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This week's magazine

21 September 1996

Issue 2048

New Scientist issue 2048 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 on the edge - How much rainforest do you need to capture diversity? When ecologists created "islands" to find out, they had no idea how complex the answers would be, says Bob Holmes

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.

Kinder Cuts - Logging is a brutal business, ripping the forest apart and leaving its lush interior to dry out into a tinderbox. But there are sustainable ways to harvest the timber, says Gabrielle Walker

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.

Shot in the dark - The US Army is developing a rifle that does a whole lot more than shoot bullets, reports Bennett Daviss. It's a portable spy machine

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.

Cosmic beakers - When physicists want to find out why galaxies cluster together in filaments, says Philip Ball, they don't scrutinise the night sky. They peer into beakers of bizarre liquids

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.

How did paradise begin?

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.

Into the forest - A few years ago, a Brazilian agronomist, sitting at his desk in the Ministry of Agriculture in Brasília, spoke to one of our correspondents thus:

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

Slash & grow

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

Technology : Video camera that packs 'em in

Tokyo AFTER a brief accord, a battle over competing standards has begun between electronics companies manufacturing digital video cameras. Hitachi has broken away from the pack and launched a new camera that records video in a format already widely used for multimedia CDs. Hitachi previously agreed with the other big manufacturers to develop cameras to …

News

Technology

Netropolitan :

News

Technology

Technology : Spiderman may sign for Galatasaray

News

Technology

Technology : Flat is beautiful for future chips

News

Technology

Technology : Compost is a natural-born killer

News

Technology

Technology : Hot throat makes a safer sound

News

Science : Infant infection may stop malaria running wild

News

Technology

Technology : Look safely into the light

News

Science : In the mood to overeat

News

Science : Potent peptide stifles the appetite

News

Science : Hubble spies galactic bubbles

News

Science : Plot thickens in Earth's inside story

News

Science : Neutrinos reveal the Sun's secret heartbeat

News

Science : Unswerving nerves keep us on course

News

Why women don't start wars

News

Blind brain `sees' rapid movement

News

Drug cocktails have hidden risks

News

How ear cells switch on sound

News

Farming shrinks butterfly gene pool

News

One wing is better than two

News

Dirty groundwater runs deep - Spreading pollution is increasingly fouling Britain's underground water reserves

News

Return to sender, address unknown

News

Malaria vaccine fails to deliver

News

Haunting tunes from ghostly players

News

Yes, we have vaccinating bananas

News

Tales of the grotesque and rabid

News

Antigravity machine weighed down by controversy

News

Not with a `pop' but a `plop'

News

Alien flatworms lay siege to Scotland

News

California's castration law `ill-judged'

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.

Editorial : Castration or incarceration? - THERE are some policies that politicians like to be seen toying with even though nobody in their right mind would dream of making them law. For years the idea of routinely castrating sex offenders fell squarely i

THERE are some policies that politicians like to be seen toying with even though nobody in their right mind would dream of making them law. For years the idea of routinely castrating sex offenders fell squarely into this category in most democracies. But that time has passed. Child molesters in California may soon have to …

Opinion

The truth is out there . . . - WHAT goes up must come down, if the textbook laws of gravity are to be believed. Are scientific reputations subject to the same rules? The two physicists who may—or may not, depending on which one of them you talk to&m

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 on the edge - How much rainforest do you need to capture diversity? When ecologists created "islands" to find out, they had no idea how complex the answers would be, says Bob Holmes

LIKE a Gothic cathedral rising from the middle of a slum, a perfect square of rainforest stands in a broad, weedy pasture. Bromeliads ornament the branches of the vaulted canopy, and buttresses support the largest trunks. The square is virgin rainforest, as the dictionaries define the term, but it has been stripped of its context–a …

Features

Kinder Cuts - Logging is a brutal business, ripping the forest apart and leaving its lush interior to dry out into a tinderbox. But there are sustainable ways to harvest the timber, says Gabrielle Walker

Features

Shot in the dark - The US Army is developing a rifle that does a whole lot more than shoot bullets, reports Bennett Daviss. It's a portable spy machine

Features

Cosmic beakers - When physicists want to find out why galaxies cluster together in filaments, says Philip Ball, they don't scrutinise the night sky. They peer into beakers of bizarre liquids

Features

How did paradise begin?

Features

Into the forest - A few years ago, a Brazilian agronomist, sitting at his desk in the Ministry of Agriculture in Brasília, spoke to one of our correspondents thus:

Features

Earth

Slash & grow

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.

Bestsellers : from San Francisco

The Night is Large by Martin Gardner, St Martin's Press The Nature of Space and Time by S. Hawking and R. Penrose, Princeton The Ends of Science by John Hogan, Addison Wesley Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Simon & Schuster A Tour of the Calculus by David Berlinski, Pantheon …

Books & Arts

Thistle diary : Fighting fat, fires and the hazards of flying - More comment from Westminster by Tam Dalyell

Forum

Forum : Geographers in search of a new role - Fred Pearce visits a field university in Jordan

Forum

Forum : The fine art of funding - Jeremy Burgess offers an artistic solution to a perennial problem

Forum

Review : Drawn to nature

Books & Arts

Review : Collected works

Books & Arts

Review : Soft sell

Books & Arts

Review : Bucky book

Books & Arts

Review : Anticlimax

Books & Arts

Review : Trouble with trunks

Books & Arts

Review : Pulp friction

Books & Arts

Review : Bang in a box

Books & Arts

Review : The big chill

Books & Arts

Review : Tales of the inescapable

Books & Arts

Review : Vitamin man

Books & Arts

Review : Sobel's here

Books & Arts

Review : Of medicine and murder

Books & Arts

Review : After the volcano

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.

The Last Word

Smell from hell Q: Why is it that, whatever they contain, dustbins always smell the same? A: The source of the smell is most probably caused by bacteria and fungi feeding on the organic matter in the rubbish. It will be most noticeable if the bin is in a warm and damp place. The smell …

Regulars

Feedback

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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