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This week's magazine

24 March 2012

Issue 2857

New Scientist issue 2857 cover
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Editor's picks

Puzzles of evolution: Why did we become bipedal?

Humans

Puzzles of evolution: Why did we become bipedal?

Features
Puzzles of evolution: Why aren't we more like chimps?

Humans

Puzzles of evolution: Why aren't we more like chimps?

Features
Puzzles of Evolution: Why was technological development so slow?

Life

Puzzles of Evolution: Why was technological development so slow?

Features
Puzzles of evolution: When did language evolve?

Life

Puzzles of evolution: When did language evolve?

Features
Puzzles of evolution: Why are our brains so big?

Humans

Puzzles of evolution: Why are our brains so big?

Features
Puzzles of evolution: Why did we lose our fur?

Humans

Puzzles of evolution: Why did we lose our fur?

Features
Puzzles of evolution: Why did we go global?

Puzzles of evolution: Why did we go global?

Features
Puzzles of evolution: Are some of us hybrids?

Humans

Puzzles of evolution: Are some of us hybrids?

Features
Puzzles of evolution: Did we kill off Neanderthals?

Humans

Puzzles of evolution: Did we kill off Neanderthals?

Features
Puzzles of evolution: Are other hominins alive today?

Humans

Puzzles of evolution: Are other hominins alive today?

Features
Wake-up call: The battle to control sleep

Health

Wake-up call: The battle to control sleep

Features
Outback to outer space: The world's largest telescope

Space

Outback to outer space: The world's largest telescope

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.

Physics

Have we summoned the mysterious Majorana fermion?

You wait 70 years for a Majorana fermion, then three come along at once. Or at least three hopeful signs. Last month, researchers at Stanford University in the US and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands offered two tentative sightings of these peculiar quantum particles, which have remained elusive since Italian physicist Ettore Majorana …

News

Life

Jilted flies drown their sorrows with alcohol

News

Space

Astrophile: Flaring fairy lights of Saturn's F ring

News

Earth

Viking mice marauders swept across northern Europe

News

Health

Universal glue for body cells targets drugs

News

Life

Out-of-breath cops fail to recognise the perpetrator

News

Health

Is 'pink slime' being unfairly demonised?

News

Space

Hungry black holes eat two courses at once

News

Health

Mothers of autistic children are out of pocket

News

Life

First Madagascar settlers may have been Indonesian

News

Earth

China's monopoly on rare earths may soon be broken

News

Earth

Damage to oceans will cost $2 trillion

News

Superfast neutrino claim takes another beating

News

60 Seconds

News

Life

Chimp prodigy shows signs of human-like intelligence

News

Life

Reptile grew feather-like structures before dinosaurs

News

Niger river dams could displace 1.5 million

News

Syrian uprising raises fears over chemical weapons

News

Health

Green tea could mask testosterone doping

News

Earth

Searching for the Venice of the Nile

News

Neutrinos send wireless message through the Earth

News

What to call the particle formerly known as Higgs

News

Technology

Mash-up aids translation of obscure languages

News

Technology

Mapping the human cost of Syria's uprising

News

Technology

Metal detector knows how much cash is in your wallet

News

Space

New space radars track small but deadly space junk

News

Technology

Command robot planes with a wave of your arms

News

Health

Should athletes be screened for heart problems?

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.

Life

A question of intelligence

Why are humans the smartest animals on Earth?

Opinion

Seeing through the fog of war

Opinion

Earth

Going green won't kill jobs during hard times

Opinion

Life

Out of Peru, the plant that tackles toothache

Opinion

Health

A tale of two classics: biology vs economics

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.

'Lab rat' of botany gets technicolour makeover

See more: To see the image this article refers to, keep checking Picture of the Day on our news blog Short Sharp Science THESE ethereal forms are no exotic marine creatures – they are botany's answer to the lab rat. Since 2000, when it became the first plant to have its genome fully sequenced , …

Regulars

Features

Puzzles of evolution: Why aren't we more like chimps?

Humans

Puzzles of evolution: Why aren't we more like chimps?

Small genetic changes can lead to big phenotypic differences Read more: " 10 biggest puzzles of human evolution " NOBODY would mistake a human for a chimpanzee, yet we share more DNA than mice and rats do. How can that be? Advances in genomics are starting to unravel the mystery. Line up the genomes of …

Features

Humans

Puzzles of evolution: Why did we become bipedal?

Features

Life

Puzzles of Evolution: Why was technological development so slow?

Features

Life

Puzzles of evolution: When did language evolve?

Features

Humans

Puzzles of evolution: Why are our brains so big?

Features

Humans

Puzzles of evolution: Why did we lose our fur?

Features

Puzzles of evolution: Why did we go global?

Features

Humans

Puzzles of evolution: Are some of us hybrids?

Features

Humans

Puzzles of evolution: Did we kill off Neanderthals?

Features

Humans

Puzzles of evolution: Are other hominins alive today?

Features

Health

Wake-up call: The battle to control sleep

Features

Space

Outback to outer space: The world's largest telescope

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.

Why a soundscape is worth a thousand pictures

See more: An illustrated version of this article will be published within the next two weeks on our CultureLab books and arts blog Your new book is called The Great Animal Orchestra . Why orchestra? When all the creatures in a given habitat vocalise together, they have to find their own bandwidth in order to …

CultureLab

An insider's view on the big bang

CultureLab

Humanity and the history of computing

CultureLab

Beware skeletons, for they mislead

CultureLab

Get tantric at meal times to enjoy what you eat

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 1690

Dolly the sheep Dolly was the name given to the first cloned sheep at the UK's Roslin Institute in 1996. The letters in the diagram represent, in some order, the numbers 1 to 16 forming a magic square where each row, column and main diagonal have the same sum. The letters of the word "clone", …

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: Feedback can be dangerous

Feedback can be dangerous FEEDBACK is grateful to Miles Maxted for the lovely photograph of an enamelled metal sign, now adorning our wall: "Beware of feed back." Apparently, it fell from an 11,000 volt electrical line in Auckland, New Zealand. Adding to our discussion of the many uses of the term "feedback" (24/31 December 2011) …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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