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This week's magazine

1 November 2008

Issue 2680

New Scientist issue 2680 cover
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Editor's picks

When doctors battled for medical beer

Life

When doctors battled for medical beer

Features
Petal power: How flowering plants conquered the world

Earth

Petal power: How flowering plants conquered the world

Features
In chaotic computing, anarchy rules OK

Technology

In chaotic computing, anarchy rules OK

Features
Can animals escape the present?

Life

Can animals escape the present?

Features
Why Einstein was wrong about relativity

Physics

Why Einstein was wrong about relativity

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

Scanner 'reads minds' to spot early signs of dementia

SOFTWARE that can interpret brain scans to "read people's minds" could help those developing common forms of dementia get better treatment. Dementia can be diagnosed through verbal tests of cognitive skills and memory, but these cannot distinguish reliably between different forms of the condition at an early stage. Positron emission tomography (PET) scans of the …

News

Technology

'Frankenphones' alert users with pounding heartbeats

News

Technology

Gizmo

News

Space

Space tourism flies into a legal black hole

News

Life

Video games don't train your brain

News

Space

Stars' flickers reveal their innermost secrets

News

Health

Purple tomatoes protect against cancer

News

Life

Why sex gets cocks crowing

News

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mouse mind

News

Life

Habitable worlds may hide in gas giants' wake

News

Life

Did McEnroe have a point about tennis umpires?

News

Life

How to eavesdrop on alien chat

News

Life

Why sunspots send the financial markets tumbling

News

Technology

Silver-screen audio trick could smooth jerky video

News

Technology

'Cultured' robots make sweet music together

News

Life

An iron will runs in the family

News

Space

Tick, tock goes the quantum clock

News

Earth

Hunger hotspots of the future revealed

News

60 Seconds

News

Life

'Menopausal' men could get sexual boost from HRT

News

'If we can do it, so can you'

News

Life

How pet dogs face up to your moods

News

Health

Famine leaves its mark on fetal DNA

News

Earth

Time to rank the best ideas to engineer the climate?

News

Health

Is cannabis being doped with Viagra?

News

Space

New NASA rocket has a problem with wind

News

Life

Men have a sharper eye for a love cheat

News

Space

Asian space race is great for science

News

Life

The yo-yo world of diet drugs

News

Earth

Greenhouse gas from flat-screen TV makers soars

News

Life

Jury still out on when life begins

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

Why psychologists need to ask better questions

IS PSYCHOLOGY a science? This was the big theme in the fourth year of my undergraduate psychology degree at the University of Sydney, Australia, in the late 1940s. Our professor, Bill O'Neill, devoted many lectures to this question. The subject matter of research in psychology might not fit easily into experimental designs, he argued, but …

Opinion

Health

No quick fix for obesity

Opinion

Space tourism must have safety standards

Opinion

Will reason or unreason prevail?

Opinion

Perspectives: Mr Medina plants a forest

Opinion

Features

When doctors battled for medical beer

Life

When doctors battled for medical beer

During Prohibition, Americans had to demand the right to drink beer During the dreary dry days of Prohibition, some Americans were prepared to go to any lengths to get a beer. Not least the nation's doctors – not for themselves, of course, but for their patients, some of whom were in desperate need of a …

Features

Earth

Petal power: How flowering plants conquered the world

Features

Technology

In chaotic computing, anarchy rules OK

Features

Life

Can animals escape the present?

Features

Physics

Why Einstein was wrong about relativity

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.

Enigma No. 1518

Sets of squares (1) FIND the set of perfect squares that between them use each of the digits 1 to 9 exactly once whose sum is as small as possible. What is the sum of your set of squares? (2) Find the set of perfect squares that between them use each of the digits 0 …

Regulars

Review: The Big Necessity by Rose George

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.

Acts of God against Dawkins

Acts of God against Dawkins THANKS to reader Nick Pearson for alerting us to the chance offered by Channel 4 television in the UK to win boxed sets of DVDs of the series in which Richard Dawkins celebrates his scientific hero, Charles Darwin. Unfortunately, Pearson's email arrived after entries had closed, but we are as …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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