Reading of irregular words is compromised in AD for those with a MMSE score in the range of 14 to 23. A lexical decision task may provide a more accurate estimate of premorbid intelligence in those with mild AD. Further research is needed to provide evidence of STW's correlation with current ability.

The Charter of the Royal College of Nursing commits its membership ‘to promote the science and art of nursing’. Nursing is essentially synonymous with caring. The caring role is central to nursing but shared with patients themselves, their relatives and with other health professions. It consists of acts of helping and assisting with daily living activities which may be simple or complex. Giving help may involve not only acting for or doing something for another but guiding, supporting, teaching and providing the right environment for another. The art of helping is built on a scientific basis. Knowledge of underlying scientific principles is needed as a basis of judgement for nursing action. The implications of this view of the primary role of the nurse for education, efficiency and specialization in nursing are reviewed.

Familial macrocephaly with mesodermal hamartomas is described as a distinct syndrome in nine individuals from four families. Constant manifestations include symmetrical macrocephaly without ventricular enlargement, mild neurological dysfunction, and postnatal growth deceleration. Speech and motor delays observed in all the children were usually well compensated by adulthood. Two children had mild mental retardation and seizures which may have been related to intracerebral hemorrhage in one. Mesodermal hamartomas were present in affected persons from all four families, with 60% of individuals manifesting only discrete lipomas and hemangiomas. More serious tumors, including intracerebral hemangiomas, hemangiomatous involvement of the bone, and aggressive lipomas occurred in 40%. Other findings that make it possible to delineate a recognizable syndrome include down-slanting palpebral fissures (66%), a high palate (67%), joint hyperextensibility (55%), pectus excavatum (22%), strabismus or amblyopia (33%), and prolonged drooling (44%). The Bannayan-Zonana syndrome is an autosomal-dominant trait with male predominance of affected individuals.

The relevant literature is reviewed and it is held that the relationships between nursing theory, practice, education and research are close and reciprocal relationships. Each is related to the other but it is argued that the hub ofthe relationships is nursing practice as nursing is a practice discipline.This paper is based on an address delivered on 10 July 1976 at the annual conference of the Association of Integrated and Degree Courses in Nursing held at the University of Hull, England.

The role of research and the development of nursmg theoryThe profession of nursing searches for a theory base for its practice, but there are problems inherent in defining the nature of concepts and in building them into testable hypotheses and theories. Some concepts are derived from everyday experience, some from the conventional wisdom of the profession. Some are developed by deductive methods from related sciences, some inductively from nursing practice itself. Although a few embryonic theories have been developed, little has been developed at the prescriptive level nor has any unifying model satisfied all thinkers. For the present there is a need to isolate concepts from conventional professional wisdom, for factor isolating research, for the testing of hypotheses against nursing practice.