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This week's magazine

10 October 1998

Issue 2155

New Scientist issue 2155 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.

Give the fault its due

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.

Like a bolt from the blue

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.

Wiggling through the waves

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.

Don't get even, get mad

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.

Fire and lightning

SMOKE from forest fires raging in Mexico this spring mysteriously affected lightning in the central US. Normally, about 10 per cent of lightning is "positive", when electrons stream up from the Earth to clouds. These strikes are more destructive than negative ones moving the opposite way. However, figures from the US National Lightning Data Network …

News

Master gene

News

Safe not sorry

News

Haven for whales

News

Longer player

News

Stars put in the shade

News

The charge of the battery car

News

Cooking tumours to death

News

Old polythene holds bags of chemicals

News

Iguanas cruise the Caribbean

News

Carrot power

News

Seeds of life

News

Resistance is futile

News

Refugee crops return to Cambodia

News

Hunt ban stays

News

Devilish seed

News

Technology

. . . . .

News

Natural cleaner

News

When the dust settles

News

Technology

. . . . .

News

Technology

Something for nothing?

News

Technology

. . . . .

News

Runaway success

News

Nearly out of Africa

News

If you can't beat them, join them

News

A head start

News

It's no way to go

News

Geography shifts in the wake of the storm

News

Spinning steel

News

Hello, sunshine

News

High and dry

News

Watch the wall

News

Gold rush

News

Small bite makes big impression

News

The subtle art of genetic origami

News

Branching out

News

To the rescue

News

Inventors beware

News

Technology

Covering all angles

News

Battle of the bilge

News

Cashing in on hunger

News

The greater good

News

Street protest

News

Gaping hole

News

In a spin

News

Heart of darkness

News

Worms dig holes in evolutionary ideas

News

Echo of the past

News

Technology

Floating home

News

Technology

Looking good

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.

Into the moral maze

WHEN scientists speak their minds, they often open up a can of worms. Take the case of French Anderson, a gene therapy pioneer who plans to extend the technique to fetuses in the womb. Recently he suggested to a government panel in the US, the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, that the technique to cure a …

Opinion

Starter's orders . . .

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.

Give the fault its due

"IF YOU'D been standing here on 18 April 1906, you'd have seen that hill over there move about two metres to the right." Allan Lindh is pointing to a hillock a few hundred metres away. Now he gestures to the dry scrub beneath his feet. "This would have been moving back and forwards, up and …

Features

Like a bolt from the blue

Features

Wiggling through the waves

Features

Don't get even, get mad

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.

. . . . .

UNDER Britain's system of government, the allocation of responsibilities within a department is a matter for the secretary of state. Problems arise, however, when the responsibilities straddle more than one department. Then only the Prime Minister can sort out any squabbles. Responsibility for research on biodiversity has become such a problem, as Mark Avery, director …

Forum

Chipping away at the funds for biology

Forum

Here they come…

Forum

Ssstunning

Books & Arts

from Oxford

Books & Arts

Half so lovely

Books & Arts

A report on Kinsey

Books & Arts

Special delivery

Forum

It's life, Captain

Books & Arts

Star of India

Books & Arts

Think life, think maths

Books & Arts

Ant harvest

Books & Arts

Bloody good

Books & Arts

Set in stone

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

IT HAS been a while since we discussed the unfortunate tendency of spellcheckers to "correct" perfectly good English and turn it into something quite different from the writer's intentions. Here is a new batch of examples sent in by offended readers. Names are sitting targets for wayward spellcheckers. Isobel Piper's Windows 95 spellchecker transformed Saddam …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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