         <2Cruise to destruction>2

FOR ONCE the Easter demonstrations
organised by the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament have some-
thing concrete and immediate to oppose.
The protests will focus on NATO's plans to
site 160 cruise missiles in Britain. The
weapons will start to arrive in December;
they are supposed to match the arms build
up by the Soviet Union.  If tens of
thousands of people are prepared to take to
the streets and to camp outside obscure
air-force bases for months on end, what
will they do when cruise becomes a
reality?
The key political point about cruise is its
high visibility. Until now nuclear weapons,
in the West at least, have remained hidden
from the public gaze, in closely guarded
silos or inside aircraft and submarines. The
cruise missile is very different. In a real war
the missiles would leave their bases for
launch sites in wooded areas of the coun-
tryside (see p 878). The bases are at Green-
ham Common in Berkshire, and Moles-
worth in Cambridgeshire. Each "flight" of
16 weapons requires a convoy of 22 vehi-
cles supported by a small army of tech-
nicians and soldiers. During peacetime, the
convoys will emerge periodically from their
hiding places for practice runs in which
only the warheads of the missiles will be
dummies.  In every other respect, the
manoeuvres will mimic what would
happen during World War III, adding a
novel experience for anyone out for a drive
on Sunday afternoon during a practice run.
The US Air Force will control the
missiles in Britain. The USAF will not say
how often its charges will go out for a spin
along the byways of central England. If
each "flight" practices in this fashion once
every six months, that means that 20 times
a year Britain's military forces will face a
massive security problem.
The visibility of the new missiles will
force us to think more acutely about
nuclear weapons and why, or whether, the
world needs them. Even now Michael
Heseltine, Britain's Secretary of State for
Defence, is at pains to point out that the
installation of cruise need not go ahead
(see p 885). In Mr Heseltine's view, the
weapons are a bargaining chip in the cat-
and-mouse game of negotiations on arms
reduction between the US and USSR. If the
Soviet Union agrees to remove its new and
threatening SS-20 missiles, which could
strike at virtually all of Europe from east of
the Urals, then NATO would abandon
cruise.
Of course, it makes sense to negotiate
from strength. It has been the strategy of
every army and power-seeker since
Genghis Khan. But what is not credible
about the cruise strategy is that, simply, the
weapon is far too dangerous to do the job
for which, according to the military, it is
intended. NATO's commanders say that
the missiles are there to deter, to prove to
the Soviet Union that the West can knock
out ports, factories and other "strategic"
targets with pinpoint accuracy. According
to this thinking, cruise missiles are not
primarily for killing people. Why, then,
does each missile carry a bomb ten times as
powerful as that which devastated
Hiroshima? If deterrence really is the name
of the game, then, so it would seem, the
missiles that NATO already deploys in
submarines add up to a threat to soviet
cities and centres of industry that is more
than sufficient.
  The US, which is paying about $4
million for each missile, rightly points out,
and sometimes ruefully, that the nations of
Western Europe asked for the weapon to be
deployed in the first place. This refers to the
decision of the NATO countries in Decem-
ber 1979, when Europe more or less begged
the US to act as its protector.
  For the US there is still time, through the
negotiations in Geneva, to display a flexible
attitude and to bring about at least a reduc-
tion in the number of SS-20s, and hence to
reduce the need for cruise. As for the rest of
NATO, the cause of world peace, not to say
sanity, would be served if these countries
were to look back to the decision of 1979
and to admit, even to themselves, that they
were wrong.                           []


       <2Military science>2

THERE should be excitement leading
  eventually to excitation in the
scientific community following President
Reagan's statement last week of his faith in
science and scientists.  ln particular, it
seems, Mr Reagan wants some neat new
laser weapons to zap The Reds.  Some
scientific "wets" will not want to soil their
hands with "blocd money"; but in these
days of financial stringency, every professor
owes it to his department to get in there and
pitch for Pentagon pennies.
  Just think, you could equip a whole new
physics laboratory. Didn't an earlier boom
in laser weaponry produce some very nice
apparatus? Is it really relevant that most of
that military money produced not a single
weapon? Does it really matter that those
were early days, when the joke on campus
was that the only way to kill anyone with a
laser was to hit them over the head with it?
  Alright, so some high-powered commit-
tees have dismissed the idea of death rays,

but that was before Star Wars showed that
it can be done. If President Reagan wants
some shiny new lasers, let him have them.
Don't worry about some Strangelove of a
character turning your innocent little toy
into a satellite vaporiser, theory has it that
military research is second rate because you
cannot do good research behind screens of
secrecy and away from the cut and thrust of
peer review.
  So come on physicists: be coherent; get
into a truly excited state. Take the money
and run. You can relax into a less energetic
state after the cash has arrived. No military
man is going to risk trouble on campus by
complaining--and he probably won't
understand what you are up to anyway. If
you really want to be devious, you could
spend the money on a particle accelerator.
Think of it, W-particles as a death ray. Has
a sort of ring to it, doesn't it, and not much
  less sensible than President Reagan's
suggestions.                            []
<2THIS WEEK>2
  <2Polonium cloud engulfs Windscale>2
A RADIOACTlVE cloud that drifted
   across Britain after a fire at the Wind-
scale nuclear factory in Cumbria in 1957
may have killed hundreds of people. That is
the claim made today by John Urquhart of
Newcastle University in an article in <1New>1
<1Scientist>1 (p 873). His claim is disputed by
the National Radiological Protection
Board,  Britain's independent nuclear
watchdog, which says that Urquhart has
used outdated figures.
  The new ingredient in the assessment of
how many deaths the Windscale cloud
caused is the radioactive isotope, polonium
210.  This virulent emitter of alpha
radiation was a vital part of the British
hydrogen bomb. It was produced in the
Windscale pile (whose main purpose was to
transform uranium into plutonium for the
bomb) by irradiating bismuth.  The
published version of the official report of
the fire, written by Lord Penney, the father
of the British bomb, made no mention of
polonium. The report had been heavily
censored "in the national interest". Until
<1New Scientist>1 asked the NRPB to re-
examine its assessment of the fire last week,
to take account of the polonium, no official
body had tried to calculate the effect of its
release.
  Earlier this year the NRPB published a
"complete description of the radiological
impact of the fire" in which it considered
41 isotopes released in the fire. But polo-
nium was not mentioned. This week NRPB
staff said privately that they were angry that
nobody had told them of their gaff. In fact,
their own chairman, John Dunster,
presented a paper to a United Nations
session on atomic power in 1958 in which
he revealed that some polonium had been
released. He did not quantify it.
  Polonium was discovered by Marie
Curie in natural uranium. The US and
Britain used it as an "initiator" to start the
chain reaction at the heart of their first
atomic bombs, according to an official
history by Margaret Gowing. Until that
history was published, in 1974, nobody had
publicly admitted that polonium was either
produced at Windscale or used in the
bomb. The question now raised is whether,
to protect the weapons programme, the
scale of the accident at Windscale was
covered up.
   After the fire, the pressure to maintain
production of polonium at the second
(unscathed) Windscale pile would have
been intense. The first British H-bomb test
had been carried out in May that year and
seven further tests at Christmas Island in
the Pacific followed in the next year.
  Polonium was then an irreplaceable part of
the bomb. But it has a half-life of just 140
days so there can be little delay
manufacture and its incorporation into a
bomb.
  Polonium was found on air filters set up
to monitor the Windscale cloud in Harwell,
Oxfordshire and in the Netherlands.
Urquhart has extrapolated from this the
likely radioactive release of polonium. He
puts it at 370 curies (the NRPB now guesses
at 150 curies). Urquhart then plugs this
figure into an assessment of the health
effects of polonium that was made by the
NRPB itself in a report on the radiological
impact of coal-fired power stations. This
produces a figure of perhaps 1000 deaths.
The NRPB this week dismissed that figure.
The Board says that a new assessment of
the polonium impact puts the risk at only
one hundredth of its previous estimate.
  The NRPB     says this is because of new
findings that the livers of cows grazing near
coal-fired stations do not appear to accu-
mulate polonium.
  Urquhart says the board's new figures
cannot be assessed until the research on
which it is based is published in full.    []


                     <2New VD microbes discovered>2
TWO COMPLETELY
new organisms have
been discovered that are
thought to be impor-
tant contributors to the
ever-increasing     problem
of     sexually-transmitted
disease--in particular
so-called      "non-specific
genital infections".  They
may attack 30000 men
each year in Britain.
  The classic sexually-
transmitted diseases, such
as gonorrhoea and syphilis
have remained stable since
the mid 1970s. But non-
specific genital infections (affecting both
men and women) have increased, rapidly
reaching an alarming 132 391 cases in
1981.  There were 80 000 cases of non-
gonococcal urethritis (NGU) reported in
Britain in 1979. This category of sexually-
transmited disease affects only men, and it ;
is here that the two new microbes may be
implicated.
  NGU is characterised by frequent and
painful urination, and discharges contain-
ing pus. Treatment is straightforward, but
one person in 10 will super chronic and
persistent infection. Dcctors do not know
why.
   Half the cases of NGU are caused by
               the bacterium <1Chlamydia>1
               <1trachomatis>1 and another 20
               per cent by infection with
               a mycoplasma called
               <1Ureaptasma urealyticum.>1
               What causes the remaining
               30 per cent of cases of NGU
               has until now been a
               mystery.
                      Mycoplasmas are the
               smallest free-living micro-
               organisms known to man
               are are usually difficult to
               culture in the laboratory.
               But now Dr David Taylor-
               Robinson of the Medical
               Research Council's CIinical
Research Centre in Harrow believes he has
isolated a hitherto unknown species of
mycoplasma,    which   he  has   called
<1Mycoplasma genitalium>1 (see figure).
  Out of 16    men with NGU, Taylor-
Robinson found that 25 per cent were
infected with <1M. genitalium.>1

   In addition to the mycoplasma, Taylor-
Robinson thinks he may have found a new
anaerobic bacterium (one that cannot live
in the presence of oxygen) which also seems
to be associated with NGU. Of 64 men with
NGU, half were infected with the bacte-
rium; compared with one out of seven men
with gonococcal urethritis and four out of
30 controls.                            []


                           <2Blacklisted vitamins on sale in Britain>2

         A "DIETARY supple-
     ment" known as B15,
that is regarded as potentially
dangerous by US health
authorities, is still on sale in
West Germany and Britain,
says the EEC's environment
commissioner, Hans Narjes.
Another potentially-lethal
"vitamin", B17 or laetrile, is
no longer on sale in Europe,
say the EEC.  But New
<1Scientist>1 purchased tablets
containing B15 and B17 at a
health food shop in central
London last week.
   Both B17 and BI5 were
first extracted from apricot
kernels by E. T. Krebs in the
US. They are manufactured
by the Contassium Company
of   Putney,    south-west
London, and several other
companies in Britain.  The
products are said to prevent cancer, but
studies carried out by the Us National
Cancer lnstitute repudiate these claims.
Medical experts also deny that they are
really vitamins, despite their "B" designa-
tions.
   B15 is sometimes called pangamic acid
or calcium pangamate.  It is sold as an
enhancer of the oxygen-carrying capacity
of the blood, and is widely used by athletes
in the USSR, says Dr Robert Woodward of
Contassium.
   Muhammad Ali attributed some of his
victories in the boxing ring to a prior course
of treatment with B15. It is also reputed to
prevent diabetes, asthma, heart disease and
"stress". But none of these claims has been
substantiated and some preparations may
actually be dangerous. Research by the
American Food and Drug Administration
suggests that one chemical that is often
found in B15 tablets, dimethyl glycine,
may cause genetic damage to cells.
   B17 is also known as amygdalin. It
releases cyanide when in the presence of
hydrolysing enzymes that are present in
some vegetables, such as lettuce and mush-
rooms, certain fresh fruits, green peppers,
celery and sweet almonds. Eating any of
these uncooked foods with B17 can cause
cyanide poisoning. Some 40 poisonings
and 17 deaths from cyanide have occurred
in laetrile users in the US. An 11-month old
baby died after accidentally swallowing a
few laetrile tablets.
   Such pills are on sale in London for #4
for a bottle of 50. The Irish, thought by the
EEC to be the last in Europe to take B17 off
the market, say that the product has now
been withdrawn.
   Both B15 and B17 are sold as a vitamin
supplement to the diet. This puts them half
way between a drug and a health food.
British authorities do not like either B15 or
              B17 but they say they arc
              unsure how to act.  Pros-
              ecuting manufacturers of
              pseudo-vitamins under the
              Trades Descriptions Act is
              difficult, a spokesman for the
              Department of Trade told
              <1New Scientist>1.  "You only
              need one person to say that
              he or she benefited from the
              product to lose the case," she
              said.
                 The British manufacturer,
              Contassium, argues that is
              has often taken doctors years
              to recognise the value of
              substances, such as vitamin C
              and B12, that are now recog-
              nised as genuine vitamins.
              "We just make them, if
              people want to buy them; it is
              for the Department of Health
              to sort out whether they are
              valuable or not," Walter
O'Connell of Contassium says.
   Dr Robert Woodward of Contassium
said that if the authorities wanted to with-
draw B17      they would "have to ban
marzipan; you can get the equivalent of a
25 mg tablet of B17 by eating 20 almonds,"
he said.
  The Department of Health says it is
"aware of the US criticism of the products"
and is keeping them "under review". The
department says that it is seeking advice
from the Committee on safety of Medi-
cines on B17.
   A European consumers' pressure group
is angry at the chaotic state of control on
such potentially-lethal products.  Yves
Domzalski of the European Bureau of
Consumer Organisations, to which the
British Consumers' Association belo-
says that no system exists for governments
to exchange information on medicines or a
range of other products.                []


                              <2UN calls for more aid for Third World space satellites>2


              OFFICIALS at the United Nations are
      appealing to the rich industrialised
world to help out developing countries in
the area of space science and technology.
The aid would come mainly through train-
ing schemes that channel to Third World
engineers knowledge about, for instance,
how to use imagery from remote-sensing
satellites that scan the land and oceans.
  The UN's outer-space division wants to
spend $500000 next year on schemes for
training and also on setting up an advisory
service for Third WorId space engineers.
But, before the programme can go ahead,
the industrialised countries will have to
contribute the lion's share of the money.
  "Much depends on the attitude of indi-
vidual governments," says Adigun
Abiodun, an official in the outer space
division.  So far, Australia the US and
Austria have indicated they will help by
running one-year scholarships for space
engineers.
  But training programmes of this nature
do not always have the intended effect,
according to Peter Adeniyi of the Univer-
sity of Lagos. Speaking at a conference on
space science and technology in Rome last
week, Adeniyi said that such schemes have
little point if the engineers are unable to use
their knowledge when they return home.
  For example, and engineer trained in
remote-sensing techniques in the West
would be unable to use his knowledge if his
own country lacks the computer equip-
ment to make sense of the data. Alterna-
tively, the information obtained from a
remote-sensing satellite could be inap-
propriate for a developing country if the
sensors on board the vehicle are tailored
only to the different requirements of indus-
trialised nations.
  Adeniyi said that in a survey of 93
scientists and engineers from Nigeria who
attended overseas courses on remote-
sensing, only 22 were in a position to apply
the knowledge that they had obtained. And
of these 22, only five had suitable equip-
ment to work with.
  Africa's needs in the area of remote-
sensing were highlighted at the conference
by Bernard Sikilo, director general of
Kenya's remote-sensing centre in Nairobi.
At present Africa contains only one station
that can receive signals directly from the
US's landsat remote-sensing craft. This is
at Johannesburg in south Africa. So the
countries of black Africa have to rely on
 data sent in computer tapes from the US or
from Europe.
Sikilo said that the countries of Africa
would benefit greatly from stations that
could receive the data directly.  For
instance, they would be able to monitor
day-to-day changes in the growth of crops
or forests. According to Sikilo, a remote-
sensing station would cost $15 million to
$20 million, with a further $1 million
annually added for running costs. Ideally,
Sikilo would like to see three such
stations--in Nairobi and in two other sites
in Upper Volta and Zaire. He says nego-
tiations are taking place with the EEC and
the World Bank to provide the finance.
  According to representatives at the
conference from China, developing coun-
tries can often do a lot themselves to
advance in space technology. They should
start regional cooperative programmes to
share the costs of, for instance, satellite
communications.     Peter Marsh, Rome []


         <2PWR's might bring export boost>2

                     THE potential export
                   value to Britain of an
                   indigenous    pressurised-
                   water    reactor       (PWR)
                   programme was trumpeted
                   by the National Nuclear
                   Corporation this week as
                   the Sizewell inquiry ad-
                   journed for its Easter
                   break.
                     The hearing, which is
                   now 12 weeks old, was told
that the fitting out of Britain's first civil
PWR could generate 6000 manufacturing
jobs. Dr Norman Franklin, NNC's manag-
ing director, conceded that the immediate
export prospects were slim, however.
  He argued that the existing advanced
gas-cooled reactor (AGR) programme was
unlikely to offer much scope for overseas
sales because of its high construction costs.
The British nuclear industry's best hope of
capturing any slice of the export action
would depend on the UK getting experience
in building several PWR's.
  However, this special pleading by the
NNC, which needs an expanded nuclear
programme for its continued existence,
squares uneasily with latest Government
observations.  During his fortnight-long
cross examination, Robert Priddle, the
Department of Energy's witness at the
inquiry, explained that Whitehall no longer
placed much emphasis on the need to help
Britain's beleaguered nuclear industry as a
justification for Sizewell B.
  He told the inquiry that the government
rated the questions of supply efficiency and
cost to consumers as more important than
"the particular benefit to the (nuclear)
construction industry."
  Last Friday the civil servant in charge of
government policy on radioactive waste
management reiterated Whitehall's posi-
tion that a solution to the disposal issue
would have to wait for a future generation.
But George Wedd, an under-secretary at
the Department of the Environment, went
on to suggest that the present generation
was morally bound to make plans.       []
  <2Argentine torpedo will threaten Falklands>2

        ARGENTINA is paying a Swiss
    company more than $100 miIlion to
develop and build a new type of remotely-
controlled torpedo.  The torpedo can sit
unattended on the sea bed for two years
until an underwater sound-signal tells it to
rise to the surface. lt can then travel up to

100 km before homing in on its target--a
British warship or merchant vessel.
  According to the magazine <1International>1
<1Defense Review>1, The Argentine govern-
ment first approached the Swiss company
Tek-Sea last summer. The Lugano-based
firm has already started testing prototypes
of the weapon, which it calls Telemine.
Further trials will take place off the coast of
Venezuela. Deliveries, at a rate of ten Tele-
mines a month, will start next spring. Each
weapon costs $300000 without its
warhead, and the production rate will
quickly build up to between 25 and 30 a
month.
  The Telemine is based on the design of a
manned torpedo that the Italian Navy used
during the Second World War. The weapon
is 5 m long, 55 cm in diameter and weighs
650 kg, including 170 kg for the high-
explosive warhead.   The Telemine can
remain dormant at a depth of 150 m for up
to two years.

   When it receives an acoustic signal trans-
mitted from a range of up to 40 km, the
weapon jettisons its ballast and rises to just
below the sea surface. An antenna on top of
the torpedo's sensor pod receives radio
signals from an Argentinian ship,
submarine or aircraft. Each operator can
                     handle up to five
                     Telemines simulta-
                     neously,     steering
                     them towards their
                     targets by remote
                     control.
                       The torpedo's 4.5
                     kW electric motor,
                     supplied with power
                     from lithium or
                     silver/zinc batteries,
                     gives a top speed of
                     35 km/hr and a
                     maximum range of
                     100 km. When the
                     Telemine is 500 m
                     from a target it
                     surfaces completely,
so the sensor pod on top is clear of the
water.  The pod contains a television
camera that operates even in very bad light.
Telemine transmits the TV picture over a
radio link to the controller, who sends back
final steering instructions. During the final
stages of an attack the weapon's sensors
lock on to the target ship's radar or sonar
signals and the Telemine homes in on
them.
  If the operator is in an aircraft that is
flying at a height of 10000 m he can
control a Telemine from a range of 500 km.
This would allow the Argentinians to stay
well clear of the exclusion zone around the
Falklands Islands while at the same time
being able to attack ships anywhere inside
it.  Telemine is only as large as a
conventional torpedo--of which two
British versions were sufficient to sink the
Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano with
the loss of more than 300 lives during the
Falklands war last summer. Mark Hewish []


<2Famine brings measles outbreak>2
         MEASLES is the latest threat to the tens of
     thousands of people displaced by the
drought and famine in northern Ethiopia. Relief
workers at Ebenat camp (<1New Scientist>1, 17
March, p 727) last wek reported that many
children have the disease, and that supplies of
vaccine were short. Measles often kills in Africa,
particularly when the victims are young and
undernourished.
  But despite the difficulties of reaching the
camps, relief workers and supplies are getting
through, A doctor and a nurse from the British
charity Oxfam are already at Ebenat camp, and
Danish health workers are setting up health
services for the 5000 people there.
  To the east, in Wollo, the Save the Children
Fund is intensively feeding 700 out of the 3000
children it has registered at the Korem camp.
The team is weighing young children every
month, and about 15 per cent of them have to go
to intensive feeding, with high-energy milk to
combat the symptoms of kwashiokor. Save the
Children's team has been in the country since
last year, and gave an early warning of the
famine. But foreign governments have been slow
to respond with aid.
  The British government has given f100 000,
of which one third will go on food. The inacces-
sibility of the drought region means that one
third of the money goes on transport.        []


        <2Doel reactors on the dole>2

             BELGIUM is pressing ahead with plans to
    generate half its electricity from nuclear
           power by 1985, despite a series of mishaps at the
country's biggest concentration of nuclear power
at Doel, near Antwerp. Three Westinghouse-
designed PWRs have been built there since 1974
and a fourth will be running by 1985.
  The trouble at Doel began last November
when workmen refuelling Doel 2 dropped "some
pieces of metal" into the reactor's core. No one
noticed for a month, until the contamination
showed up at the filters on the primary water
circuit. The pIant's operators decided to shut
down the reactor and clean the rods. After a
three-month stoppage, engineers said last week
that they expected to have the plant running
again in a fortnight.
  The shutdown has coincided with the sched-
uled refuelling of Doel 1. And last week its big
sister, the Doel 3, was also having problems. One
of the four diesel generators that would power its
computer controls in the event of a blackout was
also out of service and the reactor was threatened
with shut-down.                         []
            <2Easter hatching>2
SCIENTISTS at San Diego Zoo have an Easter
   egg with a difference. It is blueish in colour,
six times larger than a chicken's egg, and about
to make ornithological history. The egg belongs
to one of five known Californian condors that
are still mating in the wild. The chick inside is the
first of its species to be incubated in captivity.
   The incubation is part of a last-ditch attempt
to establish a mating programme to save the
huge Califomian bird, which has dwindled to
about 20 birds (<1New->1
<1Scientist,>1 20 January,
       p 142). The chick is due
      on good Friday, but it
could take up to three
days to free itself from
the egg.
   A lot rides on the
success of the incu-
bation. The "save the
condor" effort has ben
heavily      politicised.
Some environmental
groups maintaining that
the birds should be left
to their own devices
rather than being raised
in capitivity.         []


     <2Chevenement's research revolution bows out>2


FRANCE'S ebullient research and indus-
try minister, Jean-Pierre Chevenement,
was the major casualty in last week's
French cabinet reshuffle.  The minister,
who had radically restructured French
research and technology, actually handed
in his resignation on 2 February after
a clash with President Francois
Mitterrand--but it only became public last
week. Chevenement enjoyed 18 months'
political success, during which time he did
well enough to be tipped as the next prime
minister. But his handling of the industry
portfolio incurred the wrath of industry
leaders who appear to have won the presi-
dent over to their side <1(New Scientist>1 10
March, p 646). This together with other
policy differences led Chevenement to
resign.
   His replacement is a balding 35 year old
who drives a Citroen Deux Chevaux,
Laurent Fabius. Ironically, it was Fabius,
the previously budget minister, who gave

Chevenement his hardest
battle to get money to
finance     the     greatly
increased research budgets.
   Early on in the present
government's     adminis-
tration a representative of
Fabius warned that if
research was to get the
money it required, other
ministries would suffer.
Now that the gamekeeper
has turned poacher, it is not
clear whether Fabius will
fight as hard as his prede-
cessor for money. But a
spokesman for Fabius last
week said that he would do
his best to make sure that
Mitterrand's target of 2.5 per cent of gross
domestic product to be spent on research
by 1985 will be met.
   Fabius has a slightly different title from
                his predecessor.  Cheve\ne-
                ment was minister of
                research   and    industry.
                Under Fabius the order is
                reversed. At the Elysee, a
                spokesman said there could
                be "modulations" in presi-
                dential commitments over
                a period of years, and indi-
                cated that the president
                could take Fabius's advice
                in the area of research
                spending.
                  While research looks like
                taking more of a backseat in
                the new government, the
                extent to which Fabius will
                change research policy will
                become apparent only
when he has begun to change the people in
key staff positions. Observers reckon this
will happen only slowly and probably more
in industry-related jobs.
   With no background in research or tech-
nology, Fabius will take his time before
embarking on radical reorganisation of an
area which has already been transformed in
the last two years.                      []


   <2Artificial-heart man dies>2

            AFTER 112 pioneering days as the first
man to live with a permanent artificial
heart, Barney Mark, the Seattle dentist died
last week, after a viral infection attacked his
weakened body. The end came soon after
the 62-year old patient's kidneys began to
shut down and the amount of blood
pumped by his artificial heart dropped.
   Doctors said that while his heart was fine,
his vascular system had given up the ghost.
   Clark's survival had been tenuous ever
since the heart, powered by compressed air,
was implanted on 2 December last year. At
one point during his first month after the
operation, a valve failed on the artificial
heart, forcing the surgical team from the
University of Utah Medical Centre in Salt
Lake City to undertake a fresh operation to
replace it.  At other times, he suffered
serious infections and pneumonia and
became very depressed.
   He frequently had be be place on a respi-
rator that combined with the two tubes
that linked his heart to its 170 kg air
compressor, gave the impression of a man
supported entirely by mechanical means.
"It's hard," Mark told a doctor conducting
a broadcast interview with him early this
month, "but that heart bumps right along"
   The procedure itself drew criticism.
Some cardiologists complained that the
heart could never be more than a tempo-
ray remedy and that the money spent on
the research could be better used for drug
therapies and other techniques.
   Nevertheless, the heart did earn Mark
112 days of life. The Utah team's experi-
ence nursing Clark through his succession
of crises will inevitable produce dividends
for future heart patients. And, as Mark
himself said, when asked whether he had
any words of advice for those who might
follow in his footsteps, "I would tell them
that it's worth it if the alternative is that
they die."                              []
         <2Whitehall shuffle bodes well for heritage law>2

THIS       WEEK
Timothy Raison,
minister for Overseas
Development, will
read a report from
his civil servants
advising him to hand
over control of an
international conser-
vation treaty to
the Department of
the     Environment.
This decision settles
an inter-departmen-
tal squabble of long
standing and opens
the way for the government to reconsider
Britain's equally long-standing refusal to
sign the World Heritage Convention.
   In recent weeks both Sir Peter Scott and
Sir Laurens van der Post, have called on the
government to sign the 11-year-old
convention. And three government advi-
sory agencies on conservation have told
ministers that Britain's reputation as a
leader in conservation is being seriously
undermined by its continued failure to
sign.
   Sixty-eight other countries, including
most of Europe, the Commonwealth, and
the US, have ratified the convention, but
successive British governments have
argued that signing would be "too
expensive". This is because the UK would
have to contribute #39 000 a year to a fund
to help protect natural and cultural sites of
international importance all over the
world.
   Since the convention's Funds are used
mainly to help protect World Heritage sites
in developing countries, responsibility was
assigned to the Overseas Development
Agency, part of the Foreign Office. Civil
servants at the ODA say they "would rather
spend the money on social and economic
development programmes". But there has
been pressure from the Department of the
Environment to ratify the convention. Offi-
cials there are regularly and publicly taken
to task at conservation meetings in Britain
and abroad over Britain's absence from the
convention. "It's ironic," one civil servant
at the department said, "when I'm abroad
I always urge other countries to adhere to
the convention, and we haven't even signed
it".
   Environment officials--who argue that
the convention should be theirs because it
concerns conservation rather than
aid--now appear to have won their case.
Next week ODA officials will recommend
to their minister, Timothy Raison, that the
convention be handed over to the
DoE--who will then have to pay the
contributions.
   If, as expected, Britain does finally ratify
the convention, it may apply to have
certain areas designated as World Heritage
sites.  Under the convention these sites
would then be protected from damaging
developments.   A government spokesman
last year told the House of Lords that "it is
doubtful whether there would be any heri-
tage places in the United Kingdom". But
already the Countryside Commission and
the Nature Conservancy Council have
drawn up a short list of natural sites suit-
able for World Heritage status. These
include the Cairngorms, the Lake District,
(St. Kilda) and the western seaboard of the
scottish Highlands where the EEC is
thinking of funding a #200 million agricul-
tural development programme.         []
                          Catherine Caufield
  <2Reagan's ray guns are decades away>2


PRESIDENT Ronald Reagan, six-guns
flashing, regaled the public again last
week with a new vision of laser battalions in
space. He called on American scientists to
dedicate themselves to this new national
effort.
   Speaking at a press
conference on
security, Reagan raised the
banner for a new approach
to national defence--a
move away from massive
retaliation toward a new
defensive technology, hov-
ering in space, that could
nullify the Soviet Union's
arsenal of missiles.
   The notion of lasers in
space has captured the
imaginations of planners at
the Pentagon and the White
House. Such a system--a
final technological fix to
end the escalation in missile production-
"may not be accomplished before the end
of the century," Reagan said.
   In fact, even with the Pentagon spending
about $ 1000 million a year on research into
laser and anti-ballistic missile systems,
lasers are unlikely to meet that deadline,
said George Keyworth, Reagan's science
adviser and a physicist, last year. Keyworth
said then that anti-missile lasers are the
stuff of fantasy for the next few decades.
Apparently there are no specific plans to
recruit more scientists to do the job,
according to a Pentagon official who over-
sees the defence department's research
grants to university scientists.
   White House officials played down the
revolutionary tenor of Reagan's comments,
saying that no new infusion of money
was set aside for lasers, only that a
"reorganisation" of the new disparate
research projects is underway.
   Observers say that Reagan's plea to
scientists to develop non-nuclear defences
is part of a plan to back away from an offen-
sive strategy based on the homeless MX
missile. It could be part also of an effort to
raise a smoke screen to divert public atten-
tion from Reagan's plan for a massive
military build-up.
   Over the past few years, the Pentagon has
invested several billion dollars in tech-
nology related to defences against ballistic
missiles, including guided anti-ballistic
missiles, particle beams and high-energy
lasers. Military planners have also devel-
oped a strategy for nuclear defence in
which attacking missiles would have to run
a gauntlet of several "layers" of defence.
One or two layers would be in space--first
shooting at missiles as they left the atmo-
sphere and then shooting at re-entry vehi-
cles as they travel through space.
   Vital strategic sites, such as fields of
missile silos, would be protected by ground-
based systems, which would hit incoming
warheads. Some missiles would be likely to
leak through each layer but the cumulative
effect would be to limit the damage greatly.
   The army's ballistic missile defence
command in Huntsville, Alabama, is still
working on missile-based "terminal"
defence design to stop missiles as they
approach their target. One programme, the
low altitude defence system (LOWADS) is
intended to protect the MX missile by
              using nuclear warheads to
              destroy warheads. But that
              programme     may     be
              doomed because of the
              uncertainty over MX and
              concern that the explosion
              of the nuclear warhead
              could knock out the
              missiles in their silos as well
              as the incoming warhead.
                The hottest programme
              now is said to be on missiles
              that would destroy their
              targets within the atmo-
              sphere but without using a
              nuclear   warhead.   The
              Pentagon is also studying
              an "overlay" system, in
which non-nuclear missiles would destroy
warheads or missiles in space en route to
their target. When development of support-
ing technology for guidance and control is
counted in, these ballistic missile defence
programmes accounted for about $2900

billion last year with a little over $500
million budgeted for this year. The Reagan
administration has asked for $709.3
million for ballistic missile defence (BMD)
for 1984, and has proposed more than
double that for 1985.
  However, the government is spending
much less on developing directed-energy
for beam weapons, which is apparently
what Reagan had in mind last week during
his press conference.
  Work on laser weapons in space (<1New>1
<1Scientist,>1 10 June 1982, p 714) is concen-
trated at the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency and is budgeted at $148.8
million with a request for $172.6 million in
1984. The plan is for orbiting laser battle
stations which would zap Soviet missiles.
The big thrust is to develop three
subsystems collectively called the Space
Laser Triad, which is budgeted for $71
million in 1983. The triad includes the 5
MW alpha chemical laser, the large optics
demonstration experiment, and a pointing
tracking system called Talon Gold. The
first two systems will be tested on the
ground in two or three years, while Talon
Gold will be tested from the space shuttle at
about the same time.                   []


              <2It's a dog's life for chemical weapons>2

CHEMICAL weapons against predators
     that roam the American West appar-
ently interest wildlife managers more than
unorthodox, if old-fashioned, alternatives,
like guard dogs. A row over which is best
will reach the US's Congress in May.
  Hal Black a zoolo-
gist from Brigham
Young    University
says dogs might be
better at keeping wild
coyotes away from
livestock       than
poisonous chemicals.
However, he says, he
has been misquoted
and his work suppres-
sed by publicly-
supported scientists
who are supposed to
follow all research leads on predator
control.
  Black says that a member of a scientific
committee that advises the government on
the control of predators "intentionally"
excluded references to Black's work on
dogs in a report dated March 1982 to the
Environmental Protection Agency.  The
report instead came out heavily in favour of
a toxicant called Compound 1080 (sodium
monofluoroacetate) to kill coyotes.
  Then other members of the panel, the
Western Regional Coordinating Commit-
tee on Predator Control (WRCC-26), sent a
letter to a rancher "apologising" for
comments Black allegedly made at the
committee's annual meeting in Waco,
Texas. The letter quotes Black as saying
that white and Navajo ranchers
"misrepresent" their livestock losses and
"blame everything on coyotes". It also says
Black's views on the effectiveness of
mongrel guard dogs "do not represent the
views of the committee".

   Black says his remarks were taken out of
context in an effort to discredit him. The
letter is signed by three members of the
WRCC-26, two of whom did not attend the
meeting in Waco. Copies went to Black's
boss, the president of the Navajo nation
                     and the Utah Wool-
                     growers Association.
                     Black   told    <1New>1
                     <1Scientist>1 he may sue
                     WRCC-26 if they do
                     not retract the letter.
                       The controversy
                     over lethal-versus-
                     non lethal methods
                     of predator control is
                     clouded by uncertain
                     science and by poli-
                     tics.  Critics of the
                     most recent studies of
compound 1080 say that they prove only
that the chemical is lethal to coyotes--not
that it can prevent or significantly decrease
predation of flocks. However, the livestock
industry is largely pro-1080, because it is
"quick, dirty and subsidised", says Black. A
spokesman for EPA says industry supports
the chemical because it is cheaper than
other methods such as shooting, trapping
and electric fencing.
  The Carter administration favoured
phasing out lethal methods of predator
control. In 1979, the US banned the non-
experimental use of 1080 because of its
dangers to humans and wildlife other than
coyotes. However, shortly before Anne
Burford resigned as chief of the EPA, she
was due to announce her decision on
whether to lift the ban in light of new
evidence. The matter is still up in the air,
and congress plans to hold hearing in May
on whether EPA manipulated data about
1080 to justify reappraisal of the ban.
         Nancy Heneson, Washington DC
 <2Spaghetti Junction's repair men are sacked>2

THE DEPARTMENT of Transport
    (DoT) has sacked the county council in

charge of keeping Spaghetti Junction in
good repair. The 21 kilometres of elevated
road on the M5 and the M6, the hub of
Britain's motorway network, have suffered
from severe structural problems. They are
having to be repaired at a total cost of some
#20 million.
  Under the usual arrangement for trunk
roads--those roads which are controlled by
the DoT--the West Midlands County
Council acted at the DoT's agents for
repairing the road. From 1 April the DoT
will take over direct responsibility for the
major repair work of inspecting the under-
side of the viaducts, where important struc-
tural defects have appeared.
  The West Midlands County Council will
be left with the job of surfacing the roads.
Lynda Chalker, the transport minister said:
"I wish to make it clear that the county
council has my confidence in its ability to
undertake this particularly demanding role
..."

  The council will continue to be the
DoT's agent for other roads in the West
Midlands, a job which last year was worth
more than #7 million. The DoT said that
the council would lose 10to 15 per cent of
this work next year. The DoT was unable to
give a figure for how much the repair work
on the Midlands motorways is costing this
year.

  Under the agency agreement with the
DoT, the council was due to have started
"principal investigations" of the viaducts in
1977. The council did not start the work.
And under pressure from the DoT the
council appointed consultants to inspect
the viaducts. These consultants did not
start work until 1979--two years later.

  The consultants found worrying signs of
structural damage.  The most common
problem has been the need to replace the
joints between the 15 or 20 metre spans of
the road.  The DoT told the House of
Commons transport committee that nearly
1300 joints had been replaced between
1975 and 1982 and a further 750 still had to
be replaced. The cost of this replacement
programme so far has been #7.3 million.
Each section of the deck of the road is
carried on sliding bearings, to allow for
expansion of the sections. The bearings in
turn are supported on cement plinths, to
keep them level. These bearing-plinths are
often damaged, impeding the working of
the bearings and putting stress on the road
deck.  In two cases the lack of support for
the bearings has caused the beam above to
drop, by 35 mm. Some other beams have
had to be wedged to avoid dropping. The
cost of this repair work (which is two-thirds
complete) is likely to be #3 million.
  The county coucil has been responsible
for appointing contractors to carry out this
repair work. In June 1981 the junior trans-
port wrote to the West Midlands "I am
satisfied with the nature and standard of the
repair work."
  Now the junior minister says she is
pleased "that the West Midlands County
Council have accepted my proposals for a
sensible and reasonable division of
responsibilities."                        []
   <2Will an old broom sweep EPA clean?>2
IN AN effort to clean up the mess that has
 afflicted the Environmental Protection
Agency, President Reagan last week pulled
an old broom out of the cupboard. He
announced his intention to nominate, as
the new Administrator of the agency, Wil-
liam Ruckelshaus, the man who served as
its first Administrator from 1970 to 1973.
   Ruckelshaus, a republican lawyer, also
hit the headlines when he resigned as
Deputy Attorney-General in the midst of
the Watergate crisis rather than fulfil Presi-
dent Nixon's order to fire Archibald Fox,
the special prosecutor. The EPA's political
situation hardly compares with Watergate. Nevertheless persistent
charges that, under Anne Burford, the agency put politics first had
combined to lower morale.
   Ruckelshaus is a marked contrast to Burford and her political
mentor, the Interior Secretary James Watt, whose attitude often
seemed to be that the environment was over-protected. Ruck-
elshaus recognises the public appeal of the agency. "The question
of whether we're going to clean up the environment of this country
is long over," he told a press conference. "The question today is not
whether, the question is how."
   Industrialists recall that Ruckelshaus fought, in his first term as
EPA administrator, for strict pollution controls on cars, to force
steelmakers and utilities to install pollution control equipment,
and to ban several herbicides. "We have some problems with some
of his views on a number of major and very controversial issues,"
said a chemical company spokesman.
   Environmentalists recall that, since 1975, Ruckelshaus has been
a senior vice-president of the Weyerhaeuser Company of Tacoma,
Washington--a timber corporation that has had disagreements
with the EPA.
   Reminders of the chaos at the EPA continued to swirl round
Washington last week. A draft report from the House of Represen-
tatives charged that the EPA "acted improperly or at a minimum
created the appearance of impropriety", in deciding not to regulate
formaldehyde as a cancer-causing chemical.                   []
        <2Twenty-five years ago a fire swept through the core of a pile manufacturing plutonium at>2

       <2Windscale, The row still rages. New evidence points to unrecognised danger from polonium>2

                                                       <2John Urquhart>2


    IT IS 25 years since the nuclear
    accident at Windscale in October
    1957. Until recently there has never
been any suggestion that the radioactive
releases that took place then produced any
serious health effects.  Attention has
centred throughout on the releases of
radioactive iodine and its subsequent
ingestion over a wide area of Britain and
Western Europe. A recent report by the
National Radiological Protection Board
(NRPB) said the iodine-131 may have
killed 13 people through cancer of the
thyroid over a period of decades.
    However, the damage to health may
have been much more severe than this.
Indeed, it could represent the worst envi-
ronmental disaster that Western Europe
has known this century.
    On 9 October, 1957 the atomic pile
of No.  1 Reactor at Windscale in
Cumberland, north-west England, began to
overheat and part of it caught fire. The fire
was finally put out on the morning of 12
October. Probably the best and most inde-
pendent description of the accident in the
site is given by C. R. McCullough of the US
Atomic Energy Commission.  Having
explained that the first mistake was made
at 11 am Tuesday, 8 October, he goes on to
say: "At 2.15 am, Wednesday the 9th, they
discovered [the thermocouples] were
slowly rising. Some of them had gotten to
greater than 400oC, so they decided that
they had better cool the reactor." The cool-
ing attempts did not work, so by "5.40 am
[10 October] they noticed an activity up
in the stack--radioactivity." McCullough
"Then at noon on the 10th, they
found some activity on the roof of the
meteorological station; this was unusual,
and they knew that something had gone

wrong . . . Then at 12.10 pm . . . they got
a very marked increase in the stack activity
. . . About 1.38 am on the 11th they got a
reading of 1300oC. They now had a really
hot fire."
    During the fire the weather pattern was
complex. On 10 October, winds were light
and variable. An initial press release from
the Atomic Energy Authority (AEA) said
that radioactivity had blown out to sea.
According to John Dunster, then a scientist
with the AEA and now chairman of the
NRPB, the main radioactive cloud trav-
elled south-east across most of England
and on over Europe. The principal isotope
released was iodine- 131.  It produced
20 000 curies of radioactivity. There were
also smaller quantities of caesium- 137 (600
curies), strontium-89 (80 curies) and
strontium-90 (9 curies), ruthenium-103
and 106, zirconium-95, niobium-95 and
cerium-144, "together with polonium-
210".
   But a re-examination of the data
published in the aftermath of the fire
reveals that one crucial isotope released in
the fire has been ignored in subsequent
analysis of the health consequences.
   For a radioactive isotope to have serious
health effects a release should have the
following qualities:
@  large quantity released
@  great mobility in the environment
@  high take-up by the human body
@ relatively long radioactive and biological
half life.
   The radioactive iodine released does not
satisfy the second and fourth conditions.
Nevertheless, the NRPB found it probably
did significant harm.
   One pathway not yet considered as a
cause of thyroid cancer is the decay of the
12 000 curies of tellurium- 132 released.
Although it decays into the short-lived
icdine-132, it is more mobile in the envi-
ronment and the timing of its passage
through the cow or human gut could be
critical. A similar argument applies to the
900 curies of molybdenum and its break-
down into technetium. Apart from thyroid
cancer it has not seemed that any illnesses
could be detected and so the matter has not
been pursued.
   But there was one isotope released
in the accident that is highly mobile,
that does have a high take-up by the
human body, has a half-life of 140
days, and--though this was only revealed
this week by the NRPB after <1New>1
<1Scientist's>1 inquiries--was released in
significant quantities. It is polonium.
   Margaret Gowing in her official history
of the British post-war atomic programme
said:  "Polonium was a little-known
element needed for a vital component of
the (atomic) bomb . . . after Harwell had
made the first polonium, Windscale
assumed production responsibility . . .
Polonium is a strong alpha emitter,
however, until the Americans made an
atomic bomb, no one had ever used polo-
nium in any appreciable amount; it was so
radioactive that it glowed in the dark.
Penney, Cockcroft and Hinton [Britain's
nuclear "barons"] agreed that Harwell
should provide the research information
and flowsheet for a plant, to be built at
Windscale, to extract polonium from
bismuth irradiated in the piles."
   It was one of these piles that caught fire,
releasing the deadly polonium in the form
of a gas. Gowing goes on to indicate the
health hazard arising from the intense
alpha activity of polonium at the Wind-
scale site: "Alpha handling procedures had
to be greatly upgraded to deal with polo-
nium, and for a time everyone had to work
with respirators . . . Harwell's difficulties in
handling polonium were again encoun-
tered at Windscale; alpha contamination
became severe and several of the oper-
ational staff had to be temporarily taken off
the work because of polonium ingestion."
   It is, however, the polonium ingested by
the public as a result of the fire that we are
concerned with. Two figures occur in the
open literature from which we can deduce
the amount released in the radioactive
cloud that crossed England and Wales and
Western Europe. Two scientists from the
Atomic Energy Research Establishment at
Harwell, Stewart and Crooks, reported in
1958 a ratio of polonium to iodine-131 of
1 to 38.6 on filters at Harwell, while read-
ings made in Holland by Johans Blok
indicated a ratio of 1 to 31.
   Corrected for radioactive decay, a linear
interpolation of these figures to the Wind-
scale source would indicate a ratio in the
cloud as it left the Windscale chimney of
1:45. (A log interpolation would indicate a
ratio of 1:54.) Unlike the caesium-137
release, it seemed that the rate of depletion
of the polonium-210 from the cloud was
not appreciably less than that of the iodine.
(Polonium is completely volatile above
500oC.) If the NRPB is right that 20000
curies of radioactivity from iodine- 131 was
released, then some 370 curios of polonium
would have gone with it.
   A recent paper by the NRPB suggests the
virulence of this amount.  In an exam-
ination of the possible effects of coal-fired
power stations Board scientists estimate
that the release of 1.62 curies of polonium
over 30 years would lead to a population
dose of 3600 man-rems. So a dose of some
370 curies suggests a dose of some 850 000
man-rems.
   The NRPB fibres, however, refer to an
average release from a 500m high stack in
central southern England.  Much of it
would pass over the relatively sparsely
populated area of eastern England and out
to sea. The Windscale cloud however,
passed over most of the cities of England so
the collective dose would be higher. One
way of calculating this figure is to compare
the dose from given levels of
contamination of poIonium-210 and
iodine-131. Checks carried out in Leeds
after the fire gave a dose of 0.15 rems to the
thyroid with an initial ground concen-
tration of 320 nanocuries per sq. m of
iodine-131, and the NRPB Windscale acci-
dent report suggests a collective dose of
1.33 million man-rems from drinking milk
contaminated with iodine-1.31. The equiv-
alent polonium could give an equivalent
individual dose via ingesting local food of
0.57 rems implying a total dose to the UK
of 5 million man-rems and a further dose
to the continent of 0.5 million man-rems.
   Clearly this figure could be more or less.
Similar uncertainties also apply to the
actual health effects per man-rem. At
present the NRPB suggest 165 cancer
deaths per million man-rems.  We are
therefore talking about more than a thou-
sand deaths from the Windscale accident.
   Three questions remain unanswered:
was all the area of radioactive fall-out
monitored?  Clarke suggests that only 10
per cent of the iodine-131 escaped. What
happened to the other 90 per cent? Can the
calculation of 165 deaths per one million
rems be applied to all age groups--or even
any? Even light rainfall would significantly
increase deposition rates. Was there no
rain at the time?
   If the answer to any of these questions is
no, then the death figures may have to be
revised significantly upwards.           []
 <2Looking for an increase in deaths from cancer>2


IN VIEW of the number of potential
   deaths from the polonium release, the
search for signs of a rising cancer rate is
now a top priority. The figures for deaths
from leukaemia seem to back up the
prediction from dose estimates that some-
thing very serious happened at Windscale
in 1957.
   After a nuclear accident, scientists expect
to find first leukaemia cases, beginning after
five years and peaking after 15-20 years,

then thyroid cancer and finally general
cancers. The typical pattern of cancer also
shows a far higher proportion of younger
people affected than is the case from other
causes. This is exactly what we find here.
  After the Windscale fire, attention was
directed to the area immediately to the
south--downwind of the release from the
pile. In Millom and Dalton-in-Furness, the
concentration of iodine-131 fallout on the
ground was between 3000 and 10 000
nanocuries per sq.m. So, taking account of
the polonium, local people relying mainly
on local milk, meat and vegetables could
expect doses over a period of a couple of
years of about 4 to 15 rems; more inci-
dentally, than people at Hiroshima within
2 km of the bomb.
   However, a milk ban was enforced in
Cumbria for two months to reduce iodine-
131 intake and, after that, local cows
consumed uncontaminated winter feed.
Moreover,   many      local   cows   were
slaughtered after the accident. So the final
doses are likely to be of the order of 4 rems.
This is still much higher than the doses
predicted by John Dunster and others at
the time.
   In the larger population of 200000
people south and east of Windscale, the
iodine concentrations were between 700
and 3000 nanocufies per sq.m, implying
individual doses of between land 5 rems or
a population dose of 0.5 million man-rems.
This suggests between 100 and 1000
cancers.
   Peter Taylor, of the Political Ecology
Research Group, has already pointed out
the above-average numbers of cases of
leukaemia in Barrow, Cumberland
                      and Westmoreland,
                      although he says;
                      "Any link to the
                      pattern of 1957 fall-
                      out can be ruled out
                      because of the very
                      low doses and the
                      nature of the radio-
                      activity." But he was
                      not aware of the
                      significance of the
                      polonium release.
                         The Cumbria Area
                      Health     Authority
                      claimed in 1981 that
                      "deaths         from
                      leukaemia have not
                      significantly altered
                      from the national
                      rates". But, in fact,
                      the tables in the
                      report show that
                      while leukaemia rates
                      for 1951-58 were 83
                      per cent of the
                      national average, in
                      the period 1971-1978
they had risen to 100 per cent. In the area
we are particularly concerned with, south-
west Cumbria, male cancer rates rose
significantly from the period 1969-73 to the
period 1974-78.
  The Cumbria AHA report also
shows that leukaemia cases, particularly
multiple myclomas, were higher than
average (see table).

  Even if the recorded incidence
of multiple myelomas were 25 per cent up
from 1969-73 to 1974-78, as a result
of better registration of the disease, the
chances of this surge of cases occurring
by chance would be 1 in 1000. Also of note
are the cancer deaths among young adults
in the districts of Copeland, Barrow and
South Lakeland. Between 1974 and 1980
these two were significantly above the
expected level.
   The district of Copeland includes
the rural districts of Ennerdale and
Millom where some of the greatest
fall-out occurred.  A comparison of
observed young cancer deaths in Copeland
with expected deaths shows even
greater elevation in the years 1974
to 1980.  The 12 deaths observed in
thc 15-24 age group is 210 per cent of what
would be expected. The chance of this high
death rate occurring by chance is 1 in 50.
      Young children seem to have been
particularly sensitive to the Windscale acci-
dent. In Millom, four children between
the ages of 15 and 24 died in the period
1974 to 1980 when only 1-2 deaths would
be expected, and a further three died
in the period 1971 to 1973. And four chil-
dren died there between the ages of 5 and
14 in the years 1963 to 1973 when only 1.5
would be expected.  Clearly a cohort
analysis of this and other areas in south-
west Cumbria is urgently required.
  The search now goes on for cancers
over a wider area. A comparison of the
estimated concentration of fallout from
the Windscale cloud across the country
with changes in death rates from leukaemia
is revealing.
   The table below shows the extent to
which the amount of radioactive fallout
from the Windscale cloud in 16 English
counties (as measured by the iodine-131
fallout) correlates with the rate of
leukaemia deaths. The numbers are the
rank correlation coefficients. Zero is ran-
dom; one represents a perfect fit. The
increasing correlation in the mid-1970s is
clear.

1967         -0.26        1974       0.45
1968          0.01        1975       0.66
1969          0.26        1976       0.60
1970          0.17        1977       0.33
1971          0.43        1978      -0.17
1972          0.33        1979       0.30
1973          0.47        1980       0.09

   The figures suggest that some 1200
excess cases of leukaemia may have been
caused in Britain by the Windscale acci-
dent, since leukaemia deaths account for
some 15 per cent of cancers attributable to
nuclear accidents, the total toll of cancer
deaths suggested is 8000.

   This figure lies on the high side of our
initial estimate but two factors must be
borne in mind. First, we have no precise
figures for how much polonium escaped or
of where it actually reached. Secondly, the
biological takeup and pathways of
polonium are not fully known.  For
example, polonium-210 concentrates at
least a thousand times in fresh fish and
more in shellfish.

   The results of the Windscale fire have
important implications in the general
theory of the effects of nuclear accidents.
Both Britain and the US have used
polonium in the atomic bombs they have
exploded. Even if each bomb contained
only 500 curies, less than one-tenth of a
gram, the hundreds of tests could have
contributed    significantly    to   world
leukaemia and cancer levels. Further infor-
mation on the quantities used will be
needed from the military authorities, but
500 bomb tests scattering 500 curies of
polonium-210 implies an average deposit
concentration of 0.1 nanocuries per sq. m
over the world's surface. That is 10 milli-
rems for each person in the world or an
extra 5000 to 50000 deaths.

  Clearly further investigations into the
whole of the Windscale accident must be
urgently pursued. The British are in effect
now the nuclear laboratory of the world.[]
                         <2Countdown to the cruise>2
                  <2Going to war with cruise missiles would be precise, ruthless and utterly effective. Virtually>2
                    every stage in the firing and aiming process would be supervised by computers backed up by
satellite links to the White House. Once launched the missiles are accurate enough to land a warhead
                       with 10 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb on a tennis court 2500 kilometres away

                                                           Mark Hewish

IN DECEMBER, the first cruise missiles in Europe will
   take up their positions inside protective concrete bunkers
   at Greenham Common air base near Newbury in Berk-
shire. By 1988, the United States Air Force plans to have 160
cruise missiles in Britain: 96 at Greenham Common and 64
at Molesworth in Cambridgeshire. If war in Europe seems
likely, trucks carrying four missiles each will emerge
from their bunkers and disperse around southern
Britain to protect them from attack.
   The president of the United States, sitting in his
command post, a Boeing 747 flying above
America, can then order the crews to fire
their missiles. The missiles would blast
out of their launchers, navigate auto-
matically across Europe, and land within
a few metres of targets such as airfields,
ports, power stations, dams and locks.
The thermonuclear (hydrogen bomb)
warhead on each cruise missile is 10 times
as powerful as the atomic bomb that
destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.
   NATO decided in December 1979 to
base 572 new nuclear-tipped missiles in
Europe:  464 cruise missiles and 108
Pershing IIs. The first Pershing II ballistic
missiles, with a range of 1800 km, will
become operational in Germany during
December. The cruise missiles will oper-
ate from Italy, Germany, Belgium and
possibly Holland as well as Britain.
Although the cruise missiles and Pershing
II can attack similar targets, they have
their individual specialisations.
   The cruise missiles will augment and
replace manned bombers, allowing the
aircraft to attack enemy targets with
conventional (non-nuclear) bombs and
missiles. Pershing II, which dives steeply
onto its target rather than hitting it in a shallow trajectory
can carry a special "earth-penetrator" warhead that will bore
through soil to attack underground bunkers. Pershing II can
also disperse atomic mines to slow down a Russsian attack.
   The United States Air Force (USAF) will operate the 464
cruise missiles in Europe, leaving the US Army responsible
for the Pershing IIs. The US will retain control of the
weapons, although it will consult other countries before
giving the order to fire. The same arrangement has existed for
many years with the USAF's 170 F-111 bomber aircraft
which fly from Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire and
Lakenheath in Suffolk.
   NATO countries say that they do not want a "dual key"
arrangement, in which an officer from the US and the host
country have to turn their keys simultaneously before a
weapon can be launched. Earlier nuclear weapons, such as
the 1950s-vintage Honest John artillery rocket, have a dual-
key process. In fact with the cruise missiles, keys do not exist:
launch crews give the command to fire with a computer
keyboard in a mobile control centre.
   The US calls its latest weapon the Ground Launched
Cruise Missile (GLCM), inevitably pronounced "glickum".
The weapon was originally designed to arm submarines; it is
53 cm in diameter, the dimensions of torpedo tubes. The
American forces are fitting other members of the missile
family in submarines, on
warships and under
aircraft. The US Air Force has its own design, the Air
Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM), that arms B-52 strategic
bombers. Boeing builds the ALCM, but the Convair Division
of General Dynamics is responsible for all other types,
including the ground-launched missile.
  Compared with present manned nuclear bombers such as
the F-111, cruise missiles are more accurate, and hence also,
according to military thinking, cause less unwanted damage
to structures or people nearby. Nevertheless, the blast from a
cruise missile would knock down houses several kilometres
away and kill people up to 6 km away. As cruise missiles do
not rely on long runways, and can be
dispersed around

the countryside in times of international tension, they are also
less likely to be destroyed by a surprise attack.
  Over the next five years the USAF plans to buy 560
missiles, 137 launch vehicles and 79 launch control centres at
a total cost of $3800 million. The hardware not needed for the
operational sites will be used for testing and training.
  The USAF plans to organise its ground-launched cruise
missiles into "flights", each of which carries 16 weapons. A
flight comprises four vehicles called transporter-erector
launchers (TELs), each carrying four missiles; two launch-
control centres (LCCs), one to feed the necessary information
to the missiles before firing and the other to act as back-up;
lightweight fibre-optic cables which connect each launcher
vehicle to the control centres; long-distance communication
links; and other vehicles to protect against attack by saboteurs
or Russian soldiers and for repairs.
  In peacetime, each flight occupies a concrete bunker at a
main operating base (MOB) such as Greenham Common or
Molesworth. Even the largest vehicles in a flight will fit in the
USAF's standard transport aircraft such as the C-130
Hercules, C-141 Starlifter and C-5 Galaxy. Aircraft of this
type will initially deliver the vehicles from the US.

               The shelters housing each flight will protect the
               equipment against a surprise attack by Soviet
               aircraft or missiles. Trying to defend against an all-
               out nuclear attack would be virtually impossible.
               A concrete "burster slab" over each bunker will
               stop conventional bombs from penetrating. Pits
               in front of the heavy bunker doors, which incline
               outwards, collect any debris thrown up during an
               attack. The doors then lower over the pits so that
               the vehicles can emerge. Soil around the bunker
               and on top of the slab provides further protection
               and makes the base difficult to see from the air.
                 A proportion of the flights on each main oper-
ating base maintain themselves at "quick reaction alert"
(QRA) status, ready to move out at a moment's notice. In this
case the members of the flight crew live in the bunker, along-
side their missiles. A security fence, with watchtowers,

protects the base against attack by ground forces. The British
government is paying about #16 million to modernise Green-
ham Common and Molesworth to take cruise missiles, and is
contributing some 220 security guards. The USAF itself is
stationing about 2000 people in Britain to supervise and oper-
ate the missiles.
   The vehicles that make up a cruise missile flight will
emerge regularly from their base and drive around the
countryside to practise. They will go only to dummy sites,
though, and not those for use in a real war. The USAF will
adopt British safety regulations, which an probably the
strictest in the world, when storing the missiles and their
warheads. Only dummies, not live warheads, can be used
during practice manoeuvres. If a major war in Europe ap-
pears likely, the flights will disperse up to 160 km from their
main operating base so that they cannot be wiped out in a
single nuclear attack. Each flight travels as a convoy of 22
vehicles, divided into first and second "critical elements",
each with two transporter-erector launchers and one launch-
control centre. Supervising each flight will be 69 people: the
flight commander, four launch officers, 19 maintenance
men, 44 soldiers and a medical technician.
The launcher and control vehicles each comprise four-
wheeled trailers towed by German-built MAN 10-tonne trac-
tors. The tractor has a V10 diesel engine and uses eight-wheel
drive, so it can cross rough country to hide in woodland. It
can ford rivers more than a metre deep and climb hills. Like
the other parts of the convoy, the tractors carry steel plating
for protection.
    While on the road, the convoy remains in radio commu-
nication with its headquarters. Thus the missiles' controllers
can immediately stop if they receive the emergency action

message (EAM) before reaching the planned launch site
--normally a wooded area, well away from built-up areas, to
hide the weapon from prying eyes. In either case, the pro-
cedure is then the same. Troops fan out to protect the vehicles
against attack, while the launch crew prepares the missiles. A
single launch-control centre can feed information to all 16
misiles simultaneously, via the fibre-optic cables, with the
second LCC held in reserve.

                        <2Code name: Cemetery>2
    The two-man launch crew receives information from mili-
tary posts in Europe and North America, using several inde-
pendent radio links. The headquarters of the United States
European Command (EUCOM), near Stuttgart, has a direct
link with the USAF's own satellite communication network
(AFSAT). Rather than having its own satellites, AFSAT uses
transponders (relay devices) on several spacecraft of different
types. This reduces the risk of the Soviet Union destroying the
complete network with antisatellite weapons. When triggered
by signals from EUCOM, the AFSAT equipment sends a
recorded message directly to the cruise missiles' launch con-
trol centres.  This uses a radio link code-named Flaming
Arrow.
    EUCOM also communicates with the White House and
military establishments in the United States. These in turn
have radio links with the airborne command posts (converted
Boeing 747 airliners) that house the president and his advisers
in wartime. The command posts also have a direct link to the

control centres in each cruise-missile convoy. Other elements
in the network include a high-frequency radio voice link with
the chilling code name of Cemetery.
    A third branch of the communications flowing out of
EUCOM goes over landlines to the European headquarters of
the US Air Force at Ramstein, Germany, from here the
messages split up, going directly to the control centres in the
convoys and to main operating bases such as Greenham
Common.
    This chain of American communications is matched by a
NATO network. The commander of EUCOM, a US general,
also acts as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, or, in
military jargon, SACEUR. ln wartime he would operate from
SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe), near
Mons in Belgium. SHAPE has its own radio links with the
mobile launcher centres and with the bases for the cruise
missiles.
    This complicated arrangement ensures that, whatever
happens. US and NATO commanders can remain in contact
with the launch crews. In theory, the mechanism should also
prevent anyone launching the missiles accidentally.
    The missiles can be fired only if the operator types into his
computer control a six-digit code, called a "permissive action
link". Rather like a bank's cash-dispensing machine, the
launch-control computer will keep the missiles' warheads
switched off if somebody types in the wrong combination.
    For additional safety each missile's thermonuclear warhead
incorporates a high-explosive trigger that is insensitive to
shocks, from bullets for example.
    Once in its launch position, the two-man crew waits for any
orders to fire. The men breathe air that is filtered to remove
any radioactive dust, nerve gases or biological toxins. Each
truck even has its own lavatory.
    Just when would any orders come? The main aim of cruise
missiles is to deter an attack. Military and political com-
manders would normally decide to use them only when a war
in Europe was in full swing. lf the war was going badly for
NATO, and the USSR was already using nuclear weapons,

the West would turn to the cruise missiles to strike back at the
Warsaw Pact. By this time, parts of Britain would probably be
radioactive deserts.
    Western governments believe that the USSR would use
its nuclear missiles and
bombers to attack the targets
that are vital to NATO's
war efforts:  centres of
national and local govern-
ment, underground military
command centres, commu-
nication links, air bases,
ports and naval bases, army
camps, ammunition and fuel
stores,     nuclear     power
stations and radar sites.
    By launching their cruise
missiles, US and NATO
commanders would hope
that, at best, the Soviet
  Union might sue for peace,
and, at worst, that the West
could gain a few extra days
when its conventional (non-
nuclear) forces might be able
to stem the tide. It is against
this background that the
cruise missiles' launch crews
would begin their final
countdown.
  If the message to launch
goes ahead,  the controllers
would feed into the missiles'
guidance     systems     the
locations of the launch site
and target. A hydraulic ram
elevates the section of the
launcher vehicle housing the
four missiles to an angle of
450; the caps over the rear
ends of the launch tubes fold down, so that the exhaust gases
from the booster rockets can pass through; and the crew can
then press the fire button.
  A solid-propellant booster rocket, with a thrust of some
3200 kg, blasts the missile through the cover over the front of
the launch tube. After one second, controls in the nozzle of
the rocket motor start steering the missile on to the proper
trajectory. Five seconds later, the weapon's fins nip out.
Between eight and ten seconds into the mission, the missile's
wings and the air intake for the main jet engine swing into
position.
  Thirteen and a half seconds after ignition, the booster
                                  motor falls away, and half a
                                  second later the jet engine
                                  starts propelling the missile
                                  for the rest of its flight.
                                     The missile carries an
                                  inertial guidance unit, an
                                  arrangement of gyroscopes
                                  and accelerometers that
                                  senses changes in speed and
                                  direction.  The weapon's
                                  computer thus knows where
                                  it is at all times, without
                                  relying on any signals from
                                  outside. The cruise missile,
                                  6.4 m long and weighing
                                  1207 kg at the start of its
                                  flight, steadily drones at 880
                                  km/hr toward what is called
                                  the initial timing control
                                  point. This is a place in the
                                  sky over continental Europe
                                  which marks the start of the
                                  missile's preset route.
                                    At this point, the weapon's
                                  guidance system switches
                                  into    a    preprogrammed
                                  routine in which it selects
                                  data about the particular
                                  target that it is aiming for.
                                  Military engineers would
                                  have worked out this infor-
                                  mation, and fed it into each
                                  missile,     many     months
                                  before.
                                    For British cruise missiles,
                                  the US Air Force's 7555th
Theater Mission Planning Squadron at High Wycombe
would have provided the data from four sources.  The
Supreme Allied Commander Europe says what targets he
wants attacked.  The US Defense Intelligence Agency
provides data about the type, location and estimated effec-
tiveness of Warsaw Pact defences along the route. The US
Defence Mapping Agency supplies, in digital form, details of
the terrain gleaned from sources such as spy satellites. Finally,
General Dynamics and McDonnell Douglas, the main manu-
facturers of the missiles and their guidance equipment, give
details of the performance that their products can achieve.
   Using this information stored in its electronic brain, the
cruise missile descends from the initial timing control point
to as little as 15 m above the Earth's surface (so avoiding radar
interception) and sets course for its target. During its flight,
the weapon twists and turns to avoid high ground and to keep
clear of enemy defences. Due to mechanical imperfections in
the gyros of the inertial guidance equipment, errors build up
with time, so the missile periodically updates its position with
equipment known as TERCOM (terrain contour matching).
TERCOM has a computer memory which stores up to 20
detailed maps covering small sections of the course that the
missile is flying. As it flies, the missile compares its true
position with the map using altimeter readings.
   As a safety measure, the warhead completes its arming
process only as it nears the target. Arming cannot take place
until 24 separate events throughout the flight have occurred
in the correct order. Thus if the engine fails or the guidance
system has a brainstorm, the risk of blowing up friendly forces
is minimised. The thermonuclear warhead has a yield of 150
to 200 kilotons, equating to 150000 to 200000 tonnes of
TNT, compared with 20 kilotons for the Hiroshima bomb.
   TERCOM gives the nearest thing to perfect accuracy yet
achieved. According to tests with the missile in the US, of the
missiles that successfully penetrate as far as their target, half
will land within about 12 m of the aiming point.           []
     <2The tactical background to NATO's new weapons>2
THE US, Soviet Union, Britain, France
and China have for many years had
huge arsenals of strategic nuclear weapons
in the form of ballistic missiles and manned
bombers. These form today's big stick:
their owners hope that, by possessing the
ability to kill tens of millions of people and
destroy the fabric of modern industrial
society, they will prevent an enemy from
being stupid enough to risk all by waging
all-out war.
  Beneath this umbrella of deterrence are
tactical weapons. If the strategic insurance
policy fails, but the superpowers stop short
of nuclear Armageddon, combatants will
fight the war with tactical weapons. All the
weapons that Britain and Argentina used in
the Falklands were tactical:     warships,
aircraft, guns, missiles. Even short-range
nuclear missiles are tactical. Their owners
plan to fire them at an enemy's military
forces rather than against cities or factories.

In military thinking, NATO's new force of
464 ground-launched cruise missiles and
108 Pershing IIs fits in between.  It is
designed mainly to counter Russia's
Backfire supersonic bomber aircraft and
SS-20 ballistic missiles. NATO already has
about 7000 tactical nuclear weapons in
Europe in the form of Lance and Pershing
Ia short-range ballistic missiles, Honest
John rockets, artillery, bombs, atomic
mines and depth bombs. Two thirds of
these, however, have a range of less than
160 km; so the weapons could drop on the
alliance's own territory if it ever had to
retreat in the face of an attack by the
Warsaw Pact.
  In 1977 the USSR introduced its SS-20
ballistic missile, fired from a mobile
launcher.  The total has now reached
approximately 360 launchers,     of which
two-thirds threaten western Europe (the
rest are in the east, to attack China and
Japan). The SS-20j has a range of 5000 km.
twice that of the ground-launched cruise
missile and nearly three times that of
Pershing II. The weapon carries three sepa-
rate thermonuclear warheads,     each with
about the same power as the single warhead
in a cruise missile (150-200     kilotons).
While the SS-20 rocket is still in space,
diving back towards Earth,  these three
warheads separate and steer themselves to
attack different targets.
   The Soviet Union also has about 275 of
the older SS-4 missiles and 25 of the slightly
more modern SS-5s still in service. These
have maximum ranges of 2000 km and
4100 km respectively, and they each carry
a single warhead with a yield of one mega-
ton (equivalent to a million tonnes of
TNT). NATO therefore faces a total of 300
one-megaton warheads launched, against
European targets by SS-4s and SS-5s, to-
gether with more than 700 of 150 to 200
kilotons by SS-20s. Each launcher in the
SS-20 system can be used several times, and
the Soviets probably allocate two or three
missiles to each launcher. Some of the SS-4
and SS-5 instalations can also launch more
than one missile.
   In addition to the missiles, the Russians
have several hundred Badger and Backfire
long-range bombers, which can carry free-
fall nuclear bombs with yields of one
megaton each, or launch nuclear-tipped
missiles like miniature aircraft. The British
government bases its civil defence plans on
estimates that the USSR would attack this
country with more than 120 SS-20 war-
heads, about 50 nuclear bombs dropped by
Backfires, some 35 SS-4s and 10 SS-5s.
They would also use Badger bombers and
strategic missiles such as the SS-11 and
SS-19 the latter carries warheads as big as
five megatons).
   Compared with these totals, 572 NATO
cruise-missiles and Pershing 11s may seem
like chickenfeed. Soviet officials are taking
the cruise-missile threat very seriously,
though, bearing in mind that they also face
similar weapons carried by B52 bombers
and nuclear submarines.  The new
Foxhound fighter, a development of the
famous MiG-25 Foxbat, is the first Russian
aircraft to carry an advanced radar that can
detect cruise missiles flying at low levels.
   During early tests in 1978, a Foxhound
successfully destroyed several drones repre-
senting American cruise missiles.  The
aircraft, flying at a height of about 6000 m.
launched AA-9 missiles which dived to
destroy the drones only 60 m above the
ground.
   Soviet commanders already have
Foxhound in service, and another two
types of fighter with similar abilities will
soon follow. The new SA-10 surface-to-air
missile, being installed across the Soviet
Union, can also shoot down cruise missiles.
Already the Americans are working on
improved versions of the original cruise
missiles, and this continuous East-West
jockeying for supremacy looks like
developing into a full-blooded arms race. []


<2THE PRICE WE PAY FOR DETERRENCE>2
<2The West's new weapons do not represent a new dimension in warfare; rather,>2
            <2they continue the strategy>2
    <2that has kept the peace in Europe for 40 years>2
              <2Michael Heseltine>2

  THE YEAR 1983 is important for the North
     Atlantic Alliance. It is the year when cruise
      and Pershing 11 missiles may begin to be
deployed in Europe. But it is also the year when
the US and Soviet Union hold vital arms reduc-
tion talks in Geneva. The events are inextricably
linked. How the year will turn out will depend
largely on the resolve of this government and of
our NATO allies.
  Unless we show that we are determined to
proceed with the deployment of cruise and
Pershing missiles, there will be no chance of
progress in the arms control talks. Why should
the Soviets remove their SS-20 missiles unless
it is to influence our decision to deploy cruise
and Pershing 11 in Europe essentially as a balance?
  The decision by NATO's ministers in 1979 to modernise
the alliance's existing intermediate-range nuclear forces was
unanimous. And it is modernisation that is involved. NATO
is not introducing a new dimension in warfare; nor is the
alliance even increasing its nuclear warheads in Europe. In
fact, for everyry new warhead introduced with cruise missiles,
a warhead will be withdrawn from NATO's existing inven-
tory on top of the withdrawal of 1000 warheads that the

          United States carried out two years ago.
            The 1979 decision was taken after two years of
          intensive study. It was in response to the concern
          of NATO's European members (including
          Britain's then Labour government) over the
          declining capability of NATO's existing
          intermediate-range forces. The NATO countries
          were also worried about the Soviet Union's
          deployment of the SS-20 missile with its 5000 km
          range, sufficient to strike anywhere in Europe.
          The SS-20 is far more effective and threatening
          than the earlier SS-4 and SS-5 missiles.
            More than 300 SS-20s have been' deployed.
          Each is mobile; the earlier missiles were not. Each
          has three independently-targettable nuclear
warheads: the earlier missiles had one. Since the early 1960s,
NATO's intermediate-range nuclear forces have comprised
American F-111 and British Vulcan aircraft. The Vulcans
have recently been withdrawn because of their age. The F-
111s are ageing and their credibility as a deterrent depends
upon their ability to penetrate increasingly sophisticated
Soviet air defences. There are no NATO land-based missiles
like the SS-20.
  NATO    decided to modernise its nuclear capability to

strengthen deterrence. If the Soviet Union believed it could
exploit possible NATO weakness at the intermediate nuclear
level, the risks for it from aggression would be less.
   The cruise and Pershing 11 weapons are also a visible
symbol of the United States' commitment to the defence of
Europe. They discourage any ideas on the part of the Soviet
Union that it could risk a nuclear attack on Europe without
involving the United States.
   But cruise and Pershing 11 missiles do more than maintain
deterrence in the face of a growing threat. They also give the
Soviet Union an incentive to negotiate meaningfully on arms
reduction. Who can seriously believe that, without such an
incentive, the Soviet Union would have the slightest intention
of reducing its "theatre" nuclear forces?
  Britain's experience with chemical weapons shows what
can happen if we fail to negotiate from a position of strength.
In 1957, Britain renounced the production of chemical
weapons and destroyed its chemical stocks. The Soviet
Union's response has been a relentless increase in its chemical
warfare capability.
  The talks in Geneva about intermediate-range nuclear
forces have recently resumed. President Reagan's "zero
option" is on the table. This would eliminate the nuclear
missiles of most concern to both sides: Soviet SS-20 and older
weapons would be removed; NATO cruise and Pershing II
missiles would not be deployed. A major step forward in arms
reduction would be achieved.
  This elimination of a whole class of nuclear missiles must
be our goal because it is the best answer. But we have made
it clear that we will consider other possibilities provided they
are fair to both sides and involve no bogus counting. We
cannot, for example, bring into the argument British Polaris
boats which, like comparable US and Soviet submarines,
deploy strategic weapons. The Soviet Union has previously
accepted this point during talks about limiting strategic arms.
  Cruise missiles, then, are for deterrence. They are not "first
strike" weapons. That is impossible--due to the numbers of
the missiles, their range and slow speed. NATO has no "first
strike" capability; nor, as a defensive alliance, does it want
one. Nor are cruise missiles intended for fighting
nuclear war in Europe.
  With our allies, this government is committed to the
elimination of intermediate-range missiles on both sides. But
if this proves impossible, we will proceed with the deploy-
ment of cruise missiles in this country--reluctantly but
firmly. And, of course, cruise missiles deployed in Britain will
be here under exactly the same arrangements that have
applied to American forces already based in the UK. Their
use would be a matter for joint decision between Britain's
prime minister and the president of the US.
  The Labour Party now denies the need to maintain and
modernise NATO's nuclear deterrent. The Labour govern-
ment acted differently. It entirely accepted the need for the
nuclear deterrent as part of the UK's defence strategy; and
indeed acknowledged, at the April 1979 NATO meeting, the
need to modernise NATO's theatre nuclear forces. What has
changed since then? Not the threat from the Soviet Union,
except in the sense that it has become more serious.
  What has really happened is that, for internal reasons,
Labour has been forced to abandon the policy of deterrence
which has preserved peace in Europe for nearly 40 years. It is
a sad reflection on the Opposition. It makes it all the more
important that, as a country, we hold fast to the alliance and
to the policies which have stood us--and the cause of peace in
Europe--in such good stead for so long.                 []
                         <2A weapon to set Europe alight>2

     <2Cruise missiles are unnecessary, divisive and escalate the arms race. What is more, they could>2
                           <2light the touch paper for a nuclear war in Europe>2

                                              <2John Silkin>2

  IF NEWTON'S third law of motion applied to
  the world of politics and democratic debate, no
   finer test of its validity could be provided than
NATO's decision in December 1979 to deploy in
Europe American cruise and Pershing 11 missiles.
The justification originally claimed for this
decision was twofold.
  First, the decision would strengthen the
cohesion of NATO following a gap in Western
defence which the Soviet Union's deployment of
medium-range SS-20 missiles had exposed.
According to this argument, the Soviet weapons
opened up the possibility that, through want of
any alternative means of preventing the Red
Army from overrunning Europe, the US might be
forced to initiate a full-scale nuclear exchange with the USSR.
  Secondly, the new weapons would encourage mutual
disarmament in Europe by persuading the Soviet Union to
withdraw the SS-20s in return for not going ahead with the
cruise devices. This hoped-for train of events would eliminate
the flaw in NATO's deterrent strategy that the weapons were
alleged to remedy.
  In the event, the results have been the opposite of those
originally envisaged. Nothing has done more than the cruise
missiles to divide the peoples of the Atlantic alliance. Further,
the arms race between the superpowers has escalated still
more. Indeed, reports have reached the West of Soviet efforts
to develop their own cruise missiles.
                             The threat from land-
                           based medium-range Soviet
                           weapons did not begin with
                           the initial siting of the SS-20s
                           in 1977. Europe has lived in
                           the shadow of Soviet SS-4
                           and SS-5 missiles since the
                           early 1960s. To these weap-
                           ons, NATO's response has
                           long been the Polaris and
                           Poseidon missiles carried on
                           nuclear submarines.
                              NATO decided to go ahead
                           with the cruise missiles before
                           the Soviet invasion of
                           Afghanistan and against a
                           background    of   Soviet-
                           American agreement in the
                           Salt 11 talks on strategic weap-
                           ons. There were reasonable
                           grounds for hoping that the
                           Salt 11 Treaty would be
                           ratified by the American
                           Congress, prohibiting deploy-
                                ment of the cruise devices for
                           two years. This might well
                           have been followed by Salt 111
                           discussions in which various
                           new measures could have
                           been put on the disarmament
                           agenda--British and French
                           strategic weapons, American
                           F-111 bombers in Europe-as
                           well as a continued ban on
                           the deployment of ground-
          launched cruise missiles by both sides.
             Unfortunately, President Reagan's cold-war
          rhetoric has worsened the climate for
          disarmament talks. Further, he appears to have
          launched a purge on his negotiating team. Were
          there not so much at stake, in the eyes of many
          Europeans, the American government would
          warrant disqualification from the talks for not
          trying.
             The understandable anxiety about the cruise
          issue will not be dispersed by the British Defence
          Secretary's bland statement that the use of UK-
          based American cruise missiles will be a matter for
          joint decision between equal partners. Nothing in
          the agreements between Britain and the US
justifies this statement.
  There is an agreement that nuclear bases shall be subject to
joint decisions. The military advantage of cruise missiles,
however, is that they will be fired not from nuclear bases but
from any vantage place on land, particularly on roads. The
result is that the agreement does not bite.
  In any event, from the American point of view, the whole
purpose of ground-based cruise missiles is that the decision to
use them can be taken instantaneously without consulting
anybody else. It is, therefore, impossible that the US would
wish to install them if they were subject to somebody else's
veto.
  However, the fundamental reason for rejecting the
weapons in Britain or elsewhere in Europe lies in a flaw at the
heart of NATO's deterrent strategy. That strategy is based on
the proposition that NATO could not withstand a
conventional attack by Warsaw Pact forces with conventional
means alone. Far from possessing cruise and Pershing II
missiles as purely retaliatory weapons after an assault by
SS-20s, the strategy is that it would be NATO that would first
let loose the dogs of nuclear war.
  The acute danger of <1any>1 use of nuclear weapons is that
this could escalate to a full-scale strategic exchange between
the superpowers. This has been emphasised by a series of
British chiefs of the defence staffs, by the chairman of
NATO's military committee, by former US Defence
Secretary Robert McNamara, and by Lord Zuckerman,
formerly chief scientific adviser to the minister of defence and
to the prime minister.
  Instead of increasing the flexibility of our defence forces by
rectifying weaknesses in our conventional defences, the
British government is spending # 10 000 million on the
Trident strategic missile system and is encouraging the US
also to divert resources into dangerous non-essentials like
cruise missiles. By equating cruise with SS-20s, the NATO
governments may feel that they are signalling to the Soviet
Union their preparedness to fight fire with fire. But in reality
this is precisely the approach that is most likely to set Europe
aflame and leave it a burning ruin.
  Nuclear weapons are infectious. The past 30 years have
witnessed both an escalation of the arms race between NATO
and the Warsaw Pact and a proliferating membership of the
nuclear weapons club. The cruise and Pershing II missiles
only aggravate this situation. They are obstacles on the path
to a more sensible defence policy for Britain and NATO.
There is still time for the alliance to rescind its decision of
1979 and turn its attention to more pressing defence
priorities.                                            []
<2MONITOR>2
           <2Museum piece solves palaeontology puzzle>2

            A FOSSIL originally found in the 1920s
     and recently rediscovered in the
      collection of the Institute of Geo-
logical Sciences in Edinburgh, has solved
  a major problem in palaeontology--the
zoological interpretation of conodonts.
  Conodonts are small fossils found in
rocks ranging in age from the Cambrian to
the Triassic (590 to 215 million years ago).
They are straight or curved fossils bearing
close-set "teeth", and some 4000 species
have been described.  Palaeontologists
realised about 50 years ago that the separate
elements were really part of a skeletal
apparatus of some sort--perhaps the jaw
apparatus or gill support structure of
primitive vertebrates or invertebrates. But
conodonts have never been found <1in situ>1 in
in animal, and until Derek Briggs, Euan
Clarkson and Richard Aldridge described
their "find" there was no evidence to
support the speculations concerning the
nature of conodonts <1(Lethaia,>1 vol 16, p 1).
  The fossil was found in the "shrimp
band" of the Granton Sandstones (Lower
Carboniferous, 350 million years ago) on
the shore between Granton and Muirhouse
to the north of Edinburgh. Associated
fossils include several crustaceans, fish,
hydroids (?) and rare nautiloids. The
environment is said to have been a lagoon,
and the "shrimp band" is thought to repre-
sent an episode of sudden flooding by the
sea.
  The specimen is flattened and shows soft
parts as well as the hard phosphatic
conodonts. The body is 40.5 mm long and
worm-like in shape. The head end is broad

and the back end is marked by a tail-fin.
  The conodonts can be seen in the head
region, set back a little and slightly scat-
tered (see figure). A total of nine elements
were seen in the slab and its counterpart

and some more have been exposed by
careful excavation. These give an idea of
the arrangement and orientation of the
conodont apparatus, but an exact restora-
tion is difficult because they are scattered.
  In the posterior part of the body there
appears to be a distinct mid-line streak and
diagonal marks running out from it. A tail-
  fin on one side is marked by closely spaced
  fin rays, but no other fins are preserved.
  In naming the animal, the authors
  attempted to identify the individual
conodont elements. The morphology of
some of these was very like that of
<1Clydagnathus>1 a "creature" known else-
where in the Lower Carboniferous--and
that is what the animal has been called.
  The relationships of the conodont
animal are now a little clearer, but still not
certain. The slender eel-shaped body and
tail-fins could indicate affinities with
chordates or with arrow worms (Phylum
Chaetognatha). The possible segmentation
could be interpreted as traces of muscle
blocks in a chordate model and the midline
trace could be a septum, dividing these
muscle blocks, or a faint trace of, say, the
gut. The segments are harder to explain in
the chaetognath model, and the midline
trace could represent a septum or part of
the gut. In both models, the conodonts
could be interpreted as teeth For grasping
prey--in fact certain conodonts are very
similar to the grasping spines of living
chaetognaths.
    Nevertheless, Briggs, Clarkson and
Aldridge are not confident that the
conodont animal can be placed in either
the Chordita or the Chaetognatha, and
regard it as a separate Phylum Conodonta.
The conodont animal has been found, but
we still don't know what it is.         []


                           <2Scientists make the first plant-animal hybrid>2
SCIENTISTS have become so familiar
with the fine structure of living cells,
that their manipulation and culture now
appear commonplace. Intact chromosomes
can be lifted out of cells for genetic studies;
plant protoplasts (cells devoid of their cell
walls) can be persuaded to grow into whole
plants and much has been learned of plant
metabolism by grafting experiments--for
example the grafting of tomato tops to
potato tubers demonstrated the energy
storing capicity of tubers, although the
--hybrid was of little practical value
hybrids of potato and tomato cells have
also been grown.
    But perhaps the most exiting develop-
ment has been in the sophistication of
techniques used to create novel hybrid cells
from two or more different cell types.
One example of this has been the
production of specific antibodies (mono-
clonals) made by fusing tumour cells and
lymphocytes.
    Now Barry MacDonald and William
Wimpey of the Department of Biology at
the University of Hamburg, have taken
this research to its logical conclusion.
Reporting in <1The Phyrologist>1 1983, vol I,
p 4) they describe their success in
creating the first hybrid from a plant and
animal cell.
    Cell fusion techniques such as those used
in making monoclonal antibodies for
example, have always relied on poly-
ethylene glycol to fuse cell membranes
together. The German researchers how-
ever, owe their bizarre achievement to a
novel technique in which the cells are
hybridised by a "heat-shock" process.

    Placing in electrode into the culture
medium and delivering an extremely short
burst of current (a matter of nanoseconds)
they found that the two different cell types
fused together in pairs. (If the electrodes
were immersed in the solution long
enough, a stable temperature of over 200C
would be reached). The medium contains a
high concentration of long chain poly-
unsaturated fats, similar to those found in
some natural vegetable products. Cell pairs
were removed, placed on nutrient agar and
incubated in a warm (40-C) oven. By
experimenting with the duration of incu-
bation they found that fusion occurred
after only a few hours, and that viable
hybrids could be grown in a liquid culture
medium containing glucose, monosodium
glutamate, a mixture of vitamins, sodium
chloride and extracts of <1Raphanus brassica>1
(common mustard).
    Using these techniques MacDonald and
Wimpey have fused cells of <1Lycopersicon>1
<1esculentum>1 with cells of <1Bos taurus.>1 The
resulting hybrid grows like its tomato
parent hut develops a tough leathery skin.
Field trials have shown that the mature
--plant" has an otherwise normal foliage,
although its flowers are pollinated only by
horseflies. After fertilisation though, the
flowers develop extraordinary clumps of
discus-shaped bodies--microscopic exam-
ination showes that these bodies are a true
hybrid of animal protein sandwiched
between a thin envelope of tomato fruit.
   Attempts are now being made by the
authors to cross these hybrids with wheat
cells, hopefully to produce a wheat-tomato-
cow "superhybrid". Whether or not the
fruits of such a hybrid could be commer-
cially exploited is not yet clear, however
MacDonald and Wimpey feel that they are
on to something very exciting.
   With the soaring costs of producing meat
and feedstuffs for cattle, the animal-plant
hybrids may well have a promising future.
It would <1be foolish>1 to dismiss this remark-
able innovation out of hand.          []


                 <2Have termites increased atmospheric methane?>2

THE methane content of the atmos-
phere is increasing at a rate of 1.7 per
cent a year. The rise began 400 years ago,
following  27 000  years   of  stability.
Whatever the cause of this increase, it may
be contributing almost half as much as
carbon dioxide in the global greenhouse
effect.
   Although it is well established from
modern observations that the methane
content of the atmosphere is increasing at a
rate of 1.7 per cent per year, about 600
billion kg, accurate measurements go back
only 15 years. In an attempt to extend the
methane data, H. Craig and C. C. Chou, of
the Isotope Laboratory at Scripps Institute
of Oceanography in San Diego, have anal-
ysed the methane content of the air bubbles
trapped in ice samples drilled from the
glacier in southern Greenland. The samples
      go back over 30 000 years, and they show
that after being constant for most of that
time the methane concentration began to
increase in 1580 (<1Geophysical Research>1
<1Letters,>1 vol 9. p 1221)
   At the end of the 16th century, the meth-
ane concentration began increasing at a
rate of 0.114 ppmv per century (parts per
million by volume) and around 1915 the
rate accelerated to the present figure of 2.5
ppmv per century--if the data can be taken
at face value.
   The assumption is that methane in the
air bubbles trapped in ice remains
unchanged for 30 000 years, and this may
be incorrect. However. the data suggest a
change in atmospheric composition that
could be linked with dramatic changes in
human activity, first starting in the
Elizabethan age and then in this century.
An increase in livestock, and larger areas
turned over to rice production, are possible
contributors to this effect; a smaller
contribution could come from termites.
   Deforestation provides suitable environ-
ment for termites to spread and increase
their population. R. A. Rasmussen and
M. A. K. Khalil, of Oregon Graduate
Center in Beaverton, Oregon, recently
reported a study showing that one termite
produces 0.9 micrograms of methane per
day. If all termites in the world behave like
those in their lab, they might together be
prcducing between 10 and 90 million
million grams a year <1(Nature,>1 vol 301.
   p 700). It sounds impressive, but this is only
   2-15 per cent of the present annual
   increase, and it is pure guesswork how
   much of the termite production represents
   an increase caused by deforestation.
   So we don't need to worry too much
   about the termites. Perhaps, though, we
   should worry about the overall build-up of
   methane. According to Craig and Chou, it
   is already contributing 0.23oC to mean
   global temperatures through the green-
   house effect, and this is almost 40 per cent
   of the possible (but not yet confirmed)
   effect of carbon dioxide today.        []
                      <2The purpose of porpoising>2
                      WHY do dolphins
       leap?  Well
apart from allowing
them to breathe, and
apart from the sheer
fun of it, it appears
that by leaping out of
the water they actu-
ally conserve energy
when swimming at
high speeds <1(Journal>1
<1of the Marine Biolig->1
<1ical Association>1. vol
63.p61).
   R. W. Blake in the
Zoology Department
of the University of British Columbia, who
made the discovery, has even come up with
a name for the strategy. He suggests that the
term "porpoising" should be used to
describe any aquatic animal that leaps out
of the water and uses less energy than it
would if it were surface swimming at the
same speed. (There is some transatlantic
confusion in the name as the British call
    species with beaks "dolphins" and those
without beaks "porpoises", whereas this is
reversed across the water.)
  Blake has calculated that for speeds of up
to 2 1/2 metres per second, it is more efficient
for dolphins to swim at the surface. At
greater speeds they have a choice; they can
either swim at a greater depth (away from
the influence of surface drag) or resort to
their "aquabatics".  Porpoising becomes
more efficient after the animal has reached

                    an underwater speed
                    of 5-3 m/s.
                      Blake's mathemat-
                    ical models predict
                    that dolphins, killer
                    whales and even
                    some penguins can
                    porpoise.
                      The animals need
                    more   energy    to
                    propel themselves if
                    the water around
                    them is turbulent
                    rather than laminar
                    and Blake predicts
                    that dolphins are
able to reach crossover speeds even if
surrounded by a turbulent layer of water.
The much larger killer whales can porpoise
only if the surrounding water is laminar, or
at most half turbulent.
  Other aquatic animals, such as baleen
whales and penguins,  which swim with
smaller body undulations are subject to less
drag, and as a result have relatively high
crossover speeds. In order to porpoise,
baleen whales must reach four times their
normal cruising speed--probably beyond
their capabilities.
  Fish cannot swim fast enough for long
enough and so cannot porpoise--but they
do not need to surface for air and so can
swim at depth to reduce drag. Although
flying fish leap out of the water they do not
porpoise but glide, using their pectoral fins
as aerodynamic surfaces.                []
<2Codeine without morphine>2

THE     OPIUM    poppy.           <1Papaver>1
<1somniferum,>1 is the only commercial
source of codeine, an alkaloid widely used
in cough suppressants and pain killers.
Unfortunately,  much of the opium
produced by the plants ends up in the
bloodstreams of drug addicts.  Many
people throughout the world eat or smoke
opium, the air-dried latex of the plant.
And morphine from opium is illegally
converted to the highly addictive drug.
heroin,   widely   abused   in    Western
societies. But an end to illicit traffiking
in these drugs may be at hand.  Crop
scientists at Oregon State University, led
by Majid Seddigh, report that another
poppy, <1Papaver bracteatum>1, produes an
alkaloid that can be chemically converted
into codeine, but cannot be readily
changed into illicit drugs <1(Economic>1
<1Botany.>1 vol 36. p 433).
   The alkaloid.  thebaine, can be easily
converted into codeine by demethylation.
But morphine, the precursor for heroin.
can be obtained from thebaine only by a
series of elaborate and inefficient chemi-
cal processes.
       <1Papaver bracteatum>1 appears to be a
commercially viable alternative to the
opium poppy.  Native to Iran and
southern Russia, it is well-suited to
growing conditions in Europe,  North
America, Israel and India. Furthermore,
<1P. bracteatum>1 can provide up to 37 kg of
codeine per hectare, compared with the
opium poppy's much lower yield of 3 kg
per hectare. And the new poppy is some-
what cheaper to grow,  the researchers
find. The seeds may also be a lucrative
source of high quality seed oil, rich in
unsaturated fatty acids.               []


     <2How selfish DNA promotes its own survival>2

 IT IS now a little more than three years
     since four biologists caused a minor
uproar among molecular geneticists by
publishing in <1Nature>1 two papers in which
they argued that a substantial proportion of
the DNA of animal cells may exist for no
higher purpose than its own propagation.
The uproar was no doubt stimulated in part
by the authorship of the articles, which
included Francis Crick, but also reflected
the outraged resistance of many biologists
to the concept of "selfish DNA".
  Lately however, many of its opponents
have been getting used to the idea. Just as
well, because according to some recent
investigations  by   American   biologist
Philip Shaa, an extensive family of DNA
sequences with every appearance of the
most blindly go-getting selfishness is
probably at large in the chromosomes of
all mammalian species, including our own
(<1Nature>1, vol. 301, p 471).
  The idea of selfish DNA was originally
inspired by the so-called transposons of
bacteria.  Transposons are fragments of
DNA that seem to have evolved the ability
to reduplicate themselves independently of
the chromosomes in which they are inte-
grated, and to re-integrate duplicate copies
in other parts of the chromosome. This
behaviour undoubtedly enhances the
survival of the transposon, but--as Crick,
with Leslie Orgel, Ford Doolittle and
Carmen Sapienza argued, it doesn't neces-
sarily do much for the bacterium in which
the transposon is a passenger. Provided that
it did no positive harm, they reckoned, it
could spread unchecked under its own
impetus.
  But they didn't confine their specu-
lations to bacterial transposons--or even to
plants and fruit-flies, which are now known
to harbour similar transposable elements.
The suggestion that caused the fuss was a
great deal of the DNA in mammalian cells,
which doesn't it first glance look particu-
larly transposable, might have a similarly
selfish character. In particular, mammalian
chromosomes are infested with large
families of highly repetitive DNA of no
known function <1(New Scientist,>1 vol 96, p
664) that, according to the tenets of selfish
genetics, may contribute to nothing but its
own propagation.
  What molecular geneticists--among
them Sharp--have now discovered is that
one of these families does in fact have some
of the hallmarks of a transposon, and more-
over has special properties that would tend
to promote its expansion in succeeding
generations.
  The family in question is called Alu,
after the DNA-cutting enzyme through
which it is detected; and its transposon-like
feature lies at its ends.  The ends of
transposable sequences have a sort of
molecular signature consisting of short
stretches of DNA that are direct repeats of
one another. These terminal direct repeats
are believed to be generated by the mech-
anism through which migrating trans-
posons reinsert themselves into the
chromosomal DNA. Several Alu-family
sequences have now been found flanked by
terminal repeats.
  But if the terminal repeats explain how
wandering members of the Alu family
might get into a chromosome, what can
explain how they came to be wandering in
the first place?
  Sharp's explanation is that they travelled
via an RNA copy. It is no new idea that
RNA copies of genes can be copied back
again into DNA and reinserted into new
positions. But it just so happens that the
Alu family is particularly well equipped to
spread by this route. And its advantage lies
in the particular enzyme by which it is tran-
scribed into RNA.
  Real genes, that encode proteins, are
transcribed by an enzyme (polymerese II)
that has to recognise a DNA sequence
outside the gene itself: once it has located
that, it will travel along the DNA until it
has copied the entire gene into RNA. But
Alu sequences are not transcribed by poly-
merase II: instead they are copied by the
enzyme (polymerese III) that produces the
specialised RNAs--(ribosomal and transfer
RNAs) that are never translated into
proteins themselves but participate in the
translation of other RNAs.  And poly-
merase III recognises a sequence <1inside>1 the
genes it transcribes.
  This means, in effect, that each Alu
sequence that inserts itself into the chromo-
somes carries with it the means to get out
again and reinsert itself somewhere else. Of
course, if the migrating Alu sequences are
to spread to succeeding generations of
animals, this cycle must take place in the
cells that give rise to the sperm or eggs. But
in fact, the egg cells are quite the most
likely place for the cycle to occur--because
egg cells go through a phase of very high
and relatively indiscriminate transcrip-
tional activity when numerous RNA copies
are made of a great deal of DNA including
some of the Alu sequences.
  All the Alu RNA needs then is an
enzyme to transcribe it back into DNA.
Such enzymes do exist--they are known as
reverse transcriptases--but they are gener-
ally believed to be exclusive to RNA
viruses, which need them to transcribe their
RNA genes into DNA for replication inside
cells. However, if the Alu transcripts can
once in a while, borrow the reverse
transcriptase of a passing virus, there is
nothing to stop them from propagating in
increasing numbers in generation after
generation of mammals. And it is thus per-
haps not surprising that there are already so
many of them among our genes.        []


<2Where comet jets come from>2


Bright jets of material sometimes
  spurt from the nuclei of comets. It
seems only logical that these jets come from
active regions of the comet's surface. Not
so, says Fred L. Whipple of the Harvard
University--Smithsonian Institution Center
for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massa-
chusetts. He believes that the jets come
from areas where material is evaporating
from the surface more slowly than in
surrounding regions.
  It was Whipple who in 1950 originated
the "dirty snowball" theory of cometary
structure, which remains widely accepted
today.  According to that picture, the
comet's nucleus is a frozen ball of ice and
solidified gases, including dust and rocks.
  Earlier studies of comets jets, focused
on the short-period comet Swift-Tuttle,
showed that they were made up of dust
particles of about one micrometer in
diameter. A detailed analysis showed that
the jets came from eight small, fixed areas
on the surface of the comet's nucleus.
Those areas were originally considered to
be unusually active. However, Whipple says
that assumption leads to predictions of gas
and dustproduction rates much smaller than
those observed, and also would be unable
to account for the formation of the Perseid
meteor shower, linked with the comet.
  The narrowness of the jets indicates that
the dust flow is being confined by some
other effect probably gas evaporating from
the surrounding areas, according to
Whipple, who points out that broad,
unconfined fan-shaped jets are rare. He
believes that the jets may originate from
"dikes"--a geological term for tilted strata
or layers or others particularly dusty areas
which might stick up from the surrounding
surface. The faster evaporation of the
surrounding material might undermine the
slower-evaporating dusty regions.  The
undermined regions probably would have
little mechanical strength, and eventually
would collapse even in the comet's weak
gravity, resulting in bursts of activity. []
<2TECHNOLOGY>2
                         <2Video wars.  Europe's last stand>2
PHILIPS,    the         Dutch    electrical
company, is fighting a desperate battle
     to maintain a toehold in the Japanese-
dominated market for video recorders and
digital audio-disc players in Europe.
  The company has spent #1 million
buying pre-recorded tapes in its V2000

format from film companies at the full
trade price of up to #50 each, and selling
them to dealers at #7 in an effort to get
shops to stock Philips recorders. But, with
rental companies such as Britain's Thorn-
EMI backing the Japanese VHS system, the
market share for Europe's only manu-
facturer of recorders is still around 5 per
cent in Britain and 20 per cent in Western
Europe as a whole.
  Now Philips wants the EEC to take a
hand in holding back the tide of Japanese
machines, some of which, it says, are being
"dumped" in Europe at below cost-price.
  The Japanese have now agreed to sell
only 4-55 million VHS and Beta recorders

in Europe every year, and to raise prices to
those of Philips and its manufacturing
partner Grundig.    In 1982, Japanese
companies sold 4-95 million video record-
ers in Europe--roughly half their total sales.
                    This, the EEC hopes,
                    will give Philips and
                    Grundig a "guaran-
                    teed sale" of 1-2
                    million recorders a
                    year.
                       Although       the
                    Japanese       could
                    object under EEC law
                    that this is artificial
                    price fixing, they are
                    secretly not unhappy.
                    Up to now, com-
                    petition among the
                    Japanese has kept
                    prices down.  The
                    price hike means
                    larger profits, and a
                    guarantee of demand
                    for their recorders.
                       But the Japanese
                    are less happy about
Philips's other plan. This is to double the
EEC's import tariff on Compact Disc digi-
tal audio-disc players from 9-5 per cent to
19 per cent. Last year Philips petitioned
Brussels for this price rise, without even
telling Sony, the Japanese company that
helped it develop the digital disc system.
The EEC should decide soon whether to
raise the prices, and help Philips sell more
European players.
  The move was necessary, Philips said,
because some Japanese companies were
threatening to sell Compact Disc players at
"absurdly low prices". Philips says that
although it holds patents on the system,
and must license any firm that wants to sell
players, the company put no clause in the
licence to control undercutting. So Philips
must hit even its own partner, Sony, with a
double tariff.
   In Japan, the recent moves in the video
wars have a cutting edge. The EEC's vice
president, Wilhelm Haferkamp negotiated
the restrictions on Japanese trade.  In
March 1979 Haferkamp visited Tokyo to
discuss trade restrictions of a type the EEC
is now imposing. He took with him a secret
report which was leaked to the Japanese
press. It described the Japanese as "work
maniacs" and their homes as --rabbit
hutches".  Even now, four years later,
Japanese businessmen quote this insult
with a mixture of anger and shame.     []


               <2Wonder glass>2

EXCITING applications are beginning
      to emerge for dissolving glass, a mat-
erial discovered accidentally in a telephone
company's laboratory. They include a new
way of controlling waterborne diseases, and
of administering drugs to people with
chronic diseases.
   Cyril Drake, a chemist at Standard Tele-
phone Laboratories, developed dissolving
glass while working on new insulating
materials for switches. It is made by heating
phosphorous, calcium and sodium oxides
in a platinum crucible at 1100oC. Unlike
conventional glass, it contains no silicon
oxide.
   Its special property is that its chemical
composition can be adjusted so it dissolves
in water, soil, or human tissues at any
predetermined rate. And as it dissolves, it
releases at the same rate any compounds
mixed in with it.
   The first use of controlled-release
dissolving glass will probably be in the
control of schistosomiasis (bilharzia). Dr
John Jewsbury of the Liverpool School of
Tropical Medicine has shown that glass
impregnated with copper kills the water
snails that carry the disease, without affect-
ing other orginisms. Jewsbury says the
glass is as good as any slow-release
medium--and it is much cheaper than
others that have been developed.
   Although schistosomiasis rarely kills
people, its debilitating effect is a burden to
many countries in the Third World. Drake
and Jewsbury have already tried out the
copper-impregnated glass in Zambia, and
plan to return there this year to carry out
large-scale trials in village ponds and
streams.
   Another use could be in agriculture.
Glass could be impregnated with inorganic
pesticides, then ploughed into the land. Or
pellets impregnated with trace elements
could improve the diets of cattle in impov-
erished pastures similar pellets would
protect cattle from parasites.
   A lot of work will have to be done before
human beings start taking drugs in
dissolving glass. But in a few years it could
find applications in the long-term treat-
ment of parasitic diseases, and even as a
contraceptive pill.                      []
     <2Japan trips the light fantastic>2

A HUGE ORDER of powerful lasers has
      spotlighted Japan's confidence that
laser beams can replace mechanical cutting
tools in many industries. Spectra-Physics of
California is delivering 150 carbon dioxide
lasers, each capable of delivering 1-2 kW, at
a rate of three or four a month to a Japanese
industrial equipment firm, Amada.
 Lasers are an economic way to slice mild
steel if designs require complex shapes.
They are also useful in --flexible manu-
facturing systems"--robots that can be
programmed to do a variety of jobs.
 The Spectra-Physics lasers are going into
Amada's new metal cutter, the Lasmac
644.  So far, Japanese companies have
bought 700 Lasmacs (Toyota is a big
customer), and US companies 25. "As far
as the UK is concerned," said Keith Stand-
ford of Amada in England, "it's in dispute
which particular model will eventually be
on sale here. We expect to take delivery
some time after June."
  The cutting tool works by moving the
metal under a fixed laser. The metal can
move up to 1-9 metres in one direction,
with unlimited movement in the other. A
lens focusses the beam to a power of 10MW
per square centimetre--enough to cut
through 6 mm of mild steel or 3 mm of
stainless steel. The company has tried to cut
mild steel 12 mm thick, but the finish was
very rough.
  Amada is Japan's largest supplier of
metal processing machinery, with a turn-
over of #300 million in 1982. Each Lasmac
costs around #200 000.
  Japan's ubiquitous Ministry of Inter-
national Trade and Industry, better known
as MITI, is encouraging companies to try
out lasers as cutting, welding and annealing
tools. The ministry is spending about #1
million a year on lasers--and some of this
money has gone on buying equipment
from   Spectra-Physics   for     Japanese
companies to try out. Other cash has gone
to Mitsubishi and Toshiba for each to
develop a 5 kW laser. Mitsubishi has built
a 10 kW model on its own, and may
develop a 20 kW machine.                []


         <2Japan invests in adventurous robots.>2

THE JAPANESE government is about to
  launch a scheme to develop robots to
work in "extreme environments", for
instance in nuclear reactors. The Ministry
of International Trade and Industry (MITI)
has set aside #140000 for its first project
directly related to robots. It will run for a
year, beginning next month.
   The ministry has already sounded out
robot firms about joining the project,
which will bring government laboratories
universities and research institutes together
with the private sector.  Among the
companies that could take part are:
Mitsui Engineering and Shipbuilding;
Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries;
Nippon Electric Company; and the robot-
makers   Fanuc,   Yaskawa       Electric,
Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Komatsu.
"Extreme environment" robots do such
work as inspecting and maintaining
nuclear power plants, developing the
seabed, and working in space. Trade unions
are quite happy to see workers replaced in
dangerous locations. Numerous workers
for subcontracting companies died building
Japan's power stations, for example.
   Japan's Industrial Robots Association
thinks that demand for inspection and
maintenance robots in the country's
nuclear industry will grow to #53-25
million in 1985. Last year Toshiba and
Hitachi joined hands with six Japanese
utilities and two nuclear power plants in a
#33-6 million plan to develop robots to
monitor heavy plant. Mitsubishi already
has a robot for cleaning sea water intakes at
power stations.
   Once the world's nations can agree on
how to exploit mineral deposits on the sea-
bed, the robots association expects the
market for robots to do the job to be #4.2
million in 1985, rising to #35-9 million by
1990. Robots for civil engineering will be
worth #23 million by the same year, the
association calculates.
   But the biggest demand for non-
manufacturing robots will be in the more
mundane fields of warehousing and trans-
port. The robot association calculates this
will be worth #35.9 million by 1990.    []


             <2Last fling for the analogue gramophone?>2
HIFI enthusiasts who do not want to be
      involved in new-fangled digital tech-
nology now have a fresh analogue
controversy to get their teeth into.
   The Massachusetts hi fi firm NAD has
launced what it modestly calls L'GAT--the
last great analogue turntable.  It was
designed in Czechoslavakia, analysed by a
Boston think-tank, refined by a German
designer livingin the US and is being
factured by the Tesla factory at Litovel,
Czechoslovakia. The production tools were
made in Yorkshire.
   All designers of hi fi gramophones face
the same problem.  The pickup's stylus
must faithfully track undulations which are

smaller than the wavelengh of light. To
stop the turntable behaving like a seis-
mcgraph, it is suspended on isolating
springs. But these have a natural resonant
frequency, ideally around 4Hz, and if this
matches a natural resonance of the pickup
arm, there is a disastrous amplification of
background noise or rumble.
   The snag is that the arm's resonance
varies with the compliance, or springiness,
of the pickup cartridge, which the hi fi
enthusiast fits. With bad luck the
resonances match and interact.
   Traditionally, designers have made the
pickup arm from a rigid tube to curb flex-
ing.  But good tubular arms are very
expensive. In Czechoslovakia, where not
much exotic hi fi is available, enthusiast Jin-
Janda designed a cheaper alternative. He
used a thin flat arm which is laterally stiff
but vertically flexible. In Boston, NAD
came up with a sprung counterweight
which the owner can adjust to cancel out
the vertical resonance of the arm.
   NAD says L'GAT is the first East-West
collaboration on a consumer electronics
product. It costs #100, which is quarter the
price of the best hi fi turntable. British
audio experts are suspicious of the design
theory but acknowledge that NAD has a
good track record for making inexpensive
products that sound good.   []
           <2Dynamic dons>2
UNIVERSITIES that build science
      parks and --innovation centres" as a
way of establishing links with business
could be going about things in the wrong
way, according to a new report*. After a
study of academic enterprise in the US,
Matthew Bullock of Barclays Bank,
concludes that specific "technology transfer
mechanisms" are less important than the
willingness of universities to allow their
academics to work for industry "on the
side".
   Bullock's report says companies that
emerge from such university environments
follow a distinctive pattern of development.
They start as technical consultancies, then
move toward the development of a specific
product. These "soft companies" are easy
to start because they need little in the way
of capital or staff, and they are less prone to
failure than companies oriented toward
"hard" products.
   Unfortunately for would-be tycoons,
very few research-based acorns grow into
full industrial oaks. Most successful com-
panies are bought out by large customers
who see them as a way of getting into new
technologies.  This, in turn, encourages
enterpreneurs to "recycle" themselves--to
leave the large companies and start again.   []


                 <2Computers save laboratory animals>2

   COMPUTERS are replacing animals in
      experiments by students at a teaching
   hospital in Texas.The computer--an Apple
11 Plus--replicates physiological functions
which students normally observe in
experimental animals.
   The animal's physiological functions are
converted to a series of mathematical equa-
tions, which are entered into the computers
as a program. The computer continues to
solve the equations, providing a complete
series of new values each time an individual
value is changed.
   The Integrated Functional Laboratory of
the University of Texas Medical Branch at
Galveston is trying this approach. The lab-
oratory integrates experimental work from
basic science courses epecially physiology,
biochemistry, and phamacology.
   The greatest number of animal experi-
ments that the computers are taking over
are in cardiovascular studies, including one
involving   shock.   Other   experiments
involve the respiratory system, the nervous
system, renal physiology and diuretics,
   digestion and liver function, and the phar-
macology of the uterus.

   Dr James Walker, assistant director of
the labotatory, estimates that the four
computers will pay for themselves in two
years because they reduce the high cost of
buying, housing and feeding experimental
animals.
   Computers also save time. The equip-
ment is continuously available and no
special scheduling is required, as is often
the case with animals. The time to do
experiments is also cut; the computer
compresses into a matter of minutes reac-
tion times that could take hours in animals.
   Walker says experimental results are now
more consistent with textbook information
and previous lectures. "We don't face the
problems we have with some experimental
animals, such as heartworms in dogs, which
can often ruin an experiment before it
really gets underway."
   The medical students are also being
saved a moral dilemma. Walker says that
although the animals were fully
anaesthetised, some students believed they
were suffering "Of course, there is no
similar emotional reaction when the com-
puter takes the place of the animal."    []
                 <2Classroom boost for Prestel>2
BRITAIN'S Department of Industry
     (Dol) is about to announce a scheme
that will give Prestel a much-needed shot in
the arm. As an extension to its offer to
provide half the cost of a microcomputer in
every school, the department will back
Prestel, British Telecom's viewdata service,
as a medium for carrying educational soft-
ware. The scheme could also shorten the
life of a similar project involving the BBC's
Ceefax teletext service.
   In recent weeks, the 14 regional centres
of the Microcomputers in Education
Programme (MEP) have received a batch of
teletext adaptors from Acorn Computers of
Cambridge. The adaptors will allow schools
equipped with BBC microcomputers--
which Acorn also makes--to "download"
programs provided free via Ceefax.
   Brighton Polytechnic has made an even
bigger commitment to the scheme: it has
distributed 20 adaptors to local schools,
and expects to double the number of adap-
tors in its field trial in the near future. The
aim of the exercise is to show that schools
can have free (bar the cost of the adaptor)
and easy access to a range of educational
software.
   There are drawbacks. Schools that have
bought computers approved by the Dol
but made by other firms, for instance
Sinclair or Research Machines, cannot buy
adaptors.  Only the BBC machine will
handle teletext. Even the BBC admits the
Acorn adaptors are expensive at #225 (and
some educationalists close to the MEP
scheme complain that they are not buying
recent technology). And once programs are
provided on Ceefax there is no way that the
people who wrote the software can recoup
the cost from the final users--the schools.
   In effect, the BBC is organising a near-

monopoly on software provided through
television sets, and Acorn is the only
supplier of adaptors to make the service
possible.
   But Prestel, a computer-linked rather
than broadcast service, and those
organisations that provide and sell infor-
mation via adapted televisions, are promis-
ing competitors in the business of
"telesoftware". The cost of adapting a TV
set to receive Prestel can be relatively low.
The Micronet service, organised by the
publishing houses EMAP and ECC with
Prestel, will adapt a set for #50 plus a low
quarterly charge, and provide programs for
microcomputers at low or no cost.
   Software publishers can charge for
programmes via Prestel's response pages,
and provide the back-up information that
more complex software requires. Because
teletext relies on broadcast signals, it
cannot be interactive.
   The problem for Prestel is its dire
commercial performance since its intro-
duction in 1979. The number of TV sets
adapted for Prestel has crept up to 24 000,
and only 4000 of those do not belong to
businesses.  Prestel's introduction of a
cheap, off-peak scheme, and the recent
introduction of Micronet have pulled in
only "a few hundred" extra domestic
subscribers.  Teletext--Ceefax and the
ITV companies' Oracle--is a fairly big
success.
   But Prestel does seem to have made a
convincing case for its role in educational
computing. A service based on Prestel
would be available to all schools, no matter
what computers they had chosen, and
many teachers are keen to adapt Prestel,
despite its limitations, to a wider use in
schools. []
             <2Computer call-up>2

                          WHEN engineers working for the
Tokyo gas company, get a telephone
call in the middle of the night, the chances
are that a computer will be at the other end.
The company this month recruited a
computer and voice-recognition chips to
mobilise workers when an emergency
occurs at night or during a holiday.
   When the engineers are needed, all the
duty staff have to do is call the computer
through an office terminal, and enter the
type of emergency. The computer goes
through its list of 7000 engineers and site
workers, classified into five groups
depending on location and qualifications,
and decides how many to call.
   Each employee has a code word, which
the computer's voice recognition chip
checks. If the right person answers, a pre-
recorded message asks him whether he is
available and gives information on the
emergency. With 16 telephone lines, the
system can call 150 people, get their
responses, and print out a list in under
20 minutes.  And if the wrong person
answers, or the engineer cannot give the
code word, the computer apologises for the
disturbance and hangs up.              []


             <2Sound of history>2

            AFTER a 35-year gestation period,
      Britain's National Sound Archive is
finally opening early in April.
   The British Institute of Recorded Sound
conceived the idea at a conference just
after the war, and the record companies
EMI and Decca backed the scheme
with a few hundred pounds. But because
there is no legal requirement to deposit
records (as with books) the institute has
had to rely on voluntary donations over
the years. Despite this, it has amassed
over 400000 discs and 20000 hours of
tape.
   Although the institute now has a staff of
28 at its Kensington headquarters, it copes
with the collection only because few people
know about the free public listening service
that it offers. But now the British Library is
to provide cash and storage space, and help
with a computerised catalogue.
   The public now has a better chance of
listening to treasures such as the massive
40-cm 78-rpm discs cut during the
Nuremburg Trials, or the 40 hours of tape
recorded during the <10z>1 trial. But visitors
will still not be able to hear a clutch of tapes
that the School of Scottish Studies donated.
They were given on the express condition
that they will never be played.          []
           <2Astronomy--the next space race>2


<2As the European Space Agency chooses its next astronomy satellite this week, the 1980s promise a>2
    <2"space race" where the leaders will not be the United States, but Europe and Japan>2

                  <2Nigel Henbest>2


THE EXCITING new astronomical knowledge we have
gained over the past decade has come largely from
satellites. The Earth's atmosphere blocks off all radiation
from space other than light and radio waves (and some
infrared wavelengths), so only optical and radio telescopes
can see the heavens through clear "windows". We must lift
detectors above the atmosphere to study gamma rays, X-rays,
ultraviolet and long infrared radiations. But the dozens of
optical and radio observatories on the ground are
complernented by very few astronomy satellites. At the begin-
ning of 1983, there were only two, both of which are over four
years old. The International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) is still
recording high-quality ultraviolet spectra, and the small
Japanese X-ray satellite Hakucho monitors the sky for bursts
of X-radiation.
   IUE and Hakucho are the survivors from the great
flourishing of space astronomy satellites in the late 1970s,
when the United States led the field with the three huge High
Energy Astrophysical Observatories (HEAO). The second
HEAO was the Einstein Observatory, which produced the
first pictures of astronomical objects at X-ray wavelengths.
The era ended abruptly in the first two years of the 1980s,
when almost every astronomical satellite reached the end of
its life. X-ray astronomers lost the Einstein Observatory and
the British Ariel VI satellite. NASA's Copernicus ultraviolet
satellite was shut down after a record eight-year lifespan.
Gamma-ray astronomers were left totally bereft, with the
demise of the American HEAO-3 and the outstandingly
successful European survey satellite COS-B.
   This year however marks the rebirth of space astronomy
for the 1980s. Two new satellites have already been launched,
and plans are now firm for the rest of the decade and into the
early 1990s. The perspective of the 1980s however is strik-
ingly different from the 1970s. No longer is the United States
the single dominating power. With increasing costs and
generally static science budgets, international collaboration
has become the order of the decade.
   The first launch of the year, on 26 January, typifies the new
collaborative era. The Infrared Astronomical Satellite, IRAS,
was first conceived by the Dutch. But its price tag of around
#100 million made it too expensive for a purely national
project, and the cost has been split between three countries
with Britain and the US joining the Netherlands. In contrast,
the Japanese launched a second X-ray satellite, Tenma
(Astro-B). in February as a national project. But Tenma is still
a relatively cheap and simple satellite, and Japan is looking to
Britain for collaboration on its successor, Astro-C, due for
launch in 1987.
   The costs involved in astronomy satellites cover much
  more than the detectors or telescopes and even the cheapest
astronomical satellite now costs around #60 million. Launch
on the American space shuttle, the European Ariane or an
American Delta costs between #15 and #20 million. The
satellite system that supports the telescope costs at least #20
million: this includes the solar panels for power, control
systems to swing the telescope from one object to another,
tape recorders to store data, and communications links to the
ground. The receiving ground station may cost #10 million to
install and operate over the satellite's lifetime. The amount
spent on the telescope itself--say # 10 million--is only a minor
part of the total expense!
   European astronomers have collaborated for many years
through the European Space Agency, which provides some
space-science programme. This money can provide one
"medium class" satellite every 18 months.
   At present ESA has an X-ray satellite, Exosat, ready for
launch, and is building an optical astronomy satellite called
Hipparcos <1(New Scientist,>1 vol 95, p 31). The agency is also
constructing two craft to explore the Solar System. Giotto will
fly to Halley's comet in 1986, and photograph it at close
quarters. The International Solar Polar Mission is designed to
fly "over" the Sun, and was originally one of a pair of craft,
but its American partner was cancelled in President Ronald
Reagan's first budget. In addition, ESA is contributing 1.5 per
cent of the cost of the mainly-American Space Telescope,
which will total #600 million.
   With these projects under way for launch by 1987, ESA is
now in a position to choose its next major space science
mission.  This was the task this week of the Science
Programme Committee, composed of delegates from each of
ESA's member states. Five proposals were originally short-
listed. Two of these missions were Solar System explorers and
therefore came under the scrutiny of ESA's Solar System
Working Group. Kepler, a spacecraft to orbit Mars and study
the planet's atmosphere, magnetic field and gravitational
field, would have been the first European planetary mission.
Disco, on the other hand, was intended to study the Sun from
the Earth's vicinity and provide a sideways-on look at
our local star while the International Solar Polar Mission craft
flew over the top. Last month, the Solar System Working
Group opted for Disco.
   Meanwhile, the agency's Astronomy Working Group was
assessing three proposals. A new X-ray astronomy satellite,
X-80, was designed to study variations in the intensity of
X-ray sources and to investigate their spectra in detail. Mag-
ellan was an ultraviolet spectral satellite, to extend IUE's
work to very short wavelengths. But the working group settled
on the third satellite: the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO).

   Disco or ISO? That was the question the Science Pro-
        gramme Committee had to consider yesterday--and all the
indications were in favour of ISO. The project was helped
enormously by the launch of IRAS earlier this year, and its
spectacular success. IRAS has proved in particular that a
liquid-helium cooling system can work in space; and its cata-
logue of newly-discovered sources--expected to eventually
total a quarter of a million--is inviting a longer-term detailed
investigation by a specialised infrared observatory.
   A superficial description of ISO does not sound very
different from IRAS. Its telescope will have a mirror 60 cm
across, and will be cooled by liquid helium to a temperature
of only a few degrees above absolute zero; and its detectors
will be sensitive to wavelengths up to a maximum of 120
micrometres. But IRAS is only a survey telescope, with
simple detectors and a planned lifetime of around seven
months, during which its main task is to sweep the entire sky
and catalogue the sources it finds. ISO, on the other hand, is
an observatory. Like observatories on the ground, or the
orbiting IUE, ISO will be pointed to particularly interesting
astronomical objects for thorough study. To achieve this ISO
must have a longer lifetime than IRAS.
   Infrared telescopes must be cooled to within a few degrees
of absolute zero to prevent their own heat radiation from
swamping the faint signals from space: hence the liquid-
helium cooling systems which make infrared satellites com-
plex and expensive. Once the coolant has all evaporated, the
telescope warms up and is useless. ISO uses 100 kg of super
fluid liquid helium at 3K to cool the detectors and the tele-
scope. but--unlike IRAS--it also carries 50 kg of slightly-
warmer liquid hydrogen to provide the bulk of the cooling for
the satellite. The lifetime of ISO should be at least 1 1/2 years.
and judging by the success of the IRAS system it may well be
2 1/2 years--as long, for example, as the Einstein X-ray Obser-
vatory survived. (IRAS, incidentally, is now expected to last
for 11 months, until Boxing Day, with a 2 per cent chance of
surviving into 1984.) ISO will follow an elliptical orbit taking
it from 1000 to 39 000 km above the Earth's surface and will
complete one orbit every 12 hours. Instead of recording data
it will transmit them back continuously to tracking stations at
Villafranca, in Spain and Carnavon in Australia.
   The sources that ISO will be investigating will generally be
clouds of dust in space, with temperatures from a few hun-
dred degrees down to only 30 K. The warmer dust clouds are
found close to stars, either in dark nebulae adjacent to stars
that have just formed, or in the ejected shells of matter from
old stars, called planetary nebulae. Long-wavelength infrared
comes from cooler clouds that are just beginning to contract
to form stars. ISO should reveal for the first time the fine
details of star-birth.
   Many galaxies beyond our own also emit a large proportion
of their radiation--sometimes most of it--as infrared. It can
come from dust between the stars, but distant quasars and
other active galaxies produce powerful infrared emission
from their cores, which probably contain gas swirling round
a massive black hole. Looking beyond these, and hence
further back in time, ISO may "see" the birth of galaxies soon
after the big bang, something ground-based infrared
astronomers have sought years.
   ISO has three detector systems for astronomers to position
at the telescope's focus to investigate different aspects of
infrared sources. A large semiconductor (indium antimonide)
"chip" divided into 1024 radiation-sensitive segments can
"photograph" the source at the shorter wavelengths of 1 to 5
micrometers. It may be paired with a newly-developed
silicon-bismuth     chip    which    will     simultaneously
"photograph" at 5 to 18 micrometres.
   The second system is a photometer to measure the
brightness of a source simultaneously at 12, 40 and 100
micrometres with three chips made of silicon-gallium,
germanium-beryllium and germanium-gallium respectively.
The photometer also incorporates subdivided chips to
produce crude pictures at these wavelengths. Wire grids can
be inserted in front of the photometer to show the
polarisation produced when infrared radiation is reflected
from dust grains. Finally, a pair of spectrometers (Michelson
interferometers) can split the radiation up into detailed
spectra, covering the range 2 to 70 micrometres. From these
spectra, astronomers will be able to measure the conditions in
gas clouds that are obscured at optical wavelengths by the
ubiquitous dust--for example in regions where stars form,
and at the centre of our Galaxy. The spectrometer can also
show absorption at specific wavelengths by the dust itself,
thus helping to unravel the mystery of the the dust's
composition.
   ESA hopes to launch the 1.8 tonne ISO on an Ariane
rocket in about 1990. It has now prepared a short-list of five
projects for the next round of decisions to be made in a year
or two, although the agency warns that these more ambitious
and expensive projects can only be funded at the rate of one
every 21/2 years. The far-infrared and sub-millimetre space
telescope (FIRST) would extend ISO's coverage to regions
between infrared and radio, while the X-ray multi-mirror
would be a very sensitive X-ray telescope. Three projects to
investigate the Solar System range from a cluster of four
satellites to investigate the Earth's magnetosphere, through a
solar high-resolution observatory (in Earth orbit), to a probe
designed to fly to the asteroid belt and study some asteroids
at close range.
   But European astron-
omers do not want to work
only within ESA. Astronomy
satellites are launched only
infrequently,     and    each
satellite caters only for those
astronomers in a particular
area, for example, infrared
astronomy.  Besides, the
internal politics of ESA can
be counter-constructive. The
X-ray satellite Exosat should
have been launched in 1977,
before     the     more-soph-
   isticated Einstein Observ-
   atory. But ESA delayed it for
   five years, mainly so that this
   prestige project could be
launched on the European
launcher Ariane.  The satellite is now ready; Ariane
is not. So ESA has recently had to consent to launch Exosat
on one of NASA's Delta rockets--an option it could have
taken in the early 1970s which would have allowed a launch
in 1977.
    France has chosen collaboration with the Soviet Union as
a second string to its space science programme. Soviet space
science suffers the disadvantage of poor technology,
particularly in electronics, which is years behind that of the
West. The next purely Soviet space astronomy satellites will
involve only the relatively simple hardware of radio
telescopes (Box above). For more sophisticated projects,
including a gammma-ray satellite and a cooled sub-millimetre
wave telescope, the USSR is collaborating with the French.
    A purely national project, however, can give a country's
astronomers more freedom of choice, and assuages national
pride. The major single nation in space at present, after the
US and the USSR, is Japan. Its space science programme
currently has a budget as large as that of the I I nation
European Space Agency. Japanese spending is increasing at
such a rate that by the mid-1990s the country may surpass the
United States in its expenditure on space science. Moreover
European countries are individually producing their own
satellites, although on a more modest scale. Germany, for
example, is building its own X-ray observatory, Rosat, to be
launched in 1987.
    Britain has its finger in most space astronomy pies: it is a

participant in all ESA projects (including the Space Tele-
scope), and a minor partner in IUE, IRAS, Rosat and the
Japanese Astro-C. But since the X-ray satellite Ariel VI, it has
not had a national project. Astronomers in the UK have
recently proposed a "British-led" satellite, the first X-ray mis-
sion devoted entirely to spectroscopy <1(New Scientist,>1 vol 97,
p 72). It is now being assessed in detail, the decision on its
funding will be taken next year.
    The British scientists behind the mission--one possible
name for it is Exspect--believe it will-become an international
project, a move which will decrease its cost and lead to an
earlier launch. The Americans for example may build part of
the telescope and throw in a launch to cover half the cost of
#60 million; a similar deal has given American astronomers
half the use of the German Rosat.
    The outlook for American space astronomy looks fairly
grim, after years when it has led the world. Very few projects
are definitely approved, with the Space Telescope the major
exception. This is the project on which astronomers in the US
can pin their hopes, for it will undoubtedly be the single most
important telescope of the 1980s. The only other major sat-
ellite "on course" is the Gamma Ray Observatory. Few
"moderate missions" are definite either, despite proposals
that have been around for many years. The smaller projects
lack the glamour that the American public and politicians
have come to associate with the word "space"; and the larger
missions are too expensive for NASA operating on a Reagan-
sized budget.
    For years, American X-ray astronomers have been pushing
for an Advanced X-ray Astrophysics facility <1(AXAF)>1 which
would have better sensitivity and resolution of detail, than all
other X-ray telescopes presently planned. AXAF was given
the highest priority of any astronomical project by a national;
review committee in 1982, yet its price of #300 million still
puts AXAF beyond NASA's reach.
    It makes no sense for two countries to build essentially the
same satellite, and the surge-tide of new satellites from Eu-
rope and Japan is threatening to kill ideas that the Americans
have had for years. ESA's decision on ISO will probably toll
the knell for the Shuttle Infrared Telescope Facility, which
many American astronomers have seen as the next most
important project for the 1990s after AXAF.
   The anguish of American astronomers reflects the two cur-
rent trends in space science which are pulling in opposite
directions. A national project allows astronomers of that
country to take major decisions in building and using the
satellite; and national pride makes it more likely that poli-
ticians will produce the money for a national project than
simply to join in someone else's satellite.  But no single
country at present has the money to build a really major new
telescope to follow the Space Telescope--and the most im-
portant advances in astronomy have always come with the
use of a major new instrument, from Galileo's telescope of
1609 to the Einstein Observatory in 1978.
   Planetary scientists have faced this dilemma already: even
after the spectacular Voyager results, the American pro-
gramme is floundering. Although the next Jupiter probes,
called Galileo, will go ahead at a cost of #6OO million, the next
probes to Venus have had their budget slashed by half, to only
#200 million. And European planetary scientists believe that
ESA's advisers rejected the Kepler mission to Mars mainlv
because of its cost: at #300 million it was twice as much as
ISO, and would have left a gap of four years before anything
else could be funded.
   So despite European bitterness over the American's cancel-
lation of their craft in the International Solar Polar Mission,
European and American planetary scientists are now already
discussing possible joint missions to the asteroids, and to
Saturn and its moon Titan. The lesson is there for astrono-
mers too. The only route to a major new observatory in space
for the late 1990s is a joint assault on the Universe from
Europe, America and Japan.                                []


               <2What does space astronomy tell us?>2
* Gamma ray satellites so far have
shown the distribution of inter-
stellar gas (where it is struck by cosmic
rays), pulsars, and two dozen powerful
but as-yet-unidentified sources.  Future
satellites will also follow up discoveries
from balloon flights: radiation from the
centre of our Galaxy and active galaxies
and quasars, probably originating in gas
close to their central massive black holes.
* X-rays telescopes can now detect virtu-
ally every type of astronomical object,
from stars to quasars.  X-rays generally
come from regions of superhot gas (10
million degrees and above); the strongest
sources in normal galaxies occur where
gas streamers from one star fall towards
a companion neutron star or black hole;

powerful extragalactic sources include the
centres of quasars, and gas dispersed
through clusters of galaxies.
* XUV radiation (also known as EUV for
"extreme ultraviolet") refers to wave-
lengths between 9 and 10 nanometers and
is virtually unexplored; until recent year,
astronomers thought that hydrogen in
space would totally absorb them.  Sources
will be gas at temperatures of ten thou-
sand to a million degrees; they should
include streamers of gas in double star
systems, remains of old supernovae, and
hot white dwarf stars.
* Ultraviolet stronomy has so far been
dominated by satellites that collect spectra
of stars and quasars.  Absorption lines
superimposed on these spectra reveal the
constitution of interstellar gas.
* Optical astronomy can benefit in two
ways from space.  The background sky is
darker; but more important, images are
not blurred by atmosphere motions.
* Infrared sources can be studied only
with difficulty from the ground, balloons
or aircraft, because of absorption by the
atmosphere.  Infrared sources include cool
dust clouds and warm dust around young
stars in our Galaxy, nearby galaxies, and
quasars.
* Millimetre wave lie between infrared
and radio (adjacent to the far infrared or
"sub-millimetre" wavelengths), and be-
cause of absorption in the atmosphere
will be best studied from satellites.  Obser-
vations from Earth-based telescopes have
so far revealed a wealth of spectral
lines, from over 50 varieties of
molecules in space, some of which are
operating as natural masers.
* Microwave background detectors over-
lap in wavelength with millimetre waves
and radio, but are designed specifically to
look at the all-sky backgroung emitted by
gas soon after the big bang.  Satellites
should detect small irregularities in the
gas, where it would eventually form into
galaxies.
* Radio telescopes on the Earth have a
resolution limited by their size, or, in the
case of a pair of telescopes linked as an
interferometer, by their separation.  An
interferometer swung around by the
Earth's rotation will "synthesise" a dish as
large as the separation of the two tele-
scopes.  With one of the pair in orbit, the
interferometer swings around much more
rapidly--reducing the time required for
observing each source--and the separation
is not limited by the size of the Earth:
present technology permits a radio tele-
scope in an orbit a hundred times larger,
improving the resolution a hundred-
fold over that possible from Earth   []
        <2The mathematician the world forgot>2

<2Henry Smith was one of the most important mathematicians in Britain in the 19th century, and figured,>2
      <2after his death, at the centre of an international controversy. Yet his name remains unfamiliar>2

                  <2Keith Hannabus>2

      AT ITS MEETING on 2 April, 1883, the French
      Academy announced the result of its competition to
      solve a problem in the theory of numbers. The Grand
Prix was to be awarded jointly to the Savilian Professor of
Geometry at Oxford (recently deceased) and to an
18-year-old student at the University of Konigsberg in East
Prussia.  The contrast between the ages of the winners was
remarkable enough, but the award was soon the centre of a
public scandal as the French press accused the Academy
of incompetence and the younger man of plagiarism.
  We now know that the
student, Hermann Mink-
owski, was innocent of any
dishonesty. He matured into
a     distinguished   mathe-
matician who enriched many
branches of the science
before he died at the age of
only 44 from a ruptured
appendix.  He is probably
widely remembered today
not   for   his  important
contributions to number
theory, but as the teacher of
Albert Einstein and the man
who showed how the theory
of relativity could be inter-
preted as the geometry of
four-dimensional     space-
time.
  In some ways history has
been kinder to Minkowski
than to his older rival in the
french Academy's compe-
tition, the deceased Oxford professor, Henry John Stephen
Smith. Minkowski's name is now permanently associated
with many of his numerous contributions to mathematics.
But Smith's name is unfamiliar even to many of the profes-
sional mathematicians who make regular use of the ideas
he introduced. Minkowski worked in a vigorous school of
mathematicians whose traditions stretched back almost a
century to Carl Gauss. Smith, on the other hand, was isolated
in a country just beginning to regain its mathematical
confidence.
  Although Smith's contemporaries held him in high regard
for his remarkable administrative skill and consummate
powers of conciliation, few had any understanding of his real
scientific achievement until the Academy's prize brought him
posthumous international recognition. This attitude is clear
in a letter written by his old friend Benjamin Jowett shortly
after his death: "Henry Smith seems now to be recognised as
the greatest English mathematician of the century. I did not
know this during his lifetime, and used to think him wanting
in originality because his mind was absorbed in the mathe-
matical world." The Dictionary of National Biography
concurs with Jowett and gives Smith the longest entry of any
pure mathematician. There is no doubt that Smith ranks
among the most important British mathematicians of the
19th century.
  Henry Smith was in fact Irish, having been born in Dublin
on 2  November, 1826, but within two years his father died
and the family moved to England. He spent only two years at
school. Otherwise he was educated at home, at first by his
mother and then by a succession of tutors. One of these kept
a record of the lessons during his nine months tuition. This
gives some idea of Smith's precocious accomplishments at
the age of 12. "He read all Thucydides, Sophocles and Sallust,
12 books of Tacitus, the greater part of Horace, Juvenal,
Persius and several plays of Aeschylus and Euripides. He got
up six books of Euclid and algebra to simple equations . . .
and . . . learned all the odes of Horace by heart."
   In 1843 Smith's elder brother died of consumption, a
disease that had already carried off a sister some years earlier.
                            His guardian now insisted
                            that the family move to a
                            healthier climate This well-
                            intentioned advice proved
                            disastrous, for within the
                            space of one year in Italy
                            Smith had suffered from
                            frostbite, smallpox and
                            malaria.    The    repeated
                            attacks of this last disease
                            were to trouble him for the
                            rest of his life. Just before
                            this, however, he won a
                            scholarship to Balliol College
                            Oxford, with which he was to
                            be associated until his death.
                               Owing to his illness he was
                            able to study for only one
                            term in the next three years,
                            although he did put his
                            convalescence to good use,
                            adding fluency in French,
                            German and Italian to his
                            other accomplishments, and
attending lectures of the French physicist Dominique Arago
at the Sorbonne. When Smith finally resumed his studies at
Oxford he managed to compress his delayed undergraduate
career into just 18 months, during which short time he won
the university's most prestigious classics prize and gained first
class honours in both classics and mathematics. At this point
he decided to follow a mathematical career and soon he had
added the senior mathematical scholarship to his list of
honours.
   Meanwhile his old tutor, Frederick Temple, had resigned
and Balliol invited Smith to take over as mathematical
lecturer.  The demand for tuition in mathematics fluctuated
so Smith often found himself teaching other subjects such as
classics, theology and philosophy. In 1849 the university
decided to institute examinations in natural science and in
history with law, in addition to the traditional classics and
mathematics.  Although practical experience was not
required, Balliol decided to build its own laboratory, and
asked Smith to run it, sending him off to various
distinguished chemists to obtain an appropriate training.
   At that time mathematics in Britain was emerging from a
very bad period. During the 18th century there had been a
slavish adherence to Isaac Newton's methods and notation
long after Continental mathematicians had developed more
efficient techniques. By the end of the century some English
mathematicians could no longer even understand the work of
their predecessors, let alone rival the enormous advances
being made in France and Germany. When, at its first meet-
ing in 1831, the British Association called for a report on the
state of mathematics it elicited only three sections, on algebra,
  trigonometry and the arithmetic of sines, which almost
  completely ignored the major developments of the previous
  century and a half. But the tide was turning, and soon the
  subject was enjoying a renaissance in the hands of men such
as William Hamilton, George Boole, Arthur Cayley, James
Sylvester and George Green, who, unprejudiced by Con-
tinental developments, began to open up whole new areas.
  Henry Smith did not, however, follow this new British
school, but chose rather to work in the theory of numbers and
elliptic functions, in which the Germans were pre-eminent.
He returned to the original sources, in particular the
<1Disquisitiones arithmeticae>1 of Gauss (published in 1801), and
to the writings of Karl Jacobi and Ferdinand Eisenstein. It
was Gauss who he took as his model. <1"Pauca sed matura",>1
(few but ripe), which had been Gauss's motto, became
Smith's also. Like Gauss he would publish only when he was
convinced that he had not only mastered the subject but had
thoroughly understood all its ramifications. Anecdotal stories
show that Smith had often understood the subjects of other
mathematicians' researches better than they had themselves,
but had not published because he saw further than they did,
and realised that their results were special cases of a general
theory not fully uncovered.
  In 1860 Smith's circumstances suddenly changed. The
Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, the Reverend
Baden Powell, died. (His fourth son, Robert, was the founder
of the Boy Scout movement.) With strong support from
within the university Smith was elected to replace him,
though he himself felt that the other applicant should have
been chosen. (The other candidate was Boole, whose name is
cornmemorated in Boolean algebras.) Chairs at that time
were not well endowed, and Smith supported himself by
continuing to teach at Balliol.
  It was over the next few years that he started to produce his
finest work. In seeking to understand and present the work of
others in his <1Report on the Theory of Numbers,>1 he had in
many cases progressed far beyond them. One of his greatest
achievements was to complete the theory of the so-called
Diophantine linear equations, a subject that had been studied
since antiquity (Box A). His work was not confined to this
one area, however. In 1868 he shared the Steiner Prize of the
Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin for his solution of a
geometrical problem. The judge commended not only his
elegant and thorough analysis but also his lucid exposition of
the work. In the 1870s he demonstrated that he was keeping
abreast of developments in analysis too, with a paper on
Georg Riemann's new approach to integral calculus. He
corrected an error in Riemann's work and showed by an
ingenious example that the scope of the new theory was not
quite so great as some had claimed.
  His creativity continued unabated to the end of his life, but
his effciency in administration and political reform soon led
to enormous demands being made on his time. He was the
first chairman of the Meteorological Office, keeper of one
museum and secretary to another, governor of two public
schools, two Oxford colleges and helped administer two
universities. He served not only on the Royal Com mission for
the reform of Oxford, but also on the one that looked into
scientific education, and drafted most of its final report.
  But for most of his contemporaries it was Smith's immense
personal charm, warmth and good humour they valued most.
"His genius and accomplishments, his grace and gentleness,
his sound judgment, his brilliant conversation are a tradition
in Oxford, . . . He possessed in an extraordinary degree the gift
of conciliation and could say the happy words which quell the
rising storm", wrote one of them. His gentle wit was also
legendary. A good example is provided by his comment on
the way in which the first editor of the journal <1Nature>1 allowed
his personal opinions to intrude upon its pages: "[Norman]
Lockyer sometimes forgets that he is only the editor and not
the author of <1Nature.">1
  Smith himself insisted that his other commitments did not
interfere with his mathematics, as that demanded a concen-
tration too great to be maintained for more than a few hours
a day. Nonetheless, it did almost certainly delay the task of
writing up some of the results contained in his voluminous
notebooks. This shows up clearly in the episode of the French
Academy's competition.
  Smith first came across the Academy's prize problem (Box
B) when browsing through their <1Comptes Rendus>1 in February
1882, though the problem had been posed almost a year
earlier. He was aghast when he read it, for the problem was
one that he had already solved 15 years before. Indeed his
work not only provided an answer to that particular problem,
but gave a complete theory of a whole class of related prob-
lems. Moreover, this was not one of those results that had
been confined to his private papers, but it had been published
in the <1Proceedings of the Royal Society.>1 It is true that he had
omitted the full details of the proofs, but the results sought by
the French Academy were clearly stated and the main steps in
the argument were given. Characteristically it was Smith's
perfectionism that made him delay publishing the full proofs
until he had found a way of checking his answers.
  The oversight by the French Academy can, of course, easily
be explained. English mathematics had been
in a contemptible state for so long that one
could hardly have expected a solution to such
an important problem to come from that
quarter. Moreover, Smith was almost alone
among British mathematicians in being inter-
ested in that branch of number theory.
  Smith wrote to Charles Hermite, the presi-
dent of the Academy, drawing attention to his
papers. Hermite responded with a profuse
apology for the oversight, and suggested that
Smith could help the Academy out of an
embarrassing position by rewriting his earlier
papers in French, complete with full proofs,
and submitting them by I June in accordance
with the competition rules. "Then you will see
that justice will be done to you," he wrote.
Hermite was a distinguished mathematician
who was well-known for his generosity to
younger men. His letter rather suggests that he
was trying to protect the person who made the original
mistake. Smith was dismayed. He was just recuperating after
a fall, was overwhelmed by other commitments, and knew
that to pick up the threads of work he had done 15 years
before and write it up in French in only two months was a
Herculean task. Yet by the end of May he had done just that,
and his entry was on its way.
  Before the competition could be judged Smith was dead.
After addressing a public meeting in support of extending the
franchise to agricultural workers he had caught a severe cold.
This gave way to an acute infection of the liver, and on 9
February, 1883, he died. His funeral cortege was a quarter of
a mile long, and the procession included not only members of
Oxford University and distinguished public figures, but also
representatives of the underprivileged, whose cause he had
championed most vigorously.
  Hermite had presumably gambled on Smith's being the
only entry for the competition, but there were in fact two
others. One of these contained some interesting mathematics
but failed to solve the prize problem. The second, that of
Minkowski, contained a solution along the lines indicated by
Smith in his paper of 1867. The adjudicator, C. Jordan, had
not been a member of the Academy when the problem was
originally posed, and it seems from his official report that he
was not apprised of Smith's priority. In the circumstances it
is, therefore, not surprising that he awarded the prize jointly
to Smith and Minkowski, although the latter was technically
in breach of the competition rules, having written in German.
  It did not, however, take long for the French press to learn
of the Academy's blunder. Smith's priority in solving the
             prize problem had already been mentioned in
             one of his English obituaries earlier in the
             year. The fact that Smith's work appeared in
             print 15 years previously raised suspicions
             which were strengthened by the judge's
             comments on the remarkable similarity
             between the two entries.
                The Franco-Prussian war was at this time
             still a recent memory, and German mathe-
             maticians quickly suspected that nationalistic
             sentiment lay behind the accusations directed
             at their adopted son. There is an echo of their
             reaction in the moving tribute to Minkowski
             delivered after his premature death in 1909 by
             the greatest mathematician of the age. In his
             famous panegyric for his friend David Hilbert
             castigated the "chauvinistic French press" for
             starting "the most baseless attacks and
             suspicions".
                It seems unlikely that Minkowski would
have come across Smith's earlier work directly, but he may
have seen the reference to them in a paper of Ferdinand
Frobenius, which appeared in the main German mathe-
matical journal shortly before the competition was
announced. If he was acquainted with Smith's work he would
naturally have assumed that the French Academy knew it
too, and that the point of the competition was to fill in the
details of Smith's proof.
While appreciating better than the French journalists the
improbability of direct plagiarism, English mathematicians
were nonetheless indignant at the way in which the Academy
had treated Smith. For its part, the Academy was soon forced
to issue a public statement to counter the rumours that had
begun to circulate.  This carefully-worded document
rehearsed the arguments for making the joint award, while
carefully avoiding any admission of the original mistake.
So it was that Henry Smith, who during his lifetime had
been famous for avoiding any kind of malicious gossip and
for his ability to reconcile opposing factions, was, after his
death, at the centre of an international controversy. It would
surely have been abhorrent to him.                     []
   <2ADiophantine equations--the shop-assistant's dilemma>2
The halllmark of a Diophantine equation is
that the solutions should be integers (whole
numbers). They are sufficiently common
to have been studied in several ancient
civilisations, and  are   named   after
Diophantus of Alexandria who wrote a
13-volume treatise on arithmetic in about
250 AD. (It was in his bilingual edition of
the six surviving books that Bachet de
Meziriac enuncialed the Four Square
Theorem, mentioned in Box B.)
  A shop assistant will regularly solve
Diophantine equations when deciding how
to give change. For instance, to give 45p
change when the till contains only 5p, 10p
and 20p coins requires the solution of the
equation 5x+10y+20z=45, where x is the
number of 5p, y the number of 10p, and z
the number of 20p coins to be used. The
obvious solution of giving a 5p and two 20p
coins corresponds to x=1, y=0 and z=2.
Usually negative solutions are permitted as
well. (The assistant might ask the customer
for an extra 5p and then give him five 10p
coins in change, which corresponds to
X=-1, y=5, z=0.)
  One may also have several equations to
solve rather than just one. For example, the
customer might ask to be given equal
numbers of 5p and 20p coins for use in a
vending machine. That would give rise to a
second equation, x=z. In that case the

solutions that I have so far given to the first
equation would no longer be acceptable,
but one could take x=1, y=2, and z=1. It
is, however, possible that there may be no
solutions at all to a system of Diophantine
equations; the assistant could never give
46p change using only the 5p, 10p and 20p
coins.
   Smith's major contribution to the
subject was to show that any system of
equations of this sort could be replaced by
much simpler equations of the form:

each <1a,>1 divides all its successors. Here the
X s are the unknown quantities. Smith gave
a procedure for finding them and the <1a>1s
and <1b>1s from the original equations, no
matter how many equations nor how many
unknown quantities they contain.
 As an example, consider the equations

subtraction gives 20 v X =30. By writing
 <1X>1, = X + 2. and X, = Y we can replace
the first original equation by <15X,=45, and>1
 the subtracted equation by 20X, = 30.
Because 30 does not divide by 20 one sees
immediately that the second equation has
no solution for <1X.>1 When there are solu-
tions one can easily find them. For exam-
ple, <1X,>1 =9 is the obvious solution of the first
equation. The importance of Smith's
method went far beyond such simple appli-
cations, however. It forms the backbone of
an important result in algebra, known as
the Cycle Decomposition Theorem for
Modules.


   <2B The Academy's prize problem of    1882>2


 In 1621 the French mathematician Bachet
de Meziriac observed that apparently every
positive number could be expressed as a
sum of at most four squares. For example,

       and 9=3. The case of 7 shows
that sometimes three squares would not be
enough. Bachet said that he had checked
this for more than 300 numbers but did not
know how to prove it. It was not until the
late 18th century, that Joseph Lagrange
finally supplied a complete proof.
 The next question that arises is in how
many ways can one decompose a given
number as such a sum of squares? It is
clear, for instance, that 9 can be written in
two quite distinct ways, as 3, or as
2+2+ 1. In fact the number of possibilities
is even greater than this, for one could also
express it as (--3), or could change the
order of terms to get 1 +2+2 or

 2 + 1 + 2. The German mathematician
Karl Jacobi found a beautiful connection
between the number of ways in which a
given positive integer can be written as a
sum of at most four squares and the sum of
the numbers that divide it.
 Actually Jacobi's work went rather
further than that, for he also found a way of
calculating the number of expressions as
sums of at most six or eight squares.
Increasing the number of squares allowed
gives one considerably greater freedom. For
   example, 5 can now be written as

   1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 as well as 2 + 1. Jacobi
 died in 1849 without publishing the result
of the calculation and the explicit formula
was first given by Henry Smith in his
<1Report on the Theory of Numbers.>1


 The prize problem was to fill the gap
 between Jacobi's results by finding the
number of expressions as a sum of at most
five squares.  Now it turned out that
Jacobi's method worked only for even
numbers of squares, and that the case of an
odd number was much harder. Smith had
therefore turned back to an earlier idea of
Carl Gauss. Although there are numbers
that cannot be expressed as a sum of three
squares, for instance 7, Gauss had managed
to find the number of expressions when
they do exist. Smith discovered an inge-
nious way of generalising Gauss's main
idea to cover any number of squares what-
soever. Moreover, when this was done it led
back to the study of linear Diophantine
equations, a problem that Smith had
already solved (Box A). By this means
Smith could not only solve the problem for
five squares but for seven as well. More-
over, he could recover the known formulas
for four, six and eight squares although his
method was quite different.            []
<2FORUM>2
                    <2In the land of the giants>2
<2P. V. Danckwerts offers his recollections of some scientists and politicians past>2
TAM DALYELL's article "When
      giants roamed" <1(New Scientist,>1 3
      February, p 323) was strangely evoca-
tive to me as I happen to have met
(however tangentially) all the giants he
mentions, as possible participants in the
white-hot technological revolution that
petered-out in 1963-66, as well
as Robert Maxwell and Solly
Zuckerman who featured only
in an illustration to that article.
   Wynne-Jones I first met
before the Second World War in
the subterranean Balliol-Trinity
physical laboratory at Oxford,
where all the chemical kinetics
were said to be catalysed by ciga-
rette smoke.  I subsequently
bumped into him (and most of
the others) in the otiose round of
committees during the 1960s
which did as much as anything
to quench the white heat of the
revolution.  I don't think he made an
outstanding contribution to chemistry--
rather in the Thatcher mould.
   C. P. Snow I met only at feasts at
Churchill College, where he was a Fellow.
He was amiable enough over the port. It is
interesting that Dalyell shares an almost
pathological dislike for Snow with F. R.
Leavis, the scourge of the English Faculty at
Cambridge, who wrote a vitriolic riposte to
Snow's <1Two Cultures>1 lecture. Leavis didn't
understand the second law of thermo-
dynamics but felt this was quite irrelevant
to "culture". Snow was involved in a whiff
of controversy about some experimental
results obtained in the 1930s. This put
him off personal involvement in scientific
research but probably provided material for
his novels <1The Search>1 and <1The Affair.>1
   Dick Crossman, like myself, was a Wyke-
hamist but did not benefit from the
outstanding facilities for scientific
education that were available at Win-
chester.  In his <1Diaries>1 he refers to
"isotopes, whatever they may be". A
strange appointment as Secretary of State
for Science in the atomic age.
   Solly Zuckerman and J. D. Bernal were
roped into Combined Operations Head-
quarters (COHQ) by Lord Louis Mount-
batten, along with that lateral thinker
Geoffrey Pyke <1(New Scientist,>1 30 July
1981, p 302), the inventor of the giant
iceberg ship Habbakuk and many other
projects which did not quite come to
fruition. The last time I spoke to him, over
tea, Pyke discussed the best techniques for
committing suicide--to which he even-
tually resorted.
   It would be impertinent of me to write of
Zuckerman. I scarcely met him during my
time at COHQ (1944-46); by that time
Mountbatten had left, the influence of
COHQ had much declined and Zuckerman
had more important jobs to do. However,
in a quiet way he probably did much to
dampen ill-judged enthusiasm for
Habbakuk. In the affluent 1960s he chaired
a committee on which I sat and
participated in the agreeable task of giving
away large sums of private money to
deserving research projects.
  On the other hand, I shared an office
with Bernal in 1944-46. He had so many
irons in the fire that he was seldom there.
He was rather like a 12-inch gun with no
gunlayer; he always turned up to meetings
late and disoriented, although he had a
middle-aged secretary who used to follow
him about with his diary and try to keep
him in line. I fear that too much of his
energy and enthusiasm was dissipated on
Habbakuk. I was amused that Dalyell
described Bernal in his physical decline as
being "surrounded by marvellous women".
He always could pull them in, although it
was hard to figure out how he did it. The
girls I knew at COHQ thought he was
particularly unattractive, but I expect his
own girls applied different criteria.
  Bernal took a particular interest in the
Normandy beaches.  It transpired
rather late in the planning of Overlord that
what had been thought to be beaches of
hard sand actually had bands of exposed
clay. Bernal consulted French geologists
and ancient documents about peat-cutting.
He was also involved in the briefing of a
Commando landing on a Normandy beach
which was sent to bring back cores of the
beach material. They used a probe designed
and made by Sir Malcolm Campbell, the
racing driver, who ran his own private
cloak-and dagger workshop. Unfortunately
the material at the tide-line was so sloppy
that it ran out of the probe and no cores
were brought home. Bernal was also
involved in the micro-mapping of the
invasion beaches which was so vital for the
landing of our forces. Accurately-timed
aerial photographs of the water-line
together with tide-tables gave contour maps
of the beaches accurate to horizontal
metres and vertical centimetres,
There was very nearly a breach of secu-
rity because of Bernal's desire to be on the
beaches by D + 1. His lank locks had to be
shorn and he had to be kitted-out with
battle-dress and ammunition boots. All this
took some time and he was not a particu-
larly military figure at the end of it.
  Bernal was of course deeply committed
to the Communist ideal and was never, so
far as I know, privy to any of the atomic
          bomb developments during or
          after the war.  He would, I
          expect, have regarded it as his
          moral duty to pass on any infor-
          mation he might have had. At a
          time   (1944)   when   one's
          acquaintances were casually
          saying "I'm off to the US to
          work on the atomic bomb"
          (surely a gross breach of secu-
          rity) I think Bernal was carefully
          insulated. Sir John Anderson,
          who had much to do with
          atomic weapons development,
          said he was "as red as the flames
          of Hell". I remember that on the
day on which the news of the Hiroshima
bomb was published he was jumping up
and down saying "How could anyone work
on a day like this?" Later on an obscure
Indian journal landed on our desks,
containing a crude representation of an
implosion type atomic bomb. Bernal took
one look at it: "Of course," he said, "of
course that's how they must have done it."
I don't think he was ever in any position
to keep the Russians <1au fait>1
with American developments.  An early
copy of the Smyth report on the US atomic
bomb project arrived when Bernal was
away.  I wrote an appreciation of its
scientific and military implications for
circulation inside COHQ (for example,
"atomic hand-grenades are an unlikely
development"--in answer to a serious
inquiry). On Bemal's return he was under
great pressure to make his own appre-
ciation but he merely said "Danckwerts has
said it all. There is nothing for me to add".
This was all of a piece with his generous
custom of letting his research students take
full credit for collaborative research and
leaving his own name off their publica-
tions. I forgave him for the many occasions
on which he had unthinkingly made me
feel mentally subnormal.
  Actually, I had first met Bernal in 1940.
He was then involved in civil defence and
he took me to see a trial designed to show
that air-raid shelters built to government
specifications were death-traps.  The
explosive charge used, for reasons of econ-
omy or verisimilitude, was an unexploded
German bomb. This was detonated and the
shelter duly collapsed. What impressed me
was that there was a perceptible interval
between the explossion and the time at
which Bernal ducked down into our shelter
trench. He explained that he knew the
velocity of the bomb-fragments and could
calculate their time of arrival in his head. It
is ironic that the cry of the Left in those
days was "Shelters for the people" whereas
nowadays it seems to be "No shelters for
the people".
   P. M. S. Blackett was the father of Oper-
ational Research. Perhaps because of his
career as a Naval Officer during the First
World War he worked for a long period
during the Second World War at the Admi-
ralty. He was often to be met in Whitehall
committees in 1944. One of his reasons for
leaving the Navy had been his dislike of the
social relations between officers and
ratings--take three paces backwards and
shout at them. All the same, he appeared a
pretty imperious figure on casual encoun-
ter. I cherish the memory of a lecture he
gave at MIT where I was a student in 1947.
He went on at some length about the idiocy
of the strategic bombing of Germany and
how the Red Army had won the war in
Europe. This was not well received, and in
fact Blackett's sympathy with the Russians
made it impossible for him to get a visa to
visit the US during the McCarthy years. We
were both professors at Imperial College in
1956-59 but the impression I got was of a
professor somewhat on the Kissinger
model--a status symbol for the college, but
not an approachable colleague.
   Although Blackett had been a member of
the MAUD Committee--Britain's first
approach to atomic energy, subsequently
dismantled after the realistic appraisal that
if anyone could pull-off the atomic bomb it
would be the Americans--Blackett's love-
affair with the Russians ensured that he
played no part in the US wartime atomic
bomb project or its post-1945 British
successor.
   Robert Maxwell had a military career
more glamorous than Blackett's. A Czech
by birth. he was awarded the Military Cross
for his action in the German Ardennes
offensive of 1944, during which (I believe)
he formed a unit of the Pioneer Corps into
a fighting force.  This was a splendid
entrepreneurial venture and he has been on
the attack ever since--as a one-man infor-
mation explosion and the biggest influence
on British printing since Caxton. I first met
him during the early 1950s and I became
editor of what I believe was the second jour-
nal in the now enormous Pergamon Press
stable. (The first was edited from the
Vatican.) He is remembered for his period
as a Labour MP (1964-70) partly because
he introduced dehydrated mashed potatoes
into the Commons kitchens.
   As for Vivian (Lord) Bowden I can only
report that he once offered me a job in what
was to become UMIST and was particu-
larly accommodating when I asked for time
to think about it. Moreover, he was not one
to turn an able man down because he was
an ideological waif--but that is another
story.                               []


            <2Wrong alchemy?>2

         CRUCIBLE, Channel 4's answer to
     Horizon, is being scotched at a time
when the new TV channel is capturing only
4 per cent of the viewing market in the UK.
It seems that the programme is costing
Central too much. Bernard Dixon (<1New>1
<1Scientist,>1 27 January, p 254) damned it as
"stunningly amateurish". Submissions are
being made by some of the Crucible team to
continue making the progamme using
Central's facilities.                   []
                           <2An uncorroded relic>2

     <2Chris Skrewbowski believes the Holland 1 deserves careful research>2


       ONE can ex-
       plain satisfactorily
   the uncorroded
condition of Holland 1,
the Royal Navy's first
submarine,  after   70
years at the bottom of
the English Channel.
The Navy's Submarine
Museum at Gosport is
restoring the vessel to
her original condition
and, after replacing a
few missing parts, she
will go on show in the
summer. But unless she is analysed soon we
may never know why the sea did not
corrode her solid.
  Holland I sank in 1913 off the
Eddystone Lighthouse.  She was being
towed to the breakers when she began to
take in water (probably through the
conning tower hatch which was only lashed
down for the tow) and sank. The sinking
was forgotten until 1977 when a M. Pearn
sent a press-cutting recording the event to
the Gosport Museum.
  Commander Richard Compton-Hall,
museum director, said that the first step in
salvage was to get any party with a claim to
the wreck to relinquish it to the museum.
The Navy was then persuaded to locate and
to identify the wreck which lay in 63 m of
water. Last August, Holland 1 was lifted
and taken to Devonport Dockyard. She
was in truly remarkable condition. The hull
was intact apart from three small holes near
the bow where some net shackles had
                caught. Corrosion and
                metal attrition were little
                more than would be
                found in a five-or-ten
                year-old ship.
                  The hull contained a
                mass of dissimilar
                metals: steel, cast and
                malleable iron, brass.
                bronze and lead. The
                contents were expected
                to be badly corroded: in
                fact, with minimum
                effort    bolts    wcre
                undone, springs sprang,
hinges opened and moving parts were
easily freed. The main gasoline engine can
be turned and its valve gear operates. The
torpedo door opens, its closing spring oper-
ates and all the hull rivets are tight.
  The electric motor that powered
the Holland underwater is preserved
excellently and there is great confidence
that it will run. One of the batteries was sent
to Chloride Ltd which cleaned it, filled it
with electrolyte and recharged it.  The
battery delivered 30 amps.
  Holland I sank before the first nuclear
tests and was shielded by the sea from
radiation. The 20 tonnes of lead in the
batteries has been found to have an
immeasurably low level of background
radiation. If the lead were ever to be sold to
radiation detector manufacturers it would
raise more than the #24000 it has cost
to salvage the hull.
   It is a mystery why the submarine is so
well preserved. Parts of the rudder which
sank away from the main hull corroded as
could be expected, so the answer must lie
with the hull itself. Compton-Hall believes
it may have something to do with the
strong magnetic field found inside. He
regrets that no one will volunteer to
examine the hull. It must be done before
she is restored.
                       <2Strange Ingestions>2

         <2Bernard Dixon has been digesting some bizarre eating habits>2


   IT'S NEVER EASY to tell, when some-
   thing seems to be happening more and
   more, whether there is a genuine trend
or merely an excessive zeal of reporting.
London Transport (LT), for example, has
had to put up recently with dubious accusa-
tions that its trains have suddenly started
running late. But the real explanation, it
seems, is simply that the <1Evening Stan->1
<1dard's>1 Commuter Club has begun to high-
light all LT's deficiences. And radio and
television "commentators" have joined in
the chorus of complaint. So rattled has LT
become that it rounded on paying cust-
omers last month and blamed <1them-->1 for
damaging carriages, vomiting, breaking
windows, and falling under trains. Which
raises a further question, whether these
activities are on the up too.
  So in suggesting that more people are
doing weird things to themselves these
days, I plead caution. Nonetheless, as an
long-established reader of the medical jour-
nals, it does strike me that we are hearing
much more about increasingly curious self-
administrations. Take Rinso eating. Only
last week (<1British Medical Journal,>1 vol 286,
p 765) there was an account of two young
lassies in Australia who had turned up at a
health centre feeling nauseous and gener-
ally out of sorts. What proved to be the
trouble was that they had been munching
handfuls of powdered soap. "These patients
turned out to be high spirited chums at
school," reported Dr David Watson. "Not
to be outclassed by their petrol-sniffing
companions, they had adopted the practice
of eating soap powder to obtain a 'buzz' or
a 'high'."
   Tow this put me in mind of another
clinical curio in the <1BMJ>1 (vol 285, p 1401)
towards the end of last year. A woman,
described by two Portlaoise psychiatrists,
had not only taken to swigging Jeyes' fluid
she had also become dependent on it. At
first, she was tempted to drink this famous
gardening aid and household disinfectant
because of its pleasent smell. But having got
into the routine of taking three
teaspoonfuls in a cup of water three times a
day, because she felt it "gave her energy to
keep her going", she became really addicted
and unable to cope without a regular fix.
Fortunately, the lady eventually overcame
her problem.  Interestingly, while Rinso
eating was unknown to its manufacturers,
the company making Jeyes' fluid admits to
several previous reports of persons taking a
spoonful "as an aid to good health".
  Then there was the Indian woman
reported last year in the <1New England>1
<1Journal of Medicine>1 (vol 306, p 1056) who
had a craving for paper. A victim of the
craze for many years, there were times
when she ate an entire paperback novel in
one day. "On the average, a Kleenex box
and a cigarette package were consumed
daily," reported Dr Fred Olnyk and Dr
David Sharpe. "for years before her paper
pica appeared, the patient recalled eating a
special type of mud which contained a
distinctive smell and could only be
obtained by digging in a certain area of a
particular field."
   But eating clay is commonplace. It even
has its own medical epithet--geophagia.
The extent of the practise can be assessed
from a tale recounted in <1The Lancet>1 (1978,
vol 2, p 614). A professor of medicine,
visiting a medical school in Texas, asked
the resident physician how many of his
patients practised the habit of downing
mud. The local man said he'd never heard
of such a thing. So, when they had finished
their ward round, the two of them went to
each patient in turn and inquired tactfully
whether they ate earth. No less than half of
them said yes. So there.
   I don't <1think>1 that clay consumption is on
the increase--no more so than some of the
other doings in my oddities file, such as
eating the Oregon rough-skinned newt
<1(Journal of the American Medical Associ->1
<1ation,>1 vol 246, p 247) or performing
bilateral orchiectomy (ie removal of the
testes) on oneself <1(JAMA,>1 vol 241, p 2188).
But unless I am much mistaken, the
ingestion of strange materials really is
proliferating. Sadly, some (but by no means
all) such adventures are associated with
mental disturbance. Another recent item in
he <1BMJ>1 (vol 284, p 791), for example,
concerned an unhappy lady who had been
drinking Dettol for at least 10 years in
order to "purify" herself.  She had an
overwhelming fear of syphilis, and the
pattern of her tippling was similar to
that with other addictive substances.
Characteristic is a reluctance to admit the
quantity consumed, drinking secretly
alone, and taking gradually increasing
amounts.
   From a scientific rather than a
psychiatric standpoint, the most interesting
aspect of these bizarre tastes is the
opportunity they afford for witnessing the
extreme chemical insults which the body
can accept and overcome. The soap powder
guzzlers, for example, quickly recovered
and remained well, despite the alarming
formula of their favourite snort: Rinso
contains 20 per cent sodium carbonate,
and a 1 per cent solution has a <1p>1H of 10.9.
   Perhaps the strangest case on record is
that described five years ago in <1The Lancet>1
(1978, vol 2, p 952) by Dr M. Loughhead
and two colleagues at the Royal Hobart
Hospital, Tasmania.  They began their
paper with the words: "We have cared for a
patient who, according to the textbooks,
ought to have been dead, since his arterial
<1p>1H was 6.59, well outside the usually stated
range of 6.8 to 7.8".  The individual
concerned was a 51-year old man who had
swallowed strychnine in a suicide attempt
and who, in addition to severe muscle
spasms, developed an overwhelming meta-
bolic acidosis. But given heavy doses of
baking soda he began to recover, and was
perfectly normal three days later.
   The tables of physiological limits, it
seems, need to be radically revised. And not
only those tables. What of the claims that
only micro-organisms can withstand strong
acid and thrive in antiseptics?          []
      <2Softening the edge of social aggression>2

              <2Herb Torrey reports some new fashions in furniture>2

     AT THE University of Centreville,
   Maryland, a research programme
which its director admits he obtained
the money for by a far from rare academic
tactic is showing some surprising results
about human behaviour. Dr Julius Gray-
ling, the man in charge, says that he would
have had a worse chance of getting a grant
from the Mandan Foundation if he had
applied with a literal description of the
work he wanted to carry out. In his words,
"It was kind of a boon-doggie". What he
applied for was funding for research on
"The influence of geometry on social
behaviour".
 What he really wanted to do, and is now
doing, is research on the effect that the
shape of ordinary furniture has on the way
people respond to each other. Mostly, the
furniture he has been concerned with up to
now is the dining table. Grayling says that
the idea was brought sharply to his atten-
tion when a dinner guest at the Grayling
home in Indian Landing, not far from
entreville,    showed   unaccountable
aggression during the meal. "There was
nothing wrong with the food," Grayling
says, "and there was nothing wrong with
the man's mood before dinner. We were
really bugged when he started yelling."
 Afterwards Grayling tried to think of
some reason in the environment that might
have had something to do with the
outburst. It took him some time to arrive,
only tentatively at first, at the conclusion
that the hard, rectangular shape of the
dining table could have played some part.
He points out that a lot of abstract painting
uses harsh shapes and that most people do
not like it, preferring curves and gentle
changes of outline direction.
He made one or two experiments on his
own. For instance, he changed the shape of
the dining table in his home. As he is some-
thing of a carpenter (he built his own sail
boat for use on the Chesapeake), he found
it simple enough to take off the right-angled
corners and substitute curves. For six
months afterwards, he recorded guests'
behaviour, first with a sound recorder and
then with video. The results were not
conclusive, but there were certainly no inci-
dents of the sort that had started his inter-
est. This was the point at which he drew up
his application for the Mandan Foundation
grant.
 It was nearly 18 months ago now. Gray-
ling found that he had a hard time getting
people to take him seriously. But he
persevered and now has three assistants
from the students at the university helping
him. They regularly find subjects to take
part in a meal, not necessarily dinner and
not necessarily at Grayling's home. He has
a room allotted in the social sciences
department and special arrangements with
the university domestic staff. The students
are asked, if possible, and certainly
discreetly, to discover "guests" who have a
reputation for a degree of irascibility.
    Grayling has now tried a number of
different shapes of dining table, including
circular and triangular in varying sizes. It is
too early, he says, to base any firm recom-
mendations on the work so far.
  But he has found at least one surprising
thing. Whatever the shape of the table,
subjects suffer almost without exception
from what he calls "host or hostess
deprivation". In other words, the distance
that a subject is placed away from the host
or hostess, plays a major role in behaviour.
"It varies," Grayling says. "almost directly
with distance. I can pretty well forecast how
a guy is going to check out behaviour-wise
from a table plan."
   He has methods of dealing with this. The
obvious way of having no head of the
table--the circular shape--does not work
because of the prestige factor. Changing
places during a meal would clearly be too
disruptive. The solution that Grayling finds
the most feasible at present is to have a
circular table with a hole in the middle. The
table he has built on this plan--only a
mock-up as yet--is in two halves, each with
a half circle cut out. This is to allow the host
and hostess to take their places with the
minimum of complication. Once they are
seated, the two halves are pushed together.
  Then everybody is the same distance from
the person he considers "top guy".
  Grayling reckons that he has about
another two years of research to do before
he can come up with a conclusive report.
  After that he hopes to begin work on the
effect of the design of flatware. "There is a
lot of aggression in this field," he says,
pointing out that most people find
pistolgrip knives and forks the most
comfortable.                        []


                <2Director's dilemma>2

<2David Challinor on the hidden problems of museum collections>2

 TO COLLECT is a desire inherent in
humans as is clear from palaeolithic
hoards  of  tools   and   fetishes.
Organised collecting, however, on today's
scale, was possible only when nations
became sufficiently prosperous to build
and staff large national museums. By the
19th century, European domination of the
world meant that vast numbers of cultural
and natural objects started to flow into the
new museums of Europe. The United
States soon followed and, by Act of
Congress, the Smithsonian Institution
became in 1879 the US National Museum.
Just as with its European counterparts, the
museum's staff and facilities have never
been adequate to meet the demand for
space. Such space is needed to store and
exhibit a range of national treasures.
Directors frequently face difficult decisions
of what to accept and what to reject.
Perhaps a few examples of Smithsonian
directors' thinking in rejecting and accept-
ing material, or even releasing items in the
collections, might throw light on the
subject.
  General Motors approached the Smith-
sonian six or seven years ago asking if we
would be interested in the last Cadillac
convertible from its assembly line. We had
a collection of cars, mostly rather old, but
here was an example of what had once
been a great cultural status symbol. But the
director of the museum decided that the
car's importance as a cultural relic was
more than offset by its lack of
uniqueness--for there were still thousands
of such convertibles in use. Even more
important was the cost of storage. Better to
gamble that a private collector would keep
the car until it became rare enough to
warrant accepting it, if it were offered later.
The size of the car was also a consideration
as space costs money. It explains why the
institution has turned down such giants as
the liner "United States" and the largest
flying boat ever built--popularly known as
the "Spruce Goose".
   Some collections are acquired through
the museum's own initiatives. In the
National Museum of Natural History,
Washington, the collections reflect the
research interests of the hundred or more
curators.  The museum collects, and
accepts, objects that further our recog-
nition of the world's flora and fauna. Once
a specimen has been identified, the time
and place of its collection is also recorded.
When such data are properly maintained
(now frequently on computers), the
collections provide invaluable data banks
on the nature of our changing environ-
ment. For example, the widespread use of
DDT in the 1960s was suspected of affect-
ing the calcium metabolism in the oviducts
of birds of prey (raptors). The abnormal
thinness of the egg shells of many hawks
and eagles was evident when ornithologists
compared them with carefully dated speci-
mens collected before DDT was invented.
   Museum specimens also enable us to
determine the changes in the levels of
methyl mercury in tuna and swordfish, by
comparing today's concentrations with
those at the turn of the century. Indeed one
could plot the spread of radioactive stron-
tium and caesium throughout the world by
analysing bone tissue from the collections
gained by natural history museums since
the first nuclear explosion.
   It is not possible to foresee, especially at
the time of acquisition, exactly what infor-
mation a specimen might hold. It explains
why curators are reluctant to discard
collections. Nonetheless, even collections
of natural specimens are not completely
safe. Candidates for discarding might be
hunting trophies willed to museums by
former benefactors.  Of little scientific
value, they were primarily accepted to
favour the heirs of the benefactors. With
increasing pressure for storage space,
today's director faces a choice: keep the
horns or replace them with more
scientifically   valuable   material.   The
burgeoning demand for antlers in the
Orient for their "medicinal properties" is
creating a ready cash market tempting the
director to clear the attic of horns and
antlers.
   Occasionally a museum will learn
through new dating techniques, or chemi-
cal analysis, that a specimen has been
wrongly identified and thus should be
discarded, or even more rarely, that it was
improperly acquired. In 1981, the Smith-
sonian returned an important religious
object to a group of American Indians. The
Indians were able to show, after lengthy but
amicable negotiations, that the object in
question had been collected without proper
tribal authorisation in 1887!           []
   Despite the egress of isolated specimens,
museum collections grow in proportion to
the director's burden of deciding what to
accept. The day when every museum attic
will be filled can be delayed. Preservation
and storage of specimens will become more
efficient.  Computerised storage and
retrieval is already here. Perhaps develop-
ments in electronically stored holograms
will reduce the need to keep very large
suites of specimens. However, lack of space
will remain, but by keeping the models and
micro-filmed plans and specifications, the
"soul", if not the body, of objects as large
as battleships can be saved. Collect we will,
but the dilemmas will remain.        []
Dr David Challinor is the assisiant secretary for
science at tho Smithsonian Institution. Washington.

       <2Editor's collection>2
COMPANIES cannot buy their way
     into these pages by sending free gifts to
the editor. They know that, but perhaps
one well-known American maker of
tape--magnetic and adhesive--has found a
new ploy. The company sent the editor a
gift of a new product, with his name
emblazoned all over the top. We would not
be mentioning that event in these pages
were it not for the misspelling of his
name--something confused with a food
mixer. Is this a stupid mistake or a clever
ploy that succeeded?                 []


                       <2Still no clear road for lead>2

    <2Tam Dalyell muses on the need to control a pernicious form of pollution>2


WHO HAS ever heard of a popular
  tax The American colonists
  certainly   took   exception to
Britain's tea levy in 1773. Ten years earlier,
though, back in the motherland, Lord
Bute's administration drove hitherto
placid Devonians, Men of Kent and
Kentish Men into a frenzy by introducing a
"cider tax".  Both measures had been
designed to help Britain pay for an
extended and expensive war with France.
The Boston tea-party
was a famous turning
point in history
and grossly misin-
terpreted by West-
minster. Our parlia-
mentarians, always
sensitive to votes, had
probably shown a
greater concern over
the cider riots!
  There is perhaps
an    element    of
do-gooding    about
certain taxes and
even today there are
Treasury ministers
who smugly claim
they are doing the
nation's health a
favour by putting up
the levy on cigarettes,
alcohol and petrol.
Two hundred years
ago, those people
who drank substan-
tial quantities of cider often suffered a
strange disability dubbed the Devonshire
colic. But what neither minister nor the
exciseman of the 18th century realised was
that the underlying cause was lead
poisoning. It took the expertise of the Royal
Physician, Sir George Baker, to prove
that--but then he was a Devonian.
   Lead got into the cider through all sorts
of routes. The harvested apples piled up in
the fields and were welcomed by numerous
rabbits. The scrumping rodents, given a
blast of lead shot, provided the farmer with
a ready source of pot-stew. Later he would
gather up the apples (and shot) and put
them in his cider press--the stones of which
were braced with lead straps. Curiously, if
the cider was sour, the practice was to
sweeten it by shaking it with some lead shot
before storing it in barrels held together by
lead bands. Perhaps, though, most of the
lead came in the water used to make the
cider: the purer the water in contact with air
the better it was at oxidising and dissolving
lead from conduits, pipes and cisterns.
   Lead, in the 19th and early-20th centu-
ries, was responsible for a host of
occupational disabilities among house
painters, plumbers, glaziers, dyers, printers
and potters to mention but a few. Only
slowly did the various industries realise that
they had to better the "lot" of their workers
and reduce the occupational risk. In recent
decades communities in the United States
and Europe have been confronted by the
realisation that lead can severely retard the
mental development of their children.

  A UK working party, which included
many medically qualified people, was set
up by the Department of Health and Social
Security, under the chairmanship of
Professor Patrick Lawther in 1978. When
eventually its report, <1Lead and Health>1, was
published in 1980, various environmental
groups damned it for being too meek. But
actually it emphasised that various
communities, including some in West
Scotland, were still at risk because their
                  houses were served
                  by lead pipes and
                  lead-lined   cisterns.
                  (Rumour has it that a
                  diet of Scottish
                  scones and cookies
                  can alleviate some
                  of the effects of lead.
                  So also can treat-
                  ing the water in
                  ion-exchange systems
                  but sometimes it
                  produces other side
                  effects.)
                     Far more invid-
                  ious, as we now
                  know, is the lead in
                  air that comes mainly
                  from petrol. Experts
                  did not, and still do
                  not, agree on the
                  levels of lead that get
                  into the bloodstream
                  specifically by this
                  route. Some say it is
                  0.5 microgram per
cubic metre. The Lawther report said that
the annual average concentration in air
should not exceed 2ug/cu.m. The report
was criticised for not calling for urgent
action to reduce lead in petrol.
  Efforts are now being made to reduce it
to two-thirds of its level now by 1985.
However, Ken Collins, chairman of the
Environment Committee of the European
Parliament, has recently been predicting a
total EEC ban on lacing petrol with lead
before the end of June.
   Well intentioned as the EEC goal is, it is
worth remembering that four out of five
cars would be unable to run if the lead were
removed. So what effective alternatives are
there? Methyl tertiary butyl ether could
work as substitute for lead but it is
expensive. A more practical idea would be
to fix filters to car exhausts, but they would
have to be changed fairly frequently.
Besides being free from "knocking", an
engine must start from cold and operate
reliably under all conditions. The volatility
of the fuel is crucial, and the addition of an
alcohol-blending component would inter-
fere with this. If the politicians were to take
the drastic action that many voices are call-
ing for, much of our motorised transport
would not even get out of the garage. The
House of Commons would see lobbies as
never before. For society, lead is a high risk
material.  However, its immediate and
total removal, or ban, could bring much
of industry to a halt. It is vital that we
tackle with urgency both sides of the
problem.                            []
  <2REVIEW>2


  <2Cataloguing the things of the world>2

          Universal languages and scientific taxonomy in the 17th century
                   by M. M. Slaughter, <1Cambridge UP, pp 277, #25>1

                                E. J. W. Barrington

THE PRESENT generation
  of scientists is not the first
  to have been troubled by
  problems of communication, as
Dr Slaughter shows in this well-
documented account of the rise
and fall of the 17th century
universal movement. Recondite
though her theme may be, she
succeeds, by focusing on its
scientific aspects, in demonstra-
ting that it is not without rele-
   vance to our own times, as
becomes immediately apparent
when she finds the origin of the
movement in an information
explosion.
   The invention of printing in
the 16th century had resulted in
a rapid spread of literacy. but
many of those who were ready
to benefit from it could not read
Latin, which had been the
normal basis for scholarly inter-
change.
   Communication with
new readership had therefore to
be by means of the vernacular.
This, however, had previously
reflected a largely oral culture.
so that it lacked the technical
vocabulary needed to accom-
modate the translations of clas-
sical texts.
   The difficulty was com-
pounded by the new knowledge
that was becoming available
through the flowering of 17th
century science. New words and
names were essential if the new
knowledge was to be effectively
communicated, and they would
have to be clearly defined.
   Attempts to create from
English some terms that could
be self-defining (for example,
<1witchcraft for logic)>1 were short-
lived.  A more promising
approach seemed to be the
invention of a new and universal
language and writing system,
and Slaughter gives a fascinating
and commendably deadpan
account of the attempts of
"language projectors" to achieve
this objective. Some were based
on ideographic signs (real char-
acters, so-called) which directly
expressed "things" or notions of
"things".
   There was Lodowyck's uni-
versal language, for instance, in
which a sign for a radical (eg
primitive verb, <1to light>1) was set
on a musical stave, with signs for
augmentation leg that where-
with the thing is acted) set
adjacent to it. This example
could be read as "light shineth"
in a transcription of the first
chapter of St John's Gospel.
   And there was Bishop
Godwin, who, having invented
in <1Man in the Moone>1 a hero who
discovered a lunar language
formed of "tunes and uncouth
sounds", conceived the possi-
bilty of framing an earthbound
language "consisting of tunes
only". Slaughter's description of
this as "whimsical" is about as
far as her detached sense of
scholarship allows her to go
in appraising some of these
eccentricities.
   Later and more advanced
projects were attempts at philo-
sophical languages, based, as the
author explains in some detail,
upon theories and analyses of
nature, and presenting scientific
models of it. Descartes had held
that such a language could be so
devised as to "assist men's
judgement, representing matters
so clearly that it would be almost
impossible to go wrong".
  Surely a forlorn ambition, but
it goes some way to explain,
what would otherwise be so dif-
ficult to understand, why emi-
nent members of the nascent >
   Royal Society (including
Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke,
John Ray and Isaac Newton)
were so keenly interested in
these ventures.
   Many lines of thought were
eventually brought together in
the 454 folio pages of Bishop
Wilkins's <1Essay Towards a>1
<1Real Character and Philosophi->1
<1cal Language,>1 which Slaughter
deems a monument to that time
"when western Europe entered
upon the early modern period of
its specialised scientific and
technical development". It was
an encyclopedic work, setting
out the concept of a universal
language as a comprehensive
taxonomic structure. The re-
quirements were a thorough
cataloguing of the "things of the
world", the assigning to them of
marks or names, and the defi-
ning of the groups to which they
belonged.
   This was essentially a biologi-
cal approach, influenced by the
taxonomic studies of Ray, and
it aroused so much interest
that Ray himself undertook a
Latin translation. Samuel Pepys
records purchasing a copy of the
<1Essay>1 on 15 May, 1668, and it
so pleased the Sovereign that he
promoted the author from the
Secretaryship of the Royal
Society to the See of Chester.
Nevertheless, its reception was
mixed, and interest began to
wane with the death of Bishop
Wilkins in 1672.
   Indeed, the movement as a
whole had only a brief life, and
by the 1690s it was already
becoming past history.  Dr
Slaughter brings her very read-
able survey to a close with an
appraisal of the change in
atmosphere in the concluding
decades of the 17th century.
Latin began to regain its status
as the medium for elegant com-
munication, science was being
relegated to "a small,
odd, insignificant band of
professionals", while the Royal
Society, abandoning the rather
splendid hope that scientific lan-
guage could provide a model for
cultural discourse, was
becoming influenced by dilet-
tantism, and correspondingly
less practical in its aims.
   Overriding all these consid-
erations, however, is her forth-
right view that these linguistic
schemes were ultimately non-
sense, for the excellent reason
that artificial languages are not
compatible with the ways in
which man and languages actu-
ally operate.
   There is surely a lesson here
for us, as we turn to information
technology for solutions to our
own problems of commu-
nication.                  []
<2Television within a book jacket>2
<2Nova--adventures in science>2
by WGBH/Boston <1Addison-Wesley 288 #20.95 pbk #11.20>1
Peter Goodchild

IT CAN be no easy task
making a satisfactory book
out of a disparate collection of
television scripts, but with one
glaring exception <1Nova>1 has
achieved just that. The book is
based on  the   scripts  of
programmes broadcast in the
Nova  television   series   on
America's Public Broadcasting
System. About a third of these
scripts are, in turn, derived from
BBC   Horizon  programmes
which are bought or co-
produced by Nova and shown in
the series.
The subject matter of the
book is indeed disparate and
ranges from endorphins to the
secrets of the great violin
makers. Yet the original scripts
have been edited, rewritten and
sometimes fused together into
chapters which have then been
organised into four main
sections. Those sections, dealing
in turn with the origins of life
and man, the exploration of our
Solar System, medical research,
and finally sundry technologies,
have--except for this last
section--been organised with
considerable coherence.
  The book has then been very
well  illustrated   with  well-
designed coloured graphics and
good photographic selections to
provide a book that can either be
dipped into or read with satis-
faction from cover to cover.
Although the writing is fairly
liberally sprinkled with Ameri-
can cliche/, it does achieve a level
of content that seems well suited
to the interested layman.
However, the book does have
one major drawback. Despite
the lavish production, it shows
all the signs of being assembled
in great haste. I should, at this
point, declare my interest as
being associated with Horizon,
but it is through this link that I
know that not one of the
producers involved with
BBC productions was consulted
in any way during the writing of
the book. The result is that,
chapter after chapter, there are
errors ranging from factual
detail to total distortion through
drastic editing.
For example, the chapter
on "Touch", with its emphasis
on animal experimentation,
severely distorts the balance of
the original programme. Then
as an example of actual error, in
the chapter on Legionnaire's
disease, Joseph McDade is des-
cribed as re-examining diseased
human tissue and discovering
multiplying colonies of disease
organisms. In fact he was work-
ing on slides of animal tissue
which was fixed, sliced, stained
and therefore as dead as a door-
nail. In re-examining the slides
McDade came across a colony
he had just not seen previously.
Given that this was a central
and crucial part of the film's
argument, the error is even more
revealing as to the lack of care
taken.
  I am at a loss to understand
why, except for commercial
reasons, the rush to publish was
necessary.  By doing so, the
publisher has marred what
could have been an excellent
publication, but, equally im-
portant. it has devalued the
work of both the Horizon and
Nova staff who produced the
original programmes.  It can
only be hoped that, should the
book go to a second edition, the
publishers will make time to
consult properly and correct
the errors.                 []


<2Telecommunications--a technology for change>2

IT IS EASY to
   write off the Sci-
ence Museum as
somewhere you have
already visited. But,
like all good muse-
ums, the Science
Museum in South
Kensington, London,
is always changing
its exhibits. There is also a fair
sense of fun about the place;
the lunar mock-up has signs
warning kids to "Keep on the
Moon".  Upstairs, over the
Moon, there is now a large new
gallery sponsored by STC to
mark both the company's cen-
tenary and World Commu-
nications Year.
  The <1Telecommunications--a>1
<1Technology for Change>1 has
everything you would expect,
plus more. The best exhibits at
the gallery are the mock-ups of
old telegraph offices, exchanges
and wireless ops rooms. For
instance, there's a 19th century
telegraph relay station, where
human operators function like
modern amplifiers--they receive
a weak signal and tap it out
again for the next leg of the
journey. In 1872, it took 10
hours and 12 relay stations to
telegraph Australia.  There's
also a fascinating mock-up of
the wireless operator's cubby-
hole in a Lancaster bomber,
though unfortunately the glass
window separating this exhibit
from the public throws up
unwanted reflections.
  Ex-schoolboy army cadets
will feel a twinge of nostalgia
on sight of an old 38 walkie-
talkie set, which worked, in a
loose manner of speaking, on
batteries in the 7.3-8.9 MHz
band. After the war, the army
dumped thousands of these sets
on cadet forces, where they
were treated far harder than in
any battle zone. The Science
          Museum set comes
          from the Guildford
          Grammar School,
          and looks in remark-
          ably good order. Per-
          haps Guildford
          schoolboys are more
          gentle than the rest.
             Alongside the old
          telegraph equipment,
old telephones, old radios and
old cables, there is Prestel,
optic fibres and some of the
not-very-exciting new tele-
phones available in Britain. But
if you want a glimpse of the
future of telecoms in Britain,
take a walk down Tottenham
Court Road, where most of the
exotic telephones on sale are
not approved by the Depart-
ment of Industry.
  Take the time at the gallery
to see what a communications
satellite looks like at close
quarters, or one of the first
budget 405-line TV sets sold by
Pye in 1938. It cost #25, with
a 5-inch cathode-ray tube as
the screen. Or listen, on Bell
Lab discs, to the first trans-
atlantic phone calls by radio.
  An HMSO booklet* of the
same name covers much of the
same ground.  The prepon-
derance of pictures means that
the sparse text glosses over
some points and tantalises on
others.   According   to   the
author, for instance, in the
early days of telephone tech-
nology, the Post Office was
sued by the patent holders and
"even sabotage was resorted
to". It would be nice to know
more. Eryl Davies also predicts
that the "cost of telephone may
well become trivial". At the
current cost of local calls in
Britain, pigs will more likely
fly.                       []
            <2One for all and all for one>2

                       <2Social insects>2
       Edited by H. R. Hermann, <1Academic, 4 volumes>1
                       Mark Collins


SOCIAL INSECTS are broadly
   divided into the presocial
insects, in which the parents take
care of their young, and the
eusocial insects, in which the
same applies, but the young grow
up to take care of their parents
and the next generation. Why
have they attracted so much
research?
  The eusocial insects are
confined to two orders, the
Isoptera (termites) and the
Hymenoptera  (bees,    wasps,
ants). Without them, many of
the ecological processes upon
which we and other organisms
knowingly or unknowingly
depend, would soon grind to a
halt.  The termites, nature's
industrial   cleaners, digest,
process and recycle the waste
material of plant growth in the
tropics and subtropics. Helped
by a battery of mutualistic proto-
zoa, bacteria and fungi, they
have mastered the nutritional
and energetic problems of
surviving in some of the poorest
and most indigestible foodstuffs,
from dead logs to soil humus.
  The social Hymenoptera are
more varied. The honey bees are
vital pollinators of crops and
wild flowers. The ants are vora-
cious predators like the drivers,
devastating foresters like the leaf-
cutters, or efficient stockmen
like the aphid-tending species.
They are present on every
branch in a rainforest and every
square metre of uncultivated
soil. Often the social insects only
begrudgingly surrender their
natural environment to man's
requirements, as is evident in the
control programmes to combat
termites and leaf-cutting ants.
  For these and many other
reasons it is necessary to under-
stand the evolution and be-
haviour of social insects in both a
pure and applied context. This
four-volume, 1772-page text
furthers this aim and is an
extremely valuable report on the
state of modern research. Origi-
nally intended to be three
volumes, it expanded to four,
and there is still scope for more,
particularly as the termites are
treated rather briefly.
  In these 21 chapters, emphasis
is given to the eusocial Hy-
menoptera, with only one chap-
ter devoted entirely to the
Isoptera, one to the presocial
Arachnida and one to the
presocial insects. Apart from the
chapters on the bumble bees and
fungus ants, the ecology of social
insects at the population,
community or ecosystem level
receives little attention. Certain
of these aspects are currently
well-covered in M. V. Brian's
<1Production Biology of Ants and>1
<1Termites>1 (Cambridge UP, 1977).
But these new volumes encour-
age taxonomic discussions and
keys, and fill important gaps.
   Volume one comprises eight
chapters which intrcduce social
insects and the factors that sepa-
rate them from their less cooper-
ative allies. These include caste
systems, genetics and the defence
of home territories.  A useful
discussion and key to the lavae of
the social Hymenoptera families
is included.
   The final chapter on social
insect symbionts is devoted to
obligate arthroped occupants of
social insect nests; other
symbionts, such as the digestive
mutualistic symbionts central to
the evolution of termites, receive
no comment. There is probably
enough new information since
K. Krishna and F. M. Weesner's
<1Biology of Termites>1 (Academic
1969-70) to have warranted
further coverage. Nevertheless, it
is fascinating to see the range and
numbers of insects that have co-
evolved with the social insects;
over 1200 species of myrmeco-
philes have been collected from
New World army ants alone!
   The prefuce of volume two
claims rather hastily that a 1970
taxonomic review of the Isoptera
remains comprehensive, yet
a whole subfamily (the
Amitermitinae) was sunk in
1972. The first chapter reviews
the evolution of mandibular,
salivary and frontal gland meth-
ods of defence in termites;
further discussion of the
ecological results of these behav-
ioural adaptations would have
been valuable.  This and the
following chapter of Hymenop-
tera defence are much-needed
surveys of the recent, complex
analyses of defensive chemicals
and their origins. The volume is
completed by descriptions of
original work on the presocial
insects, the macabre world of the
presocial spiders, and a
taxonomic review of the social
Hymenoptera.

   The main part of volume three
is taken up by a massive review
following on from the symbiont
chapter in volume two. A review
of the honey bees is flanked by a
fascinating description of the less
well known bumble bees.
Concern is expessed that agricul-
tural methods and the wide-
spread introductions of honey
bees are reducing the popu-
lations of bumble bees.  The
chapter on stingless bees is an
important survey of their little-
known biology.
   Volume four is dedicated to
wasps and their allies, the ants.
The chapter on wasps describes a
recent renewal of interest follow-
ing theoretical work. A concise
and informative general consid-
eration of ants and their
foraging, nesting and domestic
life precedes a detailed exam-
ination of the villians of the
insect world, the army ants,
which ends with a welcome plea
for protection of their habitats.
The review of their horticultural
but costly cousins, the fungus-
growers, includes an artistic
rendering of a khakai (sic)
trouser leg spotted with the ants'
excreta; in lieu of a taxonomic
key perhaps.
  Bearing in mind the price of
these volumes, they would be
more practical had they been
divided   between    subjects.
Symbionts take up nearly 300
pages, but in two separate
volumes. Hymenoptera larval
taxonomy is in volume one, but
the adults are considered in
volume two. Nevertheless, these
volumes have drawn together
many little-known areas of social
insect and spider biology in lucid
accounts. Hymenopterists, tax-
onomists, ethologists and phys-
iologists are well served by this
work, isopterists, ecologists and
applied biologists less so, but it is
  well-indexed essential refer-
ence for the current state of
nowledge in insect sociality. []


       <2Voyeur at the Boston DNA party>2

                       <2Genetic alchemy>2
           by Sheldon Krimsky, <1MIT, pp 445. #17.50>1

                     Clifford Grobstein

          THE National Science
    Foundation in the US fun-
ded a two- to three-year study
"to examine the many areas of
controversy over the scientific
use, development, and applica-
tion of gene-transplantation
research".  Sheldon Krimsky's
book stems from this study, but
in the light of the other books
devoted to this same goal that
have appeared over the past five
years, it is worth considering
what <1Genetic Alchemy>1 adds to
previous efforts.
  First, as the latest shot at the
goal, it is able to update the
story--to about 1980. This is a
year that brings the tale to a nat-
ural turning point.  By 1980,
recombinant-DNA      had  de-
clined as a burning public issue
in the US and the character of
remaining concern, now limited
to the cognoscente, had shifted.
What had been seen as a possi-
ble threat to public health had
transformed into a darling of
venture capital with resulting
controversy over the protection
of academic virtue.  Krimsky
sketches the dynamics of this
shift in public attitude, includ-
ing the roles played by inter-
ested parties and the changing
social climate of the US in the
late 1970s.
   Secondly, Krimsky, trained as
a philosopher of science, also
has a vantage-point as a
participant-observer in the con-
troversy. His interest was first
aroused as an academic member
of a community whose ances-
tors organised the Boston Tea
Party. The turbulence of the
community in the middle 1970s
focused not on tea but on DNA.
Boston did not ignite the
recombinant-DNA controversy
but it vigorously seized the torch
and raised it to national and
worldwide visibility.
   Krimsky was well placed to
observe key individuals and
groups in action and he tells the
local story vividly. Moreover, he
had ready access to the archive
established at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology by
Charles Weiner, exponent of
oral history and interviewer of
virtually every individual who
had any relationship to the
recombinant-DNA controversy.
Krimsky's labours in the
archives adds a voyeuristic titil-
lation as people are quoted
directly, sometimes saying
things they might wish to forget.
   Thirdly, Krimsky served as a
member of the Cambridge
Experimentation Review Board.
He and his six colleagues under-
took an "extraordinary experi-
ment in assessment of social
risk" that had considerable
impact on the national debate.
He provides a first-hand
account of the board's <1modus>1
<1operandi>1 as it developed recom-
mendations that differed little
from the promulgated National
Institutes of Health guidelines
but were turned into "the first
DNA legislation in the United
States". Subsequently, he also
served a term on the NIH's
Recombinant DNA Molecule
Advisory Committee (RAC)
during the period of revision of
the original guidelines. He is
thus able again to provide first-
hand information, this time on
the convoluted debates within
that important body.
   Krimsky's participatory role,
as well as his logical expository
style, make the book interesting
reading for those who joined in
or followed the controversy. Not
all, however, will share Richard
P. Novick's view, provided on
the jacket, that Krimsky "has
produced the definitive social-
historical analysis of this
remarkable episode in the his-
tory of science". This would be
difficult to do if only because
the story is far from fully played
out. Moreover, Krimsky's per-
spective as a participant very
much colours his account as an
observer.
  For example, his first chapter
provides a thumbnail sketch of
the social and political climate
of the US in the 1960s. His
intention is to establish con-
tinuity between the issues of the
Vietnam War and those of the
recombinant-DNA controversy,
especially a pervasive mood of
doubt and suspicion about the
social benefits of science and
technology that were character-
istic of the establishment
thinking then.
  It does not dispute such con-
tinuity to point out that the
emergence of recombinant
DNA was at least equally
descendent from confluent
broad and powerful scientific
currents in genetics, cell biology,
biophysics, biochemistry, etc.
Although some of the people
who became involved had been
radicalised by the Vietnam War,
many others did not share that
experience. Rather they were
energised by the fever of
exciting, competitive and fast-
moving discovery.
  The 1960s was the decade of
Vietnam, but it was also a high
point of the mid-century
Golden Age of Science. The
number of committed scientists
was greater than that of com-
mitted radicals. Moreover, the
initial "whistle-blowers" came
from both groups.
  Rather than to characterise
<1Genetic Alchemy>1 as definitive I
prefer to view it as a valuable
"second generation" effort, con-
siderably more scholarly than its
predecessors but with more than
a whiff of the critical and scep-
tical attitudes of the disciplines
that focus not so much on the
substance of science as on its
character as a social institution.
In this sense, it makes a signifi-
cant contribution toward a
third-generation effort (perhaps
still short of definitive) that will
treat the recombinant-DNA
controversy as a not-to-be-
overlooked early warning of
profound social change to
come--as the achievements of
this scientifically enormously
productive century are built
into new foundations for
human society.             []


            <2The mysteries of calcium>2

               Techniques in calcium research
          by M. V. Thomas, <1Academic, pp 214, #15>1

                           Debora MacKenzie
OF ALL cell ingredients, one
      might guess that calcium
was among the least important.
While other ions abound in
cytoplasm in their millimoles,
liberal estimates of free Ca
concentrations run around 0.1
micromolar, maximum.  And
that, as Dr M. Thomas cogently
points out, is precisely why
calcium is so important. It is
also what makes a book like this
so welcome.
   Cells work to keep calcium at
vanishingly low internal concen-
trations, in order to use it for
signalling. Membranes must let
in relatively few Ca ions to
change local concentrations by a
large percentage; such changes
can thus connect stimuli to
responses with great speed and
sensitivity.
   Thomas's partial list of Ca-
dependent events includes
muscle contraction, neuro-
transmission, photoreception,
cell division, secretion, cilia,
cyclic AMP, and important
kinases. Calcium ions turn on
the zygote at fertilisation, and a
few years back were named the
"final common pathway" in cell
death.
   So one would like to know
how much calcium there is in
cells, and where it is going. The
rub is that measuring nano-
molar changes in an ion, with
minimal cell disturbance, has
been a physiologist's headache
for decades.

   Thomas thoroughly reviews
the cleverest current means of
achieving this, especially with
photoproteins, metallochromic
indicators and calcium elec-
trodes.  Classic techniques,
including radioisotope work, get
rather short shrift: on the other
hand, there is a welcome chapter
on the physical chemistry of
intracellular Ca.
   Thomas's eye for practicality
is particularly useful, and ex-
tends to addresses of electronics
suppliers, and the price (high) of
aequorin, a photoprotein. (He
also says how to make your own,
if you can get the jellyfish.) Prac-
tical tips from many labs
abound. There are directions
here for making accurate buf-
fers, and for building metal-
lochrome spectrophotometers,
the latter a chapter. One might
have liked more about <1p>1H
effects on Ca buffers, as the
former are no longer "expected
to be quite small" in some
systems also involving calcium.
   The book is dense with tables
and text, and one rather wishes
that Thomas had illustrated a
few of the more photogenic Ca-
dependent events. But this is a
quibble. The style is delightfully
non-dense.
   The fact is that scientists in
many areas--since calmodulin,
even the molecular crowd--have
started working with calcium,
often without appreciating the
experimental delicacy neces-
sary, or available, to do so. This
 timely handbook should bring
 the tricks of the trade out of
 the realm of personal commu-
  nication, and on to the lab
   benches of calcium's ever-
 widening circle of admirers.  []


     <2A cartoonist's view of the future>2

                  <2Microphobia>2
    by Martin Honeysett, <1Century. pp 112. #2.50>1

                 Jackie Wilson

IN THE days when
 a pocket calcu-
lator cost #100 and
microcomputers were
a thing of the future, I
saw a niche for a
book of cartoons of
 the genre that appeared in the
computer rags.
   At last the book has arrived:
 Martin Honeysett has collected
 his cartoons in <1Microphobia,>1 a
 look at how to survive comput-
 ers and the technological revolu-
 tion. The cartoons are not just
 for computer scientists, though
 perhaps the expert will see the
irony more clearly.
 Honeysett's cartoons reflect
 the mundane uses that an ill-

        educated public might
        put new technology
        to. Some of his car-
        toons show what hap-
        pens when computers
        go wrong, but the
        emphasis is on trivial
tasks to which computers might
be put in the house and office.
  My favourities are the nosy
parker whose computer opens
curtains whenever anyone passes
her window, and computerised
bath that finds the lost soap.
  Unless we do better than IT
Year did in conveying what
information technology is, who
knows what uses the man on the
Clapham omnibus will find for
new technology.           []


  <2Holistic approaches to cancer and homes>2


THERE are signs within A
   gentle way with cancer,
BBC2's Forty Minutes series on
the Bristol Cancer Help Centre,
which practises holistic medi-
cine, of nerves twanging inside
the BBC lest false hopes are
aroused within watchers.
 On the face of it, these fears
are groundless. Forty Minutes is
following six patients during
their two-day crash course in
self-healing at the centre and
during the nine months after
ward. Two of the women who
founded the centre in 1980, the
charismatic Mrs Penny Brohn, a
cancer sufferer herself who has
spurned the path of orthodox
medicine,   and   Mrs     Pat
Pilkington, and Dr Alec Forbes,
the centre's medical adviser,
made it quite clear in the first of
the series of six, that the centre's
work was to be seen as supple-
mentary to orthodox treatment
and not a substitute for it. And
in the second programme (24
March), these qualifications
were repeated several times.
   Despite these qualifications
from those immediately con-
cerned, a live studio discussion
was interpolated after the
second, with three practioners of
the orthodox--Ian McColl,
professor of surgery at Guy's,
Professor T. J. McEl-
waine, of the Royal
Marsden, and Dr
Walter Bodmer,
director of research
for the Imperial
Cancer Fund--being
ranged       against,
though they might
demur about the
word      "against",    Barbara
Kidman, a broadcaster, journal-
ist, cancer sufferer and author of
a book on the alternative
approach: and Dr Dick Rich-
ards, a physician and author.
   It was a somewhat strained
discussion on both sides, the
Right, as it were, being careful
not to be pejoratively dismissive
and to stress the importance
of improving the morale of
cancer patients and of dis-
cussion between sufferers and
the world at large; the Left being
          equally cautious not
          to exaggerate claims
          for holistic medicine.
            One felt that the
          strain proved more
          inhibiting on the
          Right and McColl,
          could not resist the
          word "gobbledygook"
          in speaking of a
remark by Dr Forbes in the
second programme about some
patients getting better. He and
his colleagues were under-
standably concerned about the
lack of evidence to support the
beneficial claims of holistic
medicine, but Dr Richards, who
thought much evidence could be
produced if funds were avail-
able, sagely remarked that
"absence of evidence is not
evidence of absence", a remark
that lingered after a discussion
that would have been better if
longer and better left to the end
of this excellent series.
     BBC's World About Us (20
March) explored in A highly
desirable residence the domestic
world of a young couple who
bought a mouldering, 18th
century cottage.
  They took it on, though, with-
out vacant possession, the
tenants being fleas, spiders,
silver-fish, wood-lice, bats, rats,
mice and indeed, the eco-system
of what biologists would imme-
diately recognise as a wet forest.
  What the programme did was
to identify the creepy-crawlies
and rodents, follow the
emigration as modernisation
proceeded, and the immigration
as those who were able (an off-
putting number) returned to
enjoy central heating, fitted
carpets and old food packets.
  This was a fascinating as well
as instructional programme,
written, narrated and prcduced
by Barry Paine. I went to bed
reflecting that though man may
be an island, he is never quite
alone. Mr Paine, I feel sure, will
be a candidate for some award
or other and I trust he will
remember the couple whose
bravery obviously far exceeded
that called for in the normal
course of duty.                []


       <2LETTERS>2


<2Confused cetaceans>2
I would like to offer some
comments on your article "Why
do whales come ashore" (17
March. p 716) in the light, or
should I say sound, of our own
work.
  A shoaling wave begins to "feel
the bottom" when the water depth
becomes equal to about one
quarter of the wavelength and is
thereafter capable of moving the
seabed sediment grains. The
acoustic energy produced by the
ensuing particle-to particle impacts
will be familiar to many divers,
and is related to the size of grains
in the sediment.
  The gently sloping sand beaches
which the article associates with
whale strandings would be
composed of particles in the 1 to 2
mm size range, emitting noise in
the 50 to i00 kHz frequency band.
  The deep water species mentioned
in your article operate highly
directional echo location systems
in the 32 to 80 kHz range.
  Is it possible that these cetaceans
and odontocetes, hailing from
beyond the wave base and thus
unfamiliar with the self-generated
noise of moving sediment, become
disoriented by these acoustic
signals on the same wavelength as
their own systems? Once
shorewards of the breakers they
could interpret the relative quiet as
deeper water, and swim shorewards
to their sad suicides.
<1Jack Hardisty>1
<1University of Bristol>1

  <2Point of error>2
  It is a pity that <1,New Scientist>1 has
give a new lease of life to the old
story of 100 000 meteorites falling
in a swarm in Poland (17 March, p
711). Thirty or 40 years ago
someone wrote a letter to <1Nature>1
after tracking down its origin.
  Apparently, a Polish scientist
analysed a meteorite and gave its
composition, which including
undetermined material added up
to 100 000. That paper was
abstracted by someone who did
not know Polish.
  Among other things, this story
illustrates the folly of giving up the
convention of putting the decimal
point a little above the line.
<1N. W. Pirie,>1
<1Rothamsted Experimental Station,>1
<1Herts.>1
<2Captive audience>2
In his article on breakfast
television, (Forum, 17 March, p
750) Barry Fox comments on the
ratings battle between BBC1 and
TV-AM.  He does not mention that
many modern television sets have
electronic tuning, which, when the
set is switched on, automatically
selectes BBC1.
  How many people at breakfast
time bother to do more than turn
the set on, knowing that both
channels are transmitting roughly
similar programmes?
<1G. M. C. Kent>1
<1Sawbridgeworth>1
<1Herts>1

<2Falklands fluke>2
Tam Dalyell's article on the
Falklands (Forum, 3 March, p 605)
caused great amusement here.
During the Falklands conflict I
heard reference to the dreaded
"local parasite called liverfluke".
I believe it was a Ministry of
Defence ploy to upset the
Argentinian military mind. I have
since read of this liverfluke
problem in histories of the war and
it has now entered the archives of
fact.
   Fiction, I'm afraid. Since 1975
my unit has examined thousands
of sheep livers and faecal samples
from throughout the islands,
without seeing signs of liverfluke.
<1John Ferguson>1
<1Falkland Islands Agricultural>1
<1Research & Development Centre,>1
<1Port Stanley>1


<2Science for girls>2
We are doing research on women
in science, in conjunction with
General Electric Company, for our
masters' theses at the London
School of Economics.
   We are attempting to investigate
the influences that act on girls and
women when they are making the
crucial 'O' Level, 'A' Level and
college and career choices, and
which channel them away from
research jobs in hard science.
   We are interested in approaching
girls' schools in Greater London
(be they private or state,
comprehensive or single-sex) which
have a science tradition. We would
also like to make contact with
schools that make special efforts to
interest students in science either
within the class room or in
extracurricular activities.
<1Lisa Kolkowicz>1
<1Sherry Hoover>1
<1Simon Fishwick>1
<1Danialle Douglas>1
<1Industrial Relations Department>1
<1LSE>1

<2Who will work?>2
Does Patrick Jenkin (The
unemployed cannot blame
automation, 24 February, p 526)
really believe that microelectronics
holds any hope for the
unemployed?
   The small percentage of jobs he
speaks of being created are all
highly skilled, whereas the majority
of the unemployed are untrained,
unskilled, and have not the
qualifications for further training.
How can people get further
training when the government is
closing down existing training
centres?  They say that the trades
taught there are no longer needed.
  If this is so where are the new
training facilities?
  It is the fault of this government
and past ones, which have allowed
people to train in narrow,
restrictive fields.  Now, when the
need for change arises, we are not
in the position to do so.
<1Colin Reid>1
<1Darlington>1
also like to make contact with
schools that make special efforts to
interest students in science either
within the class room or or in
extracurricular activities.
<1Lisa Kolkowicz>1
<1Sherry Hoover>1
<1Simon Fishwick>1
<1Danielle Douglas>1
<1Industrial Relations Department>1
<1LSE>1


  <2A farmer's lot>2
The calculations in "How
conservation will bankrupt the
conservationists" (This week, 10
February, p 357) miss out a very
important cost to the farmer.
  When the farmer changes his
land from pasture to arable, he has
additional outlay to make in the
form of farm machinery,
equipment, and so on.
  The farmer meets one essential
aspect of our needs. In doing so he
has to maximise the output from
his land as he is subject not only to
man-made economic vagaries but
also to climatic variations beyond
his control.
<1R. S. Tharmananthar>1
<1Loughborough, Leicester>1


<2Red menace>2
Your report on the Pentagon's
analysis of Soviet military power
(This week, 17 March, p 708)
raises an interesting question. We
now have the fact of Soviet
military superiority, and President
Reagan's theory that the aim of
Soviet policy is expansion by
military means.
  Surely it is time to ask what are
the Russians waiting for? Logically
they should have attacked by now,
because any delay gives NATO a
chance to catch up. Perhaps there
is something wrong with American
facts and assumptions?
<1J. Powell>1
<1Manchester>1   []
<2ARIADNE>2


LETTERS poured in about the pepper-
     mint effect mentioned a week or two
ago.  Most of them were simply informa-
tive, one or two pitying (everybody knows
about the phenomenon and where have
you been since 1605, when Francis Bacon
discovered the flashes?) and a few offering
the hospitality of the nearest dark
cupboard. I have formally to decline such
offers and shame on the correspondent who
said that he had a pair of longjohns that
flashed as he took them off and I was
welcome to observe the spectacle at any
time. This is old stuff to me. When nylon
underwear first became popular I produced
similar fireworks and had to earth myself to
radiators when nobody was looking.
  However, to our muttons. According to
most correspondents, the effect is caused by
triboluminescence, the emission of light
when crystals are mechanically stressed.
But there are other kinds of stress that will
produce the effect, too, such as drastic cool-
ing or healing. You may even get loud
cracking noises as the crystals cool or heat
up, crackings caused by their fracture. The
subject, when opened up, is complicated,
involving peaks of light emission from
nitrogen ad- or absorbed, other peaks from
flavouring agents such as wintergreen and
so on.
   You do not have to spend money on
peppermints, either. That is information I
am passing on having received no illu-
minated address from manufacturers for
helping peppermint sales to rise
dramatically.  Strike two sugar lumps
together and you will get a flash or two.
Using uranium salts is apt to be more
expensive.
   One clearly libidinous writer gives thanks
for my providing him with a far from
platitudinous substitute for an invitation to
come up and look at etchings. "I have some
interesting triboluminescent phenomena
that you might care to scrutinise" is a far
more intriguing line.                  []

WHILE we are about it, I have been
       told of another effect that, for
heaven's sake, could not have been stum-
bled on by Francis Bacon. If you put a piece
of Perspex under stress, in a vice perhaps,
and then apply a drop of hydrochloric acid
to the peak of the bend in a strip of it, you
must stand back. No hurry, but, appar-
ently, about half an hour afterwards there
will be an explosion. I can think of reasons
for this, but who am I to say?          []

BORINGLY familiar it may be as a
     measure the rise in the price of
cigarettes in the latest budget gives me
open, honest pleasure, though its smallness
causes me disappointment. I gather that the
price of tobacco was not raised because the
majority of pipe smokers are elderly or
even old, a word that nowadays seems to
make people unfasten their holsters.
   I have seen few women smoking a pipe.
An increase in their number may occur.
Talking to a tobacconist I found that he has
some women customers and a range of
smaller pipes for them to choose from.
They are not, as I had some apprehension,
gold striped, or jewelled, (the pipes, I
  mean). Hearing the prices charged for a
feminine briar, I think that the women pipe
smokers must be both.                 []

           I AM a fan and an observer of dogs and
   before the avalanche descends on me I
  must shout that, like Chris Joyce, our US
  Editor, I am well aware of the case against
dogs but also know that the relationship is
to human advantage rather than the other
way round.

   Every dog is an actor, inclined towards
the comedy side but capable of a
performance that would not shame a trage-
dian of the stature of Edmund Kean. I am
on friendly terms with a dog who is intoxi-
cated with the pleasure of travelling in
motor cars. The other day I watched this
character, uncertain whether or not he
would be taken, drop instantly into an
amazing role. With the minimum of props
and the only gesture being a raised paw, he
asked for the money for a cup of coffee,
guv, sported a patch over one eye
concealing a wound sustained in the service
of his country, at the same time dragging a
wooden leg fitted during the retreat from
Moscow while maintaining that he had a
bitch and five pups to support and did not
know where his next meal was coming
from. He was given an immediate Critics'
Award and a seat at the back.
  A pointless research project which I
sometimes toy with concerning dogs is
rpm, which is not rev/min but Rapid Paw
Movement. Trained dog observers tell me
that when this happens it is equivalent to
rapid eye movement in human beings and
the animal is dreaming. Is it true? Is there
any similarity between electrical signals in
the human brain when dreaming is going
on and those in a dog's? And if there is, so
what is a good question. On the other hand
I am prepared to get on my hands and
knees and see if there is any rem in
dogs.                                 []

IF YOU want to tell the time, don't buy a
  clock from Kovacs in Madison Avenue,
New York. I am doing the firm no harm by
tipping you off like this because Kovacs
recommends you to buy a clock from them
that will not simply tell you the time. The
clock has an alias----Time Capsule"--and.
says Kovacs proudly in its advertisement, it
"may be the world's most difficult-to-read
clock". After that claim it is good to know
that it has a --pecision quartz movement"
that rotates the hour, minute and second
discs. There is nothing like having ignor-
ance with the maximum of precision.
  Perhaps there is a new cavalier trend in
American advertising. In small print, the
advertisement asks for 50 cents for a clock
ordering kit. Kovacs finishes off by saying,
--So what if you can't tell the time. It's beau-
tiful". I can imagine a lot of beautiful things
that, among their functions, will not tell me
the time.                             []

        MANY hi-fi systems have "noise-
     reduction" systems which, by
making loud sounds louder and soft sounds
softer, expand the clarity and contrast of
sound reproduced. Daedalus would like to
do the same thing for human senses, and
DREADCO chemists are now at work on
his "contrast-exalting spectacles" or
"Cexspex" (Regd.) make of a cunning
tinted glass. The secret lies in the coloured
molecules of the tint. Any molecule is
"coloured" only in certain directions--
those from which a photon of light can
couple with the appropriate molecular
dipole. Furthermore, while coloured guest-
molecules in a glassy matrix are generally
static, the energy from a photon of light can
set them spinning. They then come to rest
in some new orientation.
  So, says Daedalus. imagine a Cexspex
lens exposed to a bright directional beam of
light. The tint-molecules will absorb its
photons, and will repeatedly be set spin-
ning. Those which happen to come to rest
in a non-absorbing direction will absorb no
more photons, and will thereafter stay put.
Those which can still absorb will be set
spinning again.
  So in a short while, all the molecules
will have been spun into non-absorbing
orientations. The glass will have been
--bleached" to light from the bright direc-
tion. However, the new orientations of the
molecules will be even more absorbing to
the --darker" directions of the scene, for
which the glass will now be even more
strongly tinted. The bright gets brighter and
the dark gets darker: contrast is enhanced.
Wherever the wearer looks, this
molecularly-rapid process will instantly
sharpen up his vision.  Cexspex will
appeal to watch-makers,  surgeons and
microscopists.
  They will also be ideal in fog, twilight and
dull weather, enhancing vague details and
extending the range of visibility. They will
act as "anti-sunglasses", giving tropical
clarity to our gloomy climate. In bright and
sunny conditions, they will give an
unearthly psychedelic punch and dazzle to
the scene, with great aesthetic
impact.                              []