The chemical composition of the solid grains from comet Halley can be inferred from impact-ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Halley's dust in the vicinity of the VEGA-1 spacecraft is a mixture of a refractory organic component and unequilibrated silicates, bu...

IN his review in NATURE1 of a publication by W. L. McAtee, entitled “Effectiveness in Nature of the so-called Protective Adaptations in the Animal Kingdom”2, “B.P.U.” apparently expresses agreement with that author in interpreting what he believes to be ‘proportional pr...

From Carnac to Callanish: The Prehistoric Stone Rows and Avenues of Britain, Ireland and Brittany. By Aubrey Burl. Yale University Press: 1993. Pp. 286. £25, $45.

THIS contribution to the anatomy of the Mammalian skull treats chiefly of the comparative proportions of those of Carnivora and Ruminants. After quoting Prof. Huxley's dictum on the importance of making longitudinal sections of every skull in an ethnological museum, the...

The gigantic muscle protein titin is a scaffold upon which the contractile units of striated muscle are assembled. Its catalytic domain is a protein kinase, and this region has now been crystallized. The structure reveals several surprises about the function of the titi...

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Detection of high-energy gamma rays from young supernovae shells1,2 can directly prove the hypothesis that the main sources of cosmic rays (CR) in our Galaxy are supernovae. This radiation is produced in nuclear collisions of accelerated protons and nuclei, through the ...

CERTAIN relations which are to be traced between the distances separating atoms in a crystal make it possible to estimate the distance between their centres when linked together in chemical combination. On the Lewis-Langmuir theory of atomic constitution, two electro-ne...