Issue 2302 | Magazine cover date: 4 August 2001 | New Scientist

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4 August 2001

Issue 2302

New Scientist issue 2302 cover

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On the cover

Features

Legends of the Edge

News

Flash of brilliance

Opinion

Westminster diary

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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.

Legends of the Edge

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.

Celestial swingers

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.

Don't blame the Butterfly

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.

Rhythm of life

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.

Rumble in the jungle

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.

Flash of brilliance

A STRANGE new material that contracts like a muscle when you shine light on it could one day make brain surgery safer. The light-activated material could be used in surgical tools, keeping electricity well away from sensitive brain tissue. Most artificial muscles use polymers that contract when a voltage is applied across them. Others need …

News

Antimatter knows when the chips are down

News

Big audio dynamite

News

Catch your breath

News

Goodbye bar codes

News

Instant e-business

News

More gas, less mass

News

Sound 'em out

News

Under, over and out

News

How to sidestep hurtling space junk

News

Technology

Hitting that note

News

Technology

VIPs go ballistic

News

Technology

I've ad enough

News

Lions send their babies to the crèche

News

Scrub up

News

Nuclear nuts and bolts

News

Out of Asia

News

No more periods

News

Former villain may have hidden virtues

News

Greening the badlands

News

Watery graves

News

Suicidal poets wandered lonely as a cloud

News

Biggest bang

News

Beam us up

News

Going grey

News

Always read the label

News

Star's bulging waistline

News

Guided missiles

News

Bushwhacked

News

The Frankenstein method

News

Was it murder?

News

Hitting HIV with a double whammy

News

Instant sunshine

News

It's a mirage

News

Heavens above

News

Space invaders

News

Broken promise?

News

No badge for this

News

A real smasher

News

If you won't use rubber…

News

Holy smoke

News

Seeking sanctuary

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.

Westminster diary

WHEN fertiliser and livestock sewage wash off the land, nutrients build up in lakes or coastal waters and toxic algae spread. According to a group of ecologists at the University of Minnesota, this process of eutrophication is set to double, if not treble, in the next 50 years, much to the detriment of the world's …

Opinion

Strike back at the Empire

Opinion

Learning to love the monster

Opinion

Cruel to be kind

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.

Legends of the Edge

Alderley Edge rears high above the flat Cheshire countryside beyond Manchester's southern suburbs. It's a popular beauty spot, but there's more to the Edge than its dramatic views. Look beneath the thin cloak of trees and you'll find layer upon layer of ancient desert dunes, which have been tilted and twisted and pushed upward to …

Features

Celestial swingers

Features

Don't blame the Butterfly

Features

Rhythm of life

Features

Rumble in the jungle

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.

Take it easy

The Invention of Comfort, by John Crowley, Johns Hopkins University Press, £32.50, ISBN 0801864372 A RECENT joke has the victim of an accident, lying on a stretcher, being asked if he is comfortable. He replies, "Well, I've got £50,000 in a savings account." "Comfort" is still acquiring new meanings. Once it meant consolation and no …

Books & Arts

It's cold out there

Books & Arts

Cosmic comrades

Books & Arts

Mushroom man

Books & Arts

Welcome to henge world

Books & Arts

Out in Paperback

Books & Arts

Twitch and shout

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

DOTCOM COMPANIES may be feeling the pain, but last month techies had a chance to drown their sorrows at the Webby Awards in San Francisco, one of the most glamorous parties in the industry's social calendar. The awards are to the Internet what the Oscars are to film, except that mercifully the winners are asked …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word