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This week's magazine

9 February 2002

Issue 2329

Â鶹´«Ã½ issue 2329 cover
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Editor's picks

Â鶹´«Ã½. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Earth

Last chance balloon

Features
Â鶹´«Ã½. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Here comes the Sun

Features
Â鶹´«Ã½. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Gentle persuasion

Features
Â鶹´«Ã½. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

What lies beneath

Features
Â鶹´«Ã½. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Law of the jungle

Features

Table of contents

News

Â鶹´«Ã½. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Scientists learn to tell left from right

SOME molecules exist in two forms that are chemically identical but are mirror images of each other. These mirror-image pairs frequently have very different biological effects, so chemists would like to find a quick way to tell them apart. A laborious method called chiral chromatography is used at the moment. Mirror-image molecules are separated as …

News

How birds began

News

Hard to forget

News

Harvesting the clouds

News

Shining bright

News

The drugs do work

News

Fatal attraction

News

Technology

Making a meal of it

News

Technology

Blood test in a hurry

News

Technology

Lace me up, before I go go

News

Pace yourself on the piste

News

Space antennas take a tip from Mother Nature

News

Fill her up with photons

News

Smart but cheap

News

Feel the heat

News

Cosmic rays on crash course

News

In the ocean, you're either red—or dead

News

How a gang of thugs could cure cancer

News

It isn't yours

News

Back on his feet

News

Fly by the stars

News

Steadying the heavens

News

A dog's dilemma

News

How dust sent asteroids on crash course for the Sun

News

Hothouse chips

News

Less is more

News

Sickly slopes

News

Easy listening

News

Eye strain

News

Every cow counts

News

TB drug revival

News

Health

The insider

News

Radioactive blunders double in a decade

News

Catch the rays

News

Good enough to eat?

News

Wake-up call

News

Snap, crackle and pop

News

All tied up

News

Opinion

Â鶹´«Ã½. 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

RADIOACTIVE iodine is widely used to treat overactive thyroid glands and thyroid cancers. But when a patient becomes radioactive through this treatment, it can pose a health hazard to anyone—such as hospital nurses—who is in close contact with them for long periods. As Â鶹´«Ã½ reported recently, a single alpha or beta particle could damage …

Opinion

For the love of machines

Opinion

Never trust your dealer

Opinion

Take a punt on fusion

Opinion

Worlds apart

Opinion

Features

Â鶹´«Ã½. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Earth

Last chance balloon

Why would a small red-and-white balloon rescued from a Victorian shrubbery in the west of England have excited weeks of feverish activity at the Admiralty in London? Because it appeared to have attached to it a message from the doomed HMS Erebus, captained by Sir John Franklin, by then missing for six years in the …

Features

Here comes the Sun

Features

Gentle persuasion

Features

What lies beneath

Features

Law of the jungle

Features

More

Â鶹´«Ã½. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Respect for the family

Great apes and humans by Benjamin Beck, Smithsonian Institution Press, £26.95, ISBN 1560989696 VOTES for chimpanzees? The Great Ape Project, launched in 1994, didn't go quite that far. Yet that coalition of scientists and philosophers unleashed a bioethical furore when they argued that our closest primate relatives deserve "human" rights. It is morally indefensible, they …

Books & Arts

Present futures

Books & Arts

The bird's feet

Books & Arts

The New Penguin Dictionary of Computing by Dick Pountain

Books & Arts

Raised by animals

Books & Arts

Behind every great man

Books & Arts

Out in paperback

Books & Arts

Regulars

Â鶹´«Ã½. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

The Last Word

Stop thief Question : I have noticed that electrical goods stores use a form of adhesive metal coil as a security tag. How do these tags set off the door alarms and how are they deactivated before a legitimate customer leaves the shop? Answer : The coils are the antennae of a very simple, disposable …

Regulars

Feedback

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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