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This week's magazine

1 November 2003

Issue 2419

Â鶹´«Ã½ issue 2419 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.

The speed of life

Features
A universe like no other

A universe like no other

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.

Technology

Nine-eyed robots are go

ROBOTS should have eyes in the back of their heads as well the front. Researchers in the US say a robot's navigation skills could be vastly improved by giving it "omni-directional" vision. A robot on the move must be able to sense whether it is travelling in a straight line or spinning on the spot. …

News

Technology

Simple space telescope could find other Earths

News

Technology

Stretched rails bridge gaps

News

Technology

Computers make tracks

News

Technology

Cellphones by proxy

News

Technology

Robo-scopes bring heavens to earth

News

Technology

No one understands me as well as my PC

News

Hole in a spin

News

Ear cells grown in lab might restore hearing

News

Mother's slipstream helps young dolphins keep pace with the pod

News

Technology

Cutting edge

News

Technology

Ultra-thin films beat evaporation

News

Technology

Robots launch domestic coup

News

Genetic screening for sperm?

News

Did life get off to a silicon start?

News

Pterosaurs had a head for aerobatics

News

DNA profiles in double-quick time

News

Scare tactic

News

Antihydrogen atoms may have been drifters

News

Longer summers shrink Arctic ice cap

News

We hear that…

News

Soundbites

News

Marine census reveals depth of ignorance

News

Ex-employee claims firm ignored drug's problems

News

Hyperactive sun comes out in spots

News

Forget the big bang, tune into the big hum

News

Play it like it was

News

Race on to clean up athletics

News

Is making new strain of smallpox worth the risk?

News

US develops lethal new viruses

News

60 Seconds

News

Toxic turnaround

News

Bird found – then habitat destroyed

News

BSE accusations

News

Would you boldly go?

News

Hey, red spender

News

Cloning palaver

News

Planet goes up in flames

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.

Humans

Westminster diary

THE headline "Fisheries policy 'an outrage'" is liable, unfortunately, to appear any week in the UK. The game is to guess whether it refers, for example, to last month's Royal Society report accusing the European Union of gambling with stocks while allowing any fishing at all – or to a political candidate proclaiming that a …

Opinion

Freedom fighter

Opinion

An unholy alliance

Opinion

Gloves off

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.

The speed of life

IT'S not the most exciting experiment I've ever seen. An ordinary white mouse sits inside a sealed glass jar, breathing. But that's enough for comparative physiologist Tony Hulbert. Each time the mouse exhales, it releases a trillionth of a gram of two gases, ethane and pentane. All animals, you and I included, puff this stuff …

Features

A universe like no other

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.

Bugs and bliss

For Love of Insects by Thomas Eisner, Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, £19.95/$29.95/€27.70, ISBN 0674011813 Reviewed by Jonathan Beard WASPS and bees advertise their deadly stingers, but what of the beetle lumbering across a log or a flightless grasshopper – what protects these seemingly vulnerable insects? Tom Eisner, one of the founders of chemical ecology, has …

Books & Arts

Burning rings of fire

Books & Arts

Deep stuff

Books & Arts

Bond's best friends

Books & Arts

Mind

A merging of minds

Careers

The word Umbraphile

Books & Arts

Set to simmer

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.

Feedback

GOOD old London Science Museum. Just about every catalogue it ever sends out gets something wildly wrong. Here's this autumn's offering, spotted on page 3 by reader Adrian Farnsworth: "Jet engines zoom us around the world and fly us to the moon, but how do they work?" How indeed, when they depend for their operation …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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