We perceive the world through images formed by scattering. The ability to interpret scattering data mathematically has opened to our scrutiny the constituents of matter, the building blocks of life, and the remotest corners of the universe. Here, we present an approach to image formation based on the symmetry properties of operations in three-dimensional space. Augmented with graph-theoretic me...

Scientific monitoring has recorded only a recent fraction of the oceans' alteration history. This biases our understanding of marine ecosystems. Remote coral reef ecosystems are often considered pristine because of high shark abundance. However, given the long history and global nature of fishing, sharks' vulnerability, and the ecological consequences of shark declines, these states may not be ...

We have implemented the Smith and Waterman dynamic programming algorithm on the massively parallel MP1104 computer from MasPar and compared its ability to detect remote protein sequence homologies with that of other commonly used database search algorithms. Dynamic programming algorithms are normally too computer intensive to permit full databases search, however on the MP1104 a search of the S...

Over 60 years ago, Peter Beighton and I both attended Arnold School, in the Lancashire town of Blackpool – a place, according to a music hall recital, ‘famous for fresh air and fun’! From there our professional careers have taken us to many fascinating places, including the remotest inhabited island in the world – Tristan da Cunha, in mid-South Atlantic. I was there in 1955 1956, as Senior Scie...

As a phenomenon accompanying European expansion, piracy and privateering spread globally, beginning in the sixteenth century. These activities, and their handling within transnational relations, shed light on several issues of modern international law, then under formation. They reflect different basic problems that both challenged and structured central aspects of legal relations on an interna...

Midway between Africa and South America, on the edge of the 'roaring 40s' (37°S 12°W) is an archipelago of five tiny volcanic islands. Tristan, a British Overseas Territory, is the largest--seven miles across and rising 7,000 feet above sea level. There is no airport, no air access except for an occasional ship's helicopter and no sheltered anchorage. The nearest port is over 1,700 miles away--...