MAGAZINE ISSUE DATE: 15 JANUARY 2005 (Vol. 184 No 2482)
NEWS:
NET NOISE THREAT TO EMERGENCY RADIOPlans to deliver broadband internet signals down mains electricity cables risk drowning out the emergency short-wave radio signals that have proved invaluable in spreading news during the recent tsunami disaster, as well as the 9/11 attacks last year. Unless the interference is controlled or filtered, it could spell the end for emergency communication of this kind. Page 26
IT'S EARTHQUAKE THE MOVIEA pioneering technique using data from GPS receivers has been used to make the first movie of an earthquake. A team in America used GPS monitoring stations throughout Japan to record the quake off the coast of Hokkaido in September 2003. The data was used to build the most detailed pictures ever of seismic waves. Page 9
HOCKNEY 'WAS WRONG' OVER COPYING CLAIMNext week, an American physicist and art historian will present computer analysis of a 17th-century painting which, he says, undermines a theory recently put forward by the painter David Hockney. Hockney believes that many Renaissance painters used optics trickery to project an image onto canvas, which the artists then traced around. The analysis of the painting Christ in the Carpenter's Studio shows that the candle in the painting was the only light source on the scene, making any tracing impossible. Page 23
INVENTION (SHORT STORY)Ever tried to throw a rope from a boat to a jetty, or up a rock face? The task could be made a lot easier with a self-hardening rope being patented by an inventor from Florida. A plastic tube is embedded inside the weave of a flexible rope. When the tube is inflated the pressure makes the rope rigid enough to hold its own weight. Page 25
PLUS: A 6-page SPECIAL NEWS REPORT : "AFTER THE TSUNAMI" (Please email [email protected] if you are interested in viewing this report)
FEATURES:
DISTANT SHORES12 months ago NASA's twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars " and they're still going strong. The success of the mission has gone far beyond any of the team's expectations. And with the proof now of a history of water on the Red Planet, plus evidence for traces of methane not long ago, suddenly the possibility of detecting evidence of life on the planet is not so laughable. Pages 30-39
ANARCHY IN THE HIVE!Very occasionally, in the oppressive regime of a honeybee colony, all hell breaks lose. Worker bees - who have given up the function of reproduction to work selflessly for the good of the colony " will abandon their duties to the queen and start laying eggs. Australian researchers are on the brink of discovering which genes are involved in triggering anarchy and in preventing it. The discovery could have implications that go way beyond insect societies.Pages 42-45
LIFELINETreatments for tropical diseases are being neglected because the financial incentive isn't there for big drugs firms to get involved. But now a few small groups have found a way round, using a commercial library of compounds and a robotic screening system, which will hopefully find safe effective drugs for the world's poorest people. Pages 40-41
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