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This week's magazine

12 May 2007

Issue 2603

New Scientist issue 2603 cover
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Editor's picks

A quirky look at our quirky species

Life

A quirky look at our quirky species

Features
Panic over for threatened rainforest species?

Earth

Panic over for threatened rainforest species?

Features
Impossible peaks under Antarctica's ice

Earth

Impossible peaks under Antarctica's ice

Features
Curiosity doesn't have to kill the quantum cat

Physics

Curiosity doesn't have to kill the quantum cat

Features

Table of contents

News

Genetically modified yeast can sniff out explosives

Life

Genetically modified yeast can sniff out explosives

What do you get if you cross a rat, a jellyfish and brewer's yeast? Happily, the answer is not the latest genetically modified food, but a low-cost explosives detector. Danny Dhanasekaran, a molecular biologist at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has coaxed a simple yeast into harnessing a rat's sense of smell to sniff the …

News

Earth

Audio collection to enhance Google Earth

News

Technology

Replacing glass with vacuums speeds up chips

News

Life

US to outlaw 'common sense' patent applications

News

Technology

Gizmo

News

Earth

Recycled plastic to get clean bill of health

News

Life

Alzheimer's drug offers hope for stroke sufferers

News

Life

The face, not the body, attracts a mate

News

Life

Gene variant may be responsible for human learning

News

Life

Parents pass on genes for reasoning and memory

News

Space

Molten core may explain Mercury's magnetic field

News

Technology

Catching a gravity wave in a tangle of photons

News

Life

For easy-listening music, put on the protein CD

News

Life

Life on Earth – the ultimate catalogue

News

Health

New technique uses bacteria to target tumours

News

Earth

Lupus cluster at oilfield points finger at pollution

News

Life

Accident-prone people do exist

News

This week 50 years ago

News

Life

Pheromone may help baby rabbits tell night from day

News

Space

Is the evidence for 'alien' universes all around us?

News

Earth

High value of whale meat costs minkes in Korea

News

Life

Archaeologists unearth America's 'lost' history

News

60 Seconds

News

Earth

Bats take a battering at wind farms

News

Space

Bright star hints at presence of antimatter

News

Earth

Price of climate action 'negligible'

News

Technology

Depleted uranium weapons linked to lung cancer

News

Earth

China appoints 'Mr Clean' as Science Minister

News

Earth

Carbon offset cash-in questioned

News

Life

Aboriginals 'out of Africa' too…

News

Opinion

Can media coverage of suicides inspire copycats?

Can media coverage of suicides inspire copycats?

On 28 April, the president of the American Psychiatric Association, Pedro Ruiz, did what many of its members wish he had done earlier. He wrote an open letter to the news media asking editors to stop airing photos, video clips and writings of Cho Seung-hui, the student who killed 32 people and then himself at …

Opinion

Earth

Editorial: Global warming – now for the hard part

Opinion

Life

Interview: Can we model the real world?

Opinion

Features

A quirky look at our quirky species

Life

A quirky look at our quirky species

Audio: Hear Richard Wiseman discuss this feature as part of SciPod, New Scientist's weekly podcast . Did you know that fruit and vegetables have personalities? According to research carried out by Robert Sommer at the University of California, Davis, in 1988, lemons are seen as dislikable, onions are stupid, and mushrooms are social climbers. Sommer …

Features

Earth

Panic over for threatened rainforest species?

Features

Earth

Impossible peaks under Antarctica's ice

Features

Physics

Curiosity doesn't have to kill the quantum cat

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

The word: Reactance

THE teenage girl who wins the boy by playing hard to get. The parents whose disapproval of their daughter's boyfriend only drives her into his arms. The child who will wear anything except what her mother suggests. These are all examples of reactance: the inclination to do precisely the opposite of what someone wants you …

Regulars

A Guinea Pig's History of Biology by Jim Endersby, William Heinemann

Books & Arts

Neptune's Ark by David Rains Wallace

Books & Arts

Life

Punctuated Equilibrium by Stephen Jay Gould

Books & Arts

The Physics of Christianity by Frank Tipler

Books & Arts

Technology

Create the perfect virtual you

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

Interplanetary scales THE scales Mary Lunnen's husband bought recently were apparently made with other planets in mind: "When to calibrate – calibration is almost never required. If the scale is inaccurate, calibration may be desired when the scale is first set up for use, or if the scale is moved to another altitude or gravitation. …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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