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Article: Science among the spires. (The British Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- September 17, 1988
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1988 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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OXFORD The British Association for the Advancement of Science is a long name for a long week. Every year it meets to let far-flung scientists gather round the same coffee machine's. This year the place was Oxford and we have picked out pentagons, molecular electronics-, sticklebacks and God
MIX the spirits of two different sciences M and you can serve a heady cocktail. Solid-state physics distils its theories from the hard, inanimate materials of which electronic components are made. Organic chemistry prefers the squelchy molecules found in living things. Shake them together and you get molecular electronics-physics looking to biology for its inspiration.
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