Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
NATO is making heavy weather of battlefield weapons in Europe. It would find it easier to modernize its forces if it would negotiate as well, and that way would also keep its friends.
Two hundred years ago Lavoisier's Traité élémentaire de chimie was published in Paris. The book stands alongside Newton's Principia as a landmark work in science.
Public interest in recent excitements is to be welcomed, especially if it does not turn to anger when attempts to replicate the observation of cold fusion fail — the most probable outcome.
Europe is in a mood to collaborate in research, as in much else, but doubts persist about the proper framework. This survey of science in Europe may resolve some issues.
Will it be different after 1992? The general expectation that everything in Europe will change when the EEC (at last) becomes a common market is belied by the inadequacy of the preparation for that event.
