New Scientist Magazine Issue 18 Sep 2004

Main Category: Infectious Diseases / Bacteria / Viruses
Article Date: 20 Sep 2004 - 0:00 PDT

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SOWING THE SEEDS OF STARVATION

A national push to persuade Chinese farmers to give up the rural life and move into towns and cities is destroying China's agriculture. Two new reports by Chinese scientists reveal that an urban demand to replace the traditional rice and wheat fields to more profitable fruit and vegetables is having a detrimental effect on the quality of China's soil and water. Pages 6-7

PC USERS FOLLOW THEIR NOSE

If your arms are getting tired of using a mouse and keyboard to control your PC, there's another way: your nose. The nose-steered mouse, or "nouse", uses nudges of the nose to guide the cursor around the screen using webcam technology. In addition, blinking the left or right eye twice takes the place of left or right mouse clicks. The Canadian inventor hopes his nouse will provide a change from using a mouse, and may make it easier for people who have disabilities to use a PC. Page 17

DOUBLE-BARRELLED SYRINGE

An American inventor has come up with a simple idea to combat contaminants in blood tests. His device is a double-barrelled syringe consisting of a miniature syringe, which draws the first millilitre of blood (most likely to contain skin contaminants). The rest of the blood is drawn into the main syringe and used for the test. Page 19

ALTERED TREES HIDE OUT WITH LOCAL POPLARS

China has planted more than a million genetically modified trees in a bid to halt the spread of deserts and prevent flash floods. But no one knows for sure where they are. Scientists are worried about the lack of proper controls over GM trees and what effect they will have on native forests. Page 7

GHOST OF BUGS HELP CUT PESTICIDE USE

Farmers could soon be spraying crops with bacterial "ghosts" as a new method to deliver pesticides. These empty shells of bacterial cells are filled with pesticide and will stick to leaves and stems even after heavy rain. Page 14

FEATURES:

THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD

When did we become civilised? What drove Stone Age people to abandon a hunter-gatherer lifestyle that had served them well for millennia and take on the trappings of modernity? Over the next three Features New Scientist follows humanity's journey from nomad to urbanite.

1. Born to trade: Long before our obsession with material goods, there was trade. And it might have been the desire to start trading in non-essential trinkets and luxury items that launched our ancestors on the road to modernity. It looks as though our taste for jewellery, cosmetics and fashion is a lot older than we thought. Pages 25-28

2. Manna or millstone: Archaeologists see the transition from foraging for food to cultivating it as a crucial step in human progress. But did our ancestors adopt farming to feed bellies or to achieve a certain status? Pages 29-31

3. Urban legends: Situated on the banks of the river Euphrates, Urak has long been considered the world's first true city. But archaeologists are having a serious rethink about where and when the first cities arose after recent evidence of urbanisation in northern Mesopotamia at around 4000 BC, long before the existence of Urak. Pages 32-35

BEYOND THE X PRIZE

If all goes well, SpaceShipOne will fly into the record books by winning the X prize - a competition for the first privately owned spacecraft to complete two manned sub-orbital space missions. But what's in store for the private space sector after the X prize has been won? Will paying customers turn up, and what of the prospects of all the unsuccessful competitors? Pages 36-39

THE ACCIDENTAL RAINFOREST

In 1836, Charles Darwin described the remote volcanic Ascension Island as completely devoid of any vegetation. 150 years on, the island's renamed "Green Mountain" is a fully functional man-made tropical cloud forest, grown from scratch from odd and ends of seeds brought in by the Royal Navy. How did this happen? According to ecological theory, rainforests evolve over millions of years, but this rainforest was produced in just 150 years without any co-evolution. Pages 44-45

INTERVIEW: MASTER OF THE DEEP

Film director James Cameron's film Titanic was the most successful movie of all time, and his Terminator movies weren't far behind. As if making huge Hollywood movies wasn't enough, he has also built up a formidable reputation as a deep-ocean explorer, educating both researchers and the public. Claire Ainsworth caught up with him at the University of Southampton where he received an honorary doctorate. Pages 40-43

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