Technology Micro-sculptures give metal the Velcro touch THE minuscule shapes that Bruce Dance and his colleagues are sculpting on metal surfaces could have a profound impact in many fields of engineering. By training intense electron beams on the surface of metals, Dance and his team have found a way to fashion delicate metal projections that will act like ultra-strong Velcro to form … News
Humans Westminster diary AS CHAIR of the All-Party Latin America Group, it was my job to host a meeting with Alvaro Uribe, President of Colombia, when he visited the House of Commons last year. He was then journeying around Europe as president-elect before taking up office. One of his many concerns, he said, was the illegal trade in … Opinion
Paradise lost...and found A 200-year-old French painting has reopened a debate about one of the most spectacular yet least studied families of tropical birds -the mystical, ethereal birds of paradise from New Guinea. The painting (left) shows a bird like no known species, yet the artist has an impeccable reputation for accuracy. So is the bird a weird … Features
Niles Eldredge, palaeontologist Your next book? Why We Do It: Rethinking sex and the selfish gene is out this month (W. W. Norton). From Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (John Murray, 1859) onwards, Eldredge says, "it is blindingly obvious that a major portion of the progress made in understanding evolution has come through books, rather than … Books & Arts
Feedback FROM now on Feedback will be looking a lot more closely at TV images of crowds apparently listening intently to a politician, nodding support for the company chairman or swaying in time with the music at a concert. A Californian called John Stanier has been granted a patent on a way of making politicians and … Regulars