Playing Lego with molecules

LINKING together individual molecules to make complicated structures, much in the same way as children playing with Lego, chemists are now trying to construct materials whose properties they can fix beforehand.

Making clothes more comfortable

WHILE CHOOSINGa fabric, fingers may be the best judge of a cloth's quality, but they are not reliable in predicting the cloth's behaviour after it is tailored. Now, a mathematical technique called fuzzy-set theory, may enable textiles to be designed according to predetermined attributes related to comfort and performance over time.

Strong medicine

ONTARIO Hydro's newly appointed chairman, Maurice Strong, has initiated steps to reduce the corporation's debt and review its operations, including its nuclear programme. Ontario Hydro, Canada's largest power corporation, owes US $29 billion. It raised its rates by 11.8 per cent in 1992 and in addition shelved expansion plans, retrenched 1,950 workers, froze unsigned private sector projects and shut down two generating units.

Human gene in plants

AND NOW a human gene can be environmental groups call it a "landfound in plants. A Canadian scientist mark decision". has succeeded in adding a human The problem in the affected areas gene - metallothionein - to plants has been caused by excessive use of like rapeseed, tobacco and alfalfa. fertilisers, which take up to 40 years Scientists are now trying to engineer to percolate to underground water the plants to express the gene in non- supplies. edible parts. Plants bearing metallothionein, which produces a protein that attracts metals, will be used to clean up polluted water and soil in

Free trade pact raises environmental fears

THE NORTH America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which will bind the USA, Mexico and Canada into a common market, has everyone wondering what the pact will do to the environment of the region. The key concern is that US companies hiding behind less stringent Mexican norms will reduce their own standards or simply relocate. President George Bush also has the task of elections with his electorate that seem more concerned with job issues than liberalised trade. The fear is that NAFTA will prompt US companies to dump workers at home in favour of cheap Mexican labour.

Fish wars of an economic kind

IF YOU cannot agree to something right away, the UN has a simple solution: call a conference later. That is precisely what the Rio conference did on the vexatious question of straddling fish stocks. These are stocks of fish that migrate into one country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) from another's or between national EEZs and the open high seas. Over-fishing in the high seas by one nation can deplete the fish stocks within the EEZ of another.