MAGAZINE ISSUE DATE: 5 JUNE 2004 (Vol. 181 No 2450)

ONLY A MATTER OF TIME?A terrorist attack with a "dirty bomb" looks increasingly likely, according to evidence gathered by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA's records, released to New Scientist, show a dramatic rise in the level of smuggling of radiological materials around the world which are used for industrial, medical and research purposes. Pages 8-9

BABY FOOD COULD TRIGGER MENINGITISAn extensive survey of baby foods has found that they contain worrying levels of disease-causing microbes, including a bacterium linked to outbreaks of meningitis in children's hospitals in the US and Europe. This is the first study to detect this bug in dried infant food. The same British study found that the number of bacteria in infant formula which had been left out at room temperature doubled every half an hour. Page 16

LIFE GOES ON WITHOUT 'VITAL' DNAAmerican researchers shocked a scientific meeting recently by announcing they had deleted huge chunks of DNA from mice without it making any difference to the animals. The result was totally unexpected because the parts of the genome deleted were so called "conserved regions" which do not code for proteins but are thought to have important functions. Page 18

PROGRAMS THAT PUT YOUR PERSONAL DETAILS AT RISKYou probably think that after typing your password or credit card number into a computer it disappears as soon as you hit the Return key. Think again: they can sit on the computer's hard drive for years, as easy prey for hackers. This alarming problem comes from American researchers who have been able to track sensitive information as it passes through computer memory. Page 23

FELLED BY FUNGUSOur obsession to fill our gardens with exotic plants, fuelled by gardening shows, is unleashing an alien killer fungus into nurseries, forests and ecosystems. Already discovered as the cause of sudden oak death, phytophthoras have the power to spread an epidemic of new dangerous diseases which could change our landscape forever. Experts say the only way to prevent future outbreaks of plant diseases is to restrict the mass movement of plants and return to local production. FEATURE Pages 41-43 + EDITORIAL

HACK OUT THE USELESS EXTRASEven with the hike in processing power and the very latest in software packages - aren't our PCs just as slow and frustrating as ever? Nicholas Negroponte, the founding chairman of MIT's Media Lab, believes that rather than packing so many advanced features and options into our computers and mobile phones, we need to go back to much simpler machines. Page 26

ROVING SEASON DRAWS TO CLOSEThe onset of Martian winter weather is taking its toll on NASA's rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Lower temperatures, shorter days and an accumulation of dust on the rovers' solar panels are gradually reducing the amount of work each can accomplish. Page 6

GET IN TO THE GROOVE TO SAVE OLD SOUNDSRare recordings made on antique wax cylinders can now be retrieved, without wearing down the cylinders every time the needle is used. This means that old sounds from archives could be heard for the very first time. The technique, developed by US researchers, involves using an imaging system to create a computer map of the groove pattern. Page 25

SHORT STORY " PENDANT PROJECTORA tiny cellphone screen isn't the best way to show off your photos. The solution, say Hewlett-Packard, is a pendant-like image projector hung around your neck to beam an enlarged view of the pictures onto any nearby surface. Page 25

WHEN NERVES BREAK DOWNFor a long time multiple sclerosis has been seen as an inflammatory disease where the patient's immune cells attack the myelin sheath that covers the nerves. Based in this idea, scientists have developed drugs that reduce the inflammation. But a new theory suggests that this autoimmune response not only damages the nerve's myelin sheath, but also triggers a degeneration of the neuron itself. If this new theory is right, it could open the door to a whole host of drugs for MS that could stop nerves degenerating. FEATURE Pages 42-45

SECOND ROCK FROM THE SUNOn Tuesday 8 June, around five billion people will have the opportunity to witness an astronomical spectacle never seen in living memory " Venus crossing the face of the sun. Hazel Muir takes a detailed look at the planet's vital statistics and best-kept secrets. FEATURE Pages 32-39

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NewScientist is the world's leading science and technology news weekly, boasting a circulation of 145,000. The magazine is now available to readers worldwide, with US and Australian editions of NewScientist now being published.

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