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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We imagine crystals as Platonic ideals of perfection, but real ones are always faulty and impure. Most could not even have formed without faults. The endless variety of crystalline nature, leading for example to mechanical strength, brittleness, plasticity, transparency, reflectivity, colour, electrical conductivity, transistor behaviour, phosphorescence and photographic sensitivity, is largely brought about by faults and impurities.

Glasses can be defined as non-crystalline solids with a disordered liquid-like structure. After recalling the concepts of order and disorder in various states of aggregation of matter, the problem of glass formation by quench of melt is described as well as other ways of obtaining disordered solids. The evolution of the technology of glass-making is outlined and various applications of traditional and novel glasses are presented. The extraordinary development of glasses, which are essential in a modern economy, can be explained by the fact that these non-crystalline materials combine the properties of their parent crystals with those of liquids where the constraints linked with order are no longer present.

The common cork stopper takes advantage of the peculiar properties of the bark of the cork oak. This has very low permeability to both gases and liquids due to suberin and waxes; the cellular structure makes possible the deformation that gives a secure fit in the bottle neck.

We still have much to learn about the morphologies of natural and synthetic polymers crystallized in bulk. Nevertheless, conventional X-ray and thermodynamic studies of crystallinity in polymeric materials over the past 60 years have given us a clear picture of the concept of crystallinity and the molecular features which promote crystallinity in these substances. Apart from issues of chain connectivity, the science of conventional molecules proved adequate for the task!