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This week's magazine

4 October 2008

Issue 2676

New Scientist issue 2676 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.

When concrete boxes were for healthy living

Features
Anyons: The breakthrough quantum computing needs?

Technology

Anyons: The breakthrough quantum computing needs?

Features
The outer limits of the human brain

Life

The outer limits of the human brain

Features
There's gold in them there landfills

Earth

There's gold in them there landfills

Features
Steam power takes to the road again

Earth

Steam power takes to the road again

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

Rat brains show robots the way

A car fitted with a navigation system inspired by a rat's brain has successfully mapped a 66-kilometre road network in a suburb of Brisbane, Australia. Built by Michael Milford and Gordon Wyeth at the University of Queensland in St Lucia, the system is designed to give future autonomous robotic vehicles the ability to explore and …

News

Earth

Is Google gobbling up too much power?

News

Life

Web content contributors seek attention not altruism

News

Technology

Gizmo

News

Technology

Repackaging data could 'double internet speed'

News

Life

Videogame for flies lets them pilot a robot

News

Life

Daughters thrive on mother's pride

News

Earth

Discovery of world's oldest rocks brew controversy

News

Life

Heroic ants give their lives to protect their colony

News

Life

Maths helps bees read the waggle dance

News

Life

'Cancer-free' stem cells hint at human therapies

News

Life

White meteorites from Mars may hide evidence of life

News

Space

Satellite galaxies cling onto their haloes

News

Technology

Hiding magnets in blood brings scans into focus

News

'I don't think our kids are watching the space shuttle launches'

News

Health

A taste for scorpion venom could be cancer's undoing

News

Life

What direction now for US space exploration?

News

Physics

Why nature can't be reduced to mathematical laws

News

60 Seconds

News

Life

Could brain scans ever be safe evidence?

News

Life

Were pterosaurs too big to fly?

News

Health

African cities triggered the AIDS epidemic

News

Health

Transplanted frozen liver raises hopes of organ 'bank'

News

Health

Multi-drug 'polypill' finally to tackle heart problems

News

Space

Is Mars lander standing in what was once a puddle?

News

Earth

Cities aren't the only culprits in climate change

News

Earth

Everglades restoration bogged down by poor planning

News

Space

UN urged to coordinate killer asteroid defences

News

Life

Delinquent boys lack hormonal control

News

Earth

Tax credits promise brighter outlook for solar energy

News

Opinion

Eleven things the next president should do for science

Eleven things the next president should do for science

Science holds the key to many of the pressing issues facing the US, so New Scientist asked a group of prominent scientists and thinkers to offer advice to the incoming president Peter Agre The first priority should be to re-establish the Presidential Science Adviser within the White House with a rank equivalent to cabinet secretary. …

Opinion

Humans

Editorial: New lie detectors have yet to prove their worth

Opinion

Life

Commentary: The marvellous mystery of mind

Opinion

Interview: Living a wild life

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.

When concrete boxes were for healthy living

These days, hoteliers take a dim view of guests who smash up their rooms. But in 1850, as Orson Fowler travelled through Milton, Wisconsin, he stayed at the newly built Milton House inn, whose proprietor delighted in inviting guests to take a sledgehammer to the walls for 6 cents a swing. Intrigued, Fowler hefted a …

Features

Technology

Anyons: The breakthrough quantum computing needs?

Features

Life

The outer limits of the human brain

Features

Earth

There's gold in them there landfills

Features

Earth

Steam power takes to the road again

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.

Review: The Unfinished Game: Pascal, Fermat, and the Seventeenth-Century Letter That Made the World Modern by Keith Devlin

EVEN scholars once thought that fortune alone controlled the future. Forecasting it, unless they were at a casino, was deemed impossible. But Pascal and Fermat, in a series of dashed-off letters in 1654, reformulated the laws of dice and cards for messy real life. In doing so, they wiped out ages of superstition and created …

Books & Arts

Review: Diagnosis: Mercury by Jane Hightower

Books & Arts

Review: Nature's Blueprint by Dan Hooper

Books & Arts

Virtual bodies, real treatments

Careers

Gallery: Solargraphs show half a year of Sun

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

LHC for sale THE switch-on of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, on 10 September generated a large number of stories on the internet. Nigel Bailey points us to one of the more surprising of these – the announcement on Ebay of the successful sale of an LHC constructed in a garden …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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