Follow that ant ANT-WATCHING could soon become a lot less boring for researchers aiming to unravel their intricate social behaviour. An image-processing system unveiled at a conference on software robots in Montreal last week not only keeps tabs on 100 individual ants at a time, but can also figure out what jobs they do in the colony. Learning … News
Westminster diary NORMALLY I would be the last politician to complain about lack of publicity, but when I tried to raise the issue of climate change during the general election campaign, I remained unreported. The technological options for halting the rise in greenhouse gas emissions were laid out in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on … Opinion
A matter of fact "Facts, not opinons." A stern, didactic slogan. You can picture it inscribed in pokerwork or embroidery on a wall plaque in the drawing room of a headmistressy great aunt. In reality you can see it carved into the stone lintel of a Victorian building in London's Southwark Street, just a few steps from the Thames. … Features
A Mission to Explain Mission Jupiter by Daniel Fischer, Copernicus/ Springer-Verlag, $32, ISBN 0387987649 GALILEO—the spacecraft, not the man—has shown us space exploration in all its phases, from the frustrating to the rewarding. Since late 1995 it has sent us 15,000 astonishingly detailed images gleaned from its orbit round Jupiter. The craft has dropped a probe into the gas … Books & Arts
Feedback EACH YEAR around this time Feedback's favourite government report appears—the Home and Leisure Accident Surveillance System report from Britain's Department of Trade and Industry. It gives figures for accidents reported by people admitted to a sample group of British hospitals and then gives extrapolated estimates for the country as a whole. First the bad news … Regulars