Subscribe now

This week's magazine

15 March 2003

Issue 2386

New Scientist issue 2386 cover
Previous issue Next issue
arrow
Subscribe
Access our magazine content direct via our website, app or print magazine
arrow
View in the app
Check out this magazine in our easy-to-navigate mobile app
arrow
Find a previous edition online
Search through our digital archive of over 30 years of magazines

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.

Ghosts of the great eel war

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.

Reading the genetic master code

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.

Technology

The robot within

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.

For chromsomes, it's location location location

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.

Running repair keeps DNA in order

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.

DNA is a live wire

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.

50 years since Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA

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.

Technology

Open secret

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.

Yawning gap divides monkeys and us

CONTRARY to what you might think, large differences in DNA, not small ones, separate apes and monkeys from both humans and each other. Scientists believed that differences between primates were mainly the result of variations in individual DNA letters. But a detailed comparison of human chromosome 21 with corresponding regions of genetic material in chimpanzees, …

News

Nano-world snapped

News

Sex aid for pandas

News

A forest of polluters

News

Soft-centred planet

News

Physics

Optical tweezers pluck out cancer cells

News

Physics

Chill out with the magnetic refrigerator

News

Lizards like to keep it in the family

News

Switching off Huntington's

News

Smart virus hunts down tumours wherever they are

News

A phone that knows you're busy

News

Burping animals clean up their act on a fishy diet

News

Technology

Text message beats fraud

News

Technology

Tree-free paper saves forests

News

Physics

Bending light backwards

News

Talent-spotting software predicts chart toppers

News

Smarter poll could call the closest races

News

Technology

Making the most of memories

News

Art treasures survive detox unscathed

News

Is that sinister spot cancer?

News

Earliest human footprints preserve prehistoric trek

News

Brainy crows learn how to upgrade tools

News

Altered beet offers taste of the future

News

War will stifle aid

News

Record companies fear launch of 100-hour discs

News

Will tourist island ruin Barrier Reef?

News

Humans

Future looks bleak for Iraq's fragile environment

News

Few vaccine side effects

News

Cancer risk clouds miracle gene cures

News

Dispatches

News

Soundbites

News

Dialysis filters out killers

News

Bones tell where victims lived and when they died

News

The world's first brain prosthesis

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.

Humans

Westminister diary

BEFORE anybody starts using depleted uranium (DU) anti-tank shells in Iraq or elsewhere, they ought to think hard about the aftermath of their use in Bosnia. I suggested this to the veterans minister, Lewis Moonie. Moonie replied that a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) team used sensitive instruments to measure radioactivity at 14 sites. They found …

Opinion

The word red snow

Opinion

Health

Christopher Reeve's good fight

Opinion

Madness on trial

Opinion

No special pleading

Opinion

Johnny Mnemonic's headache

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.

Ghosts of the great eel war

The draining of the Great Fen in eastern England was one of the most celebrated erarly achievements of Europe's drainage engineers. The dug whole new rivers to turn swamp into fine agricultural land. They ditched an economy based on reeds and eels and replaced it with one based on arable field that helped feed the …

Features

Reading the genetic master code

Features

Technology

The robot within

Features

For chromsomes, it's location location location

Features

Running repair keeps DNA in order

Features

DNA is a live wire

Features

50 years since Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA

Features

Technology

Open secret

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.

High flyers

The Migration Atlas edited by Chris Wernham, Mike Toms, John Marchant, Jacquie Clark, Gavin Siriwardena and Stephen Baillie, T&AD Poyser/British Trust for Ornithology, £55, ISBN 0713665149 Reviewed by David Tomlinson AT NEARLY 4 kilograms, The Migration Atlas weighs in at the equivalent of 800 goldcrests. This shelf-bending weight is its only disadvantage. For any birdwatcher …

Books & Arts

Watson and DNA: Making a scientific revolution by Victor McElheny

Books & Arts

Survival of a genius

Books & Arts

Simon Blackburn

Books & Arts

Think of a…

Books & Arts

Graham Farmelo

Books & Arts

There was a young fellow of Italy…

Books & Arts

Serious greenery

Books & Arts

Boom, bust, boom

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

THE JARGON of quackery never ceases to amaze. A correspondent received this email: "New amazing anti-aging water…It contains all 34 mineral waveforms in their correct non-metallic states as needed by the body to repair and sustain itself. It's a miracle water and has produced miracle results." So far, so much rubbish of the kind we're …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

Browse past issues

View all
Piano Exit Overlay Banner Mobile Piano Exit Overlay Banner Desktop