. Trials of
interferon in viral disease have certainly met with some suc-
cess. It has proved of benefit when used against herpes viruses
or viral hepatitis for example, and researchers at the MRC's
Common Cold Unit in Wiltshire have shown that it can
provide effective protection against colds. For the time being
however, interferon remains very much an experimental
drug whose full clinical value has yet to be determined.
   An alternative to using interferon itself as an anti-viral drug
is to use chemicals that induce cells to make their own inter-
feron. One approach has been to make synthetic double-
stranded RNA molecule~ which can mimic the effect of viral
double-stranded RNA as an inducer of interferon prod-
ction. Several reserch groups have performed clinical trials
with a simple synthetic RNA called polyinosinic-
polycytidylic acid (polyl:C). While interferon production was
certainly induced by this compound its efficacy in treating
viral infections bas so far been disappointing.
   Another idea thrown up by interferon research has been to
make synthetic analogues of the 2',5'-oligoadenylate mole-
cules formed in response to interferon and which activate the
nuclease enzyme to break down viral messenger RNA. Paul
Doetsch and co-workers at the Temple University Medical
School in Philadelphia have administered a 2',5'-
oligoadenylate analogue to human lymphocytes (a type of
white blood cell) infected with a herpes virus called Epstein-
Barr virus. This virus causes glandular fever and is also asso-
ciated with a human cancer called Burkitt's lymphoma.
Doetsch found that his synthetic analogue prevented the
normal development of the viral infection within the cells,
prompting him to suggest that it might have therapeutic
potential <1(Proceedings of the US National Academy of>1
<1Sciences,>1 1981, vol 78, p 6699).
 This work with polyl:C and 2',5'-oligoadenylate analogues
demonstrates that even if interferon itself doesn't live up to
our expectations, research into its mechanism of action might
suggest new and more effective ways to attack viral disease.
   The battle to conquer viruses is unlikely to be transformed
by the sort of dramatic advance that penicillin made in the
earlier fight against bacteria. There is more likely to be a
gradual wearing down of viral disease, with a wide variety of
drugs becoming increasingly effective against specific types of
virus. The first successes are already being achieved with
acyclovir, vidarabine, amantadine and interferon.  []


                                <2French Science--finance rules aux quais>2

    <2The Socialist government in France has achieved a change in the country's R&D programme that>2

                      <2has astounded observers. Critics say the figures are fudged>2

                                              <2Andrew Lloyd>2

          FRENCH R&D has gone through an irreversible
  change even though budgetary "rigour" looks certain
 to clip the massive spending central to the government's
 strategy to encourage research, development and high tech-
nology industry. Just how much spending has been and will
be hit is the talk of the research world in France at the
 moment. But even without the blank cheques originally
promised, enough has been achieved in the 22 months since
 the Socialists came to power to make sure French research
will never be the same again.
 "Even sceptics have to admit that the French have some-
 thing to show for their research efforts over the past two
years" concedes one scientific counsellor at a foreign embassy
in Paris. Money, new priorities, institutional changes, tax
incentives and other measures have been used to influence
progress in high technology <1(New Scientist,>1 vol 93, p 19). Just
as importantly, the authorities have urged the French to
change their attitude to science.
   For once, foreign opinion of France is more positive than
that of the French. "The thrust [the French] are giving to
science and technology is really unique," declares Louis Ber-
linguet, scientific counsellor at the Canadian Embassy in
Paris. More fulsome in his praise than the anonymous diplo-
mat above, Berlinguet approves of the measures taken. "The
balance sheet is very impressive. Everything has been set up
so that science can get moving," he says. France, he adds, is
one of the few countries where science and technology has a
future. "Chevenement, the minister for research and tech-
nology, and President Mitterrand are surrounded by good
scientists."
   It was Francois Mitterrand, even before his election in May
1981, who turned attention to science and technology. He
promised a powerful research ministry to push the niggardly
1.8 per cent of gross domestic product spent on research to
2.5 per cent by 1985. The man charged with carrying out this
policy, the "advocate of the future", was Jean-Pierre Cheven-
ement, son of a schoolteacher, came to power with the repu-
tation of a left-wing idealist. Since then he has shown every
sign of being a pragmatist, an adroit politician and a very hard
worker. Under Chevenement, the government has created
changes affecting nearly every aspect of scientific life.
  The cornerstone of the new policies is a law piloted through
parliament by Chevenement last July. His big breakthrough
was to get parliament to accept a high technology spending
programme up to 1985 with a commitment to priorities. The
plan was to avoid annual parliamentary wrangles.
  The top priorities agreed are: rational production, use and
diversification of energy, biotechnology; electronics; sci-
entific resrearch and technological innovation in the service of
the developing nations; research into employment and work-
ing conditions; promotion of French as a scientific language
and the discrimination of scientific and technical culture; and
the development of technology use in industry.
  The first three and the last have obvious economic impli-
cations, the other priorities have long-term political
value--though it could be argued that even these will provide
indirect economic benefits.
  So far, electronics has gleaned the bulk of aid and much of
the limelight. Last year, the government announced it would
receive a $20 thousand million investment over the next five
years, including private sector funds. Substantial amounts
have been earmarked for energy--mainly to a new agency for
energy management and the atomic energy agency. Bio-
technology spending has been more diffuse but it will get at
least #100 million a year in government spending.
  Leaving aside the vexed question of exactly how much
money the government is going to spend, there is heated
argument about its approach. First, the government is pump-
ing a lot of cash into obsolescent industries. Secondly, the
new research and technology law itself singles out 10 or so
second-priority sectors worthy of attention. "They've adop-
ted a sheepdog approach and put priorities on everything,
except for environment and
university research," says
one observer. A lot of money
is going to the losers. Steel
and textiles are examples,
though the government
would reply that it is good
marketing policy to renovate
machinery, improve prod-
uctivity and quality.
  While finance is central to
the new policies, other mea-
sures have been hugely suc-
cessful. The first move was to
galvanise scientific opinion
by a series of regional and
national debates on science
policy. It was theoretically
out of these debates that the
legislation on research and
technology    policy   was
framed.  The programme
may easily be criticised as a
political ploy designed to
make decisions already taken
look like the result of demo-
cratic process. Most observ-
ers feel that the discussion re-
motivated some of the more
dispirited sections of the sci-
entific community.
  One diplomat observed:
"The national colloquium
and the discussions leading
up to it gave the lower rank-
ing researcher better status,
and a feeling of more in-
volvement in his work." A
verdict not shared by all. Henry Bordes-Pages, spokesman on
research for the white-collar union CGG says: "The govern-
ment has spent too much time on debates.  And
a year later, researchers have lost their motivation now that
they find promises of more money have been broken." More-
over, some senior research directors are particularly cha-
grined by credits which are frozen as soon as they are granted.
  The science establishment itself, in particular the Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique <1(CNRS),>1 France's
25 000-strong state research body, was rendered wide-eyed by
a reorganisation at senior levels at the end of 1981. Later,
senior researchers in some science establishments lost their
security of job tenure. Chevenement set up a new manage-
ment structure within the research ministry to coordinate
national ad industry research efforts. The new organisation
rivals DNA in its complexity. But Chevenement has created
a body which is better equipped to achieve the objectives laid
down in the law. On the negative side, as political opponents
are only too ready to point out, Chevenement has installed
his own men in key positions.
  The reorganisation of the CNRS and other bodies is one
facet of a major principle behind the government strategy: the
researcher must be tempted down from his ivory tower to talk
to industry and think about the needs of the real world. This
message has begun to percolate through the corridors of
science power. People in universities are beginning to think
about how they relate to the rest of the world.
  The French, it must be said, have been lost for centuries in
wonderment at science. They have accorded it blind respect
while considering it totally irrelevant to the real world.
Scientists for their part have tended to consider the layman's
admiration as their right and the real world as irrelevant.
  Another aim of the new policies is decentralisation. Pre-
vious governments have paid lip service to the idea but
achieved little. Perhaps it was too difficult to let the "keys to
power" leave Paris. Chevenement has installed a system of
regionalising research. He has created regional delegations,
encouraged bodies that finance innovation, such as ANVAR,
to move away from the capital, and generally supported
initiatives in research at regional level. These moves have
gone down fairly well in most quarters though again political
cynics see decentralisation as a long-term ploy by Chevene-
ment to build up personal political support in the provinces.
  There is widespread approval for all these measures with
occasional examples of carping criticism. There is unanimous
scepticism on the reality of the huge budget increases voted
parliament and confirmed by Chevenement. In mid-January,
the minister made his frankest admission yet that money is
tight. "The forecast growth for the civil research budget is
17.8 per cent. It is possible that this may be a little reduced
by budgetary adjustment," he told a gathering of French re-
searchers and administrators on the Cote d'Azur.
  The 1982 budget has already fallen short of spending
targets--thanks to a prime ministerial freeze on 25 per cent of
capital spending.  But just how far short is anyone's
guess--and a guess that few are prepared to make. Even a
parliamentary question received such an ambiguous answer
that deputies were little the wiser after the government's
reply. But for the moment it seems that Chevenement is
fighting to keep up appearances of big budget increases while
losing at least a little ground to other ministries in that fight
for limited funds.
  Scepticism over official figures comes from both ends of the
polictical spectrum. "It's difficult to say just how much
spending will fall short of target," says Henry Bordes-Pages.
But some of this year's rumoured "freeze" on credits may
mean there is little real increase at all, he says. At the CNPF,
France's business and industry lobby, there are complaints
that the government has been fudging figures to make it look
as though targets have been met. Some of the present govern-
ment's high technology spending is being inflated by includ-
ing money already earmarked by the previous government.
Many people wonder for how long cosmetic accounting can
hide broken promises.

                   <2A brighter future>2
  But despite the doubts, it seems at least probable that sub-
stantial research spending increases have occurred, at least in
the seven areas singled out for special treatment. Chevene-
ment said last month that preliminary estimates for 1982
science spending show that the percentage of GDP spent on
R&D has already risen to 2.1 per cent, in line with the 1985
target of 2.5 per cent.
  Nevertheless, there are areas where France's research policy
has made little progress. Apart from union complaints about
the few jobs generated, there is little sign that the much
vaunted investments in high technology are pulling the
French out of recession, once a basic tenent of the Chevene-
ment philosophy. Rival ministers must even claim that heavy
spending in one area is holding back growth in others. Most
critics say it is too early to judge. The future still looks
brighter than it would have done without the new plans.
  Industry is another area where little progress has been
made. From his early days as minister, Chevenement pointed
out that industry's share of R&D spending compared badly
with the United States, the German Federal Republic and
Japan. To reach the 2.5 per cent of GDP target by 1985
industry, R&D had to increase by 8 per cent a year. Last year,
it managed 5 per cent. The CNPF points out that industry
spending will always appear lower in countries where a lot of
government military research is carried out (compared with
Germany and Japan for example). They also say it was gov-
ernment research which slipped back the most between 1973
and 1981 and that industry needs to be allowed to make
profits before upping R&D.
  Chevenement was actually given responsibility for industry
as well as research just under a year ago. This removed one
source of opposition to his plans (an independent industrv
ministry) but put more pressure on him to achieve results
today rather than tomorrow. And, to mix a metaphor,
France's lame ducks may have become an albatross around
his neck.
  Chevenement's influence has yet to be seen in the banks,
now mostly state owned. His plan was to push the banks into
investing more risk capital--a pressure which the banks so far
have been able to resist. The number two at the Banque
Nationale de Pans, Jacques Masson, refused to answer a <1New>1
<1Scientist>1 question on whether BNP had increased its
financing of innovation since the socialists had come to
power. Chevenement is finding that finance from the trea-
sury, the banks or from private industry still rules <1aux quais>1
de Paris.                                            []
   <2MONITOR>2
          <2Sugary foods may promote breast cancer>2

CERTAIN Foods, particularly sugar,
  may encourage the development of
 cancer of the breast, suggest Stephen
Seely of the University of Manchester and
Dr D. F. Horrobin of Efamol Research
Institute in Kentville, Nova Scotia. Their
epidemiological studies, to be published in
the July issue of <1Medical Hypotheses,>1 high-
light a striking correlation between dietary
intake of sugar and mortality
from breast cancer across 20
countries.
  Breast cancer is primarily a
hormone dependent disease;
thus, when the cells are grown in
tissue culture, their proliferation
is temporarily checked by the
absence of female sex hormones.
So the ovaries of women
suffering from breast cancer are
often removed. But the relief is
only temporary because when
hormone-dependent cancers are
deprived oF their hormone
supply, sooner or later some
cancer cells mutate to become
independent of them and the
growth of the tumour is
resumed.
  But diet also appears to have a strong
connection with breast cancer. The most
important evidence, as in all diet-related
diseases, comes from immigrant studies.
The incidence of breast cancer in women of
Japanese origin living in the United States
has been intensively studied. The disease is
rare in Japan but begins to become more
common in the first generation born in the
United States, and approximates the rate
prevailing in the US by the second gener-
ation.
  Yet suspecting that a disease is linked to
diet is a far cry from being able to identify
the item of diet that has toxic or pathogenic
properties. But dietary pathogens can be
traced by looking for a match between the
geographical distribution of a disease and
the consumption of various food-stuffs.
  A statistical survey carried out by Seely
and Horrobin shows that the geographical
distribution of breast cancer varies with
age: not a surprising discovery for a disease
in which hormonal and dietary Factors
overlap. It is reasonable to assume that
hormonal effects predominate in younger
women, while dietary factors may become
increasingly important in older women. So
the geographical distribution of the disease
in older women is rnore likely to point to
dietary pathogens.
  Among the 20 countries belonging to the
Organisation of Economic Cooperation
and Development, for which reliable statis-
tics on both mortality and food
consumption are available, the highest
mortality from breast cancer in older
women (65-74 group), in descending order,
occurs in the United Kingdom, the Nether-
lands, Ireland, Denmark and Canada, and
the lowest in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Yugos-
lavia and Japan. This ranking order is
based on the latest available mortality
statistics, ranging from 1977 to 1979. The
researchers found that this geographical
pattern is best matched by that of sugar
consumption, in which the leading coun-
tries are, in descending order, the UK, the
Netherlands,   Ireland,    Canada   and
Denmark, and the countries with the
lowest consumption are Italy, Yugoslavia,
Spain, Portugal and Japan. The data on the
consumption of food antedate mortality
statistics by 10 years, and include all food-
stuffs with high sugar content, like honey,
syrup, and glucose, in proportion to their
sugar content.
   Insulin is probably the connecting link
between sugar consumption and breast
cancer this hormone is secreted in
response to rising levels of glucose in the
blood. The public image of insulin is that it
is some kind digestive enzyme, necessary
for the metabolism of carbohydrates which,
in fact, is not the case. Its function can be
best visualised as a form of rationing which,
in lean seasons, determines priorities at
which various tissues can draw glucose
from the plasma. Some essential and irre-
placeable tissues, like the brain, kidney
tubules, intestinal mucosa and red blood
corpuscles, can take up glucose in the
absence of insulin, which other tissues,
notably muscles which are normally the
largest consumers of glucose, need its pres-
ence. When food is plentiful, sufficient
insulin is secreted for all organs to satisfy
their needs, but when food is scarce, some
organs or tissues are starved. The female
breast is a luxury organ, low in the order of
priorities. In tissue cultures insulin is an
absolute requirement for the growth prolif-
eration of normal mammary tissue and
breast cancer cells are, at least initially, also
dependent on it. Its connection with breast
cancer is essentially the same as that of
oestrogens and prolactin.
  The apparent pathogenic effect of sugar,
in this light, is due to its easy digestibility.
Commercial refined sugar (sucrose) is a
disaccharide consisting of glucose and fruc-
tose. When they are split, glucose immedi-
ately enters the circulation.  Fructose is
inverted in the liver and follows after a brief
interval. The sudden appearance of glucose
in the bloodstream and the corresponding
rise in blood glucose level evokes a quick
response from the pancreas and results in a
brief state of apparent overabundance. This
state seems to act on low-priority tissues as
a mild carcinogen.
  According to this agument glucose is a
supersugar. When consumed as such, its
entry in the bloodstream is not preceded by
any metabolic work. Glucose is used by the
food industry mainly in the manufacture of
           confectionary. In Britain and in
           the Netherlands it accounts For
           about 10 per cent of the total
           consumption of sugar, in
           Ireland for 8 per cent, in
           Germany and France for about
           5 per cent. The fact that the
           three largest consumers also
           have the highest rates of
           mortality from breast cancer is
           certainly suggestive.
             Synthetic oestrogens (in oral
           contraceptives) and phyto-
           oestrogen (mimics of oestrogen
           present in many food plants)
           may also act, in conjunction
           with natural hormones, to
           promote breast cancer in
           women.  Seely and Horrobin
           have explored the influence of
oestrogen-mimics. Leguminous plants are
the most important producers of phyto-
oestrogens. The most common legumes are
pasture plants such as clover, and soya and
other beans eaten by humans. Sheep are
particularly sensitive to phyto-oestrogens
(presumably because they crop pastures
more closely than cows); the substances can
cause infertility, difficult labour and
lactation in unbred ewes.  Oestrogen-
mimics, therefore, can have an indirect
effect on the breast.  The traditional
consumers of soya beans are countries of
the Far East. Other leguminous plants play
a more important part in the diet of
Mediterranean than North European
countries; so the consumption of legu-
minous plants seems negatively correlated
with breast cancer. It is interesting to note,
however, that in these countries breast
cancer in younger women is comparative
more prevalent than in older women. In
                     Japan, for example,
                     breast cancer mor-
                     tality in the 65-74 age
                     group is 14 per cent
                     of that in Britain,
                     while in the 35--44 age
                     group it is 36 per
                     cent.  The corres-
                     ponding figures for
                     Spain, Portugal and
                     Yugoslavia       are
                     42/63, 38/64 and
                     30/58    per    cent
                     respectively.  Phyto-
                     oestrogens are thus
                     unlikely to represent
                     an important factor
                     in the development of
                     breast cancer, but
                     they may have some
                     contributory effect in
                     younger women.  []
     <2An ear for rhyme helps children read>2

D0 CHILDREN learn to read by
      recognising whole words or by associ-
ating sounds with letters?  Educational
theory has embraced both views, with the
"phonetics" and "look-and-say" camps
firmly entrenched. A  new study by Peter
Bryant and Lynette Bradley at Oxford
University provides
the     first good
evidence that the
ability to analyse a
word into its constit-
uent sounds is most
important   in   the
early stages of learn-
ing to read <1(Nature,>1
vol 301. p 419).
   Byrant and Brad-
ley were not the first
to notice that poor
readers were also
insensitive to the
sounds of words, but
their study is the first
to establish the causal
connection between the two.  They
achieved this by combining two different
methods: a longitudinal study, following
the same children for four years from
before they were able in read until they had
been at school for two or three years; and a
training programme that looked at the
effect of giving pre-school children specific
training in categorising sounds.
  They began by testing 403 children on
their ability to pick the odd one out of a list
like "hill, pig, pin". None of these four and
five-year-olds could read at that stage. Four
years later they gave the 368 children left in
the study standard reading and spelling
tests. They also gave them general intel-
ligence tests so that they could exclude the
effects of variations in intelligence.
   The results showed clearly that children
who were good at categorising sounds were
better at reading and spelling regardless of
                      their IQ. But does the
                      one cause the other,
                      or are both due to an
                      unknown       third
                      factor? The training
                      study answered that
                      question. Bryant and
                      Bradley chose 65 of
                      the children who had
                      not been very good at
                      categorising sounds
                      at the beginning of
                      the study and divided
                      them    into    four
                      groups. Two groups
                      received     intensive
                      training over two
                      years in recognising
the common sounds in sets of simple words
represented by pictures. In one group they
were also shown which letters of the alpha-
bet went with which sounds. The other two
groups acted as controls, one receiving no
training at all, the other being taught how
to sort pictures into conceptual categories
(animals, for example).
   Both groups trained to attend to the
sounds of words were significantly better at
reading and spelling at the end of the study
than the untrained group.
   The group that was introduced to the
sounds of individual letters was better at
spelling than the group trained only to pick
out sounds in words.
  Bryant and Bradley conclude that a
child's awareness of the sounds in words,
revealed by their ability to detect rhyme
and alliteration, "has a powerful influence
on their eventual success in learning to read
and spell". They also point out that this
awareness may well be influenced by chil-
dren's experiences before they go in school.
Parents bored with the endless repetition of
nursery rhymes should pause to consider
that this monotonous activity may be
giving their children a head start in their
education. []

            <2Add-on drugs fight insecticide resistance>2

ONE OF the insecticides recommen-
     ded    by    the    World    Health
Organisation for use against <1Culex>1 and
<1Anopheles>1 mosquitoes is malathion, a
fairly   cheap    and   relatively   safe
organophosphate.  But mala-
thion-resistant   strains     of
mosquito are increasing.
  Control authorities may
respond by increasing the dose
of insecticide, but they run the
risk of exceeding "safe" dosages
and increasing environmental
contamination.  This strategy
also increases the selection
pressure for genetically resis-
tant insects--hastening the
inevitable switch to a newer,
possibly more dangerous, and
certainly     more   expensive
insecticide.
  At the London School of
Hygene and Tropical Medi-
cine,     work    by     Janet
Hemingway   on       anopheline
mosquitoes has shown that malathion-
specific resistance is inherited as a single
gene controlling a carboxylesterase
enzyme which breaks down the malathion
to its monoacid.  However, addition of a
synergist such as triphenyl phosphate
                  (TPP) can overcome this resistance,
                  probably by competing with the
malathion and saturating the carboxy-
lesterase enzyme (<1Pesticide Biochemistry>1
<1and Physiology,>1   vol 17, p 149). Further
work in collaboration with G.  P.
Geoghiou of the University of California
has shown that organophosphate resistance
in <1Culex quinquefasciatus>1, a common
  nuisance mosquito
  and vector of
  filariasis, can also be
  suppressed by the


                     addition of synergists
                     such TPP, DEF (a
                     defoliant) or the
                     fungicide     Kitazin
                          (IBP). During selec-
                     tion with malathion
                     and IBP, resistance
                     gene frequency of
                     a stock of <1Culex>1
                     <1quinquefasciatus>1 de-
                     creased at the same
                     rate as untreated
                     mosquitoes, whereas
                     with       malathion
                          alone the resistance
                     gene       frequency
increased fourfold in three generations.
Field applications of malathion and IBP
could therefore delay the onset of
resistance or even reduce the frequency
of resistant genes already present.
Kitazin does increase the mammalian
toxicity of malathion approximately eight-
fold, but even at this level malathion
would remain amongst the less hazardous
insecticides. []
  <2The thinning of the British hare>2

HARES are steadily disappearing from
      the British countryside, say research-
ers at the Game Conservancy in Hamp-
shire.  Modern agricultural practices are
mostly to blame, it seems.
   Dr Richard Barnes, funded by the Natu-
ral Environrnent Research Council, and Dr
Stephen Tapper of the Game Conservancy,
have documented the decline by looking at
hunting records.  Before 1965 hunters
bagged 10 hares per sq. km, on average
every year, but by 1980 only five hares were
shot for every sq. km. Declines in East
Anglia are even more striking.
   Predators and bad weather have helped
to halve the number of British hares. Hares
make up some 20 to 30 per cent of a rural
fox's diet, and foxes have increased by
three-fold over the last 20 years.
   But the main culprit seems to be modern
farming techniques. Barnes radiotracked a
group of hares living on Hampshire farm-
land and found that the animals are very
selective foragers. A hare feeds only very
briefly on any given crop--it will visit
winter wheat, for instance, only in late
February or early March, when the corn is
still short and growing rapidly. For the rest
of the year it will look elsewhere for its
food, timing its trips to turnips or spring
wheats with equal finnesse. Over a year a
hare may travel over an area as large as 50
hectares, in search of the right food.
   To satisfy its taste for diversity, a hare
tries to pick an area where it has access to
half a dozen fields. Hares that cannot avoid
areas with huge fields under monoculture
compensate by establishing very large
home ranges. Barnes and Tapper find that
a small change in the diversity of crops in
an area drastically reduces the number of
resident hares. If some 60 hares live in a sq.
km that contains four fields, the removal of
a single field will cause numbers to plum-
met to less than 20. "The tendency in
modern arable farming to knock out field
boundaries and devote fewer fields to grass
seems to be largely responsible for the
decline in hares," Tapper says.
   Pesticides may also be contributing to
the fall of the hare. Hares (but not rabbits)
are particularly vulnerable to paraquat, a
herbicide often applied to stubble in the
autumn so that it can be easily burned.
Hares are killed when licking fur with the
herbicide. But hares were declining before
paraquat was introduced, and the effects of
agricultural chemicals on wildlife are
notoriously difficult to assess. []


   <2Isotope effect has astronomical implications>2

AMERICAN scientists have found an
     effect that may cast doubt on a whole
body of research in the evolution of the
Solar System, as well as making physicists
look again at the subject of isotopes, forms
of the same element that differ in the
number of neutrons in the nucleus.
   The conventional wisdom on isotopes of
the same element is that they can a
distinguished only in two ways: by the
different masses of the nuclei, and by
subtle differences in the way they absorb
and emit light of specific wavelengths. Both
effects can be exploited to separate
isotopes--for example in enriching
uranium by increasing the ratio of
uranium 238 compared with uranium 235,
although the first is currently the most used
for large-scale enrichment.
  But now Mark H. Thiemens and John E.
Heidenreich III have found a specifically
chemical effect that allows oxygen atoms of
different isotopes to be distinguished. They
have found that molecules of oxygen (02)
split up at different rates according to
whether the molecule contains two atoms
of oxygen-16 or one atom of oxygen-16
combined with another of the rarer
oxygen-17 or oxygen-18 isotopes.  A
strange finding was that the rate was the
same for all the "mixed" molecules, regard-
less of what "unusual" oxygen isotope
they were composed of.
   Measurements of the resulting isotope
ratios closely approximated those found in
carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. Unlike
material from the Earth and other mete-
orites, carbonaceous chondrites have
oxygen-isotope abundances which cannot
be explained by purely mass-related effects.
The discovery of that fact in the early
1970s puzzled astronomers.
   One proposed explanation was a super-
nova explosion near the Solar System as it
was forming, injecting a large quantity of
carbon-16 into the pre-solar nebula and
thus skewing the oxygen-isotope concen-
trations in carbonaceous chondrites.
Thiemens says the new isotope effect
provides a simpler explanation.
   That explanation depends on the pres-
ence of molecular oxygen in the gas cloud
that was condensing to form the Sun,
something the San Diego chemists think
was likely, although they cannot be certain.
Ultraviolet radiation could do the same
job as the electrical discharge in their
laboratory. The Sun now emits ultraviolet
radiation, but a young T Tauri type star
would have emitted up to 10 000 times
more. Such a star would probably have
been close at hand--it is considered to be
an early stage in the evolution of stars like
the Sun.

  Strictly speaking, the isotope selection
effect observed by the San Diego chemists
is not the only one which can be indepen-
dent of mass. Photochemical effects also
occur which rely on the absorption of
a particular wavelength of light by Mole-
cules containing one isotope but not by
those containing other isotopes. However,
such effects require a laser light source
producing only a very narrow band of
wavelengths, a source not available in
nature.
   Existence of a natural isotope effect not
dependent on mass complicates efforts to
deduce the history of the Solar System by
studying isotope ratios. However, it does
explain why measurernents of silicon and
magnesium isotopes yield results which do
not agree with what would be expected
from a supernova explosion.
   Thiemens told a January meeting of the
American Astronomical Society in Boston
that similar isotope effects may exist for
other diatomic gases such as hydrogen and
nitrogen which, like oxygen, have one
isotope much more abundant than others.
Such effects could account for shifts in the
isotopic abundances of hydrogen and
nitrogen in carbonaceous chondrites.
Thiemens said that it might even be possi-
ble to apply the effect to enrichment of
certain isotopes. []
     <2Why aquatic plants have varied leaves>2
AQUATIC flowering plants have two
     distinct forms of growth. Underwater,
the leaves are thin and feathery. Above the
surface they are more like ordinary leaves.
There are other differences too--for exam-
ple, aquatic leaves have fewer stomata--all
of which make feath-
ery leaves better
underwater      and
stouter ones better in
air. Research has now
revealed that the
shape of the leaf is
determined simply
by the surrounding
medium (<1Science>1, vol
219, p 505)
  Paula Deschamp
and Todd Cooke
looked at growth in
<1Callitriche hetero->1
<1phylla,>1 a common
water plant.  They
discovered that there
were lots of things
that would make the
"wrong" sort of leaf
develop.
  Giberellic acid, a
plant      hormone,
caused shoots in the
air to grow under-
water - shaped leaves.
Abscisic acid, an-
other plant hor-
mone, caused un-
dewater shoots to
grow aerial leaves, as
did higher temper-
atures and when
mannitol was added
to the water.
   The common factor to all the manipu-
lations was a change in the water balance
around the growing shoot. Underwater, the
turgor or pressure inside the cells, which is the
difference between the osmotic potential
bringing water into the cell and the water
potential driving water out of the cell, is
high. This makes the cells very elongated.
and that in turn makes the whole leaf, elon-
gated. In air, osmotic potential is almost
balanced by the water potential: the turgor
pressure is low and so the cells--and
                      leaf--are rounder.
                      Mannitol in the
                      water lowered both
                      osmotic and water
                      potential, and made
                      them almost equal,
                      which is why the
                      leaves adopted the
                      form seen in air.
                      Giberellic acid causes
                      cells to elongate by
                      increasing the uptake
                      of water, and so the
                      leaves took the water
                      form.
                        Abscisic acid and
                      high temperature do
                      not affect the hydro-
                      static pressure of the
                      cell.  Instead, say
                      Deschamp       and
                      Cooke, they probably
                      make the cell less
                      yielding, so that even
                      high turgor cannot
                      elongate the cell into
                      the feathery form.
                        The shape of the
                      leaf is thus very
                      simply determined.
                         Merely the presence
                      or     absence of sur-
                      rounding water en-
                      sures that the leaf will
                      be      suited to life un-
                      derwater or on top. []


<2TECHNOLOGY>2
    <2Geologists probe deeper for new metals supply>2

       BRITISH researchers have started a
project that could open up to metals
      mining many areas of the world that
are geologically unexplored.  The pro-
gramme could make it much easier for
geologists to discover deposits of minerals
in rocks hidden beneath layers of relatively
young sedimentary material.
    By far the greatest proportion of the
world's metals mines are in places where
the relatively old mineral-bearing rock is
near to the surface. This is only partly
because digging and operating deep mines
is, in itself, extremely difficult. No mine
goes deeper than about 3 km, because heat
and air pressure become too great.
     The other reason for the scarcity of
mines in areas where sediments have over-
laid the older rocks is that the tools with
which geologists look for deposits a
the main, useful only when the deposits are
 near to the surface. Workers at Britain's
Institute of Geological Sciences aim,
however, to come up with a new set of tools
that can indicate minerals much further
under the ground.
  In a three-year project funded by the
European     Commission     and       the
Department of Industry, the researchers
aim to use a variety of methods to capture
data about the Earth's rocks. These encom-
pass information on surface fractures
obtained  by  remote-sensing  satellites:
details of rocks perhaps 2 km beneath the
surface obtained by drilling bore holes; and
anomalies in the Earth's magnetic field and
gravitational force that are measured in
instruments on board aeroplanes. A further
set of readings come from chemically anal-
ysing soil samples collected from streams.
   By themselves, the data may not be all
that illuminating. But the workers hope to
marry them together with the aid of
computer techniques to come up with sets
of data "signatures" that will indicate
deposits far beneath the Earth.
 The centre of the investigation is the area
of the East Midlands around Nottingham.
At this point the layer of sediment is up to
2 km thick. Underneath are the shale and
granite deposits which workers think stand
a good chance of containing metals. It is
these deposits which (due to millenia of
weathering and other natural forces) are
close to the surface in Cornwall, the High-
lands of Scotland and other areas of Britain
which traditionally have been mined.
 The institute's workers, based in London
and Keyworth, are looking in the East
Midlands for traces of tin, tungsten, lead,
zinc and barium.
 There is little chance that new mines will
open in Britain to excavate these metals.
The mines would create havoc in built-up
areas. Also, in the UK, it is extremely diffi-
cult to find who owns the mineral rights for
specific pieces of land. So mining com-
panies are reluctant to waste years--and
much cash on legal fees--in determining to
whom they should pay royalities once they
have found a deposit.
  In many countries, this problem is
considerably reduced because the state
owns all the mineral rights.
  But the institute's researchers think that
the results of their work could hold equally
in other areas of the world where fewer
obstacles are in the way of mining compa-
nies.  One difficulty remains in that a
mining venture would still need to find a
way through to the deposit in a place where
the sedimentary layer is not too thick. But
many of the layers of sediment are not at all
uniform and may be relatively thin in
places. For example, the sedimentary rocks
that form the top geological layer in much
of southern Britain may be only a few
hundred metres thick in a few isolated sites.
  There is already evidence that mining
corporations are interested in probing
beneath the sedimentary rocks to find new
deposits. In South Australia, for instance,
geologists recently discovered a source of
copper hidden under such a layer. Satellite
data were very useful here.             []


           <2Robots displace slide rules from the classroom>2

 TIME was when a slide rule was the ulti-
   mate in classroom one-upmanship, but
these days, it seems, no pupil should be
without his, or her, robot. That at least was
the impression given by an exhibition in
Birmingham last week at which schools
throughout the country demonstrated
projects in electronic control.
  There were any number of cranes, cars
and mechanical arms fashioned from the
modern equivalents of Meccano. Under
the control of the ubiquitous BBC Micro-
computer, these creations whirred through
their paces, lifting polysterene chips out of
boxes, drawing pictures and finding their
way around.
  Among the home-grown equipment
were a number of cheap devices that are
sold to schools. The most famous is the
BBC Buggy, a box with two wheels and
several sensors. The # 120 Buggy, sold by a
firm called Economatics, has light-sensitive
cells, an infrared receiver, bumpers which
sense collisions and a pen holder. It can also
be equipped with a mechanical arm.
  The Buggy is connected to a BBC
computer by an umbilical cable. Under the
direction of 13 different programs, it
can read codes like the ones found on
supermarket goods, play music, find and
describe objects and draw maps of its
surroundings.
   Aimed at school physics departments is a
device called the VELA. This # 175 black
box, produced by Leeds University, records
measuremants from pieces of laboratory
equipment like digital thermometers, oscil-
loscopes, resistors, timers and so on.
Measurements are shown on a liquid crys-
tal display. Up to four devices can be
attached to VELA at once. The speed at
which VELA operates makes it possible to
record results from experiments that are
difficult to measure any other way.
   Apart from the battery of robots and
electric motors under computer control,
firms are selling gadgets for teaching the
principles of microprocessors.  Scientific
Systems makes what is called the Exploded
View Computer, a # 150 machine which
displays its workings on a board of coloured
lights. The computer can be slowed down
so that each step it takes can be followed on
the display of lights.
   The Birmingham extravaganza was
organised by the Department of Education
and Science, which has run a scheme called
the Microelectronics Education Pro-
gramme (MEP) for the past three years.
Junior education minister William Shelton
took the chance to announce a further #9
million cash injection for the MEP, bring-
ing total govemment funding to #20
million.
   The programme trains teachers and
produces software for use in schools. It has
14 regional information centres scattered
around the country.  Despite the large
amount of funding that has been pumped
into the scheme teachers are worried by the
time it takes for materials and information
to get through to them. "It's a very complex
process," said one.
   "I am well aware that criticism is levelled
at the MEP by classroom teachers who
argue that too little has penetrated to the
level of the teacher from the programme,"
said Roger Conibear, director of the
programme's unit in the West Midlands.
"But I promise the the next 18 months will
see the MEP having an effect."         []


            <2America rushes into optical fibres>2

COMMERCIAL fibre-optic telecommu-
  nications is barely half a decade old, but
already companies in the United States are
ordering massive quantities of "third
generation" equipment based on single-
mode fibres. Some observers predict that
ground-based fibre-optic systems may take
over many of the point-to-point tele-
communications tasks performed by
satellites. But others are concerned that the
telecommunications
industry may be
rushing to use novel
types of fibre before
the technology is
proven.
   The first two gener-
ations of commercial
fibre-optic systems
use multimode fib-
res, in which light is
carried (along a cent-
ral core some 50 mic-
rometres in diameter)
in a variety of possi-
ble modes. The light
pulses spread out as
they travel: this limits
the information the
fibre can carry.
   First generation systems use such fibres
with galium-aluminium-arsenide semi-
conductor lasers producing light at about
0.8 micrometres. The second generation
uses a new type of semiconductor laser,
made of a mixture of iridium, gallium,
arsenic and phosphorus. This laser emits
light  at  1.3  micrometres, a wavelength
more suitable for glass fibres as attenuation
and pulse spreading are reduced.
   Single-mode fibres also operate at 1.3
micrometres, but they have cores only a
few micrometers across. Light can travel in
only one mode, enhancing the capacity of
the fibre to carry data.
   Sourses for single-mode fibres can
present problems. It may be difficult to
channel light into the tiny core of such a
fibre.  But telephone companies building
long-distance, high-capacity transmission
lines have not been slow to take up the
challenge.
   Last last year, AT&T showed it could
transmit 432 million bits of information
per second through a single-mode fibre
system in Atlanta,  Georgia. Meanwhile
AT&T Long Lines--the part of the Bell
System which handles long-distance tele-
phone lines--plans a 1500 km network of
single-mode optical cable. The project will
be finished in 1985.
   Even more ambitious plans for
                     single-mode fibre sys-
                     tems were announ-
                     ced early this year by
                     MCI Communica-
                     tions, one of AT&T's
                     competitors in the
                     long-distance tele-
                     phone market.  The
                     company plans to
                     install fibre trans-
                     mission lines along
                     6600 km of railways
                     in the eastem half of
                     the United States.
                     MCI has already
                     signed contracts to
                     buy most of the
                     fibre for the network,
                     which  should    be
                     completed in 1987.
   Such orders put into the shade the
contracts British Telecom has placed for
single-mode fibre.   The corporation is
installing six lengths of such fibre, totalling
about 400 km. British Telecom plans to
install about 100 000 km of fibre by the end
of the decade, the great bulk of it multi-
mode.
   In the US, some observers point out that
single-mode fibre has been produced only
on a small scale and the technology is not
proven.  The telephone companies may
have "purchased something that doesn't
exist", according to John Kessler, a consul-
tant in Newport, Rhode Island.
   Such difficulties notwithstanding, fibre-
optic systems could bring back to Earth
some of the telephone communications
that are routed through satellite links. Opti-
cal fibres are "intrinsically superior to
satellite radiocommunications for most
applications," says one observer.         []


         <2Automation comes home in Japan>2
  After pouring energy into factory auto-
    mation the inventive Japanese want to
do the same for people's houses and flats. A
two-year research project has produced
what is called the home bus system, a set of
standards for wiring up the home with
coaxial cable. From a control panel in the
living room, a householder would supervise
any number of appliances, ranging from
heaters to door locks.
  The system carries signals in three
frequency hands. One is used for control
messages, another carries TV pictures and
the third high-speed data. The universities
and electronics firms participating in the
project say the wiring scheme in each house
will link up with digital telecom-
munications networks carrying messages
between cities and individual homes. The
project is supervised by researchers work-
ing at the Kansai Electronics Industry
Promotion Centre.
  All this might sound far-fetched; but one
firm, Sanyo, has already made a step in the
direction of home automation. The firm
has developed an electronic chip that can
bring piecemeal systems under unified
control.  In this way, a mechanism for
running the bath that automatically cuts off
before the water overflows could be linked
with, for example, a control unit for the
central heating.
   Sanyo is selling the #5 chip to companies
such as house-builders and sensor manu-
facturers which then incorporate it in their
own projects. The electronics firm says it
will make about 250 000 per month if the
demand catches on. And later this year,
Sanyo plans to enter the business of home
automation itself--albeit in a limited way.
It will sell a remote"controlled lighting
system that incorporates the new chip. The
system, incorporating a control panel simi-
lar to that used with TVs will take a house-
holder's living room from pitch black to
blinding light in sixteen steps           []


            <2Wired-up libraries>2

BRITISH Telecom is developing a
     sound and vision library for use with
cable TV. In return for an extra payment, a
subscriber will call up feature films, audio
entertainment or computer software. These
items could arrive at night for use the next
day. The commercial TV stations are work-
ing on a similar idea using broadcast sig-
nals; meanwhile, the telephone corporation
is seeking commercial partners so it can try
out its idea.
   In the plan, British Telecom would
install videodisc players at the point in a
cable system which links up subscribers
TV sets. To watch a firm, the subscriber
would issue a set of instructions that loads
the relevant disc onto the player. The
signals are then fed via the cable link to the
person's home.
   The result is that, for a fee of about # 1.50
per hour, the subscriber receives a
programme from a disc, but without having
to buy an expensive player.
   In a more sophisticated system, a
subscriber can control the pulses from the
videodisc player via a keyboard in his
home. A mail-order catalogue stored on the
disc could be used in "teleshopping.  []

            <2Germany wheels on>2
         The fastest railway wheels in the world
      are on a new bogie developed by the
German company Messersehmitt-Bolkow-
Blohm. The German Federal Railway set
the record by running the bogie, on a test
bed, at 400 km/h.
   The new bogie does not have rigid axles.
Instead, two short stub axles are coupled
together allowing the wheels to slip inde-
pendently of each other. An important
application could be in low-speed urban
rail systems, which often have tight corners.
   Messerschmitt is developing another
bogie, with controlled slip and with wheel
profiles designed for high speeds, which it
hopes to test on a new inter-city experi-
mental train at 350 km/h.              []
         <2Wind of change>2
THE cold wind of technology could soon
    be blowing through Britain's pig
sties--helping farmers to reduce animal
mortality and so increase their commercial
fortunes.  The draught comes from a
machine called the Medata Blowaway
Unit. It directs a stream of cool air at the
compartments of pig sties in which piglets
normally nuzzle up to their mothers. Often,
when the sow lies down, it squashes
sheltering piglets and suffocates them.
  According to James Burnhill and Sons of
Cleckheaton, the firm selling the unit,
piglet losses with the new system can be
reduced by up to 94 per cent. The company
has tested the mechanism on piglets reared
by 300 sows on a farm near York. In one
trial, installation of the equipment reduced
infant mortality from 10 per cent of the
litter to 0.5 per cent.
  With the #295 system a current of air is
produced at piglet level around the sow
when it is standing up. But as soon as the
animal sits down, a photoelectric cell
switches on the air stream, so stopping the
pig from getting cold. According to the
manufacturer's theory, piglets soon learn to
avoid the air current and retreat to a
warmer place in the sty.                []


       <2Monoclonal tests promise good news for mice>2
MONOCLONAL     antibodies    are
 evolving from a scientific technique
to a true biotechnology. The antibodies are
sets of biological identity tags created by
hybrids made from immune cells and
tumour cells. (Such fusions arc called
hybridomas.)  Reports at the Second
Annual Congress for Hybridoma Research
in Philadelphia suggested ways to "sani-
tise" the antibodies' manufacture, making
this more like a bench process with a
reduced need to involve live animals--or
even live humans.
  Monoclonals' great strength, in theory at
least, is that they are remarkably "clean".
They eliminate the need to purify the most
useful of the wide range of different anti-
bodies produced by an animal's immune
system after an injection of foreign mate-
rial. However, methods for making mono-
clonals produce their own contaminants.
These arise when, for example, the hybrids
are made in part from mouse cells and
raised inside mice.
  For relatively large volumes of anti-
bodies, industry has relied on raising the
hybrids in ascites (fluid in the peritoneal
cavity) in mice, rather than in tissue
culture. But Stephen Fazekas de St Groth
of the Basel Institute of Immunology has
come up with a different method--an auto-
mated system in which a technician collects
the antibodies off an "anti-immunolo-
globulin" column.
  Fazekas de St Groth calls his system
"ascites without the mouse"; it is based on
a method used for decades to Brow bacteria
in suspension. He raises his hybrid cells
under a controlled atmosphere in large jars.
  These contain a spinning mechanism that
turns at a gentle 15 to 30 revolutions per
minute--just enough to ensure convection
and prevent cells from adhering to the glass
walls of the bottle. This allows him to grow
cells at about twice the number per unit
volume that will survive in tissue
culture--and at just below the density at
which they begin to die, poisoned by their
own wastes.
   Many researchers have tried to obtain a
medium for growing antibodies that is free
from calf serum. A team from the Univer-
sity of California at San Diego has
concocted such a medium in which a
particular type of cell that causes cancer in
mice grows readily. These cells, called the
NS I mouse myeloma line, are commonly
used in making hybridomas.
   The vital ingredient that serum provides
to a medium is lipid, which cells need to
maintain the integrity of their outer
membranes. A serum-free medium must

contain something similar. The medium
obtained by the workers in California is
based on oleic acid.
   The acid is in complex with fatty-acid
free bovine serum albumin and human
low-density lipoprotein, added to an
enriched mixture of standard cell media.
   Workers have also turned their attention
to obtaining all-human monoclonal anti-
bodies. Virtually all monoclonal antibodies
today are made by hybrids of mouse cells or
mouse-human hybrids. Before fusing with
a tumour cell, an antibody-producing cell
(one known as a B cell) must be stimulated
to react to the substance its antibodies will
recognise. It is easy to inject a mouse to
stimulate its B cells, but injecting a human
with something just to create monoclonal
antibodies is another matter.
   Several speakers at Philadelphia reported
stimulating human antibody--making B
cells <1in vitro>1, rather than in live humans.
Joy Cavagnaro and Michael Osband of
Boston University have provoked antibody
production <1in vitro>1 in "naive" human B
cells--in other words those never before
stimulated to produce antibodies. They did
this by tipping the scales in favour of
antibody production--identifying and
removing those cells known to suppress
antibody production.                   []


       <2US sheds light on materials>2
INDUSTRIALISTS in the US hope
   that a new research facility providing
high-energy radiation will recover for them
lost ground in areas as diverse as micro-
circuitry- and metals processing. The $ 138
million National Center for Advanced
Materials is planned for the Lawrence
Berkeley Laboratory in California. One of
the centrepieces is a synchrotron, due to
start up in 1989, that generates light beams
some 10 000 times more brilliant than
existing sources. The instrument should
provide new clues about the structure of
materials.
   "We will be trying to anticipate the needs
of industry some five to 15 years down the
road," asserts David Shirley, Lawrence
Berkeley's director. And Earl Hyde, the
number two at the laboratory, says that the
centre is part of a "very big rethink" within
the government about how publicly funded
laboratories can solve industrial problems.
   The centre will comprise the synchrotron
and three adjoining laboratories. It is an
answer to institutes in West Germany and
Japan that pose a threat to American tech-
nological supremacy in some areas of
industry.
   Shirley wants American companies to
become deeply involved in planning the
centre. He has discussed the venture with
research groups from IBM, AT&T, Exxon,
US Steel and Hewlett-Packard. According
to scientists at Lawrence Berkeley Labora-
tory, the proposals for the centre have
surfaced at a good time.  The federal
government has suddenly "discovered"
high technology, say the scientists, and is
likely to back plans for the new institute.
To set the ball rolling, President Reagan set
aside $35 million for the centre in his
1983-84 budget.
   The synchrotron at the centre, called the
advanced       light
source, will be the
first such device
designed for use with
what are called
wigglers and undul-
ators. These use mag-
netic fields to force
electrons to "wobble"
as they speed along,
increasing the inten-
sity of the light. The
synchrotron will flash
light every two thou-
sand-millionths of a
second.
  The three laborato-
ries built around the
high-energy source
will each have
specific roles.  One
will make and anal-
yse new kinds of
polymers,  ceramics
and   alloys.   Some
of the materials will
be important in
electronics: for inst-
ance, researchers will
work on new manu-
facturing techniques
for gallium arsenide,
which is used in high-
speed chips.
  The second labora-
tory will investigate
surface science and
catalysis, while the
final member of the
trio will develop
instruments to probe
materials and find
new applications.  []
  A 100 kW hybrid solar power plant (above) has entered oper-
ation in Meekatharra a remote town 750 km north-east of
Perth in Australia. The plant uses 960 sq metres of solar arrays
built by the West German company MAN. The $A3.6 million
plant should save 100 000 litres of diesiel oil per year, worth
about $A40 000. In the plant, 50 kW of power is provided by
recovering waste heat from the town's existing power system. []


     <2Critics in a spin over Flettner's ships>2


<2Ships driven by revolving metal pillars sticking up from the deck sounds like Victorian science>2
<2fiction.  In fact, they enjoyed a successful but brief existance>2

                                            Wolf Seufert and Ulrich Seufert
   FLETTNER ROTORS are tall, spinning cylinders
       mounted on a ship's deck. They propel the vessel
       through the water using the same principle that allows
a bowler in cricket or a baseball pitcher to swing a ball
through the air. The technology was invented in the early
1920s by Anton Flettner, a German naval engineer, and has
since fallen into undeserved oblivion. But before they faded
from view, Flettner rotors proved to be a reliable form of
wind propulsion during several years of full operation at Sea.
   The stout cylinders rose from the decks of Flettner's
amazing rotor ships to about two-thirds the height of the
masts on a sailing vessel. They were capped by flat discs and
had a smooth surface without any semblance of an aero
dynamic profile. The cylinders were not driven by the wind
but rotated in it. They extracted power to propel the ships by
a corollary of Bernoulli's theorem (which describes the prin-
ciple of energy conservation for ideal fluids in steady flow). As
the cylinder turns, it is pulled to that side which accelerates
the airflow (figure I).
   The forces generated in this way are surprisingly strong.
Their origin was explained by the German physicist Gustav
Magnus in 1852, who thus solved the vexing problem of why
spinning projectiles veer off course. A cylinder at rest pro-
duces lines of flow in a passing current of air (Figure 2a). The
pattern is similar to that produced by the flow of electrical
current around a circular defect in a plate. If the cylinder
spins in a fluid medium at rest, under ideal conditions, it sets
up a circulatory profile (Figure 2b). The pattern is like the
magnetic field produced around an electrical conductor going
into the plane of the paper. The superimposition of both flow
movements gives a grid pattern (Figure 2c). The streamlines
of air, blown at a spinning cylinder, obtain from diagonals
drawn into the grid since each cell approximates a paral-
lelogram of forces.
   The Magnus effect is more pronounced the faster the cylin-
der rotates. The greater air speed produces a correspondingly
greater pressure drop to which the cylinder is pulled, or lifted.
A spinning cylinder generates lift in direct proportion to the
acceleration it imparts on the air streaming by. Its efficacy is
determined by the ratio of the circumferential velocity and
the wind velocity. The Magnus effect is familiar in sport. A
pitcher can spin a baseball to make it follow a trajectory in
any direction. A cricket bowler knows how to make the ball
swing to or from the batsman by positioning its seam. Tennis
players use the "cut" ball, as do golfers. The same effect is at
work in all these examples: aerodynamic lift deriving from
the ball's rotation acts either vertically, affecting range, or
sideways, affecting curve.
   Flettner put the Magnus effect to work. He commissioned
the Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt in Gottingen, Ger-
many, a foremost centre on aerodynamics, to study the fluid
profiles around cylinders at rest and formulated his theory of
laminar flow.
   Some engineers were sceptical about the efficacy and
dynamic stability of rotors on ships. Flettner argued that
rotating cylinders on the deck of a ship should replace sails in
favourable wind conditions and bring great advantages in
handling. At the time the rotor experiments were undertaken,
Flettner was already famous and wealthy. His name and for-
tune was based on the successful "Flettner rudder", a freely
pivoting rudder for ships actuated by a small control surface
in a strategic position of leverage. His reputation, as well as
the meticulous and comprehensive work on the Flettner rotor
done at Gottingen, were instrumental in finding the Ger-
mania shipyards in Kiel (owned by the krupp family) and the
Hamburg-America Lines as partners . They were willing to
underwrite, in part, the construction of a ship with rotors as
an auxiliary power source.
   The experimental results that encouraged the financiers to
support a rotor ship were truly spectacular. In wind-tunnel
tests, the performance curves of rotors (Figure 3) exceeded
those of sails by far. The surface that the rotor presented to the
wind was only one-tenth the projected sail area.
   Several of the rotor's advantages were immediately
apparent: because of its axial symmetry the position relative
to the wind is not at all as critical as with a sail. The rotor
presents the same frontal area even if the wind changes
directions; only the direction of the thrust developed varies.
Furthermore, the lift generated will act in a diametrically
opposite direction when the rotation of the cylinder is re-
versed. And, rotors are smaller than masts and sails. A vessel
equipped with Flettner rotors gains in manoeuvreability as
lift is diminished by slowing a cylinder's speed of rotation.
Two rotors turning opposite ways can turn a ship on the spot.
   Later wind-tunnel experiments were performed to convert
the 460 tonne schooner Buckau to a rotor ship. A model of
the hull carrying the Buckau's spread of sail and an identical
one with two rotors showed the immense superiority of the
latter in all wind directions (Figure 4).  The most severe
criticism was that wind pressure on the huge rotors could
capsize the ship. The aerodynamicists replied that, in fact, the
resistance of the rotors grew more slowly, with an increase in
wind speed, than did the Buckau's rigging. The wind pressure
on the rotors increased rapidly when they were rotated at full
speed but levelled off at wind velocities beyond about 12
m/sec. This meant that the rotor could be used in heavy
winds and should not compromise the ship's safety.
   The Buckau with rotors stopped appeared to be safer than
the Buckau with sails doused. We can also infer from the
trends depicted in Figure 2 that gusts did not unduly affect the
rotor ship's dynamic stability.  Since the lift generated
depends on the ratio of two flow patterns (created by the
cylinder's rotation and the wind acting on the cylinder) a
sudden increase in wind speed while the rotors turn at a
constant speed reduces the lift in proportion. This com-
pensatory effect produces a steady power curve.

                       <2Buckau is converted>2
   Some arguments could be answered unequivocally only by
operating a rotor ship. They concerned principally profit-
ability and factors such as optimal vessel size. In spite of all
the work done by Ludwig Prandtl and his colleagues, it was
a daring step to commit the resources of the mighty Ger-
mania yards, in early 1924, to install two metal cylinders
more than 12 m tall on the elegant schooner Buckau, so soon
after the idea had ignited Flettner's imagination in 1921.
   The outer shells of the Buckau rotors sat on pivots that
came to about two-thirds of their height. They had a diameter
of nearly 2.7 m and were topped by discs a little more than
3.6 m across to prevent the pressure gradient spilling over the
top. Two electric motors below deck, delivering a maximum
11 kW each from a 220 V direct current generator, drove the
rotors independently at a peak 125 rpm. Every part of the
installation was accessible. Particular attention had been
given to the design of heated support bearings to prevent an
increase in their mechanical resistance when the lubricant
stiffened with a drop in temperature. At three tonnes the
cylinders were relatively light. ln all, the Buckau weighed only
20 tonnes more after her conversion.
   Sea trials began in November 1924 and were everything the
wind-tunnel experiments had promised. As reported by the
chief naval engineer of the Germania yards, the rotor ship
handled beautifully and was able to tack a full 20 degrees
closer to the wind than a commercial sailing ship. She could
turn on the spot by rotating the cylinders fore and aft in
opposite directions and at different speeds. The helmsman
and the engineer controlled her easily and she reacted without
hesitation to all commands, naturally much faster than a
sailing vessel. Her loading deck was unobstructed by staying
or control ropes and wires.
  Doubts concerning the dynamic stability of a rotor ship
were eliminated with further trials. Could a rotor's circum-
ferential velocity be maintained in gales at the ideal ratio: 3.5
times that of the wind? Would the wind pressure on the
cylinders become too high? The pressure bearings into which
the rotors were set had been designed to withstand the
strongest winds with a margin of safety. If the ship should
become threatened by strong winds, the rotors were simply
stopped and their resistance dropped drastically.
  In light weather, she was handicapped only if driven by her
rotors alone, and only in comparison with a fully rigged sail-
ing vessel dead before the wind. The rotors were intended as
auxiliary sources of power, and, as such, to be run only in an
envelope of conditions useful for their operation. They were
able to harvest energy from the relative wind produced by the
ship's screw-driven movement through a calm. As had been
realised already in the model experiments, a rotor ship would
not make full use of a wind blowing directly from astern. This
was offset by the fact that the "Buckau' could sail, as
predicted, approximately 20 degrees closer into the wind than
commercial sailing ships. They were usually limited to a
tacking angle of 50 degrees.
  The Buckau's first series of trials at sea as a rotor ship was
completed successfully in January 1925. She had done a total
of 62 test runs, past the measured mile up and down the
Baltic Sea coast near the port of Kiel, with a full load of coal
(350 tonnes). In 47 of these tests, the rotors were used either
alone or to supplement the power delivered by the ship's 120
kW Diesel engine. When the Buckau was driven by her screw
only she reached a top speed of 14.5 km/h, with rotors alone
14.3 km/h and with both systems running, 18.5 km/h.

                      <2Buckau enters service>2
  The rotor's operation added consistently more than 15 per
cent to the ship's speed, on all headings before and against the
wind. In favourable conditions, the rotors were very effective
power sources indeed: running more than 55o upwind. The
Buckau once reached a speed of better than 7.4 km/h on
rotor power alone, about half her design speed of 16.5 km/h.
Maximum rotation was 120 rpm and the rotors delivered up
to 27 kW. These data do not give the ship's full performance
but are experimental results collected under a variety of real
operating conditions. The rotors were often run at a circum-
ferential velocity only slightly higher than that of the relative
wind, that is at far less than optimal efficacy.
  The little ship had given remarkably good results and was
immediately put into service to carry bulk cargo across the
North Atlantic and the Baltic Sea. Her "revolutionary" form
of propulsion and distinctive profile attracted great attention
when she visited American waters in 1926, after a refit, under
her new name Baden-Baden. Her performance left no doubt
as to her reliability and sea worthiness.
  Impressed with the Buckau's success, the German
Admiralty commissioned the Weser Shipyards in Bremen to
build a new, larger rotor ship on a proven full design. The
Barbara was launched in 1926; two 6-cylinder Diesel engines
in series generated a total 745 kW to give her 2840 tonne gross
a maximum design speed of 19 km/h. Her three rotor towers
were taller and wider but very similar in construction and
weight to those of the Buckau, thanks to the use of a new light
aluminium alloy for their mantles.
  Independently controlled electric motors turned the rotors
at a maximum of 160 rpm. All three rotors fed on one single
Diesel generator with an output rated at 45 kW only. Full
data on the Barbara's performance in service do not seem to
be available any longer. She carried perishables under the
colours of the Sloman Line from the Mediterranean to
Germany, at least until 1929.
  Brief enthusiastic accounts surfaced in the popular press
every now and then, offering highly suspect details on her
"phenomenal" sailing characteristics.  By a conservative
appraisal of the few data at hand, she was an engineering
success. The speed gained by operating her rotors from a
paltry 45 kW source was the equivalent to that obtained had
  another Diesel of 370 kW been coupled in series to the exist-
                                  ing two. In spite of all, she
                                  ultimately disappointed her
                                  owners who could not amor-
                                  tise her high capital costs.
                                    In the early 1930's, both
                                  the Buckau and the Barbara
                                  had their rotors taken off and
                                  they went back to work as
                                  ordinary motor vessels. The
                                  principle of propulsion by
                                  Flettner rotors suffers still
                                  from their ignominious fate.
                                  The ships were taken out of
                                  service in circumstances en-
                                  tirely different from the set of
                                  priorities and considerations
                                  that apply today. One forgot
                                  in the early enthusiasm that
                                  the rotors had never been
                                  intended to be a ship's prime
                                  movers, too much was ex-
                                  pected of them.
                                     Fuel was considered ex-
                                  pensive then, but the high
capital outlay required for the construction of a rotor ship was
far more disconcerting. The great depression came along. The
rotor concept was condemned to die as innovations are never
well received in difficult times; when they are needed most.
   Even very recent reports on the relative profitabilities of
wind propulsion systems for ships dismiss the rotor as inferior
to sail designs, improved by sophisticated technology. These
conclusions were often reached on the basis of incomplete or
wrong information. The few existing technical articles on
rotors were written in German more than 50 years ago and
are not readily accessible. Prandtl's conclusions as to the effi-
cacy of the Magnus effect in Flettner's application were con-
firmed only recently by the results of an extensive study done
carried only recently by the results of an extensive study done
at the University of Dayton's Research Institute. It is to be
assumed that his results on the Flettner rotor are as valid.
  Shall we see commercial sailing vessels ply the seas again?
Exhaustive computer simulations done in the US show that
even at the present prices for fuel, conventional sailing ships
are only marginally competitive when all is counted. Sails to
supplement a ship's principal engines, not to replace them,
could help us save energy where it is easiest to harness the
wind, namely at sea. Anton Flettner's way of extracting
power from the wind presents too many advantages to sink
into oblivion.                                                 []


              <2Ten years to slake a global thirst>2

 <2The world has committed itself to providing water and sanitation for>2

<2all by the year 1990. It will not reach that target without the right hardware>2

                   <2Anne Charnock>2
SIX YEARS AGO, at a conference in Argentina the
       United Nations set a target for the 1980s: clean water
      and sanitation for all. The 1980s became the Inter-
national Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade. The
need for the decade is only too obvious. Four-fifths of diseases
in the Third World are linked to dirty water and lack of
sanitation. Among the many on the list are the blinding
disease Onchocerciasis, or river blindness, caused by a para-
sitic worm; the debilitating schistosomiasis, also caused by a
worm; the killer malaria caused by a protonoan and of course
diarrhoea, mainly caused by bacteria, which kills something
like 20 000 children every day.

   Three out of five people in the Third World have no easy
access to clean water. In rural areas, the figure drops to one
in three. Women and children often spend most of their day
collecting water; in the hilly areas of Kenya women spend
nine-tenths of their time on this single task.
   Attempts to do something about the problem have to
concentrate on underground resources. The world has about
3000 times as much groundwater as it has water in rivers and
lakes, and groundwater is far cleaner. The problem is getting
it to the surface, and in rural areas the best way is by hand-
pump. International aid agencies, such as UNICEF, the UN
children's fund and the World Bank, are now striving to find
a design for a handpump that is cheap and easy to maintain.
   For sanitation, the statistics are even worse. 0nly one in
four people in the Third World has any kind of sanitation
system. In some areas, ignorance and taboos make it difficult
to introduce new customs. Education, and the participation of
the community are crucial if schemes are to have any chance
of success.  But above all, engineers are only slowly
acknowledging that many Western solutions, principally
water-bome sewerage systems, are not the right answer for
many parts of the Third World.
   The UN has set a tough target for developing countries to
reach. Although many are taking the decade seriously (Africa
is doubling its spending) no one pretends that the world will
reach its target. That would entail providing half a million
people a day with new or better services, The cost: between
$300 billion over the 10 years.
   Current spending is around $6 billion to $7 billion a year.
The world could pay for all this by redirecting 10 days
military spending, but this is an unlikely prospect. And the
climate of recession and public spending cuts in the US and
Europe has hit overseas aid. The only way out is to adopt
low-cost technologies, which local manufacturers can produce
and which villagers can maintain. The aid organisations real-
ise that the task is too great to embark on any other course.
                WHEN HANDPUMPS are installed
                this year in villases in Malawi,
                       Pakistan and the Philippines, thou-
                sands of people will have their first chance
                of leading a healthy life. It is likely to be
                their one and only chance. When hand-
                pumps break down, they can stand idle for
                want of maintenance, not for a week or
                two, or even for a few days, but for the
                lifetime of all the villagers.
                   Developing countries are littered with
                the rusting remains of unsuccessful
                projects which have left communities with
                little choice other than to resume old life-
                styles. The women return to their daily
treks to distant rivers, springs or canals to collect polluted
water.  For the whole community this marks the return of
infections and, for many, a premature death. But in the eyes
of government departments, trying to meet the goal of "clean
water for all by 1990", those villages have had their share.
They stay on the statistics as villages with "adequate water
supplies".
   The same goes for sanitation schemes. If the designers of pit
latrines ignore local customs, or allow the latrines to become
fly-ridden and smelly, people will stop using them. They will
return to the fields, rivers, canal banks or waste ground.
   Unfortunately, governments in the Third World are buying
unreliable technologies and poor advice in the guise of expert
opinion. At the extreme, rogue manufacturers are trying to
cash in on this huge market, and have won multi-million-
pound orders for technologies that may be sound as pieces of
machinery but have not been tried adequately in the field.
Britain's Consumer Association, which has been testing
handpump designs for the UN and the World Bank, has
identified some of them. Donald Unwin, chief engineer at the
association's Testing and Research Laboratory, said "Many
manufacturers just do not look at the problem through the
eyes of the Third World countries. Some are completely
ignorant." Manufacturers in five countries, Britain, Canada
the US, Japan and the Philippines, have been selling farm-
yard pumps, which the association says have "failed
miserably" because they cannot stand up to all-day use.

   Unwin singles out the Sumber Banyu pump, which an
Indonesian firm, P. T. Celco, makes to a design by the
" Battelle Institute in the US. The pump is built to exacting
tolerances, requiring high standards of quality control. But
most workshops in developing countries cannot meet these
tolerances, "so the spares simply don't fit," says Unwin. In
Lesotho, the US Agency for International Development is
paying for the installation of Robbins & Myers pumps, made
in the US. Their underground components, an Archimedian
screw with a complex helical rotor and stator, need very
special manufacturing techniques. "They don't often go
wrong, but if they do they must be replaced." Unwin said.
Local mechanics cannot do the job, so once the US experts
have left, the government will have the burden of spending
limited foreign currency to buy spare parts from abroad.
   But equally to blame are governments that commission
consultants to design over-sophisticated schemes, which are
bound to fail, with cash coming from aid organisations. This
occurs not so much because the engineers are callous, but
because of a blinkered approach by all parties. The water
decade has succeeded in forcing engineers, both in consul-
tancies and in governments, to question whether their designs
and ideas are meeting the needs of people in developing
countries. Engineers have invariably passed through Western
universities and polytechnics, which train them more to run
projects for the Thames Water Authority than for under-
takings in the Third World. Foreign students who return
home rise through the ranks quickly, but are often more
familiar with activated sludge treatment, as used in Britain,
than with simple ponds for the stabilisation of waste.
  However, most engineers now agree that low-cost systems
are better. This means that, whenever possible, open wells
and handpumps should take priority over the more expensive
piped water supply schemes (see Box B). Phrases such as "use
low-cost methods wherever possible" pepper terms of refer-
ence for designs. But just as crucial, if any new project is to
avoid dereliction, engineers must investigate maintenance
down to the most minute of details.
  Handpumps provide the classic example of what can go
wrong. Until recently, most government handpump schemes
had next to no provision for maintenance. Bearing in mind
that in many villages there is little chance of finding even a
monkey wrench, it is easy to see why speedy repairs are often
impossible. In any case, with most handpump maintenance,
workers need a rig to lift the pump head off its base. And
travelling maintenance crews may not turn up from one year
to the next because of the immense areas they have to cover.
  This catalogue of repair problems is forcing engineers to
redesign the well-head and
borehole components of
many existing pumps (see
Boxes A and B). Worn bear-
ings, gaskets and seals go un-
replaced because there are no
spare parts. Leaking oil and
spilled water around the well-
head percolates through to
the groundwater, carrying
pollutants. Welds split be-
cause of continual use, and
poorly constructed boreholes
let sand and grit into the well
water.
  Many of the new designs
make a quantum leap in the
choice of materials; more
and more parts are being
made of plastics. This may
appear heretical in terms of "appropriateness", but plastics
are cheap, light and easy to replace. More to the point, many
developing countries have manufacturers of injection-
moulded plastics which can make well casings and pump
components to specification.
  More futuristic, but by no means on the lunatic fringe,
solar energy is now generating power to pump groundwater.
The UN Development Programme has paid for tests on exist-
ing photovoltaic systems, and a British consultancy, Sir
William Halcrow and Partners is carrying out field work in
Sudan, the Philippines and Egypt. Intermediate Technology
Power, part of the British Intermediate Technology
Development Group, is developing the machinery. The con-
sultants reckon that pumping water from depths of 20 metres
would cost less than 50 cents per cubic metre with solar
                            power. Considering that in
                            Tamanrasset in the Sahara
                            people are prepared to pay
                            water sellers $1 a litre (or
                            $1000/m3),    photovoltaics
                            are already economically
                            feasible.
                              However, according to
                            Peter Fraenkel of IT Power,
                            existing systems need to be
                            more reliable. Solar power
                            introduces another step
                            where breakdowns can
                            occur, but the cost of main-
                            tenance is far lower than with
                            diesel pumps. Diesel pumps
                            need daily attention: starting
                            up, checking oil levels, and
                            so on.  However, Fraenkel
                            says engineers are realising
that wind power is more immediately cost-effective for
pumping groundwater. "If wind speeds are over 3m per
second then it's crazy to think of anything else."
  Inadequacies of design soon reveal themselves in even the
simplest of hand-dug water wells. If the edges of the well are
not protected, the well head becomes a pool of mud and a
cycle of parasitic infections, such as guinea worm and hook-
worm, quickly develops between people and water. Simply
building a wall around the top of the well breaks the cycle.
  Another simple solution, which Loughborough Univer-
sity's department of water and waste engineering suggested at
a water decade conference in Madras last year, is to put a pot
chlorinator in each well. These chlorinators are earthenware
pots containing a mixture of coarse sand and bleaching
powder. The pot hangs on the end of a rope and when in
contact with the water makes a disinfecting solution of
chlorine.
  Sanitation causes more controversy than the problem of
water supply, possibly because it affects people in cities. If a
city cannot dispose of its sewage properly, it will pollute
water, and negate any progress made on that front. For many
technology-conscious officials in developing countries, get-
ting rid of sewage means installing underground pipes leading
to treatment plants on the western pattern. City authorities
from Calcutta to Cairo have laid sewers, but they are too
expensive to keep up with the growth of the cities. They work
in the central and usually wealthy areas; people in the shanty
towns do without.
  What enthusiasts often overlook is that western
communities do not always depend on sewer systems. Many
Americans, for example, have individual septic tanks, and in
only a few countries, such as England and West Germany,
does sewerage dominate sanitation systems.
  Transferring the twentieth-century technology of sewerage
is fraught with technical problems. Some cities, such as Dar
es Salaam in Tanzania, do not have enough water, either
from rain or from industrial waste, to flush the sewage
through the network. So the sewage goes septic, giving off
hydrogen sulphide which corrodes the pipes and makes a
nasty smell. Engineers now realise that sewerage cannot be
technically viable without a large domestic water supply. And
the cities of the Third World often have unpaved roads. Dust,
sand and grit get into the sewers. Within a few years, the pipes
begin to clog.
  The inhabitants of Cairo often remove manhole covers and
dump all sorts of rubbish, from old car tyres to building
rubble, into the sewers. Regular clearance is crucial, but
allocations of aid and government budgets
rarely take the cost of maintenance into
account. Cairo's city authority is only now
training its sewer gangs properly. As well as
keeping the pipes clear, the gangs are learn-
ing to avoid accidentally connecting sewers
to water pipes.
  The higher the technology, the greater
the pitfalls. The Ugandan capital Kampala
has seen the devastating effect that civil war
has on a sophisticated engineering scheme.
Nothing is maintained, sewer networks,
water pipes, or treatment plants, so health
hazards have flourished.
  What is the alternative? At one extreme,
officials regard traditional latrines as prim-
itive and unhealthy (Box C). But new-wave
sanitation experts say sewerage offers little
more than convenience when compared to
well thought-out latrines. The UN decade
has encouraged engineers to think seriously
about this age-old system. The two prob-
lems they have had to tackle are ventilation
and structural safety.
  In the large Ethiopian and Eritrean refu-
gee camp at Towawa, near Gadaref in
eastern Sudan, where 20 000 refugees have
lived for over two years, parents stop their
children using latrines because of the risk of
the ground caving in during the rainy sea-
son. In old sections of Sudan's capital,
Khartoum, stories abound of latrines col-
lapsing, with people falling through ancient
crumbling squatting slabs to unspeakably horrible deaths.
  Yet latrines can work extremely well. The island of Lamu,
off the Kenyan coast, has 600 years experience with pit
latrines in its densely-populated harbour area, where as many
as 260 people live in each hectare. There, pit latrines <1inside>1
<1homes>1 take pride of place, their arched entrances lavishly
embellished with stone carvings. They are well maintained,
and there are no problems with smells. Workers known as
"fundi" carry out the specialised three-day task of emptying
each pit. The fundi seal off the street alongside the house, and
dig a hole outside the latrine. When they are sure the hole is
deeper than the pit, they break through the lime and coral
wall of the pit and the contents run into the hole. The fundi
then backfill the hole to street level. By the time the latrine
needs emptying again, in about 15 years, the sludge will have
decomposed and can be dug out and spread on neighbouring
farms. It sounds an unsavoury task, but it is less unhealthy
than the job of "night soil" collectors who in many countries
spend their nights emptying buckets.
  Lamu's latrines stand as a challenge to the old engineering
belief that sewerage is the only feasible system of sanitation
for crowded cities. Yet the latrines are illegal, because
Kenya's building regulations, written in colonial days, forbid
them inside houses.
  The World Bank has published a guide to help non-
specialists choose a sanitation system. <1A sanitation field>1
<1manual>1 sets out the different types of low-cost sanitation. It
prompts planners and engineers to ask questions such as,
"Are there water taps in the houses to be served? Are plot sizes
large enough for septic tanks and soakaways? Is there a strong
social preference to re-use excreta?" Some questions may be
obvious, but, as the authors explain, "Few engineers are
aware of the need to consider the socio-cultural aspects of
excreta disposal."
  Despite this failing, a clearer understanding of all these
design issues is emerging among donor agencies, private firms
and government ministries. But there is still the temptation
for designers to lean toward high-technology schemes--partly
for prestige, partly because their fees might be higher. And
                corrupt officials have more chance of a
                rake-off when expensive goods are in-
                volved.
                  Aid donors, too, lean toward capital-
                intensive projects. Administrators are keen
                to sign supply contracts with Third World
                governments for expensive desalination
                plants, mechanised sewage treatment
                works (as in Kampala) and to agree on
                projects that will steer business toward for-
                eign designers and contractors. The British
                and US governments have told their aid
                agencies that they see aid projects as a
                source of export orders.
                  Britain's Overseas Development Admin-
                istration spent nearly #75 million out of its
                gross aid budget of #1029 million for
                1981/82 on water and sanitation projects.
                However, of the 44 loans, #50 million went
                on just one scheme--Cairo's sewers. Of the
                rest, 36 projects had less than #1 million.
                half of them less than #100000. No one is
                saying that Cairo does not need the repairs,
                but the disparity does show the imbalance
                that arises when aid goes to urban, high-
                technology programmes.
                  Money from multilateral agencies is also
                in short supply. The World Bank's support
                for the decade's first two years fell short by
                as much as $800 million on a planned
                spending of up to $2000 million. President
                Reagan's delay in replenishing the bank's
                soft loans affiliate,  the International
Development Association, caused much of the shortfall. The
association lends money to the world's very poorest
countries.
  The World Health Organisation has called for individual
developing countries to commit themselves to decade pro-
grammes. India, for example, has set itself a target of provid-
ing 80 per cent sanitation in towns, 25 per cent in rural areas,
and water for all. A tall order in itself.
  For community self-help programmes, Malawi in southern
Africa stands as a shining example, having completed well
over 30 piped water schemes with the willing toil of rural
communities. Malawi can make good use of mountain water
by piping supplies under gravity to lowland settlements, at a
cost of #3 per person. All these schemes begin with a public
meeting which local chiefs and members of parliament
attend. The village chiefs ask their people if they are willing to
work on the water projects, and once agreed a project com-
mittee is set up carrying the authority of all involved.
  Since 1969, Malawi's self-help schemes have laid 300 km of
pipes, supplying water for over 640000 people. Once fully
exploited, these mountain resources will be able to supply one
third of Malawi's rural water needs.
  "Low cost" and "self help" are therefore the buzzwords of
the decade. Money and skilled manpower are the main con-
straints. During the next seven years, requests for assistance
will undoubtably outstrip the resouces of international
agencies, and UN officials are already taken aback by the
response of the Third World. It will be up to the engineers to
spread what resources there are as far as possible.        []
      <2A: Water, water (almost) everywhere>2

    GROUNDWATER is a massive
      resource but it cannot be found every-
where, and sometimes lies too deep to
exploit economically. Roughly speaking
groundwater can be extracted in useful
quantities from depths up to 800 m below
the earth's surface.
  Groundwater is found in aquifers (water-
bearing rock) or overburden (sedimentary
rock over mineral deposits). It fills all the
interconnected voids, and the volume of
water depends on the porosity and
permeability of the rock.
  Sandstone, for example, can hold very
large volumes of groundwater because
spaces are formed between the rock's
rounded quartz grains. Similarly, porosity
can be high in stream-laid gravels and
sands. However, if the sands are mixed with
silt, porosity may be low because the fine
silt particles tend to clog the void
dense igneous rocks can hold and transmit
water if they are fractured, although the
pore space is negligible.
  The water table is the upper level of the
roundwater zone, and slopes in rough con-
formity with the surface topography. Occa-
sionally the water table intersects the
earth's surface, forming streams and lakes.
However, irrigation can raise the water
table artificially and, as happens in Egypt,
can bring groundwater very close to the soil
surface.
  The depth of the water table determines
how to get water out. If the water table is
within 15 m of the surface, the cheapest
method is to dig a well by hand and protect
the walls from collapse by building a
masonry lining. Water comes up in a
bucket. Alternatively, a handpump at the
top of the well does the job. In most shallow
wells the pumping mechanism sits at the
well head (which allows easy maintenance),
and water is "sucked up" through a rising
main.
  Extracting water from deeper aquifers
involves drilling a well and lining it with
slotted steel or PVC pipes surrounded by a
packing of pea-sized gravel.  The per-
forations allow water to enter the well, and
the packing reduces the amount of sill car-
ried with it. To deliver water from these
depths the pumping machine has to be at
the bottom of the well. A series of con-
necting rods links the pump handle with
the piston pump situated below the water
level in the borehole.
  However, in many developing countries
geological data are often incomplete. And
because drilling is expensive, hydro-
geological investigations must be done
before water supply projects can start.  []


      <2B: Quest for a better handpump>2

THE WORLD BANK and United
Nations Global Handpump project is
grasping the mettle of pump design by test-
ing many best-selling models in the field.
Among them are the India Mark II, Bri-
tain's Consallen, the Madzi pump (a mod-
ified version of the Zimbabwean Blair
pump) and also the lesser-known but very
promising Malawi handpump.
  The testers hope to develop from these
best-sellers a near-ideal "village level
operation and maintenance" pump---which
decade followers have long dreamed of. In
other words, they are tryng to develop a
pump that a village caretaker could
maintain with a single spanner.
  Much of the field work is being carried
out on the Upper Livulezi in Malawi.
Around 200 pumps are now in place and
during the next three years villagers will
learn to maintain them. At the same time,
project staff will redesign and incorporate
new parts for the borehole components, ir-
respective of the type of pump they serve.
  According to David Grey, working for
the Malawian Department of Land, Valu-
ation and Water, under a British technical
assistance programme, there is no point in
improving the design of pump heads until
problems are sorted out with the boreholes.
Engineers must prevent sand and grit from
getting into the well water.
  Until recently, all Malawi's boreholes
had heavy steel well cores, but the de-
partment has introduced substitutes with
the help of a local maker of injection-
moulded plastics. These plastic well casings
are not only cheaper but have a greater
number of slots cut in them than steel eas-
ings. As a result the casings' "open area" is
increased a hundredfold, allowing more
water in and, because the slots are much
narrower, keeping more grit out. None of
the boreholes installed properly during the
past 18 months has broken down.
  For Malawi, the pilot project is a novelty.
for the first time the government is encour-
aging communities to take part in a
groundwater scheme. As Grey's colleague
John Chilton says, the villagers will take
more care of their new systems if they feel
they belong to them. Backing up this
policy, the deparment has delegated all
community liaison work to Malawian
professional staff.
  Project manager Francis Msonthi, a
geology graduate with just two year'
experience, is therefore in charge not
only of drilling rigs, well-digging teams
and maintenance workers, but also travels
around the district discussing the
department's plans for water supply.  When
siting the pumps, he explains, the
community has the final say.  For example,
people would rather walk further than
have to carry water pots a shorter way up-
hill.
  None of the team will say at this stage
which of the pumps appears best, but the
Malawi pump is certainly popular.  The vil-
lagers find it easy to use because of the "T"
piece at the end of thre handle, and also like
it because the pump produces a good flow
of water.
  More important for maintenance, how-
ever, is that there is no need for a winch to
lift the pump head off its foundations.  In
just 15 minutes the connecting rods, piston
and foot-valve can be pulled by hand
through the pump head.  The engineer gets
in by unbolting the top plate.
  However, Grey wants to see mod-
ifications in the connecting rods. At present
the steel rods screw together, but in future
they will have hinged connections so that
no tools will be needed to remove the rods
from the borehole.  Equally important, this
redesign wuld make repair work a one-
man operation. Beyond that, there are
plans to make the pump pistons and foot-
valves in plastics and to devise a system so
that when the connecting rods are removed
they also withdraw the piston and foot-
valve.
  The Upper Livulezi project will supply
30 000 people with water for only 6 Kwa-
cha (about #4) a head---far less than other
aid-financed groundwater schemes.  A part
of this can be credited to the team's fru-
gality.  For example, only one tractor serves
four mobile drilling rigs, though one per rig
is the norm on many projects.  Expatriate
vehicles are kept to an absolute minimum,
and site offices are merely caravans.
  According to the Malawian government
if three large-scale projects were initiated
along the lines of the Upper Livulezi pilot
project, each serving up to 25 000 people
Malawi could get somewhere near the de-
cade target.  But, of course, donors are in
short supply.   []
  <2C: Latrine designs in regular Third World use>2
If water is easily available from a yard tap, a water-vendor or a public standpipe, then a
pour-flush toilet is appropriate.  It involves simply flushing with water, poured from any
container. This system is used with a septic
tank and soakaway if space is available.
Advantage: the toilet is built in the house
and the U-bend trap prevents smells.  This
system can be upgraded when more money
and/or water is available by connecting the
sewers or installing a cistern-flush toilet.
As with the composting toilet and the pit
latrine no water is needed with this system.
The pit is completely off-set. Disadvantage:
the chute can become fouled and therefore
should only be built if the users are willing
to keep it clean.  Advantage: the closet is
larger than a pit and therefore lasts longer
also it is easy to empty.  In parts of southern
Africa individual units have been in use for
over 20 years.
Venlated improved pits:
One of the oldest and cheaper forms of
sanitation, the pit latrine can be upgraded
by increasing ventilation. A pipe from the
pit is fixed to the outside of the shelter. Air
inside the pipe heats up creating an up-
draught through the pipe and a correspond-
ing downdraught from the shelter into the
pit, reducing the problem with smells.
Sunlight at the top of the vent pipe attracts
flies from within the pit and if a gauze is
fitted over the top they fall back and die in
the pit. A "double-pit" latrine can be used
which employs a common superstructure.
Advantage: relatively cheap,

Aquaprivy:
With this system the squatting slab is posi-
tioned directly over the septic tank and the
inlet pipe extends below the water level in
the tank. Advantage: the toilet is within the
house and could in the future be connected
to sewers rather than a soakway. Disadvan-
tage: regular topping up is essential.


Double-vault composting toilet:
If people wish to reuse excreta in their
gardens or to sell it to local farmers com-
posting toilets can be built as long as users
agree to follow strict rules of maintenance.
Ash and biodegradable waste must be
added regularly to achieve the right carbon-
nitrogen ratio. When 3/4 full, the vault must
be sealed with earth and the movable super-
structure positioned over the second vault,
which has been emptied and its contents
used on the land. Advantage: the DVC can
be converted to a pour-flush toilet with one
vault used for excreta and the other for
household water waste (sullage).   []
<2REVIEW>2


   <2Critical year's of the revolution in Earth science>2
               <2The road to Jaramillo>2
    <2by William Glen, >2<1Stanford UP. pp 459, $37-50>1
                 <2Robert Muir Wood>2


SOMETHING happened to
  the old    rock   and
mountain studies in the
mid-1960s. To put it simply,
geology died, Earth sciences was
born. A transfer of power and of
objectives took place that has all
the makings of a revolution.
The origins of this trans-
formation may be traced back
into the late 19th century but
the upheaval finally came at the
time of Vietnam, flower-power
and the campus revolutions.
   William Glen has approached
the revolution in Earth science
from a most specific vantage
point--that of the University of
California at Berkeley. Here he
has learnt the craft of the histor-
ian after training first as a
geologist, and here he has writ-
ten his doctoral dissertation on
which <1The Road to Jaramillo>1 is
based. The place and the biogra-
phy are needed to locate
the viewpoint, because Glen
collected much of the material
on his doorstep in interviews
with scientists from Berkeley.
   The story of plate tectonics,
the inspiration of the revolu-
tion, was the eventual weaving
together of a whole series of
disconnected threads. The most
important of these, at least as it
appeared to those involved, was
the discovery of sea-floor
spreading, which was trans-
formed from a brave conception
to a probability in 1963.

   The mid-ocean spreading
ridge was shown to be a "tape
recorder" for the planet's
magnetic pole reversals.  The
ocean floor was the tape slowly
and symmetrically drifting away
from either side of the ridge.
   When this unlikely idea was
first launched in England and
Canada, the exact pattern of the
past few million years of pole
reversals had yet to be charted.
At Berkeley, as elsewhere in the
US, there was ingrained hostility
to continental drift, and these
early proposals were not taken
seriously.
   The story of the creation of
the time-scale of magnetic
reversals (the Jaramillo Reve
provided the final entry in the
time-scale) goes back to the
early 1950s when the scientists
at Berkeley perfected the
detection accuracy of the
potassium/argon method of
rock-dating for samples less
than a million years old.
   The success of this devel-
opment ensured that Berkeley
won the race to construct the
magnetic reversal time-scale.
When in 1966 this confirmed
sea-floor spreading it came as a
revelation--a revolution. These
were the critical years, but it is
arguable that this was the crit-
ical place.
   By choosing to write from
interviews, Glen is being more
of a journalist (in the great
American style) than a histor-
ian. Yet this is the first serious
attempt to write about the revo-
lution since the heyday of the
early 1970s. In contrast to the
books written then, <1The Road to>1
<1Jaramillo>1 is full of insight into
the interactions, communica-
tions, thoughts and impressions
that make scientific problem-
solving enlightening.
   This personal detail displaces
the historial overview; the most
creative, external aspects of the
story of sea-floor spreading are
relegated to footnotes, appen-
dices and an extra chapter.This
bias is more  unfortunate
because Glen writes well: even
the footnotes are rewarding.
One only wishes that he had
spent more time gaining a
perspective outside America.
For while the Berkeley geomag-
netists walked the road to
Jaramillo other scientists had
travelled there on the power of
imagination.                 []


         <2Women's place in the machinery>2

                <2Women, technology and innovation>2
        <2edited by Joan Rothschild, >2<1Pergamon. pp 88, #9.50>1

                          <2Ursula Huws>2


IN THE HOME, as in
   industry, it is overwhelmingly
men who are the designers and
repairers of machines, while
women are the operators,
expected to perform neatly and
swiftly on typewriters, sewing
machines and the rest, but not to
understand how they work.
   The power that this greater
control over technology gives
men lies somewhere near the
root of many of the problems
which beset women both inside
and outside the workplace, yet
until recently it is a subject that
has been strangely neglected.
<1Women. Technology and Inno->1
<1vation>1 is therefore to be
welcomed as a first step towards
changing this state of affairs.
   However anyone looking to it
for an explanation of how
women have come to be
excluded so completely from the
control of machines, or even for
a theoretical framework within
which to pose such a question, is
in for a disappointment. The
book's origins as a special issue
of the journal <1Women's Studies>1
International Quarterly are all
too apparent and it offers a
series of partial glimpses rather
than a coherent overall picture.
  The first three pieces are
celebrations of women's past
achievements as inventors:  in
pre-agricultural societies, in
ancient Alexandria and in
American Shaker communities.
The last five are one or two
page descriptions of women's
studies courses, all in the United
States. For analysis of women's
relations to technology in the
present day, the meat at the
centre of this sandwich, we are
left with just three articles.
  The most disappointing of
these  is  the  only   British
contribution to this otherwise
all-American anthology, a study
of the impact of word processors
by Erik Arnold, Lynda Birke

and Wendy Faulkner at the
Science Policy Research Unit at
Sussex University.  After an
extensive survey of the literature
on     patriarchy,  technological
change and the clerical labour
process (already much reviewed
in this context), they leave us
with neither new evidence nor
any fresh insights. Their main
conclusion, that "more than
ever, the typist of the new era
will be the office wife", is a
simplistic one that ignores the
contradictory nature of the
evidence.
  Certainly it seems likely that
women will find themselves ever
more firmly trapped at the
bottom of the office hierarchy
as a result of the introduction
of     information    technology.
However it is also likely that
many "wifely" tasks such as tea-
making and the bosses' shop-
ping disappear, and that typists
gain   some  protection  from
sexual harassment as they
increasingly become machine
operators, tied to work stations.
   Where the SPRU team takes
us at a brisk trot through the
literature, Jan Zimmerman
adopts more of a wild canter in
her survey of the likely effects on
women of a range of new
technologies, in a piece that
makes up in polemic what it
lacks in argument.
   In a lower key, Sally Hacker
describes her research on how
engineering students see the
world, with some thought-
provoking insights into the part
played by mind/body dualisms
in perpetuating the contempt for
all things female which charac-
terises their views.
  Much research and debate is
required before we have a femi-
nist theory of technology; in the
meanwhile, this book will serve
a useful purpose if it places the
problem on the agenda of
women's studies.             []
                <2A measure of intelligence>2

                Handbook of human intelligence
edited by Robert Sternberg <1Cambridge UP, pp 1031, #45, pbk #15>1

                          Hans Eysenck

                    THIS is a very long, very
    expensive and very high-
level book on human intel-
ligence which will undoubtedly
become, for many years to
come, and as far as it goes, a
standard book of reference, It
has five parts, dealing re-
spectively with the nature of
intelligence and its measure-
ment; cognition, personality
and intelligence; society, cul-
ture, and intelligence; the phy-
logeny   and    ontogeny   of
intelligence; and a metatheory
of intelligence. The contributors
are well chosen, none having a
special axe to grind, and all
being experts in their
fields.
   In view of all these
positive things, is it
true to say, as the
blurb does, that "the
<1Handbook of Human>1
<1Intelligence>1    will
guide thinking about
intelligence for the
rest of the century"? I
doubt it myself, for
the reason that
introduced the words
"as far as it goes"
above: the book sim-
ply leaves out of
account  the    most
important       recent
developments which

foretell a revolution in the mea-
surement and understanding of
intelligence.
  These developments can be
understood only in the context
of the long continued debate
between two sides concerning
the nature of intelligence, one
captained by Sir Francis Galton,
the other by Alfred Binet.
  For Galton intelligence was a

unitary, global mental capacity;
for Binet it was merely the aver-
age of a number of independent,
disparate abilities. For Galton it
was a gentle predisposition; For
Binet it was strongly influenced
by socioeconomic, cultural and
educational factors. For Galton
the best method of measure-
ment was physiological, or by
reaction time; for Binet it was in

terms of problem solving, learn-
ing, remembering following
instructions, and other activities
strongly   involving   learning.
Almost from the beginning
Binet's approach won the day,
and this book is a celebration of
his approach; unfortunately it
may also be its epitaph.
   In recent years, it has become
clear that very simple measures
of reaction time (particularly
choice reaction time) and vari-
ability in reaction time correlate
very highly with ordinary IQ
measures, to an extent that
makes much of the theorising in
this book inapplicable,
             Similarly,     mea-
           sures of inspection
          time have shown
          uncommonly high
          correlations with IQ,
          particularly in below-
          average subjects.  In
          these tests, two lines
          of obviously different
          lengths are exhibited
          for a very short
          period of time, and
          the subject has to say
          whether the right or
          the left line was the
          longer. The shortest
          exposure time at
          which the subject
          succeeds better than
          97.5 per cent is taken

as the inspection time, with
short inspection times being
indicative of high intelligence.
  Despite these outstandingly
interesting and important find-
ings, which support Galton and
throw an entirely new light on
the whole topic of intelligence,
none of the contributors
mentions the work of S. Lehrl
and others in Germany, which
demonstrates very high cor-
relations between IQ tests and
simple speed of naming of
numbers and letters; this too
throws much doubt on the
theories embraced in this book.
  Worst of all, there is no refer-
ence to the work on physio-
logical measures of intelligence,
begun by J. P. Ertl in Canada a
dozen years ago. Ertl showed
that evoked potentials on the
EEG showed shorter latency and
greater amplitude for high IQ
subjects than for low IQ sub-
jects, In recent years this ap-
proach has been broadened and
improved by the Hendricksons,
and we now have physiological
measures on the EEG evoked
potential which correlate as
highly with typical IQ tests as one
of these IQ tests correlates with
another! Yet neither Ertl's work
nor the approach using evoked
potentials and other physio-
logical measures is discussed.
   It is difficult to understand
how such selectivity can be justi-
fied, in view of the fact that these
studies and their results are quite
incompatible with the major -
theoretical thrust of the book,
which is complexly cognitive in
the best Binet tradition.
   This is a great pity; the battle
between these two paradigms,
that of Galton and that of Binet,
is a very real one, and to pretend
that it does not exist, and that
there is no evidence against the
paradigm adopted here, is disin-
genuous.
  The book also shows the
extremely irritating parochi-
alism of American textbooks in
psychology, to wit an almost
complete exclusion of papers and
books not written in English. I
have already commented on the
book's failure to mention the
work of Lehrl, from West Ger-
many: equally missing is the
outstanding work of Volkmar
Weiss and the Mehlhorns in
East Germany, of A. Firkowska
and others in Poland, of N. G.
Lipovecheja and his colleagues
in the USSR, and many others.
In a science which is supposed to
be international, such provin-
cialism is inexcusable.
  As I said before, the <1Hand->1
<1book of Human Intelligence>1 is
excellent as far as it goes, but it
certainly does not go far enough;
perhaps the second edition will
improve on this sad state of
affairs!                     []


        <2Greed in the heart o the country>2

                     Whose land is it anyway?
       By Richard Norton-Taylor, <1Turnstone, pp 350, #6.95>1

                      Kenneth Blaxter

         In 1066, by right of conquest,
   William I owned all the land.
Now more people have a stake,
with some owning far more
than others and most owning
none at all. In the millennium
Richard Norton-Taylor thinks
that worker-farmer cooperatives
should prevail, that large estates
should be managed by local
communities, and that the
land should be used to meet
expressed needs of the people.
   At least, this might be the view
that Norton-Taylor wishes to
promote but it is not readily
evident in his book.  He is
certainly concerned with the
inequalities, injustices and
inequities in the world as a
whole and the UK in particular;
with the greed, short-sightedness
and self-interest of some of its
inhabitants; and with the inade-
quacy, incompetence and ineffi-
ciency of the institutions which
relate to land as a primary
resource.
   There is of counse no reason
why he should propose solutions
to the questions he implies
about the use of land and its
ownership. It is perfectly reason-
able, and in the classic mould of
18th century pamphleteers, to
be angry about our present state,
to criticise and to apportion
blame to those who exercise
irresponsibility. To ask for solu-
tions as well is perhaps to ask too
much, for he has found more
than most to be angry or cynical
about.
   The land is used for many
purposes: for housing, factories,
rail and roadways, airports,
water reservoirs, recreation,
amenity, forestry and farming.
Land varies in its quality from
the highly fertile soils in equit-
able climates to the poor, thin or
peaty soils in the uplands and
hills.
  Our ancestors could recognise
good land, and early settlements
were almost invariably sited on
the better land. This land is now
mostly built upon and its value
augmented by a contiguity. The
sites of Claridges and the United
States Embassy, which are
owned by the Duke of West-
minster, are obviously of greater
financial value than those of
similar area on the Isle of Mull.
  Norton-Taylor has analysed
the ownership of all this land,
drawing heavily on studies made
by the Centre for Agricultural
Strategy, and embellished his
account by sub-analyses of the
land holdings of members of
Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet, by
a fairly definitive listing of
Ministry of Defence holdings,
and an examination of the
acreages associated with the
entries in <1Debrett's Landed>1
<1Gentry>1.
  The extent to which land has
and is being used as a long-term
security by pension funds and
by finance houses, and the entry
of foreign buyers into the land ;
market, are dealt with anec-
dotally. This is understandable.
Even the official inquiry led by
Lord Northfield in 1977 could
do little more, For there is no
modern equivalent to the
Domesday account.  Land lies
derelict, land is poorly farmed,
and one rather has the feeling
that Norton-Taylor regards it as
a sin to own land at all.
  Yet the system is changing.
More farmers than ever before
now own their farms. The past
30 years has seen a continuation
of the break-up of the old
landlord and tenant system.
Whether   more  participants
spreads the load of sin is not
altogether clear.
  Farming comes in for much
criticism, largely  it  appears
          because farmers have
          responded to the
          need to make a live-
          lihood from the land
          by producing more
          primary commodi-
          ties using industrial
          techniques.  The
          reduction in employ-
          ment of farm labour,
          the use of machine
          power, the adoption
          of simplified farming
          systems and the
          replanning of farm
          layout to ease farm
          operations       are
          actions taken to
          ensure solvency in
          the light of changes in
          the structure of costs.
             Since   1975,  the
          prices farmers receive
          for commodities
expressed in real terms has fallen
by 16 per cent. Input costs have
also fallen in real terms, but by
only 3 per cent. Output, again in
real terms, has increased by 25
per cent.  The food manu-
facturing industry has benefited
from the lower costs of the
commodities it processes.  Its
prices have increased, however,
and the consumer has not bene-
fited from the efforts of farmers.
   Admittedly, Norton-Taylor
castigates the food industry as
well as the landowners and the
farmers--he spreads his casti-
gation very evenly.  He also
realises that it is the structure of
costs that determines the ways in
which farmers as entrepreneurs
respond. He also points to the
ecological problems that this
industrialisation of farming and
forestry has brought about, to
the increased reliance that has to
be placed on chemical pest and
disease control under mono-
cultures. It is a pity that he attri-
butes to Emrys Hughes remarks
relating to these matters made
by Sir Emrys Jones.  Neither
gentleman is likely to be pleased;
this is not the way to make
friends and influence people.
   But then one does not have
to make friends with people in
order to influence them.  One
can bludgeon them with facts,
anecdotes and innuendoes
about the ways in which land is
being misused, show that even
the best of intentions are
misguided, and that most people
who have to do with land and
what it provides hold views
which are wrong. This Norton-
Taylor has attempted to do, but
his book betrays too much anger
and too much cynicism to be
wholly effective.              []
                   <2Threat to a great ape>2

        <2The orangutan: its biology and conservation>2
   <2edited by L. E. M. de Boer, >2<1Dr W. Junk, pp 376, Dfl 175>1

                       <2David Chivers>2

I PERSONALLY find the
   orang-utan to be the most
appealing of the great apes: it is
magnificent in its tropical-forest
home, and very entertaining in
captivity. The orang is not as
endangered as was estimated 15
years ago, but it <1is>1 threatened.
   Rehabilitation programmes
have served a valuable role in
conservation education, and in
rescuing pets and animals from
cleared habitat, but have done
little to boost wild pop-
ulations--indeed, they could
endanger them.
   Their varied fruit diet high-
lights the orang-utan's crucial
role in rainforest perpetuation,
and the prime need to protect
this ecosystem to conserve all its
inhabitants. The large size and
wide-ranging habit of the orang-
utan make it especially vulner-
able to devastation in tropical
rainforests. A book synthesising
knowledge of this endangered
species is long overdue.
   Leobert de Boer has rectified
this deficiency, following a
workshop in Rotterdam in
October 1979, by editing a vol-
ume comprising eight chapters
on biochemistry and physiology,
five on maintenance and
behaviour in captivity and four
on ecology, behaviour and con-
servation in the wild.
   Most appropriately, the intro-
ductory chapter on distribution
and evolution is an up-to-date
review by that eminent physical
anthropologist G. H.  R.  von
Koenigswald.  De Boer has
produced an equally stimulating
epilogue, collating well the
topics in the book into an inte-
grating conservation frame-
work.
   The studies of genetics, hae-
moglobins and chromosomes by
de Boer and his colleagues, and
reproductive physiology by J. J.
van der Werff ten Bosch, Susan
Kingsley and Ronald Nadler,
provide a much-needed col-
lation of basic biological infor-
mation and highlight the
distinctiveness of Bornean and
Sumatran orang-utans, as well
as the likelihood of distinct pop-
ulations within each island.
   A detailed review of orang-
utans in captivity by Marvin
Jones is supplemented by infor-
mation on veterinary care by
David Jones and behavioural
studies by S. D. Edwards and
T. J. Maple. They highlight the
social and manipulative skills of
this ape and the need for care in
reducing boredom and stimu-
lating breeding, as well as the
distinctness of Bornean and
Sumatran animals.
  The field studies of C. Schur-
mann, B. M. F. Galdikas, R. J.
Aveling and H. D. Rijksen focus
on mating strategies, the role of
orang-utans in seed dispersal,
conservation by habitat protec-
tion and education, and socio-
ecology in relation to survival
prospects, respectively. Mating
strategies are clarified, as pre-
dicted from and elaborated in
captive studies: subadult males
are more active sexually than
adults, but the latter focus on
peaks of female fertility. Hence,
the frequent incidence of
"rape", and the females enhanc-
ing the reproductive success of
adult males by their proceptive
behaviour around ovulation
(references to "oestrus" in an
ape are misleading).
  <1The Orang-utan>1 is especially
welcome for stressing the con-
servation problems and provid-
ing some answers, for collating
so much biological information
on this fascinating ape (some
results expected, others not),
and for clearly posing problems
for future field and laboratory. It
is essential reading for all
researchers interested in apes
and in appreciating the mutual
benefits of field and laboratory
study.
  Too many "conservationists"
fail to appreciate the value of
captive studies and even of
management in disturbed habi-
tats--all approaches are very
valuable, but the protection
of adequate areas of natural
habitat is paramount, These
approaches, and the critical
plight of South-Eeast Asian wild-
life, are well summarised in the
epilogue; Dutch primatologists
are to be congratulated on their
initiative in this venture,      []


        <2Publicity agent for whales and seals>2

                    <2Sea shepherd>2
    <2by Paul Watson, >2<1Norton, pp 258, #10-50>1

                    <2Mark Cawardine>2


   A "NOXIOUS TWIT" one
    Newfoundland writer once
called Paul Watson. Born in
Canada, but now spending most
of his time charging around the
world getting into trouble,
Watson is a young radical deter-
mined to stop animals such as
whales and seals being hunted to
extinction.
While most of his contem-
poraries in the conservation
world sit behind desks or on
committees, Watson and friends
race "kamikaze" inflatable
dinghies in front of Soviet and
Japanese whalers' harpoons or
handcuff themselves to the seal
hunters' vessels. It's an exciting
life by any standards and this
description of Watson's incred-
ible feats certainly makes
exciting reading.
  His dedication is infectious.
He has been beaten, nearly
drowned and jailed on numer-
ous occasions--but never actu-
ally stopped.  The thought of
someone boldly (or foolishly?)
risking life and limb for his
cause cannot fail to capture the
imagination, though the effect is
sadly marred in places by over-
reacting and extreme sentimen-
tality. At least no one can accuse
Watson of being half-hearted.
  One particularly interesting
aspect of the book is the
continuous discussion on the
use of violence. It is clear that
Watson spends a great deal of
time wrestling with his con-
science over the choice between
morals and results. Despite the
fact that he was dropped from
Greenpeace in 1977 for being
too much of an activist, it seems
that he is not blindly reckless.
While he strongly believes that
violence produces results (pre-
sumably by dramatising the
point in question) he agrees that
it is morally wrong. In a compro-
mising philosophy he allows
himself violence against prop-
erty but never against life,
human or otherwise.
   The book is a mixture of vary-
ing   successes  and   failures.
Although very often his actions
have little or no <1practical>1 effect,
they certainly succeed in raising
public support. In the long term,
manoeuvring an inflatable
dinghy between whales and
whalers is not alone a dramatic
event as far as the world's
whales are concerned although,
of course, it temporarily delays a
killing. The same goes for diving
in front of a seal pup to protect
it from the sealers. But, on the
other hand, the public support
such actions encourage can be
overwhelming--and surely do
nothing but good.
  But Watson does not only see
himself as publicity agent for his
cause. "If there are rio police,"
he says, "then vigilantes will
appear, because there will
always be somebody to see to it
that crime is never given a free
rein." This one-man vigilante
squad is not such a noxious twit
after all.                     []
   <2Big money and old wives scrutinised>2


         BACK in 1975, when Reg
   Prentice was Secretary of
State for Education and Science
(remember?), I asked him how
long it would take the then
government to assess the success
of Lord Rothschild's reforms.
He had no answer--save that
British scientists had been reor-
ganised so often in recent years
that it was time for stability.
  That exchange came to mind
as I watched Gavin Scott's Hori-
zon, British science--on the
wrong track? (BBC2, 28 Febru-
ary). Here, it seemed, was a chap
who had got up one morning
and resolved to query the #4
billion we spend annually on
science.
  "How come, if we're so clever,
we're so poor?", he asked,
observing Aaron Klug and John
Vane receiving their Nobel
prizes last year. Daresbury was
fine, he agreed, but no one
pretended that its work would
be converted into saleable prod-
ucts. Some fields get dispro-
portionate funds, he opined,
while others go hungry.
   There was much here to inter-
est <1New Scientist>1 customers--in
particlular a vivid portrayal
of the unprecedented butchery
visited on academe by the
Thatcher government. But the
lack of historical perspective was
discomfiting.  An excellent,
pointed illustration of how
Britain failed to capitalise on
Cesar Milstein's monoclonal
antibodies was linked
to an innocently
superficial recap of
the penicillin affair.
   The    paymasters
were blamed for
favouring        high
energy physics as
against engineering,
despite the past
decade's shift of resources in the
opposite direction. And viewers
were given the ridiculous
impression that two blokes from
Sussex University, rather than
Eugene Garfield, had invented
citation analysis as a means of
assessing quality in research.
   What Scott lacked above all,
however, was any visible grasp
of the reports and councils,
White Papers and Green Papers,
which have reconnoitred this
terrain before and illuminated
the thorny issues at the heart of
science policy. It really is not
good enough to ignore such
debate entirely and grouse
instead      over      simplistic
          comparisons be-
          tween expenditure on
          different specialities.
          Nor should a serious
          programme leave
          unchallenged Mary
          Kaldor's hollow
          phrases about how
          science should "meet
          people's needs".
  But then again, one might
forgive such callowness in grat-
itude for several gems in this
otherwise disappointing report.
Especially the moment when Sir
Edward    Parkes,    surveying
university gloom, announced:
"Unknown genius must be
allowed to flower."
  Gavin Scott has now moved
on from science to other things
(he is reading the news on TV-
am's <1Good Morning Britain),>1 so
we shall not, presumably, see the
further development of his short
career in science. One man who
<1has>1 been with science for many
years now--and his experience
certainly tells--is Mick Rhodes,
whose new series of QED began
last week.  Old wives' tales
(BBC 1, 2 March) . . . was a
delight and a pleasant bout of
instruction.
   Does thunder really make the
milk go sour? Yes it can, if close,
humid weather curbs evapo-
ration, allows the temperature of
milk  to  rise,  and  thereby
promotes bacterial production
of lactic acid. Do we really have.
to tell the bees everything,
especially about births,
marriages and deaths?  No,
because that is nonsense.
   Ranging wide over ancient
aphorisms, Professor Noel Dilly
struck precisely the right note of
scepticism, receptivity and curi-
osity. And some illuminating
principles emerged.
   Inoculated with rhinoviruses,
people are no more likely to
develop a cold (or "chill") if kept
cold and damp than if tucked up
warm. One year's seeding really-
does mean seven years' weeding,
when we consider the succession
of seasons required for astrono-
mical numbers of poppy seeds to
decay to zero.
  Just two questions remain.
Did a single viewer understand
the explanation of why peptide
401 and other substances in bee
venom,    by  causing  inflam-
mation, should relieve rheumy
joints? Any why is this series,
every episode of which has been
totally different from the one
before, called a series at all?  []
<2FORUM>2
         <2Beware the hazards of inactivity!>2
<2Karl Hammond has been reading the Royal Society's report on risk>2
HALF A DOZEN years ago, it was
   almost fashionable for scientists
   who had made a quick excursion
through Britain's mortality statistics to
adopt a righteous posture and preach the
message that people were worried about the
wrong things (usually nuclear power).
They, the experts, had examined the statis-
tics and concluded that the risk of being
killed by an accident in a nuclear power
station, or by cancer"causing
saccharin in coffee was so low
that it was "acceptable".
   Lord Rothschild appeared on
television to give a Dimbleby
lecture in which he author-
itatively reassured the public
that the risks of nuclear power
were negligible: if those risks
were not, in fact, accepted, it was
because the public were too
stupid or ill-educated to realise
that they were objectively
"acceptable".    Less   accom-
plished lecturers repeated the
message at meetings of the
second-rate institutions that
infect academic life. The word
they brought down from their
ivory towers was "accept-
ability". If, their litany ran, risks
are low, we ought to accept
them.
   The spate of similar lecturers, articles
and tracts was a stunning confirmation of
the critics who argued that scientists could
spout such one-dimensional, unrealistic
drivel only because they and their science
was   equally    one-dimensional.   Any
competent social scientist could have shot
them down in flames.  Some social
scientists did:  most ignored the debate
because it was, frankly, niave (and often
consisted of nothing more than special
pleading from scientists working for insti-
tutions that had much to lose).
   The gap between natural and social
science seemed enormous.  The natural
scientists, pointing to "objective facts",
pleaded for more rationality. The few social
scientists who bothered with the issue
pointed out that the control of risks was a
social activity and in its analysis ideas like
objective facts and rationality were a posi-
tive hindrance.
   While the academic debate continued on
the sidelines, the people who actually ran
most of the risks being discussed took
matters in their own hands. Trade unions
began, if slowly and unadventurously, to
assert that they didn't give a hoot: their
members were not going to run risks they
didn't like. The public inquiry into the
expansion of the Windscale nuclear re-
processing factory gave the anti-nuclear
movement the impetus it needed not only
to challenge the official estimates of risks,
but also to question repeatedly the idea that
the simplistic estimation of the numerical
size of a risk should govern its regulation.
   Now, the academics (or rather the best of
them) have caught up with the real world.
The Royal Society has produced a report
(<1Risk Assessment>1) that firmly knocks on
the head the assinine logic of Rothschild
and the other one-dimensional men.
   The report points out that quantifying
risks is not without its uses: it teaches you a
great deal about the way that the
engineering systems you're analysing
behave. It can be important in choosing
sites for factories that will create risks or in
choosing between different kinds of equip-
ment with different risks. Neither is the size
of a risk unimportant in influencing how
people regard it. But it's only one factor.
  There are many others. For example,
many people see no reason why they should
run any risk from factories making nuclear
weapons when they disapprove of nuclear
weapons in the first place. Others refuse to
accept risks from activities which, they
believe, bring no benefit to them or to soci-
ety at large. Why should I accept even the
very small risk of living near a dump site for
nuclear waste when I believe that nuclear
power is costly, dangerous and unneeded?
   When Yorkshire Television's documen-
tary on asbestos showed a 10-year-old boy
dying horribly of mesothelioma probably
(or even possibly) caused by the asbestos he
breathed while watching his father change
asbestos-lined brake shoes, it does the
asbestos industry no good at all to point out
that the risk of contracting mesothelioma is
quite low. Quite rightly, the injustice, pain
and horror of that boy's death outweighs
any "objective" argument. A society that
allows such deaths is not humane.
   The Royal Society's report accepts that
people's attitudes to risks are just as
important as the numerical value of the
probability of the risk being realised. Much
of the credit for this advance in the estab-
lishmemt's thinking should go to Professor
Terence Lee from Surrey University. Read-
ing the report, it is clear that many of the
ideas in it about people's perception of risks
are his.
   Equally, the presence of John Dunster on
the working party that produced the report
has clearly brought some fresh air into
otherwise tired thinking. Dunster, who is
head of the National Radiological Protec-
tion Board, and was deputy director of the
Health and Safety Executive, obviously
drafted the sections of the report on how
risks should be controlled. His thinking is
original. He starts with the premise that, in
many activities, safety is impossible. On the
           other hand, there are clearly
           risks that most people find
           unacceptable. So the regulatory
           tactic should be to ban the risks
           consensus      defines      as
           unacceptable and to impose (if
           necessary) a duty to limit other
           risks as far as money allows.
              Neither does Dunster (or the
           Royal Society's report) dodge
           the implications of this tactics.
           First, it means that there must
           be some form of cost/benefit
           analysis, however distasteful it is
           to assign money values to life or
           ill-health. Secondly, and much
           more importantly, politicians,
           industrialists and the powerful
           in general, must realise that you
           can persuade people that risks
           are acceptable, only when they
           have enough information to
decide for themselves. The consensus must
be open and public. That means publishing
research, collecting data on morality in
factories and constructing some forum
where consensus can be agreed by nego-
tiation. And above all, it means that the
government cannot, in private, pre-empt
consensus.
   Margaret Thatcher's government so far
refuses to listen to these ideas. For example,
it steadfastedly refuses to ban lead in petrol
even though there is now no scientist of
repute willing to say that leaded petrol is,
on balance, blameless and even though
opinion polls have shown a massive public
consensus against lead in petrol.
   Having produced a report that talks
sense about risks, the Royal Society prob-
ably thinks its job done. That's a pity. For
none of its analysis, none of its
prescriptions will matter a jot unless the
government can be persuaded to take
notice. With more than three million
people unemployed (even by Norman
Tebbit's figures), the trade unions have
other things to think about. With Thatcher
running amok through the welfare state,
lobby groups are preoccupied defending
what was once thought unassailable. But it
would be too much to ask the Royal Society
to act on its own analysis. That might
disrupt its comfortable life of leisure in its
government-owned mansion overlooking
The Mall. All that is to be hoped is that
individual fellows of the society will use this
report to press, alongside others less privi-
leged, for an openness, a democracy that
harldy distinguishes the Royal Society
itself.                                  []


                  <2Scientific Promotions (Inc)>2

    <2Milton Love has some ideas for advertising scientists>2

MY WIFE, Regina,  is forever
          charaterising me as possessing an
                  almost childlike naivete--one
attuned with a more idealistic time.  I
cheerfully agree with this assessment. I am
forever bemused by the verities of our
modern-day society.
   This may explain my confusion on read-
ing a newspaper advertisement touting a
book on baseball by Roger Angell. Promi-
nently displayed in the ad was the state-
ment, "People buy the <1New Yorker>1 for the
damndest reasons. I happily pay my yearly
subscription just to read Roger Angell's
occasional essays on baseball." This state-
ment was attributed to a book review in the
<1Boston Globe>1 by one Stephen J. Gould.
   Strange, I thought, I have not heard of a
prominent baseball authority with that
name.  Perhaps it was a lesser figure,
possibly a locker room attendant for a
minor league team, such as the Opeleika,
Alabama, Hog Throttlers.
   A quick call to the <1Globe>1 proved that the
book review was indeed by <1the>1 Dr Stephen
J. Gould, guru of New Wave Evolution.
   Now, while I am at least mildly inter-
ested in his thoughts on evolution, why
would the publisher of Angell's book
believe I would care what Gould thought
about a baseball book?
   Perhaps Gould's work on snail speci-
ation gives him some peculiarly perceptive
insights into the baseball world.  For
instance, could the infield fly rule be in
some way analogous to punctuated equi-
librium? Or is base running a societal
metaphor for gene flow?

   I am ashamed to admit to the same
bafflement on hearing Dr Sylvia
Earle--algalogist, marine biologist and self-
promoter extraordinaire--extolling the
virtues of a moving and storage firm in a
radio   advertisement.   Perhaps,   unbe-
knownst to me, she had worked her way
through graduate school pushing grand
pianos down stairways, or dropkicking
boxes of Wedgwood into waiting vans. But
if not, how has her work in algal taxono
or her dives into the Galapagos Rift
prepared her as an expert on the moving
business?
   Seeking an answer, I visited the labora-
tory of Dr Alice J. (Apple) Pion, until
recently a little-known physicist at Dismal
Seepage, North Dakota, Community
College. Little-known, that is, until she
received the Snavely Award for Least
Useful Research for her development of
schools where backward quarks might
learn charm.
   I found Pion to be most eager to discuss
any and all aspects of both the physical and
metaphysical universe. "My, my, yes", she
burbled, settling back into her chair. "Since
my ascendancy to the hallowed ranks of
Snavely winners, my opinions in all
matters have been sought most eagerly.
Why, in the past week alone I have given
my views on nuclear disarmament, the
Middle East, world hunger, racism in the
dairy industry, the proper depth to set okra
seedlings and the supremacy of <1angst>1 in the
first two volumes of <1Winnie the Pooh>1.
Three firms--Dismal Seepage Savings and
Loan, Dismal Seepage Carwash and
Dismal Seepage Goat Packers Inc.--have
asked me to do advertisements. Soon I
begin a round of personal appearances for
the Dismal Seepage Home for Unwed
Optometrists.
   "You see, dear boy, what you have stum-
bled upon are classic cases of what has
happened to me. We have reached the
occasion where an individual receiving
publicity in one field is thought to be an
expert, or at least a saleable item, in all
others.  In my case, before becoming a
Snavely winner, I was but crabgrass in the
Garden of Physics. After the award, I have
to beat away publishers, admen and
sycophants with a sharpened stick."
   It is indeed a shame that prominent
scientists of the past did not share in this
phenomenon. We might then have seen
such advertisenents as:
   Galileo Galilei, for Famagusta Instant
Golden Enriched Noodles, from atop the
tower of Pisa:
   "Let me tell you how it is. I'm on the roof
studying the planets and its cold. Mama
mia, its cold. Then my neighbours start
screaming, "Galileo, you lazy bum, get into
bed. You got to go look for work tomorrow.
Quit wasting your time looking at the sky."
Then my kids start up. "Yeah, Papa, stop
looking at the sky. All the kids at school
think you're some kind of heretic."
   "Here I an trying to change man's
perception of the Cosmos and the neigh-
bours and kids tell me to get a job. That's
when I need a big bowl of Famagusta
Instant Golden Enriched Noodles.
   "Now I hear the Pope has decided to
bring me to trial. The first thing I think is
"Uh oh, Galilei, your rear end is in a pasta
maker now". But the next thing I do is buy
a case on Famagusta Instant Golden
Enriched Noodles. If they throw me in
prison, at least I know that with Famagusta
and maybe a rodent or two from my cell, I
can have a meal fit for a Borgia."
   Madame Marie Curie, for Breast-Arrest
Bras, from within a small wooden hut:
   "Zut, alors! Before I started wearing my
Breast-Arrest my physics career was in a
shambles, for my ample <1balcon>1 kept plop-
ping into my radium, disrupting one
experiment after another.  I tried every-
thing, even hiring an off-duty <1castrato>1 to
hold them out of the way, but nothing
worked.
"How, I wondered, would I ever win the
Nobel Prize?
"Then I remembered Breast-Arrest, with
the patented material Z-28, the same
material used in suspension bridges across
the Seine. Breast-Arrest keeps me cool,
comfortable and in control!"
Charles Darwin, for Dregs Ale, from the
public bar at the Dodo Agogo Inn:
Joseph Hooker has just triumphed in his
debate with Bishop (Soapy Sam) Wilber-
force over Darwin's <1Origin of Species>1.
Hooker, Thomas Huxley and their friends
are in a local pub celebrating by playing
darts, setting fire to the proprietor and, of
course. drinking lots of Dregs Ale.
In the midst of this revelry, Charles
Darwin strides in.  He is immediately
besieged with cries of "Good Old Charlie",
"Mr Evolution" and "Slimy Old
Pruneface" (from a disgruntled Wilberforce
supporter who had slipped into the
festivities).
Darwin hoists a pint of Dregs saying,
"I've had my share of good moments, such
as when I cheated that Wallace simpleton
out of any credit for natural selection. Or
when I come down with psychosomatic
diseases so that my wife babies me and
Huxley and Hooker fight all my battles.
Yes, and when I celebrate good times, I do
it with Dregs. Don't let other ales make a
monkey of you, drink Dregs!"  Darwin
then pours the ale on the semi-comatose
Hooker amid general merriment and the
screams of the burning proprietor.      []


<2Hard pill to swallow>2


<2Donald Gould has been digesting a report from the OHE>2
PROFESSOR GEORGE Teeling-Smith
has provided the nation with a grim
warning, and one we should do well to
heed before we are all poisoned to death.
The professor is director of the Office of
Health Economics, and has been ever since
that admirable bureau was established in
1962. The OHE is funded by the Associa-
tion of the British Pharmaceutical Industry,
and is housed in the association's premises
in Regent Street. There is nothing covert
about this operation. OHE is not a "front"
organisation for the pill merchants, but a
proudly acknowledged agency, and is far
and away the most successful PR exercise
(perhaps the <1only>1 successful PR exercise)
which the industry has ever staged.
   Its function is "to undertake research on
the economic aspects of medical care", and
to "investigate other health arid social
problems", and to "collect data from other
countries", and to publish the results of
these wholly commendable activities. This
brief has been fulfilled with distinction, and
every three or four months for the past 20
years the office has produced an objective,
well-documented, literate, and attractively
presented booklet encapsulating the known
facts about subjects ranging from suicide,
rabies and heart discase, to the cost of
running hospitals and what the public
expects from the NHS, always adding a few
percipient comments and conclusions of its
own for good measure.
   This activity has earned the gratitude
and, indeed, the respect of hacks such as
myself, who have come to rely on the
OHE's booklets and fact sheets and other
publications as accurate and marvellously
convenicnt source material. George him-
self has deservedly achieved the status of a
guru, and a year or so back was made a
part time professor of medical economics at
the City University. He and his staff have
created a fund of goodwill for the industry
which employs them, precisely because they
stick to examining and explaining facts,
and don't flog the party line, and never
indulge in propaganda--well, <1hardly>1 ever.
   I suspect that some of the drug barons
who shell out money in support of what
must be a pretty costly operation regard the
academically-minded staff of the OHE as a
bunch of eggheads, not to say "wets", who
ought to be earning their keep by polishing
up the industry's somewhat tarnished
image, and by encouraging sales, instead of
spending their time and the companies'
profits on airy-fairy projects which aren't
going to rustle up a pennyworth of busi-
ness. And I suspect also that from time to
time the director feels that he has to placate
the more hard-nosed and less imaginative
of his many paymasters by producing
something that <1could>1 be regarded as
promoting trade.
   How else are we to explain the grotegue
document which this highly intelligent and
normally level-headed man gave birth to
the other day? It has an innocent enough
title-- <1The Needs of the Pharmaceutical>1
<1Manufacturerss from their Medical Depart->1
<1ments in the 1990s>1--and in it he very
reasonably argues that an increasingly
sophisticated public, provided with alarm-
ing insights concerning drugs like Opren
and thalidomide by such philosophical
weeklies as the <1Sunday Times,>1 is going to
demand a great deal more information
about the many medicines doctors so reck-
lessly prescribe, (Those aren't quite the
terms <1he>1 uses, by the way.)
   Yes, fine. And we must all agree with
George when he states that in future the pill
pedlars will not only have to show that their
nostrums work, "but also that they actually
bring benefits in social and economic as
well as in purely medical terms".
   So far, so good. But it is the means by
which these desirable ends are to be
achieved that must shock and dismay.
   The professor claims that the customers
are going to want "more authoritative
advice than their doctors can give. . . . "
And how are they going to get this
"authoritative advice"? Why, straight from
the manufacturers, of course. Cut out the
costly and ignorant middleman.
   You can see his point. The doctors may
broadcast their scrips to a drug-hungry
nation like showers of autumn leaves, but
they still act as an intolerable bottle-neck
between manufacturers and their clients,
the latter, poor sods, often not even know-
ing what wondrous remedies are to hand
for the asking.
   It may be, says George, that the public
should be privy to the codes which doctors
use to rustle up data on drugs on their TV
screens. Anyway, one way or another there
must be much more direct contact between
the pill makers and the pill swallowers.
Drug companies will have to start regarding
themselves as suppliers of health rather
than just medicines, and "In the extreme
case, companies could possibly start to
provide general health counselling" to
accompany the use of their products.
   Now, I'm all for the members of the
Great British Public knowing a great deal
more about the nostrums they consume,
and having the information needed to help
them share in deciding which are worth
having and when, and which are best left to
the birds.  But are the pill and potion
merchants the right, proper and natural
sources of guidance and advice?
   Not on your nelly! After all, would you
like to have the fat cats who make Exocets
and Harrierjets tell us when and where we
should go to war? It's bad enough having to
rely on old daddy Reagan and Maggie
Thatcher.                              []
       <2A time and a place for jargon>2


  Colin Tudge on the living language of science


 IN THIS     game    (known     as
  science-writing, as in I science-write,
  you science-write, he/she science-
writes) it pays to know about jargon. If you
don't, if you throw it into articles without
laying the ground first, you tend to lose
your readers. Worse, if you have an astute
sub-editor, or even a conscious one, he/she
has a tendency to write all over your nice
clean copy with a felt-tip, which is like
having people tread on your geraniums. A
firm knowledge of what jargon is, then,
should take its place with a stout pair of
boots and a spare pair of braces, in every
science-writer's knapsack.
      The word "jargon", according to the
 <1Shorter Oxford English Dictionary,>1 comes
from an Old French root that has to do with
the warbling of birds. It came, in English, to
mean twittering in general; and in Middle
English meant "unintellible or meaningless
talk or writing; nonsense, gibberish". But
medieval England, no less than now, was
full of all manner of self-appointed schol-
ars, administrators, and general schemers
with a vested interest in obfuscation; and
with what pleasure, by 1651, says the <1OED,>1
was it "applied contemptuously to the
language of scholars, the terminology of a
science or art, or the cant of class, sect,
trade, or profession".
 The trouble now is that jargon, both the
thing and the word, have become a kind of
battle ground. There are nasty people (a
pox on their house) who use fresh-minted
language not simply or even primarily to
communicate with their peers, but to repel
boarders; just as prep-school boys use caba-
lisms to confuse rival Football teams. On
the other hand, there are philistines who
apparently believe that all new ideas, no
matter how subtle, can be conveyed in the
terms they happened to have picked up at
their mother's knee, and reject any attempt
to expand the language into areas beyond
the nursery. (A pox on their house too.)
The battlefield must be cleared of a little
smoke. It should be obvious first of all, but
surprisingly to many people isn't, that each
field of expertise needs its own vocabulary.
I am constantly astonished by the technical
terms of building:  breastsummers and
dados, screeds and spandrels, rebates and
mullions. Where do the words come from?
Whoever thought to give a word to a bit of
stone sticking out of a wall, or a bit of wood
stuck in one? The point, however, is that to
build a house that stands up requires a
knowledge of where every bit goes and what
it does--and that knowledge is an order of
magnitude and greater than one would have

been able to guess at. A breastsummer isn't
just a piece of wood stuck over a gap, it's a
piece of wood that holds the walls together,
and the rest of the building up. The fact that
it is actually a bit of wood is not important;
what is important is the function, which
can be carried out most conveniently by a
bit of wood in the right place. Breast-
summer doesn't actually describe a piece of
wood at all; it describes an idea. Like all
ideas, the idea of breastsummer is subtle,
with all kinds of connotations. Like all
ideas, it is most easily controlled if it is first
given a name.
  Once you move into particle physics, or
molecular biology, then you may deal with
phenomena that are not only esoteric, but
literally have no equivalent in the everyday
world. It is reasonable, to start ideas in train
in children, to compare an electron with a
ping-pong ball, or the whole atom with a
tiny solar system; but the longer you stay
with homely parallels, the harder it ulti-
mately becomes for the child to move out
of the imagery of pong-pong balls and into
an appreciation that atoms aren't really like
that at all. The new ideas, that come from
the grey area where energy and matter
interchange, need new words, just as rough
country needs Land-Rovers; without the
vocabulary, the traveller in new ideas is
permanently aboriginal. Thus is "technical
language" vital. It is no part of the job of
anyone who pretends to convey any area of
scholarship to a lay audience to shield that
audience from the technical terms, for the
basic vocabulary is the chief requirement of
initiation. It is part of the job (perhaps the
main part) to introduce the principal terms
and to convey some sense of what they
mean: not only as defined in a dictionary,
but also the connotations, the extra shades
of meaning appended to words by the
people who use them. To suppose that tech-
nical vocabulary <1Per se>1 is "jargon", the
warbling of birds, is simply foolish: and to
suppose that popular "science-writing"
should be stripped of technical terms is to
misconstrue the nature of the craft.
  However, technical vocabulary is one
thing and technical language is another.
Vocabulary is words, lists of, abacus beads,
each   encapsulating   a   precise   idea.
Language is what people speak. Beads have
no meaning in isolation: language has
meaning by definition, even if there isn't a
bead in sight. Scholars in every field use
their technical terms all the time, just to get
through the day. Like all other words, like
the word "jargon" itself, the technical terms
are changed with use: corrupted, as they are
used more and more cavalierly: enriched,
as their origins are taken more and more
for granted and they begin to be used as
metaphors. Because technical terms are
genuinely a part of language (and not
intended simply as items in a dictionary),
they ebb and flow, and grow and contract,
and  shift  in   connotation.  Everyday
language, the language of tea and scones,
when it has been beaten by use into every-
day forms, is termed vernacular. True, it is
studded with words that have dictionary
definitions, and held together by formally
definable rules of syntax; but the real
matrix of vernacular is the common under-
standing of people who have shared experi-
ence.  To foreigners, no matter how
generously equipped with dictionaries, the
everyday language of everyday people is
incomprehensible. That is a pity, perhaps,
but it does not mean that everyday
language is bad; it is imply the way of
things that language is not alive unless it is
vernacular, because the adornments and
abbreviations are the adornments and
abbreviations of human thought. Jargon is
technical language that has become
vernacular and, similarly, it is not intrin-
sically bad; if technical language were not
vernacular to those who need to use it, then
it would actually serve very little purpose.
  So when is jargon bad? When is the sub-
editorial felt-tip justified? It is bad when the
inevitable exclusiveness of vernacular
becomes the reason for using it. It is neces-
sary if you are a scientist, as it is if you are
a juggler or an aficianado of the French
horn, to employ jargon. It is bad, if you are
a scientist, to use it specifically to put
outsiders down.
   Similarly, if you are a "science-writer" it
is good to convey as much as possible of the
jargon of a discipline, because the jargon is
a large part of the living language of the
discipline, and therefore of the thought
processes that direct it. It is bad to lapse
into the jargon without conveying its mean-
ing and its connotations, because that is
lazy; and unforgivable to use it just to give
the impression of being in with the chaps. []


          <2'A journalist, proud of that epithet'>2


     Bernard Dixon on Arthur Koestler, the science writer

 TWICE IN MY LIFE I have
   consciously     avoided     meeting
   someone, because I held them in such
awe. One was Arthur Koestler. And the
substance of my apprehension is to be
found in the formidable dossiers of
attainment    which
have been catalogued
in numerous obitu-
aries over the past
week. That, plus the
devastating reputa-
tion of a man who,
uniquely in the 20th
century, shattered the
myth that intel-
lectuals always avoid
the action.
   It was a stupid
misjudgement. When
I  did come to know
Koestler I found him
electrifying but not
at all intimidating.
Even during recent
years of poor health,
his outstanding qual-
ities were riveting
charm and mental
vitality. Small, com-
pact, puckish, he had
the aura of an
insatiably inquisitive vole, continually
turning over ideas, playing with them, and
challenging you to come clean about what
<1you>1 thought. Sharing a glass of whisky with
him in his Montpelier Square home, you
were liable to be quizzed about theories of
antibody formation, David Bohm's work,
or any one of 101 other topical issues that
had caught his attention. He had strong
opinions. But his curiosity about what
others were doing was itself astonishingly
forceful.
   Koestler was, of course, a journalist,
proud of that epithet. After serving as a
foreign correspondent in the Middle East
and Paris, he took up a new job in Berlin on
the very day in 1930 when the Reichstag
election heralded unprecedented barbarism
in Europe. As he later recalls, in <1Arrow in>1
<1the Blue,>1 "the arrival of a new science
editor at that particular moment struck
them as exceedingly funny".
   But so it was that this Hungarian son of
a would-be inventor moved towards his
abiding precccupation with scientific ideas.
And just as Koestler the man seemed
devoid of small talk, so too all the writings
that followed were pertinent and direct,
never trivial or sloppy. <1The Sleepwalkers>1
must be unrivalled as a scholarly history
which has also aroused life-long interest in
                     science among many
                     youngsters. <1The Case>1
                     <1of the Midiwife Toad>1
                     is a controversial but
                     brilliant account of
                     the Paul Kammerer
                     affair.  And <1Beyond>1
                            <1Reductionism>1 (edited
                     with J. R. Smythies)
                     reviews notions, ridi-
                     culed at the time, that
                     are already being
                     recognised as a valu-
                     able corrective to
                     some simplistic para-
                     digms of biology in
                     the late 1960s.
                       Many of these writ-
                     ings have attracted
                     hostility.  One re-
                     calls Peter Meda-
                     war's opening line
                     ("Arthur Koestler is a
                     very clever, know-
                     ledgeable and inven-
                     tive man, and <1The>1
<1Act of Creation>1 is very clever too") largely
for the blast that followed. But Koestler's
replies have invariably upstaged the most
erudite critics. And, despite appearances it
is questionable whether he always wanted
to prove his case to the hilt. Far better,
surely, to be remembered as one who
scorned a wealth of speculations which
were constructive and exciting. I like to
compare him with a footballing genius,
putting through passes others are too slow
to take, and making moves that <1would>1 be
brilliant if only the rules were different.
  And I shall remember his courage.
"Reason tells us--when not choked by
panic--that before we were born we were all
dead, and that our post-mortem condition
is no more frightening than the pre-natal
twilight," he wrote in EXIT's <1Self Deliv->1
<1erance.>1 "Only the process of transition, of
getting unborn, makes cowards of us all."
  Those words, remember, were penned by
one whose physical and intellectual forti-
tude had been amply demonstrated in the
fullness of life.                       []
                  <2Sanitary Sanity>2

Tam Dalyell believes that where there's muck there are votes

 VICTOR DE SABATA, favourite son
   of Arturo Toscanini, brought the
   orchestra and the entire chorus of
La Scala Milan to the Edinburgh festival in
the 1950s.
   The occasion was magical with glittering
performances of Verdi's <1Requiem.>1 Nobody
who was lucky enough to go to the city's
Usher Hall can have
forgotten the splen-
did <1Dies Irae.>1 Rudolf
Bing, the director of
the festival, was then
about to take up his
post as director of the
Metropolitan Opera
in New York.      He
vigorously defended
against allcomers the
enormous expense of
bringing La Scala to
Scotland. But his self-
confidence        was
dented by one salty,
working-class Edin-
burgh     councillor,
who loudly opined to
the great impresario,
"This city can always
find  the  cash   to
powder its nose:  but
we forget to wipe our
bottom!" Rude,    but
true, because not for
another two decades
did the Scottish
capital get around to paying for proper
effluent disposal into the River Forth.
   Edinburgh, like many other British cities,
has a superb inheritance of Victorian
sewers. But we cannot expect to live on this
inheritance for ever. In Britain, about 10
sewers collapse each day, and the highest
incidence is in the North West of England.
Like all else, sewers deteriorate, and
become old and dilapidated. In towns, the
ever-increasing motor traffic takes its toll of
crumbling sewers. In the countryside, in
ribbon developments and even new hous-
ing estates, Victorian sewerage systems
have to serve populations ten times larger
than those for which they were designed.
One thing is certain: we cannot just amble
on and it is going to cost us dearly--#40 000
million according to the National Water
Council and others.
   But one should not be too dismayed by
the sum that we shall have to fork out
before the end of the century, to replace
sewers.  Increased public investment is
essential to economic recovery. Spending
money on the sewers certainly has benefits
in the battle against national depression
and the creation of jobs.
   Of course, investing at times of depress-
sion creates additional demand.  But I
believe that for every #100 million spent on
sewers, the present <1real>1 cost to this nation
of tax payers would be rather less than #50
million. Contractors would have to employ
more people. Sewer renovation requires
large numbers of labourers. The ordering of
building materials would help greatly the
building supplies industry that is at present
in the doldrums.  Much less unemployment
benefit would be paid out. More would be
paid by contractors' employees in tax.
Some people claim there is not much differ-
ence between the after-tax earnings of
low-paid workers and their social security
entitlements when out of work. My reply is
that there are many on the dole who do not
share this view and who would far rather
                     have a job.  There
                     is a difference in the
                     money involved but
                     self-esteem    comes
                     into it.
                        Probably the most
                     urgent sewer rejuve-
                     nation    work    is
                     required in the West
                     Midlands, the North
                     West of England, and
                     the Greater Glasgow
                     conburbation. These
                     are precisely the areas
                     where    the     un-
                     employment is high-
                     est.  A substantial
                     increase in water
                     industry investment
                     should be possible
                     without stimulating
                     higher inflation, or a
                     deterioration in the
                     balance of payments.
                     There would be "real
                     jobs", to borrow
                     Margaret Thatcher's
                     phrase     of     the
moment, and of great significance they
would be British.
  When potential investors, and more
particularly their banks, look at the possi-
bility of setting up in a district, they invari-
ably inquire about the water supply and the
standards and controls of effluents and
sewerage systems. Local authorities that
have modernised their water systems stand
a much better chance of attracting new
industry than do those that have not. Could
this point be "sold" to the public, who are
thought by the politicans to be unin-
terested with matters "out of sight, out of
mind"? Certainly. I would have no diffi-
culty whatever in going on any hustings
and waxing elequent about foul sewage
coming up in the wrong places. There are
votes in sewage for those who argue the case
in a constructive and sincere way.
  Politicians are of course at fault. On the
local councils, water and drainage commit-
tees are not among the most prestigious: if
importance and utility were the criteria
then becoming a member of these commit-
tees or their chairmen would carry kudos.
Nationally, few MPs think that they will
gain much from chuntering on about the
drains . . . but I just wonder if they are not
wrong.
  I attended an excellent meeting on 28
February, that the Institution of Civil
Engineers (ICE). Though it sent invitations
to 250 MPs, and though the venue is
precisely three walking minutes across
Parliament Square, only two of us turned
up--Albert Costain of Folkestone, whose
firm is famous in the world of civil
engineering, and myself.
   All right it was an inconvenient day for
some. All right, the secretary of state may
have had a Cabinet committee meeting. All
right, Giles Shaw, the junior minister at the
Department of the Environment, was in
Brussels. At Engineers' Hall we listened to
experts like D. A. D. Reeve, chief executive
of the Severn Trent Water Authority, D.
Gaulter, director general of the Federation
of Civil Engineering Contractors, and W.
T. Devenay, director of water, Strathclyde
Regional Council. Silently, watching the
proceedings from the walls were portraits of
a host of 19th century presidents of the
ICE. No less than five of them, men like
Robinson and Locke, had also been
members of parliament. For all I know they
may have been part-time MPs, or they may
have had a limited electorate to represent.
Some may have had "rotten boroughs".
But I am jolly sure that they would not let
the government of the day, or their contem-
porary House of Commons, forget how
important it is to supply water and to look
after the sewers and drains. For all the
success of 20th century wonder drugs, 19th
century improvements in sanitation did
more for the health of the nation.
   Let's get back to the dynamism and
outlook of the men who built our great and
marvellous sewers. Our Victorian grand-
fathers recognised the paramount
importance of sewers--we should recognise
it too.                                  []


<2LETTERS>2
  <2Human cropspray tests>2
The children of Maharashta State,
India, share with Egyptian
teenagers the distinction of being
sprayed with Ciba-Geigy pesticides
(<1This Week>1, 10 February, p 355).
In 1979 R. R. Rao and colleagues
published a report in <1Ecotoxicology>1
<1and Environmental Safety>1 (vol 3, p
325) of trials of "Nuvacron 40"
(chemical name--monocrotophos),
"a potent systematic insecticide."
Trial one consisted of a single
aerial dousing on five female and
12 male volunteers (!), ages ranging
from 13 to 57 years. Trial two
consisted of crop dusting 21 males
aged 22 to 50 years for three
consecutive days (only 12 men
remained to be sprayed all three
days). Rao and colleagues blithely
observed that males were sprayed
shirtless: females wore light
garments and all remained in the
cotton fields for 60 minutes after
each dousing. The purpose of ihe
"study" was to observe the ionic
effects on cholinesterase activity.
red and white cells, and
hematocrit.
  The spraying of Third World
children and the pseudoresearch
described by Rao and colleagues
raises serious ethical and scientific
issues. These issues include the
lack of informed consent, the
exploitation of children as
"volunteers", and the
unconscionable use of humans as

test animals. Publication of a peer-
reviewed article by members of the
Ciba-Geigy Department of
Toxicology and Pathology
(Bombay) serves to legitimise the
methods of the "study", and thus
the indiscriminate spraying of
pesticides on children. In India, the
responsibility clearly lies with the
company.
<1D. R. Goldsmith>1
<1Chapel Hill North>1
<1Carolina, USA>1
<2Acid rain:>2

<2look for the dust>2
The subject of the effect of acid
rain on the environment (Forum,
24 February, p 535) has received
increasing recognition and it
certainly behoves those with
influence to reduce the quantity of
sulphur compounds being released
into the atmosphere. Leaving aside
what Tam Dalyell credits "many
ecologists" view on the Falklands,
one could read the article and infer
that spruce forests aggravate the
consequences of acid rain. The
statement "If rain falls on spruce
forests, the rain can become even
more acid" may have been drawn
from a recent paper from the
Institute of Terrestrial Ecology that
certainly showed that water flowing
down the stem was more acid than
that caught in the open.
  The villain though, is the dust
collected from the atmosphere
since the previous rain. Had the
trees not intercepted this dust, it
would have fallen onto the
surface--or blown to somewhere
such as Scandinavia.
 Spruce needles certainly take
longer to decay than some other
leaves, releasing humic acid over a
longer period but at a slower rate,
but being a long standing
constituent of the northern
latitudes coniferous belt, spruce
(Picea) is quite compatible with
lakes well stocked with fish.
  No doubt a research project to
assess the increase of acidity by
rain by heather <1(Calluna vulgaris)>1
would also pick up the effect of
accumulated dust. This species is
the main alternative to spruce in
much of the Uplands but has a
much reduced capacity to take up
sulphur compounds than any
forest when assessed on the basis of
weight per unit area.
<1M. T. Rogers>1
<1Commonwealth Forestry>1
<1Association, Oxford>1


<2Car lead data>2
The accusation by David Price
(This Week, 17 February, p 425)
that the Commission of the
Europan Communities exerted
censorial pressure on tbe report of
the Isotopic Lead Experiment is
ludicrous. If indeed the sentence
referred to has disappeared during
the preparation of the final draft,
its content is still explicit in the
report. For instance on page 57 of
the status report, we read: "If
equilibrium had not yet been fully
established by the time of the
switch back at the end of 1979,
then later equilibrium state
Pb-206/Pb-207 ratios would pre-
sumably be lower than those seen
in 1979. Consequently the contri-
bution of petrol lead to blood lead
of adults would be higher than the
average 24 per cent calculated for
Turin." On the 61, it says: "The
contribution of petrol lead . . .
appears to be at least 24 per
cent . . ." This is followed by a
discussion of the possible reasons.
Thus the points made in the
sentence quoted by Price are more
than underlined in the final text.
<1Dr D. Turner>1
<1Associated Octel>1
<1Ellesmere Port>1
<1South Wirral>1
<2SERC confused>2
<2about physics>2
The report which gives such a
gloomy view of the state of physics
(Comment, 24 February, p 502;
This Week, 3 February, p 287)
covers only a very small part of
physics. It excludes, not only
astronomy and particle physics,
but nuclear physics, much of
radiation and medical physics,
acoustics, materials physics, and
almost all applications of physics.
It is not surprising that the Science
and Engineering Research
Council's review committee found
evidence for a low level of activity
when they chose to compare such
a small part of physics with the
whole of chemistry or biology.
  The SERC's antiquated view of
physics makes it extremely difficult
for physicists working in some of
these lively fields to obtain
consistent support for their
research.
  For example, people working
here in acoustics and radiation
physics never know which SERC
committee will finally examine
their applications--some of our
recent applications have been to
the committees for Biology,
Chemistry, Chemical Engineering,
Mechanical Engineering, Polymer
Engineering, the joint SERC/SSRC
committee or even sent off to
ARC. From the wide experience,
we can say that the committees of
the Engineering Board are
generally more tolerant of new
ideas.
  There are four active research
groups here, all receiving
substantial support from Research
Councils, charitable foundations,
government departments and
industry.
  But only a section of one group
receives sustained and sympathetic
support from the SERC Physics
Committee.
<1Professor Daphne F. Jackson>1
<1Department of Physics>1
<1University of Surrey>1
<1Guildford>1


<2Sliderules>2
Regarding the appeal in your
columns for sliderules for
Mozambique (Forum, 27 January,
p 256), I will collect and deliver
slide-rules in the Bath area. Phone
Trowbridge 3130 9 am-4 pm. or
drop them into my home.
<1Richard Scrase>1
<126 Thomas Street, Bath>1


  <2Ariane failures>2
You and your readers should have
  a more factual account of the
  Ariane launcher success rate than
you recently presented (Forum, 10
February, p 392). The laucher has
not failed "more often" than it has
flown successfully. Three of the
first four development launches
were successful, and Ariane was
declared qualified for operational
service. The fifth launch was the
second failure. (Moreover, the two
unsuccessful rockets certainly did
not "crash to the around".)
  As my letter perhaps indicates, I
am not from "the old school of
diplomacy" as your article would
have readers believe, and I do not
like destructive reporting in an
area which merits a more
measured and informed approach.
<1R. Gibson>1
<1La Boissie\re Ecole>1
<1France>1
<2Internal evolution>2
In the article on "Molecular Drive:
a third force in evolution" (vol 96,
p 664) Gail Vines claims
  "Evolutionists, up to now, have
  considered only two processes that
  could spread mutations of genes to
  all individuals of a population and
so create evolutionary change . . . .
natural selection . . . genetic drift".
  This assertion is incorrect, for it
ignores the interest by many
evolutionists with orthogenesis,
also known variously as "laws of
growth" "oriented evolution" and
"nomogenesis" etc. Very simply,
these terms cover a process by
which evolution is internally
directed. This is not just genetic
drift but a process whereby the
entire structural basis of an
organism is determined along
particular lines (not to be confused
with rectilinearity) of development.
  Although "orthodox" theory
disregards orthogensis (often
confusing it with rectilinearity) the
existence of "laws of growth" was
recognised by Darwin, although he
failed to synthesise their role in
relation to the environment and
vastly overemphasised the power
and importance of natural
selection. There appears to have
been a greater interest in
orthogenesis in the earlier part of
this century and writers such as
Berg considered the subject in
some depth. However more
recently the evolutionist Leon
Croizat has intensively evaluated
the evolutionary role of
orthogenesis against a background
of space, time, form by
panbiogeographic method.
  Given the prior interest in
orthogenesis, the assertion by Gail
Vines that "molecular drive" is a
new mode of evolution cannot be
accepted unqualified. Yes, "new"
perhaps in a technical sense but in
the context of internally directed
evolution, molecular drive is at
best only one possible mechanism
for orthogenesis. With respect to a
concept of orthogenesis the validity
of internally direction evolution
does not stand or fall on what
various specialists such as
molecular biologists, have to offer.
<1J. R. Grehan>1
  <1Victoria University>1
  <1Wellington>1


  <2Recipe for>2
<2hypochondriacs>2
Bernard Dixon (Forum, 24
February, p 534) may be interested
to know that Jerome K. Jerome
was a fellow sufferer. In <1Three Men>1
<1in a Boat>1 he tells how, having gone
through a medical dictionary at the
British Museum--to check if he
had hayfever--he decided he had
everything in the book except
housemaids knee. Taking his
troubles to his doctor, he was given
a long prescription, which he
presented to the chemist without
first reading it. The chemist
suggested he try the Co-op, or an
hotel. The prescription read:
1 lb beefsteak, with
1 pt bitter beer, every six hours
1 ten mile walk every morning
1 bed at 11 sharp every night
and don't stuff up your head with
things you don't understand.
  I would suggest that Bernard
Dixon, and any other
hypochondria sufferers, try the
prescription. It can't do any harm.
<1Robert Kennan>1
<1London N6>1
<2Of ducks--or men?>2
The article by Dennis Lendrem
("A safer life for the peeking
duck", vol 97, p 517) held no
surprises. Why? Because it took
anthropomorphism to the nth
degree, Mr Lendrem's conclusions
may be summarised as follows: (1)
When ducks sleep they close their
eyes. (2) When ducks have their
eyes open they are awake
(Lendrem uses the "I know what's
happening term" "vigilante".) (3)
Ducks watch out for predators. (4)
Ducks cannot distinguish cricket
bats, scaffolding or umbrellas when
they are carried by men. (5) The
more ducks a cat has to choose
from the less likely it is to take one
duck in particular. (Lendrem uses
the "random cat" analogue
P=1<1-e-n-Bt.>1 I have yet to find a
random cat or a one-dimensional
flock of 30 ducks.) (6) Ducks feel
more at ease when with other
ducks. (7) Male ducks frequently
look at female ducks. (8) The more
female ducks the males have to
look at the more time they spend
looking at them. (9) Brightly
coloured ducks are easier to see.
(10) Ducks like sleeping.
  Mr Lendrem has gone to great
pains to establish one thing: that
all of his preconceptions
concerning bird behaviour are true.
Lendrem's conclusions, which
from hereon should be termed
"Lendrem's Axioms", simply
demonstrate that the behaviour of
ducks and human beings
(ethologists, for sure) are motivated
by identical factors. If all science
were as Lendrem portrays it, we
could ascertain everything by resort
to introspection and examination
of our own motives.
       <1Philip A Rea>1
<1Bioengineering Unit>1
<1John Radcliffe Hospital>1
<1Oxford University, Oxford>1


<2Energy from refuse>2
Your report on Corby and
Edmonton refuse-fired power
stations could be misleading (This
Week, 2 January, p 219).
Edmonton recovered less than half
its total annual costs from
electricity sales last year, as you
say. But it is still cost-effective
since the rest of its annual costs,
#3.85M or about #10/tonne, are
27 per cent <1less>1 than the average
cost of refusal disposal to the GLC
and only half those of long-
distance hole-filling contracts (up
to #23/tonne).
  The price of refuse-derived
power is not unreasonable,
averaging 2.1 p/kWh for
Edmonion. Nuclear power, for
comparison, averages
2.4-2.8p/kWh including capital
charges, as shown by Professor J.
Jeffery <1(Energy Policy,>1 June 1982).
This ignores the saving on refuse
disposal (which would have the
effective price) and the fact that
one method reduces landfill
pollution, while the other generates
a type we do not yet know how to
clear up.
<1James E. Thing>1
<1Lambeth>1
<1London SE 11>1
<2Who will work?>2

Does Patrick Jenkin really believe
that microelectronics holds any
hope for the unemployed (The
unemployed cannot blame
automation, 24 February, p 526)?
  The small percentage of jobs he
speaks of being created are all
highly skilled, whereas the majority
of the unemployed are untrained,
unskilled and have not the
qualifications for further training.
How can people get further
training when the government is
closing down existing training
centres? They say that these trades
taught there are no longer needed.
If this is so where are the new
training facilities?
  It is the fault of this government
and past ones that have allowed
people to train in narrow,
restrictive fields, and now, when
the need for change arises, we are
not in the position to do so.
<1Colin Reid>1
<1Darlington>1   []
<2ARIADNE>2
           THIS should be the last word about
exploding rats and other devices that
appeal to the sadistic sense of humour in
most of us. According to a reader, the
Americans thought of such things first. In
1864, the Confederates had the idea of
making torpedoes to look like lumps of
coal. This was in the days when torpedoes
were not missiles that moved underwater,
hence the nowadays somewhat obscure
meaning of Admiral Farragut's remark,
"Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"
The torpedoes in question were fixed
charges in a channel.
  The coal torpedoes had a
powder charge inside a hollow
cast iron block that was
disguised as coal with tar and
coal dust. They were dropped
into coaling barges and slung
into boiler furnaces with the
rest. Results, or alleged results,
include the sinking of a Federal
warship.
    A problem with underwater
limpet mines in the second
world war was solved by aniseed
balls, I am told. The mines were
going off too early, but aniseed
balls placed between contacts
proved effective, for aniseed
balls dissolve at a constant rate
no matter what the temperature.
They were also quite sensitive as
fuses.  They could be sucked
beforehand to reduce the time
before explosion, though the
imagination sags a bit at conjur-
ing up a frogman sucking
aniseed balls underwater along-
side explosive charges.  []
SPECIFICALLY designed to
    improve the usability of a
wide     range    of   personal
computers by raising the back to
a calculated level. Fundamental
ergonomics reveal that this
makes      the     keys     more
comfortable to operate and
their printed surfaces easier
to identify. Those two sentences
are straight quotations from a
leaflet sent to us from Warp
Factor Eight, a firm in Ware.
  The product is called Hi-Stak. It consists
of two plastic wedges, with sticky surfaces
to attach to the computer and rubber Feet.
Two of them can be yours, giving "a
professional look to the personal computer
set-up",   for   #3.95,   Enterprising   I
reckon.                                   []


           Royal Society's study group
   report on risk assessment is a tough
read; For example, "At the administrative
level, there is a need to acknowledge the
validity of public perceptions, while at the
same time purveying the fullest informa-
tion on objective risk estimates, not least
because    these   data   fom   a   major
component of the public's perceptions,"
But it concentrates the mind and, of
course, it deals with every activity of man.
All, you might say, human life is here. I do

not want to give the wrong impression by
quoting that slogan of a well-known
Sunday newspaper. Those who see that
one section of the report is concerned with
fates worse than death may be dis-
appointed.
  This is not the place to discuss the report
at length, but to mention one or two points
that were aired at the press conference to
introduce it. Nuclear energy as a hazard
came up ineluctably, in a discussion of the
familiarity of a risk, such as that in driving
a car, making it generally acceptable.
Professor T, R. Lee said that people were
exercised about the dangers to life from
railways when they were new, but they
were eventually seen as negligible, with the
implication for some that the same
sequence would happen with nuclear
energy. Analogies are always dangerous, I
think.  John Dunner, the head of the
National Radiological Protection Board, in
an aside, made the interesting suggestion
that perhaps there had been altogether too
much information available about nuclear
energy, rather than too little, ready material
to use, either uncomprehendingly or fully
aware, to stoke up polemical fires.       []


 All the same, there may be one or two
   risks that the Royal Society's Group
have not taken into account.  One was
launched into my consciousness by Linda
  Lee Potter, in the <1Daily Mail. A paragraph>1
about her reaction to the house in Muswell
Hill being investigated by the police stated
that, no matter what renovation was done
there, she would not live in it. "Evil", she
wrote, "does get into bricks, tragedy into
mortar," It is new light to me on the
properties of bricks and mortar. It raises all
kinds of questions, such as how do the evil
and the tragedy get out again, how long can
they stay there without deterioration and
many more.  Fortunately there is an
answer. Evil and tragedy, lurking in the
brickwork, are apparently destroyed by
fire, so burning the house down would be
efficacious.                              []

                        A FLYING=MACHINE pow-
                 ered by the wind is an
           elusive goal. A kite on a line
           generates lift from the wind
           streaming past it; but if
           released it soon reaches the same
           speed as the surrounding air and
           loses it all. Daedalus, however,
           recalls that the wind is always
           gusty and turbulent.
              So his prototype "Anti-
           parachute" is a big circular
           membrane in a tensioned wire
           rim, pierced with thousands
           of valve-like holes carrying
           film or fabric flaps. These are
           designed, rather on the principle
           of the weathercock, to orientate
           themselves to the instantaneous
           local air movement.  If the
           air-flow at a valve is down-
           wards, it will open to admit
           it; if upwards, it will close to
           entrap it and if it is horizontal
           from any direction the flap will
           tilt to allow it through at an
           angle, gaining aerofoil-type lift
           from it.
               So the Antiparachute will
           always    rise.   The   energy-
           spectrum of atmospheric turbu-
           lence persists down to the
           smallest scales, and to trap the
           maximum amount of energy
           the valves must be as small and
           numerous as possible,
               The payload of Daedalus's
           new craft will be conventionally
           suspended from cords around its
           rim. Unfurled into the air it will
at once fill and rise. Its intrepid pilot will
control it by hauling on the suspension-
lines to angle the lift generated by the
canopy.
   Even so, the craft will probably have
difficulty in "tacking" upwind.  It will
have to rise to those heights where shear
between two wind layers gives a choice
oF wind-direction, and plentiful turbulence
to sustain lift.  With good meteoro-
logical predictions, directed Anti-parachute
flights might be confidently undertaken,
perhaps even on a commercial basis. Even
so, the first use of the Antiparachute are
likely to be rather tentative and sporting.
   Of course, if by some atmospheric freak
the wind and its turbulence should fail, it
will simply revert to a normal parachute,
delivering its burden safely back to the
ground.                                    []