India's and Pakistan's decision to conduct nuclear tests was the topic of a long and lively discussion held in the ICTP's Main Lecture Hall on 18 June. Physicist Paolo Cotta Ramusino, secretary general of the Italian Union of Scientists for Disarmament, examined the wide-ranging political and technological implications of nuclear proliferation in southern Asia-a topic of both professional and personal concern for the large contingent of Asian scientists who visit the ICTP.