Issue 2209 | Magazine cover date: 23 October 1999 | New Scientist

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23 October 1999

Issue 2209

New Scientist issue 2209 cover

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On the cover

Features

The man who wouldn't die

News

Stiff competition

Opinion

Biological bounty

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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.

The man who wouldn't die

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 prodigal returns

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.

Indestructible

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.

Bones to phones

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.

Staying alive

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.

Fly now, die later

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 creatures time forgot

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.

Stiff competition

BUILDING on Nobel prizewinning research, scientists have shown that it may be possible to use gene therapy to temporarily treat impotence. Louis Ignarro of the University of California at Los Angeles shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine a year ago for the discovery that small amounts of the toxic gas nitric oxide act as a …

News

NASA's clawback

News

Collateral damage?

News

Huge admission

News

Watch it! My growl is as bad as my bite

News

Dampened hopes

News

Rapid response

News

Good to be bi

News

Shells shocked

News

HIV blocker

News

Fast food

News

Tread carefully near the triceratops

News

Technology

Online jamming

News

Flutter stutter

News

Masters of infinity

News

Moon mystery emerges from the X-files

News

Out of Asia

News

Mould shock

News

Transistor spy

News

Bats off the hook

News

All over in a flash

News

Living dead

News

Pharaohs left behind a radioactive curse

News

That sinking feeling

News

Technology

Tagged at birth

News

Technology

Wakey wakey, Captain

News

Death stars

News

Take heart

News

Saving skin

News

Criminal damage

News

Mussel power

News

Fast trick

News

Love on the wing

News

Will Net upgrade dent online privacy?

News

Unkissable

News

No denying it

News

Technology

Just the ticket

News

We have the power

News

Supersniffer

News

Are mad cows a 1970s throwback?

News

No relation

News

Nuclear neighbour

News

The krakens wake

News

It's not over yet

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.

Biological bounty

AUSTRALIAN governments have finally discovered biotechnology. Attracted by the lure of future jobs and wealth, the Federal, Victorian and Queensland governments in particular are making a big political push into the area. Last week, for instance, Queensland premier Peter Beattie travelled to Japan to encourage international biotechnology companies to set up in the Brisbane area. …

Opinion

Humans

Westminster Diary

Opinion

Patent right

Opinion

Playing with fire

Opinion

The last taboo

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.

The man who wouldn't die

PETE ATHANS had climbed Everest more times than any other Western mountaineer, but he had never seen anything like this before. On the late afternoon of 11 May 1996, at an altitude of almost 8000 metres on the mountain's South Col, he watched in amazement as a man who should not have been alive staggered …

Features

The prodigal returns

Features

Indestructible

Features

Bones to phones

Features

Staying alive

Features

Fly now, die later

Features

The creatures time forgot

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.

Almost Like a Whale: The Origin of Species Updated by Steve Jones

Almost Like a Whale: The Origin of Species Updated by Steve Jones, Doubleday, £20, ISBN 0385409850 WHEN he wanted an example of how a change in habits might trigger an evolutionary transformation, Charles Darwin noted that a bear had once been observed swimming with its mouth open to catch insects "almost like a whale". The …

Books & Arts

Marriage of convenience

Books & Arts

Show them you care

Books & Arts

Post-postmodern

Books & Arts

Playing gods

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

NASA is understandably embarrassed by the recent loss of its Mars Climate Orbiter as a result of confusion between imperial and metric units. In view of this, the following paragraph from a press release put out by the Kennedy Space Center on 11 September 1998, soon before the orbiter's launch, is rather enlightening: "At liftoff, …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word