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At 4.6 million square kilometres in coverage, this year’s sea ice minimum is the sixth lowest on record. At 4.6 million square kilometres, the sea ice minimum is the sixth lowest on record.

The Square Kilometer Array will be the world's biggest radio observatory and promises to spur science and economic development in Africa.

Films of ice less than 1 nanometre thick, sandwiched between sheets of graphene, have been observed to adopt a square lattice structure quite different from the widely occurring hexagonal structure of bulk ice. See Letter p.443

Nature 474, 76–78 (2011) In Fig. 2 of this Letter, the square symbol for specimen Sts 72 is black (indicating that it represents a large tooth), but it should be white to indicate a small tooth. Supplementary Table 1 correctly shows that Sts 72 is a small tooth. All calculations also use the correctdata.

Boston. Representatives of six countries have agreed to build a giant ground-based telescope with a collecting area of a million square metres, to be completed in the middle of the next decade.

Warehouses squander storage space by needing aisles for access to the goods. So Daedalus is inventing the '15-puzzle warehouse', based on the game in which 15 square tiles are shuffled around on a square tray with one empty space.

Nature 405, 756 ( 2000) The units of the r.m.s. of the square of the wind velocity shown in the x-axis label of Fig. 1a should be cm2 s−2, and not m2 s−2 as published.

San Diego The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico was reported this week as being out of fire danger, following a blaze that burned 43 square miles of nearby forest.

Scientists are to play a leading role in a campaign launched by China to develop its economically disadvantaged western region. The region, covering an area of 5.4 million square kilometres, includes the Tibetan and Loess plateaux, and is home to many of China's poorest people. It also includes Shaanxi, which was the centre of ancient Chinese civilization in the Tang dynasty a thousand years ago.

Daedalus suggests a solution to the radio noise from telecommunication satellite systems, and the problem they create for radioastronomers. For example, the 66 satellites of the Iridium system now entering service could collectively form a ‘very long baseline interferometer’ which could be made wonderfully directional — transmitting to and receiving from just few square metres around a specific ground station. Radiotelescopes elsewhere would detect nothing.

MICHAEL FARADAY was born in 1791, as the son of a working blacksmith in London. During the distress of 1801, when corn rose to more than 9/. a quarter, his family received public relief, and one loaf of bread was allotted weekly to the nine-year-old child. His systematic education was rudimentary in character, for in his thirteenth year he became errand-boy to a bookseller in the neighbourhood of Manchester Square, and was entrusted with the duty of distributing the Sunday newspapers.

THE Alai-Pamir expedition was a joint undertaking of the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft and the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., and its object was to explore the almost unknown north-western part of the Pamir. The sheet of the general map which accompanies these volumes extends from 72° E. to 73° 45′ E. and from 38° 30′ N. to 39° 40′ N., and most of this area was surveyed in greater or less detail. The actual survey reaches from the Kisil-su on the north to the southern border of the sheet, and from the Garmo Peak on the west to the Pamirski Post road on the east, stretching beyond that road in the Transalai and in the neighbourhood of Lake Karakul. The area covered by the survey is about 15,000 square kilometres. Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der Alai-Pamir Ex pedition 1928. Im Auftrage der Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft. Herausgegeben von Dr. H. v. Ficker und Dr. W. R. Rickmers. Teil 1: Geodatische, Topographische und Glazio-logische Ergebnisse. Von Dr. Richard Finster-walder. Band 1: Geodatischer und glaziolog-ischer Teil. Pp. x + 218 + 23 plates. Band 2: Kartenbeilagen. 12 maps. Teil 2: Geologische Untersuchungen im nordwestlichen Pamir-Gebiet und mittleren Transalai. Von Dr. Ludwig Noth. Band 1: Stratigraphie (ausschliesslich Quartar), Tektonik. Pp. viii + 130 + 3 maps. Band 2: Quartdare Ablagerungen, Morphologie. Pp. v + 131–211 + 24 plates. Teil 3: Beitradge zur FaunistiJc des Pamir-Gebietes. Von Dr. W. F. Reinig. Band 1: Okologie und Tiergeographie. Pp. viii + 195. Band 2: Systematischer Teil. Pp. iv + 196–312 + 6 plates. (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer (Ernest Vhsen) A.-G., 1932.) 6 vols., 175 gold marks.

The first successful sounding of the ocean depths was carried out by Sir John Ross in 1840. As a commemorative gesture, in January of 1968 a survey was made over an area of 47 square miles in the vicinity of the Ross site, and soundings were recorded. In this article, the depth recorded during the survey is compared with Ross's original figures.

DOUGLAS JOHNSON'S recent death is mourned by a wide circle of friends and admirers on both sides of the Atlantic. Johnson delighted in interpretation of scenery and showed to equal advantage in choice of subject, plan of attack and clarity of exposition. In his latest monograph1, which includes forty-six illustrations, mostly air-photographs, he dealt with a problematical erosion form represented by tens of thousands of parallel, oval, marshy hollows pitting the coastal plain of America. The area affected measures some 25,000 square miles, and ranges through South Carolina into neighbouring States. Here marshes of any shape are commonly called 'bays', perhaps, it has been suggested, because bay trees flourish in them. This local practice accounts for the title selected by Johnson for his book, "The Origin of the Carolina Bays". Johnson alternatively speaks of the oval hollows as craters. They are shallow basins, measuring anything from a few hundred feet up to four miles in length, and averaging about 50 ft. in depth, when allowance is made for partial infilling with peaty silt. Usually they are more or less completely encompassed with white sandy rims.

THERE are few contributions to geological science, published in recent years, of greater value than this description of some three thousand square miles of the littoral of northern Peru. Geology of the Tertiary and Quaternary Periods in the North-west Part of Peru. By Dr. T. O. Bosworth. With an Account of the Palaeontology by H. Woods, Dr. T. W. Vaughan, Dr. J. A. Cushman, and others. Pp. xxii + 434. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1922.) 2l. 5s. net.

ON the nights of July 28 and August 25, 1942, there were mass migrations of mosquitoes into the camps of the Eighth Army in the Western Desert of Egypt. They became abundant in all tents and vehicles over an area of not less than 75 square miles. They then became scarcer and disappeared after three or four days, when no further specimen could be found.

SOME years ago, I pointed out that in my opinion the cave deposits in the dolomite of the Transvaal when fully worked will give us the remains of most stages of early man and pre-man that have inhabited South Africa from probably Middle Pliocene to Recent. In the Sterkfontein area alone there are apparently in about ten square miles more than a hundred different cave deposits, and many of these are of quite different ages judging by the faunas. Almost all the animals at Kromdraai main deposit are quite different species from those at the main quarry at Sterkfontein. The jackals, the sabre-toothed tigers, the baboons, the dassies and the ape-men are quite different species.

SINCE 1956, field research on the bionomics of Stomoxys has been in progress in the north of the Mengo District of Buganda Province, Uganda. The experimental area lies in an irregular tract of country of approximately 200 square miles and includes territory ranging from wet seasonal swamps at an altitude of 4,000 ft. above sea-level to wind-swept hills up to 6,000 ft.

United States Department of Commerce: National Bureau of Standards Tables of Functions and of Zeros of Functions: Collected Short Tables of the National Bureau of Standards Computation Laboratory. (Applied Mathematics Series—No. 37.) Pp. x + 211; 2.25 dollars. Table of Salvo Kill Probabilities for Square Targets. (Applied Mathematics Series—No. 44.) Pp. ix + 33; 30 cents. Tables of the Error Function and Its Derivative. (Applied Mathematics Series—No. 41.) Pp. xi + 302; 3.25 dollars. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1954.)

THESE two handsome volumes present with a A wealth of detailed evidence the results of three seasons' pioneer work in the arid desert of the Fayum depression. Regions, previously traversed only by camels or donkeys, had to be opened up to motor-cars; water had to be supplied to gangs of native excavators encamped twenty-five or more miles from the nearest spring; the intrigues of other expeditions had to be circumvented. In the face of these obstacles the authors completed a contoured map of 100 square miles within the depression, and an archaeological and geological survey of a much wider area. The Desert Fayum By G. Caton-Thompson E. W. Gardner. Vol.1. Pp. xiv + 167. Vol.2. Pp. vii + 114 plates. (London: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1934.) 30s. net.

To assess the moisture, use is made of the Assman psychrometer with the addition of a simple and easily made adaptation, which consists of a square polished metal box 4 in. × 4 in. × 2½ in., open at one end. Two holes, sufficiently large to hold the box against the air tubes by means of the threaded ends of the psychrometer cups, are punched in the closed end of the box, equidistant from the sides. In the middle of the bottom edge of each side a ½-in. square cut is made, and when the box is fitted over the psychrometer cups, the instrument is ready for use on livestock.

IN consequence of evidence that I had obtained as to the existence of a dwarf race in Spain, I wrote to Mr. McPherson, our Consul at Barcelona, and enclose his reply. There have long been rumours of survivals of a dwarf or a prehistoric race existing in parts of Spain, but careful inquiries at Madrid failed to supply any definite information on the subject. Last summer on reading over an old number of Kosmos (Paris, 1887), I found a brief paragraph referring to a pigmy race having been found in the province of Gerona, Spain, who had slightly Mongolian eyes, yellow, broad, square faces, height from 1 m. 10 to 1 m 15, and red hair.

THE peninsular shield of India has long been regarded as a stable region. The area had not been subject to orogenic deformation since the Pre-Cambrian, although a vast area (5 × 105 square km) was flooded by basalts during Late Cretaceous to the Eocene—the Deccan Trap. Several years ago, a small dam was built across the Koyna river, some 200 km south-east of Bombay (Fig. 1). The dam reservoir filled in stages, beginning with the monsoon of 1962, and reached a capacity of 2 × 109 m3 and a maximum depth of about 70 m1.

THE county of Leicestershire covers an area of 800 square miles of the centre of England, at the summit of drainage between three of the great streams, the Trent, the Severn, and the Midland Ouse. Almost the whole of the county is at least 100 feet above sea-level. A large portion of the surface is between 300 and 500 feet, and Charnwood Forest rises at its highest point to 900 feet, so that Leicestershire is very different from such low-lying level Midland counties as Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, and Huntingdonshire. Half the area of the county is in grass, about one-quarter is under arable cultivation, and there are 20 square miles of woodlands. In Charnwood Forest there are slate and granite, and the sedimentary rocks are represented in the county from the middle of the Palaeozoic to the middle of the Mesozoic series—Carboniferous Limestone, Coal-measures (Permian missed out), Trias, Lias, and Lower Oolite—so that there is every variety of soil. The Flora of Leicestershire, including the Cryptogams. With Maps of the County. Issued by the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society. 372 Pages and 2 Maps. (London and Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1886.)

THE Volta Dam was closed on May 18, 1964, initiating the transformation of a tropical river into one of the largest man-made lakes in the world. This lake will lie between latitudes 6° N. and 9° N. along the 0° meridian. Stretching more than 250 miles, it will eventually cover an area of 3,275 square miles and hold 120 million ft./acre of water. The maximum elevation of the water surface will be maintained at 276 ft. above sea-level and the seasonal variation in depth will be 8–10 ft.

I HAVE received from Mr. Thos. Blakiston, of Tokio, Japan, a communication to the Japan Mail by himself and Prof. Alexander, commenting on my article in NATURE, vol. xxvi. p. 86, and pointing out some errors as to the estimated advantage derived by the mimicking butterflies. On referring to my article, I find that I have, by an oversight, misstated the mathematical solution of the problem as given by Dr. Fritz Muller and confirmed by Mr. Meldola, and have thus given rise to some confusion to persons who have not the original article in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society to refer to. Your readers will remember that the question at issue was the advantage gained by a distasteful, and therefore protected, species of butterfly, which resembled another distasteful species, owing to a certain number being annually destroyed by young insectivorous birds in gaining experience of their distastefulness. Dr. Muller says: “If both species are equally common, then both will derive the same benefit from their resemblance—each will save half the number of victims which it has to furnish to the inexperience of its foes. But if one species is commoner than the other, then the benefit is unequally divided, and the proportional advantage for each of the two species which arises from their resemblance is as the square of their relative numbers.” This is undoubtedly correct, but in my article I stated it in other words, and incorrectly, thus: “If two species, both equally distasteful, resemble each other, then the number of individuals sacrificed is divided between them in the proportion of the square of their respective numbers; so that if one species (a) is twice as numerous as another (b), then (b) will lose only one-fourth as many individuals as it would do if it were quite unlike (a); and if it is only one-tenth as numerous, then it will benefit in the proportion of 100 to 1.”

JUST the accident of setting his bed alight with a candle, and the shock resulting from his effort to subdue the flames, led to the death of Sir Clements Markham on the evening of Sunday last, January 30, at his residence in Eccleston Square, London.

REQUIRING recently the square roots of the numbers from 1 to 100 to ten figures, or one more place of decimals than is given in Barlow, I was led to the discovery that his last figure for numbers above 1250 is not to be depended upon for its accuracy. It is true that De Morgan, in issuing a reprint of Barlow's Tables in 1839, admitted that his method of checking Barlow's entries by differencing left “remaining a possibility of any of the last figures being a unit wrong in the columns of square and cube roots”.

WITH characteristic foresight, the Government of Canada has collected such information as is available regarding the possibilities of the northern regions of the dominion as a field for immigration. The title of these cloth-bound volumes is attractive, and certainly optimistic. The evidence of those who know the country, given with simple directness, does not emphasise its fertility, and it soon becomes obvious that a large part of the 1,637,559 square miles discussed has emerged so recently from the Glacial epoch that soils have only just begun to form. It is fair to add that a very large part remains unsurveyed and unprospected. Canada's Fertile Northland. Evidence heard before a Select Committee of the Senate of Canada, 1906–7. Edited by Captain E. J. Chambers. Pp. 140; with illustrations and a volume of maps. (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1908.)

IN his article on the “Freshwater Fisheries in the British Colonial Empire”1, Dr. E. B. Worthington stresses the importance of freshwater fish production, but points out that in many parts of the Empire the fresh waters are being neglected. Taking Lake Victoria as an example, he estimates the production of fish in this great tropical lake to be only about 1.4 lb. per acre per year. This “ridiculously small” figure he compares with the North Sea which produces about 15 lb. per acre per year, and explains that in Lake Victoria only the fish of the inshore waters are taken, while the main mass of the water, 26,800 square miles in area, but less than 270 ft. in depth, is left undeveloped and unexploited.

IN a previous communication1, four 4-choice reaction experiments were described in which the responses were made by the hands and feet. In one of them tactile stimuli were used; in the other three the subjects responded to positional displays in the form of either a square or a rectangle. In each of the experiments ipsilateral errors predominated.

THE boundary between the Tanganyika Shield arid the Mozambique Orogenic Belt in north-central Tanzania is being investigated by means of an initial photogeological study of an area of about 70,000 square miles, making use of the extensive reconnaissance mapping by the Tanzania Geological Survey.

TWENTY years ago, as Mr. Diller informs us, picturesque record of a strange episode in volcanic history was unknown to any but the Indians. It is still not very accessible, for it lies in an unfrequented region, deep set in the summit of the Cascade Range, some sixty-five miles north of the California line, but the United States Government, “recognising its worth as an educational feature,” has already wisely secured it from the speculator and spoiler by making it, a national park. An area of two hundred and fifty square miles is thus protected, of which we find a description in the present memoir. The first part, by Mr. Diller, deals with the geology and physical history of the great volcano, named after a local society Mount Mazama, which was shattered to form Crater Lake, and the second, by Mr. Patton, discusses the petrography of its rocks. It was virtually discovered by Captain Dutton, by whom and by Mr. Diller it has already been noticed; the U.S. Geological Survey has also published a special map, but the story is now completed in this excellently illustrated memoir.

ABOUT a century ago, De Morgan, the mathematician, was contributing articles to the Athenceum, describing the various attempts which had been made to invent perpetual motion, to square the circle, or to trisect the angle. These articles, along with many items gathered from his varied and expensive reading, were included in his “Budget of Paradoxes”, a book which, as reprinted by his widow in 1872, is one of those books still beloved by readers who are interested not only in the highways but also in the by-ways of literature. The book is a marvellous combination of versatility and accuracy. Essays and Studies By W. A. Osborne. Pp. vii + 188. (Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide: Lothian Publishing Co. Pty., Ltd., 1946) 10s. 6d.

IN the latest volume of the Egyptian Survey Dr. John Ball describes the geology and geography of an oblong district about 380 square miles in extent, the south-west angle of which rests on the Gulf of Suez, the northern part of it including some of the Gebel el Tih. This is an intensely dissected limestone plateau of about Cretaceous age, rising to nearly 4000 ft., with northward-facing scarps. South of this comes an undulating sandy upland, about 1600 ft. above the sea, and then (forming about half the district) a highly eroded mountain tract, the highest point of which, Serabit el Khadim, reaches 3596 ft.

The Fountains in Trafalgar Square Some Reflections on the Civil Service. By C. K. Munro. Pp. x + 202. (London: William Heinemann, Ltd., 1952.) 12s. 6d. net.

THE counter experiments of Auger, Maze and Grivet-Meyer1, and those of Kolhorster, Matthes and Weber2, indicate the existence of very large cosmic ray showers, extending over an area of many square metres, and consisting of several thousand particles. In order to obtain information about the constituents of these showers, a cloud chamber with a 2 cm. lead plate across its centre, situated in a room with a light roof, has been used in a magnetic field of 800 gauss. The chamber was controlled by the five-fold coincidences of counters, distributed so that the outer counters were separated by 5 metres. With this counter arrangement the chamber took, on the average, 0·2 photographs per hour.

ON August 26, at 10.30 p.m. and next day, at 9.15 a.m., severe earthquake shocks were felt throughout the south-western part of Iceland. The seismic focus seems to have been situated in the neighbourhood of the volcanic ridge out of which Hekla rises, and the waves moved in a direction which they had formerly been observed to take, namely from north-east to south-west. According to reports to hand, these shocks were felt as far north-west as Тsafjord and as far north as the head of Skagafjord. Thus it appears they overran an area of more than 20,000 square miles, or half the island, for they also caused damage in the Westman Islands, which lie further south than the most southern point of Iceland. Even at sea the shock was felt. A sailing ship was so badly shaken, thirty-five miles from land, that the crew feared it had struck a rock, and began to lower the boats.

THE cylindrical form of the stems of grasses is so universal a feature in the family that the report of the existence in China and Japan of a bamboo with manifestly four-angled stems, has generally been considered a myth, or, at any rate, as founded on some diseased or abnormal condition of a species having stems, when properly developed, circular in section.

THERE is a certain appropriateness in contemplating the development of ethical ideas in contemporary India, for there are few countries, Russia and China excluded, where the march of history has engendered such violent conflicts in the mental and moral attitudes of peoples as in Hindustan. Dr. Edward Thompson, who has devoted many years of service to India, did well, therefore, in choosing this theme for his Conway Memorial lecture this year. Ethical Ideals in India To-day Conway Memorial Lecture delivered at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, W. C. 1, on March 22, 1942. By Dr. Edward Thompson. Pp. vi + 39. (London: Watts and Co., Ltd., 1942.) Cloth, 2s. net; paper, 1s. net.

THIS Report for 1880–81 (the fourth since the various branches of the Indian Survey were amalgamated) shows as usual a good amount of useful work done in the year, and contains also many points of general interest. There were in all twenty-nine field-parties and six large head-quarters' offices. The whole out-turn of work cannot be shortly stated, and the total cost is not given; but it appears that there were 22,765 square miles surveyed topographically, 6141 square miles in great detail, besides much minor and special work, also that eleven Revenue Branch parties surveyed 11,326 square miles at a cost of about 81,000l. General Report on the Operations of the Survey of India during 1880–81. 61 pp. Report, 93 pp. Appendix, and 22 Plates. (Calcutta, 1882.)