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This week's magazine

26 March 2005

Issue 2492

New Scientist issue 2492 cover
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Editor's picks

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Life

Histories: Nearer my god to thee

Features
New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Life

Cannabis: Too much, too young?

Features
New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Technology

Micro scalpel offers unprecedented precision

Features
New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Earth

When lava flows uphill

Features
Introducing the glooper computer

Technology

Introducing the glooper computer

Features

Table of contents

News

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Technology

Invention

INNER SPACE CAPSULE The idea of steering a drug capsule through a patient's bloodstream to a tumour or diseased organ, and then making it release its payload once it arrives, is being researched by the University of California in Oakland (world patent application 2005/020918). Researchers propose using a tightly focused ultrasound beam to create vibrations …

News

Technology

The personalised traffic jam buster

News

Technology

Following the trail of the zombie PCs

News

Technology

Personalised robot aircraft for US soldiers

News

Technology

New Powerbook controlled with a shake

News

Technology

Snooze button addicts defeated by runaway clock

News

Soundbites

News

Space

Glow of alien planets glimpsed at last

News

Life

Face blindness runs in families

News

Technology

Oil and water mix for better drugs

News

Life

Kids – do not let gender bend your fender

News

Earth

Greenpeace slams seal hunt quotas

News

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Wrinkles could be less than skin deep

News

Space

Crater count led Mars historians astray

News

Space

Robot finds life in a Mars-like desert

News

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No way to heaven for born heathens

News

Earth

Forests belch out greenhouse gas

News

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Green tea may increase birth defect risk

News

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US flu vaccine trials may be effort wasted

News

Life

Oysters may deserve their sexy reputation

News

Space

Neptune's rings are fading away

News

Life

Bar-tailed godwit is king of the skies

News

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Prion antibodies open way for vCJD vaccine

News

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An apple a day may keep the doctor away

News

Earth

French nuclear tests may have caused cancers

News

Earth

Fuel tax likely for European airlines

News

60 Seconds

News

Life

Rogue weeds defy rules of genetics

News

Earth

Cracks may force shutdown of UK reactors

News

Earth

UK's final farm-scale GM evaluation concludes

News

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Indian-made cheap drugs threatened by patent law

News

Earth

Coal-fired power plants to trade mercury pollution

News

Earth

Huge US market fuels illegal logging crisis

News

Technology

School computers may be overrated

News

Opinion

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

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When drugs are too blunt an instrument

YOU have a headache and you buy an over-the-counter "extra strength" painkiller. Among other ingredients, it may contain codeine, a well-known drug for pain relief, but one without analgesic properties itself. Codeine is a pro-drug: only after the body transforms codeine into morphine is there any pain relief. But nearly 1 out of every 10 …

Opinion

Earth

Editorial: Edge of the global warming abyss

Opinion

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Editorial: Back-pedalling on cannabis policy?

Opinion

Humans

Washington diary

Opinion

Interview: Electronic maestros

Opinion

Features

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Life

Histories: Nearer my god to thee

At 3 am on 7 June 1913, four men crawled from a makeshift tent. For weeks they had struggled to haul equipmentto a snowy col, far above central Alaska's muskeg plains. Now, suffering from altitude sickness and indigestion from an ill-advised experiment with home-made noodles, they faced one more challenge: a final push to the …

Features

Life

Cannabis: Too much, too young?

Features

Technology

Micro scalpel offers unprecedented precision

Features

Earth

When lava flows uphill

Features

Technology

Introducing the glooper computer

Features

More

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Earthly delights

Richard Fortey's wonderful The Earth (Harper Perennial, £9.99) is now in paperback. Ted Nield reviewed it for New Scientist saying, "Books with a title this ambitious generally do not live up to their billing. This one does." Fortey takes us around the world, showing that it is "forever in transit". The evidence he gives us …

Books & Arts

Meanwhile in heaven

Books & Arts

Do answer back

Books & Arts

Physics

Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The letters of Richard P. Feynman

Books & Arts

Life

On the Wing by Alan Tennant

Books & Arts

Philip's Dark Skies Map

Books & Arts

A Geological Time Scale 2004 edited by Felix Gradstein, Jim Ogg and Alan Smith

Books & Arts

The Hopes of Snakes by Lisa Couturier

Books & Arts

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All in My Head: An epic quest to cure an unrelenting, totally unreasonable, and only slightly enlightening headache by Paula Kamen

Books & Arts

Regulars

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Feedback

Betty the Caledonian heifer A CREATURE viewed by modern society as "little more than a benign food source – the cow – is also shown to be an astute animal capable of solving riddles, with an intellect more traditionally associated with an ape". Readers in the UK who saw this statement in The Observer newspaper …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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