After climbing six flights of stairs she found she had run out of steam and had to sit down.

From the ground, Colombo’s port does not look like much. Those entering it are greeted by wire fences, walls dating back to colonial times and security posts. For mariners leaving the port after lonely nights on the high seas, the delights of the B52 Night Club and Stallion Pub lie a stumble away.

His jargon of slang was a continuous joy and surprise to them. His gestures, his strange poses, his frank ribaldry of tongue and principle fascinated them.

The study of a nanovortex in superconductivity, portrayed here, entails twin sources of information: STM measurements give the topology of the object; scanning tunneling spectroscopy registers the intensity of the relationship of the current with the voltage.