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This week's magazine

16 September 2000

Issue 2256

New Scientist issue 2256 cover
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On the cover

Features

All fired up

News

Sleep tight with melatonin

Opinion

A changing climate
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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.

All fired up

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.

Space rescue

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.

Love That Fat

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.

Health

The skull doctors

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.

Earth

Is weather getting wilder?

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.

Sleep tight with melatonin

PEOPLE who are totally blind don't sleep too well at night. Their body clocks go awry because they can't sense any light, so they can't tell night from day. Now researchers have found a treatment: the anti-jet-lag hormone, melatonin. "Light is the major time cue in humans," says Debra Skene of the University of Surrey …

News

Rough stuff

News

It takes a killer to stop a killer

News

Relax, then do it

News

Wake-up call

News

Nellie's on the pill

News

Wipe out

News

Feeling better

News

Super cables

News

Purple Earth

News

Copper cleans up

News

Jet-propelled ship makes cargo fly

News

After the earth has moved

News

The secret of spring

News

Breaking asthma's downward spiral

News

Look, no fillings

News

Whispering atoms

News

It's a dog's light

News

Virtual fighting

News

Barcode bonanza

News

War of the bugs

News

Stop that infernal racket

News

Leaning tower

News

Who started it?

News

Dangerous apes

News

Sea change

News

Killer cure?

News

Why humpbacks sing high in winter

News

A bridge with backbone

News

Caesarean foils virus

News

MEPs take a stand

News

A hole lot bigger

News

Cooling off

News

Build your own spaceship

News

Piercing brilliance

News

Technology

Dial `M' for money

News

Technology

Deep-dyed guilt

News

Dig for life on Mars

News

How to sunbathe without getting wrinkles

News

Egg stopper

News

Storms in paradise

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.

A changing climate

GLOBAL climate change moved to the centre of the political stage this week. In place of the usual politicians or economists, the National Press Club in Canberra invited three of Australia's leading climate scientists to present the growing body of evidence that global warming is a serious issue. John Zillman of the Bureau of Meteorology, …

Opinion

Humans

Westminster Diary

Opinion

Digging and dreaming

Opinion

Drug buster

Opinion

Save us from another HIV

Opinion

A good, clean fight

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.

All fired up

It's big. It's heavy. And it's very, very black. But it hardly seems heroic. Yet this briquette of Crown Patent Fuel, a block of Welsh coal dust bound together with bitumen, has earned its place in the story of Antarctic exploration, as told in a new exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in London. The …

Features

Space rescue

Features

Love That Fat

Features

Health

The skull doctors

Features

Earth

Is weather getting wilder?

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.

Origin of planetary systems

GALILEO would have loved it: for the first time, astronomers can study a variety of solar systems. And this growing collection of planets is full of surprises. Gas giants larger than Jupiter whip round their stars in tiny orbits. Others trace eccentric paths, looping about like loose cannonballs. Only a few planets circle within their …

Inside Science

Grab an axe

Books & Arts

Life and letters

Books & Arts

Prince of tides

Books & Arts

No X are Y

Books & Arts

Robo sapiens: Evolution of a new species by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio

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

FEEDBACK'S admiration for those who participate in international standards negotiations knows few bounds. The combination of mind-numbing technical detail and sometimes vicious diplomatic horse-trading calls for a very special set of abilities. But we have doubts about an announcement from the International Organization for Standardization, better known as ISO. Its Technical Management Board decided earlier …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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