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This week's magazine

12 February 2011

Issue 2799

New Scientist issue 2799 cover
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Editor's picks

How to understand the risk of a bacon sandwich giving you bowel cancer

Health

How to understand the risk of a bacon sandwich giving you bowel cancer

Features
Spin doctors: Your number's up

Health

Spin doctors: Your number's up

Features
Evolution's X factor: Shuffling up new species

Life

Evolution's X factor: Shuffling up new species

Features
Darwinian dating: Baby, I'm your natural selection

Life

Darwinian dating: Baby, I'm your natural selection

Features
Spin doctors: The truth behind health scare headlines

Spin doctors: The truth behind health scare headlines

Features
Mind reading: The science of storytelling

Life

Mind reading: The science of storytelling

Features
Spin doctors: TV kills

Health

Spin doctors: TV kills

Features
Spin doctors: Size matters

Health

Spin doctors: Size matters

Features
Spin doctors: Die another day

Health

Spin doctors: Die another day

Features

Table of contents

News

After the birds vanish, plants are next to go

Earth

After the birds vanish, plants are next to go

Pollination is strictly for the birds The first evidence that the loss of a bird species could damage the prospects of particular plants has heightened fears for vulnerable plants around the world. Many plants rely on birds to pollinate them and disperse their seeds, so it seems reasonable to assume that if the bird population …

News

Space

Neutron star seen forming exotic new state of matter

News

Health

HIV-like infection banished from mice

News

Life

Brain's 'constant gardener' discovered

News

Health

Without language, numbers make no sense

News

Space

US military promotes peace in space

News

Earth

Egypt and Tunisia: rocked by the global food crisis

News

Health

Temple conflict could spell malarial doom

News

Earth

Lettuce is sucking California's fruit basket dry

News

Health

Shaken baby evidence shaken

News

60 Seconds

News

Life

Death rattle of a decapitated brain

News

Health

Spaghetti junction bridges gaps in broken spines

News

Space

Who ate all the planets? Blame the 'bloatars'

News

Health

Taste bud trickery needed to cut salt intake

News

Space

Vacuum has friction after all

News

Earth

Make or break time for Mali's fertile wetland

News

Giant archaeological trove found in Google Earth

News

Space

Gushing flood formed giant Martian sinkhole

News

Life

Sex and aggression are bad bedfellows in the brain

News

Health

A sweet tooth predicts success of alcoholism treatment

News

Humans cheat chimps by knowing the rules

News

Technology

Augmented nose sniffs out illegal stenches

News

Space

Clearing up space junk, one piece at a time

News

Life

Watch out, your lover may be cyberstalking you

News

Technology

Army wants rapid-fire rubber bullets for crowd control

News

Earth

US to curb 'rocket-fuel chemical' in water

News

Opinion

Frankenstein syndrome: Why do we fear making humans?

Life

Frankenstein syndrome: Why do we fear making humans?

Frankenstein's monster was stripped of his intelligence in film and theatre versions From IVF to artificial wombs, why does each advance in reproductive technology still conjure up visions of monsters or Hitler clones? WHEN Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, the Vatican spokesman for bioethics, objected to IVF pioneer Robert Edwards receiving the 2010 Nobel prize for …

Opinion

Hope and hype in the world of statistics

Opinion

A matter of life and brain death

Opinion

Earth

Let's take better care of our rare earth elements

Opinion

Technology

Supercomputer creator: Our machine can win Jeopardy!

Opinion

Features

Spin doctors: Your number's up

Health

Spin doctors: Your number's up

Twenty-four men lie prostrate in Leicester Square, London, to show the number killed by prostate cancer each day in the UK What would worry you more: being told that cancer kills 25 people out of 100, or that it kills 250 people out of 1000? Dumb question, you might say; both statements mean that a …

Features

Life

Evolution's X factor: Shuffling up new species

Features

Life

Darwinian dating: Baby, I'm your natural selection

Features

Spin doctors: The truth behind health scare headlines

Features

Life

Mind reading: The science of storytelling

Features

Health

How to understand the risk of a bacon sandwich giving you bowel cancer

Features

Health

Spin doctors: TV kills

Features

Health

Spin doctors: Size matters

Features

Health

Spin doctors: Die another day

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.

Inventing modern science over eggs and bacon

In The Philosophical Breakfast Club , Laura Snyder pins the rise of science as we know it on the weekly meetings of four great 19th-century thinkers ON THE night of 14 July 1830, British astronomer John Herschel nearly discovered Neptune. Charting stars with his large reflector telescope, he swept within half a degree of the …

CultureLab

A tour of the multiverses

CultureLab

The thrill of the alien planet chase

CultureLab

How going online messes with your head

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 1633

Same perfect square Harry, Tom and I were each looking to find two 2-digit positive integers which each were the product of two primes and whose difference was also the product of two primes, the six primes all being different. We each found a different valid solution; in each solution the sum of the two …

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.

Environment

Feedback: Quantum shift in woo-woo nonsense

Quantum shift in woo-woo nonsense FEEDBACK'S "ongoing nonsensewatch programme", as Ian Sanderson dubs it, is grateful to him for drawing our attention to www.trinfinity8.com and its promise of an "algorithmic technology" to combat ageing. We knew that students of what in the old days we called "New Age babble" are guaranteed a feast of material, …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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