An iron water wheel was uncovered in early September at Gresham Street in the City of London. It is the first ever found in northern Europe and the large links of wrought iron are extraordinarily well preserved.

Tree ring analysis dates the wheel at 108 to 109 AD. However, archaeologist Ian Blair, from the Museum of London, says: “The iron is as good as the day it was made. The staggering state of preservation is highly unusual in Roman metalwork.”

The iron work was protected by being buried in a water-logged, anaerobic environment, brought about by the collapse of the well head after a fire. London’s rising water table has ensured the site remained submerged.

Another well at the western end of the same site yielded square wooden buckets from another huge water wheel, dated to 63 AD. Only a single wooden gear piece has survived from the lifting mechanism, but the oak buckets are unique – the only known surviving examples from the Roman world.

Iron pins and resin hold them together and they are currently on display in fish tanks filled with deoxygenated water. This will protect them for one month, but they will then be freeze dried.

The Gresham Street water wheels hauled water up from wells about five metres deep. The buckets from the western well held about two litres of water. Those at the eastern well, which have not survived, are estimated to have held five litres of water, delivering about 100 litres per wheel revolution.

The chains were probably turned by a treadmill powered by humans. Calculations by the museum suggest that a slave could have lifted more than 270,000 litres of water a day, walking about 10 metres to raise each 100 litres of water. In a week, that slave could have filled 17,500 modern bath tubs.

Why such a huge volume of water was needed is still a puzzle. The Gresham Street site, being excavated before development by LandSecurities, lies between Roman London’s amphitheatre and public baths.

The wells could have supplied the baths as there are no springs in this part of the city, or could have been to supply the amphitheatre. London was largely rebuilt after its destruction during Bodicca’s revolt against Roman rule that ended with her death in 61 AD. The western well was part of the redevelopment of the Roman city.

The technology was the best that the Roman Empire could provide. Written contemporary accounts do exist, but these exceptional artefacts will be essential for research into Roman engineering, say archaeologists.

Kunzig, European editor of the US science magazine Discover, says his inspiration was a drop of seawater seen under a microscope at MIT 10 years ago. Of the thousands of plankton visible, fewer than half were known or named.

His curiosity aroused, he began to investigate what we know about the oceans, and how the knowledge was gained. He discovered that maps of the sea floor sometimes weren’t all they seemed: “I just made most of it up,” said one oceanographer when questioned about the detailed map of the bed of the Indian Ocean.

Chair of the judges, Sir David Weatherall described the winning book as “passionate, revelatory and scientifically rigorous”.

Rich reward

The short list, chosen from more than a hundred entries, showed Kunzig faced strong competition: George Johnson’s biography of Murray Gell-Mann, Oxford’s Mark Ridley’s account of error-correcting genes, Mendel’s Demon, Steve Grand’s evolving algorithmic Creatures, Paul Strathern and Mendeleyev’s Table, and Lewis Wolpert’s tale of depression and recovery, Malignant Sorrow.

Another £10,000 went to the winner of the Junior Prize – Michael Allaby with his Dorling Kindersley Guide to Weather. For this prize, the shortlist is chosen by a judges’ panel and sent out to 25 schools. The pupils then pick the winner.

Chair of the judges Geraint Smith commented that the shortlist was outstanding, but that a lot of rubbish was being produced for the under-14s. The panel had been shocked to read so much sloppy science full of errors and such poorly edited books.

And there are other benefits from winning the Science Book Prize: Brian Greene, winner in 2000 with his take on string theory, The Elegant Universe, has out-earned pop star Posh Spice’s book deal. He’s been signed up for $2 million for his next book.

Even being on the short list can bring fame: Sylvia Nasar’s biography of the troubled mathematician John Nash, A Beautiful Mind is now being filmed. It is due out later in 2001 and will star Russell Crowe, in formal Princeton wear this time, rather than a leather skirt.

The variety of pleasures provided by smoking makes it hard to design
one substitute that would make it easy for smokers to break their habit.
Nicotine patches provide only a steady low dose of nicotine throughout the
day and night. Nicotine chewing gum won’t work if you drink coffee or juice.
Nasal sprays provide some intense peaks of smoking by delivering a fine
mist of nicotine but the blast they provide is often initially painful.

Soon there may be another method – a device called the Nicohaler, which
delivers a smaller hit of nicotine vapour. The researchers developing this
new device have just published data in the Journal of the American Medical
Association showing that it can help smokers to quit.

Stig Jorgensen, a researcher at the Bispebjorg Hospital in Copenhagen,
developed the Nicohaler working with colleagues at the hospital and Kabia
Pharmacia of Sweden. The device looks a bit like a grey plastic cigar with
holes. A plug of nicotine mixed with a buffer fits into it. It is not an
easy smoke: you have to suck hard to produce the vapourised nicotine. ‘If
you are not motivated, it won’t work,’ says Karl Fagerstrom of Kabi.

The company plans to complete trials on the safety and efficacy of the
device and then apply for medical licences in Europe and the US. If they
are successful, they will have added another choice for smokers who want
to quit.

‘The big thing is a combination,’ according to Fagerstrom. ‘The patch
is very good for people who smoke between 10 and 15 cigarettes a day, the
nasal spray for very addicted smokers.’ His results appear soon in the
journal Psychopharmocology and show that a patch or nicotine gum on their
own are less effective than a combination of patch supplemented by gum,
inhaler or nasal spray.

With a mix of delivery systems, it’s possible to match most of the pleasures
of a real cigarette without actually lighting up. There is only one problem
for smokers – with all the pleasures of smoking under chemical control,
what excuse can there be not to quit?