Maudsley International was set up to help improve people's mental health and well-being around the world. A variety of programmes have been developed by Maudsley International over the past 10 years, for planning and implementing services; building capacity; and training and evaluation to support organisations and individuals, professionals and managers to train and develop health and social care provisions. Maudsley International's model is based on collaboration, sharing expertise and cultural understanding with international partners.

The action spectrum of the ERG b-wave was measured under dark-adapted conditions in intact goldfish (Carassius auratus). It is substantially broader than the absorption spectrum of goldfish rod porphyropsin. Neither prolonged dark adaptation nor removal of possible efferent neural activity affected its shape. Moreover, a 682-nm background did not produce a selective loss of sensitivity to long wavelengths. The results imply that the spectral sensitivity of the b-wave in dark-adapted goldfish reflects the influence of at least two photoreceptor types which act as a single univariant mechanism near absolute threshold.

Visual responses of goldfish to rotating square-wave gratings were recorded before and after intraocular injection of 2-amino-4-phosphonobutyric acid (APB). High doses of APB reduced the rate of optokinetic nystagmus (OKN) to a relatively high spatial frequency grating moving at a high temporal frequency. Responses to a low spatial frequency grating were not altered, nor were responses to the higher spatial frequency when it rotated slowly. The effects of APB were transient and lasted no longer than 3 d. We conclude that APB reduces OKN to high spatiotemporal frequencies in goldfish.

Last year the largest aid budget in the world was steered through the American Congress—yet it was the smallest budget since America began giving aid twenty-three years ago. But perhaps this is no cause for alarm. Consider the following vignettes.

• Washington. December 18th, 1969 (U.P.I.). ‘Senate Democratic leader Mike Mansfield said that the foreign aid programme had lost its original purpose and he would oppose it. “Foreign Aid is no longer an aid programme. It’s a programme for the benefit of American business”, Senator Mansfield said at a news conference. He added, it was no longer being used for the humanitarian precepts (sic) for which it was established.’

• Washington. June 7th, 1970 (A.P.). ‘U.S. Foreign Aid Chief John Hannah acknowledged today that the U.S. aid programme is being used as a cover for C.I.A. operations in Laos.’

In 1960 one person in ten in the United States was non-white. Today it is one in nine. By the end of the decade it will be one in eight. Of persons under fourteen today it is one in seven. Of persons under the age of one it is one in six.

The American race problem is too large to be swept under the carpet. In fact it is of such a size as to influence the whole course of world politics: for if one thing is clear in this turbulent world it is that the major source of conflict of the latter half of this century will be the race/poverty problem and that America will, in one way or another, be at the hub of it.

Already in America the situation is being polarized to the extent where it is becoming more and more rare for white and black people to do anything together. This was my conclusion after two years in the U.S.: first in the liberal, nearly all white, peaceful university town of Madison, Wisconsin, and secondly in the West Side ghetto of Chicago where no other white people lived and where the crime rate was one of the highest in the country. And since leaving America twelve months ago I have seen the process of polarization accelerate at an astonishing rate. All my white and Negro friends agree that they see no alternative in sight to an escalating number of major explosions that will make Newark and Detroit look like tea-parties.

We are entering a new period in man’s history. Some men have always been poorer than others; people’s skin colours have always been different. But for the first time there is developing a fusion between those who are poor and those who are ‘different’. The one supporting the other – they have come to rest with odd exceptions side by side. A line has been drawn across the world. On one side are approximately one third who are white and well fed and affluent, whether they be American capitalists or Soviet factory workers. On the other side are the two thirds who are brown, black or yellow, and are either starving, or at least facing the prospect of always being poor and deprived; certainly standing little chance in the forseeable future of being affluent.

In the poor part of the world, the so called underdeveloped countries, there is a population growth of 2 to 4%. As well as high birth rates they have some of the lowest death rates in the world because of their over proportioned youthful population. A decrease in their birth rate from even a large birth control campaign would according to the distinguished Swedish economist, Gunnar Myrdal, have no effect on the labour force for 15 years and only a very minor effect for three decades.

Again as Myrdal observes even if industrialization were pushed much more rapidly than has been possible in the underdeveloped nations so far, it will not create much employment.