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  • Recent discoveries in the Plio-Pleistocene deposits of East Africa may call for a re-examination of man's evolutionary history.

    • SARAH BUNNEY
    British Association Supplement

  • Statistical techniques primarily developed for the natural sciences are finding increasing application in the social sciences. At a time when there is little agreement among statisticians about the properlogical basis of statistical inference, the use of equivocal methods for the interpretation of scientific data of social relevance, and the misunderstanding of some of the basic tenets of inductive inference, may have grave social consequences.

    • A. W. F. EDWARDS
    British Association Supplement

  • More geological evidence can now be brought to bear on the problem of the origin of Stonehenge. Spreading ice sheets rather than human activity could have brought the rocks to Salisbury Plain.

    • G. A. KELLAWAY
    British Association Supplement

  • The evidence in favour of a big bang cosmology is much less definite than is widely realized, and it is not impossible that we are living in a steady state universe.

    • G. BURBIDGE
    British Association Supplement

  • Data provided by accelerators in various parts of the world have given high energy physicists plenty to think about during the past year.

    • RICHARD WILSON
    British Association Supplement

  • Investigations ranging from tissue culture to animal communication are rapidly providing deeper insights into the mechanisms of brain and behaviour.

    • FRANCIS O. SCHMITT
    British Association Supplement

  • During the past year the results of deep sea drilling and other geophysical investigations have continued to strengthen the concepts of sea floor spreading and plate tectonics. Samples of lunar rock, too, have focused attention again on the history of the Earth.

    • F. J. VINE
    British Association Supplement

  • The highlights of a year when microorganisms have proved more productive than ever for studying the genetic apparatus of cells have been the isolation and synthesis of DNA genes and the sequencing of RNA phage genes. First steps have been taken towards characterizing the enzymes which synthesize DNA and degrade RNA in bacterial cells. Protein synthesis in mammals is initiated in a way similar to bacteria; this supports the idea that the mechanisms of heredity are universal even in their details. A breakthrough in understanding the action of RNA tumour viruses has been the finding that they reverse the central dogma of molecular biology by directing synthesis of DNA.

    • BENJAMIN LEWIN
    British Association Supplement