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This week's magazine

22 July 2006

Issue 2561

New Scientist issue 2561 cover
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Editor's picks

Where dirty ships go to die

Earth

Where dirty ships go to die

Features
Hypervelocity stars: Catch them while you can

Space

Hypervelocity stars: Catch them while you can

Features
Unnatural selection in the cyber world

Technology

Unnatural selection in the cyber world

Features
The teen gene: Switching on puberty

Life

The teen gene: Switching on puberty

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

Gizmo

Instances of food contamination could be spotted earlier thanks to software that looks for patterns in complaints databases. Over the next two weeks, the Consumer Complaint Monitoring System developed at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will start linking complaints made to the US Department of Agriculture and suggest likely origins such as mishandling at …

News

Space

Static helps satellites swarm in formation

News

Technology

A good robot has personality but not looks

News

Life

Quantum tool kits could transform archaeology

News

Life

Women enjoy smarter cyber massacres

News

Technology

Music videos ease pain of dental work

News

Technology

No surgical hidden extras, please

News

Life

How people with autism miss the big picture

News

Health

All alone with my broken heart

News

Earth

New pathway to pollution in Arctic

News

Earth

The Red Sea parts, but roughly

News

Space

Eye-to-eye with Venusian storms

News

Life

Fatherhood boosts male brains

News

Life

Killer dinosaurs had a happy youth

News

Health

Could stem cells help heal damaged livers?

News

Life

Lack of sleep saps men's brain power

News

This week 30 years ago

News

Life

Evolution in action, by Darwin's finches

News

Space

Space radiation scare for long-haul astronauts

News

Life

Underpaid, overworked and ageing faster

News

Earth

Ozone hole alters Antarctic sea life

News

Space

Relic neutrinos join the hunt for dark energy

News

Life

Déjà vu created in the lab

News

Life

How will the lungfish cross the dam?

News

Space

Bubble ousts black hole at centre of the galaxy

News

Earth

Red letter day for endangered species

News

Soundbites

News

Life

HIV screening: To know or not to know

News

Earth

Hundreds perish as tsunami hits Java

News

60 Seconds

News

Space

Swell spacecraft inflates on cue

News

Space

Shuttle Discovery comes home safe

News

Technology

Fight malaria with your home computer

News

Health

Homeopaths under fire over tropical treatments

News

Prisoners are not guinea pigs, panel warns

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.

Health

Time to resist the illness industry

GOOD health is not what it used to be. The rites of passage of a normal life – birth, mood swings, sexuality, the ageing process and so on – are increasingly being redefined as pathological by pharmaceutical companies and medical associations. Illness is becoming an industrial product, and health a state that nobody can live …

Opinion

Life

Editorial: Implications of routine HIV testing

Opinion

Health

Editorial: Controlling the onset of adolescence

Opinion

Health

Interview: Bio-pirate or saviour of native knowledge?

Opinion

Features

Where dirty ships go to die

Earth

Where dirty ships go to die

For thousands of Bangladeshi people, breaking ships is a way of life ON A BEACH near Chittagong, Bangladesh, teams of men clamber over what used to be an oil tanker, ripping it apart with little more than a cutting torch and their bare hands. Working in oppressive heat amid toxic fumes, this is one of …

Features

Space

Hypervelocity stars: Catch them while you can

Features

Technology

Unnatural selection in the cyber world

Features

Life

The teen gene: Switching on puberty

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.

Life

Folsom, by David Meltzer

SOME 10,500 years ago Palaeoindian hunters slaughtered 32 ice-age bison at Folsom, New Mexico. The kill site was first spotted in 1908, and in the late 1920s fluted stone spear points were found lodged between some of the bisons' rib bones. That fatal "Folsom point" has become iconic in American archaeology. Its significance in proving …

Books & Arts

Earth

The Long Exile, by Melanie McGrath

Books & Arts

Life

On the origins of warfare

Books & Arts

Life

The word: Infovore

Regulars

How the light takes you

Books & Arts

Biology beyond the genome

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

Sparks to your door BROWSING the weather forecast site www.nowcast.co.uk , John Poyner was somewhat startled to be presented with an advertisement for supermarket Tesco offering a "Thunder and Lightning Strike" – with free delivery. Had they been reading the article about artificial lightning from Tesla coils in this magazine on 24 June (p 36)? …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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