NEW SCIENTIST PRESS RELEASE
EMBARGO: NOT FOR PUBLICATION BEFORE
1900 HOURS GMT WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1997
ORDER #1: EVEN FLOORS HAVE FEELINGS
Being left alone can create problems for people who are frail or confused,
and although monitoring is often necessary, most forms are expensive or
intrusive. Now a Finnish company has developed a polypropylene flooring
material that can sense if someone is walking around on it, and even monitor
their breathing and pulse if they fall. Page 26
ORDER #2: SPEED FREAKS ARE OUT IN THE COLD
Drug dealers in the US are buying cold cures over the counter and converting
them into speed. But Warner-Lambert, the pharmaceuticals company which makes
Sudafed nasal decongestant, is close to a solution which will make the
conversion process "practically impossible". Page 26
ORDER #3: BOYS WILL BE BOYS
At the tender age of just three months, little boys can detect a difference
between male and female babies - and it seems they like the boys better, say
researchers. They speculate that the neonatal surge in testosterone levels
may explain their behavior. Page 29
ORDER #4: NOSE JOB
The celebrated French sense of smell, nurtured down the centuries on the
fruity bouquets of fine wines, is now being applied to a less palatable
subject: air pollution. French scientists are training volunteers to
recognise different smells given off by a rapeseed oil factory outside Rouen
which has been accused of fouling the local village's air. Page 12
ORDER #5: ONE IS ALL IT TAKES
Tiny amounts of alpha radiation from plutonium cause cancers in human
thyroid cells, say scientists in Scotland. A study by researchers at St.
Andrews University and the Medical Research Council found that when mice
were injected with irradiated human thyroid cells, more than half developed
tumours within 125 days. Page 29
ORDER #6: HELMSMAN'S ELBOW
Modern engineering has finally caught up with the shipwrights of the 17th
century - and is rewriting the history of occupational medicine in the
process. Technology historians claim that the vessels' helmsmen did not
suffer from a "repetitive helming injury", as some experts have argued. Page 19
ORDER #7: COOKIES IN COURT
Public employees in Tennessee are being taken to court in an attempt to
force them into revealing the internet sites they visit during working
hours. A newspaper publisher has filed a lawsuit - believed to be the first
of its type - claiming that taxpayers should have access to computer files
that record the Net surfing habits of public servants. Page 18
ORDER #8: A QUESTION OF TIMING
Doctors across Africa may be unwittingly undermining the future
effectiveness of the last line of defense against the deadliest form of
malaria. The drug, artemether, is now widely available in Africa - for
patients who can afford it. But many tropical disease specialists have long
said that it should not be used until resistance to the traditional drug,
quinine, becomes a major problem on the continent. Page 18
ORDER #9: METEORITE FEVER
Mars fever has hit the meteorite trade. Last week a company placed banner
advertisements in The New York Times offering to sell slivers of the Red
Planet for hundreds of times the price of gold. A New York-based company -
The Sky is Falling - is offering buyers 0.02 grams of the Zagami meteorite
for $98. Page 14
ORDER #10: STEAMY STORY RACES TO A HAPPY ENDING
Every cold-weather driver know the routine. You spend ages scraping the ice
off your windshield, only to get inside and watch all the windows fog up so
you can't see anyway. But German engineers have designed a system that can
heat the interior of the car almost instantly. They say this not only
results in clearer windows, but also reduces pollution by raising the
engine's temperature faster
than usual. Page 28
ORDER #11: BURN ME
Paper waste should be burnt rather than recycled if the environment is to be
preserved. That is the conclusion of a new environmental study which claims
that incineration is the least damaging option for the Earth. Pages 30-34
ORDER #12: FAITH, HOPE AND STATISTICS
Personal beliefs, prejudices and hunches are essential to modern science
because Bayes theorem, one of the most powerful statistical tools, is
useless without them. Pages 36-39
ORDER #13: SEX IS MURDER
Seminal fluid contains toxins that can kill, say biologists studying the
sexual habits of the fruit fly. The two sexes, it seems, are locked into a
molecular arms race. The males produce toxins that kill females after they
have laid eggs, while females evolve to outwit the molecular killers. Pages
40-42
ORDER #14: GOING UNDERGROUND
An entirely new generation of spacecraft that will burrow beneath the
surface of other planets and moons is being developed by NASA and the
Japanese space agency ISAS. The spacecraft, called penetrators, will burrow
into the Moon and Mars in 1999 and will help to answer questions such as how
did the Moon form and whether
water is present beneath the Martian soil. Pages 44-47
- ENDS -
November 19, 1997
Issue cover date: November 22, 1997
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