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This week's magazine

27 November 2010

Issue 2788

New Scientist issue 2788 cover
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Editor's picks

In our own image: Why we treat things like people

Life

In our own image: Why we treat things like people

Features
Cloud lasers: Hunting quantum secrets in the skies

Earth

Cloud lasers: Hunting quantum secrets in the skies

Features
Magnetovision: Birds' seventh sense revealed

Earth

Magnetovision: Birds' seventh sense revealed

Features
Person with arm in cast looking down on an expanse of rubble, smoke and twisted wires

Health

Born scared: How your parents' trauma marks your genes

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.

Health

Radio-wave treatment cuts high blood pressure

Zapping a nerve with radio waves could soon be used routinely to reduce blood pressure in people whose hypertension fails to respond to drugs. This would cut the risk of stroke and heart disease for hundreds of thousands of people. The procedure targets nerves surrounding the kidney, which are housed within the wall of the …

News

Health

Blind mice can see where they run

News

Physics

New evidence that weird quantum supersolid exists

News

Space

Found: first planet from another galaxy

News

Space

Comet caught throwing basketball-sized snowballs

News

Health

Red wine packed with antidiabetes compounds

News

Earth

Weakening ice sheet could protect itself from the sea

News

Health

Stem cell trial for blindness gets green light

News

Earth

China bucks recession trend to keep emissions high

News

Technology

North Korea could make two nuclear bombs per year

News

Health

US bans sale of alcoholic drinks with caffeine kick

News

Health

Meningitis vaccine to be distributed through Africa

News

Life

Thoughts of religion prompt acts of punishment

News

Earth

Recipe to save the world's tigers

News

Life

Find your biological relatives through new gene bank

News

NASA's spare solar sail reaches orbit

News

60 Seconds

News

Space

The dark side of antimatter

News

Earth

Californian conservationists go trawl fishing

News

Life

Crime scene blood could identify age of criminal

News

Physics

Sea of photons made to act as one 'super-photon'

News

Earth

Snake fangs evolved from groovy teeth

News

T. Rex had a big bum

News

Space

Galactic illusion helps refine dark energy abundance

News

Earth

Glowing trees could light up city streets

News

Technology

Robots learn to read the writing on the wall

News

Technology

Smartphone app monitors your every move

News

Technology

Skin patch could offer pain relief with every flinch

News

Technology

Police radar guns could help identify suicide bombers

News

Opinion

Gravitational waves: Inside the Equinox Event

Space

Gravitational waves: Inside the Equinox Event

If Einstein is right, the collision of two massive objects causes ripples in space-time A potential breakthrough in one of the longest-running projects in physics showed how science really works, says sociologist Harry Collins THE two huge interferometers belonging to one of the world's biggest physics experiments, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), experience a …

Opinion

How community spirit can backfire

Opinion

The perils ahead for literate robots

Opinion

50 ideas to change science forever: competition winner

Opinion

Health

How to see reality on drugs

Opinion

Life

Wildlife film-maker: Everybody's faking it

Opinion

Features

In our own image: Why we treat things like people

Life

In our own image: Why we treat things like people

One step closer to being human-like Editorial: How community spirit can backfire Cursing computers, talking to plants, even putting pigs on trial: anthropomorphism may be irrational, but it's how we cope with an indifferent world IT WAS a classic open-and-shut case. As Jehan Martin slept in his bed an intruder crept in, killed him and …

Features

Earth

Cloud lasers: Hunting quantum secrets in the skies

Features

Earth

Magnetovision: Birds' seventh sense revealed

Features

Health

Born scared: How your parents' trauma marks your genes

Features

Culturelab

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.

Humans

Mapping the mind to the body – a little too easily

Antonio Damasio's Self Comes to Mind has some intriguing new ideas based on solid science and makes a grand claim, but won't get its hands dirty WHEN combining neuroscience and philosophy, one popular strategy is to present many surprising neuroscientific results and then breathlessly assemble them into a grand speculative claim about "what it all …

CultureLab

Anarchy or empire? The internet in the balance

CultureLab

One modern man's act of sun worship

CultureLab

Explorers and other strange creatures

CultureLab

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 1623

Over the edge To design a book of road maps the publisher took a huge square map of the total area covered. He then drew some vertical lines right down the map and some horizontal lines right across the map, thus dividing it into between 50 and 150 identical rectangles. Each rectangle was a whole …

Regulars

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: Reflecting on vampires

Reflecting on Dracula DRACULA dust. "Does this class as fruitloopery or just insanity?" wonders Bob Sunman. By "this" he means the opportunity to purchase a sample of dust from Bran Castle in the Romanian province of Transylvania, home to Vlad the Impaler, inspiration for Count Dracula. To be more precise, the dust is said at …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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