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The outspoken universities of South Africa are under new threat from the government that supports them. Academics elsewhere must rally round, in their own interests if not South Africa's.
New and more methodologically advanced publication and citation data for the period up to 1984 indicate that the relative decline of British science is continuing, albeit at a slower rate than in the 1970s.
The potential of liposomes as drug-delivery vehicles is currently receiving much attention. But new research uses are also being developed, in areas from modulating the phosphatidylinositol cycle to modelling antigen-presenting cell functions.
The 27th annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology will be held next week in St Louis, Missouri. Roughly 210 companies have booked exhibit booths, and some of the wares they will have on display are described below.