¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

This week's magazine

9 February 1991

Issue 1755

New Scientist issue 1755 cover
Previous issue Next issue
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.

Why anaesthesia can still kill: Every year people die or become severely disabled because the oxygen supply to their brain fails during surgery as a result of human error. Yet monitoring devices that have drastically cut down on such accidents in the US

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.

What makes faces familiar?:

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.

A second chance for targeted designer antibodies

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.

Life after death for empty shells: Crustacean fisheries create a mountain of waste shells, made of a strong natural polymer, chitin. Now chemists are helping to put this waste to some surprising uses

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 plant anatomy light show: With chemicals from washing powders and fluorescence microscope, even novice anatomists can explore the intricacies of living plants

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.

Full steam ahead for ferry safety: Researchers studying the Zeebrugge tragedy have pinpointed the fatal flaws of roll-on roll-off ferries. Now the British government is pressing for safer designs

Features

Table of contents

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

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

Technology: Hi-fi firms join forces against Europe

Electronics companies in Britain are joining forces to challenge a European Community directive which, as it stands, will require them to shield all electronic equipment from interference, a requirement that could bankrupt many of the companies. Despite early warnings from trade bodies, many manufacturers of audio and video equipment and studio and theatre lighting controls …

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Technology

Technology: US floats plan for levitation train

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Technology

Technology: Solar array lends itself to cosmic possibilities

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Technology

Technology: Australia's race for clean cars

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Technology

Technology: Europe changes tack on energy from waves

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Technology

Technology: Space probe turns thermometer

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Technology

Technology: Britain backs power from bed of coal

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Technology

Technology: Big bang greets slimmed down Star Wars

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Science: Could herpes speed up AIDS?

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Science: Long tails, a hard act for swallows

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Science: Rooting around for the right temperature

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Science: Giant galactic jet approaches the speed of light

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Science: Neuroscientists plan 'atlas' of the brain

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Science: Brighter than a million Suns

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Acid forests

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Old buffers

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Nobel refusenik

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Electrique Voitures

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Tumour attack

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Can trees save Australia's salty soil?

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Long-life scrapie

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Safer syringe stops accidental jabs

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Animal experimenters need tough police

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

European collider 'on course' for top quark

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Gulf crisis hijacks research budget

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Leafing through Antarctica's balmy past

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Weakened welds shut down reactor

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

The game's up for phoney medical research

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

America on the lookout for plutonium

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

No booms spare to save Gulf wildlife

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Ceausescu's poisonous bequest to the nation

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Himalayan scandal rocks Indian science

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

First Hubble, now ROSAT ..

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Drugged troops could soldier on without sleep

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Friends fall out

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

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.

Comment: Reaping the whirlwind

When the final accounts are drawn up for the Gulf War, it will be interesting to compare the income generated in the Western world by arms sale to Iraq over the past decade of the eventual cost to Western economies of destroying - of trying to destroy - those arms. Throw in the human cost …

Opinion

Comment: A habit to be broken

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.

Why anaesthesia can still kill: Every year people die or become severely disabled because the oxygen supply to their brain fails during surgery as a result of human error. Yet monitoring devices that have drastically cut down on such accidents in the US

In February last year an anaesthetist was convicted of manslaughter, when the patient under his care suffered severe brain damage leading to coma and death. What should have been a simple technical mishap, easily recognised and corrected, went unnoticed during his absence from the operating theatre. Damages of almost 1 million Pounds were awarded in …

Features

What makes faces familiar?:

Features

A second chance for targeted designer antibodies

Features

Life after death for empty shells: Crustacean fisheries create a mountain of waste shells, made of a strong natural polymer, chitin. Now chemists are helping to put this waste to some surprising uses

Features

The plant anatomy light show: With chemicals from washing powders and fluorescence microscope, even novice anatomists can explore the intricacies of living plants

Features

Full steam ahead for ferry safety: Researchers studying the Zeebrugge tragedy have pinpointed the fatal flaws of roll-on roll-off ferries. Now the British government is pressing for safer designs

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.

Forum: Love is a many jargoned thing - Love is now the food of research

To ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵs nothing is sacred. From this it follows, quite logically, that no facet of human activity is immune from their investigation. Clearly, it was only a matter of time before that great human preoccupation, love, was placed, as it were, under the psychologist's microscope so more could be understood about this elusive emotion. The …

Forum

Thistle Diary: A sense of direction - Comment from Westminster

Forum

Forum: Just don't mention the politics - More political meat with his greens

Forum

Forum: The march of the science platoon - The human materiel of research wars

Forum

Review: A measure of dissent

Books & Arts

Forum: There's no such thing as a calorie-free lunch - You can't escape the bill for energy saving

Forum

Forum: The life and stage of Josephine Wilson - One of the founders of the Molecule Club

Forum

Review: Freud's debt to Darwin

Books & Arts

Review: A pocketful of stars

Books & Arts

Review: Immortal, invisible, not really there?

Books & Arts

Review: Hurray for holy wood

Books & Arts

Review: A cliffhanger of a civilisation

Books & Arts

Review: Dinosaurs honorary and otherwise

Books & Arts

Talking Point: How AIDS has changed epidemiology

Forum

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 Saudi official who took to Western television screens to express his outrage at the Iraqis' 'environmental terrorism' was none other than Abdulbar al-Gain, head of the Saudi environmental protection agency. (Though now, of course, the telegenic oiled cormorants are known to have been polluted by oil leaking from Saudi fuel tanks.) He called any …

Regulars

Ariadne

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

Browse past issues

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