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This week's magazine

8 October 2005

Issue 2520

New Scientist issue 2520 cover
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Editor's picks

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.

Life

Reality Wars

Features
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.

Fundamentalists are just like us

Features
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.

Life

Blind faith in science

Features
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.

Life

Enemy at the gates

Features
Solids that can pass through solids

Physics

Solids that can pass through solids

Features
End of the Enlightenment

Life

End of the Enlightenment

Features

Table of contents

News

Shock tactics to destroy torpedoes

Technology

Shock tactics to destroy torpedoes

THE US navy wants to protect its warships with a system that will destroy incoming torpedoes by firing massive underwater shock waves at them. The ships would be equipped with arrays of 360 transducers each 1 metre square – effectively big flat-panel loudspeakers – running along either side of the hull below the waterline. When …

News

Technology

Microscopic holes are the secret of wood's resilience

News

Technology

Gizmo

News

Space

Off-the-shelf mini satellites herald space revolution

News

Health

Horseshoe bats in the frame as source of SARS

News

Physics

How being slim may help our universe to survive

News

Earth

Meteorites provide snapshots of the newly born Earth

News

Life

Salting roads kills tadpoles

News

Health

Red blood cells fitted with artificial tails

News

Technology

Hot new fuel for nuclear reactors

News

Technology

Medical implants could get bug-busting coat

News

Technology

Robotic vehicles rev up for race across the desert

News

Life

Makeover for male swallows helps ensure partners' fidelity

News

Health

Cranberry and oregano make seafood safe to eat

News

Trailblazing eco-law may lose its teeth

News

Health

Reconstruction of 1918 flu virus prompts warnings

News

Health

Mixed ancestry helps to nail disease genes

News

Soundbites

News

Life

Gorilla uses tool to plumb the depths

News

Earth

Cigarette butts go green

News

Health

Bone marrow stem cells repair failing livers

News

Earth

Arctic ice shrinking as it feels the heat

News

Space

Ten years on, a rich haul of planets

News

60 Seconds

News

Physics

Physicists win Nobel for breakthroughs in optics

News

Earth

Greenhouse emissions break Kyoto vows

News

Health

Australians win Nobel for linking ulcers to gut bug

News

Life

Mystery of Mayan tablets solved

News

Earth

Satellite will provide new test of global warming threat

News

Space

Tenth planet finds a companion

News

Opinion

Global warming in fiction

Global warming in fiction

Where's the science in science fiction? Where indeed, asks SF writer Kim Stanley Robinson , one of the few who work hard to make their stories scientifically sound. All the more scary, then, that the fictional floods that turn Washington DC into Venice in Forty Signs of Rain, the first volume of his near-future eco-saga, …

Opinion

One right for all

Opinion

Health

Editorial: Killer flu is back

Opinion

Life

Editorial: Where holy writ must hold no sway

Opinion

Life

The empathic ape

Opinion

Life

Fox-hunting

Opinion

Features

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.

Life

Reality Wars

After two centuries in the ascendancy, the Enlightenment project is under threat. Religious movements are sweeping the globe preaching unreason, intolerance and dogma, and challenging the idea that rational, secular enquiry is the best way to understand the world. Over the next 12 pages, we report from the front line of this conflict. We investigate …

Features

Fundamentalists are just like us

Features

Life

Blind faith in science

Features

Life

Enemy at the gates

Features

Physics

Solids that can pass through solids

Features

Life

End of the Enlightenment

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.

Round Up

Fruits of labour In August, the world's largest producer of fruits and vegetables, Dole Foods, approached four North Carolina universities to help create a biotech research centre in Kannapolis, a small city of 40,000 people near Charlottesville. So far, the plans include an institute for advanced fruit and vegetable science that would work to improve …

Careers

Physics

Book Review: Naked genius

Books & Arts

Life

Book Review: Myriad monsters

Books & Arts

Sea, scenery and a biotech boom

Careers

Life

The Word: Pathosphere

Regulars

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

Attack of the killer mice MICE may look cute, but their habits can be somewhat unpleasant. Novice mouse-handlers are often horrified to find that their furry charges have set upon and eaten – or just terminally nibbled – one of their cage-mates. That is probably what happened to the three mice that went missing last …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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