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This week's magazine

30 September 2006

Issue 2571

New Scientist issue 2571 cover
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Editor's picks

Snakes alive! What's your poison?

Life

Snakes alive! What's your poison?

Features
Population Earth: Enough already?

Earth

Population Earth: Enough already?

Features
Mind-altering drugs: does legal mean safe?

Life

Mind-altering drugs: does legal mean safe?

Features
What's done is done… or is it?

Physics

What's done is done… or is it?

Features

Table of contents

News

Swarm of subs set to uncover the ocean's mysteries

Earth

Swarm of subs set to uncover the ocean's mysteries

Boldly going where humans cannot A fleet of 100 robotic submarines could in five years' time be roaming the vast unexplored stretches of the world's seafloors and helping unlock their mysteries. The plan was unveiled by the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration at the Oceans 2006 conference in Boston last week. "The pace of …

News

Technology

Plankton could power robotic submarines

News

Technology

The boss is watching your every click...

News

Technology

Search engines warned over news story copyright

News

Technology

Online 'quill' lets you email in Hindi

News

Technology

Gizmo

News

Space

Donut feast may explain giant stars

News

Technology

AA battery charges through USB port

News

Life

Mums help chicks if dad was ugly

News

Technology

Lasers inspire way to accelerate electron beams

News

Health

Repair kit for damaged retinas

News

Health

Diabetes spotlight falls onto fish

News

This week 38 years ago

News

Health

Needle-free 'biopsy' pins down tumours

News

Earth

Changing storms increase coastal erosion

News

Earth

Dinosaurs suffered climate change too

News

Health

Alzheimer's 'seeded' like mad cow disease

News

Life

Fish show off their mating craters

News

Space

Will US and China be friends in space?

News

Life

Boy or girl? Embryo tests give parents the choice

News

Health

Distraction tactic wipes out allergies

News

Soundbites

News

Life

Shark slaughter shock

News

60 Seconds

News

Earth

Climate change: 'One degree and we're done for'

News

Earth

Why splitting the Mississippi won't save the wetlands

News

Life

Bugs can live forever, but only if times are bad

News

Life

Silky-footed tarantulas don't come unstuck

News

Health

Taking on neglected diseases

News

Life

Does arrested development equal embryo death?

News

Earth

Alarming surge of a potent greenhouse gas

News

Health

Tough times at the FDA

News

Space

New mini-rocket crashes on maiden voyage

News

Life

Doctors fail to recognise violent patients

News

Opinion

Small-scale renewable power – low-wattage thinking?

Earth

Small-scale renewable power – low-wattage thinking?

To prevent global temperatures rising by 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, the rich nations must cut their carbon emissions by 90 per cent by 2030. In seeking to work out how this might be done, I have made many surprising findings, but none has shocked me as much as the discovery that renewable micro-generation – …

Opinion

Life

Editorial: Clear heads needed over legal highs

Opinion

Earth

Editorial: Still in a mess over climate change

Opinion

Earth

Can E. O. Wilson really save the world?

Opinion

Features

Snakes alive! What's your poison?

Life

Snakes alive! What's your poison?

SNAKE-VENOM researcher Bryan Grieg Fry made his first discovery the hard way. During his PhD, he handled a snake whose venom was largely unknown. "As far as anyone knew, Stephen's banded snakes were not considered dangerous," Fry says. "I clearly proved this wrong as my body hit the ground seconds after the bite". Several thousand …

Features

Earth

Population Earth: Enough already?

Features

Life

Mind-altering drugs: does legal mean safe?

Features

Physics

What's done is done… or is it?

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.

Physics

The Goldilocks Enigma, by Paul Davies

WHO hasn't ever wondered why we are all here, or whether there's a purpose? Or if we will ever find satisfactory answers to such questions? The "Goldilocks enigma" is the puzzle of why life can exist in the universe; in other words, why the cosmos is "just right" – like the porridge in the famous …

Books & Arts

Life

The Medici Giraffe, by Marina Belozerskaya

Books & Arts

Back to academia: A mid-life crisis?

Careers

Physics

The word: Subharmonics

Regulars

Impressions of a strange land

Books & Arts

Physics

Review: The Trouble With Physics

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

Hail Eris, goddess of discord! HAIL Eris! The mildly gravitationally challenged planet formerly known as 2003 UB313 now has an official name. It had previously, if unofficially, borne the seemingly quite adequate name Xena, after the feisty warrior princess of fiction. So why the change? Feedback asked Eris's discoverer, Mike Brown, whether fictional deities had …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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