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This week's magazine

9 March 1996

Issue 2020

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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.

Thought Control: Machines can already tune into brain waves to bypass damaged nerves, and the day is coming when they may even plug into the brain itself

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.

Taking arms against the knife: Wielded by a fit adult, an ordinary knife has

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.

Simply Faster: The formula that has given us ever more powerful chips will not work for very much longer, and chip makers are puzzling over what to do next

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.

Racked with Pain

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: Infinite fours

A GROUP of friends stand in line, each holding a number written on a card. Alan's number is the square root of one more than the number that Brian holds. Brian's number is the square root of four more than Colin's number. Colin's number is the square root of 16 more than Dave's number. Dave's …

News

Technology

DNA bait lures genes out of hiding

News

Technology

The great attraction of atomic spin

News

Technology

Dervish dances through killing fields

News

Technology

Credit card forgers under pressure

News

Technology

Couch potatoes turn mastermind

News

Enigmatic Chiron goes to sleep in the Sun

News

Technology

Dipstick spots disease in minutes

News

Technology

Netropolitan

News

Technology

Ceramic takes the heat for clean fuel

News

Universal protein may solve the riddle of twisted joints

News

A marriage built on rock

News

Fish nose ahead of humans in greedy brain stakes

News

Doctor, there's a fly in my genome

News

Some of our quasars are no longer missing

News

Suicidal nerves recover will to live

News

Mums' willpower

News

The shooting party takes aim: Landowners are pushing for a licence to kill protected birds of prey because they eat grouse. Although there is little evidence that the grouse are seriously harmed, the landowners have powerful friends

News

Female cancer toll

News

Modem farming

News

Body-hugging holograms measure up

News

Space ambitions

News

Toothfish pirates

News

Industry cash backs Foresight

News

Hunters set their sights on Norway's lynx

News

Fighting for life in the Death Strip

News

Net porn law faces `free speech' test

News

Antarctic bases lose midwinter lifeline

News

Pioneering rainforest project starves to death

News

Live genes need warning labels

News

Does old moss tell tale of distant Antarctic summers?

News

Behaviour pills flood US schools

News

Klan falls foul of air police

News

Nuclear treaty flounders as Asia steps up demands

News

Cleaned birds `unlikely to survive' in the wild

News

Save our soil for future generations

News

Pig transplants win ethical backing

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.

The year of the pig?

THE pace of research into animal-to-human transplants is quickening. Over the past thirty years, occasional attempts have been made to transfer kidneys, livers, hearts, bone marrow and brain tissue into humans from a menagerie including sheep, pigs, chimps and baboons. None of these "xenotransplants" has succeeded so far, but recent advances in genetically engineering animals …

Opinion

Get to know your tomato

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.

Thought Control: Machines can already tune into brain waves to bypass damaged nerves, and the day is coming when they may even plug into the brain itself

IN the latest thriller to hit British screens, Keanu Reeves plays a man with a digital memory built into his brain. Using a neuroconnection in the back of his head, the eponymous hero, Johnny Mnemonic can plug into any computer and store or download data. With this memory upgrade, his brain acts like the hard …

Features

Taking arms against the knife: Wielded by a fit adult, an ordinary knife has

Features

Simply Faster: The formula that has given us ever more powerful chips will not work for very much longer, and chip makers are puzzling over what to do next

Features

Racked with Pain

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.

Dispensing justice the American way

SHOULD I ever be in a position to rewrite the rules for getting a PhD in science, I'll have every student do jury duty. They should realise early in their careers that the vast majority of people do not communicate using chalk. When I was called up for jury duty, I assumed that I would …

Forum

Time to leave the stones unturned: Comment from Westminster

Forum

Where have all the people gone?: The UN's demographic projections are predictably wrong

Forum

Bestsellers from Sydney

Books & Arts

Electric times

Books & Arts

Birds on film

Books & Arts

After Maggie

Books & Arts

Technology

A woman of substance: Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics

Books & Arts

Collected works: Recommends an open mind on medicine

Books & Arts

Wiped out

Books & Arts

Fossils were her

Books & Arts

Theatrical proof

Books & Arts

Whatever the weather: Braving the Elements: The Stormy History of American Weather by David Laskin, Doubleday, $23.95, ISBN 0 385 46955 1 Weird Weather by Paul Simons, Little, Brown, £15.99, ISBN 0 316 87703 4

Books & Arts

Uninventing the bomb

Books & Arts

Powerhouses of the cosmos: Gravity's Fatal Attraction by Mitchell Begelman and Martin Rees, W.H. Freeman, £19.95/$32.95, ISBN 0 7167 5074 0

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

DAVID Elstein, director of programining at Rupert Murdoch's Sky satellite station, has been telling industry conferences for at least a year now how Sky will soon use digital technology to transmit several dozen extra TV channels. Satellite operator Astra is already launching new digital satellites. Manufacturers including Murdoch's own company Digi-Media Vision are building the …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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