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This week's magazine

3 January 2009

Issue 2689

New Scientist issue 2689 cover
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Editor's picks

How your friends' friends can affect your mood

Life

How your friends' friends can affect your mood

Features
Why storms are good news for fishermen

Earth

Why storms are good news for fishermen

Features
Desktop atom smashers could replace LHC

Space

Desktop atom smashers could replace LHC

Features
We have the technology to rebuild ourselves

Technology

We have the technology to rebuild ourselves

Features

Table of contents

News

Rise of the garage genome hackers

Life

Rise of the garage genome hackers

KATHERINE AULL's laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, lacks a few mod cons. "Down here I have a thermocycler I bought on eBay for 59 bucks," she says, pulling out a large, box-shaped device she uses to copy short strands of DNA. "The rest is just home brew," she adds, pointing to a centrifuge made out of …

News

Technology

Springy robot has a gentle touch

News

Earth

Ancient Earth was a barren waterworld

News

Earth

More polar bears going hungry

News

Space

Did gravity point time in the 'right' direction?

News

Earth

Comet smashes triggered ancient famine

News

Earth

Why mountains are bad for the ozone layer

News

Life

Sniff of sickness makes mums prime babies for life

News

Spiralling sperm find eggs in rough waters

News

Life

Space experiment has a sting in the tail for newts

News

Health

Beer marinade cuts steak cancer risk

News

Technology

Implants for babies could help deaf learn to speak

News

Space

Mystery stone circles may point to water on Mars

News

Nearby galaxy clobbered by dark matter 'hit and run'

News

Space

Mars rovers reach fifth anniversary

News

Technology

Wikipedians are 'closed' and 'disagreeable'

News

Technology

Nano-bubble protects anti-cancer treatment

News

Technology

Gizmo: Touch skins

News

Life

Cyborg cockroaches could power own electric 'brains'

News

Technology

Nanobot lets DNA legs do the walking

News

Health

Radical alternatives proposed for cannabis controls

News

Health

'Strings' of drugs deliver only when needed

News

Obama's science 'dream team' prepares for business

News

Deep-sea fish uses mirror magic to reflect light

News

Opinion

Inside the mind of an autistic savant

Life

Inside the mind of an autistic savant

Daniel Tammet Autistic savant Daniel Tammet shot to fame when he set a European record for the number of digits of pi he recited from memory (22,514). For afters, he learned Icelandic in a week. But unlike many savants, he's able to tell us how he does it. We could all unleash extraordinary mental abilities …

Opinion

How social contagion can strengthen your resolve

Opinion

Mind

Radical alternatives needed to cannabis prohibition

Opinion

We should understand savants, not revere them

Opinion

A new deal for the White House

Opinion

Health

Is sleep the elixir of health?

Opinion

Comment: Why kids are natural-born scientists

Opinion

Features

How your friends' friends can affect your mood

Life

How your friends' friends can affect your mood

IF YOU live in the northern hemisphere, this is probably not your favourite month. January tends to dispirit people more than any other. We all know why: foul weather, post-Christmas debt, the long wait before your next holiday, quarterly bills, dark evenings and dark mornings. At least, that is the way it seems. For while …

Features

Earth

Why storms are good news for fishermen

Features

Space

Desktop atom smashers could replace LHC

Features

Technology

We have the technology to rebuild ourselves

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. 1526

Degrees of error JOE did not trust the accuracy of his two digital thermometers, but he knew he could be confident that their percentage errors were constant over the range he needed to use them. He placed the sensors of both thermometers in a beaker of oil and noted the temperatures indicated as the oil …

Regulars

Review: Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

Books & Arts

Review: Ten Technologies to Save the Planet by Chris Goodall

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

How often students have group sex "FEMALE art students more sexually active than male science nerds," blared the headline on an Agence France-Presse story published by phys.org.com . Wondering who thought this was somehow, you know, news, Feedback almost missed a quote from the original paper in the Australian journal Sexual Health by Bernadette Zakher …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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