Issue 2175 | Magazine cover date: 27 February 1999 | New Scientist

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27 February 1999

Issue 2175

New Scientist issue 2175 cover

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On the cover

Features

Identity crisis

News

Mad cow confusion

Opinion

Seriously silly

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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.

Identity crisis

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.

Smash the system

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.

Local heroes

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.

Fire in the sky

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.

Mad cow confusion

Deciding who shares the blame for Britain's BSE crisis has become so complicated that the official BSE Inquiry has asked for more time to complete its deliberations. The inquiry hoped to reach its conclusions by June 1999. But after sending letters to people who may be criticised, inquiry chair Lord Phillips now says this timing …

News

Squaring the circle

News

Final curtain

News

It takes a giant to kill a giant

News

Colour coded

News

Sick swine

News

Air way

News

Shocking heat

News

All together now

News

Deep message

News

Acne and ecstasy

News

Don't call God. . .

News

Virtual reality leaves you virtually reeling

News

Caught in a loop

News

No hiding place

News

Supercold helium picks a fight with Newton

News

A question of breeding

News

Hormonal high raises cancer risk

News

Unknown quantity

News

The paranormal web

News

Numbers up

News

Saved by the light

News

Rule of thumb

News

Dispatches from the killing fields

News

The great divide

News

How to price what we put on our plate

News

Fears for the future

News

Bugs to the rescue

News

Clearly safer

News

In a spin

News

Organs take sides

News

Follow that video

News

Never say dye

News

Quantum memory

News

Set in a nuclear sea

News

Chip off the Moon

News

Salty vintage

News

In the blood

News

Technology

Robopump

News

Technology

On the ball

News

Technology

Einstein was here

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.

Seriously silly

AS EVERY fan of Monty Python knows, sketches can become too absurd for their own good. That's what seemed to be happening to Britain's great genetically modified food saga earlier this week when it emerged that scientists at the nation's biggest biotech company may have been breaking the letter of the law when they merrily …

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.

Identity crisis

"DO YOU know this person?" runs the headline above an eerie photograph of a person's face. It's eerie because the image is not of a real face but a reconstruction. It was created from the skull of a person who died with nothing else in the world to identify them but their bones. Such reconstructions …

Features

Smash the system

Features

Local heroes

Features

Fire in the sky

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.

Leader of the pack

QUICK—think of an electronic product in which Australia runs a trade surplus with Asia. Give up? Try smart cards, those little plastic rectangles with a gold-topped microchip in them. Commuters in Hong Kong, drivers in Shanghai, and healthcare recipients in Malaysia all rely on Australian designed and made smart card systems. Back home the picture …

Forum

. . . . .

Forum

Virtual warfare

Forum

We can rebuild…

Forum

Cy-dough-plasm

Books & Arts

Roll over Piaget

Books & Arts

Feel good

Books & Arts

from Oxford

Books & Arts

Apply ice

Books & Arts

Vulcan's acolyte

Books & Arts

Reforming characters

Books & Arts

No angel

Books & Arts

Public Benjamin

Books & Arts

Kids out

Books & Arts

Take flight

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 a little ditty about Bill Gates and his company. The interesting thing about it is that it was sent to us anonymously—in a Microsoft envelope. Is this the sort of thing that Gates's employees pass round when the boss isn't looking? Said Bill—and he said it quite stroppily— "I tell you, it's not …

Regulars

The Last Word

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word