Issue 2292 | Magazine cover date: 26 May 2001 | New Scientist

Skip to content

26 May 2001

Issue 2292

New Scientist issue 2292 cover

Previous issue Next issue

On the cover

Features

Light duties

News

Dancing on the ceiling

Opinion

Washington diary

Access our magazine content direct via our website, app or print magazine

View in the app

Check out this magazine in our easy-to-navigate mobile app

Find a previous edition online

Search through our digital archive of over 30 years of magazines

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.

Light duties

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.

Needlework

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.

As if by magic

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 intelligent body

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.

Swallow it whole

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 power of nothing

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.

Hype, hope and healing

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.

Dancing on the ceiling

ANTS scale sheer surfaces to raid your kitchen counters and breakfast bar using sticky pads between their claws that rapidly inflate and deflate. Insects such as ants and bees need to make their feet sticky so they can run up smooth surfaces but they must also be able to unstick them very quickly. Bert Hölldobler …

News

Tea for teeth

News

Dirty comet

News

Life's first letters

News

Cooking up a smog

News

Iron test

News

Technology

Burn, baby, burn

News

On-off switch for HIV

News

Spills and kills

News

You don't get many of those to the shekel

News

Lord of the dance

News

Molecular saw rips bacteria to shreds

News

Magic touch

News

Put yourself in the past

News

The nanotube solution

News

Dust up

News

Technology

Suck 'em and win

News

Technology

Turning turtles

News

Satellites make sure there's enough in the tank

News

It's unstoppable

News

Living logic

News

Plutonium for sale

News

Did the big bang blow cosmic bubbles?

News

Air heads

News

If the face fits, a woman will know

News

Wheezy weather

News

Fearsome froth

News

Out of the shadows

News

Point of honour

News

Juggling the Net

News

Crohn's cracked?

News

Africa on ice

News

Foul fare

News

Save the ape

News

Fatal flaw

News

Shorter run

News

Dust won't settle on depleted uranium

News

All my own work

News

Vin de silkworm

News

Power hungry

News

Brave new babies

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.

Washington diary

EVEN biologists and physicists, who tend to look down their noses at the social sciences, agree that psychologists might be onto something when they suggest that role models are important in shaping social behaviour. Advertisers certainly agree. That's why they'll kill to get famous sports or movie stars to use their products. Even politicians have …

Opinion

Greater than the parts

Opinion

In the name of freedom

Opinion

Down on the genetic farm

Opinion

Depleted responsibility

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.

Light duties

By 1846, the Smalls lighthouse had been guiding ships around the hazardous west coast of Wales for 70 years. Perched on one of the "Smalls", a cluster of low-lying lumps of rock 34 \ kilometres from St David's Head, the lighthouse's water supply was somewhat precarious. Weather permitting, a supply ship brought casks. But the …

Features

Needlework

Features

As if by magic

Features

The intelligent body

Features

Swallow it whole

Features

The power of nothing

Features

Hype, hope and healing

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.

F. David Peat

For someone who reads only for "diversion and relaxation", physicist and author F. David Peat has a heavyweight reading list: Sophocles, Dylan Thomas, Henry Fielding, Charles Baudelaire, Sir Thomas Malory, Fyodor Dostoevsky. He's a fan of Anthony Burgess's books—he has read all of them—and of Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers. One of Peat's earliest memories …

Books & Arts

Light of our lives

Books & Arts

Mad about the idea

Books & Arts

Phone a philosopher

Books & Arts

Dodgy dinners

Books & Arts

Looking at life

Books & Arts

David Sainsbury

Books & Arts

Behind the scenes

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

NIKE , the American shoe giant, recently started "Nike iD", a special service for people ordering online. It allows customers to choose what cushioning, colour and other features they want on their shoes. Jonah Peretti, a student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had read critical reports about Nike's labour practices in developing countries, so he …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word