Benjamin Thompson, better known as Count Rumford, discovered the mechanical equivalent of heat. He was also soldier, administrator, founder of the Royal Institution in London and the English Garden in Munich. Fellow of the Royal Society and Membre de l'Institut, his career embraced rural New England, London society, service to the Elector of Bavaria and an unhappy marriage in Paris to the widow of Antoine Lavoisier.

Manipulations with isolated plant cells represent a powerful technology for the genetic engineering of plants.

Interdisciplinary studies on ‘Text and Image’, which began in the 1970s, have now taken on a position of some importance. They pick up and develop those theories which, from the 15th to the 17th centuries, considered the association of the arts in terms of the Horatian ‘Ut pictura poesis’. These studies, however, confront a major theoretical difficulty, inherent in the retention of Euclidean categories in our conception of vision and painting. A comparison with cultures in which the ideogram flourishes—in particular those of China and Japan—should allow this difficulty to be resolved.

Cultures may be viewed as systems of elements constituted through the selection, interpretation and internalization of traditions by individuals and groups. Group identities may be viewed as cores of living tradition systems based on a limited number of key symbols and tales of identity. The cultural identities of Finno-Ugrian minorities in present-day Russia are at risk and uncertainty prevails concerning the strategies to be adopted in their defence. What are the cultural resources for ethnic survival and what principles may be discerned in a basic strategy that should be flexible enough to be modified according to thousands of different minority situations?

A review of market structure and firm conduct in European food processing industries, as well as the policies of Member State governments toward the movement of goods across borders, suggests that the pace of market integration in this section of the EU economy will be slower than sometimes predicted.

The cities of Western Europe are profoundly affected by major global forces, which affect both the competitive advantage of different cities and the location of activities between cities and suburbs. These forces will impinge differentially on the main levels of the urban hierarchy; it is useful to distinguish between global cities, regional cities, older industrial cities and county-level cities.

After World War II, the European semi-periphery—southern, Mediterranean and the eastern one—underwent rapid industrialization and urbanization. During this process. East-Central European socialist countries also replicated the forms—but not the social content and mechanism—of earlier Western European urbanization. Post-socialist transition has introduced important changes into urban processes as follows: (a) growing inequalities; (b) development of transboundary relations and the beginning of city competition across the whole of Europe; (c) independent urban governments; (d) transformation of urban society; and (e) privatization of urban land and housing.

The Eurometropolis is a new power, challenging the supranational role of Brussels. The territories of influence of such Eurometropolises extend outside individual nations. In federal systems they may be part of state organization, elsewhere they create networks of competition and co-operation, and have started to develop independent politics.

An attempt is made to describe the global urban situation, stressing important aspects of cross-cultural links and environmental problems for the urban development of sub-Saharan Africa. As a consequence of Agenda 21, passed at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro (1992), there exists an urgent and growing need to analyse further and assess the research and planning of urban development in the South.