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Editor's picks

A unifying force for Third World science

Looking for trouble: Animals survive only by being vigilant for predators. How can we tell where an animal is looking and what it is looking for?

You did it, didn’t you?: The police often argue that the tough ‘interviewing’ of suspects is the best way to extract the truth. But such strategies are exactly the sort to provoke false confessions

Mind the bugs don’t bite

Techniques to create the nonexistent / Computer sculpture

Good vibrations from the stars: Our planet rings like a bell after a large earthquake. Stars can ring, too. Astronomers use these vibrations to probe stellar interiors and even estimate the age of the Universe

Sculptures in the void: You can look, but you can’t touch. Computers and art meet to produce three-dimensional representations of sculptures that do not actually exist

Table of contents

News

Britain in row with neighbours over North Sea dumping

Science: Meteorites that struck Moon disrupted Earth’s ionosphere

Science: Newborn stars may grow suddenly brighter

Science: The making of a molecule in a billion billion

Science: Humans may have come from Greece, not Africa

Environment

Science: Rainforest yields ‘extinct’ lemur

Science: Ancient hunters kept their meat under water

Science: Plan to map dark matter in the Milky Way

Dutch euthanasia provokes storm

USSR calls for green code

Global choking

New role for ABRC

Death of cave research woman

‘Ozone culprits’ named by American pressure group

Radioactive gas threatens three times as many homes as thought

Technology

Technology: Proteins with a cool, quick test for salmonella

West German toxic waste may no longer go East

Public debate rejected on tunnel safety

NHS reforms ‘could divert money from research’

German scientists demand right to genetic research

US asks to rejoin East-West think tank

No evidence of asbestos danger in schools, say critics

NASA report sparks tug of war over control of space policy

‘Hundreds killed’ by South Africa’s border fence

Ignorance of malaria puts travellers at risk

Scotland to host rail gun test-bed

Deformities found in North Sea fish embryos

Patents: Sounds balanced

Patents: Benefits of death

Patents: CFC recycler

Patents: Disc deal

Patents: Bloaters for breakfast?

Technology

Technology: The bacteria at the heart of a good snowfall

Technology

Technology: Soot turns to diamond

Patents: It’s not patently obvious

Technology

Technology: Japanese memory chips win another round

Technology

Technology: Engine company goes for the strong, silent type

Technology

Technology: Sorry, no numbers – The day the US’s telephone network crashed

Opinion

Hairy flights

Back to the bench

Features

A unifying force for Third World science

For 25 years, Abdus Salam has built up the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste. Now he wants it to be a model for centres of excellence in other disciplines

Looking for trouble: Animals survive only by being vigilant for predators. How can we tell where an animal is looking and what it is looking for?

You did it, didn’t you?: The police often argue that the tough ‘interviewing’ of suspects is the best way to extract the truth. But such strategies are exactly the sort to provoke false confessions

Mind the bugs don’t bite

Techniques to create the nonexistent / Computer sculpture

Good vibrations from the stars: Our planet rings like a bell after a large earthquake. Stars can ring, too. Astronomers use these vibrations to probe stellar interiors and even estimate the age of the Universe

Sculptures in the void: You can look, but you can’t touch. Computers and art meet to produce three-dimensional representations of sculptures that do not actually exist

More

Maths on the road / Review of ‘Pop Maths Roadshow’

Forum: Research on a shoestring – All you need is a little ingenuity

Forum: If ethologists studied chairs – Can biologists even begin to be truly objective?

Thistle Diary – Another round-up from Westminster: Weapons, paternity suits and nuclear subs

Decision time for animals / Review of ‘Problems of Animal Behaviour’ by David McFarland

The late origins of Man / Review of ‘Human Origins’ edited by John Durant

A flood tide of numbers / Review of ‘The Empire of Chance’ by Gerd Gigerenzer, Zeno Swijtink, Theodore Porter, Lorraine Daston, John Beatty and Lorenz Kruger

Forum: A briefer history of time – Time isn’t what it used to be

Forum: First, catch your baby – A plea for more romance in the schoolroom

Forum: If the shoe fits . . . – Who says scientists don’t have soles?

Clothing dry fragments of fossil bone / Review of ‘In Human Evolution’ by Maurice Wilson at the Natural History Museum

The fats of evolution

Regulars

Ariadne

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