50 Years Ago

Completion of construction on the Dounreay fast reactor is expected towards the end of the year... One of the main objects for the Dounreay reactor will be to develop fuel elements capable of burning fissile atoms rapidly, and able to withstand high heat ratings with high outlet temperatures for the coolant. The use of plutonium as a fuel will be investigated, to illustrate the economics of a system based on the breeding of plutonium from natural or depleted uranium. The economics of the chemical processes required to handle highly active irradiated fuel will form part of this study, since there is no requirement for separation of 'poisons' in the shape of fission products with high capture cross-section for neutrons, but rather a means of re-forming fuel which may have suffered extensive mechanical damage from the fission process.

From Nature 25 May 1957.

100 Years Ago

The Khasis are a tribe inhabiting the Khasi and Jaintia Hills in the Indian province of (as it is now called) Eastern Bengal and Assam. They are surrounded on all sides by alien peoples, Tibeto-Burman and Aryan, and are believed to be a survival of a primitive Austro-Asiatic race that once occupied the whole of eastern India until they were conquered and dispossessed in prehistoric times by an invasion of Tibeto-Burmans. The tribal constitution is strongly matriarchal. Inheritance is through the female line, the youngest daughter being the chief heir of her mother; ancestral property can only be owned by women, and the only property which a man can possess is that which is self-acquired. The chief deities are all female. So is the sun, while the moon is represented as a man, and in grammar and vocabulary the feminine element is much more prominent than the masculine.

From Nature 23 May 1907.