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This week's magazine

20 June 1998

Issue 2139

New Scientist issue 2139 cover
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On the cover

Features

Gut reaction

News

Sharp smokers

Opinion

Lessons from a leech
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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.

Gut reaction

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.

Catching the tide

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 the north was won

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.

Sharp smokers

BRAIN scans seem to confirm what smokers insist: cigarettes can improve concentration. A team led by Elizabeth Quattrocki of the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, asked four smokers not to smoke for 24 hours. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, they scanned the brains of these volunteers and four nonsmokers as they answered questions about pictures. …

News

Bouncing back

News

Galactic surprise

News

Dino dung

News

Rhythm of blues charts the ocean depths

News

Knowing their own minds

News

Suffix sensibilities

News

Suffix sensibilities

News

Suffix sensibilities

News

Biowarfare sleuths

News

Universities fear loss of academic freedom

News

Jungle survivor

News

Shifting ground

News

On yer bike

News

Reynard vs the devil

News

More than just a stab in the dark?

News

Fatbuster

News

Bless you

News

What on earth's on this video?

News

The listening machine

News

Light storage

News

Smelly spuds

News

Brace yourself

News

Going places

News

Pastoral symphony

News

Iceland's most famous film star returns home

News

Sight and sound

News

Code breakers

News

Skin dipping

News

Trust Radar, he knows everything

News

An acquired distaste

News

Cashing in on the not so smart cards

News

High-level risk

News

Rewiring the brain

News

Anticlimax

News

Don't let your eyes deceive you

News

Chemical clampdown

News

Radioactive burnout

News

Star quality

News

I'm tickled

News

A will to win

News

Let your fingers do the thinking

News

The eye's mind

News

Technology

Remote flush

News

Technology

Sweet smell

News

Technology

Snap happy

News

Cooling it

News

Blinded by the light

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.

Lessons from a leech

CAN a leech do maths? This is the bizarre question raised by the discovery that the creature's nerve cells use trigonometry to calculate which muscles to move and by how much ("Simple minds", p 28) . Few would object to the idea that leech nerve cells can, along with so many other mindless physical systems, …

Opinion

Your life in their hands

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.

Gut reaction

TEUVO RANTALA, a Finnish nutrition researcher, thought life was just fine. He had a great job with the country's Olympic track and field team, a happy home life and a sweet two-year-old son. But gradually his son Samu changed, becoming withdrawn and uncontrollable. When not smashing up the house in a wild rage, Samu would …

Features

Catching the tide

Features

How the north was won

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.

Computing's clarion call

MORE and more science graduates are moving into fields other than science after leaving university. Computing and engineering have become popular fields for those with science qualifications. Doctoral enrolments are going up for science, but this may be more an expression of the inability to get a satisfying job than a real desire to specialise …

Forum

. . . . .

Forum

Easy does it

Books & Arts

Numbers for life

Books & Arts

Northern greed

Books & Arts

from Cambridge

Books & Arts

Collected works

Books & Arts

The rise of the wrinklies . . .

Forum

Spread the word

Forum

Disappearing world

Books & Arts

Wet between the ears

Books & Arts

A game of two halves

Books & Arts

Stay home

Books & Arts

Talking point

Books & Arts

A bulldozer

Books & Arts

Selling Stephen

Books & Arts

And the winner is . . .

Books & Arts

Love bites

Books & Arts

Staying alive

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

HERE IS the name of a chemical found in nature: amidophosphoribosyltransferase. And here is another: phosphoribulosyl forminoaminoimidazolcarboxamidoribotide. Do you find them difficult to read? Feedback certainly does. So hats off to Dave Yost, who initiated last year's "web dot" campaign, which argued that the letters that precede Web addresses ( http://www ) should be pronounced …

Regulars

The Last Word

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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