Albatrosses plump for youth over experience YOUNG female wandering albatross spurn experienced mates in favour of partners of their own age, according to an international team of biologists. Stephen Dobson of Auburn University in Alabama and his colleagues examined 32 years of breeding records from the Crozet Islands in the Indian Ocean. Unlike other birds that prize experienced mates, young virgin … News
Gone fishing WHY build a robot coelacanth? "Just for fun" is the answer given by Yuuji Terada of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan (see p 17) . Mitsubishi is planning to create a whole aquarium full of robot fish from the pre-Cambrian seas, a fitting project for an industrial giant whose corporate slogan is "global harmony between … Opinion
Custom-made for you EVEN a Rolls-Royce will eventually break down as a result of wear and tear. The same is true of human bodies, as our ligaments, muscles and organs are pulled, pumped and repeatedly prodded by disease, routine use and ageing. Unfortunately for us, new body parts for worn-out or sick humans are at a far more … Features
A life among giants I wish I'd Made You Angry Earlier by Max Perutz, Oxford University Press, £19.99, ISBN 0198505310 AS well as his Nobel prizewinning work on the structure of proteins, Max Perutz was a long-time contributor to both The New York Review of Books and The London Review of Books. His essays spanned the spectrum of science, … Books & Arts
Feedback X-RAY vision seems to be more and more in demand these days. Reader Matthew Carroll recently purchased a digital camera, a Canon Powershot A5. This includes Ulead PhotoImpact 4 software, which comes on a disc in a sealed plastic pack. When Carroll opened the pack to install the software on his computer, he found a … Regulars