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This week's magazine

13 September 2008

Issue 2673

New Scientist issue 2673 cover
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Editor's picks

The origins of willpower

Life

The origins of willpower

Features
Could the diabetes epidemic be down to pollution?

Earth

Could the diabetes epidemic be down to pollution?

Features
What is your dinner doing to the climate?

Earth

What is your dinner doing to the climate?

Features
Pimp my scope: Revamping Hubble

Space

Pimp my scope: Revamping Hubble

Features

Table of contents

News

Synthetic trees drag water to new heights

Technology

Synthetic trees drag water to new heights

SYNTHETIC trees could one day extract and purify the traces of water held even in arid earth, and help make high-quality wines. That's the claim of a team who have reproduced the way plants pump water to heights of many tens of metres. For years, it was thought that capillary action couldn't raise water more …

News

Technology

Artificial muscle could keep hearts beating

News

Life

Computer resurrects ancient Greek instrument

News

Technology

Can icy fuel bring down an airliner?

News

Technology

How to scribble notes onto digital photos

News

Technology

Gizmo

News

Space

'Space traffic control' needed in junk-filled orbits

News

Health

Fetuses fight back against mother's malaria

News

Health

Hereditary blindness therapy within sight

News

Life

Why lager beer comes in two genetically different flavours

News

Space

Star-tickling aliens could speak via 'galactic internet'

News

Life

Gender differences revealed in the brain

News

Earth

Rare parrot needs the right feed to breed

News

Health

Common brain cancer is actually two diseases

News

Life

A head for maths: learned or innate?

News

Life

How much faster could Usain Bolt have gone?

News

Earth

Should Naples fear a big bang from Vesuvius?

News

Health

New form of 'mad cow' disease could infect humans

News

Earth

Promiscuous toads are just hedging their bets

News

Neanderthals matured at the same rate as modern humans

News

McCain vs Obama: Who will end the war on science?

News

'America must always stay on the cutting edge'

News

Life

New laws could make everyone an organ donor

News

Life

DNA firms step up security over bioterrorism threat

News

Technology

Nuclear reactor shutdown hits hospital waiting lists

News

Life

US army is breaking rules to make terrorists talk

News

60 Seconds

News

Physics

Large Hadron Collider passes tricky beam tests

News

Earth

International nuclear rules bent for India deal

News

Life

Food companies reject clones over consumer fears

News

Earth

'Garden of Eden' to get UN protection

News

Opinion

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Comment: The other food crisis

IT IS hard to ignore the fact that we are facing a food crisis. As New Scientist has reported , recent increases in the prices of staples such as rice, wheat and eggs could push 100 million people who have escaped from poverty back into it, and make life for the poor even more desperate. …

Opinion

Editorial: Why are the US elections so quiet on science?

Opinion

Health

Editorial: Another good reason to ban toxic chemicals

Opinion

Technology

Commentary: In praise of the LHC

Opinion

Technology

The man behind the 'God particle'

Opinion

Features

The origins of willpower

Life

The origins of willpower

WALTER MISCHEL can predict the future using a bag of marshmallows. In experiments he started in the 1960s at Stanford University, he discovered that if 4-year-olds could resist eating a marshmallow while he briefly left the room – for the promise of two marshmallows on his return – they were more likely to have higher …

Features

Earth

Could the diabetes epidemic be down to pollution?

Features

Earth

What is your dinner doing to the climate?

Features

Space

Pimp my scope: Revamping Hubble

Features

More

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Review: The Noble Lie by Gary Greenberg

IN THE face of life's inconvenient facts – alcoholism, drug addiction, depression and craziness, to name a few – pseudoscientific medical concepts allow us to cast difficult moral problems as simple factual questions, readily soluble in the lab and in the hospital. Gary Greenberg's The Noble Lie is an impressive and fascinating round-up of such …

Books & Arts

Review: The Earth After Us by Jan Zalasiewicz

Books & Arts

Health

Review: Swindled by Bee Wilson

Books & Arts

Regulars

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Feedback

Cars that run on water THERE should be a law against it, we grumble. Back on 13 June, Mark Rowatt Anderson tells us, the normally reputable Reuters news agency – without whose accurate and precise business reports capitalism as a whole would be in deep trouble – distributed a short feature on the Japanese company …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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