Ionic liquids: fact and fiction

Ionic liquid literature is increasingly plagued by unfounded mythologies that have arisen due to the burgeoning interest in these neoteric materials. This short polemic is designed to bring attention to some of the key problems in the current ionic liquid literature; this is an exciting new field, and we want to see it blossom in the fertile ground of academic and industrial excellence.

Nature as historical protagonist: environment and society in pre-industrial England

This article compares chronologies reconstructed from historical records of prices, wages, grain harvests, and population with corresponding chronologies of growing conditions and climatic variations derived from dendrochronology and Greenland ice-cores. It demonstrates that in pre-industrial, and especially late medieval, England, short-term environmental shocks and more enduring shifts in environmental conditions (sometimes acting in concert with biological agencies) exercised a powerful influence upon the balance struck between population and available resources via their effects upon the reproduction, health and life expectancy of humans, crops, and livestock. Prevailing socio-economic conditions and institutions, in turn, shaped society's susceptibility to these environmental shocks and shifts.