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This week's magazine

18 June 2011

Issue 2817

New Scientist issue 2817 cover
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Editor's picks

13 exotic elements we can't live without

Earth

13 exotic elements we can't live without

Features
Sex and asymmetry: How the camel got its penis

Life

Sex and asymmetry: How the camel got its penis

Features
Rag-trade robots: From body scan to bespoke suit

Technology

Rag-trade robots: From body scan to bespoke suit

Features
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.

A question of science 2011

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

Early Americans helped colonise Easter Island

South Americans helped colonise Easter Island centuries before Europeans reached it. Clear genetic evidence has, for the first time, given support to elements of this controversial theory showing that while the remote island was mostly colonised from the west, there was also some influx of people from the Americas. Easter Island is the easternmost island …

News

Life

Scuba spider uses web as gill to breathe underwater

News

Physics

$500,000 for mathematician who laid Poincaré groundwork

News

Life

Bean sprouts to blame for 'decade-old' E. coli

News

Technology

Second team does not see Tevatron's mystery signal

News

Life

It is human nature to cooperate with strangers

News

Life

Why female zebra finches cheat on their partners

News

Earth

Recent warming trend is significant after all

News

Life

3D movie reveals how brain loses consciousness

News

Earth

Global warming not to blame for 2011 droughts

News

Good news for vaccines against meningitis A and B

News

Earth

'Extinct' frog was under our noses all the time

News

60 Seconds

News

Life

Tribal wars: DNA testing divides American Indians

News

Life

Breeding with Neanderthals helped humans go global

News

Health

Chronic ketamine use kills bladder cells

News

Earth

Are the wild horses of the American west native?

News

First 'living' laser made from kidney cell

News

Health

Could a whiff of oxytocin help hypnosurgery?

News

Health

Ovarian cancer cells 'bully' their way to other organs

News

Physics

Shrink peas for designer wrinkles

News

Health

Early infection may shorten lifespan

News

Technology

Cracking the code of machine translation

News

Technology

Botclouds: a cyberattacker's dream

News

Technology

Say cheese! Taking photos with a wave of the hand

News

Technology

One Per Cent

News

Technology

Fighting patent 'trolls' – there's no app for that

News

Technology

Spies can send messages hidden in a Google search

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.

DNA and the need to belong

Genetics should be kept out of discussions on race and tribe HOW would you feel if your government declared that you had to emigrate if your father wasn't your biological parent? This unpalatable scenario is already playing out within some American Indian tribes. Once upon a time they were groups of indigenous people united by …

Opinion

The cloud that hangs over cloud computing

Opinion

Robots show their soft side

Opinion

Life

The call of the weird: In praise of cryptobiologists

Opinion

Health

Men's health expert: Why being male is bad for you

Opinion

Health

Citizen medicine and why we must try it

Opinion

Aperture

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.

ALMA casts a cold eye on the sky

See more: To see the image this article refers to, keep checking Picture of the Day on our news blog Short Sharp Science ONE of the grandest ground-based astronomy projects of the coming decade is taking shape in the arid desert of northern Chile. These antennas, each measuring 12 metres across, are part of a …

Regulars

Features

13 exotic elements we can't live without

Earth

13 exotic elements we can't live without

The elements of modern life From indium touchscreens to hafnium-equipped moonships, the nether regions of the periodic table underpin modern technology – but supplies are getting scarce AS YOU flick the light switch in your study, an eerie europium glow illuminates your tablet computer, idling on the desk. You unlock it, casually sweeping your finger …

Features

Life

Sex and asymmetry: How the camel got its penis

Features

Technology

Rag-trade robots: From body scan to bespoke suit

Features

A question of science 2011

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.

The beasties we need near us, for our own sake

In The Wild Life of Our Bodies , biologist Rob Dunn argues that our modern separation from other species causes more harm than good THERE has been no shortage of nostalgia for the "good old days" of human prehistory, when our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in ecological harmony with nature, roaming savannahs instead of cramped in …

CultureLab

How did we discover the Earth wasn't round?

CultureLab

The untold story of feathers

CultureLab

Evolutionary explanation for what ails the west

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 1651

Four-digit numbers I have found a 3-digit perfect square, a 3-digit perfect cube and a 4-digit triangular number that between them use 10 different digits, with no leading zero. (Triangular numbers are those that fit the formula n(n+1)/2, like 1, 3, 6, 10, 15.) I have also found a 3-digit perfect square, a 3-digit triangular …

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: Night of the sleeping dead

Night of the sleeping dead WE ARE relieved to hear that the US Centers for Disease Control is geared up to tackle zombies should it prove necessary. Its online catalogue of Emergency Preparedness and Response plans at " Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse ". And guess what? The CDC manages to calm public fears about dealing …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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