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This week's magazine

19 November 2005

Issue 2526

New Scientist issue 2526 cover
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Editor's picks

Desert racers – drivers not included

Technology

Desert racers – drivers not included

Features
Scientific moments of truth

Physics

Scientific moments of truth

Features
The viruses that kill tumours

Health

The viruses that kill tumours

Features
Let chaos keep your secrets safe

Technology

Let chaos keep your secrets safe

Features

Table of contents

News

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.

Technology

Forget spark plugs, start your car with nanotubes

THE accidental discovery that carbon nanotubes can be set alight with nothing more than a bright light could lead to a more efficient way of igniting car and rocket fuel. Three years ago, a student working in Pulickel Ajayan's lab at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York inadvertently ignited the pile of carbon nanotubes he …

News

Technology

US military hit by Jitters bugs

News

Technology

Gizmo

News

Earth

Can Earth's seismic radio help predict quakes?

News

Life

Otters helped prey grow big and meaty

News

Life

Darwin wins one fight as another begins

News

Earth

Forests paying the price for biofuels

News

Health

Why a loose tooth needn't mean a sore jaw

News

Technology

IBM's BlueGene tops chart again

News

Technology

UR r@ is in the trap

News

Life

Bored monkeys make for stupid monkeys

News

Why bird flu is so deadly

News

Life

Parasitic insects recruited to collect blood samples

News

Life

What lives in the ocean and goes 'boing'?

News

Physics

Molecule-moving drama may be shortest movie ever

News

Life

Manic depression linked to creativity

News

Life

Godzilla of the deep crawls out of Argentina

News

Soundbites

News

Health

The food you eat may change your genes for life

News

Space

Many planets may boast three rising suns

News

Health

The gene that can make you feast or starve

News

Earth

Louisiana slips into the sea

News

60 Seconds

News

Space

Europe to Venus on a shoestring

News

Life

Venom found to be widespread in lizards

News

Space

Why stars only go bang after a boom

News

Life

Zen and the art of central heating maintenance

News

Life

Questions over scientist's human egg source

News

Space

Lack of Moon knowledge may hinder landings

News

Earth

Rate of forest felling falls

News

Health

Polio is still at large

News

Space

Robotic asteroid-visitor gets lost in space

News

Earth

Rome set to dim its lights

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.

Keeping God from the courtroom

WHAT a lost opportunity! When Harriet Miers withdrew as a nominee for the US supreme court, her Christian critics missed out on a chance to show that it is possible to combine integrity and rationality with religious belief. It's an opportunity that these days presents itself all too rarely. Now President Bush has chosen a …

Opinion

Health

Editorial: Human genome remains full of surprises

Opinion

Editorial: Export as you would be exported to...

Opinion

Health

Interview: Ailing psychiatry needs some attention

Opinion

Features

Desert racers – drivers not included

Technology

Desert racers – drivers not included

EVERY day for two months, Sebastian Thrun drove Stanley, his customised Volkswagen SUV, through the Sonoran desert, Arizona, burning down dusty roads and avoiding boulders and potholes. With every twist and turn, Stanley's on-board computers watched and learned. Then one day Thrun did something most people would find rather scary. He turned over control of …

Features

Physics

Scientific moments of truth

Features

Health

The viruses that kill tumours

Features

Technology

Let chaos keep your secrets safe

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.

Earth

On the rocky road to salvation

ONE morning in the summer of 1933, David Brower, future leader of the US environmental group the Sierra Club, bumped into the landscape photographer Ansel Adams on a path in a forest in the Sierra Nevada mountains. As famous encounters go, this was not quite on a par with that of Stanley and Livingstone in …

Books & Arts

Health

The word: Junk DNA

Regulars

Life

Headless Males Make Great Lovers by Marty Crump

Books & Arts

Awards report

Careers

On the brighter side of biotech

Careers

Physics

Einstein: A hundred years of relativity by Andrew Robinson

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

The steam iron diet GILLIAN Coates tells us of the questionnaire she was asked to fill in when she bought a Morphy Richards Turbojet steam iron the other day. Question 10 asked her "Which factor most influenced your decision to buy a new appliance? (Please tick one)". Among fairly sensible possibilities such as "Existing appliance …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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