Issue 2208 | Magazine cover date: 16 October 1999 | New Scientist

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16 October 1999

Issue 2208

New Scientist issue 2208 cover

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On the cover

Features

Musical pears

News

Peace offering

Opinion

Don't get personal

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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.

Musical pears

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.

Gene express

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.

Gendercide

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.

Oxygen

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.

timeless

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.

Peace offering

Bob Shapiro, the chairman of Monsanto, last week held out an olive branch to his critics. Speaking by satellite link to a meeting in London organised by Greenpeace, which has attacked the company's stance on genetically modified crops, Shapiro said: "We've irritated and antagonised more people than we've persuaded, and our confidence and enthusiasm for …

News

Avian epidemic

News

Full fat fungicide

News

Gas powered

News

Technology

Charged coats

News

Technology

Take the tube

News

Technology

Money laundering

News

The long view

News

Japanese follow trail of stray neutrons

News

Lessons from the wreckage

News

Then there were ten

News

It's that man again

News

How safe is safe?

News

New wave

News

Radical rescue

News

Quantum balls

News

Blowing strong

News

The downside of liquorice

News

In the round

News

Double trouble

News

Bionic nerve

News

Technology

Join the gold rush

News

Good ol' milkweed

News

Hair today…

News

One's enough

News

Space delay

News

No evolution

News

Walk this way

News

Magic metal

News

Split standard

News

Cough please

News

Wash and go

News

At last, a plane that handles well in a severe swarm

News

Patently silly

News

Winning signal

News

All dried up

News

Say "ahhhh"

News

Choppy waters

News

Seat of power

News

Fighting back

News

Mighty melt

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.

Don't get personal

IT SOUNDS like a classic cover-up: a lone whistleblower raises fears about food safety, only to be shot down by a powerful coalition of vested interests. That, in Britain at least, has been the tone of much of the coverage of this year's debate over the safety of genetically modified food. Arpad Pusztai, whose experiments …

Opinion

Red for danger

Opinion

Getting back to the basics

Opinion

Humans

Westminster Diary

Opinion

Dangerous obsession

Opinion

Forces of nature

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.

Musical pears

What's the link between St Helena, an insect from South America and the novelist Compton Mackenzie? The answer lies inside some dog-eared paper packets, on display at the Museum of Economic Botany at Kew Gardens in London. The packets contain gramophone needles made from the wickedly sharp spines of prickly pears gathered on the island …

Features

Gene express

Features

Gendercide

Features

Oxygen

Features

timeless

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.

Embryos and evolution

A HUNDRED years ago, it was commonly thought that the growing human embryo passed through all its previous stages in evolution. From the single cell, to a simple multicellular creature, and then through stages corresponding to a fish, a lizard, a mouse, a monkey and then a human. This idea was first suggested by German …

Inside Science

The diver's tale

Books & Arts

Go East, young man

Books & Arts

Evolving IT

Books & Arts

The hunt for Alan B

Books & Arts

Bestsellers from cambridge

Books & Arts

Unholy father

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.

The Last Word

Flea market Question : How do fleas so easily find creatures to feed on? I once entered a house that had been empty for almost a week. It was infested with fleas. Within seconds, my feet and ankles were covered with the hungry little insects. How did they know I was there, and that I …

Regulars

Feedback

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word