[en] The author describes how the idea of quarks as fundamental particles and constituents of protons and neutrons came to be established. One of the successes of the ideas behind the quark model has been the prediction and subsequent discovery of the omega minus particle. Observations on groups of hadrons led researchers to propose that quarks had fractional electric charges, 1/3 and 2/3 that of the electron in direct contravention of Faraday's experimental observations which had held sway for so long. Although controversial at first, these three fractionally charged quarks (known as up, down and strange) where shown to make up all the hadrons, or particles subject to the strong interaction when grouped together in threes. Pairs of quarks and antiquarks were shown to make up the meson family. Later studies revealed the existence of a fourth ''charm'' quark and a fifth ''bottom'' quark which added to understanding of high energy interactions. The search for the, as yet theoretical, sixth, or top quark continues. (UK)

[en] Scientists at the Large Electron Positron collider (LEP) at CERN are now attempting to upgrade the machine built in the 1980s to study the W boson, and to search for the Higgs boson. This project, known as LEP2, is described in this article and aims to double LEP's energy at a cost of Pound 180 million. The many technical difficulties encountered are described, and the experimental aims and complexities of LEP2 are explained. (UK)

[en] The use of ethanol as an alternative fuel for cars in Brazil, may shortly be reduced. Falling world oil prices have meant that ethanol, derived from sugar cane, following a fourteen year research program, has ceased to be a financially viable replacement for petrol. Although about a third of Brazil's cars are at present powered by ethanol, only substantial government subsidies could reinstate this fuel despite its reduced pollutant status. Government officials now predict that ethanol will become merely a petrol additive and production of ethanol cars will have stopped by the year 2000. (UK)

[en] Accurate measurements of the lifetime of the neutron are important to scientists in many fields, nuclear physicists, astronomers and environmental scientists. The neutron decays into a proton by emitting an electron and an antineutrino in about 900 seconds. It has taken three decades of research to assess this decay time accurately because of the technical difficulties involved. Neutrons must be kept very cold close to absolute zero, in order to be moving slowly enough for any practical detector to measure them. In the late 1980s two groups of experimenters produced very accurate results which led to an acceptance of the lifetime as 889.1 ⁺- 2.1 sec (the 14 minutes 49 seconds of the title). There now seems to be agreement between particle physicists and cosmologists about the important result. (UK)

[en] During the Cold War, a corner of Washington state was home to the plutonium industry. Cleaning up the deadly mess is now proving the biggest challenge ever and is discussed in this article. (author)

[en] Cleaning up the dump in Washington State, where waste from the Cold War necessitated plutonium industry was deposited will require robots as the hazards from radiation and chemical wastes are too great to allow human involvement. The Hanford Nuclear Reservation covers an area of 1456 square kilometres, and waste has been dumped indiscriminately throughout the site. The first task is to map the contents of the 177 underground tasks using wall crawler robots, which are preprogrammed for maximum efficiency. (UK)

[en] An interview is reported with John Collier, the chairman of Nuclear Electric, the company responsible for operating all Britain's nuclear power reactors since November 1989, when the nuclear sector was withdrawn from the United Kingdom (UK) Government's electricity privatization plans. Since nuclear power was first used to generate electricity, unit costs have been high, even though subsidised by fossil fuels, and the reactors have been operating below capacity. The author suggests that now all the reactors are under one management structure, improvements will be seen in both these areas, and the faster than planned completion of the first U.K. Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) at Sizewell will improve operating figures still further. It is hoped that success at Sizewell may lead to hardware exports. The author identifies city confidence as a greater problem for the success of future reactor construction projects than environmental issues, as money for future work might come from private rather than public sources. (UK)

[en] The world's nuclear power stations risk becoming brittle as they age faster than expected. As Western engineers try to understand how, they are turning to Russia for practical help in giving their oldest stations a new lease of life. (author)

[en] This article traces the development of clockwork wind-up battery chargers that can be used to recharge mobile phones, laptop computers, torches or radio batteries from the pioneering research of the British inventor Trevor Baylis to the marketing of the wind-up gadgets by Freeplay Energy who turned the idea into a commercial product. The amount of cranking needed to power wind-up devices is discussed along with a hand-cranked charger for mobile phones, upgrading the phone charger's mechanism, and drawbacks of the charger. Details are given of another invention using a hand-cranked generator with a supercapacitor as a storage device which has a very much higher capacity for storing electrical charge

[en] The proposal by the Dutch to extract natural gas from the 40 billion cubic metres beneath the Wadden Sea has been cited as a serious cause for concern by environmentalists. The new right wing government is less concerned than was the recently ousted left wing government and stands to gain directly through increased revenue. The Wadden Sea is a vast area of tidal channels, mudflats, shifting sandbanks, salt marshes, wet meadows and dunes, and provides a safe haven for numerous protected plants and animals. It is also a sanctuary for migrating birds and a feeding ground for herring, sole and plaice. Subsidence is cited by the environmentalists as a major potential problem and pollution is said to be always a risk