<2A season of protest>2 THANKS TO the orbit of the Moon, Easter came early this year, bringing also an early start to the anti-nuclear season. We can expect the protesters to continue with more vigour than usual this year, and to exhibit renewed enthusiasm when cruise hunting starts. Thus we are in for a prolonged battle to win over public opinion. Mrs Thatcher sees the problem of convincing those in the middle ground as one of understanding and propaganda. One reason why she brought Michael Heseltine in as Secretary of State for Defence is said to be his ability as a public-relations man. Mr Heseltine has been given the task of selling the government's strategy on nuclear weapons. As the best PR people try to understand their audience before they try to sell something, we must assume that Mr Heseltine is even now reading up on anti-nuclear propaganda. Unfortunately, there is precious little evidence that the government is trying to understand the protestors. It needs to. A hundred thousand people at Aldermaston is a symptom of a far greater unease about "the Bomb". Admittedly, most of those who attend such demonstrations are, as the government has said, self-righteous prigs who mistakenly believe that they are the only ones interested in peace. But For every person at Aldermaston there are hundreds who share at least some of the protestors' fears, without their fanaticism. It is in the nature of protest movements to paint issues as black and white. There is no point in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament taking a reasoned line. If it did it would soon lose support and wither away. That is not its role in life. Govern- ments have to behave differently. Only then will they win the middle ground, and only then will they give their policies a chance to persist when they have moved out of office. Fortunately, one or two civil servants realise that the government could build up trouble if it allows a whole gener- ation to grow up with a dislike for nuclear weapons. They have been thinking about the long-term future and have concluded that it will be very difficult to impose nuclear weapons on a population that is generally opposed to them. Politicians get away with this sort of behaviour only in totalitarian states. At the moment, Mrs Thatcher and her ministers are playing the role they seem to like most, that of school bully--they call it strong government. Naturally, the fair- minded British tend to side with the under- dog. For the first time in years nuclear weapons could well be an issue at the immi- nent general election. Silly talk of linking arms around the Berlin wall just might make a few of the supporters of the SDP/Liberal Alliance--whose nuclear poli- cies are indistinguishable from the govern- ment's and whose voting habits are more volatile than Conservatives'--opt for Mr Foot and his clear policy of unilateral disarmament. [] <2A worthy career>2 JIM (J.G.) CROWTHER, founding father of the craft of science journal- ism, died last week after a short illness. He was 84. He was, through his books and contributions to journals and newspapers, a source of inspiration for numerous scientists, would-be scientists and general readers for more than 60 years. Indeed, it may not be going too far to say that without J. G. Crowther <1New Scientist>1 would not be here, certainly not in its present form. Crowther's concern that the lay press was weak in its coverage of science led him in 1928 to confront <1The Manchester Guard->1 <1ian's>1 legendary editor C. P. Scott with the quip that although there wasn't such a profession as science journalism, he, J. G. Crowther, proposed to invent it. Scott took him on as scientific correspondent. J. G. had no scientific degree, but his perceptive knowledge of scientists, their research and the needs of a daily newspaper made certain that he didn't fail any of them. J. G. spelt out his credo for the craft in a short note in his book <1An Outline of the>1 <1Universe>1 published in 1931: ". . . As a proper craft, scientific journal- ism is social. It is becoming an essential binder in the structure of a civilisation created by the application of science to industry. Modern society may collapse unless the atmosphere of science becomes generally apprehended. ". . . Anyone in contact with scientists is aware how often general accounts of recent scientific work give the facts but not the mental attitude of the researchers. For instance, the day's two leaders in theoretical physics are men of about 30 years, their ideas have been generally expounded by men about 50 years or older and one is certain many of these widely read expositions do not reveal the mental- ities of the young creative thinkers. The revolutionary, hard and brilliant intellects of Heisenberg and Dirac do not yield mysticism that is a spurious growth stimu- lated in uncreative by creative minds. Mysticism is the product of those who fail to understand, the substitute for compre- hension and the margarine of philosophy. The scientific journalist's attitude must be adopted from that of creative workers and he must attempt to convey what these workers think and do. ". . . The proper scientific journalist should devote the whole of his intellectual energy to the prosecution of his craft. Then society will learn from continuous imper- sonal accounts that attitude required to solve present social problems, and will scorn sporadic writing intended to titivate its humour or its soul." In 1981, at the 150th anniversary meet- ing in York of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the Univer- sity of York conferred its degree of doctor on J. G. Crowther "For creating the profession of scientific correspondent, for scholarly contributions to the history of science and to the social aspects of science, and for acting as a healthy irritant to the scientific establishment for 60 years." It was a fitting climax to a worthy career. [] <2THIS WEEK>2 <2Police to form national computer network>2 EIGHT police forces in Britain have plans to link their computerised criminal files (which hold both criminals and suspects) to the Police National Computer (PNC) in London. <1New Scientist>1 has discovered that one force, Suffolk, has already linked up. These first steps towards a national network of police computers are going ahead even though many senior policemen are concerned with the lack of a national policy on police computers. In evidence given in 1978 to the Lindop committee on data protection, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) said that the police's intelligence computers should not be linked up without the approval of parlia- ment or the Home Secretary. Yet the Home Office has said that specific approval for the functions of police computers is not required from them. This vacuum in responsibility was condemned last week by Sir Norman Lindop, the chairman of the data protec- tion committee. He said that, in the absence of a national policy, there is no-one in national control of police policy on the use of computers. The issue of police use of computers is extremely sensitive. The fear is that a nationwide network of police computers could swap unsub- stantiated gossip and suspicion about indi- viduals. The police say that such unsubstantiated infor- mation--know as criminal intelligence-- will be kept separate from criminal records and other hard information. But in practice the distinctions are confused. One member of the Lindop committee, Paul Sieghart, a lawyer, told <1New Scientist>1 last week that the chief officers feeling in 1978 "was that intelligence systems--with unverified non-factual information-- should not find their way into factual systems, and therefore [the data] should not be retrieved by people looking for factual information." The Home Office has set up a committee to examine codes of practice for police computers. Its chairman, Northumbria's chief constable, Stanley Bailey, said there is a problem in categorising the middle ground between factual information and intelligence. "I believe by forming a better definition of criminal record information, and with a better definition of criminal intelligence, we should be able to identify the middle grade which is called criminal information," he said. Since the beginning of last year, police officers in Suffolk have been able to use thier computer terminals to plug into both their own "criminal information" files, containing facts and suspicions, and to national records held on the PNC. The Suffolk system records details on more than 75 000 people, some of whom are "actively engaged in crime but who have no previous convictions" and others who are "checked" persons. Those people checked by officers on patrol "more than three times in 28 days are made suspected persons," according to internal Suffolk documents. "This allows us to keep a check on who is moving around in the middle of the night," said Segeant John Bishop who heads the computer operation. Bishop said that Suffolk's safeguards include a separate microcomputer to hold non-factual intelligence information. There are no plans, he said, to link the micro with other computers, such as the Suffolk criminal information system. This much larger system can at present take information from the files of the PNC. But the PNC cannot get hold of Suffolk files. This "one-way interface" safeguards civil liberties. Eight other constabularies are planning similar links between their criminal information systems and the PNC (see map). One is the Merseyside force which already has a link from the PNC to its #2 million command and control computer. Now it wants to link up its planned crim- inal information computer, whose approval is still needed from the local police committee. This computer makes possible "complex speculative searches of a database of local people." One Scottish force, Lothian and Borders, is planning a similar link with its new crim- inal information computer. This computer will include information gathered by area constables whose job is to: "secure the service of at least one observer in every street, not a paid professional informant, but someone who knows the inhabitants and is inquisitive enough to find out what is going on and will pass on information." [] <2Thatcher vetoes computer scheme>2 MARGARET THATCHER is person- ally behind the delay in imple- menting a massive government-backed programme of computer research. At a meeting of a cabinet committee early last month, she is said to have "kicked over the table" in consternation at the proposals. They call for a five-year programme to knit together the nation's best brains in comput- ers, with the taxpayer contributing two- thirds of the total bill of #350 million. Treasury officials had planned to include details of the scheme in the budget on 15 March. Mention of the programme was hastily removed. According to one source, ministers supporting the project, who include kenneth Baker, the minister for informa- tion technology, have been forced to lie low after the Prime Minister's outburst. Civil servants from several departments are now re-examining the scheme, which was first suggested by a committee chaired by John Alvey of British Telecom. It appears that Mrs Thatcher's main objection was the amount of public money involved. Also, she failed to be swayed by arguments that Britain's future industrial prowess crucially depends on a strong base in computing research. [] <2High times as magic mushrooms go to court>2 HALLUCINOGENIC mushrooms can be legally grown in Britain, a judge ruled last week in a test case. Kelvin Curtis, 31, was charged at Snaresbrook Crown Court in east London with producing or attempting to produce a Class A drug psilocyn, an ester of psilocybin. This drug is banned under the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. Curtis faced a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison because he had been growing <1Psilocybe cubensis,>1 or "magic mushrooms" as they were called in court. The mushrooms contain psilocyn. Both defence and the prosecution agreed on the main facts of the case. However, after hearing legal arguments, the judge, Clive Callman, said that the law was ambiguous. Although the pure drug was banned it was not certain whether a naturally-occurring substance containing the drug was illegal. The judge directed the jury to acquit Curtis. The Metropolitan Police, which brought the case, has 28 days in which to take the case to a higher court. When arrested, Curtis told the police that he had obtained the mushroom spores for #3 from an American magazine <1High>1 <1Times.>1 He germinated the spores in dishes containing agar jelly, then trans- fered the spores to Kilner jars which contained rye grains. Once the fungus had begun to grow, he covered the growth to a 1 cm depth with a mixture of "dirt", chalk, peat and sand. Curtis told police, that he sometimes pressure-cooked this mixture to sterilise it. He watered the jars with distilled water once a day and the mushrooms appeared after about a month "if you were lucky". Curtis said he learned how to grow the mushrooms from a widely available book called the Mushroom <1Growers' Guide.>1 Police asked him how much he took to "get a buzz". He said the most he had ever taken was 50 grams. The crux of the case was a legal argument about whether the phrases "products and substances" in the 1971 act, which are not defined, include the mushrooms. Prosecution experts said the mushrooms were a product and substance, but agreed that the words could have different mean- ing. The defence relied heavily on the legal precedent of Goodchild in the House of Lords in 1978, where Lord Diplock ruled that it was not illegal to possess naturally- occuring substances even if they contained a controlled drug. As the law now stands it is legal to grow the mushrooms, and eat them fresh, but illegal to prepare them in any way--even by cooking. Mushrooms containing the drug psilocyn grow all over Britain, notably on Hampstead Heath. Curtis told the police when arrested: "I'd like to be recognized for making the planet a better place to live in." [] <2Hedgehopping with the satellite mapper>2 RESEARCHERS in Europe are delighted with the quality of images which the US's latest land-mapping satellite, Landsat 4, is trans- mitting to Earth. The bad news is that a vital piece of equip- ment on the craft has stopped operating, cutting off the flow of data to ground stations. The images in which researchers are most interested are from a sensor on board the vehicle called the thematic mapper. This produces pictures of the ground with a resolution of 30 metres, an improvement on the 80 m obtained from earlier Landsat satellites. A receiving station operated by the European Space Agency near Rome acquired about two months worth of data from the thematic mapper before transmitting equipment broke down. Livio Marelli, who is in charge of making sense of the informa- tion, says the quality of the data is better than he had anticipated. He says that processed information should be available to researchers in Europe from the summer. John Townsend, of Reading University's geography department, told New <1Scientist>1 that the images are so good it is possible to pick out individual hedgerows. According to Townsend, the data should be invaluable to researchers studying rural areas. Military officials may also be interested because at this resolution the craft can pick out features such as missile silos. As a result of the fault, the only way people can obtain data from the thematic mapper will be via the US. The transmitter that sends data to a receiving station at White Sands, New Mexico, is still working The snag is that the information has to be channelled via one of two other satellites which are not operating. The first of these Tracking and Data Relay Satellites entered orbit on board a space shuttle earlier this week, but later ran into trouble when its second booster failed. People who require less detailed images are, however, unaffected by the trans- mission problems. Landsat 4 has another sensor called the multispectral scanner which is a copy of that carried on earlier members of the Landsat family. This is operating normally, providing pictures with the usual 80 m resolution. The US government will start selling thematic mapper data only when the sensor is fully proven, some time over the next year. At this point a tape of data contain- ing information about an area of some 40 000 sq. km, will probably cost around $3000, five times as much as the price for data From the scanner. [] <2Europe hunts dioxin waste>2 GOVERNMENTS throughout most of Western Europe are this week wondering whether one of their country's warehouses or toxic tips may have become home to 41 drums of dioxin-contaminated waste that was spirited out of Italy last September. The waste is the most toxic remains of the industrial accident at Seveso in 1976. On Easter Monday, Belgian police raided a ship equipped for incinerating waste at sea, the <1Matthias II>1, in Antwerp harbour, The raid followed reports in the Italian press that the waste, which contains 300 grams of dioxin (TCDD) had been incinerated on board a Dutch ship in the North Sea. Last week the manager of a French company that had handled the waste was arrested. Bernard Paringaud of the firm Spedilec, is alleged to have asked a German firm to store the waste. That firm, Badische Ruckstandsbeseitigung, says it refused to handle the waste. Meanwhile German ministers say the waste has not crossed their borders and the French environment minister, Huguene Bouchardeau has retracted an earlier claim that the waste had left France. It was "not impossible" that it was still there, she said. [] <2Bounty placed on wolf>2 THE CONTROVERSY in Norway over a bounty of #2000, placed on the head of one of the country's last wolves, has had to be settled at cabinet level. Ministers have upheld a decision by the Directorate of Came and Freshwater Fish that the wolf, which has been killing sheep near Verg- arshei in the south of the country, should be shot. But the outcry from conservationists has been so great that the government has decreed that no more wolves will be shot <1(New Scientist,>1 10 March, p 633). This has scotched a plan by hunters in the forest of Trysil, 200 km north of Oslo, to kill three wolves whose tracks have been found on the border with Sweden. There are now hopes that Trysil, a densely-forested area abounding in roe deer and elk--but remote from domestic livestock--could be an ideal place for the Norwegian wolves to live. [] <2Leprosy Vaccine goes on trial>2 THE FIRST controlled tests on humans of a vaccine against leprosy have just begun in, of all places, Norway. Further tests will follow in Britain and the US later this year. They are the first phases in the biggest programme of clinical trials ever undertaken. The aim is to eradicate the disease for good. Why Norway? The reason is mainly immunological. The vaccine--which consists of whole, dead leprosy bacilli-- should induce immunity in the subjects. Such immunity can be detected with a simple skin-test. In Third World countries where the disease occurs, day-today exposure to leprosy would confuse the trials by giving many people natural immunity. People in northern climes, on the other hand, are unlikely to have been exposed to leprosy in every-day life and a positive result in the test is bound to be due to vacci- nation. Tore Godal, the head of the Norwegian trials says that there has been no problem in finding altruistic Norwegians to volunteer. Four groups will be given successively- increased doses of the vaccine, which the Wellcome foundation is making in Britain. The volunteers will be observed for toxic reactions and immunity for three months after each dose. The year-long process will then be repeated in leprosy-infected areas. Full-scale prevention trials will then start. At most, five people per thousand contract leprosy, so hundreds of thousands must be vaccinated to reduce significantly the number of cases. As the onset of leprosy is slow, it will take at least 10 years to produce positive results. Moreover, because of geographic variations in people's sensitivity to the disease, tests will have to be done in many countries. The vaccination programme has been criticised on the grounds that this massive time and effort could be better spent improving drugs to cure leprosy. A vaccine is needed, however, partly because an over-reliance on one drug, Dapsone, has spawned resistance to the drug on an alarming scale. Moreover, because leprosy is often spread by people who do not yet know they have the disease, therapy with drugs is not very effective. Debora MacKenzie [] <2Fears of China Syndrome hot up>2 NEW EVIDENCE that increases fears about the consequences of a melt- down inside a nuclear power station after a major accident has been unearthed by nuclear scientists at the Insti- tute for Transuranic Studies at Karlsruhe in West Germany. But British authorities are sceptical of its importance and do not intend to add it to their evidence to the Sizewell public inquiry (which is now enjoying an Easter break). The German scientists, led by Dr Hans Schmidt, have tested, for the first time any- where, the thermal conduc- tivity of molten uranium fuel of the kind used in pressurised- water reactors (PWRs) throughout the world. A pool of molten fuel would form on the floor of the reactor duting a meltdown. Schmidt's team have concluded that the molten fuel is five times less conductive than theoretical studies, on which the safety-design work for PWRs is based, had suggested. They believe that, if the heat in the molten fuel cannot be dissipated by conductivity, then the danger from the so-called China Syndrome, in which the hot fuel bores its way through the bottom of the reactor building, would be much higher. British scientists at the UK Atomic Energy Authority's Harwell laboratories are sceptical about all this. They developed the technique used by Schmidt to melt the uranian--firing high-powered carbon dioxide lasers onto a suspended disc of uranium dioxide fuel. But, says the UKALEA's Dr John Gittus, they want to see if he can repeat the result using an alternative method, such as heating the fuel in a tungsten crucible. Even if the thermal conduc- tivity of the fuel does turn out to be much lower than assumed, Gittus believes that this "may not produce a significant increase in temperatures during a severe accident". Conductivity, he says, "is only one of the process involved. There are also convection and radiation, for example". Also, there are other substances in the molten pool, which would affect the picture, such as the zirconium alloy cladding round the fuel rods. "In my evidence to the Sizewell inquiry," said Gittus, "I say that 99 per cent of core melt accidents would not cause a melt- through of the concrete base mat. We have generally concluded that the China Syndrome will not occur". On the basis of the present evidence, he does not intend to change his mind. David Price, Brussels, and Fred Pearce [] <2Conserving efficiently>2 THE EFFICIENCY of the Nature Conser- vancy Council is praised by a government review committee under Sir Derek Rayner whose draft report was handed to the council last week. But the report is disappointing, say NCC staff, because the narrow terms of reference prevented Rayner from addressing the council's real problems. The report side-steps such ques- tions as whether the council will have the resources to protect threatened sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) or to promote conser- vation in the countryside as a whole (see p 7). Council officers are especially worried about the revicwers' recommendation that the stat- utory criteria for selecting SSSIs--which are at present purely scientific--should take into account administration and finance. [] <2Reprocessing recruit>2 BELGIUM is to rejoin the nuclear fuel reprocessing race. A project to revive its Eurochemic plant for reprocessing nuclear fuel, at Mol in the northeast of the country, has just obtained the senate's approval. It should be fully operational by 1986. The plant will initially reprocess irradiated fuels from the country's five existing nuclear power plants. The plant was built by the Nuclear Energy Agency of the OECD, which set up Eurochemic in 1957. In 1974 it was squeezed out of the market by an Anglo-French-German enterprise, United Reprocessors. Both France and West Germany intend to double their reprocessing capacity by 1990--when the THORP plant at Windscale should be in business. [] <2Genentech buys relaxin>2 GENENTECH, the biotechnology company from the US has signed an agreement with the Howard Florey Institute of Experimental Physiology and Medicine in Melbourne for commercial development of the human-birth hormone, relaxin. The hormone has great potential for alleviating problems during child- birth and, perhaps, in the treatment of arthiritis. The deal follows the recent announcement of the production of a pure form of the hormone by researchers from the institute, using genetic engineering techniques. Genentech outbid rivals from Japan, Britain and the US. According to Dr Derek Denton, director of the Florey Institute, the agreement with Genen- tech should allow clinical trials of the hormone to begin within two years. It could be on the market within four years. Under the agreement, the institute will receive royalties if Genentech successfully markets the hormone. [] <2Data detente>2 EUROPE'S three largest data-processing firms are planning to fight back against national research programmes that companies in Japan and the US are running. The three firms, ICL, Cii-Honeywell Bull and Siemens, met last week to discuss plans for a joint research centre. Initial reports suggest that the centre will employ 50-60 people and have a budget of #5-6 million--about 3 per cent of the combined research budget of the firms. The three still have to sort out the thorny question of who will run the centre and where it will be. They may land up building the centre outside Europe--in Silicon Valley or Tokyo. Europhiles are hailing the idea as a significant step on the road to European cooperation over technology. But in reality it is small fry. The Japanese learned how to cooperate many years ago, with impressive results. And 10 American companies recently took advantage of a more lenient approach to anti-trust policy in the US to form a jointly run Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation. The firms' budget looks like being 12 or 13 times bigger than that of its European imitators. [] <2US plans lessons in nuclear survival>2 WHEN the bomb drops, make sure you have on hand enough toilet paper, soap and towels to last your two- week stay in a fallout shelter. So advises the US govern- ment's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in its proposed guide for teach- ing schoolchildren how to survive natural and man-made disasters. The guide is the first to emerge from FEMA since the 1950s. The curriculum on emer- gency managament, designed for all pre-university students, advances the idea that nuclear devastation is manageable in the same way as fires, earthquakes and floods. In fact, it reassures, ". . .much assistance would be available from local, state and federal governments, the US armed forces units in the area, and fellow Americans". The curriculum was tested in 20 states. Two school authorities rejected the section on nuclear disasters. Sister Eillen Regan, from the board of education of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of San Francisco, says the board shunned it for two reasons: "It treats nuclear war as survivable and implies nuclear war is a political option". The arch- diocese took its lead from the schools in neighbouring Oakland, which also rejected FEMA's plan, Regan says. Although the teachers' guide to the cur- riculum concedes that people who are close to a nuclear blast "probably would be killed or seriously injured", it predicts that people in "fringe" areas "have a good chance of surviving it" by diving into the fallout shel- ter and emerging in "a week or two". But what would they find? "No facilities, no infrastructure", says Natalie Goldring, an analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). "Even if food were avail- able, there would be no way to get it because there would be no transportation", she says. Howard Ris, UCS's expert on nuclear arms, remarks that "even putting nuclear war in (the curriculum) with other types of disasters is seriously misleading about the gravity of the situation". Coincidentally, another curriculum has appeared which stress prevention rather than survival of a nuclear holocaust, "choices" is a set of 10 lessons on conflict and nuclear war. It is a joint project of UCS and the National Education Associ- ation. Goldring says: "It is not a response to PMA and contains nothing about civil defence". Instead, it encour- ages students to act out confrontations, such as a US Soviet conflict over oil in disputed territory, without resorting to nuclear attack. Goldring says that teachers in 34 states tried Choices and found that the unit answered many students' needs to discuss their fears about nuclear annihilation. But Choices has its detractors. Some teachers said the first draft of the unit was biased toward an anti-nuclear view, Ris concedes, but he adds that the final version is more balanced. Choices is ready for schools now. By the end of 1983, when PMA's final curricu- lum is due, teachers could have an inter- esting choice. Their pupils could be learning either to duck and cover again or to stop worrying and live with the bomb. [] <1Reagan saves Honduran road for a rainy day>1 THE UNITED STATES has shelved plans to cut a military road through a pristine Honduran rain-forest that is a staging post for guerilla raids on Nicaragua. But the Reagan administration may still go ahead with the road, once protests from environmental- ists have died down. The $7.5 million road would cut 150 km through the heart of La Mosquitia to link Tegucigalpa, the capital, with the Nic- araguan border and the Caribbean port of Puerto Lempira. The road would pass within 3 km of the Rio Platano Bio- sphere Reserve, an unspoilt rainforest that is protected as a World Heritage site. At present this area is accessible only by air for three-quarters of the year. The road would give the Miskito Indians through whose ancestral lands it would pass, better access to markets. Although it was to have been built with funds and expertise from the US's Agency for International Devel- opment (AID), it was promoted by the US Embassy in Honduras. Opponents say it is primarily a military road. One AID official agreed: "There's no other reason sufficient to justify it." The US ambassador, John Negroponte, is an outspoken supporter of military assis- tance to groups working to overthrow Nicaragua's left-wing government. The rebels stage their guerilla attacks on Nicaragua from these isolated Miskito lands on the Honduran side of the border. In its request for funds, the Honduran AID mission cited a study by Britain's Overseas Develop- ment Agency (ODA) which, it said, agreed that the road should be built. The US government refused to release the ODA report, saying it was "classified". In fact the report concludes that "it is unlikely that costly road construction will yield benefits suf- ficient to justify the investment". Most of the main Honduran forests are being cut down, but the Mosquitia region has been protected by its inaccessibility. Ocelots, jaguars, otters, tapirs, harpy eagles, and other endangered species survive there. A road would open the area to woodcutting and cattle ranching. Honduras has doubled its beef production since 1972 to feed the growing market in the US for cheap imported beef. The road has many opponents. Officials at the Honduran Forestry Development Corporation were angry at the planned disruption of the area which the govern- ment has designated forest reserve. Honduran military officials are worried that the road would allow their country to become a base for raiding parties into Nicaragua and further destabilise the troubled region. Many AID officials also think the road was a bad idea, especially after Negroponte's staff rejected the agency's proposal for a park and other environ- mental safeguards to protect the region's wildlife and Indian communities. Another controversial aspect of the road plan was the recommendation that for half its length it should be routed through land belonging to Manuel Zelaya, a powerful Honduran sawmill owner. In the mid- 1970's Zelaya was imprisoned for 21/2 years for his part in the murders of two priests and five peasants who were agitating for land reform. The priests were castrated and then shot. Zelaya was exonerated after his son married the daughter of the then presi- dent of Honduras. The road would give Zelaya access to rich timber. The controversy led AID to turn down the project. But American sources say that Negroponte is still determined to have the road. There are several ways it might be done. The State Department has its own fund for emergency projects. AID could pay for the road through its Economic Support Fund. Another government department could build the road. Or a third country--Japan and Israel have both been suggested--could finance the road as a favour to the US. The attraction of this option is that it would neatly sidestep what is now the main stumbling block to the road, American public opinion. [] <2Dentists get a taste for new fillings>2 MOUTHFULS of metal may be on the way out. Dentists searching for a substitute for traditional amalgam fillings are getting a boost from the British govern- ment. The Department of Health will spend #300 000 over the next three years on testing the safety and effectiveness of new dental materials. So the department's Robert Allen told a gathering of hospital dentists and materials scientists in Liverpool last week. The government wants to speed up the vetting of new materials in dentistry. A dentist is now paid by the National Health Service only for materials on an approved list. But it can take 10 years for a material to get on the list while officials develop a standard, which specifies physical and chemical properties of materials. Officials now fear that the British company ICI, may develop a new dental plastic which it can sell successfully everywhere--except Britain. To avoid such an embarrassment the Department of Health is funding academics to come up with "<1in vitro>1 and in <1vivo>1 tests" which can act as "an early warn- ing system to identify within a year the likely performance of a new material", Allen said. Promising substances might then be put on a provisional list. The department has written to the dental schools at Liverpool, Newcastle, Birmingham and Manchester and the London Hospital to canvass their support for becoming centres for the evaluation of new dental materials. Any scientist coming up with a set of laboratory <1in vitro>1 tests that accurately predicts the behaviour of a material inside a patient's mouth would be dearly loved by both government and industry. Costly experiments on the teeth of live dogs or primates, not to mention the public disquiet about such animal testing, might be avoided and delays reduced. Professor Roger Browne, of Birminghan University has devised an artificial tooth-cavity, lined with cells from tissue cultures. The reaction of dental material placed in the cavity gives a measure of its toxicity to living tissues. But many dental practitioners are scep- tical of the need for a replacement for the amalgam filling. A mixture of silver, tin and copper amalgam has been a successful filler of teeth for well over 100 years. Practitioners respect its low toxicity and its ability to withstand the enormous pressures generated in the back teeth. And "however much it is abused, it seems to work well", said one participant at the Liverpool meeting of dentists last week. Others, however, point to the rising cost of metals and the possibly harmful effects of the mercury vapours to which dentists and technicians may be exposed (silver is shaken with mercury just before use to make it malleable). Dr David Williams of the University of Liverpool argues that the real reason for the push to alternatives is that people will prefer a filling that looks like teeth. But "cynics believe it is the manufacturers who are behind it all," said another participant. ICI has just developed a new composite widely touted to be a likely contender; it is now undergoing clinical trials at Liverpool University. The company is also developing two new materials which it hopes will be strong enough to fill cavities in the back teeth. The materials are known as composites and contain organic resin, urethane dimeth- acrylate, and powdered glass. It is sold as a paste and is hardened by light; once the paste is in the cavity, the dentist sets it by shining a blue light for about a minute. [] <2Moors conservation goes down the drain>2 FARMERS on Tealham and Tadham moors on the Somerset Levels are rush- ing to drain their land in order to forestall a plan by the Nature Conservancy Council to declare the area a Site of Special Scientific Interest for its rare combination of waterfowl, meadow plants and aquatic flora and fauna, Tom King, secretary of state for the envi- ronment, has already granted the council's request for an emergency order to stop deep drains being installed on 30 hectares belonging to one farmer. But four others are now draining a further 80 hectares. The Somerset Trust for Nature Conservation has written to the Ministry of Agriculture complaining that, although the farmers had consulted ministry officials about their drainage plans, the officials did not refer the scheme t the council for comment, as they are required to do by the new Wildlife and Countryside Act. The trust is also worried that it took six weeks for the emergency stop-order to progress through the Whitehall's bureau- cracy. [] <2Odour-free video turnoff>2 AMERICAN businessmen have been A turning up their noses at video conferencing because they cannot smell each other. That is one of the conclusions of a report by a market research company which has been trying to discover why video conferencing is not more popular. Americans currently spend some $100 million per year on video conferences. But this is not enough says International Resource Development, which believes the figure should be more like $10 billion. Video conferencing has proved such a turn off that Satellite Business Systems, a company which operates a private satellite service in the US, has replaced circuits allocated to video with good old telephone lines. Even the inventor, the multi-national giant AT&T, has pulled out. Part of the problem is that Americans are so used to seeing slick TV presenters on the small screen that they take exception to watching badly-dressed businessmen who lack the skills of professional performers. "We found that people just weren't liking each other on meeting at a video confer- ence," said David Ledecky, of IRD. What is lacking, says Ledecky, is a tele- presence. People cannot smell or touch each other, so new devices are needed to give the impression that people are in the room. These could include a tele-smell machine (which would detect and emit pheromones) and 3-D holographic pictures. "I am sure these devices could be devel- oped," said Ledecky. In Britain, British Telecom has been running video conferencing studios for the past 12 years. There are eight studios in major cities and two that can be dragged around in caravans. A spokeman said that although there was a hard core of users it was certainly not a mass medium. "There is a psychological battle to be won," said the spokesman, "for many people meetings are more than just talking shop, the business lunch is just as important. [] <2Leaks and landslide loom In Sri Lanka>2 "PhD STUDENTS will flock to Sri Lanka in a few years' time and write learned theses on the inap- propriateness of high technology aid for poor countries", predicts a Sri Lankan lawyer, Gamini Iriyagolle, a specialist on the Mahaweli Programme, one of the world's biggest development schemes under way anywhere. The Mahaweli Programme is a #2000 million scheme to dam Sri Lanka's 300 kilo- metre Mahaweli river. It has run into serious problems. Without Western aid, it could never have been launched. But neither can the scheme continue unless Sri Lankans are squeezed for more money. Launched in 1978, the programme aims to make the country self-sufficient in food and to cut unemployment and energy imports. It was expected to cost around #800 million when launched, of which foreign aid made up about a half. Since 1978, costs have soared and Sri Lanka now has to find, #1600 million. To raise the money, the government has increased taxes and cut subsidies. The project entails building three dams across the Maha- weli river near Kandy; a further dam downstream; power stations to triple Sri Lanka's generating capacity, the irrigation of 120 hectares of new land and the re- settling of 11/2 million people. That makes it probably the world's largest resettlement scheme. The aid money is also in the "largest ever" category. Britain, Sweden and West Germany are each giving around #100 million; Canada, Japan, Kuwait and the EEC have ensured that total aid is more than #400 million. Two of the three main dam sites are highly controversial. The dam furthest upstream is the Swedish-financed Kotmale. It will be 90 metres high and will contain 174 million cu.m of water when completed in 1985. But the dam is situated in a valley hit by landslides. "Certain adverse geologi- cal characteristics of the dam site and reser- voir have been identified", say Sir William Halcrow and Partners the project consul- tants. These include unstable soil and rock masses; a thick bed of chrystalline lime- stone underlying the dam site and outcropping in the reservoir, which is a potential source of leaks; also the possibility of earthquakes caused by the weight of water in the reservoir. "The key problem" believes Iriyagolle, "is that the area is unsta- ble and that the hills above the site could collapse into the reservoir". Should that happen, then a catastrophe could occur. The nearby towns of Gampola and Kandy, which together house more than 100 000 people, could be flooded. Because of the area's problems, the dam has already been moved 200 m downstream from its original site and has had 20 m chopped off its height. Halcrows say they are stabilising the soil by pinning down the hillsides. Fears remain, however, that the area is too unsta- ble for any such measures to be effective. Forty-five kilometres downstream lies the British-aided Victoria Dam, 130 m high and 500 m across at the top. Water is due to be impounded in April 1984 and the reser- voir will spread over 3500 hectares of what is now a semi-urban area. Six towns, 123 villages, 14 Buddhist temples, more than 20 schools and a prison will go under the water. So too will the homes of 45 000 people. Yet, had the Sri Lankan and British governments opted for a slightly lower dam, then the most heavily populated area, including the town of Teldeniya, would not have been flooded.The highest dam possi- ble was chosen to maximise the amount of electricity that could be generated. The people who are losing their homes belong to a settled community with centuries-old traditions. Yet they were not consulted before the project started and there has been no public inquiry of any kind. Hopes of getting an inquiry appear to have been dashed in 1979 when Britain offered its #100 million and and gave the Sri- Lankan government the confidence to sweep aside any objections. Most of the families being flooded out are receiving #90 compensation, plus the offer of 1 hectare of new land in a resettlement zone 90 km away. But the new land is mostly forest, which they have to help clear themselves. The irri- gation waters made possible by flooding their own homes might eventually help the people in their new. But one key question is--what will the waters bring down with them? Many of the hillsides between Kotmale and Victoria are bare of trees. In an area with around 250 cm of rain a year, it seems clear that if the hillsides are not replanted then silt is going to rush down into the river, through the sluice gates of the dam and into the new land, where irrigation canals might become seriously clogged up, and the fertility of the soil lowered. Tragically many trees have been removed from the valley in recent years by people who cleared land to grow tobacco. Officials admit that the replanting of the hillsides is crucial for the success of the programme and yet the replanting only started in 1981 and seems a case of too little and too late. The downstream area, where people are being resettled, has problems enough with- out the additional burden of silt. It is largely isolated. Poor roads means that machinery, tools and other imputs which the settlers need are often not getting through. Many channels for the irrigated water remain to be cut. To save money the government has now cut by one-third the money it is spend- ing on the resettlement area. One official admits that the entire programme will fail unless the transport problem is solved. The programme may yet overcome its problems, fulfil its aims and even benefit the poor. But the tragedy is that while essential aspects of the project, such as the denuded hillsides and the transport prob- lem, could have been seen at the start, in 1978, they were largely ignored. The Western-financed dams received all the attention; the numerous jobs that needed to be done if the dams were going to be of any use had scant priority. Donors have got their money's worth in the relatively simple transactions of giving aid, and making sure that their own firms got the orders to build the dams. The complex- ity of what needed to be done to give the scheme a chance of success was pushed aside, and Sri Lanka seems likely to end up the poorer, with the poorest suffering most. [] <2The age of the rhynchosaur>2 The dinosaurs dominated the Earth for 130 million years. But they might have remained as also-rans if the rhynchosaurs had not already been driven into extinction Mike Benton THE FOSSIL RECORD shows that throughout the history of life on Earth the groups of animals that were dominant in any one age were often replaced wholesale in the next age by others animal of a quite different group; and biologists have sometimes argued that such replacements occur because of direct competition between the old dominant type and the new. It has been suggested, for example, that mammals "took over" from the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago, just by competing with them. This view is essentially anthropomorphic; we are mammals after all and it is perhaps comforting to think that our own distant relatives so directly proved their supremacy over slow-witted reptiles that had nothing to fight with but their bulk. But this simplistic account of that crucial phase of evo- lution has not stood the test of modern investigation. It is now clear that dinosaurs were supreme for 130 million years, and that mammals co-existed with them, albeit small and insignif- icant through most of that time. It is plain too, that dinosaurs in their highest forms were far from being lumbering brutes; and there is overwhelming evidence that what finally defeated them was not competition from "higher" forms of life, but changes in climate, possibly exacerbated by catastrophic events, including the impact of giant meteors. In this scenario the mammals emerge not as natural conquerors, but as opportunists, filling a gap, an "adaptive zone" with a range of ecological niches, after, and only after, the old regime had run its course. Modern evidence suggests that this is a common pattern. Major groups do not simply obliterate other major groups by competition; rather do they radiate into the adaptive zones after the previous dominant group has become extinct. Thus the dinosaurs themselves probably gained ascendancy in pre- cisely this fashion. In the Triassic Period, 225 to 190 million years ago, before the age of dinosaurs, the predominant groups of herbivorous land animals belonged to two quite different groups of reptiles: the synapsids, or mammal-like reptiles; and the rhynchosaurs. The most numerous were the rhynchosaurs. They are present in most of the major faunas known from the Middle and Upper Triassic, in land area- that now constitute Tanzania, Brazil, Agentina, North America, Britain and Germany; and whenever they were present they were the most abundant type of land animal. But although there has been detailed research on several rhyn- chosaurs, there are still important controversies surrounding their diet and their mode of life, their significance in Triassic ecosystems, and their taxonomic position (that is, their re- lationship to other kinds of reptiles). A typical rhynchosaur is <1Hyperodapedon gordoni>1, found in what is now north-east Scotland in the late Triassic Lo- ssiemouth Sandstone Formation of Elgin. I did my PhD thesis on this animal at Newcastle University. As shown above, <1Hyperodapedon>1 was a squat quadruped, 1.3 m in length, with powerful limbs. The skull is specialised with a broad posterior portion to accommodate powerful muscles to close the jaw (adductor muscles). The upper dentition is borne on two maxillary tooth-plates, each of which has several rows of teeth and is bisected by a deep longitudinal groove (figure 1). The lower jaw fits snugly into the groove when the jaws are shut, like the blade of a penknife fitting into its handle. There are two rows of teeth in the lower jaw, one row on the crest of the jaw (buccal teeth) and one row lower down on the inside (lingual teeth). There are toothless beak- like premaxillae at the front of the skull, and the lower jaws curve up on either side to a high point. <2Mammal-like teeth>2 Detailed studies of the arrangement of teeth within the jaws, and of their cell structure (histology), have shown that rhynchosaurs did not replace their teeth in a typical reptilian way. In living lizards and crocodiles, new teeth appear in sequence below the functional teeth, which are effectively dead, and force them out periodically. By contrast, rhyn- chosaur teeth were more like those of modern mammals in their manner of growth. They continued to grow throughout their functional life, and new teeth appeared at the back of the jaw as the animal increased in size. The teeth were fused to specialised bones of attachment, and the hollow centre of each tooth is the root canal which was filled with blood vessels and nerves. The functional teeth were "alive" and were sub- ject to consent internal remodelling, as is typical of most mammals. Patterns of tooth wear, and the nature of the jaw joint, show that rhynchosaurs had a precise, straight up-and-down bite. The groove in the upper tooth-plate clearly prevented sideways movement of the lower jaw. Neither could the lower jaw slide backwards and forwards in a saw-like motion be- cause the "hinge" between the lower jaw and skull (the joint between the quadrate bone on the skull and articular bone of the lower jaw) was tight when the jaws were shut. This is confirmed by the presence of shallow pits worn into the bone of the tooth-plate by the teeth of the lower jaw; if there was a sliding jaw action, there would be grooves instead. What does all this tell us of the rhynchosaurs' diet? One current suggestion, that they ate molluscs, is based on the general appearance of the tooth-plate and the "tusks". But there is strong evidence against this. The teeth are not pol- ished and hard like those of other animals that crush shells, such as the chimera, stingrays or lungfish, which are all modern fish, or the extinct placodonts, which are marine reptiles of the Triassic. In fact, rhynchosaur teeth have only a thin layer of enamel, which apparently was readily worn away. The shape and arrangement of the rhynchosaur teeth are also different from those of living molluscivores; they were sharp and conical when unworn, rather than broad and flattened. The deep groove in the maxilla in the upper jaw, and the blade-like dentary (the principal bone of the lower jaw) are also quite different from the usual flattened, pavement-like dentition, designed to act like a pounding board, in a shell crusher. Finely, fossil animals are often found in association with the remains of their principal food, but rhynchosaurs are rarely found in association with mollusc shells. On the other hand, there is good evidence that <1Hyper->1 <1odapedon>1 was a herbivore. The patterns of tooth wear and growth and the precision-shear bite are comparable with those seen in <1Uromastix>1, a thickset, stumpy-tailed modern lizard, 30 to 40 cm long, that lives in North Africa and Asia. Few modern lizards are herbivorous, but <1Uromastix>1 is a herbivore: it efficiently crops leaves, flowers, shoots and fruit of a wide variety of plants, but does not masti- cate the food. The teeth of <1Uromastix>1, unlike those of insectivorous or carnivorous lizards, are expanded back- wards and forwards to form a nearly continuous cutting edge. The jaw action is scissor-like and both tooth and jaw bone can perform the cutting function. The body shape, too, suggests that rhynchosaurs were herbivorous. <1Hyper->1 <1odapedon>1 and other rhyn- chosaurs had a barrel-shaped body to accommodate a large gut for the slow digestion of plant material; they could not grind up plant food with their teeth, but may have been able to "ruminate", like a modern cow. They could gather food with the beak- like premaxillae, manipulate it with the large tongue (possession of which is suggested by the extensive hyoid bones in the throat) and crop and slice it effi- ciently with the powerful jaws. The hind limbs were strong and apparently adapted for scratch-digging, and <1Hypweodapedon>1 could presumably dig up edible tubers and roots. Several rhynchosaurs have been found in association with fragments of plants (though it is not possible to say from a juxtaposition of fossils whether those fragments were ever inside the animal) and the diet probably consis- ted of leaves, stems, fruit and seeds of seed-ferns, conifers, ginkgos, equisitales (horse- tails) and ferns (Figure 2). Final evidence that rhyn- chosaurs were herbivorous is that they occurred in large numbers; in general we expect the herbivores to outnumber carnivores. Rhynchosaurs did not diversify--radiate--into so many different forms and niches as many other major groups of animals, but they are known from many parts of the world and they certainly did change and evolve with time. Small, possibly ancestral forms occurred in the early Triassic (225-215 million years ago) in South Africa; types such as <1Noteosuchus, Howesia,>1 and <1Mesosuchus>1. The middle Triassic rhynchosaurs from Tanzania (<1Stenaulorhynchus>1), India (<1Mesodapedon>1) and England (<1Rhynchosaurus>1), dating from 215 to 205 million yes ago, have elongate skulls, teeth on the palate, and two grooves and lingual teeth on the maxilla. The late Triassic forms from Argentina and Brazil (<1Scaphonyx>1), India and Scotland (<1Hyperodapedon>1), dating from 205 to 190 million years ago, have broad skulls, no palatal teeth, and one groove and no lingual teeth on the maxilla. Thus was the range of variation. But where do the rhyn- chosaurs fit into the picture of Triassic life? At the begin- ning of the Triassic the domi- nant land animals were the mammal-like reptiles, the synapsids, although they had already been badly affected by dramatic events at the end of the Permian; catastrophic events of the kind that are now known to have turned the course of Earth's history several times. Though the synapsids survived the end of the Permian, many forms of life suffered mass extinc- tions. Yet at the end of the Triassic the synapsids were practically extinct and the dinosaurs, which as Figures 2 and 4 illustrate are a quite different group, were abun- dant and widespread. This take-over is one of the most significant events in verte- brate history. What hap pened in that time? And what part did the rhyn- chosaurs play? To find out I looked closely at all the reptile faunas known from the Triassic; that is, I looked at each separate assemblage of reptiles that was known to live in any one place at any one time. I tabulated these faunas, estimated the numbers of each kind of animal in each fauna, and then calculated the percentage representation of each kind of animal. Then I plotted the changes in the percentage of each kind of animal against time. The results are shown in simplified form in figure 2. Of course, this kind of tech- nique can give only approxi- mate results. First, for all the vast span of time of the Triassic, only a few faunas are known; there must be many others that we do not know about. Secondly, some of the faunas have not yet been dated accurately, and we must allow a tolerance of +-l--5 million years for each one that is known, although we can work on the assumption that two faunas that have several animals in common are of about the same antiquity. Thirdly, the fossils that are preserved in any particular geological formation reflect the fauna that gave rise to them, but they do not accu- rately represent them. Some animals are preserved better than others; groups of animals with long life spans leave fewer fossils than those with short lives; and seasonal migrations may upset the pattern. Finally, the inevitable imbalance may become exacerbated by the bias of collectors. On sites rich in fossils, collectors often become bored with the commoner animals and pick up only the rarer ones. This is quite understandable, but it means that the collections oF fossils in museums, which are the basis of my data, will differ in composition from the original assemblage of fossils--which in turn differs, as we have seen, from the composition of the living assemblage. In some cases, however, collector bias might offset the problems of selective preservation, as the animals that are over-represented because they are easily fossilised then become under-represented because they are less assiduously collected. Despite these problems, the study was worth making. It turned out that in each of the Triassic faunas, or at least in most of them, one particular taxonomic group (not always the same group in different faunas) was particular abundant; between 40 to 90 per cent of specimens found. This must represent, in a broad way, the relative abundance of the living animals. Secondly, the results were consistent, with no dramatic difference from place to place at any particular time. As a first attempt the results are no doubt crude, but they do provide a basis for further refinement. At the beginning of the Triassic the dominant herbivores were synapsids, mammal-like reptiles of the group known as the Dicynodontia, but the dicynodonts declined repidly as the Permian flora disappeared, a flora dominated by a see fern (pteridosperm) of the genus <1Glossopteris>1 (Figure 2). The carnivores of the Lower Trissic were from two groups: some were synapsids of the group Cynodontia, and others were early thecodontians. As shown in Figure 4, the thec- odonttians were the first of the archosaurs, the group that also includes the pterosaurs, crocodiles and the dinosaurs. The thecodontians were nearly all carnivores. Some were only as big as a chicken, while others grew to a length of about 5 metres. Some had a heavy, lizard-like form, some were shaped like a crocodile, and many were small and bipedal. In the Middle to Upper Triassic the role of small- to medium-sized herbivores was played by two groups of reptiles: another synapsid of the group known as the Aademodontoidea, and the rhynchosaurs. Cynodonts and thecodontians still prevailed as carnivores. By the beginning of the Upper Triasssic, rhynchosaurs were still the dominant herbivores. In the four major faunas known from that time, from Scotland, Brazil, Argentina and India rhynchosaurs account for 30 to 70 per cent of speci- mens collected. Each of these Upper Triassic faunas contains a Few dinosaurs however; but only 0-5 to 3-0 per cent of the total specimens. Yet by the end of the Triassic the dinosaurs (prosauropods) were the dominant herbivores worldwide. The rhynchosaurs had by that time became extinct. Are we talking here about direct competition, the old conception of nature red in tooth-and-claw, of the kind that was once thought to have taken place, at a much later date, between dinosaurs and mammals? Probably not. The disap- pearance of the rhynchosaurs, like the decline of the synapsid dicynodonts before them, seems to be associated with a decline of their food-plant; this time, of the seed fern <1Dicroidium>1, which was giving way to the worldwide spread of the conifers. Dinosaurs and thecodontians may never have had to "compete" directly with synapsids and rhynchosaurs, as envisaged by the authors of all technical and popular literature on this subject. They simply radiated into the adaptive zones left vacant by synapsid and rhynchosaur decline. The real competition, the old-style conception of the battle for survival, may have taken place, if it took place at all, between the plants that provided the reptiles with their food. The idea that dinosaurs simply radiated into the ecological niches that had already been vacated, and that mammals I 30 million or so years later did the same thing after the dinosaurs had departed, has profound philosophical implications. Palaeontologists have typically tried to find particular reasons for major changes in the history of life, and in particular to invoke the idea of evolution by natural selection; the idea, crudely stated, that "inferior" creatures are replaced by their superiors. Thus they have speculated that the thecodont- ians replaced the synapsids because they were anat- omically superior, and that they were in turn replaced by the allegedly superior dino- saurs. But Darwin conceived that natural selection applied to individuals, or possibly to species, and that is how it is still understood. It is wrong to extend such concepts to explain the wholesale replace- ment of large groups of animals by others. It would be hard to imagine an accumu- lation of competitive encoun- ters between individuals that led to the extinction of a whole group of animals distributed worldwide. The modern evidence, of the kind I have presented here, suggests that such encounters need never have taken place. If the dinosaurs and thecodonians were superior to the types that went before them, they may never have had to demonstrate that fact. The role of natural selection in bringing about the gross changes in the evolution of animals is thus brought into question. Though competition between individuals or popu- lations, leading to the selection of one and the demise of the other, may well fine-tune the course of evolution, the mass replacernent of one dominant life-form by another may depend on environmental factors or chance events that lead to the disappearance of the first <1before>1 the second can begin to radiate. More particularly, reappraisal of the fossil evidence from the Triassic not only helps to undermine the old view that superior mammals ousted the cumbersome dinosaurs, but may completely reverse it. At the end of the Triassic, when the rhynchosaurs and synapsids finally disappeared, the first mammals were already in existence; they are an astonishingly ancient group. They could, theoretically, have radiated worldwide, just as they were to do 130 million years later, when the rhynchosaurs and synapsids disappeared. But they did not. The dinosaurs took over instead; and it is tempting to suggest that the mammals failed to seize their chance precisely <1because>1 the dinosaurs beat them to it: in the first encounter, if such it was, the dinosaurs won. If the mammals had prevailed when the opportunity first pre- sented then the scope for speculation becomes mind- boggling. There would have been no great age of dinosaurs, but there would have been a flowering of mammals 130 million years earlier. The first men might then have walked the Earth 130 million years ago. [] <2Ireland struggles to control pollution>2 <2There was no such thing as a chemical industry or anti-pollution laws in Ireland in 1970.>2 <2The country now exports some #683 million of chemical products and "loses">2 <25000 tonnes of toxic waste every year>2 <2Deirdre Mason>2 THE Republic of Ireland's dramatic appearance as an industrial nation since the 1950s is a European--and quite possibly a world--phenomenon. It happened because of a deliberate, intensive strategy by the Irish govern- ment via its Industrial Development Authority (IDA). The expansion, which was virtually unchecked until recession bit in the late 1970s, raced ahead of the country's ability to understand and control industrial pollution. A strat- egy for handling toxic wastes is beginning to emerge, because of EEC directives, but a quarter of the wastes produced by the Republic cannot be accounted for. Some 5000 out of an estimated 20 000 tonnes of waste "disappears" every year. The figures are from the government's Institute for Industrial Research and Standards (IIRS), which is working on a confidential study to find the missing waste. Toxic waste was in the background when the Federation of Irish Chemical Industries held its second economic conference in Dublin last week. Delegates placed an over- riding emphasis on hanging on to the foreign investment the country has; on winning back firms wooed away to the Third World; and on finding new customers. There was, at times, a marked hostility to environmental pressure groups and to the trade union movement. Many speakers urged a switch from the emphasis on manufacturing and processing to research and development. While there was, from the platform, evidence of considerable care and attention being paid to the potential physical hazards of the industry, little or nothing was said by the industry's speakers about the effects of chemicals or their by-products on the environment. Like fellow EEC members, the Republic has seen its econ- omy torn to ribbons by recession. The Fine Gael government has just introduced a tough budget after three months in office and the Taoiseach (prime minister), Garrett Fitzgerald, felt it necessary to explain on television why this highly unpopular measure was essential. In 1977, the Republic's foreign debt was about #1 000 million a year. Last year, it rocketed to #5000 million, and interest alone cost #1221 mil- lion--more than the government raked in from income tax. The country needs an economic saviour and it may choose the Irish chemical industry. The industry, as defined by the IDA. comprises bulk chemicals, phamaceuticals and health- care products. It exports about #683 million of goods per annum--20 per cent of all Ireland's industrial exports. In 1970, the chemical industry's exports were negligible. The industry's expansion is the result of the IDA's efforts to create a new industry to take over from the ailing assembly, light manufacturing, and textile industries that started Ireland's industrialisation in the early 1950s. Grants of up to 50 per cent have attracted more than 70 chemical companies to what the IDA bills as "the most profitable location in the EEC". Most of these are American (50); 14 are British, 12 are German and the rest, with the exception of Asahi and Mitsui from Japan, are from other European countries. Pharmaceutical and health-care firms are popular with the government because they reinvest about 75 per cent of their Irish-generated profits in the Republic. Measuring the effect of the growth of the industrial base since 1950 on the environment is tricky and open to error. Past records are patchy and incomplete, and Ireland already has a legacy of pollution from agriculture. Traditionally, Irish farmers have been blamed--justly--for their easy-going disposal of gross pollutants such as pig slurry and creamery wastes. But, are they now being blamed for pollution only partly caused by their activities? The latest government figures--unpublished as yet--show causes of serious pollution in 1982 as 60 per cent agricultural, 22 per cent urban sewage and only 18 per cent industrial. A survey by the IIRS in 1976, of industries grant-aided by the IDA since 1970, claimed that, almost without exception, there was no sign of environmental pollution. This supported the IDA's assertion that the anti-pollution requirements it imposes before awarding grants were work- ing. The Republic takes the "polluter pays" principle further than the UK in that it has no disposal facilities for toxic wastes. Companies have to burn waste or undertake solvent recovery on site. They are responsible for sending intractable wastes out of the country, at their expense, for treatment. Des Greene of Minchem, one of two firms that export toxic wastes for treatment, estimates that he sends, at most, 2000 tonnes of waste a year to the UK. There are no more than two consignments a week at an average of 20 tonnes each. The waste goes to Rechem International at plants in Scotland, Pontypool and Southampton, and to Frazer McNaughton of Sunderland. His competitor, Barry O'Donovan of Carbrook Chemicals, does not export on anything like the same scale as himself, he says. Even allowing for O'Donovan doing half as much business, this would mean 3000 tonnes of toxic waste leaving Ireland a year. Yet, Greene is emphatic that if there is any illegal dump- ing, it is negligible. There might be, he concedes, a few prob- lems with small firms with inadequate or non-existent treat- ment facilities on site. If Irish industry is indeed managing its 17 000 out of 20 000 tonnes production of toxic wastes so efficiently that it pollutes neither land nor water then Ireland ought, by right, to become top Euro- pean advisor on wastes handling. However, there is 5000 tonnes a year of, presumably, both mildly and highly toxic wastes that appears to have gone down a hole somewhere--perhaps literally. A dumping incident in 1980 goaded the government into action on the EEC wastes directives. A tanker driver on his way to an illegal dump in Co. Dublin, with a load of chromium-polluted effluent, decided that going home for his tea was a more attractive proposition than completing his run. So, he tipped the load down a drain in Co. Cork. Unfortunately for him, the drain led to the River Gradouge and killed the fish in it. The government made counties keep track of all waste produced in their areas and draw up disposal plans. A marshalling point for waste was set up at Baldonnell, near Dublin, which is convenient for the south and west. It aroused much local opposition but the directives came into force, technically at least, from I January this year. There is still no provision for a national toxic wastes dump. Lakes and rivers in heavily farmed counties such as Cavan have long suffered from irresponsible dumping by farmers. However, a study done by An Foras Forbartha (AFF) --Ireland's institute for physical planning and construction research--showed in 1980 that pyrolytic wastes in Irish waters were higher than the EEC directives permit. The survey, of about 80 rivers and lakes, also found that pesticides were comfortably below the EEC levels. Gerry Walker from AFF told last week's conference that it is very difficult for local and central government to monitor all waters continuously. At the moment, only half (7000 km) of Ireland's rivers are surveved and there is an equally incom- plete picture on wastes handling. AFF is due to publish the hefty <1State of the Environment>1 later this year. The Shannon estuary, in the west, is already industrialised and more factories are coming. Walker estimates that the Alcan aluminium plant, currently demanding about 20 000 tonnes of caustic soda a year, will eventually need 70 000 tonnes a year. This, at least, is a known industry with known demands. But the industries that eventually do pile in will probably bear little or no resemblance to AFFs "profile". AFF's mathematical model of the estuary's dispersal and dilution abilities has shown which sites are best suited to what activities. It is not rigid: "You can accommodate anything anywhere if you are prepared to pay the price", Walker said. The "price" Walker meant was the cost of providing the right treatment. But, the price to be paid for estuarial devel- opment could be less acceptable. County Cork is both blessed and cursed with a magnificent harbour. The harbour has made the county a major centre of industrial expansion. Liarn Mullins, Cork County Council's engineer, told the conference that #110m of public money has been invested in the harbour and in providing an industrial infrastructure. The currents in Cork Harbour, he explained, make it both an excellent disperser and a massive assimilator of wastes. "Rebel Cork's" citizens, however, are by no means united in favour of more industry in their beautiful county. There is a strong environmental lobby. When the Cork-based company, Raybestos of Ringaskiddy, was found to be dumping asbestos illegally in the late 1970s, it created such local uproar and intrac- table opposition that the company had to leave. In May 1980, there was a serious emission of ammonia from Nitrigen Eireann Teoranta, the state-run fertil- iser plant at Little Island. The company has consistently denied that it allows danger- ous emissions but, sirens have been installed to warn of escapes. There are battles being fought all over Ireland about pollution incidents and industrial hazards. Some relate to the chemicals indus- try; some relate to the results of other activity such as mining. The Tynagh Mines in Co. Galway which yielded silver until their closure in 1980, are blamed for the death of livestock. Farmers claim that there are high levels of lead, zinc and cyanide in a man-made lake. One farmer, Jim Killeen, told Ireland's <1Sunday Press>1 news- paper that there are concentrations of 899 parts per million of lead on his land. The pit, however, worries him most. "The water is rising all the time and I wouldn't like to be around when it does over- flow. There is cyanide in that pit and there is also the lake which is used for effluent of lead, zinc and cyanide. The land around here will be good for nothing then." A pharmaceuticals plant at Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, owned by Merck, Sharp and Dohme is accused by a local farmer of causing his cattle to die. A government inquiry cleared the plant, which has in one way or another brought about #100m to the area, but the cows go on dying. Matt Lynch, manager of the environmental services department of IIRS, outlined for the conference the diffi- culties that legislation presents when trying to draw up a strategy for pollution control. Despite the introduction of the Local Government (Water Pollution) Act 1977, which gave water authorities clear responsibilities, it is easier to prosecute polluters under long-standing fisheries legislation. The Republic's 87 planning authorities handle some 50 000 planning applications a year. By the end of 1982, about 1000 effluent licences were granted, leaving 600 or so still in the hands of local authorities. But these 600, says Lynch, are likely to be the most difficult to handle. What really concerns him, however, is the lack of progress on the national strategy for waste disposal that arose from the Gradouge incident. Councils were supposed to set up sites for industrial and domestic wastes; the Baldonnell site was to marshal other unsuitable wastes. All that has happened is some well organised opposition to the Baldonnell site. Privately, Matt Lynch thinks it is about time that the Republic got on with disposing its own toxic waste. "The British are getting a hit nervous about the draft EEC directive regulating transboundary movement of wastes", he told <1New>1 <1Scientist.>1 "It's very early days--we only saw the first draft last month and it could be three years before it is implemented. But I think that it's imperative that we get on with providing our own facilities here for treating these wastes." The ques- tion remains, if the Irish do not want toxic waste, will Britain have to accept even more of it? [] <2Argentina's new armada to sail from Europe>2 <2The Franks Report said that British arms sales to Argentina encouraged the>2 <2Falklands war. Some arms were flown from Heathrow just four days before the>2 <2attack. Now Britain is helping to build a modern fleet for the junta>2 <2Ed Harriman>2 JUST before 8 am most working days, Admiral Raul Gonzalez takes the lift from his penthouse in one of Hamburg's most luxuri- ous apartment blocks. Gon- zalez then drives to his office on the third floor of a new building on the waterfront. He oversees all Argentinian arms purchases in Europe, in particular the three frigates being built (a fourth arrived in Argentina on 21 March) with British components in the nearby Blohm and Voss shipyard. The frigates have twin Rolls-Royce Tyne and Olympus engines, as used by the Royal Navy. They also have David Brown gearboxes and Hawker Siddeley electronic propulsion controls. Much of the equipment has been shipped since the Falklands war. The engine contract, according to the British government, is worth around #40 million. The Admiral and his staff were based in London, at offices in Vauxhall Bridge Road maintained by the Argentine Naval Commission for more than 20 years. When the Falklands were invaded on 2 April last year, they were given the week- end to pack and a police escort to the Dover ferry. Gonzalez is doing his job commendably well. The frigates--La Argentina, Heroina and Sarandi--are on schedule. An armada of Argentinian warships, being built elsewhere in Europe, will soon be complete. Most Western European arms manufacturers are back in business with the junta. The only European country that maintains an arms embargo is Great Britain, but even that is not absolute. The embargo applies only to direct sales and shipments, not to the supply of components to third countries. British firms (including British Aerospace and Philips UK) supplied key navigational and precision-engineered parts for Exocet missiles, made by Aerospatiale in France, throughout the Falklands war. Exocets destroyed HMS Sheffield and Atlantic Conveyor; more of the missiles were shipped through Saint Nazaire on 18 November. Gonzalez has little cause to complain about the supply of British parts for Exocet and the frigates. True, spares for Argentina's considerable armoury of British weapons are subject to the embargo. On the other hand, Argentine military representatives have been in London talking to bankers and arms firms. There is a feeling on the British side that the junta will soon get its spares. <2What Franks said>2 The only party aggrieved by these arrangements is the Ministry of Oefence (MoD). Indignant MPs have asked, on several occasions, in the House of Commons why Rolls Royce and other firms have been allowed to deliver important parts to Hamburg for the frigates. The junta, they point out, refuses to sign a formal cessation of hostilities despite its surrender. Aircraft have again been probing Falklands airspace and recently an Argentinian flag was planted on Southern Thule. The Franks Report suggested that: "British Government policies which may have served to cast doubts on British commitment to the Islands and their defence [include] the Government's preparedness, subject to certain restrictions, to continue arms sales to Argentina (and to provide training facilities in the United Kingdom for Argentine military personnel)." The Report concluded: "Moreover in recent years there was a substantial increase in Argentina's military strengths in all three of its armed services, which must have increased its confidence in its ability to occupy the lslands and retain them." If all this was true before the invasion last year, it must also apply now to the Argentinian military procurement programme, to which Britain is contributing. The British government has not shied from the issue. On 22 November the question was first raised in the Commons and John Nott, then Minister of Defence, replied: "It would be wholly against our policy to supply equipment such as Rolls- Royce engines direct to Argentina. However, those engines are part of a long-standing contract with a NATO ally and also with a most important trading partner. In making them available under the terms of an existing contract, we made it clear that we would be concerned about early delivery to Argentina." The MoD has the power of veto over all British arms exports. Sir Frank Cooper was the top civil servant at the ministry, as permanent under secretary of state, from 1976 until he retired at the end of last year. He, too. is convinced that a contract signed has to be honoured. He says: "You've got a very considerable amount of money at stake as far as British industry is concerned, and you've got jobs at stake. I wouldn't have thought it's in the real realms of practical politics to persuade the German government or indeed any other government to renege on a contract which has been signed. Obviously it's right that we should try and persuade the German government to delay matters as much as possible. But we're not going to persuade the Federal Republic to stop the supply of those ships." Certainly the MoD thinking on this issue has had little effect in delaying delivery of the four frigates. In February, the first, the Almirante Brown, was handed over by Blohm and Voss to the Argentinian navy in a quiet ceremony on deck. The German government representative was discretely absent. Sir Frank also acknowledges that British ships had not been adequately defended against Exocet, and that there could not have been any control over its sale to third parties as British firms supplied only components. He said that France was still shipping the missiles to Argentina because they had signed a contract. Sir Frank added that Britain had no "power to do anything other than see if it can influence the French or whichever country it may be. It's an unfortunate state of affairs, but I don't think anybody in this country has got control over it." Last July, a month after the Argentinian surrender at Port Stanley, Geoffrey Pattie, Under Secretary of State for Defence, issued the MoD's first report on the war: <1Falkland>1 <1Island Operations--Interim Commentary on Equipment>1 <1Matters.>1 It gave a generally favourable assessment of the performance of British weapons. And it was early enough for Britain's arms makers to refer to it in their autumn arma- ments promotions. British Aerospace printed glossy brochures about its "combat proven" weapons used by British forces in the Falklands--Rapier, Sea Dart, Sea Skua and Seawolf. Short Brothers, in Belfast, also issued a statement. British troops had used its Blowpipe surface-to-air missiles against Argentinian planes. But Argentinian forces also used Blow- pipe against British aircraft. Shorts told the press: "It is notable, even if regrettable, that the Argentine forces are believed to have shot down one Harrier GR3 and two heli- copters with Blowpipe." Though details of Short's contract are secret, it sold Argen- tina 60 Blowpipes as well as Tigercat surface-to-air missiles. The Tigercats were found by British troops, abandoned at Port Stanley airfield. Shorts is not the only firm to have supplied both sides. The Argentinian navy's Aermacchi fighter which sank HMS Ardent was powered by a Rolls-Royce licensed turbojet engine. Argentinian aircraft also use Martin Baker ejection seats, Dunlop parts and tyres, Smiths Industries instruments. and Plessey and Marconi radar. Aluminium Supply Co provided body sheeting for the Argentinian Pucara ground- support aircraft. British troops in the Falklands found much hardware discarded by Argentinian troops. Some of it was Israeli. American and French in origin, but a lot had labels from various places in Britain. Paratroopers, after losing 15 men in one of the bloodiest battles of the conflict at Goose Green, discovered crates of 35 mm anti-aircraft ammunition made and supplied by the British Manufacture and Research Company, of Grantham, Lincolnshire. Argentinian anti- aircraft fire had brought down at least one Harrier pilot before the gun barrels were depressed and turned against the Paras. The ammunition was part of an order for nearly one million shells worth about #50 million. British Manufacture and Research Company is a subsidiary of the giant Swiss armaments firm Oerlikon; it won the Queen's Award for Export Achievement in 1981 on the prime minister's recom- mendation. Like most firms selling arms to Argentina, it refuses to discuss even the commercial aspects involved. Argentina has not been just any other market for British arms; it has been one of Britain's best customers in a long relationship. Its navy, particularly, has drawn heavily on Britain for ships, customs and training. Even its uniforms are modelled on those of the Royal Navy. Marines have trained here. So when the Ministry of Defence Sales Organisation, set up by Harold Wilson in the mid-sixties, sought customers for the then new Type 42 frigate, it turned to Argentina, <2A little hiccup in sales>2 Soon Vickers at Barrow was building the Hercules for the Argentinian navy and then, under licence, helping it to build the Santisima Trinidad at Rio Santiago. (HMS Sheffield was also a Type 42.) Seven months before the Falklands invasion, Santisima Trinidad was on show at the Royal Navy equip- ment exhibition at Portsmouth. (She had gone there for fit- ting out and trials of Aberporth.) One week before the inva- sion, both ships were deployed between South Georgia and the Falklands in support of the illegal landing on South Georgia. The only hiccup in Anglo-Argentinian arms deals was im- mediately following the bloody coup of 1976 when the military seized power. Foreign Secretary David Owen was not keen to support the British Shipbuilder's tender to supply six Type 21 frigates to Argentina, for at least a billion pounds. Instead, four ships were ordered from Blohm and Voss. Arms sales recovered with the Conservatives' return. Argentina's aircraft carrier, the 25 del Mayo was refitted by Plessey and Ferranti. She was electronically coordinated with Hercules and Santisima Trinidad for computerised warfare. Cecil Parkinson, then Minister of Trade, took a sales force to Argentina in 1979. Contracts with Short Brothers and other firms followed. These deals involved a steady supply of components and spares which, before the invasion, were shipped by sea from Sheerness in Kent. The last consignment left Britain aboard the Argentinian ship Tierra del Fuego Il on 19 March Ikt year. The ship called at Buenos Aires and then sailed on to Port Stanley, according to Lloyds Shipping Intelligence Unit. She arrived shortly after the invasion. Her cargo out of Sheer- ness included Westland helicopter spares, parts for the Sanstisima Trinidad from Vickers, Racal-Decca and Marconi radar parts, and five containers from British Manufacture and Research Company full of anti-aircraft gun mounts. Argentinian air force cargo jets also loaded with military equipment at Stansted in Essex on 3, 10, 12 and 25 March 1982. The last Aerolineas Argentinas flight to leave Heathrow for Buenos Aires on 29 March, four days before the invasion, was also loaded with military freight. Sir Frank Cooper argues that, despite intelligence reports of something amiss in the South Atlantic, it would have been inapproprate to have stopped these shipments. "I think it would have been provocative," he says. "One's also got to be very careful to take account of the word 'contract'. If you've signed a contract you have to fulfill it except in the most desperate circumstances. "The general expectation in the MoD at that time was that you would get another round of discussions with Argentina at a political level, and that the real difficulties were more likely to occur in the summer than at the time they did." Sir Frank now feels it would be wrong to stop Rolls-Royce engines and other components going to Blohm and Voss; along, of course, with the engineers who must oversee their installation in the frigates. If Britain tried, "the Germans would simply get engines from somewhere else." The Foreign Office has suggested that Britain recom- menced supply of engines after the war under pressure from Blohm and Voss. The Germans threatened to install LM 2500 engines made by General Electric in the US instead. This is open to doubt. The two types of engines occupy roughly the same space but it would be no mean feat, par- ticularly now, to make the major alterations necessary to fit other than Rolls-Royce engines and the integrated British-built train. In any case, work in Hamburg is proceeding apace. German shipyard workers have been ambivalent about the con- tract. Even if they had wanted to black the work in support of a NATO ally, they say they had no grounds once Britain began delivering the engines after the Falklands war. They also point out that West Germany lifted its arms embargo to Argentina on 25 September, a fortnight after Rolls-Royce was re-granted an export licence. As there is little work in the shipyards, it would have taken a special appeal to have convinced them to down tools. "Why don't the en- gineers at Rolls-Royce boy- cott the engines?" they asked. Engineers at Ansty where the engines are built say that, in the current economic climate, they would prefer not to talk. The four frigates, MEKO 3600 H2 Type, are as modern as anything in the German navy. They carry Oto Melara and Breda Bofors guns, Otomat and Aspide missiles, and the radar and electronics are supplied by Philips in Holland at Holland Signal. Add the British drive train, and they are excellent examples of NATO cooperation and workmanship. Blohm and Voss has also been building six MEKO Type 1400 corvettes for the Argentinian navy. Their stabilisers and controls come from Vosper Thornycroft. Northwest of Hamburg, in the small port of Emden, two Type 1700 diesel submarines made by Thyssen-Nordseewerke are nearing completion for Argentina. They are the first of six. In the Bazan shipyard in El Ferrol, Spain, five 900 tonne Halcon class fast patrol boats are being fitted out for Argentina. They carry simple Kelvan Hughes sonar and Racal-Decca radar. Each has a Breda Bofors gun and an Aloutte 3 helicopter; both possess the range for hit-and-run raids to the Falklands. Most of this modest, modern armada being built by Europe for Argentina is to be delivered within the next year. The estimated cost is about #2 billion. Argentina's foreign debt is $36 billion yet Admiral Gonzalez's office in Hamburg has had little trouble in raising the cash. [] <2MONITOR>2 <2The making of an insect's nervous system>2 THE American habit of naming streets and avenues by number or letter may lack romance, but its simplicity makes navigation easy for a tourist. How do you get from the corner of 168th St. and Fifth Avenue to 184th and First? No problem for a newcomer to New York, but imagine trying to get from Hammersmith Broadway to Shaftesbury Avenue without a map! The developing nervous system has to solve a similar problem--how does each nerve cell know where to find the other cells it must contact? Some recent experiments carried out by Corey Good- man in Stanford, California and his colleagues suggest that in insects a small group of pioneer cells may provide a labelled "streetmap" along which the developing neurons can navigate by using a simple set of directions to locate their specific targets. There are two important advantages of using insects in developmental work. Firstly, many of the internal organs are repeated in each body segment. In the thorax and abdomen, for example, the nervous system consists of a chain of paired "ganglia" each composed of a few thousand cells. Secondly, many of these cells can be individually' identified in the living embryo. The small number of cells involved, and their unique appearance make it possible to study the complete developmental history of a single cell-- something that is not yet technically feasible in vertebrates. In 1976 Michael Bate now working at Cambridge University drew attention to the embryonic development of nerve path- ways linking these ganglia with the budding limbs. By studying a series of successively younger embryos he found that the same cells at the tip of the limbs always contacted the central nervous system first, and that subsequent connections were always made along pathways established by the axon processes extended by these pioneer cells. These preliminary contacts are made at a very early stage in development when the embryo is very small and the pioneer cells need only extend their exploratory axons over a short distance in order to contact the target. Since Bate's discovery, many other examples of pioneer cells have been found which established a network of criss- crossing links between major parts of the nervous system and the developing limbs. One of the most interesting recent developments had been the discovery that the very first muscle cells to differentiate also erect a kind of scaffold of pathways along which the later 'motor' nerves migrate in order to locate their muscle targets <1(Nature,>1 Vol 301 p 66). However, as the nervous system develops and the distances that must be crossed become greater, the tracks traced by individual nerve cell processes become increasingly elaborate, and cease to follow single pioneer pathways. To work out how the later neurons navigated Jonathan Raper and his colleagues in Goodman's lab <1(Journal of>1 <1Neuroscience,>1 Vol 3, p 20) studied the development of two neurons, called G and C, located in one of the thoracic ganglia of the grasshopper nervous system. The two cells first grow inward across the midline following a pathway pioneered earlier by the first neurons in the ganglion, Q 1 and Q2. Then, after a pause, the G cell turns towards the head, while the C cell extends towards the tail (see figure). Thus the ques- tion Raper had to ask was why do the G and C cells stop growing laterally and turn? What he discovered was that the G cell turned when it met the axons of cells A1 and A2, whereas C turned and followed two other pioneer cells, P1 and P2. So far it is not clear how the G and C cells know when to stop following the Q cells and select an A or P pioneer. What the Goodman group have found, however, is that pioneer cells can be stained selectively with certain monoclonal antibodies indi- cating that their surface membrane contains a unique type of "marker" molecule which could provide one of the cues traced by later developing axons. Intriguingly, in a few cases Raper found that the G and C cells became linked to the axon they would Follow just before the turn was made. Perhaps a chemical signal is passed between the cells, providing another cue that the correct spot had been reached. It is not yet clear whether this "choose-and-follow" mechan- ism occurs in other species. However, the bundling, or "fasciculation" of axons trav- elling to similar destinations is a widely observed phenomenon, and in some species at least all of the axons in an individual fascicle can be identified by a unique monoclonal antibody <1(Journal of>1 <1Neuroscience,>1 Vol 3, p 369). This suggests that axons within such a bundle recognise one another using molecular cues and as such its relevance may be quite general. [] <2Lovers beware of poison oak!>2 POISON OAK <1(Rhus toxicodendron)>1, an American cousin of the Tree of Heaven (<1Rhus typhina>1) that adorns many an English garden, has been incriminated as an agent of sexually transmitted disease. Dr Michael Gochfeld and Dr Joanna Burger, of Rutgers University, New Brunswick, US, describe how a romantic walk in the hills near Santa Barbara, Cali- fornia, ended in several days of severe discomfort for two of their patients. <1(Lancet,>1 vol i, p 589). The trouble started when the woman, having defaecated behind a bush, wiped her perianal area with leaves. When told what the leaves were--for Poison Oak is well known across the Atlantic as a cause of severe contact dermatitis--she decided that she must wash vigorously; and this she did about 11/2 hours after touching the leaves. The couple later had sexual inter- course--about three hours after the woman's contact with the poisonous plant. Twenty seven hours later a red, intensely itchy rash appeared on her inner thighs, buttocks and perianal area, and gradually the blisters characteristic of Poison Oak dermatitis developed. The rash lasted some six days. Meanwhile, about 40 hours after the woman's contact with the poison, a burning, itchy rash developed on the man's scrotum, penis and pubic area, even though he had no direct contact with the plant. His rash lasted four days. The woman had rubbed herself vigorously with the leaves, and presumably the man had been exposed to some of the plant's irritant oil remaining on her body after washing. Thus, some cases of Poison Oak dermatitis, though scarcely ranking with conditions as severe as genital herpes, must now be considered examples of sexually transmitted diseases. [] <2Monolayer films that assemble themselves>2 MONOLAYER films--layers of mat- erial just one molecule thick--have many potential uses, ranging from the construction of synthetic biological membranes to micro-electronic applica- tions (see <1New Scientist>1 vol 95, p 912). Now Lucy Netzer and Jacob Sagiv, from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot in Israel have developed a simpler and quicker technique for preparing monolayer films that relies simply on the chem- ical properties of the starting materials. In effect the mole- cules assemble themselves <1(Journal of the American>1 <1Chemical Society>1, vol 105, p 674). So far, Netzer and Sagiv have made films up to three monolayers thick using the new method. The standard technique for producing monolayer films was pioneered by Langmuir and Blodgett (LB) in the 1930s. It employs mechanical means to organise molecules into a monolayer on the surface of a liquid. This layer can be trans- ferred onto the surface of another material by dipping the latter into the liquid. Repeated dipping will produce films many monolayers thick. The draw- backs of the LB procedure are that it is slow, not easily applied to large areas and doesn't always produce a film with the desired structure. Scientists examining alternative approaches are attracted to the idea of using molecules that are chemicals designed to assemble themselves into a film. Netzer and Sagiv designed a long chain molecule with a reactive chemical group at one end ad an inert group at the opposite end. They chose a reactive group that would bind to a solid surface with hydroxyl groups (--OH) sticking out. They hoped that the molecules would react with the surface to form a film, with the long chains all sticking out like a field of corn. Since the outermost ends of the molecules are unreactive the reaction should stop after one monolayer has formed. They tried their idea out on a piece of glass which they dipped into a solution containing their compound. Within two minutes a monolayer was produced. The reactive heads of the molecules could also react with one another, forming cross-links that made the film very strong. Chloro- form, which easily dissolved the original compound, did not remove the monolayer. To prepare multilayer films, the Israeli scientists first needed to modify their special molecule. They replaced the unreactive end with a new chemical group. Although this group is inert, it could be turned into an hydroxyl group at a later stage. The outer surface would then be covered with hydroxyl groups, like the original surface, and the process could be repeated. By repeating this "acti- vation" process twice, the researchers managed to make a film three monolayers thick. However, the second and third layers were 20-30 per cent less compact than the first. These experiments demonstrate clearly that self-assembly is a feasible approach to monolayer formation. The design of the molecule predetermines the structure of the film and covering large areas should prove no problem--important advantages over the LB technique. [] <2Modern farming spreads potato gangrene>2 MODERN, mechanised systems for harvesting, handling and grading potatoes are largely responsible for contact transfer of potato gangrene--one of the most commercially important diseases of stored potatoes. R. B. Copeland of the Department of Agriculture for Northern Ireland has shown that the incidence of wounds infected by the gangrene- fungus, <1Phoma exigua>1 (var <1foveata>1) increased if freshly damaged tubers were shaken with diseased tubers to simu- late the contact that occurs during potato harvesting. <1(Annals of Applied Biology>1, 1982, vol 101, p 465). Soil on potato grading machinery is frequently heav- ily contaminated with <1Phoma>1 spores. Copeland found that more tubers were infected after they had been passed over an elevator digger which was lifting stocks of heavily infested tubers. The digger was wounding the tubers sufficiently to allow infection. If the webs of potato harvested are sprayed with a particular strain of <1Phoma>1 that does not occur naturally, tubers harvested immediately after spray- ing developed gangrene rots, from which the abnormal strain could be cultured. No abnormal isolates were obtained from tubers harvested before the webs were sprayed. A similar experiment showed that <1Phoma>1 spores can be transferred from tubers to soil on potato graders, and from there to other tubers during grading. The number of gangrene rots at damage points increased if the recipient tubers were wounded <1after>1 contact with the diseased tubers, rather than before. Rots also increased on recipient tubers when the donors were heavily infected but were free of gangrene lesions. The potato gangrene fungus grows on senescent potato stems and develops spore- bearing capsules (pycnidia). Released spores an washed down into the soil and onto the tubers by rain. It is almost always present in potato crops. In a survey of nine County Antrim farms, Copeland detected <1Phoma>1 in soil samples taken from riddles and rollers of graders on eight of them. The use of systemic fungicides sprayed onto potato crops, and fumigation of stored potatoes, can reduce the incidence of the disease but the spread of infec- tion is greatly facilitated by modern harvesting equip- ment. Careful washing of eqip- ment might help; so might harvesting soon after haulm desiccation before stem pycnidia mature and release their spores. A return to manual harvesting would also reduce dramatically the spread of infection. Copeland quotes a test in which only one gangrene rot devel- oped during storage of 200 tubers dug by fork compared with 15 rots on 200 tubers lifted with an elevator digger from the same crop. Though it might help Britain's unemployment problem, who wants to harvest our annual 6 to 7 million tonnes of home-grown potato crop by hand! [] <2Hidden talents of the orang--utan>2 EVOLVING humanoids grew more intelligent at about the time they began using tools to hunt; this finding has encour- ged anthropologists to speculate that it was tool use that made intelligence particu- larly adaptive. The great apes substanially share our intellectual powers, as demon- strated by their use of tools in captivity, but only chimpanzees use tools to obtain food in the wild; they use twigs to fish termites out of holes. Why then have other great apes, such as orang-utans, evolved their mental capabili- ties, if not to use tools? These creatures seem to live slow, simple lives high up in tropical rainforests, spending most of their time travelling from place to place, eating and napping. A nine-year study of free-living orang- utans in Borneo, conducted by Suzanne Chevalier-Skolnikoff, Birute Galdikas, and Alan Skolnikon of the University of California at San Francisco, suggests that the life of the orang-utan has hidden challenges <1(Journal of Human Evolution,>1 vol 11, p 639), Social interactions, feeding, and the construction of nests and overhead rain shelters all present intellectual challenges for an orang-utan, they find. By applying catergories devised by Jean Piaget to chart the intellectual development of the human infant, the researchers conclude that orang- utans are capable of the mental reasoning achieved by a two-year old human. But the single activity which requires the most intelligence, they suspect, is the orang- utan's locomotion. These apes are the largest tree-living mammals; a male may weigh 80 kg. Animals this heavy cannot safely leap from tree to tree as smaller animals can. Yet the Borneo orang-utans regularly cross gaps 2-25 m wide. They manage these acrobatic feats by using a variety of apparently intel- ligent strategies. Orang-utans are able to cross small gaps by grabbing small branches of neigh- bouring trees and pulling them closer until they can reach branches large enough to support their weight. If gaps are large they cross by using pole trees or vines as "vehicles" in true Tarzan fashion. The apes may also climb onto small, supple trees and swing across. They may bend the small tree towards neighbouring tree by climbing out onto side branches of the pole tree; in other circumstances, the apes swing pole trees back and forth to gain momentum--often initially bending the trees away from their direction of travel, Orang-utans also swing across on vines, first untangling them; if a suitable vine is already stretched across a gap, a beast may walk across on top, balancing in the manner of a circus tight- rope walker. Perhaps, the researchers conclude, it was largely the need to get safely from tree to tree that stimulated the evolution of such a clever ape high up in the trees. [] <2Weather model explains unusual weather patterns>2 WHENEVER a long spell of unusual weather occurs, there are always people ready to blame it on carbon dioxide, a storm on the sun or the latest volcanic eruption. However, new theoretical evidence strongly supports the suggestion that the atmosphere, acting alone, can spontaneously generate persistent weather spells that can last for weeks. The evidence comes from a model devised by B. B. Rein- hold and R. T. Pierrehumbert <1(Monthly>1 <1Weather Review>1, 1982, Vol 110, p 1105). Their model, though vastly simpler than the real atmosphere, mimics some of its important properties. It simulates a system of long waves in the jet stream around the globe, together with a set of short waves superimposed on them. The forcing influ- ences are few and strictly constant: a heat- ing gradient between Equator and Pole, and a single mountain rane, resembling the Rockies, perpendicular to the flow. The flow pattern, and allowed to run for many years of simulated time, generating a sequence of day-to-day "weather", Just as in the real atmosphere, the shortwaves turn out to be unstable. Small disturbances grow bigger as they move east, steered by the long-wave flow. They then distort the long-wave pattern which is controlling them, causing the next short- wave disturbances to move differently. This interaction between the small and the large scales is a fundamental feature of the model, just as it is of the real atmosphere. As a result of the instability and inter- actions, the pattern rapidly loses any detailed memory of its initial state. The changes are not random, however. Because of the persistent influence of the mountains, sometimes a ridge in the flow pattern develops at about 15 degrees of longtitude upstream. This in itself is not surprising. Once a ridge has developed, it often persists for many weeks. Yet, the time of breakdown of the pattern seems to be a matter of chance. More surprisingly, some- times a trough develops at about the same position, 15 degrees upstream of the moun- tains: and this pattern also persists for many days or weeks. Imagine a model person living upstream of the model mountains. During a ridge spell he will experience one type of weather, during a trough spell a very different type. He might be tempted to blame these fluctu- ations on the sun or a volcano. But there are no volcanoes or solar variations in the model! The fluctuations between weather regimes are due solely to the intrinsic variability of the model atmosphere itself. The authors believe the cause of these persistent spells lies in the ability of the short waves to react on the long waves in such a way that, under certain situations, they favour the very pattern that caused them. [] <2Maternity blues linked to platelet receptors>2 TWO-THIRDS of women suffer from postnatal depression, accompanied by crying, confusion and tension. Little is known about the causes of the problem, though a new study of receptors on blood platelets has suggested a possible mech- anism, and could provide a way of predict- ing those women who will suffer postnatal depression. Receptors which bind hormones such as adrenaline and noradrenaline are widely distributed in the body. A certain sub- group called ai-adrenergic receptors are found in brain tissue and have also been identified on the membranes of platelets. Two Oxford research groups under the directions of clinical pharmacologist Professor David Grahame-Smith and psychiatrist Professor Michael Gelder have used a substance called yohimbine which is specific for ai-receptors to study the number of platelet receptors before and after childbirth <1(Lancet,>1 vol i, p 495). Their findings indicate measurable differences between normal and depressed women. The capacity of platelet receptor sites to bind yohimbine is known to vary with levels of the sex homones oestrogen and progesterone. Platelet binding falls after the menopause and rises in women using the Pill. After delivery, the concentrations of a new mother's sex homones fall dramatically and the Oxford workers have shown that there is a corresponding fall in the number of ai-adrenergic receptors. However, their results show that this post- natal reduction in receptor levels is less marked in women who suffer from mater- nity blues, and it is suggested that this may be the cause of the depression. Support for this view comes from current ideas on how some antidepressant drugs work. These have been observed to lower the sensitivity of ai-adrenergic recep- tors in rats. Since the difference between levels of receptors in women becomes apparent 3-4 days after the onset of depression, it is thought that the effects of falling sex hormones are mediated via the mega- karyocyte, a huge bone-marrow cell which is the precursor of platelets, [] <2TECHNOLOGY>2 <2Government research cash goes begging>2 THE MOVE by Britain's Department of Industry (DoI) to increase greatly its research spending is in danger of misfiring. The department has admitted to a substantial underspend in two important areas or research in the financial year that has just ended. Organisations that apply for the DoI's research cash say that bureacatic procedures and shortage of staff are to blame. If spread over the whole of the department's research budget, the shortfall in the two areas would mean that between 25 and 40 per cent of the cash allocated for 1982-83 has remained unspent. The department planned to spend #140 million this year in what it calls its support for innovation programme. Under this, money is handed out to industry to finance up to half the cost of individual research projects. The cash is due to increase to #325 million in 1983-84, reflecting the desire of minis- ters to pour more money into new tech- nologies. But the new figures cast doubt on whether anything approaching this amount will actually be spent. A complete picture for the DoI's 1982-83 cash outlay is difficult to build up. First, the financial year has just ended and not all the figures are available, Secondly, the department appears to have trouble digging out the relevant information even when it applies to previous years. The House of Lords' select committee on science and technology, which delivered a hard-hitting report on industrial R&D last month, was unable to turn up figures for actual (as opposed to forecast) government spending. The committee called for an increased R&D effort and a more imag- inative approach to research from govern- ment (Hew <1Scientist,>1 10 March, p 634). The two research areas on which the government has shed light are machine tools and mechanical engineering, and electronics applications. In the former, the DoI budgeted to spend #24 million in 1982-83 but the true figure will be about # 14 million, an underspend of 40 per cent. The position was even worse in 1981-82, when #4 million was spent out of the # 10 million allocated. In electronics applications, the DoI says it will have spent #22 million in 1982-83, compared with the #23.8 million forecast. But the latter sum has itself been subject to revisions. The planned figure at the start of the year was about #30 million, making the true shortfall around 25 per cent. In 1981-82, # 14.6 million was spent out of the # 19.1 million allocated. As for the reasons for the shortfall, the department says that research officers as a matter of course over-estimate spending at the start of a financial year. Also some companies do not claim the cash to which they are entitled until well after the financial year has ended. The DoI says that there is no shortage of staff to deal with applications for research cash. Last year, the mechanism for fixing up research contracts was streamlined. Kenneth Baker, the minister for infor- mation technology, said at the time this would make it easier for firms to obtain money. But observers say the reor- ganisation has not worked. Lord Gregson, the chairmen of the House of Lords' science and technology committee, says companies that deal with the DoI find the process of obtaining support "demotivating". Cedric Ashley, the chairman of the Asso- ciation of Independent Consulting Research Organisations, told <1New Scientist>1 that his members are used to delays of eight months in obtaining cash. According to Eric Duckworth, managing director of the Fulmer Research Institute near Slough, problems are worse with what the government calls shared-cost contracts. Here, several firms or research groups team up to obtain money from the department for one project. But because these schemes are more complex, staff at the Ministry of Defence have to draw up the contracts as DoI officials lack the expertise. The procedure leads to more delays, [] <2Dentists get their teeth into polymer protection>2 A CHEAP and plentiful polymer may soon prevent tooth decay and protect supertankers from fouling. Dr Brian Caus- ton, a physical chemist at the London Hospital, has found what appears to be a universal method of keeping protein off a surface--be it a tooth, a ship or a cooling tower. The technique has a host of medical and industrial applications, because bacte- ria cannot colonise a protein-free surface. Some years ago Causton found that biological polymers called mucopoly- saccharides could exclude protein from some surfaces. He wanted to find a readily- available synthetic polymer that could do the job. The polymers he tried all took at least three days to form an adequate surface layer. The trouble was that the polymers were landing on the surface of the tooth "like a plate of spaghetti". By analysing the thermodynamics of the process, Causton discovered a way of getting polymers to form a layer in just 3 milliseconds. The crucial process, which the British Technology Group is patenting, aligns the polymers so that they form a coherent layer. "It involves making them take the shape wanted while still in solution," Causton says. The polymer treatment might be used straight away as a daily mouthwash for mentally handicapped people to stop plaque sticking to teeth. The polymer should present no health worries: "If we have toxicological problems, then so does ice cream," says Causton. A thick layer applied to ships could save the tonnes of tin and copper now added to paint to discourage fouling bacteria Causton says. Heat exchangers might also benefit from treatment with polymers. After a few months cooling towers are covered in a slime which makes them less efficient. A layer of polymers could prevent the damaging micro-organisms from getting a foothold. Medical applications also abound. Kidney machines treated with polymer might be able to work longer, and blockages in arti- ficial veins and organs might also be prevented. Causton plans to alter the ends of the polymers to make them stick better to specific surfaces or make them attrac- tive to only a particular protein. For instance, the pellicle--a mucopolysaccha- ride and glycoprotein layer on teeth--is known to lower the susceptibility of tooth enamel to acid; useful for people on grapefruit diets. The polymer layer could probably be engineered to prevent only bacteria known to cause decay from getting their first foothold on the teeth. [] <2Smooth shift saves fuel on the buses>2 BUSES rumbling through the city streets in 1986 could need 30 per cent less fuel than they do now to bring the cry "standing room only" to impatient queues. The saving in diesel will happen if Leyland Vehicles can convince the world's transport executives that its new continuously. variable transmission (CVT) is, indeed, revolutionary. Leyland unveiled a proto- type transmission on Tuesday; it was fitted to a single-decker bus in place of the traditional gearbox. A flywheel will be added to the system next year to store kinetic energy lost by braking. Leyland says a 16-tonne vehicle braking at 0.5 g from 50 km/h dumps more than 1000 kW into the brakes as heat. The high-speed flywheel will store the energy and use it to get the vehicle moving again. Prototypes of the CVT and, eventually, the flywheel are designed for public trans- port. But Chris Greenwood, the principal research engineer, said: "We've got a trans- mission capable of working on a wide range of vehicles, including Formula 1 cars, tanks, buses, delivery trucks, earth moving machinery and off-road transport of all types. CVTs save fuel, especially in the urban cycle." At the moment Leyland does not see huge off-the-shelf sales for the transmission. The short-term view is that CVT will make the firm's buses more competitive. The Department of Industry contributed to the cost of developing a prototype, between #600 000 and #700 000. Production is due to begin in 1986 when the Farringdon bus plant will start to churn out the 830 mm long and 330 kg "gearboxes" at a cost "comparable with existing transmissions". Leyland's CVT has three main components: a variator, to give an infinitely variable ratio range (within limits); a section to provide reverse, forward and neutral; and the micro- processor-based controller which made the development possible. The variator consists of input and output discs facing each other on the same axis (see diagram). Power is transmitted between the discs by rollers at right-angles to the main shaft. The input discs turn clockwise, and the rollers turn the output discs anti- clockwise, and vice versa. If the rollers connect the outer edge of the input discs with the inner edge of the output discs, the latter spin faster. Effec- tively, the CVT "gears down". Swapping the rollers position "gears up". One input disc has a hydraulic piston to squeeze the variator along its length. The degree of squeeze is in proportion to the load on the transmission. The transmission operates in two phases. Low regime is for reverse and forward speeds up to the equivalent of second gear. High regime, where drive is from the vari- ator, provides overdrive of up to 1.8:1. This is equivalent to about 100 km/h per 1000 rpm in a car and about 50 km/h per 1000 rpm in a commercial vehicle. Leyland designed the microcomputer which controls the ratios. It is programmed to take into account the driver's wishes, the speed of the wheels and the speed of the engine. It can be reprogrammed to change limits for different jobs. [] ----------------------------------------------- <2Lesson in alternatives>2 WANT to learn how to solve the energy crisis? Britain's National Centre for Alternative Energy is running two short courses this month for would-be designers of wind turbines and small water wheels. Each course runs over a weekend at the centre's headquarters in Wales. The course on wind power, which begins on 15 April, covers everything from the design of household windpumps to the intracacies of megawatt-generating machines. On the weekend beginning 29 April, students of water power will be able to learn how to put a project together. The Centre for Alternative Technology, a charity, has run a working exhibition on "low impact technologies" since 1974. Details: Machynlleth (0654) 2400. [] <2French banks put cash in their chips>2 FRANCE last week took another step away from its tradi- tion of keeping money in old socks under the mattress. A consortium of banks in the town of St Etienne, near Lyon, launched the country's third experiment with "electronic cash"-- terminals in shops that automatically debit a customer's bank account. In Britain, the big banks have tried out similar systems in several small experi- ments. But they are still discussing plans for a national net- work of terminals. The French gov- emment, which is overseeing the experi- ments and contributing part of the cost, will decide this year on which system it will base its national network for electronic cash, which computer companies have inevitably dubbed <1"monetique".>1 The experiment in St Etienne is the first to link terminals in shops, in real time, with the banks' computers. The city's traders have installed 350 <1Point Rubis>1 (ruby point) terminals in department stores, small shops and restaurants, linked via telephone lines and the national Transpac data network to all but two of the big banks. When a customer wants to pay for some- thing through the system, he or she presents a banker's card or a Visa credit card to the shopkeeper. To activate the system, the shopkeeper passes the card through a magnetic-strip reader in the terminal, enters the cost of the purchase, and the customer punches out a personal code on a detachable keypad. The terminal checks with the bank's computer that the number corre- sponds with the card, and that the customer has not spent over the limit of #200 that day. If the transaction is in order, the display on the terminal writes <1"oui",>1 and prints out a receipt. If not, the word <1"non">1 is displayed to the world in large red letters. At the end of the day, the banks' central clearing house adjusts each customer's bank account in the same way as with cheque withdrawals. The main bank behind the St Etienne experiment, Societe General, says the system is the most modern in the world. But the bank may have trouble persuading the government of its merits. At the launch- ing ceremony of <1Point Rubis>1 last week, the French minister of telecommunications, Louis Mexandeau, described a rival experi- ment, using a "chip on a card", as the "way to the future". With this system, which banks are trying out in Caen, Lyon and Blois, the customer buys a "smart card" with a pre-set cash limit in its memory, and "cashes" it at off-line terminals. A third experiment, a system of magnetic cards and off-line terminals, is under way in Aix en Provence. [] <2'Tomorrow's sounds' is a blast from the past>2 A YOUNG Italian, Hugo Zuccarelli, has used a modern technology to improve the 100-year-old system of stereo sound. The new system has a catchy name, "holophonics", and without doubt Zuccarelli has made some impressive recordings. Clever publicity, orchestrated confusion over the equipment involved and a gullible pop industry have conspired to create a wave of enthusiasm in some parts of the press and the music industry. But a question mark hangs over the technology of "holo- phonics", which the inventor explains by expounding a new theory of human hearing. Zuccarelli and his partner Mike King are already collecting royalties from the sale of two LP records which include snatches of holophonic sound. One of these records, <1The Final Cut>1 by the group Pink Floyd, is likely to sell well, so the royalties could be substantial. Two more records, an LP from the avant garde group Psychic TV and a sound-effects disc from CBS, should soon be in the shops. Zuccarelli is talking with manu- facturers about licensing his invention for new hi-fi systems. Holophonics sounds espec- ially impressive to someone who has never heard binaural or "dummy head" recordings. As if by magic, a stereo disc or tape heard through head- phones produces a surround of sound. Even engineers who are familiar with binaural stereo believe that Zuccarelli recordings sound better. But the inventor refuses to make his equipment available for controlled scientific tests. Zuccarelli will not discuss what is inside his "Ringo" recording head instead expounding a psycho-acoustic theory to disguise what engineers suspect is a simple advance in old-fashioned binaural recording. And whatever the advance, demonstrations suggest that Zuccarelli's system, like all previous "dummy head" systems, will turn out to be a technically- interesting dead end. The idea dates back to 1881. In that year, a French aeronautics and telephone en- thusiast called Cle/ment Ader arranged a demonstration at the Paris exhibition to put the Bell telephone through its paces. He arranged a row of 80 telephone mouth- pieces across the front of the stage at the Grand Opera in Paris, and connected them by wires to 80 earpieces. Visitors put a receiver to each ear. A contemporary report said: "the sound took on a special character of relief and localisation" because Ader had discovered "a new acoustic affect". The same new acoustic effect has been discovered repeatedly throughout the past century! The basic idea is simple. Two microphones, one in each ear of a dummy or human head, pick up the sound reaching the ears. This sound is coloured by the baffle effect of the head: one ear hears sounds earlier and louder than the other. If the sound from each microphone is sepa- rately recorded on a two-channel disc or tape, and played back through stereo head- phones, the listener hears a remarkable replica of the original sound field. The first person to file a patent on the idea was W. Bartlett Jones of Chicago in 1927. Jones envisaged a cinema with each seat equipped with a pair of small speakers arranged as headphones along each side of the listener's head. Now, in 1983, the group Psychic TV is suggesting the use of holo- phonics in the cinema. Even when stereo records came on the market, binaural remained a gimmick. To get the intended effect the listener must either wear headphones or sit between a pair of loudspeakers positioned like large headphones. This is both anti-social and impractical. Conventional stereo, repro- duced from a pair of loudspeakers in front of the listener, produces a less dramatic effect but over a much wider listening area. The main snag with binaural stereo, apart from the inconvenience of listening through headphones, is the difficulty of distinguishing front from rear sound, and getting a clear feeling of height. Zuccarelli has built a dummy head which produces a clear impression of sounds coming from the back, and some impression of frontal sound. Some Zuccarelli recordings create an illusion of height. But significally all these recording are of sound effects, replete with high frequencies, for instance a ratting match- box, or earth falling on the top of a coffin in which the dummy head is being buried. Long established theory says the human ear receives information about height from reflections on the whorls of the outer ear or pinnae. These cause delays and frequency dips and peaks. The Zuccarelli recordings so far demonstrated could well have been made with a simple dummy head, incorp- rating reflectors or circuits to emphasise this effect. It is also important to note that Zuccarelli used a digital recording system, the portable Sony F1 costing around #2000: binaural recording depends for its success on accurate replication of the phase discrepancies caused by delays of the sound across the head and at the ear lobes. When binaural recording last found favour, 10 years ago, there was no low-cost digital recording equipment available. Zucarrelli, however, maintains that his secret is much more complicated. In October 1980 Zuccarelli filed a European patent applica- tion, covering nine countries including Britain. This applica- tion now published, as number 50 100, is freely available. It describes merely a carefully- constructed dummy head, with hair on top and microphones inside the car canals. Frequency equalisation compensates for the sound passing through the auditory canals. In Japan both Sony and Matsushita have worked on similar equalisation, but never bothered to market a system. On 21 February the TVS programme <1The Real World>1 devoted 30 minutes to holo- phony and Zuccarelli. The programme quoted Zuccarelli's theory that the ear is an active radiator. According to the inventor, the ear generates a reference signal which mixes with incoming sounds to produce a composite signal. This is deco- ded by the brain. He claims that his dummy head does likewise. As the Zuccarelli tone will be heard in addition to the natural tone from the ear of a head- phone listener, this could explain the exag- gerated effect of his recordings. But it is unclear whether this theory is serious or a misunderstanding. Zuccarelli Labs also says that the patent does not give away the real secret of the invention. But the cost of pushing a Euro- pean patent througgh in nine countries is around #10 000. The cost of application alone is around #2000 and Zuccarelli has already paid an extra #500 to keep the application alive for a further stage of official examination. This is a surprising move if the patent is irrelevant. Previous binaural recording systems have followed much the same path as Zuccarelli's holophonics. On first hearing the new listener is bowled over, especially, when the system is demonstrated in pitch dark, as by Zuccarelli. It later becomes clear that a dummy head can produce dramatic results only when recording sounds from close quarters, such as whispers or sound effects. To capture the sound of a band or orchestra, the head must of necessity be placed several metres away, and the result is disappointing. As the Italian inventor may discover, the music industry does not flourish on recordings that sound right only on head- phones [] <2'And yet it moves'>2 -------------------------------------- <2The most famous trial in the history of science was held in April 1633. Galileo Galilei>2 <2was charged with heresy by the papal Inquisition>2 <2C. L. Boltz>2 GALILEO GALILEI was the founder of modern physics. To assess such a claim requires that we make a giant leap of the imagination to transport us to a state of ignorance about even the most elementary principles of phys- ics. Today, the simple laws of motion, for example, are known to the most modest O-level candidates, yet Galileo spent his life unravelling these mysteries. However, he lived at a time when the centuries-old <1Almagest>1 of the Egyptian scholar Claudius Ptolemy was still being used by the Church to defend the doctrines of Scripture with "evidence" and "confirmation" (not that Ptolemy had ever had the remotest idea that his book would support the Bible!). Ptolemy had written the book in AD 139 and in it propounded, among other things, the old Aristotelian idea that the Earth was at the centre of the Universe. One must remember that Galileo was part of the Renais- sance, the centuries-long ferment accelerated and intensified by the invention of printing in the middle of the 15th century. He was not alone. More or less contemporary with him were the Dutchman Willebrord Snell (who conceived the law of light refraction), the Belgian Simon Stevin, and the four Frenchmen Marin Mersenne, Pierre de Fermat, Rene Descartes and Blaise Pascal--physicists and mathematicians all. And there was the German astronomy genius Johannes Kepler. Yet it is Galileo's name that survives as the "founder" of physics. We must understand, however briefly, the sociological and political and religious climates of Galileo's time. Italy, for instance, was no longer the great Roman empire. It was divided into small states often warring with one another. The one in which Galileo was born was an autocracy, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, with its capital at Florence and its second city at Pisa, his birthplace. The de Medici family ruled. Next to Tuscany was the state led by Venice--the Venetian Republic--as near as anyone came to a democracy in the 16th century. It refused to give in to the authority of Rome and the Church. It expelled the Jesuits and defied the Pope. It had its famous university at Padua (from which, it may be remem- bered, the learned doctor Bellario was to come to defend Antonio against Shylock in <1The Merchant of Venice.>1 which William Shakespeare wrote in 1594, when Galileo was at Padua). In the footsteps of the Peripatetics The papacy had by this time lost most of its former immense temporal power. The Reformation was spreading. Scientists were free in the Netherlands and much of Germany as well as in Britain. All the same, some power remained and the majority of academics were Jesuits or Dominicans or members of the other many orders. Numbers of them became administrators or held important posts. They held entrenched positions. For the Galileo story it is important to know that over the centuries Aristotle's philosophy had become a part of Catholic orthodoxy. Aristotle (384-322 Bc) had created his philosophy while ambling in his sandals along the olive groves of the Lyceum in Athens and so his philos- ophy was dubbed "Peripatetic". In biology he had much observation to support him but in "physics" he had no experi- mental evidence worth mentioning. His concepts read like a fairy tale today. There were four elements in the Earth's realm--air, fire, earth and water. His views on motion seem to us today quite absurd. He said that a solid body moving through a fluid medium such as air was in fact propelled by the air, which was cleft by the moving body and then rejoined behind it to provide the forward drive, for there could be no such thing as a vacuum, that is, mere nothingness. He argued that two bodies of the same material but different weights would fall at different speeds. All the famous Greek philo- sophers were disdainful of the artisan, the man who merely made things. What mattered was thought--universals, essences, the "nature" of things and so on. As regards the world and the planets, the Earth was still the centre of the Universe, with the planets fixed on transparent spheres rotat- ing, so that the planets seemed to move in circles round the Earth. All this and much else of a similar kind was orthodoxy to the Peripatetics. It is true that centuries later Ptolemy applied mathematics to his astronomy. but the essential point, that the Earth was the centre of the Universe, remained. So did the idea of perfect circles or spheres though Ptolemy added other variants. So the centrality of a fixed Earth remained as orthodox Peripatetic "science". It was taught dogmatically, with much logic-chopping and illustra- tive syllogisms. There was no scope for questioning. Into all this came young Galileo as a student at the univer- sity at Pisa. He was highly intelligent, observant and question- ing, a joy to the first-class teacher and a pest to the second- rate, who as usual formed the majority. He wrote poetry and was a skilled musician and painter. He was highly cultured and came of a family of minor nobility. Vincenzio Galilei, his father, was also a musician, with original views, as well as being something of a mathematician. Galileo was to read medicine and so be able to earn a living. However, the Ducal court went into winter quarters at Pisa to escape the biting winds of Florence: the court mathematician, Matteo Ricci, went with it. Galileo came upon Ricci teaching the young pages about Euclid and was at once entranced. Meeting Ricci later, Galileo also learned about Archimedes, a Latin version of whose work had been published in 1543. That was that. Archimedes became "that divine man" and Galileo saw in Euclid the wonder of geometry, especially in the work on ratios, which Galileo was to expand and use to its limit later. His mind was alerted to the excitement and importance of mathematics applied to practical problems, that is in effect, physics. He timed the swinging of chandeliers in the cathedral and at once abstracted the essence of the problem, so that he made pendulums of string and small weights and established the relationship between length and time of swing, using his own pulse for measurement, for there existed no device for fine accurate timing. (Later on Galileo utilised the phenom- enon to make his <1pulsilogium>1, a device timing the human pulse, and on his deathbed 70 years later he designed a pendulum-regulated escapement for a proposed clock.) Leaving the university, he kept himself by teaching privately and lecturing, and then produced his first scientific paper at the age of 22. It was concerned with the story that Archimedes had found a way of discovering if a crown made for King Hiero of Syracuse was in fact of pure gold, as it was supposed to be, or had been adulterated with a cheaper metal. This he had done, according to the story, by finding the weight of water displaced first by the crown and then by an equal weight of pure gold, the measurement being that of weighing the water displaced from a full bowl. Galileo could not believe that a genius such as Archimedes would have used such a crude method. So Galileo set out to devise a method of considerable precision. He made for himself a special balance with which he could measure the exact proportions of two metals in a mixture or alloy. He realised that fine-enough markings would be too difficult to read so he wound along a part of one arm of the balance a tight spiral of very fine brass wire, extending from where the suspended weight would balance metal <1A>1 (suspended in water) to where it would balance metal <1B>1 (suspended in water). He then balanced the immersed mixture by sliding the weight along. He measured the number of turns along his spiral by passing along it a fine stiletto, each winding making an audible "ping". Thus, with his fine musical ear, he could count the number of turns, and therefore the distance. So he was able to state the proportion of <1A>1 to <1B>1 in the mixture. This tiny essay, which he called <1La>1 <1Bilancetta>1, is enchanting. In this little original work there is much of what we need to know about Galileo's methods. There is first of all his outstanding and delicate manual skill. More important, there is always the insistence on accurate measurement and <1also repeatable>1 measurement. And there is the use of mathematics, in this case the principle of the lever, which he was to use many a time in later work. Moreover his mathematical basis was Euclid and Archimedes. If we here abandon the time-sequence of his life and anticipate his later work we should also see that an idea or hypothesis was often involved in some of his work, being followed by experiment involving accurate measurement to verify or deny the hypothesis. Indeed it would be entertaining to trace all his mistakes (including his comic theory of tides) and see how he corrected earlier guesses as he progressed. Any student today would recognise his methods, for, despite his lack of algebraic formulae and the lean state of knowledge of his time, it was recog- nisably "modern" physics. It is true that there were first-class scientists at work in other countries but they were either greatly taken with large unprovable notions or were limited to a single field, whereas Galileo was orig- inal in dynamics, hydrostatics, mechanics (strength of materials), optics and astronomy. He continued to develop, correcting earlier errors. admitting his ignorance on "mysteries" and abhorring abstract notions. He was interested only in what he could see or hear or touch and, above everything, measure. He took his account of the little balance as well as some research on centres of gravity and travelled to Rome to impress a couple of eminent intellectuals, and he succeeded, being appointed professor of mathematics at Pisa when he was 25, though he had never had a university degree. One of his earliest escapades there was to take his students to the Leaning Tower and drop weights from it, thereby disproving one of Aristotle's dicta on motion. This was the start of his lifelong war with the Peripatetics. This must not be misconstrued. He did not start off as a rebel seeking out Peri- patetics to confound. Indeed he was a great admirer of the Greek philo- sopher, many ofwhose concepts stayed with Galileo for a long time, but he demanded to be allowed freedom from dogma and interference to pursue the truth. As it happened all his discoveries went against the Peripatetic views, and as he advanced so the attacks on him grew, largely because the lesser ones among opponents saw their cosy lives of repetitions of dogma in danger. Thus he was driven into polemic replies. By 1592, through the influence of many eminent intellectuals and men of power he was appointed to the presti- gious post of professor of mathematics at the University of Padua, where his inaugural lecture was delivered in the Great Hall to an immense audience. Being in the Venetian Republic there was much freedom of thought in this university and the medical school in particular under the great anatomist Fabricius was famous for experimental work. (One young Englishman. William Harvey, was a student during Galileo's time.) His classes increased in size; even visiting noblemen would drop in to hear him. Students came from all over Europe, a number of them boarding with him and his mistress, paving fees for private tuition. He enjoyed his social life with leading intellectuals and noblemen, where there was much debate, all with- out rancour. Many of these social friends had, or were on their way, to very high positions. We can imagine the Galileo of the mid-1590s. He was a redoubtable debater with a caustic tongue in polemics and a nice touch in irony in writing. He was a laughing man of wit and humour--many a time he referred to the "larks and escapades" with his special friends, some of whom doubtless remembered his satirical poem at Pisa against the rule about wearing academic togas in town. He was a <1bon viveur>1, savour- ing his food and especially his wine. He was generous in spirit, often refusing to hurt an opponent if this one was in trouble. He was probably self-conceited and vain about his reputa- tion, selfish about priorities in discoveries and publications. He may have been something of a money-hunter, as his correspondence shows, but on the other hand he had a big family of relatives with a call on him. He may have been a time-server as his attitude about the Pole Nicolaus Coper- nicus suggests. Copernicus had argued that, contrary to the views of Aristotle and Ptolemy, the Earth and all the planets actually moved in orbits round the Sun. Galileo in a letter to Kepler (who showed that the orbits must be ellipses, not circles with the foci at the Sun) admitted that he had been a believer in Copernican theory for years but had been "too timid" to say so for fear of ridicule. Who are we in a free democ- racy to condemn this? His artful way of presenting rival theories by saying in effect "X says this but Y says that" kept him out of trouble. We must remember that in 1600, when Galileo was at Padua, the Inquisition had burned Giordano Bruno to death for daring to say that he did not believe in transubstantiation of bread into body and wine into the blood of Christ at the Eucharist. In 1609 came the most sensational discovery of his life. He heard of a Fleming who had made a "spy-glass" and he rushed to experiment, not wishing to be outdone. And he succeeded in making a telescope of the sort familiar to everyone today who has seen an elementary book on optics. It astonished and excited everyone, and when he succeeded in making one of eight magnifications and then even 20 (grinding his own lenses!) he made celestial observations that shook the world of astronomy as well as the most learned of the Peripatetics. He saw mountains on the Moon (very anti-Aristotle this), then satellites orbiting Jupiter, which he mapped with such accu- racy that his orbital times are hardly different from those calculated today. Then he saw sunspots and described their variations. Finally he observed that Venus showed phases very like those of the Moon, an observation that clinched the Copernican argument. In 1610 he published <1The Starry>1 <1Messenger.>1 He presented telescopes to the Doge of Venice (and had ageing councillors climbing a campanile to see merchant ships out at sea) and to his former pupil and friend Cosimo II, Grand Duke of Tuscany. He became famous all over Europe. He was the equivalent in science of a Nobel prizewinner today. At last, too, he was able to leave Padua, which resented his departure. It had promised him 1000 florins a year in a year's time. But he was tired of the republic, tired of government by committee. "It is impossible to obtain wages from a republic," he wrote naively, "without having duties attached. For to have anything from the public one must satisfy the public and no one individual." What he was probably saying was that he could not get more money unless he did a lot more teaching, whereas his heart was in his research. So Cosimo II offered him also 1000 florins a year for life and with no duties postulated. Furthermore he was back in his homeland. He made a triumphant visit to Rome, where he was welcomed by the Pope and Cardinals and was fated everywhere. He was elected as but the sixth member of the exclusive Accademia dei Lincei (that is, the Academy of the Lynx-eyed). Back at his home near Florence he completed his book on hydrostatics, in which it is interesting to see that he was nonplussed by the fact that a thin flake of ebony, though denser than water would nevertheless float. This pleased his Peripatetic opponents who asserted with Aristotle that sink- ing or floating was merely a matter of shape. Galileo did have the insight to perceive that the effect was probably the same as that when a drop of water would remain on a cabbage leaf. Of course surface tension was an unknown phenomenon. A year later he published his three letters on sunspots. He was by now a very powerful man and had created jealousy and resentment. He had so many appreciative friends in very high places that he probably considered himself safe. Some highly placed people were in fact former pupils of his. Most of his enemies worked quietly like rats in a cellar, but some did not. There was, for example, the hateful person Chris- topher Scheiner, a Jesuit, who claimed priority in seeing sunspots and of course gave an Aristotelian expla- nation of them. His book challenged Galileo in the most spiteful way. There was Simon Mayr who claimed priority in seeing the Jupiter satellites. As both men had to use Galilean telescopes, their claims seem unlikely to have been true. Even so, Galileo had many topics on his mind and was not solely doing astron- omical research, so that the priority of a month or so could have been true. No research, not even that of Stillman Drake, the leading authority on Galileo, has been able to establish unequivocally the truth about the Scheiner claim. On Mayr's claim there is enough evidence to state that he was wrong. <2The spies were about>2 It looks as if there was an opinion on high to leave Galileo alone, but then he made a mistake. He wrote a letter to his friend and former pupil Benedetto Castelli in which he discussed the Bible, especially the passage that stated that Joshua had commanded the Sun to stand still, a fact that would have proved that the Sun must previously have been moving, as Aristotle and Ptolemy had said. Galileo's comment was that though the Bible was the word of God it must not be taken too literally, word for word, being written not for intellectuals but for common people. The spies were about and a Dominican in some way unknown secured a copy and sent it to the Inquisition at Rome. Almost at the same time a loud-voiced and unpopular Dominican priest made an outspoken attack against all mathematicians and Galileo supporters. Galileo saw the danger and hurried to Rome, on his mule it seems. There Cardinal Bellarmine after some talk persuaded Galileo to agree not to teach the Copernican theory as truth. In fact nobody knows exactly what Galileo did promise at this meeting in 1616, but his enemies, by a gangster-like trick, did much later produce an unsigned document (long after Bellarmine was dead) claim- ing that Galileo had promised not to teach or publicise the Copernican doctrine. Whatever the truth he returned home apparently satisfied but careful. He did not enter controversy again until 1623 when he produced a now-famous polemic book called <1The Assayer>1, acclaimed as the height of contro- versial writing. It was against a Jesuit who had written about comets and was a manifesto for intellectual freedom in science. In 1623 his friend in Florence, Maffeo Barberini, was elec- ted Pope and Galileo could not wait to get to Rome to see him, and the reception was cordial. Everything seemed to be going well, and it must have looked as if the weight of Galileo and the rest of the scientific world might succeed and get a thorough revision of orthodox science. Galileo produced his famous book called in brief <1A Dialogue>1 etc. between a Peripatetic aptly called Simplicio, a Venetian gentleman Sa- gredo (actually Galileo's close friend of the old days) and a scientifically- informed Florentine, Salvatio, who was really voicing the opinions of Gali- leo himself. The subject of the dialogue was the two world systems, that of Ptol- emy and that of Copernicus. The im- primatur was obtained from the Papal censor and the book was published in 1632. Galileo had written a pious pre- face in which he ridiculed the Co- pernican theory as wild and fantastic and contrary to Holy Scripture. In this form the censor permitted the book to pass. The censor lost his job when the pious preface brought laughter down on the Church that had been duped by such an obvious pretence. All over Eu- rope people read Galileo while the Pope and cardinals fumed. It is said that Scheiner, on hearing this in a Rome bookshop, turned pur- ple and shook violently. But he and his fellow haters and intriguers were not beaten. In fact they succeeded and there followed a sequence of events that has never been thor- oughly recorded in full detail, though Stillman Drake has done his best. It looks to me as if the situation was that the Inquisition would have liked to do nothing but was forced to do so by the detailed and documented evidence claiming that Galileo was in fact a heretic. There was another fact working against Galileo as well. It was that the Pope grew angry and anti-Galileo when he learned of the events of 1616, of which he had never been informed. He thought himself tricked by Galileo's artfulness. Galileo was ordered to appear before the Inquisition. Though ill, old and partially blind he went, hav- ing been offered a "litter" by the Duke of Tuscany, though Venice had offered sanctuary. (Why did he not accept? Was it that he was such a sincere Catholic that he would not refuse an order from the Pope? Or was he still over-confident? We shall never know.) In Rome he was housed comfortably and on 13 April attended the first hearing, when some Domini- cans produced the unsigned document. Galileo pleaded igno- rance of any such document and promised to produce that signed by Bellarrnine in 1616. He almost won the day. There followed considerable activity behind the scenes, the Cardi- nals probably detested the Scheiners etc.--and Francesco Bar- berini, the Pope's brother, who remained a loyal and admir- ing friend to Galileo throughout, was very active. He appeared once more and was then kept in suspense for months.The Pope eventually decided on life imprisonment. Of the 10 cardinals, three had refused to sign the verdict, Francesco demanded a pardon and when it was refused he persuaded his brother to make life "imprisonment" that of house arrest in the home of a sympathetic bishop. To pay for this, Galileo was made to kneel and admit to being vain and ambitious and to abjure the Copernican doctrine as being wrong. "I Galileo Galilei, being in my seventieth year having be- fore my eyes the Holy Gospel, which I touch with my hands, abjure, curse and detest the error and heresy of the movement of the Earth." The churchmen published Galileo's recantation throughout Europe to demonstrate their power to make men recant. It was an enormous humiliation and Galileo was left a broken man, almost mentally deranged by the months of pressure. But the kindly bishop Ascanio Piccolomini nursed him back to mental health and at length the authorities in Rome allowed him to go home, though still under house arrest. It was possibly on this occasion that Galileo defiantly made his famous outburst: <1"Eppur si muove">1 (And yet it moves). This is the opinion of Stillman Drake after assessing all the evidence. Why did Galileo make his abjuration at the trial, admitting what he knew to be a lie? Was he a coward? Did he think it more important to get back to his life work? Who are we to judge? It was at his home that Galileo re- newed his life work, that on mechanics and motion. In it he arrived, among many other discoveries, at the law of inertia later used by Isaac Newton as the first law of motion, at the parabola as the path of a projectile, at the re- lationships between distance and velocity and between distance and time, and at the continuity of acceler- ation. He struggled towards an under- standing of continuity, though the work had to wait for Newton and Gottfried Leibnitz to produce an infinitesimal calculus to master this difficulty. (One of his pupils, Cavalieri, nearly got there in his book on "indivisibles".) The book published in 1638, was called <1Two New Sciences etc.>1 and can be consid- ered his memorial. He died on 8 January, 1642. Less than a year later Isaac Newton was born. [] <2Galileo and his money>2 Galileo talked much of money and his need for it. By taking the bullion value of gold it is possible, ignoring the matter of the cost of living, to estimate what he earned. The florin and the ducat were seemingly equivallent coins, the former more used in Tuscany and the latter in Venice. Each weighed about 54 grains of gold. In Troy weight this is 0.1125 of an ounce. Taking the present bullion value of gold as 400 dollars, the ducat or florin would be worth in present British money about #30. The salaries of Galileo were thus: Pisa ( 1589) 60 florins # 1800 per year #34 per week Padua ( 1592) 180,, #5400 per year # 104 per week (1589) 320 Ducats #9600 per year # 185 per week Venice (offered only) 1000 Ducats #30000 per year #577 per week Florence (1610) 1000 florins #30000 per year #577 per week [] <2Australias drought and the southern climate>2 -------------------------------------------------------- <2The Australian drought is part of a hemisphere-wide pattern of unusual climatic phenomena>2 <2Marcel van Dijk, David Mercer and Jim Peterson>2 FIRES that ravaged parts of eastern Australia in recent weeks were the culmination of the worst drought this century. By March 1983 it had persisted for 11 months. The drought has its origins in a persistent pattern of atmos- pheric circulation that has affected the whole of the southern hemisphere, bringing drought also to South Africa and parts of South America, and probably related to the return of El Nino, a surge of warm ocean water off the western seaboard of South America (see box). Although there is no certain cause of the hemispheric pattern, it has been related by some researchers to the eruption last year of El Chichon in Mexico, and by others to a recurring cycle of drought and flood in the southern hemisphere. Quite possibly, however, the fluctu- ations may be no more than the results of random changes in atmospheric activity which, occasionally, bring large devia- tions from normal conditions. The drought persisted in eastern Australia during 1982 and the cumulative effect up to the end of January 1983 is shown in Figure 1. By the end of June 1982 serious or severe defi- ciencies in rainfall had developed over most of New South Wales, central and south-western Queensland and northern Victoria. By the end of August rainfall deficiencies of three to five months duration had become established over much of South Australia, almost all of Victoria and New South Wales, Tasmania and southern Queensland. The failure of winter rains was followed by abnormally small rainfall in spring and by the end of 1982 the severe conditions extended over most of eastern and southern Australia. The only state that has so far escaped severe drought is Western Australia. The effects of the drought have been exacerbated by a history of agricultural problems. From 1850 to 1900, as Euro- pean immigrants settled much of Australia they introduced millions of cattle and sheep to what was often very marginal country and left behind a woeful legacy of rabbits and feral animals such as donkeys, camels, goats and pigs. Together with overgrazing by overstocking, this led to a serious and continuing degradation of the land. About a third of the continent and more than half the country's farmlands are, as a result, now affected by soil erosion, and conservative esti- mates put the cost of "repair" at 1 billion dollars. In the 1940s, a pattern of meteorological events similar to those of recent months resulted in millions of tonnes of top- soil being blown away in a series of devastating dust storms, and these storms are now being repeated. In Melbourne on the afternoon of 8 February, 1983, the sky was completely blacked out for a while. The temperature in Melbourne before the storm was 43.2'C, the highest ever recorded there in february. Coming at a time of deep economic recession, the drought has affected the whole economy of Australia. The problems are typified by farmers growing rice and cotton on irrigated land in New South Wales. These are potentially lucrative crops, but they involve enormous inputs of capital and expensive investment in irrigation. Because of the drought, cotton farmers in north-western New South Wales are re- ceiving only 10 per cent of their normal allocation of water from irrigation projects, while the cost of water has risen by as much as 30 per cent. Recent projections suggest a 36 per cent decline in this year's rice crop and a 22 per cent fall in cotton yield. The situation is even more serious for beef and sugar pro- duction in Queensland and the Northern Territory, usually- two of the country's most profitable exports. Cattle are in poor condition and many have been slaughtered; meanwhile, the wheat crop from the latest harvest was only 8.7 million tonnes, compared wih 16.5 million tonnes in 1981/82. The bushfires of 16 February, 1983 (ironically, Ash Wednesday) were simply the latest in a growing list of catastrophes. <2Blocking the rain systems>2 So what caused all the problems? It would certainly be easier to mitigate the effects of such a drought if long-range forecasting could be made more effective, and although there is as yet no secure basis for the kind of forecasting required, an analysis of the causes of the latest drought offers some hope of explanations that may have predictive value in future. The meteorological factors that produce abnormal patterns of atmospheric circulation and suppress rainfall over eastern Australia are difficult to isolate. Very simply, persis- tent high pressure over eastern Australia and across to New Zealand has blocked the passage of rain-bearing low pressure systems and their associated cold fronts northward out of the Antarctic (Figure 2). Superficially, this is a "blocking high" of the kind which brought prolonged drought to England and parts of continental Europe in 1976. The pattern at sea level shown in Figure 2 also persisted in the upper atmosphere, with a high pressure ridge helping to steer cyclones along trajectories much further south than usual. There seems to be a link between these phenomena and the distribution of irregularities in atmospheric pressure and sea surface temperature across a large part of the southern hemi- sphere at low latitudes.The abnorrnally high pressures over Australia during the latest drought are part of a changing pattern called the "southern oscillation", a seesawing of pres- sure between the Australian region and the central Pacific Ocean. At one extreme of the southern oscillation the pres- sure over Australia is low and that over the Pacific is high; at the other extreme, as in 1982, the situation is reversed. Dur- ing this drought the amplitude of this effect has been bigger than at any time since reliable pressure records for the region were first taken 50 years ago. The southern oscillation reverses irregularly, but typically at intervals of from two to five years. It has its own associated pattern of atmospheric circulation, named after Sir Gilbert Walker who identified it early in this century (Figure 3), and it is also associated with changes in the pattern of surface temperature. At present, with Walker circulation flowing west to east at low level there is warm surface water in the eastern Pacific and cool surface water in the west. The temperature pattern also reverses when the pattern of atmos- pheric pressure of the southern oscillation reverses. Patterns of air pressure, surface winds and sea surface temperatures are all interlinked. The sea surface temperatures of the Pacific switched from one state to the other as the Australian drought set in. Figure 4 shows the state in November 1982. The warming in the eastern Pacific is known locally as El Nino, and the strong EL Nino of 1983 has had severe effects on the local anchoveta fisheries off Peru (New Scientist, 10 March, p 632). Unusually, however, the latest El Nino developed during May, rather than the usual season which is about five months later (see box). Indeed, there is a lack of knowledge about the causal mech- anisms of climatic variability in general. Droughts in South Africa (see box), changes in the southern oscillation, El Nino and other facets ofthe circulation in the southern hemisphere are surely interlinked, but the complexity of the energy fexchange between the ocean and the atmosphere is such that computer models cannot yet provide reliable forecasts of changes in phenomena such as the southern oscillation. Meanwhile, the present Australian drought can be put in perspective by comparison with the five major droughts that hit the region in the previous 100 years, which is as far back as we have accurate meteorological records in Australia. The present drought is already one of the worst to affect south- eastern Australia in that time, and if it persists until May it will match anything in the record. That record also shows clear long-terrn trends, as well as fluctuations in rainfall and temperature. In a broad band of inland Australia covering Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, average annual rainfall increase by 100 to 150 mm between 1946 and 1974. Does the present drought herald a reversal of that trend, or is it just an unusually large erratic fluctuation away from the norm? Either way, the best hope of predicting such events,and mitigating their impact, lies in a better under- standing of the southern oscillation and its role in the circu- lation of the southern hemisphere. [] <2The analysis of bad times>2 AS WELL AS the Australian drought, the southern hemisphere has experienced a series of extreme climatic events in the past year. Over the Pacific Ocean, the most sig- nificant change was the sudden onset of the pattern known as El Nino in May last year. This warm water now in the eastern Pacific usually occurs near Christmas time, although its arrival is unpredictable and it does not come every year. In 1982 it arrived five months early and, in addition, was one of the strongest events of this kind observed in the present century. The effects of the fluctuation persisted throughout the year and into 1983, bringing 108 mm of rainfall at Guayaquil in Ecuador in November, compared with a normal figure of 8 mm, and 614 mm (normally 214 mm) at the same site in January 1983, compared with a record of 701 mm in January 1973, the only higher figure ever recorded there. Widespread flooding, loss of life, property damage and economic disruption has occurred across one-third of Ecuador. As explained in the text these events are part of a pattern of distinctive changes in the temperature of the sea surface and pres- sure in the southern hemisphere. On past occasions, the warming of the eastern Pacific his been followed by a warming of the tropical Atlantic, and this typical sequence of events was completed in January 1983 as warm conditions ("positive sea surface temperature anomalies") began to be reported across the equatorial Atlantic. Another feature of past episodes of warming in the eastern and equatorial Pacific has been the occurrence of droughts in the southern part of Africa and in north east South America, and once again the present event shows no deviation from the pattern. Countries such as Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zim- babwe, Zambia and the Republic of South Africa have all been affected. Since October last year, South Africa has been in the grip of serious drought, with agricultural prod- uction expected to decline by at least 700 million Rand. In January 1983, the water content of reservoirs in South Africa had fallen to 50 per cent of its level at the same time last year, and the 1982 maize crop was 40 per cent lower than the record of 40 million tonnes harvested in 1981. Last No- vember, Zimbabwe ordered rice from North Korea because drought had dis- rupted the usual source of supply in Mal- awi, while Mozambique has been receiving aid in the form of rice from Japan. These arc just a few examples. The pat- tern of the connected climatic events in the southern hemisphere is nothing unusual, but its timing is and so is the strength of the phenomenon. Why should the southern oscillation have flipped, bringing EI Nino in May rather than October or November? The temptation to link the change with the disruption to equatorial atmospheric con- ditions produced by the El Chichon erup- tion in April is strong, and lends weight to the argument of researchers at the Univer- sity of East Anglia that the major effect of the volcano on climate occurred soon after the eruption (see next week's New Scientist). A related possibility is that the El Nino of 1982 was not the usual primary pulse of that event, hut an unusually strong secondary pulse. Such secondary pulses have been observed at about this time of year after very strong El Ninos in 1957, 1956 and 1972--but this 1982 "secondary" would have been stronger than the "primary" it belongs to, again raising the question "why?" But while the exact timing of this pattern of events was unusual, the return of the overall pattern in the early 1980s comes as little surprise to some researchers, who have been warning for several years that a new drought cycle was due. R. G. Vines, of CSIRO in Melbourne, is among the the- orists who have analysed rainfall patterns over South Africa, Australia and New Zealand and found evidence of cyclic pat- terns including recurring severe droughts at roughly 20-year intervals. Such claims are always contentious in climatic circles, and opponents of the work claim that the cycles are not statistically significant, and criticise Vines's claim that the patterns correlate with changes in the Sun's activity. How- ever, it is surely worth noting that in September 1980 the <1South African Journal>1 <1of Science>1 carried in article by Vines (vol 76, p 404) in which he considered the pros- pect of extended drought conditions in South Africa in the mid-1980s. "If the fluc- tuations in rainfall . . . continue as they have over approximately the past 90 years," he said, "the development of drought at that time is to be expected (<1as it is also in>1 south-eastern Australia and New Zeal- and)." (my italics). [] <2REVIEW>2 <2Delicate balancing of animal rights>2 All that dwell therein by Tom Regan, <1California UP, pp 249, #15.20>1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Judith Hampson ANIMALS suffer and die for a plethora of reasons; many are arguably trivial. One clear fact is that those reasons relate entirely to human interests. Any interests that animals might legitimately have are not merely ignored, they are not even considered. Tom Regan, professor of philosophy at North Carolina State University, is one of the leading thinkers in a new aspect of moral philosophy and this collection of short essays on animal rights and environ- mental ethics should do much to clarify our thinking. Some of the essays may seem a little dense but this is inevit- able. The subject is not super- ficial, and the superficial treat- ment that it often receives perhaps explains our shallow and muddled thinking. But this lack of depth is no indication of the enormous dimensions of the subject. The low value which we place on animal life results directly in countless millions of animals, of many species, wild and domestic, suffering and dying at human hands every year. Claims that we are over- concerned about animal welfare are belied by what we do to animals. No one can deny that millions are made to suffer and die each year in laboratories all over the world. Farm animals suffer too, during rearing, trans- port and often in slaughter. The Food and Agricultural Organisa- tion estimates that each year upwards of 100 million cattle, 100 million sheep, 200 million pigs, 26 million calves and three thousand million chickens meet their deaths in the US alone. All this is widely socially sanctioned, so we can hardly describe ourselves as "animal lovers". On the contrary, "few things are regarded so cheaply as an animal's life. . . . Few things now call forth less collective compassion of humankind than the great suffering animals endure in the name of human interests." But <1All That Dwell Therein>1 is not about compassion, or about cruelty. It is about morality, and morality cannot be judged according to the quality of our intentions, or according to whether a practice is socially santioned. Slavery was once socially sanctioned. Those of us who now recognise it as immoral do so, not because we are compas- sionate, but because we recog- nise the equal rights of humans and the duties that follow from recognising those rights. Our moral perspectives have widened, and continue to do so. Thus we should guard against any immediate and unreasoned reaction to the idea that they might ultimately be widened to encompass individuals who do not happen to be human. To those who would thought- lessly dismiss this notion as "silly", Regan cautions that "silly sounding ideas sometimes turn out to be true. The silly, extravagant, strange or ludi- crous sound of an idea some- times tells us more about ourselves, about our prejudices and resistance to change, than about the truth contained in the idea itself." Such was true of those who scoffed at the idea that Blacks had moral rights. Thus Regan sets aside preju- dice and thoughtfully explores the idea that the concept of rights might legitimately be applied to some animals. He does not try to prove points one way or the other, but he does ask meaningful and relevant ques- tions. For example, <1if>1 the notion of human rights is a meaningful one (itself in hot dispute), and if it extends to <1all>1 humans, includ- ing the severely and terminally brain-damaged, then how could we logically fail to extend the notion to at least some animals? Rights cannot be based upon such characteristics as rationality, language or self awareness without excluding some humans as possessors of them. On what then can they be based? Regan favours the quality of "intrinsic value", a concept that he treats at length. Accepting such ideas would not lead to absurd con- sequences. It would not mean that animals should be treated equally with people, they do not have the same interests as people. What it would mean is that we would consider it immoral to treat animals as if they had no intrinsic value, as if they were of instrumental value only, merely means to human ends. This is how they are cur- rently treated when we use them as research tools or slaughter them for consumption at our tables. Regan makes no secret of the fact that he is not merely indulging in theoretical philoso- phy. The intention behind the book is furthering the neces- sarily slow process of changing values. The consequence of such change, vast reduction in the exploitation of animals, is one that Regan would want to see. He never asserts, however, that even if we accepted that animals have rights, we could never justify infringing them. In the solution of dilemmas involving human rights we have to strike delicate balances. Yet before we can even consider infringing the rights of people, we have to make strong <1moral>1 justifications. If we accepted animal rights we would have to make simi- larly strong <1moral>1 justifications for infringing them. Clearly, it would be more convincing to argue a case for exploiting animals to develop a life-saving vaccine than to produce a dispensable commodity such as a new lipstick. There has been a significant shifting of emphasis here. No longer would we require the opponents of animal expen-- mentation to prove the practice wrong; rather, we would ask researchers to justify, on moral grounds, each particular use of animals they proposed. Regan makes no attempts to provide answers for the complex and difficult questions which would confront us. He does con- vince us that the questions are sufficiently important to be asked. If we are to be at all logical in our approach to contemporary ethics, we must accept this much. Many would agree. This debate should do much to add a note of sanity to controversies that have been hitherto based more on rhetoric than argument. Finally, <1All that Dwell>1 <1Therein>1 shows that the debate is important, not just for the effect it might ultimately have on our treatment of animals, but for what it might reveal about ourselves. If we fail to see any need to offer sound moral justifications for treating sentient creatures as mere "commodities", "preparations", "models", or research "tools", then we surely deny that very rationality which we cite as the single quality which elevates humans so far above the other animals. [] <2Energy shapes a nation>2 Energy and transport: historical perspectives on policy issues edited by G. Daniels and M. Rose, <1Sage, pp 287, #18.95, pbk #7-95>1 John Moss THE GREAT American transport adventure, with its twin rival thrusts from the railways and highways, was inseparable from the develop- ment of energy use and the country's future. The continued argument about transport de- velopment shows how impor- tant a part it still plays in the economy of the US. But the sociological studies in this work go widely into much broader aspects of the familiar themes of energy and transport. Take, for example, the frontier role of American agriculture which laid the foundations for much of the country's pros- perity. Much early productivity was achieved by sheer horse power coupled with some cunning inventions. One of these, the Schandoney equalising hitch, was one of those deceptively simple inventions like the horse collar or the water wheel. It revolutionised an entire techno- logical and social system. Made of iron, shaped like a slightly elongated clover leaf, it enabled 32 horses to pull a combine harvester while sharing their effort equally. A similar revolutionary force was the employment of women to provide food for farmers and hired hands, particularly during harvest. During this time they provided an average of five daily meals often baking bread two or three times a day in addition to tending the garden and cows. Such is the loving care which has gone into past history, it seems a pity that the authors are so hesitant about the future. They seem bewildered by Presi- dent Reagan's abandonment of an energy-saving policy and uncertain about what to say on key issues. For example, where does informed thinking now stand on the future of the rail- ways, or, for that matter, the development of alternative energy sources? History has been called the science of the future, so it seems a pity that this body of research comes up with virtually none of the solutions to the problems plaguing the American energy scene. [] <2Avoiding the coffee-table pitfalls>2 Hunting the past by L. B. Halstead, <1Hamish Hamilton, pp 208, #10.95>1 Tom Kemp I ALWAYS think that the most difficult kind of scientific writing is "popular science", because the line between patron- ising over-simplification on one hand and obfuscation on the other is fine indeed. A common escape route is to use superb illustrations to disguise brief but turgid text, thereby creating the "coffee- table" genre frequently (and usually rightly) despised by proper scientists. Beverley Halstead has admirably avoided these pitfalls in his most recent book, which I find delightful. In a series of six chapters he covers stratigraphy, palaeon- tology, fossil collecting the main stages in evolution, human evolution and conti- nental drift. Each of the chapters is itself subdivided into a set of double-page spreads with its own title, such as "Fossil envi- ronments" and "The origin of life". It is therefore a simple matter to find a particular topic, and also to browse profitably through the book. The illustrations are particu- larly well chosen and one can find high-quality photographs of many of the key fossils and geological structures, such as Burgess Shale fossils, fossil and living stromatolites or the Laetoli fossil footprints. These are complemented by numerous diagrams of great clarity and rel- evance to the accompanying text. About the text itself, Dr Hal- stead never seems to lose a light touch of enthusiasm, whilst remaining informative and indeed scholarly. Naturally there are signs of omission, such as arguments of which only one side is presented. And no doubt other authors would have cho- sen a different balance of topics--more invertebrates and light vertebrates perhaps. In the light of what the book is aiming to do, however, these are not criticisms, but merely reflections of the idiosyncrasies of the author which give the book its whole flavour. And what is the book aiming to do? As I see it, it is conveying the intellectual achievements and excitements of palaeon- tology at a level appropriate to that part of the population who enjoy <1Life on Earth>1 and <1Horizon>1 on television. For what it is worth, my own sample of one sixth-form biologist found <1Hunt->1 <1ing the Past>1 excellent reading.[] <2Prestel and its trappings>2 Viewdata and the information society by James Martin, <1Prentice Hall, pp 293, #25.45>1 Peter Kirstein JAMES MARTIN'S latest offering keeps up his earlier standards; it is one of the most balanced books on viewdata that has appeared. Like many others it considers the technology, the organisation and the applica- tions in various walks of life. Unlike most, however, it presents both the European and North American view. Martin describes the prin- ciples of the viewdata sets and the different components of the viewdata service. He shows clearly how the system is used to find specific pages, and the different types of information displayed. While the successive pages do indicate his point clearly, one cannot help wondering whether 40 con- secutive pages from the North American Telidon system, and 27 pages Listing topics available on Britain's Prestel service, information providers and applications are not partly a convenient way of filling space! Joking aside, these listings do illustrate the breadth of the Pre- stel service--though they do not hint at which are profitable or will prevail. In describing the structures of private, national and inter- national viewdata systems and their interconnection, Martin gives a good overview of the different national standards for character sets, and of how the European "levels of service" are trying to cater for the quality provided by the North Ameri- can standards. He does not hazard any opinions on how costs depend on the complexity of the service! The book is good in its description of the present state of technology and well-known applications, and shows the similarity between teletext and viewdata sets. It is weaker, though, in the discussion of pri- vate systems. Martin does not mention the more powerful, tailored facilities such systems are starting to offer--though the possibilities are referred to earlier in the book. The table of contents notes three parts: "Introduction" (127 pages), "More details" (81 pages) and "Impact on specific industries" (60 pages). The last part is definitely much weaker than the rest of the book. For example, under "Direct selling and mail ordering", Martin deals only with the consumer and user. The very promising area of the professional and business market is ignored. Thus, the introduction of inven- tory ordering by retailers from wholesalers or manufacturers is not introduced--though this is a rapidly growing application for viewdata. The significant number of colour photographs, although they must contribute to the price, do add to the information content. Despite the short- comings, <1Viewdata and the>1 <1Information Society>1 is to be recommended. We can expect to see even the shortcoming overcome--from past experience the author will produce a sequel which summarises the tech- nology and does better justice to the applications. I will want the sequel also. [] <2Mathematics, litigation and change>2 A history of mathematics education in England by A. G. Howson, <1Cambridge UP. pp 294, #25>1 Ian Stewart "SCHOLAR Sir, I thanke you, but I thynke I might the better doo it, if you did showe me the woorkinge of it. <1Master:>1 Yea. But you muste prove yourself to do som thynges that you were never taught, or else you shall not be able to doo any more than you were taught, and were rather to learne by rote than by reason." Not only did Robert Recorde write the first series of mathematics texts in English: he expressed (in his <1Ground of Artes>1 of 1543) a very modern viewpoint. He also had a sense of humour. <1"Master:>1 Now I ask you how muche would the holle price of the hrose [horse] come unto. <1Scholar:>1 #34952. 10s. 7d. ob. [1 ob = a halfpence.] <1Master:>1 That ys well done, but I thinke you wylle bye no horse of the pryce. <1Scholar:>1 No Syr, if I bee wyse." Geoffrey Howson's meticu- lously researched study of math- ematics education in England is written along biographical lines, and it's compulsive reading; not least because of a pervasive sense of <1de/ja\ vu.>1 I always thought that academic litigation was a peculiarity of modern America, but no: one Paul Nicholas sued the University of Paris for withholding his degree. He lost, thereby achieving the distinction of becoming the first person in history who could be <1proved>1 to have failed his degree. The year was 1426. We read of Samuel Pepys ("Up by 4-a-clock and to my Arithmetique. . .", no <1de/ja\ vu>1 there), who attached a special mathematical school to Christ's Hospital, so that "forty poore boys" might learn the math- ematics of navigation, to be- come Naval apprentices. Of Philip Doddridge, dissenter, and leader of the Northampton Academy. Of Charles Hutton: "For the accommodation of such gentlemen and ladies as don't choose to appear at the public school, I propose (at vacant hours) to attend them in their own apartments." Hutton was professor of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy from 1773. There is Augustus DeMorgan: "I know perfectly well what you are doing: YOU ARE CRAMMING FOR THE EXAMI- NATION. But I will set you a paper as shall make ALL YOUR CRAM of no use.'' Thomas Tate, of Battersea Training School (for teachers), whose students had to help look after the pigs; Charles Godfrey, who helped found mathematics education as a discipline in its own right. And Elizabeth Williams, who lived at a time when universities were so enlightened that they would actually permit women to sit examinations (but not, alas, be awarded a degree). That was 1870; yet in 1881 Frances Mary Buss [<1Miss Buss and Miss>1 <1Beale/Cupid's darts do not feel/How>1 <1different from us/are Miss Beale and>1 <1Miss Buss>1] could say "There is now no such thing as a "woman's education question'," even if that were only a half truth. Finally (aside from numerous fascinating appendices and notes) we find a postlude discussing the repeated major changes made to education in general and mathematics in particular since 1960. A final plaintive note records how, influenced by the advice of friends, this postlude does not include adverse commentary on the recent moves in the Department of Education to centralise the school curriculum ("on the grounds that I read too much into what were chance decisions") and regretting accepting that advice. The use of education as a political football has entered the language as a cliche/. Perhaps if a few of our political masters were to read this book, and learn from it, they would recognise the dangers inherent in gambling with our children's future for ideological gain. Maybe by saying that, I'm fall- ing into the same trap; but this book deserves to be read by anyone who believes that education, and mathematics, are essential to our culture. [] <2Evolution--gateway to depravity?>2 Abusing science: the case against creationism by Philip Kitcher, <1MIT, pp 213, #10.50>1 Dax Copp PHILIP KITCHER refers to the position in the US where bills were recently introduced in 17 states to require the teaching of "creation science" equally with the theory of evolution. His intention is to help a wide readership appreciate the importance of the theory of evolution and understand the lack of scientific method in creationism. In this he succeeds. The author teaches philoso- phy at the University of Vermont and his professional training is apparent in the absence of polemicism and carp- ing criticisms. Moreover his style is pleasantly direct and his inclusion of occasional personal allusions will encourage the lay reader to trust his judgement as a person and not only as a philosopher of science. A clear first chapter provides an outline of the theory of evolution while wisely leaving mention of the punctuated- equilibirium model of evolu- tionary change for a later chapter. Here the matter is dealt with and used to show how current differences about mech- anism have been exploited by creationists. Kitcher comments "It is illegitimate to deploy the arguments offered by both sides, arguments that criticise the rival accounts of the <1process>1 of evolution, to cast doubts on the <1existence>1 of evolution. For we can know that a species is related to an ancestral popula- tion by evolutionary descent, even though the details of the transition are controversial.'' The major part of the book is used to study the writings of creation scientists and discuss their various criticisms of evolutionary theory. Three authors, Duane D. Gish, Henry Morris and R. L. Wysong, provide over 100 quotations with citations to works, includ- ing the one with the clarion title <1Evolution? The Fossils Say No!>1 There are detailed discussions of the conflicting views on such matters as the correlation of fossil forms and the sequence of strata, the seem ing implications of the second law of thermo- dynamics, the role of mutation in speciation, radiometric methods for dating rocks and the age of the Earth. The chapter "Exploiting toler- ance" deals with the way in which creationists appeal for their subject to be accepted in schools as an alternative to evo- lution and also make much of there being a scientific establish- ment with a collective closed mind. Kitcher gives a good example of how a theory becomes accepted by the generality of scientists: Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift achieved acceptance after half a century of intermittent discussion only when the con- cept of plate tectonics provided an acceptable mechanism. Kitcher deals with the motivation of creationists: evo- lution contradicts the early chapters of <1Genesis.>1 Here he uses a telling quotation: "Evo- lution is the root of atheism, of communism, nazism, behav- iorism, racism, economic impe- rialism, militarism, libertinism, anarchism and all manner of anti-Christian systems of belief and practice." The campaign to have cre- ation science taught in schools makes little of the supposed moral harm of evolutionary the- ory because this would expose the fundamentalism of its pro- ponents and make the subject inadmissable as being religious teaching. However the public is influenced by the wider alle- gations and Kitcher expresses concern that "Those who have been beguiled into thinking that a high school course in evolu- tionary biology is the gateway to a life of violence and depravity are not likely to ponder the scientific credentials." [] <2Snippets of science from a goon>2 IT IS difficult to describe the feel- ings with which one approaches a series entitled Science inter- national, presented by original goon and parascience enthusi- ast Michael Bentine. Relish? Apprehen- sion? Curiosity? In the event this 10.30 am five-minute slot, launched last week by ITV, turned out to be beyond neat description. "Scientists from all over the world gather every year at an obscure location in the Texas Plains," Bentine announced on the first morning (28 March). "It's the National Scientific Bal- loon Facility." They went there, he said, to study the chemistry of the upper atmosphere. Fine. Only two things wrong First, the examples given were not chemistry at all. One was a search for proof of the existence of antimatter, the other an attempt to identify different kinds of high energy particles "to help us understand the changes in our own Galaxy". Secondly, the programme posed at least as many questions as it answered. Above all, why were these chaps messing around with helium-filled contraptions, in an age of routine rocketry? What on earth was the <1point>1 of it all? The purpose of exhibit two, the Santa Fe International Cor- poration's pipe-laying craft The Apache was certainly made clear. But some young watchers will have been puzzled to be told that "because she is a ship, not just a barge, she is, of course, self-propelled". Having a friend who lives on the Blackwater in an old Thames sailing barge, complete with sails <1and>1 engine, I rather object to the notion that barges must be pas- sively powerless. And so to tran- sponders implanted under the skin of New Mexico cattle. Today's cowboy ("A sort of John Wayne PhD") tuned into these gadgets, Ben- tine vouchsafed, to identify ani- mals and monitor their health and weight. End of edition one, leaving at least one watcher feel- ing that three items in five minutes was an excessively sketchy menu. But day two saw the record broken at once. This time Michael Spivak, described as the "original creator/producer", contrived to cram in four elements. One, on Paul MacCready's bicycle-powered aircraft, Gossamer Albatross, occupied all of 16 seconds. The remaining 4 min 44 s was allo- cated between a new, mid-air launched, Canadian lifeboat; a Dr Jane Smith, researching into high-frequency squeals baby mice emit to summon their mums; and a chin-controlled wheelchair developed at John (sic) Hopkins University. All lively stuff, like day one, if some- what lacking in bottom. Day three was similarly dis- parate. Miniature Japanese raced miniature motor cycles round a kiddies' course in Yok- ohama. Industrial robots made 9600 welds an hour in Detroit. And a remote controlled 'plane, shaped like a falcon, shooed lesser birds away from the runways of Vancouver Inter- natiomal Airport. It's definitely tempting to dis- miss this peculiar, fledging series as trivial. No one could learn much from such snippets. There's an uneasy suggestion, too, that science means mostly gadgets. But Mr Bentine does have his good points--apart from a chuckling delivery style he did not learn by listening to voice-overs on Horizon. It may be, for example, that youngsters will pick up from this pro- gramme some hint of the rich variety of occupations all of which are often hidden under the umbrella heading of science. <1Science International>1 cer- tainly ranged widely during its first week, as well as getting across a few simple principles. Jane Smith's murine cries were nicely illustrated by way of their electronic imitation. The idea of programming a robot's memory to mimic a sequence of human movements also came 'over clearly. Even that Canadian answer to avian nuisances was neatly, as well as entertainingly, explained. For many children, despite Nuffield, science as portrayed at school can still mean a dour dis- cipline of white coats and boring methodology. Anything which enlarges such a view, and high- lights scientists in their very many guises, is to be welcomed. On that count, Mr Spivak's orig- inal creation deserves attention. But were I marking his inau- gural effort for its calm sobriety, I fear my assessment would be beta minus. [] <2FORUM>2 <2Hating science is wrong>2 Colin Tudge tackles some attitudes to science A WHOLE SLAB of educated people, several generations of them, and especially in Britain, hate science. A comparable slab of slightly less educated people, but including many of those who are educated, love quasi- science: books about bits that fall off Jupiter and the pyramids that came from outer space. The hatred of real science and the love of quasi-science are related phenomena; opposite sides of the same coin. But whereas the first is deeply pernicious, the second is merely inevitable. The first phenomenon, the hatred, is incon- trovertibly evil. It is sad, first of all, that so many educated people miss all the fun that is in gocd science; how many hours they spend at dinner parties with nothing substantial to pass the time, and how many acres of <1The>1 <1Observer>1 have been devoted to the to-ings and fro-ings of Guy Burgess and the annotated laundry lists of D. H. Lawrence, because the impeccably educated editors of that mercifully ailing rag do not know, after they have worked through the football and the statutory theatre crits, what is inter- esting. It is mildly blasphemous, too, to be sent into this breathing world with trillions and trillions of brain-cells, all anxious to fire and to titillate, and to shutter them off against the more vigorous half of human thought. It is Philistine not to see that a fact and a theory, simple components of tenuous knowledge, are a way not neces- sarily of controlling nature, but of coming to terms with it, of playing homage; science is less arrogant in many ways than the arts of landscape or of poetising, mainly because it is content to describe the world as it is. Above all, it is sad that so many educated people have hardened themselves against science, because if they had not, and if instead of floundering historians who have never heard of Joseph Priestley and Erasmus Darwin, and effete scholars of English who have never heard of history, we had Renaissance men, then science might be more controllable, more easily and naturally directed to the fulfilment of human aims: an agent of democracy rather than (as it so often has been) of rule by military or com mercial despotism. I am not sure why the hatred exists. The matter is not simple. It has to do partly with the feeling, particularly powerful in the 19th century, that the proper role of education, at least at the top end, was to equip gentlemen to run the Empire; and it seemed reasonable at the time to concen- trate not upon mechanics, but upon grand ideals, and the classics were studied as if they were a form of theology, a way of revealing fundamental and lasting human truths This, perhaps, is why anti-science is strongest in Britain, because we took Empire most seriously. It had to do too with William Blake, at the very beginning of the 19th century, who equated tech- nology with industrialisation and industri- alisation with despoliation. But the appeal of the romantic movement does not explain why those who were not party to it, such as Michael Faraday, who was a vision- ary and wrote beautifully, have been completely written out of conventional histories of 19th century Britain, as if he (and David Brewster and Thomas Henry Huxley and the rest) were just peripheral figures, keeping things ticking along so that statesmen could make grand decisions and the widening of human understanding could be left to poets. Perhaps the greatest force causing the neglect and hatred of science, has been the mistaken idea that science deals in inexor- able and inhuman truths; in ideas that could, if necessary, be ground out by machines if only enough facts (gathered by other machines) were fed in. Perhaps the thing the world owes to Sir Karl Popper is the death blow he has dealt to this naive, inductivist view of how science progresses. He also stated in terms that cannot be misunderstood that science is after all a human activity, dependent on human imagination to produce its hypotheses, absolutely incapable of describing the world absolutely, but setting itself merely the obligation of bouncing its ideas against reality. People are brought up to believe that to be successful in science you have first to have your right cerebral hemisphere obliterated; and the people (like a lot of teachers) who perpetrate this nonsense should be fried slowly in rancid yak fat. The initial prejudice against science, for all or any of the above reasons, does not in itself lead to hatred. But it does lead inevita- bly to ignorance, for you cannot under- stand what you deliberately chose to have no truck with. Ignorance leads to frus- tration and (because science is so obviously powerful, both in the depth of its ideas and in its effects on the world) to fear. Preju- dice, ignorance, frustration and fear together lead to hatred. They are, in any context, its principal components. The more "educated'' you are, of course, the greater the hatred. There must be nothing worse than to find, after a couple of decades of academic graft, that there is a whole world of ideas out there of incomparable pedi- gree that has become inac- cessible. What of quasi-science, the bits that fall off Jupiter? That too is a product of the hatred, but in a slightly different form from mere rejection. It is not too awful to be confronted with people cleverer than oneself (in science journalism it happens quite a lot) but it is intolerable to share the world with people who apparently are party to bodies of knowledge and ways of thinking that make all one's own ideas seem petty. Whole tribes of proud and even magnificent people have at times sat down and died for no other reason than that their ancient culture has been exposed, even briefly, to one that seems to belong to a superior order. To be confronted with modern science, and to have no route into it, is an awesome affront to human dignity, just as the transistor radio is an affront to many an ancient faith. One response to this affront is to erect an alternative system of belief; to fabricate another, esoteric world of ideas that seems to challenge and in turn to trivialise the ideas that are proving so bothersome. So, if modern orthodox astronomy seems esoteric and omniscient, let's erect alternative theories of astronomy that are no less esoteric, and which chal- lenge the claim to omniscience. Immanuel Yelikovsky's idea that the Earth stopped rotating in Old Testament times is attrac- tive, as Martin Gardner points out in his recent <1Science, Good, Bad and Bogus,>1 because it seems to verify the Old Testa- ment. But it is also attractive, just as Ron Hubbard's dianetics or Wilhelm Reich's orgone theories are attractive, because it seems capable of grasping great truths while casting orthedox science in the role of the lame and purblind also-ran. The hatred of science among educated people might, in a hundred years, fade into history: a quaint phenomenon of the 20th century. Quasi-science will remain as a perpetual epiphenomenon. [] <2A decade (and more!) of pseudoscience>2 David Whitehouse believes scientists should take up the cudgels A DOCUMENTARY programme from NBC-TV in January 1973, had such an impact that in the following 48 hours more than a quarter of a million copies of the associated book were sold. The book was <1Chariots of the Gods>1 and the Erich Von Daniken circus of controversy was opened for business. Von Daniken claims that our ancestors were visited by alien intelligences. His hypothesis, while unlikely, is neither logically nor physically impossible. Many scientists believe that the Earth is not the only place in the Universe inhabited by intelligent life, so much so that radio tele- scopes are being used to search for them. But Von Daniken, like others of his creed, believes that evidence of spacemen already exists on Earth. His assertion is that our ancestors were too stupid to have created the most impressive of surviving ancient architectural and artistic works. Few books can have captured so power- fully and quickly the imagination and appealed to the religious yearnings of a gullible public than <1Chariots of the Gods>1 and its successors. The Swiss-born amateur archaeologist has probably sold 40 million copies worldwide. But in none of these books is there any hard evidence for the thesis it presents. Arguments and "evidence" are delivered in an oblique way, forming a house of cards toppled by anything other than superficial exami- nation. The author assails the reader with "let us suppose", "let us assume", "let us postulate" and the often used "isn't it possible". Such phrases have become the stock in trade of Von Daniken's many imitators. From the mumbo-jumbo mysteries of the "Bemmuda Triangle" to the "I-was abducted-by-aliens" blitherings, such Danikenesque ideas are a broadside (albeit badly aimed) to the principles of science and many of the world's religions. The popularity of the works of pseudo science, especially at universities, some- times rises to cult proportions. It is a matter of grave concern. The minds of our future leaders are being deluged with fantasy and unopposed put-downs of science. I do not seek to deride the intel- ligence or all undergraduates, but with one side of the argument apparently lacking, how can target readers of Von Daniken come to any firm, reasoned conclusions? To sell his appealing philosophies, Von Daniken trades on society's ignorance of science. Sadly it is a society in which professed ignorance of things scientific is sometimes paraded as a virtue. That same society once believed that science would overcome all its problems. But nuclear power brought nuclear warheads, plastics brought pollution, and the silicon chip promises unemployment for some people. When that "civilised" society realised that science creates problems as well as solving them, it gladly turned to space-gods and their companions. Those whose job it is to seek knowledge, and sometimes solutions, here on Earth--the astronomers, anthropologists, archaeologists and researchers in all branches of science--have, for the most, remained silent on pseudoscience. It is as if the academic community takes the view that theories on ancient astronauts are beneath their dignity. There are surely more important things to do, they claim--open eyed. Familiarity with works such as Von Daniken's is breeding contempt. Open- minded scientists should take time off to pour tough criticism on the rubbish being written, to counter the half-truths and misconceptions that are being seeded unchecked in all areas of society. A ground rule for science is "anything is possible". But perhaps we should apply a variant of this to pseudoscience: "everything is pos- sible if you don't know what you are talking about". [] <2The fringe finds beam weapons>2 <2Jeff Hecht examines some on-beam targetting>2 I DON'T KNOW what political fringe group was responsible for the little table set up in front of the main Boston Post Office. The manner in which the hand- lettered sign on the side attacked Senator Edward Kennedy told me more than enough about them. I began the standard evade and ignore manoeuvre I use to get by sidewalk solicitors, but I was almost stopped by the message on the sign facing the building: <1"Don't freeze nuclear weap->1 <1ons, destroy them with beam weapons.">1 It was inevitable that the seekers of simple solutions would find beam weap- ons. I suppose I've done my part to help them by writing extensively about laser weapons for <1New Scientist>1 and other maga- zines. I'm also about to send the final chap- ters of a book on the subject off to my publishers. However, in the process of writ- ing about beam weapons, I've learned much about them. There is undoubtedly real promise in the technologies of conventional lasers, X-ray lasers, particle beams, and high-power microwaves. Yet it is not clear that this promise can be trans- lated into any effective weapon systems. Certainly none of these technologies can provide an instant cure-all for the problems inherent in the current nuclear balance of terror. The progress of beam weapon tech- nology is deceptive because it is compara- tively easy-to-build powerful lasers or particle-beam generators. The hard part is getting the beam to the target, either through thousands of kilometres of space, or through the inherently uncooperative atmosphere. After having spent over $2 billion, the US Department of Defense has made some progress toward that goal. Budget-boosting horror stories notwith- standing however, no one, not even Presi- dent Ronald Reagan, is about to orbit a fleet of laser battle-stations able to zap nuclear missiles. At best, such a system is years away (<1New Scientist>1, 31 March, p 871). Nor will such a network of battle stations immediately end the threat of nuclear attack. System designers talk of battle stations able to "thin out" the ranks of attacking missiles--not of stopping them altogether. Even if later generations of beam weapons could provide better shields against nuclear attack, they would probably only buy time in the arms race. It might be comforting to see the balance of power in the hands of the defence rather than the offence--but there is no assurance it would stay there. The beam weapons that might seem invulnerable in 1983 might turn out to be no more potent than peashooters in 2033. Even Senator Malcolm Wallop, one of the staunchest advocates of laser battle- stations, has said that they will not be the "ultimate" weapon. The best we can hope for realistically is that beam weapons can provide the type of defensive security blanket that would help the US and Soviet Union to reduce their reliance on offensive nuclear weapons. Perhaps the availability of some defensive shield would help convince national leaders that international security could be based on something other than threatening to blow the other side to oblivion. In the long term, however, assuring peace and true national security requires some type of mutual and verifiable nuclear disarmament. What is needed is an effort to build trust, tolerance, and a spirit of friendly (or comradely) competition, not simply a new generation of weaponry. [] <2Paper chase>2 ON DECLARING his interest in infor- mation on nuclear physics, one of our Eurohacks was invited by a helpful EEC official to his office in one of the bureau- cratic towers in Brussels. There, beavering away in their individual boxes, were other Eurocrats surrounded, it seemed, by shelvesful of dossiers and files. As befits paperholics, large rooms were provided along all the corridors--marked "Archives". It was a clear need, like oases to the desert traveller. One sight that our man observed was an office crammed on every conceivable site with files of paper--a new idea in wall paper? His EEC friend was very helpful. He gave him a document and showed him the photocopying room. There, after taking a copy, our man noticed a press cutting stuck to a filing cabinet. It read: "SOME FOREST! The two thousand million pages printed annually by the Euro- pean institutions cost nearly three and a half thousand million Belgian Francs [about #47 million Sterling] and entail the destruc- tion of thirteen thousand trees. "A EEC report strongly advises a reduc- tion in the use of expensive photocopiers. Sixty million photocopies are made every year in the European Community institutions". Of course our Eurohack took a photo- copy of the article. After all, he thought that is the sort of information that could be published elsewhere. [] <2The new Lysenkoism>2 Dan Greenberg finds that skulduggery is alive and well in parts of Washington's science policy arena JOE STALIN'S favourite scientist, the late Trofim Denosovich Lysenko, would surely have felt a spiritual kinship with the flee- ing management of the American Envi- ronmental Protec- tion Agency (EPA). Because Lysenko, a crackpot geneticist, was the modern pioneer of bending scientific data and bashing professional opponents to suit the reigning political pre-ference--not un- like the EPA admin- istrators who dealt with dioxin contami- nation by re-writing the reports and intimidating their various authors, Lysenko was so pre- eminent in this process that common English usage has accorded him an eponymous distinction: "Lysenkoism" is now the accepted term for politically enforced manipulation of scientific truth. His arena was agriculture, over which he presided as the USSR's scientific and administrative chief from the mid-1930s until Stalin's death in 1953. After that he rapidly faded. But while Stalin lived, Lysenko derived great power by espousing the politically seductive claim that charac- teristics acquired by one generation--in seeds and men--could be passed on to succeeding generations. This was schlock science, then and now at odds with main- stream genetics, but it was science in the service of ideology for a paranoid dictator in a hurry to make over his country. Dissenters from this discredited and scientifically arid theory were banished, or worse, and the Soviet scientific literature was purged of any and all data of a contrary nature. Lysenkoism has been thoroughly repudi- ated by today's Soviet scientific leaders. But "catch-up" in science takes a long time, and the legacy of that Stalinist assault persists in the USSR's current back- wardness in genetic engineering; it is probably also reflected in the poor agricul- tural productivity of the country. While in the United States the unfolding tale of corruption and mismanagement at the EPA has tended to focus on the usual mainstays of White House interference and "sweet-heart" deals with past industrial employers, little attention has been paid to the Lysenkoist assaults of the Reagan administration on the EPA's scientific integrity. Huge cuts in EPA's research Funds (down by nearly 50 per cent since Reagan took office) can perhaps be justi- fied on the grounds that, in hard times, scientific priorities can be temporarily reshuffled with little or no long-term damage. Not so easily survivable, however, are the crude overridings of capable and honest scientists whose findings conflict with the preferences of their political bosses. An example was the recent revela- tion at congressional hearings that some of the EPA's political appointees based in Washington directed the Chicago regional office in 1981 to delete incriminating refer- ences to the Dow Chemical Company in a report on dioxin contamination of Michi- gan waters. According to Valdus V. Adamkus, EPA's Chicago regional administrator, the current acting head of the agency, John W. Hernandez Jr., "angrily denounced the report and called the work of Our regional people "trash"'. A scientist in the Chicago office testified that changes favourable to Dow "had been dictated by Dr. Hernandez''. Earlier it was re- vealed that the EPA managernent had compiled a "hit list" of scientific advisers whose politics were considered to be out of harmony with the Reagan administrat- ion's environmental philosophy. Since times are hard in the science job markets and so- called whistleblowers tend to be regarded as troublemakers rather than public- spirited heroes, these depredations against scientific integrity would probably have remained hidden in the absence of the scandals at the EPA. And though we do not know for certain, it does seem doubtful that the only sins against EPA science are those that have been revealed. As Trofim Denosovich Lysenko well knew, more than a little bashing is required to undermine the integrity of science. [] <2A load of bull>2 AN IMPOVERISHED African country (the name changes according to where you hear the story) decided that its agricul- ture needed a shot in the arm. So it applied to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations for some aid. The FAO organised a series of meetings between eminent experts, commissioned a mountain of reports, and decided it could help. A few months later, a champion Euro- pean bull arrived in the diplomatic bag. The FAO bull was greeted with extensive speeches by the president, entertained on the diplomatic circuit, and amid much pomp and ceremony was eventually sent to work in the fields. More months passed. The bull grew fat on his salary and expense account, but his performance was disappointing to say the least. Not one of his mates produced. Even- tually the minister of agriculture complained to the president. He referred the matter to the UN which in turn complained to the FAO. At great expense, the organisation sent a team of experts out to Africa to interview the bull. "We've spent a lot of money on you,'' they told the animal ''why aren't you performing?'' ''Ah," replied the bull, ''I was only sent here in an advisory capacity.'' [] <2Meaningful aid for the Third World>2 Tam Dalyell has been reading the second Brandt report NOBODY who has seen the news on television of late can have remained unmoved by the harrowing pictures of the starvation that is afflicting parts of Africa, especially Ethiopia. Sadly, far less publicity has been given to the Brandt Commission's second report, <1Common>1 <1Crisis, North South, Co-operation for>1 <1World Recovery.>1 Yet, the answer to the drought and related problems lies not with the worthy, necessary and spatchcocked aid to Ethiopia but with a positive response to Brandt. Why, compared with the first Brandt report, has this second, updated and more realistic document received such scant public notice? I believe that gener- osity becomes less between nations, as the world economy heads for a more frightening decline. Three years is a long time in world politics. I place particular importance on Brandt's views on research. High on the report's list is food research: in particular, in and for Africa, where the greatest need is to find crop varieties and farming tech- niques best suited to local conditions. Indeed conditions can be highly localised. For example, the late John Strachey, former Minister of Food, used to contend that had the notorious African Ground Nuts Scheme been placed just 30 miles to the West of the site chosen in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), the climate differed just sufficiently there that all would have been well. For most agriculture in developing coun- tries, says Brandt, research should seek new methods of prod- uction that are less vulnerable to the high cost of energy. There is of course nothing new in that. The late Professor Ragnar Nurkse used to tell his students at Cambridge in the 1950s, of whom I was one, how important it was that Third World countries should develop their agriculture without resorting to the inter- nal combustion engine. Chairman Mao and many others, including the Swed- ish economist and politician Gunnar Myrdal, preached the same gospel. In autumn 1971, I went to China as a member of a delegation from the Scottish Council for Development and Industry. (Only later did we learn that Peking had considered it fashionable to support small countries, struggling against "hegemony". The Chinese imagined that the Scots were like the Albanians--and appropriately enough we were taken to the Sino-Albanian Friendship Commune.) I remember talking to the Chinese Trade Minister, with Louis Portman, export manager of the British Motor Corporation, in the hope of persuad- ing the Chinese to buy tractors then being made in Bathgate. Mao's man was civil, but firm. ''Why should we want your tractors, Mr Dalyell? We have horses and donkeys. Horses and donkeys eat grass and roots, which we have: tractors eat petrol, which we don't have. Horses and donkeys make manure, Mr Dalyell, which we need. Trac- tors make smells." Later in the day, an even more potent reason emerged. In the China of Mao and Chou En-lai, everyone, even the old, had to have a function if not a job. The <1Little Red>1 <1Book>1 made that clear. Returning to the conversation, over the delicious Peking duck, and fresh cabbage washed down with a splendid Chinese wine, our host argued fervently: "Tractors: do not be silly: what would you expect us to do with all the donkey minders?" The mandarins of Communist China were quite clear that their empire could not cope with unemployed or dispossessed donkey drivers. Countries that have developed a taste for gas-guzzling machinery are certain to find it difficult to turn back to animal power. But with the foreign exchange shortages in many developing countries, I do not see what alternative there is in the long term. The nations of the world have become less and less disposed to help each other. Certainly the situation will not be improved by a price war in oil. Nigeria, for example, produces oil which is similar to ours. Nigerians accuse Britain of leading a cut-price war against them. That was their view when first we reduced our North Sea oil prices, and now they think it again. So what? Just this: Nigeria is our major trading partner in Africa. Our trade with Nigeria is greater than that with South Africa. Thus an enormous amount is at stake in our relationship with Nigeria. We should be talking with them and going out of our way to assure them that we do not wish to engage in a price war. We should also be discussing with Nigeria and other countries bordering the Sahad the rele- vancies of food crop research within the indigenous condi- tions of the develop ing countries them- selves. Such research would be all the more effective if it were done in conjunction with the European and British institutes for tropical research that I discussed earlier this year (3 and 20 January, pp 106 and 183). The aim of such cooperative research should be to produce the improved crop varieties, better livestcck breeding lines and farming techniques most suitable to local conditions. The returns on research expenditure and the close connection between research and increased yields are irrefutable. Govern- ments of developing countries should certainly be making greater provision for agricultural research. But they need to be reassured that in all countries results from research tend to be indirect and to take time before they come to fruition. However we may feel about overseas aid, the requirement for agricultural research is a matter of tens of millions of dollars, not billions. MPs on all sides of the political spectrum are claiming that not to provide these relatively modest sums is repre- hensible neglect. [] <2Lack of information>2 THE WORDS OF WISDOM of <1New>1 <1Scientist>1 readers are, after all, to be made public. Last autumn, we invited read- ers to contribute essays on how they believed information technology would change life in Britain. The authors of the best contributions were invited to the mega- conference in December that wound up the government's Information Technology year. As part of the deal, the winning essays were to feature in the proceedings of the conference. Since then, scurrilous rumours have had it that no proceedings were to be published. The collected thoughts of luminaries such as Kenneth Baker and Margaret Thatcher--not to say the pearls from our own readers--would never reach a wider audience. But the conference's organisers now tell us that anyone can obtain the papers by writing to Dewe Rogerson, 4 Broad Street Place, Blomfield St, London EC2M 7HE. [] <2LETTETS>2 <2Quantum jump>2 "Without quantum theory there would be no genetic engineering---John Gribbin surely oversteps the mark with this one (Review, 24 March p 830). I know it is difficult io discuss a scientific topic nowadays without dragging in recombinant DNA somehow, but I cannot conceive of even the most tenuous connection between genetic engineering and the quantum theory. Perhaps John Gribbin knows something that we do not. I think we should be told. <1Douglas B. Kell>1 <1University College of Wales>1 <2ECT understood?>2 Your report "Sacked nurse takes ECT case to Europe" (This week, 17 March, p 708) says no one knows how ECT exerts its effects. There is, however, abundant evidence that many patients vulnerable to clinical depression have a constitutional deficit of serotonin. This substance, which acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain to regulate mood, also influences the activity of norepinephrine, the other neurotransmitter known to be involved in manic-depressive illness. ECT increases the central nervous system's turnover of norepinephrine, and does it more quickly with fewer side-effects than the tricyclic drugs. The relationship between serotonin and depression was first realised 25 years ago when reserpine, a drug used to treat hypertension, was observed to deplete the brain of serotonin and cause severe depression in a considerable number of patients. It follows that careful monitoring of patients for their susceptibility to depression before prescribing mood-altering drugs would be a wise precaution. It would save some patients from being precipitated into depression and the concomitant risks of treatment with ECT. <1G. H. Turner, Liverpool>1 <2Action in schools>2 Your leader article "action now for science literacy" (3 March p 566) quotes the Royal Society's recommendation that alll fourth and fifth year pupils should have nine weekly periods of science, an equivalent to 22.5 per cent of total teaching time. Whether this is desirable or not is a matter of opinion--I doubt whether some of my colleagues in other departments would readily agree. But surely, the sheer mechanics of it would be impossible in most schools. Certainly, more science teachers would be needed, yet even if that were possible where on earth would they teach their pupils? Schools have little free laboratory time as it is, and the cost of new laboratories in the present economic climate would seem prohibitive. Many science teachers already have classes in excess of 25 pupils. I think that many of us would prefer to see falling rolls as a chance to reduce class size, thus giving pupils a better chance of carrying out practical work in pairs rather than in groups of three or even four. <1David Sampson>1 <1(Chemistry teacher)>1 <1Appelby>1 <1Cumbria>1 <2Forces sweetheart>2 Ariadne's paragraph on dissolving aniseed balls used as timing devices in a World War II limpet mine (10 March p 700), recalls to mind another technical feature of this mine which may be of interest. When in position the confection obviously had to be protected from the effects of the sea water until the frogman had positioned the mine and was ready to "an" it. The aniseed ball was located at the base of a short tube projecting from the mine casing and a waterproof cap was required which could he removed when the limpet mine was afixed to the enemy ship. As an interim measure, the contraceptive sheath was pressed into service. The purchase, in large numbers, of these items by the development team gained for them quite an athletic reputation among the chemist shop assistants in the locality. When a purpose-designed cap was brought in to replace the humble condom, it was reported that the mine-laying frogmen were less than happy, having regarded the prior item as something of a "perk" of the job. <1G. D. Bateman>1 <1Norfolk>1 <2Ban lead now>2 I wish to correct the report in <1New>1 <1Scientist>1 (This Week, 24 March p 785) on lead in petrol. The motion which I am anxious to put before the full plenary session of the European Parliament is in fact a motion to ban lead from petrol completely, not merely to reduce it as stated in the article. <1K. D. Collins MEP>1 <1Chairman>1 <1Committee on the environment,>1 <1public health and consumer>1 <1protection>1 Overdose Tam Dallyell is misleading readers by illustrating generic substitution of drugs with the substitution of one car by a different one on the basis that they do the same job (Forum, 17 March, p 749). Generic substitution enables the same drug to be dispensed by the chemist, allbeit under a different band name. Vallium (Roche), the most prescribed brand of diazepam, is currently priced at # 10.48 for 100 10-mg tablets. Atensin, also diazepam but produced by Berk, is priced at #5.50 for the same amount. Both Roche and Berk are companies of repute, and I do not think that Berk would like to be described by Dalyell as "fly by night" simply because it produces a cheaper product. Generic substitution would indeed affect the profits of drug companies, but why should the National Healih Service unnecessarily pour vast sums of money into the pockets of multinationals? Prescribing by general practitioners is increasing at the rate of 5 per cent per year, and is one of the fastesi-growing sectors of the budget of the Department of Health and Social Security. Surely it is time to make an effort to reduce the drug bill. Perhaps doctors should simply be encouraged to prescribe less; after all, 3 per cent of admissions to acute wards are due to adverse drug reactions. <1N Naidoo>1 <1Oxford>1 <2Don McPherson>2 In our issue of 24 march (This week. p 787) we wrongly identified Don McPherson from the Department of Energy in the US as being from the British department of the same name. A misplaced comma also left the impression that McPherson felt Britain's participation in the US's loss of fluid test (LOFT) was "a key to Britain's budding romance with PWRs". We apologise for both errors. [] <2ARIADNE>2 THE paper was headed by a <1trompe l'oeil>1 logo (I think it is called), saying Trebor on what looked like a rippled label. It was from the research and development section of the famous mint manufacturers. It was also a report of failure. For the very fountain head of the triboluminescent effect mentioned in these columns to the astonishment of the entire civilised world, had been unable to produce a single flash from a load of peppermints hot from the press or the ovens or what- ever machinery is used. The team, admittedly hastily assem- bled, had spent weary hours in an unused store room cracking away like lunatics with not one spark of light to show for it. The project scientist who sent me the disappointed and sceptical account of all this said that there were shrieks from the store room, but not of success. They were from one hammered finger, two disqualified bites and a crushed toe. These injuries disturb me, for they indicate that some unorthodox methods were being tried. I am prepared to send instructions on pepper- mint cracking, with diagrams, if asked. There must be something wrong with the Trebor tech- nique because countless--or about a dozen--readers have sent in stories of their own triumphs with peppermints, sugar lumps, sticky tape and photographic film. Two have discovered another exam- ple of the effect. If you slowly unseal one of those self-seal envelopes in the dark, you will be rewarded with a tiny firework display. Perhaps Trebor can swap informa- tion and results with Basildon Bond. [] FOR months now I have been trying to contain excitement at the thought of the compact disc. I am one of those people whose money burns a hole in the pocket whenever anything promising arrives on the market. I could hardly wait, for example, to get my hands on the original ballpoint pen. It cost pounds in 1946, but when I at last got it, I could write under- water. Alternately alarmed and exalted by Barry Fox's reports of the progress of CD (we who are in the know call it that) I have therefore been following the advertisements of equip- ment to play CD records. I ran across one the other day that lifted me up on wings of heady prose, only to plunge me into the deep end of bathos. Beware of fine writing, chaps. You can come a terrible purler. Someone called Maurice Frydman is the author. "How." asks Frydman, "can I express the inexpressible? How can I communicate that auditory shock, that dumbstruck astonishment I experienced as one of the first priviledged listeners . . ." And so forth Palms sweating, I read on. "Plunged into semi-darkness, I perceived, lit by a slim ray of light from an invisible sun . . . the compact disc player . . . sublime in its performance, it stood before us, seekers after perfection gathered together in a common quest for the absolute". By this time I was on my knees trying to make up my mind whether to bow my head in the direction of Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Eindhoven or the US. I read on, reverently. "Rocked and buffetted by the sounds, the silences and whispers of Wagner, Mozart, Simon and Garfunkel . . .". [] A FRIEND of mine, an artist, used surlily to describe those books that tell you that, unskilled as you are, you too can write bestsellers, cook like Escoffier and play the piano like Rubenstein if you carry out the simple instructions, as "any idiot can draw books". Hurrying through a railway station, I caught sight of one of them, right up my friend's alley. The full title was not visible but what I read was, "Paint along with--" Whom, I have been asking myself since. For alliteration it ought to be Pablo or Picauo. Do it yourself Guernika? I had thought that all anyone could do along was sing. If you can paint along all sorts of possibilities open up. Compose along, cut diamonds along, organise a strike along, crack atoms or safes along. The market is wide open, except possibly, publish along. [] THERE is no competition attached to the following remarks, mainly because it would be easy enough to cheat, but I would be glad to have any suggestions about the question that could have received the answer quoted. <1The Lancet>1 ran a Christmas quiz in its 25 Decem- ber issue. The answer to ques- tion 8 was "A duck (influenza) (ii, 812)." The obvious idea of duck's disease will be a disap- pointment. [] HEARTS give a lot of trouble. Either by gradually losing their pumping capacity or by sudden seizure, they cause much disease and some heroic surgical intervention. So, as an alternative to the implantation of alien or artificial hearts, Daedalus is devising a new auxiliary blood-pump. He points out that our veins have one-way valves in them. Accordingly, the rhythmic compression of our leg-veins when we walk, or chest-veins when we breathe, turn these veins into little peristaltic pumps, aiding the circulation of the blood around the body. Daedalus's new "peristaltic tights" do this job much more effectively. They are woven from rather coarse flexible tubing, and are driven from a compressed-air supply that is strapped on at the waist. On command, a wave of tube- inflation rises up the tights from ankle to thigh, squeezing the vein-blood in front of it. A simple programmer repeats this action at regular intervals. The arteries, much more rigid than veins and buried deeper in the body, are unaffected. Blood flows out from the heart to the tissues as before, but its return is now forced. Peristaltic tights will appeal to sufferers from poor circulation and varicose veins, and those whose hearts need a bit of extra help. They should also give a pleasant massage effect. For those with really bad hearts, Daedalus recommends a complete peristaltic body stocking, which forcibly returns venous blood to the head from all over the body. Even if the stocking were to be woven from the finest feasible tubing, it would be a cumbersome garment with its compressed-air bottles and controller. However, with any luck, the system could maintain circulation even in the case of total heart failure, purely by venous pump- ing. Peristaltic garments could almost double blood flow in healthy subjects. Strength and physical endurance would rocket as blood surged around their systems with unprecedented vigour. All existing athletics records could be broken. Accusations of cheating by the use of borrowed external power could easily be met. The athletes would pump up their compressed-air bottles themselves, beforehand. []