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This week's magazine

17 June 2006

Issue 2556

New Scientist issue 2556 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.

Earth

Histories: Captain William's obsession with tides

Features
Your amazing regenerating body

Life

Your amazing regenerating body

Features
Eco-cities special: A Shanghai surprise

Earth

Eco-cities special: A Shanghai surprise

Features
Sterile neutrinos: The cosmic controllers

Space

Sterile neutrinos: The cosmic controllers

Features
Eco-cities special: Ecopolis now

Earth

Eco-cities special: Ecopolis now

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.

This week 25 years ago

Israeli jets attack Iraq In the furore that has followed last Sunday's attack by Israeli F-4s and F-16s on the Osirak reactor near Baghdad, two questions remain; did Iraq really have the capacity to build a bomb, and were its intentions aggressive? The truth is elusive. Iraq has been quietly acquiring nuclear technology for more …

News

Technology

Medical spider silk gets an upgrade

News

Space

Astronomy detectors could become nuke hunters

News

Technology

Google steps on more of Microsoft's toes

News

Technology

Gizmo

News

Life

The irresistible rise of cybersex

News

Life

Love means never holding your nose

News

Earth

Air pollution is turning China dry

News

Technology

Robots develop a surgeon's sense of touch

News

Physics

An immune system so versatile it might kill you

News

Life

Risks of being a queen mother

News

Life

Sexual desire boosted in female migraine sufferers

News

Technology

Round salt goes with the flow

News

Space

Local stars influence planet growth

News

Health

Six years of fast-food fats supersizes monkeys

News

Earth

Night flights give bigger boost to global warming

News

A rare rainbow of rare beauty

News

Space

Found: The stardust missing since time began

News

Life

First embryonic stem cell trial on the cards

News

Earth

Insight: Conservationists' tactics now used by whalers

News

Health

DNA vaccine best hope yet for Alzheimer's

News

Life

Hybrids: When two species become three

News

Soundbites

News

Space

Shuttle fuel tank stripped for launch

News

US scientists may become ungaggable

News

Earth

Royal reprieve for Thailand's giant catfish

News

Hope of life for death row inmates

News

Health

Fewer US suicides since Prozac's introduction

News

Health

Are child abuse and schizophrenia linked?

News

Space

ESA to tackle Mars once more

News

60 Seconds

News

Health

Today's bird flu vaccines will have to do

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.

Life

Selecting embryos – the moral choice

LAST month, the UK's fertility treatment and embryo research regulator made what appeared to be a radical decision. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) said it would consider allowing prospective parents to test embryos created outside the body for serious genetic disorders such as aggressive breast, ovarian and bowel cancers before deciding whether to …

Opinion

Earth

Editorial: Cities are the green future

Opinion

Editorial: Voicing concerns should not be punished

Opinion

Technology

Interview: How much do we need to know?

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.

Earth

Histories: Captain William's obsession with tides

In the small hours of 8 November 1770, a middle-aged man emerges from a house near the Old Dock in Liverpool, one of the busiest ports in England. Through freezing rain and gale-force wind he crosses to the dock gates and peers down into the water, trying to read the height of the tide from …

Features

Life

Your amazing regenerating body

Features

Earth

Eco-cities special: A Shanghai surprise

Features

Space

Sterile neutrinos: The cosmic controllers

Features

Earth

Eco-cities special: Ecopolis now

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.

Technology

The word: Hypertext

FOR a thoroughly modern word, hypertext has surprisingly ancient antecedents. Contrary to what you might think, it's not exclusively a device of the World Wide Web, but has been around in one form or another for centuries, perhaps even millennia. What is hypertext? Put simply, it is a way of displaying and cross-referencing documents containing …

Regulars

Life

The Medici Conspiracy, by Peter Watson and Cecilia Todeschini

Books & Arts

Life

Amazing Numbers in Biology, by Rainer Flindt

Books & Arts

Life at 78 degrees north, 40 degrees below zero

Books & Arts

Technology

A perverse military strategy

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

Malformed Acronym Syndrome (MAD) EUROPEAN Union funding for science projects demands, understandably enough, that applicants put together a collaboration involving more than one member state. Feedback has not actually seen the additional rule that you must assemble a cute and vaguely acronymic name for your collaboration, but we deduce that it must exist somewhere in …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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