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This week's magazine

20 March 2004

Issue 2439

New Scientist issue 2439 cover
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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.

The storm king of Philadelphia

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 on empty

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.

Bad or mad?

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 world turned inside out

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.

Technology

Rocket fuel kicks transistor speeds through the roof

HOW do you make transistors run faster? Add rocket fuel, of course. Hydrazine, a toxic liquid sometimes used as a fuel in rocket motors, has turned out to be ideal for helping to make faster thin-film transistors, a crucial component of liquid crystal displays. What's more, it does so in a novel "wet" manufacturing process …

News

Technology

Voicemail tickets, please

News

Technology

A cleaner cup of tea

News

Technology

Bird-proof poisons

News

Technology

The dating game goes wireless

News

Space

Lost in space

News

Technology

Vibrating pedal says 'ease off gas'

News

Technology

Cutting edge

News

Technology

Record nanofibre teased from smoky suspension

News

Farm run-off sparks invasion of coral crunchers

News

Droplet plumes from oxygen masks may have helped spread SARS

News

Diamonds flowed on early Earth

News

Bog butter test

News

X-ray snap of Saturn reveals a polar puzzle

News

Technology

Software agent targets chatroom paedophiles

News

Pink salmon see blue when they get in deep

News

Spiders' saga of sex and sacrifice

News

It's what cows eat that counts

News

How green tea can combat cancer

News

Stem cells generate hair and hope for the bald

News

We hear that…

News

How the moon gave life on Earth its first big break

News

Best-ever view of early Universe

News

A new planet or queen of comets?

News

Splitting continents turned Earth into ice

News

Soundbites

News

Cheap blood test heralds speedy stroke diagnosis

News

Ivory sale fuels illegal trade fears

News

Making bomb-building harder for terrorists

News

Preparing for the worst

News

60 Seconds

News

What's in a nano?

News

Bottled hot water

News

Stem cell sidestep

News

Spotlight on caviar controls

News

Bye-bye munchies

News

No cold shoulder

News

French protest at science cuts

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.

Natural designs

Born in Tokyo, William McDonough now lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia. He has designed buildings for Nike, Gap, IBM, Ford, the Smithsonian Institution and the US Environmental Defense Fund. In 1996 Bill Clinton gave him the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development, the highest environmental honour in the US. He holds a professorship at Cornell …

Opinion

Humans

Westminster diary

Opinion

Big deal

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.

The storm king of Philadelphia

At about 5 pm on 19 June 1835, a violent tornado tore past New Brunswick in the state of New Jersey, leaving a 30-kilometre-long trail of devastation in its wake. Entire houses were tossed into the air, their roofs and rafters torn off and scattered hundreds of metres away. Hats, books and roof tiles were …

Features

Running on empty

Features

Bad or mad?

Features

The world turned inside out

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.

The word geodiversity

A ROCK is more than just stony stuff. It's also a vital clue to how life and landscape evolved. Geodiversity – the variety of rocks in all their forms – is as crucial in mapping the history of the Earth as biodiversity is in tracing the evolution of its life forms. Is geodiversity as threatened …

Books & Arts

The forgotten front

Careers

Soya processors go moo

Books & Arts

Now there's a thing

Books & Arts

Is accuracy alarmist?

Books & Arts

Pip, pip, pip

Books & Arts

Periscopes for cars

Books & Arts

Highs and lows of Earth's crust

Books & Arts

Three Mile Island by J. Samuel Walker

Books & Arts

The Long Summer: How climate changed civilization by Brian Fagan

Books & Arts

Stories with bite

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

MANY readers will have seen the picture put out by the European Space Agency last week of a cloud of dust swirling round a distant star known as V838 Mon. ESA's press release told us breathlessly that the image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, bore "remarkable similarities" to Vincent Van Gogh's famous painting Starry …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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