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This week's magazine

29 July 2006

Issue 2562

New Scientist issue 2562 cover
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Editor's picks

Histories: China's oldest mathematical puzzles

Life

Histories: China's oldest mathematical puzzles

Features
Medical roulette: Dicing with death

Health

Medical roulette: Dicing with death

Features
Let Einstein help you board your plane

Physics

Let Einstein help you board your plane

Features
A fuel tank full of water

Technology

A fuel tank full of water

Features
Easter Island: A monumental collapse?

Earth

Easter Island: A monumental collapse?

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.

Earth

California shaking, but no cause for concern

A MAGNITUDE 5 earthquake struck near the junction of three tectonic plates in northern California last week. The offshore quake was centred 13 kilometres west of the town of Petrolia. “These silent earthquakes and episodic tremors could help predict the next 'big one'” Despite being the state's most seismically restless region, scientists are somewhat blasé …

News

Experiments on GM animals on the increase

News

Space

Rich tourists offered a walk in space

News

Technology

Computer's schizophrenia diagnosis inspired by the brain

News

Technology

Zombies breathe new life into spam

News

Technology

Producing the ultimate game-playing bots

News

Technology

No head required for 20-brained bot

News

Technology

Gizmo

News

Technology

See attachment (no file attached)

News

Space

Souped-up spacesuits offered by new fabric

News

Health

Make mine a zombie vaccine

News

Life

Recycled fin helped ancestor crawl from the seas

News

Earth

Farewell to the tigers we never even knew

News

Earth

No Sahara desert, no Egyptian dynasty

News

Life

Famous flying ace no hotshot after all

News

Life

Electrified bugs soar into space and infest the galaxy

News

Life

False memory reduces pleasure in drinking

News

Life

Sniffer worms' recoil helps drug hunters

News

Life

Baby bats babble too

News

Earth

Dunes hint at origins of ancient American drought

News

Health

Medical cannabis is a blunt tool

News

This week 36 years ago

News

Health

To heal a wound, turn up the voltage

News

Space

Alien 'art' soon to be revealed

News

Earth

China faces new cotton pest

News

60 Seconds

News

Life

Breaking the cycle of drug addiction and crime

News

Health

Military test veterans suffer 'Gulf War' effects

News

Earth

Insight: How lullabies prevented tsunami deaths

News

Space

Hunting Higgs boson in mini black holes

News

Soundbites

News

Life

Snakes hunt their prey blindfolded

News

Space

Titan weather: Methane downpours and drizzle

News

Health

Eradicating polio leaves people defenceless

News

Health

Political interference blights US drug regulators

News

Health

'Western' diseases rise in India

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.

Editorial: Who called stem cell research murder?

IN MANY countries, James Thomson and Doug Melton would be lauded by their political leaders as scientific heroes. But in the eyes of the US president, we were told last week, they are murderers. It was an obscene characterisation, but a revealing one, exposing George W. Bush's morally inconsistent position on stem cell research – …

Opinion

Life

Turning point: Days to remember

Opinion

Life

Interview: On sex, religion and biology

Opinion

Technology

The success that allows failure to strike

Opinion

Features

Histories: China's oldest mathematical puzzles

Life

Histories: China's oldest mathematical puzzles

It took 17 years to piece together the 190 bamboo strips that make up China's earliest known maths test "A fox, a wildcat and a dog go through a customs-post. They are taxed 111 cash. The dog says to the wildcat, and the wildcat says to the fox, 'Your skin is worth twice mine; you …

Features

Health

Medical roulette: Dicing with death

Features

Physics

Let Einstein help you board your plane

Features

Technology

A fuel tank full of water

Features

Earth

Easter Island: A monumental collapse?

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

This Is Your Brain on Music, by Daniel J Levitin

WHY are some chord sequences or arrangements of musical notes a delight to listen to while others sound awkward or unsatisfying? It's largely down to how your brain analyses their structure – whether it recognises patterns and finds some kind of meaning. This is profoundly to do with memory, so much so that without memory …

Books & Arts

Speed, Ecstasy, Ritalin: The science of amphetamines, by Leslie Iversen

Books & Arts

Bones, Rocks and Stars: The science of when things happened, by Chris Turney

Books & Arts

Life

The word: Sleepwalking

Regulars

Physics

Review: The joy of symmetry

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

Gene-free tomatoes FEEDBACK will not inquire why Roger Key started to read an elderly copy of the Daily Mail newspaper used, he says, for packaging. We are only grateful for the wonderful advert he sends, for seeds of the "Tomazing" tomato, promising both "sweetness without the calories" and "high sugar content". More remarkable than the …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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