Subscribe now

This week's magazine

20 March 1999

Issue 2178

New Scientist issue 2178 cover
Previous issue Next issue

On the cover

Features

Urban jungle

News

Saved from ourselves

Opinion

No more nice guys . . .
arrow
Subscribe
Access our magazine content direct via our website, app or print magazine
arrow
View in the app
Check out this magazine in our easy-to-navigate mobile app
arrow
Find a previous edition online
Search through our digital archive of over 30 years of magazines

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.

Urban jungle

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.

Ten, nine, eight... you're under

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.

States of mind

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.

The heart that just won't die

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.

Saved from ourselves

A BIOTECHNOLOGY company in New Zealand has developed a "curative vaccine" to treat psoriasis, a previously incurable autoimmune skin disease that affects 100 million people worldwide. Genesis Research and Development in Auckland has completed clinical trials of the vaccine—known as PVAC—in the Philippines. The vaccine is the first to eradicate a disease already in the …

News

Dragged apart

News

Below the belt

News

Fertile is fine

News

Ailing Hubble sends NASA into a spin

News

Neolithic farmers grew modified maize

News

Lovely bubbly

News

Blood verdict

News

Antibiotic protest

News

Safe to eat?

News

A leg up

News

Flick of the tongue

News

Wet welcome

News

Reality check

News

Technology

Snapshots of space

News

Suckling pigs acquire a taste for cordon bleu

News

Not a sound idea

News

Tax is on target

News

Trouble in paradise

News

Queen's English?

News

Hidden Marillion

News

Red faces all round

News

Something rotten…

News

Where no chip has gone before

News

Human bar codes

News

Chips chill out

News

Bad blood

News

Crying wolf

News

Doctors say sayonara to paperwork

News

Strong stuff

News

For your ears only

News

Saviour from the acid swamps

News

Seeing the light

News

Why the pain of wounds comes back to haunt you

News

Hue and cry

News

Technology

Mind the gap

News

Technology

Suck it and see

News

Technology

No screws loose

News

Confusion reigns

News

Guiding light

News

Complete control

News

Smallpox appeal

News

Phones on trial

News

Gene race

News

The long goodbye

News

Reykjavik rattles the harpoons

News

Manifold blessings

News

Tax break

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.

No more nice guys . . .

IT'S NOT often that scientists and editors of major newspapers get to trade insults. But in Britain this past week, Robert May, the Chief Scientific Adviser, found himself described as "contemptibly pompous" in a leading article in one tabloid while the editor of another laid into him for his "vulgar contempt" for her paper. To …

Opinion

Forever young

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.

Urban jungle

SINCE the industrial revolution, cities have been the subject of a peculiar love-hate relationship in Western culture. On the one hand, we tip our hats to their importance in the rise of civilisation. On the other, we pinch our noses at their billowing smokestacks, mountainous garbage dumps and over-ripe sewers, castigating them as the very …

Features

Ten, nine, eight... you're under

Features

States of mind

Features

The heart that just won't die

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.

Plants on the move

FOR the past two million years or so, what's called the Quaternary period , the Earth's climate has blown both hot and cold. So far, it has fluctuated from cold ice age or glacial period to warm interglacial period some 50 times during the Quaternary, with the last ice age ending 10 000 years ago. …

Inside Science

The People bite back

Forum

Birth ethics

Books & Arts

Her next door

Books & Arts

from Cambridge

Books & Arts

The complete bird

Books & Arts

Take your pick

Books & Arts

Spirit of the stacks

Forum

It's everybody's baby

Forum

. . . . .

Forum

Artful

Books & Arts

How to do it

Books & Arts

Don't fence me in

Books & Arts

Medieval medics

Books & Arts

Beyond fiction

Books & Arts

Self seeking

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

VISITORS to London Zoo will be impressed to see notices posted near the exhibits thanking people and organisations who have helped to pay for an animal or its enclosure. And who would complain if private companies get a little boost to their reputations in return for their largesse? So let us record our admiration for …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

Browse past issues

View all
Piano Exit Overlay Banner Mobile Piano Exit Overlay Banner Desktop