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This week's magazine

1 September 2012

Issue 2880

New Scientist issue 2880 cover
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Editor's picks

The shape of life: Biology's biggest mystery

Life

The shape of life: Biology's biggest mystery

Features
Net worth: Reclaiming our personal data

Technology

Net worth: Reclaiming our personal data

Features
Food for thought: Eat your way to dementia

Health

Food for thought: Eat your way to dementia

Features

Table of contents

News

Record haul of uranium harvested from seawater

Earth

Record haul of uranium harvested from seawater

Uranium source: Saline solution? Lingering doubts over the future of US energy security are breathing new life into a technology that has lain dormant for more than a decade. Researchers at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have more than doubled the amount of uranium …

News

Life

Gibbons on helium sing like sopranos

News

Life

Location of the mind remains a mystery

News

Life

Genome sequencing used to control hospital infection

News

Space

Astrophile: Red giant and the exploding dwarf

News

Life

Slugs benefit from getting stabbed while having sex

News

Space

Giant fractals are out – the universe is a big smoothie

News

Life

Sleep your way to greater knowledge

News

Health

Teenage cannabis use leads to cognitive decline

News

Space

Neil Armstrong: First moonwalker and cool-headed nerd

News

Technology

Cyborg tissue is half living cells, half electronics

News

Space

Mars rover beams back eerie human voice – and postcard

News

Health

Mental health the winner after Breivik 'sane' ruling

News

Turing machine pops up in messed-up mathematical world

News

Earth

US energy independence by 2020 is a pipe dream

News

Life

Lance Armstrong decision is bad news for drugs cheats

News

60 Seconds

News

Earth

Arctic ice low heralds end of 3-million-year cover

News

Earth

What ice-free summers will mean for Arctic life

News

Health

Can we deter athletes who self-harm to win?

News

Life

Protein discovery could lead to 'genomic debuggers'

News

Life

Cool clue to body clock's workings

News

Technology

Mirrors take root in pitch-black nanotube forest

News

Life

Epigenetics gives clues to human cancer susceptibility

News

Earth

Waste water harnessed to make electricity and plastics

News

Technology

Harness unused smartphone power for a computing boost

News

Technology

Sharp-eared glasses let deaf people 'see' sounds

News

Technology

One Per Cent

News

Technology

Smartphones put the app into physics apparatus

News

Opinion

Securing the legacy of the world's greatest geek

Technology

Securing the legacy of the world's greatest geek

"I would love some big frightening display of coils, because Tesla was quite a showman" ( Image: Koa Metter ) Matthew Inman wants to build a museum dedicated to inventor Nikola Tesla, the "greatest geek who ever lived" What did Tesla do to deserve a museum? Overall, his most practical achievement would be the polyphase …

Opinion

Health

Brain diabetes: the ultimate food scare

Opinion

Earth

Arctic melt, smash and grab ahead

Opinion

Good data habits need to be taught

Opinion

Earth

If 2013 breaks heat record, how will deniers respond?

Opinion

Humans

Destroying the powerful and destructive race construct

Opinion

Analysis

FBI launches $1 billion face recognition project

Technology

FBI launches $1 billion face recognition project

The Next Generation Identification programme will include a nationwide database of criminal faces and other biometrics

News

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.

Landsat captures impact of deforestation in Brazil

See more: To see the image this article refers to, keep checking Picture of the Day on our news blog Short Sharp Science

Regulars

Features

The shape of life: Biology's biggest mystery

Life

The shape of life: Biology's biggest mystery

How plants and animals form their astonishing variety of shapes has long been an enigma, but we are finally making progress

Features

Technology

Net worth: Reclaiming our personal data

Features

Health

Food for thought: Eat your way to dementia

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.

Space

Satellite time capsule for life on Earth

See more: An illustrated version of this article will be published within the next two weeks on our CultureLab books and arts blog

CultureLab

Humans

Babies without sex or pregnancy?

CultureLab

Life

Retracing the stardust trail

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 1713

Inventories I am going to start with a number and repeatedly take inventories of the digits in it. For example, if I start with 1531, then I read this as "one 1, one 5, one 3, one 1", which can be written as an inventory of 11151311. This new list has "three 1s, one 5, …

Regulars

Regulars

Feedback: Higgs boson delivered by truck

Feedback: Higgs boson delivered by truck

Image: Paul McDevitt) Image: Paul McDevitt) Higgs boson delivered by truck WHAT led to the Large Hadron Collider's confirmation in July of the existence of the Higgs boson (14 July, p 6) ? The LHC straddles the French-Swiss border close to Geneva. Derek Christie writes in to tell us that people living near Geneva suspect …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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