Major changes are in progress in Russian science as the dominance of military objectives have been removed. The problems of rebuilding a national research and educational system in science are enormous.

Extinction of widespread species is common in evolutionary time (millions of years) but rare in ecological time (hundreds or thousands of years). In the fossil record, there appears to be a smooth continuum between background and mass extinction; and the clustering of extinctions at mass extinctions cannot be explained by the chance coincidence of independent events. Although some extinction is selective, much is apparently random in that survivors have no recognizable superiority over victims. Extinction certainly plays an important role in evolution, but whether it is constructive or destructive has not yet been determined.

The idea of continuous progress for mankind is no longer unquestioned. Problems of equality, rationality and emotion are unsolved. Conflict exists between cultural conformity and the threat of internationalism. In particular, modern rationalism is in conflict with traditional beliefs.

In recent years large global programmes on the environment have been developed in which geography provides an essential component. This article outlines the main programmes in progress.

Playing cards were introduced into Europe from the Islamic world in the second half of the 14th century, forming packs with essentially the same structure as now, but with different suit-signs and court figures. Trick-taking games were certainly among those games which were introduced with the cards used to play them; but trumps and bidding were later European inventions. The former of these ideas derives from the games played with the Tarot pack (which was not associated with fortune-telling or the occult until the late 18th century); the latter from the Spanish game of Ombre, once fashionable all over Europe.

Thea purpose of science funding policy is to pave the way into new territory without knowing the final outcome to be expected. This needs the input of a wide range of scientific advice in response to well defined questions. There must be a serious intention to listen and if possible act on such advice.

The atmospheric oxygen reserve is so huge that, in the short term of hundreds or thousands of years, only minor changes can be expected due to fossil fuel burning and deforestation. Each oxygen molecule passes through a living organism, on average, only once in 9000 years. As a consequence, the fastest regulating system must take of the order of hundreds of years. Nevertheless, it is possible that the actual oxygen level is not necessarily at the optimum level for life, but is just an accidental one in the course of the earth's history. Tropical forests are not the ‘lungs’ of the earth in terms of hundreds of years, but only on a much longer time scale, likewise for all other vegetation which produce humus and the long-term fossil carbon. The driving force is related to the slight differences caused by external factors between photosynthesis and respiration, with subsequent organic matter deposition or consumption for short time regulation of hundreds of years; while, for periods of millions of years, the regulation depends on changes of weathering or burial of fossil sedimentary organic matter.

Surface tension effects, due to the accumulation of minor components in the surface, play an important part in the processing and properties of materials. The ‘tears of wine’ is an example of such processes.

The extra-terrestrial scenario of the origin of life suggested by Svante Arrhenius (1908) as the ‘panspermia’ hypothesis was revived by the discovery of a low-temperature quantum limit of a chemical reaction rate in 1973. Entropy factors play no role near absolute zero, and slow molecular tunnelling can lead to the exothermic formation of quite complex molecules. Interstellar grains or particles of cometary tails could serve as possible cold seeds of life, with acetic acid, urea and products of their polycondensation as quasi-equilibrium intermediates. Scenarios of the origin of life should consider the appearance of a typical feature of living species—chiral purity of their aminoacids and sugars. Very cold solid environment hinders tunnelling racemization under conditions typical for outer space. However, the decisive problem of the origin of chiral purity of the Earth's biosphere is the mechanism of the spontaneous breaking of mirror symmetry rather than the search for some ‘advantage factors’ which can promote gradual accumulation of enantiomeric excess. Extra-terrestrial (cold, solid phase) scenarios of the origin of life seem to be more promising from that point of view than terrestrial (warm) scenarios. In a scheme of five main stages of prebiological evolution some problems important for further investigation are briefly discussed.

Comparison of the molecular structure of genetic material from living species reveals evolutionary relationships, and estimates of dates when pairs of species last shared a common ancestor. The resulting evolutionary trees, which are accumulating rapidly in the literature to complement those trees produced from fossil records, can be used to reveal hitherto unsuspected patterns in the evolutionary record. In particular, the trees can be analysed to show when rates of speciation and extinction were abnormally high or low. Together with estimates of ancestral character states and environments, these data throw new light on the reasons for speciation and extinction. This article describes how statistical methods are being developed and used to analyse molecular phylogenies.

All over the world natural history museums act as storehouses. Billions of creatures are preserved. Most museum visitors never see these collections; they only meet the limited specimens presented in public exhibitions. Most people seem to know little about the value of these collections and how they are used. This article presents some aspects of natural history collections and their value in scientific and other contexts.

The paper discusses policies aimed at reducing the eutrophication of the Baltic Sea. Discharges of two nutrients—phosphorus and nitrogen—can be mitigated by measures ranging from sewage treatment to creating or enhancing natural ‘nutrient sinks’ such as coastal wetlands. The latter have been identified as low-cost alternatives to removing nitrogen through traditional, end-of-pipe technologies. Implementation of such projects yields additional benefits through enhancing biological diversity by recovering valuable habitats typical of wetland ecosystems. The paper offers several recommendations regarding policy instruments likely to enhance the cost-effectiveness of the Baltic-wide environmental recovery programme now under way.

For various reasons, the canon of literary works to be read in school has been criticized in recent years. The status of the canon, both as a concept with hierarchical connotations and as a particular set of texts, has been affected by developments in literary scholarship as well as by political views and new educational goals. However, teaching literature without the regulative idea of a canon is not very satisfactory. If we wish to select a limited number of literary texts to be taught in secondary schools, some consensus would be necessary about the functions of literature as well as about didactic goals, which in turn are related to concepts of morality and political exigencies. For instance, one may decide to teach not only a national ‘great tradition’, but to introduce a European perspective by incorporating works from abroad into the curriculum, if necessary in translation. In view of the fact that Europe is a multicultural community, it is of long-term interest to guarantee the pluriformity of any school canon of literature.

Bioethics has been stimulated by two happenings. Indignation provoked by the behaviour of Hitler's regime against the unfortunate deportees and the splendid progress of biology and medicine. One can distinguish two periods in the history of ethical committees. Firstly a period concerned only with local regional, hospital or university committees and a later period concerned with national committees (the first was created in France in 1983).

Three revolutions which pose important ethical questions have changed medicine in the last fifty years:

1. A therapeutic revolution with therapeutic trials (well organised trials on healthy volunteers, or comparative trials which are both morally necessary and necessarily immoral).

2. Organ transplantation with questions about the donor (dead or living) or the recipient who becomes a chimera.

3. Epidemiological enquiries with the difficult question of creating a register.

The biological revolution which came later has given man three masteries:

1. Developments in birth control, such as the RU of Baulieu, which can terminate pregnancy.

2. Artificial insemination ranging from treating male infertility to a matter of convenience.

3. In vitro fertilisation leads to the problem of what to do with supernumerary embryos.

Genetic developments lead to progress in predicting the predisposition to disease as well as the power to modify the inherited genetic makeup. The invention but not the discovery can be patented. Finally progress in knowledge of the nervous system leads to two important bioethical problems, psychopharmacology and nerve tissue grafts.

These difficult questions and the tensions that they have engendered have led ethical committees to formulate the following principles to guide their judgement:

1. The definition of a person at the very beginning of life, with the tendency to consider an embryo as a potential person.

2. Respect for knowledge depends on two precautions; confining some research to a small number of laboratories and having a moratorium on some new findings.

3. Eliminating the financial element from blood transfusions or organ donation.

4. The responsibility of the researcher who should deal with the ethical problems created by his or her research as it develops.

What is the role of the law in ethics? What legislation can be and what cannot be forecast? How can we develop the teaching of bioethics particularly in higher education, medicine and law? Can we start sufficiently early teaching morality in schools? How do we develop the necessary international arrangements? By increasing meetings? By creating a European bioethics committee? Finding an answer to these questions was the object of a meeting in Madrid in March 1992 of the chairmen of the national ethical committees of Europe.

The greatest problem of civilization is the inexorable growth in population. This essay examines the problems in the context of two recent books concerned with the development of birth control pills.

Information is carried along nerve fibres by electrical pulses generated by ionic transfer; it is digitally coded. Information transfer between nerve cells depends on the release of a chemical transmitter which acts on specific receptors on the second neurone. This is a non-digital, analogue process which is highly non-linear. It involves the summation of inputs from highly divergent sources. In sensory systems such as vision, extensive compression, feature extraction and other high-level processing occur before presentation to the cerebral cortex, where a massive expansion in distribution of information occurs. Huge numbers of neurones are involved in the central presentation of even simple sensory information. This is because the neural events are relatively slow, so that a massive parallel information flow and processing occurs. Learning and memory involve changes in synaptic efficiency and the development of new stable connective patterns. Memory and recall must involve a comparison of contemporary events with stored information, but cannot involve a one-on-one comparison because it can deal with extensive transformation of sensory information.

Converting military technologies and manufacturing to meet civilian needs is beset with many difficulties as the rationale for the two are very different. The problem gets compounded in countries where the political and economic systems underwrite military manufacturing over other national priorities. This is what is happening now in the countries formed out of the former Soviet Union. In a single step, they are trying to convert military–industrial complexes into civilian manufacturing units and also transform the centrally commanded economy into a market driven and delegated one. Results available up until now of this Russian experiment are disappointing: appropriate civilian technologies and their market demands are not easily seen; there are no links connecting vendors, designers, manufacturers and the market. The only institution that can help in this impasse is the Design Bureau. This is a unique institution created by the Soviets for integrating various partners working in technology design, development and manufacturing. Though resented by many partners, the bureaux have worked satisfactorily in the past, and provided the technological expertise and manufacturing strength. It is suggested that this institution should be revived to integrate the various components of Russian manufacturing, taking care to replace the authoritarian structure of the bureau by a collaborative one. Among the institutions available today in Russia, the Design Bureaux are the only ones that appear capable of effecting Conversion among the many military–industry complexes of that country.

One way that the American government has changed in the past 50 years is through the establishment and expansion of organizations providing technical expertise for decisionmaking. This essay reviews the performance of current structures from the diverse vantage points of elites, bureaucracies, the general public and activist minorities, drawing on studies of the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government, and the cultural theory of Mary Douglas et al. The apparently mature institutional landscape may well be ripe for change.