two octavo volumes; as this has been translated into English, we gather that it is a book of some consequence. Yet, he has dragged himself away from all his interests in Europe and devoted a valuable part of his life to medical missionary work in equatorial Africa. Such a man must be either a restless crank or a true altruist, and, as it is obvious from his writings that Dr. Schweitzer is not t...

The problem of UV properties of primeval galaxies is briefly assessed from the theoretical point of view discussing its impact on the definition of the cosmological model.

The Rodin-Ohno (RO) and the Delarue models divide the table of the genetic code into two classes of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (aaRSs I and II) with recognition from the minor or major groove sides of the tRNA acceptor stem, respectively. These models are asymmetric but they are biologically meaningful. On the other hand, the standard genetic code (SGC) can be derived from the primeval RNY code...

A model for the developmental pathway of the genetic code, grounded on group theory and the thermodynamics of codon-anticodon interaction is presented. At variance with previous models, it takes into account not only the optimization with respect to amino acid attributes but, also physicochemical constraints and initial conditions. A 'simple-first' rule is introduced after ranking the amino aci...

Small communities in the primeval societies used to bury solid waste just outside their settlement, discharge aqueous waste into the local water bodies and release gaseous pollutants into the atmosphere. The increase in community size necessitated a more organised form of waste management to minimize the environmental impacts as the quantity of pollutants exceeded the system’s threshold. The st...