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A maximization procedure for identifying significant links in a flow matrix is described and its use illustrated. The method appears to have advantages over primary-flow linkage methods and over methods based on flow-combination procedures.

The “quantitative revolution” in human geography which swept across so many universities in the 1950s and 1960s had its main diffusion centers in a few locations which were to have global significance. Two critical early centers were the University of Washington in the Pacific Northwest and Lund University in southern Sweden. But the experience of change was different in different locations as the general forces of perturbation sweeping around academia were translated into local eddies with local repercussions. Here, small and somewhat random quirks at the outset, led eventually to fundamental divergences between adoption and rejection. The theme is illustrated by reference to changes which occurred at Cambridge, one of England's two oldest universities, as seen from the perspective of someone who—as undergraduate, graduate student, and later, faculty member—was caught up in these changes and took some small part in propagating them. Special attention is given to the role of two environmental scientists, Vaughan Lewis and Richard Chorley, in introducing changes and the way in which later developments in human geography drew on preceding experiences in physical geography. The reasons behind the “Cambridge variant” and the questions of how intellectual DNA is passed across the generations are discussed.

Changes in the spread of disease-causing viruses into Australia, New Zealand and the Southwest Pacific are examined. Particular reference is made to the impact of reduced travel times between those areas and both Western Europe and Southeast Asia on the transfer of infectious human diseases, notably smallpox, measles, influenza and rubella. The likely consequences of increasing population size and decreasing remoteness on the entry of other infectious diseases are noted.

The general problem of constructing gross climate limits from analysis of a map of species distribution is raised. A study of the distribution of Q. suber suggests that the use of measures of central tendency rather than an attempt to define limits may provide a more fruitful approach to such problems. Use of the standard deviation, together with the mean, provides a probabilistic measure of plant ranges which may provide a useful tool in locating climatically analogous areas for plant introduction. See full-text article at JSTOR