NEW SCIENTIST PRESS RELEASE
EMBARGO: NOT FOR PUBLICATION BEFORE
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1997
ORDER #1: SET PHASERS TO SHOCK
Real life is catching up with Star Trek. An inventor from San Diego has
been granted a patent for a "phaser" that uses light to stun or kill. Page 6
ORDER #2: WHITE, WITH A HINT OF POTATO
Next time you repaint the bathroom, you may end up slopping potato starch on
the walls. Chemists at ICI's paint subsidiary, Dulux, have replaced up to 25
per cent of the structural chemicals in household paints with starch from
commercial crops. As well as being cheaper, the potato paints will also
appeal to the
environmentally conscious consumer. Page 7
ORDER #3: TAKE AIM, FIRE
Half of the most common cancers might be treatable with genetically
engineered magic bullets that destroy tumor cells by shooting lethal
bacterial toxins into them. Early laboratory tests showed these bullets to
be effective against tumors found in cancers of the colon, breast, lung,
ovary and prostate. Page 28
ORDER #4: THE ROT SETS IN
Parasitic fungi are helping to nurse ailing forest ecosystems back to
health. By injecting the fungi into the heartwood of healthy trees, American
biologists hope to recreate habitats for woodpeckers and other creatures
that have been destroyed by decades of "salvage logging". Page 12
ORDER #5: MONSANTO'S COTTON GETS THE MISSISSIPPI BLUES
Farmers in Mississippi could lose millions of dollars following the partial
failure of a new genetically engineered cotton crop. Entire fields have shed
their bolls - the fluffy part harvested for fiber - or have developed small,
malformed bolls. Page 4
ORDER #6: A BIGGER SPLASH
An impact that formed a deep-sea creater off the southern coast of Chile
might have sent life forms on their way towards the South Pole 2.2 million
years ago. A scientist in Germany says this overturns ideas about how marine
diatoms arrived in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica. Page 11
ORDER #7: EARTHLY WORLD
Martian rocks are intriguingly similar to many on the Earth, say scientists
who have assessed the results of the Mars Pathfinder mission. It is now
thought that vigorous geological processes such as plate tectonics occurred
on the Red Planet. Page 11
ORDER #8: TIME'S ARROW
How fast does time pass and why doesn't it flow backwards? Award-winning
physicist and author Paul Davies explains on pages 34-38
ORDER #9: HERE COMES HYPERTIME
The Universe has more than one dimension of time, says a physicist from
Harvard. This extra dimension could solve many outstanding problems in
physics and may even provide a route for time travel. Pages 40-41
ORDER #10: COUNTDOWN TO CHAOS
If terrorists took control of the atomic clocks used to measure time,
aircraft and ships would lose the ability to navigate, power utilities could
not synchronise adjacent power grids leading to worldwide blackouts and
phone companies could not send data over their networks. In short, the world
would grind to a halt. Pages 42-45
ORDER #11: IN THE BLINK OF AN ATOM
Nobody knows exactly how long a second lasts but researchers all over the
world are racing to pin the interval down more accurately. Pages 46-51
ORDER #12: WHEN A SECOND LASTS FOREVER
Researchers have discovered how to speed up or slow down an animal's sense
of time. The work proves that our brains actively construct and control our
perception of time and may explain why time seems to slow down as we get
old. Pages 52-56
- ENDS -
October 29, 1997
Issue cover date: November 1, 1997
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