#1: HUMAN CELLS MAKE 'PERFECT' PROTEINS A small biotechnology company in Cambridge, Massachusetts has developed a protein used to treat anaemia which can now be manufactured in cultures of human cells, making it virtually identical to its natural counterpart. The new technique could take business worth billions of dollars from one of the biotech industry's giants. Page 22 ORDER
#2: PUSHING THE BOAT WITH PENGUIN POWER Picking up on the penguin's propulsion system could help engineers create highly efficient ships and submarines. Massachusetts researchers are now planning to build craft driven by flapping flippers rather than propellers after successful trials of a miniature ship last month. Page 25 0RDER
#3: SMART WINDOW SPELLS CURTAINS FOR BLINDS Chemists at Harvard University have come up with a moulded polymer which could be used to make smart windows which could be depressurised at night, turning the windows opaque and doing away with the need for blinds. Page 23 ORDER
#4: YOU WON'T WANT TO TANGLE WITH THE NYPDblinds. Page 23 It may sound like a scene from Spiderman, but police in New York are about to start testing a net which literally catches criminals. The Nonlethal Entanglement Technology (NET) uses a small electric shock or glue to immobilise criminal suspects. Page 7 ORDER
#5: SUPERBUG SPECTRE HAUNTS JAPAN
Scientists in Japan have found a bacteria which is resistant to the current "last-resort" antibiotic, vancomycin. With many hospital patients already having succumbed to "superbug" strains, doctors are worried about this latest addition to an international problem. Page 5 ORDER
#6: YOUNG HEARTSlem. Page 5
When girls go through puberty their physical fitness can decline, while boys remain as fit as before. Paediatricians in Croatia now claim that this is due to a slowing in heart growth that affects girls in the year after their first period. Page 13 ORDER
#7: SECRETS AND LIES IN EUROPE
Mad cow disease is perceived as a British problem. But there are signs that the infection has spread silently across the Continent and may now be about to erupt. Page 14-15 ORDER
#8: PIGEONS PLAY FOLLOW MY LEADER
Research at Oxford University has revealed that if a pair of homing pigeons are released - one from a clear box and one from an opaque box - the less clued-up bird will fly after the one from the clear box, which will slow down to let the more disoriented bird catch up. Page 18 ORDER
#9: CHINESE BIOTECH WOOS WESTe 18
A Chinese biotechnology company is to be floated on the New York Stock Exchange. The floatation of Beijing-based company Sinogene International is hoped to raise up to $200 million towards the manufacture of drugs in China. Page 7 ORDER
#10: KILLER FUNGUS SWARMS ALL OVER LOCUSTS drugs in China. Page 7 Locusts and grasshoppers, which ravage crops across swathes of Africa, have succumbed to a biological pesticide for the first time, say a team of researchers from Britain, Benin and Niger. Page 10 ORDER
#11: SCORPIUS STAR IS TWINNED WITH SUN If you want to boost your chances of finding extraterrestrial intelligence, point your telescope at a star in the constellation of Scorpius, say astronomers in Brazil. They have found that this star resembles our Sun more closely than any other investigated. Page 18 ORDER
#12: WHERE DID YOU GET YOUR BRAINS? Baby mice inherit their mother's wits and their father's basic instincts, say researchers from the University of Cambridge. What does this mean for humans? Pages 34-39 ORDER
#13: THE HEAT IS ON
A new theory of superconductivity may finally explain why some materials carry current with zero resistance at high temperatures. Pages 26-29 ORDER
#14: AN INSIDE STORYe at high temperatures. Pages 26-29 The chance discovery that tiny circular beams of electrons can create X-rays may revolutionise X-ray imaging and chip making. Pages 30-32 revolutionise X-ray imaging and chip making. Pages 30-32 ORDER
#15: A DROP IN THE OCEANnd chip making. Pages 30-32 The cost of cleaning up birds after oil spills can be as much as $32,000 per bird and may simply prolong their agony, according to marine biologists in the US. Pages 40-44 -ENDS- 40-44
April 29, 1997
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