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Increasingly stringent environmental requirements for pesticides mean that both biological activity and favourable environmental behaviour must be assessed at an early stage in pesticide discovery. Soil behaviour is governed by the physical properties of the molecule: partition coefficient, dissociation constant, vapour pressure and melting point, which control potential movement under particular soil and environmental conditions and the soil persistence. Established chemical structure-physical property correlations generally allow physical properties to be estimated for the large number of compounds in a synthesis programme with adequate precision. Stability to chemical or biological transformations in soil is more difficult to estimate but a combination of measurement for a few compounds and analogy with known chemical and biological transformation rates for various functional groups can give useful structure-stability correlations.

The handedness of 1599 college students was assessed using a modification of Annett's (1967) inventory. The addition of a strength of preference scale makes the "mixed" classification a better indicator of ambidexterity than in the original inventory by eliminating from it subjects who show preference for the same hand for nearly all tasks. Contrary to previous reports, sex was not significantly related to handedness. It was found that a family history of left-handedness was significantly related to the handedness of the subject. The present form of the Annett inventory provides an easily scorable inventory for determining handedness of large groups as well as for use in individual testing situations. A further advantage of the present inventory is the ease with which data may be transferred by key-punch operators prior to special analysis or sorting procedures.