We have made some spectacular advances.

Until this occurs, there can be few spectacular advances such as those achieved recently in fluvial and slope geomorphology.

"This is the most spectacular advance by terrorists in the history of Peru's civil war," said Fernando Rospegleose, an expert on terrorism.

"As you probably learned in school," he went on, "late in the twentieth century the medical sciences made a lot of spectacular advances in molecular biology."

And along with spectacular advances in radio technology, there has been a dramatic increase in the scientific and public respectability of theories about extraterrestrial life.

That represents quite a spectacular advance, both in miniaturization and in cost reduction, in a period of six or seven years.

For despite the spectacular advances in the life sciences over the last three centuries, the secret of longevity still remained to be discovered.

And they will do all this in a context of spectacular, elegant, yet frightening scientific advance.

Nor was it a particularly successful strategy, despite some apparently spectacular advances in Africa and Afghanistan.

Lead, normally the dullest of metals, has seen the most spectacular advance.