Stalin's bomb: Soviet physicists and the Cold War

Revisionist historians of the nuclear age have long argued that it was not necessary to have used the atomic bombs in August 1945 to bring the Second World War to an end, and that a more conciliatory approach by the Truman administration towards the Soviet Union—being franker with Stalin about the bomb and giving him an assurance that it would not be used—would have created a better chance of achieving a less confrontational postwar relationship between the two powers. They have also challenged the myth that the reason for using the bombs was to save American lives.     

Teaching subjects to pupils with profound and multiple learning difficultiesConsiderations for the new Framework

Nicola Grove, who lectures in speech and language therapy and works in a school for pupils with severe and profound learning difficulties, and Nick Peacey, Director of the Special Educational Needs Joint Initiative for Training (SENJIT) at the Institute of Education, discuss the development of a framework for teaching National Curriculum subjects to pupils with profound learning difficulties through discussion with mainstream specialists.     

Uncertainty,environmental policy and social learning

This note puts the research project which led to this Special Issue in the context of developments in and around environmental policy over the past two decades, from the perspective of someone closely involved. It links political and institutional problems over sustainable development to the changing role and authority of science in contemporary society, and to the new kind of emphasis on social learning to be found in the papers that follow.