Subscribe now

This week's magazine

27 May 1995

Issue 1979

New Scientist issue 1979 cover
Previous issue Next issue
arrow
Subscribe
Access our magazine content direct via our website, app or print magazine
arrow
View in the app
Check out this magazine in our easy-to-navigate mobile app
arrow
Find a previous edition online
Search through our digital archive of over 30 years of magazines

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.

Liberté, Egalité, Interneté

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.

Down on the virtual farm

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.

Easy Rollers

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.

Just obeying orders

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.

Enigma: No. 824 Buying a book

SUSAN'S friends have all been giving her book tokens recently so that she now has 50 of them. Each token is for a whole number of pounds. Susan decided to buy a book and so she went through a catalogue and marked all the books that looked attractive. The most expensive was a huge encyclopedia …

News

Technology

Netropolitan – Replies

News

Technology

Hullabaloo over all round sound

News

Technology

Vaccine stalks cat allergy

News

Technology

Robo-Kicker puts the boot in

News

Patents

News

Technology

Antibody steers safer path to tumours

News

Technology

Netropolitan – Ebola

News

Technology

Netropolitan – Net Nanny

News

Acid test for diseased tissue

News

Butterflies find mates in ultraviolet

News

Technology

Escape to sterility for designer fish

News

Technology

Heavy metal guzzlers relish dirty waters

News

And now for the sunspot forecast

News

A blast of sound is good news for the ozone layer

News

How many people hear in colour?

News

TB vaccines move a step closer

News

Strange stars the size of planets

News

They came from 40 million BC

News

Feud splits world of schizophrenia researchers

News

Weapons challenge

News

Breast not best?

News

Grim lessons from aircraft inferno

News

Glittering prizes

News

Accidental death

News

Drug developments

News

Climax count

News

Two's company

News

The sickness at Australia's heart

News

Norway's wrong numbers fuel war on whaling

News

Siberian sturgeon donate sperm to European cousins

News

Ozone alert follows cancer warning

News

Can Cameroon's lethal lake be made safe?

News

Deputy dog sniffs out poached fish

News

Money up front for promising technologies

News

Priceless plant foils thieves with hidden bug

News

NASA's final countdown

News

Circuses traffic in banned species

News

Britain misses North Sea targets

News

Russia rejects pleas to shut risky reactors

News

Tan worshippers ignore sunbed safety rules

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.

With the benefit of Foresight?

WHAT does it take to get Prime Minister John Major to put on a press conference with eight of his senior colleagues? The answer appears to be a minimum of 4.5 kilograms of documents. Earlier this week, Major and colleagues launched simultaneously a report from the Technology Foresight Programme, the Forward Look, (the second White …

Opinion

The bishop and the naughty genes

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.

Liberté, Egalité, Interneté

SOBER/drunk, happy/sad, young/old, man/woman: it's impossible to tell who you are talking to on the Internet. Does this mean that electronic communication is equalitarian? Has the anonymity of the Internet succeeded where countless communes and democratic systems failed, by shattering the social barriers of gender, class and race? Or has the Net merely reinforced the …

Features

Down on the virtual farm

Features

Easy Rollers

Features

Just obeying orders

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.

High-tech skulduggery and underhand cuts

THE PENTAGON doesn't like to share its high-tech toys. Witness the case of one of its most useful, and certainly one of its most expensive pieces of technology, the Global Positioning System. This network is the ultimate answer to the age-old question: Where am I? It consists of a $10 billion fleet of satellites that …

Forum

A challenge to the cake-slicers

Forum

I am a system

Books & Arts

They're under starters orders …

Forum

Alhambras of the mind

Books & Arts

The man who japed – or not

Books & Arts

Moral watershed for the Middle East

Books & Arts

Everything you were too embarrassed to ask

Books & Arts

How to become a professional astronomer

Books & Arts

All creatures great and small

Books & Arts

The molecules that dreams are made of

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

SUPPOSING the president of the US suddenly started going loopy. It could happen. There are those who wonder if Ronald Reagan's Alzheimer's disease began to affect him before he finished his term in office. Come to that, there are those who wonder whether Margaret Thatcher was running short of the odd marble before she ceased …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

Browse past issues

View all
Piano Exit Overlay Banner Mobile Piano Exit Overlay Banner Desktop