Issue 2272 | Magazine cover date: 6 January 2001 | New Scientist

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6 January 2001

Issue 2272

New Scientist issue 2272 cover

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On the cover

Bodies of evidence

News

Remember your HRT

Opinion

Play time

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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.

Life

Bodies of evidence

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.

Bright encounter

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.

Big, buoyant and back in business

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.

Sizzling skies

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.

Remember your HRT

HORMONE replacement therapy may help keep ageing women's memory in tip-top condition. Elizabeth Hampson at the University of Western Ontario tested the memories of 96 postmenopausal women. Those taking oestrogen performed significantly better on verbal and spatial tasks. Such tasks use what is called "working memory", which demands simultaneous processing and storage of information (Hormones …

News

Single file please

News

Total impact

News

Vaccine boost

News

Great expectations

News

Daily dose of rocket fuel

News

Easy does it

News

Next-generation fashion

News

Ancient bones still good for soup

News

Acquired taste

News

Cold war, hot secret

News

There's a lot of them about

News

Space

Asteroids face ant attack

News

Space

Deep waters

News

Space

Iridium watches the weather

News

Great ape escape

News

Eyes on the prize

News

Pluto or bust

News

Sex on eight legs

News

Keep drinking the water

News

Tainted air

News

Screen test

News

Technology

Porpoise-built nets

News

Technology

Shock of the fold

News

Technology

Dinner's on the Web

News

Who needs 3G?

News

A cut above

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.

Play time

LET'S begin with something gentle, and not too challenging. If you're tiring of holiday turkey leftovers, however, then Sheep (Empire Interactive, £29.99 on the PC and Sony PlayStation) is likely to make you sick of lamb as well. It takes its cue from entertaining yet frustrating puzzlers such as Lemmings. So the premise is very …

Opinion

Humans

Westminster Diary

Opinion

Stand your ground

Opinion

Moving on up

Opinion

Walking with Neanderthals?

Opinion

But is it art?

Opinion

Thrash it out

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.

Life

Bodies of evidence

JENNIFER SYNSTELIEN emerges from the tool shed wearing a knee-length plastic apron, surgical face mask and thick latex gloves. Unfazed by the smell of death wafting through the warm autumn air, she kneels next to a decomposing corpse. Her practised hands wave at hovering flies as she opens the chest cavity and pokes around for …

Features

Bright encounter

Features

Big, buoyant and back in business

Features

Sizzling skies

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.

Patently alien

In The Secret of Life, Paul McAuley pulls off that rare balancing act of exploring big concepts while telling an absorbing and entertaining story. It's 2026, and the Chinese have found microbial life on Mars. Now biotech companies are scrambling for the gene patents. Microbiologist Mariella Anders travels to the Martian polar cap and through …

Books & Arts

Prize writing

Books & Arts

Bang goes the dung

Books & Arts

Pleased to meet you

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

WE PROMISED we wouldn't do it again. No more product warnings for Feedback, oh no. But this is, after all, the season for broken resolutions (applies only in cultures where it is customary to make resolutions on 1 January). READER Arthur Robinson is partly to blame, for his flattery about how much he "has enjoyed …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word