Since the second world war, as large-scale technological innovations have become more and more expensive, complex and risky, western economies (recently followed by China’s guided economy) have sought to bridge the chasm between laboratoryscale technology trial and commercial rollout, through the use of publicly funded demonstration projects and market measures which seek to limit the risk by c...

World War II began on September 1, 1939 with the German invasion of Poland. By early May 1940, German troops had overrun the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg; soon thereafter Germany broke through the French defensive forces near Sedan. Political lethargy, a poor communication system and many mistakes accelerated the downfall of the French army. By the end of May approximately 350,000 Frenc...

group of fungi. On the other hand, actinomycetes have been included, although they are true bacteria and entirely unrelated to the fungi. The author's reason for including them, namely, that they occupy a similar ecological niche, does not appear compelling. These personal criticisms do not, of course, in any way detract from the value of the book. Physiology of Fungi can be recommended to all ...

What does it mean to communicate and how “best” can this action be accomplished? Perhaps the second part of this question, rather than the first, describes the history of approaches to ideas of communication and their practices. The first “official” textbook providing a window on this history reveals a remarkable consensus on what “communication” and related terms should mean, if not directly i...

detailed suggestions in the use of various methods that are not possible to transmit through research publications. The subjects covered in Volume XI include nearly all the techniques that would be needed in a thorough study of enzyme structure. Subjects that would appear to be missing generally have been covered by articles in previous volumes. The first section contains ten articles on amino ...

ham, sent for Ashmole and asked him to cure his rheumatism (pp. 250 and 1711). Ashmole seeing that he was at death's door declined to do so. For two things Ashmole's name will be mainly remembered. In 1682 he founded the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, based on his own collections of manuscripts, books, coins and specimens, which are now housed in the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford. He ...

Jean Leray (November 7, 1906–November 10, 1998) was confined to an officers’ prison camp (“Oflag”) in Austria for the whole of World War II. There he took up algebraic topology, and the result was a spectacular flowering of highly original ideas, ideas which have, through the usual metamorphism of history, shaped the course of mathematics in the sixty years since then. Today we would divide his...