MAGAZINE ISSUE DATE: 1 NOVEMBER 2003, Vol. 180 No. 2419
US DEVELOPS LETHAL NEW VIRUSESA scientist funded by the US government has deliberately engineered an extremely deadly strain of mousepox, a relative of smallpox, that kills 100 per cent of mice even if they have been vaccinated. But the work doesn't stop there - the cowpox virus has been altered in a similar way. The researcher tells New Scientist that the work is necessary to explore what bioterrorists might do. However, many researchers think this latest pox research is risky, bringing with it the terrifying prospect of pox viruses being turned into diseases lethal to humans. Pages 6-7
IS A NEW STRAIN OF SMALLPOX WORTH THE RISK?Meanwhile, another team in the US want to breed a new strain of smallpox that infects monkeys, with the hope of developing new treatments and vaccines. Critics argue that this is unnecessary. The World Health Organisation committee will meet next week to decide whether to approve the work. Page 7
RACE TO CLEAN UP ATHLETICSAs the sports industry comes under scrutiny as never before, New Scientist has learnt that monitoring of performance-enhancing drugs is set to change. Before the end of the year, the UK will launch the world's first initiative to routinely screen the multimillion"dollar supplements industry " which many athletes are quick to blame when their urine tests positive. A co-ordinator of the scheme says the scheme will reveal if retailers have tampered with products while discouraging guilty athletes from trying to pass the buck. Pages 8-9
TUNE INTO THE BIG HUMThe big bang sounded more like a deep hum than a loud bang. To produce the sound, an American physicist took data from a NASA probe - which has been measuring temperature variations in different parts of the sky. From these variations he was able to calculate the pitch and loudness of sound waves during the early universe - which can be played as an audio file on a PC. Page 16
HOW BABY DOLPHINS KEEP PACE WITH THE PODYoung dolphins are always seen in the open ocean swimming alongside their mothers - but how do they manage to keep up? Israeli scientists have found their secret. If the young calves swim close enough to their mothers they literally get sucked along in the slipstream of the moving water. Page 18
HYPERACTIVE SUN COMES OUT IN SPOTSThe sun is more active now than it has been for the past millennium. A European team of researchers reconstructed past sunspot activity from radioactive particles found in ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica. They found that there have been more sunspots since the 1940s than for the past 1150 years. Page 17
TECHNOLOGY:-
NINE-EYED ROBOTS ARE A GOA robot's navigation skills could be vastly improved by giving it eyes in the back of its head. Researchers in the US say that a robot with just one camera for an eye cannot tell whether it is travelling in a straight line or spinning on the spot. Their solution is a nine-eyed sphere which feeds images to software and can easily identify the direction of motion. Page 25
ROBO-SCOPES BRING HEAVENS TO EARTHCheap automated telescopes that find an area of sky at the press of a button, together with digital cameras and clever software are transforming amateur astronomy and challenging the professionals. This latest trend has seen a huge rise in amateurs searching the skies for comets or supernovae. Page 26
ULTRA-THIN FILMS BEAT EVAPORATIONA biodegradable blanket of organic molecules on the surface of lakes or reservoirs could prevent evaporation of precious water. A Canadian company, the first to commercialise the technique, say that the technology showed between 30 and 45 per cent reduction in evaporation in field trials. Page 24
ROBOTS LAUNCH DOMESTIC COUPNew figures show that sales of domestic and entertainment robots designed for the home tripled in 2002. The figures on which the survey World Robotics 2003 is based have been driven by a reduction in costs of robots that carry out domestic chores like vacuuming and mowing the lawn. Page 23
FEATURES:-
NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ME AS WELL AS MY PCIBM hopes to achieve superhuman speech recognition programs that will be better at humans in identifying words, within a decade. The machines are learning to lip-read and, unlike humans, won't get bored. Pages 28-31
THE SPEED OF LIFEThe key to a long life could be in your membranes. Researchers say that gunky, water-tight cell membranes give slow animals like elephants long lives, while runny, leaky membranes allow speedy mice and hummingbirds to live fast " but die young. Pages 42-45
A UNIVERSE LIKE NO OTHERIn 1969, Leonard Susskind was one of the physicists to propose the string theory - the most ambitious attempt in theoretical physics to explain the laws of nature. But about a year and a half ago - he tells New Scientist " he became rather sceptical that he and other string theorists had the right expectations about their own theory. Pages 34-45
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