NEW SCIENTIST HIGHLIGHTS
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1900 HOURS GMT WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1997
ORDER #1: A POISONED INHERITANCE
Genetic damage caused by radiation might grow worse with each subsequent
generation, say researchers studying irradiated mice. If the same is true
for people, it could lead to a re-evaluation of safety guidelines for the
use of radiation in medicine and industry, say the researchers from the
University of California. Page 4
ORDER #2: FIX FOR FURRY ARTERIES
A double-barrelled assault on coronary heart disease will begin next month,
when doctors begin testing a pioneering drug to tackle both the root cause
of blockages in coronary arteries and supress levels of cholesterol. The
drug works by snuffing out any inflammation in the endothelial cells that
line the artery walls. Page 6
ORDER #3: CLEAN-LIVING FIRE
There may be no smoke without fire, but now fire without smoke is a real
option, thanks to a solid-fuel stove developed by researchers. The
invention could be good news for people forced to rely on solid fuel, as
well as for those who want to have real fires in smoke-controlled areas.
And whereas previous designs for smokeless stoves have relied on expensive
catalysts, a consultant
working on the new stove claims this solution is much simpler - "You just
stick a brick at the back," he says. Page 19
ORDER #4: HUNGRY HELPERS CHEAT THEIR CHARGES
White-winged choughs are cooperative breeders, which means that the birds
help feed the hatchlings of other birds in their group. But scientists have
found that the birds often only pretend to do the feeding - then gobble the
grub themselves. Page 22
ORDER #5: FROM LITTLE ACORNS...MIGHTY SOFTWARE CAN BE GROWN
Powerful and complicated personal computer programs could be many times
smaller than today's software if they were written using a new programming
technique which does away with the need for a separate operating system and
builds up all the programs from little pieces of shared code. Page 7
ORDER #6: DEATH TO THE CHIP
Microprocessors will be economically and physically obsolete by 2010,
according to Hewlett Packard. The computer company has revealed that it is
already using alternatives to computing with silicon chips, and is
developing computers that could use quantum switches instead of transistors.
Page 10
ORDER #7: FOREST FABLES
Since the early 1980s, a succession of reports by the European Commission
and national governments have declared that Europe's forests are dying. But
now a group of German scientists is insisting that the technique used by all
these studies to assess the health of the trees is faulty. Page 15
ORDER #8: DRAINED OF LIFE
Destroy peatlands and coastal fisheries will collapse, warns a climatologist
in Colorado. He claims that the iron-rich runoff from peatlands is essential
for maintaining high biological productivity in coastal waters. Page 26
ORDER #9: CREATURES FROM PRIMORDIAL SILICON
Let evolution loose on a primordial soup of silicon components and the
result is useful microchips, say physicists. These chips do not use
conventional digital rules to carry out their task and just how they work,
nobody yet knows. Pages 30-34
ORDER #10: A GRIM RECKONING
The human race will last for at least another 5100 years but not more than
7.8 million years, according to the rules of mathematical logic. And the
only way to survive longer is to begin the colonisation of space now, warns
a Harvard professor of astrophysics. Pages 36-39
ORDER #11: DISTILLED WISDOM
Chemists are turning from the test tube to the computer to tell them how to
create the next generation of wonder drugs. Pages 40-43
ORDER #12: IF YOU GO DOWN TO THE WOODS TODAY
Lyme disease is now the most common vector-borne disease in the US. It is
being spread by the way humans change wooded environments and the same could
soon happen in Britain, warn ecologists. The disease causes arthritis,
abnormalities of the nervous system and cardiac problems. Pages 44-48
- ENDS -
November 12, 1997
Issue cover date: November 15, 1997
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