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This week's magazine

13 August 2011

Issue 2825

New Scientist issue 2825 cover
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Editor's picks

First life: The search for the first replicator

Life

First life: The search for the first replicator

Features
Star power: Small fusion start-ups aim for break-even

Technology

Star power: Small fusion start-ups aim for break-even

Features
Datacasting: What will you buy tomorrow?

Technology

Datacasting: What will you buy tomorrow?

Features
Future funerals: What a way to go

Earth

Future funerals: What a way to go

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.

Life

Rare genetic mutation explains lack of fingerprints

Thanks to a rare genetic mutation, a handful of people have no fingerprints. That's not the implausible premise of a crime story but a real condition, and it's more notable for causing confusion at border control than for baffling detectives. Now, geneticists have identified a mutation that may cause it. It is unlikely to save …

News

Technology

US internet providers hijacking users' search queries

News

Life

Sex on the brain: What turns women on, mapped out

News

Technology

Home-made drone to help phone and Wi-Fi hackers

News

Earth

Prized sashimi tuna bred in captivity for first time

News

Physics

'Haircuts' identified as a cause of financial crisis

News

Life

Mental abacus does away with words

News

Life

London unrest: UK's first networked riots

News

Space

NASA bets on metal hydrogen and cosmic gas stations

News

Weeds acquire genes from engineered crops

News

Boeing selects Atlas V rocket for space taxi service

News

60 Seconds

News

Life

Reality check: Why dreams aren't what they seem

News

Space

Time need not end in the multiverse

News

Life

How Muslims can win Olympic gold during Ramadan

News

Life

Stone Age toe could redraw human family tree

News

Space

Mars rover reaches rim of vast, ancient crater

News

Earth

Your faeces, my furry friend, are blowin' in the wind

News

Life

Monkeys did not gain big brains by shrinking guts

News

Health

Building new faces from stem cells in the ear

News

Optical cloaks hide objects in broad daylight

News

Life

Lost the plot? The contraceptive pill might help

News

Life

Bacterial 'wires' an electronic dream

News

Technology

Wire robot yanks your golf game into shape

News

Technology

Smartphone jiggles reveal your private data

News

Technology

4G crunch: Ultrafast mobile internet still snarled up

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.

Ecology could teach economists a thing or two

The latest financial crisis shows that we have still not learned all the lessons of the credit crunch ONCE upon a time, ecologists talked of the "balance of nature". It seemed that any small fluctuation in an ecological system was always balanced out by some other change, maintaining equilibrium even in complex situations. Though a …

Opinion

Hijacking web searches for cash threatens net success

Opinion

Competition will fuel the nuclear fusion quest

Opinion

Earth

The end of the road for motormania

Opinion

Health

Whistle-blowing doctor: My fight to speak the truth

Opinion

Life

How to size up the people in your life

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.

Beyond Room 101: The hyperaggressive rat

See more: To see the image this article refers to, keep checking Picture of the Day on our news blog Short Sharp Science THIS hyperaggressive rat is a legacy of a remarkable experiment started in the former Soviet Union in 1972 by Dmitry Belyaev. Like Charles Darwin before him, he was interested in the process …

Regulars

Features

First life: The search for the first replicator

Life

First life: The search for the first replicator

Dawn of the living Life must have begun with a simple molecule that could reproduce itself – and now we think we know how to make one 4 BILLION years before present: the surface of a newly formed planet around a medium-sized star is beginning to cool down. It's a violent place, bombarded by meteorites …

Features

Technology

Star power: Small fusion start-ups aim for break-even

Features

Technology

Datacasting: What will you buy tomorrow?

Features

Earth

Future funerals: What a way to go

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.

Science straight from the source

Future Science , Max Brockman's latest collection of essays by frontier researchers, is both thrilling and bewildering MAX BROCKMAN clearly has designs on the family business. While his literary agent father John represents many of the big beasts of science writing – the Richard Dawkinses and Steven Pinkers of this world – Max focuses on …

CultureLab

Hacking the system, because he could

CultureLab

Astonishing stories of astronomy

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 1659

Pairs of numbers I have before me four two-digit numbers, all eight digits being different. I have grouped them into pairs, such that the product of the two numbers in each pair is the same, and is a perfect cube. What are the four numbers? WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the …

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: Myriad malfunctioning metaphors

Myriad malfunctioning metaphors NOT only is the world of computing riddled with icons and images representing obsolete kit – such as that which encourages us to save a file to a barely existent floppy disc (25 June) – many of them are broken. Robert Cailliau writes that "the clock widget on my computer screen has …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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