Book Reviews Current Research in Britain. Physical Sciences. Pp. 1240. Longman. Paperback f 125 ISBN 0582 209250. Current Research in Britain. Biological Sciences. Pp. 1232. Longman. Paperback f 125 tSBN 0582 209226.

Since 1981 Current Research in Britain (CRIB), which replaced Research in British Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges (RBUPC), has served as a most valuable annual review of research in Britain. In publishing this seventh edition the British Library has joined forces with Longman, greatly strengthening the latter’s already impres- sive list of international reference books on the organisation of scientific research. The new arrangement has not resulted in any substantial change in format or presentation - nor, indeed, does any seem at all necessary - but the work is substantially larger than its immediate prede- cessor. It does, however, reflect a substantial change in the formal organisation of institutions of higher education in Britain. Last year a large number of polytechnics and colleges were desig- nated universities and in many cases this resulted in a change of name. Thus Leicester Polytechnic is now De Montfort University and is listed accordingly. All told, the number of institutions listed is a little over 150, corresponding to more than 4000 separate departments. This includes a small number of noneducational research centres such as the Royal Institution and E. A. Tech- nology, Harwell. Industrial research, however, is excluded: details of this are to be found in a companion volume, Indusrr~al Research in rhe Unired Kingdom.

As before, each of the physical and biological sciences volumes are issued in two parts, devoted, respectively, to research projects - some 12,000 in all - and research workers, study areas, and specific research subjects. The number of indivi- dual research workers listed is now almost 50,000, divided roughly equally between the physical and the biological fields. Most of the details were collected between March and July 1992.

Also available are companion volumes on the social sciences (annual) and the humanities (alternate years). British research workers, like their confreres in most other countries, have problems in raising funds for increasingly sophisti- cated investigation, but these impressive volumes do not suggest that British science is in serious decline. CRIB is now also available in CD-ROM.

Trevor 1. Williams

Industrial Research in the United Kingdom. Pp. 548. Longman. f 790 ISBN 0582082730.

Over the years, Longman has built up an impres- sive list of international reference books on research. Industrial Research in the United Kingdom first appeared in 1946: this 14th edition follows the general pattern of its predecessors.

Endeavo~r, New Series, Volume 17, No. 3, 1993. 0190-9327/93 $6.00 + 0.00. Pergaran Precu Ltd. Printed in Gnat SMain.

It includes details of technical research in over 300 laboratories or industrial companies in the UK. The tirst four chapters deal, respectively, with industrial firms; research associations and consultancies; government departments and their laboratories; universities and polytechnics. In the case of the last it should be noted that the book went to press too late to take account of the recent massive upgrading to university status - and in most instances renaming - of a large number of polytechnics and colleges. Thus Sheffield City Polytechnic overnight became Sheffield Hallam University. Two further chapters list, respectively, trade and development associations and learned and professional societies.

As with earlier editions the volume closes with three indexes: personal names, titles of establish- ments, and subjects. To this has now been added, for the first time, a helpful index of establishments broken down by their general sphere of interest. For this 11 categories have been selected, ranging from aerospace to agriculture, environmental science to earth and astronomical sciences.

Trevor I. Williams

Japanese/English English/Japanese Glossary of Scientific and Technical Terms. By Louise Watanabe Tung. Pp. 1146. Wiley. 7993. Hardback f56.00, US $91.95 ISBN 0 471 57463 5.

This 1146 page glossary contains 120 subjects with between one and four thousand entries in each of biology, chemistry, computing, engineer- ing, and mathematics. Although many good, but expensive, glossaries exist in Japan, this is intended to fill a need for Western readers. As such it has romanized pronunciations to help those who cannot read Japanese characters.

A central problem with any Japanese dictionary is how to index it. This glossary, together with most others, requires that you know how to pro- nounce a word before you look it up. This is unlikely if you are not a Japanese expert and you are attempting to read. As such the glossary has limited value in the Japanese to English direction.

With such a rapid growth in new terms, another problem is what to include. Here nitric acid is included, but polystyrene is not. The layout makes the glossary considerably more bulky than it need be. It is certainly a reference work.

I admire the effort that went into this work, but would welcome a CD-ROM version with more entries and easier than these to look up. Until then, for a western scientist or translator, this book is useful, especially going from English to Japanese.

David Inman

Light and Electron Microscopy. By Elizabeth M. Slayter and Henry S. Slayter. Pp. 312. Cambridge University Press. 7993. Hardback f35.00, US $84.95 ISBN 0 521 32714 8; paperback f14.95, US $27.95 ISBN 0 521 33948 0.

This excellent book breaks new ground in that it can be read with profit by both optical and electron microscopists, who have much in common and much to learn from each other. It exploits the fact

that practising microscopists are always looking over their shoulders at developments in all forms of microscopy that might help them. The pattern of the book is based on the sensible idea that an accurate verbal explanation, accompanied by the results, rather than derivation of a mathematical analysis, lead to great conciseness and accuracy of expression. The book is ostensibly designed to encourage biologists to assimilate the basic physics background underlying all forms of microscopy, but microscopists of all disciplines, beginners or experienced, will find that there is much within these pages to entice them into areas which they have not yet explored, but which look promising. This is a text that can be trusted, in spite of one or two unfortunate printing errors. The more discerning reader will find it possible, even rewarding, to correct these after consulting the mathematical appendix. Excellent references are provided. As a personal copy it is good value for money. Basic principles of microscopy do not date quickly.

T. Mulvey

Black Holes. By J.-P. Luminet. Pp. 372. Cambridge University Press. 1992. Hardback f30.00 ISBN 0 521 40029 5; paperback f 10.95 ISBN 0 521 40906 3.

Few people, from professional astrophysicists to science-fiction buffs to those with only a casual interest in science, fail to be fascinated by black holes - objects with such a strong gravitational field that not even light can escape their clutches. Yet, the professionals aside, how many of us know much more about black holes beyond this simple definition?

In this book, J.-P. Luminet, a specialist in black holes, reveals the rich world of ideas that surrounds the basic concept of the black hole. Some of the ideas are puzzling, some of them definitely mind- stretching, but they are all undoubtedly fascinating, and are presented without recourse to mathematics. Luminet begins with an introduction to relativity and curved space-time, and proceeds via a discus- sion of the life and death of stars to the main subject - the black hole in its many manifestations in theory, and, possibly, in the real universe we inhabit.

The result is a fascinating book that demands to be read not once but probably several times, as some of the more difficult ideas certainly require a second reading. However, Luminet’s writing is such that this is a pleasure rather than a chore.

Christine Sutton

Quantum Chaos: A New Paradigm of Nonlinear Dynamics. By Katsuhiro Nakamura. Pp. 208. Cambridge University Press. 1993. Hardback f35.00 ISBN 0 521 39249 7.

The ubiquitous nature of chaos in classical physics is now well established. In that a classical system may be regarded as a limit of a quantum system, imprints of classical chaos upon a quantum system in the semiclassical regime have been studied

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