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This week's magazine

31 July 2010

Issue 2771

New Scientist issue 2771 cover
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Editor's picks

Is a cosmic chameleon driving galaxies apart?

Space

Is a cosmic chameleon driving galaxies apart?

Features
Military power law: The equations of body counts

Life

Military power law: The equations of body counts

Features
Size isn't everything: The big brain myth

Life

Size isn't everything: The big brain myth

Features
Fever: friend or foe?

Health

Fever: friend or foe?

Features

Table of contents

News

Twitter mood maps reveal emotional states of America

Life

Twitter mood maps reveal emotional states of America

The mood of the nation at midday and 11 pm EST brightcove.createExperiences(); Video: Twitter mood map America, are you happy? The emotional words contained in hundreds of millions of messages posted to the Twitter website may hold the answer. Computer scientist Alan Mislove at Northeastern University in Boston and colleagues have found that these "tweets" …

News

Physics

Triple-slit experiment confirms reality is quantum

News

Life

Single gene could be key to a baby's first breath

News

Life

We humans can mind-meld too

News

Life

Bellyflopping frogs shed light on evolution

News

Technology

What comes after the Large Hadron Collider?

News

Technology

Locked-in people could control wheelchairs by sniffing

News

Health

Why IVF pioneers were denied public money

News

Health

Anti-vaccination website poses public health risk

News

Earth

Climategate data sets to be made public

News

Space

Smart glass helps pioneering solar sail to steer

News

Space

Time to go atomic on space station

News

Earth

US food waste worth more than offshore drilling

News

60 Seconds

News

Life

Morphosaurs: How shape-shifting dinosaurs deceived us

News

Earth

Climategate scientist breaks his silence

News

Technology

Quantum electron 'submarines' help push atoms around

News

Health

Regulation could save genome scanning, not kill it

News

Space

Spinning black holes could expose exotic particles

News

Space

Cosmic Trojans may sneak comets towards Earth

News

Earth

Solar cycle may drive Venice's floods

News

Health

Gene variant role in Parkinson's uncovered

News

Life

Why dogs and their owners are so alike

News

'Buckyballs' spotted in interstellar space

News

Technology

Google tracks political allegiances

News

Life

Computer supermaterial could stop your shoes smelling

News

Technology

Google, Twitter and Facebook build the semantic web

News

Technology

Team-working robots huddle together to boost comms

News

Technology

Ageing irises could confound biometric checks

News

Space

Satellite quantum communication circles closer

News

Opinion

Beyond decibels: Planning the new sounds of the city

Earth

Beyond decibels: Planning the new sounds of the city

As the noisy internal combustion engine is phased out, how will this scene sound? City-dwellers may hate traffic noise and loud, late parties, but they enjoy a "vibrant calm" soundscape, says Trevor Cox , and we should cultivate it I WENT on a "sound walk" in London in spring last year. Thirty people gathered near …

Opinion

Not all shaken baby convictions are sound

Opinion

End dirty tactics in the climate war

Opinion

Earth

Who's afraid of radiation?

Opinion

Life

Neuroscientist: Brain scans may improve careers advice

Opinion

Features

Is a cosmic chameleon driving galaxies apart?

Space

Is a cosmic chameleon driving galaxies apart?

Where do we look to observe this accelerated expansion? A shape-shifting fifth fundamental force could neatly explain the mystery of dark energy – and some other puzzling astronomical observations ASK A cosmologist for a potted history of the universe, and it might go something like this: the cosmos began some 13.6 billion years ago with …

Features

Life

Military power law: The equations of body counts

Features

Life

Size isn't everything: The big brain myth

Features

Health

Fever: friend or foe?

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 Number 1606

Nightmare! You are in a locked room, seated at a table on which stands a two-pan balance. One of the pans holds a number of steel ball bearings, each weighing the same whole number of grams greater than 1. If you could determine the total weight of the balls, you could work out the number …

Regulars

Off-grid campaigner: Inspiring today's US pioneers

Books & Arts

Take an astronaut and rocket away from normality

Books & Arts

Voyager: A robotic Columbus for the space age

Books & Arts

Mathematical mystery tour

Books & Arts

How big is the universe? And 19 other questions

Books & Arts

Regulars

Sciency sporting excuses – the winner

Sciency sporting excuses – the winner

Here's what you could have won Sciency sporting excuses – the winner LAST month, as the world was in a fever of anticipation over the football World Cup, Feedback had a vision of what was about to come to pass. Soon, we foresaw, all but a few teams would be roundly humiliated and sent home …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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