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This week's magazine

16 March 2013

Issue 2908

New Scientist issue 2908 cover
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Editor's picks

The body: Born to run... and throw

Humans

The body: Born to run... and throw

Features
The body: Your curious behaviours and what they reveal

Life

The body: Your curious behaviours and what they reveal

Features
The body: It takes all shapes and sizes

The body: It takes all shapes and sizes

Features
The body: You've got to hand it to the hands

Humans

The body: You've got to hand it to the hands

Features
The body: Can you eat yourself to death?

Humans

The body: Can you eat yourself to death?

Features
The body: Your nose knows more than you think

The body: Your nose knows more than you think

Features
The body: The great skin safari

Life

The body: The great skin safari

Features
The body: Who owns the bits you leave behind?

The body: Who owns the bits you leave behind?

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.

The body: The continuum of you

Features

Table of contents

News

The father of all men is 340,000 years old

Life

The father of all men is 340,000 years old

Dwarfed by the X chromosome, the Y seems more ancient than we thought Albert Perry carried a secret in his DNA: a Y chromosome so distinctive that it reveals new information about the origin of our species. It shows that the last common male ancestor down the paternal line of our species is over twice …

News

Space

Astrophile: Glistening cloud acts as cosmic centimetre

News

Space

Salty water oozes up from Jupiter moon's hidden ocean

News

Earth

True face of climate's hockey stick graph revealed

News

Space

Giant Milky Way bubbles blown by black hole merger

News

Life

Mapping brain activity is neuroscience's lofty new goal

News

Health

Zapping brain to improve learning comes at a cost

News

Technology

Controversial quantum computer aces entanglement tests

News

Life

Zoologger: World's biggest mouth has an erectile secret

News

Life

Mystery bug found in Antarctica's Lake Vostok

News

Earth

The melting of Canada's glaciers is irreversible

News

Life

Plants lace their nectar with drugs to make bees return

News

Life

Antibiotic resistance an 'apocalyptic threat'

News

Space

First rapid planet-reader makes unique family portrait

News

Life

Cloning record broken – next up clones from faeces

News

Life

Neanderthals may have swapped social lives for big eyes

News

Technology

Mystery boson earns Higgs status thanks to W particle

News

Life

Craig Venter close to creating synthetic life

News

Physics

Ancient pi calculator gets a modern twist for pi day

News

Health

US Army needs to sharpen up PTSD diagnosis

News

Earth

Hammerhead sharks are winners of wildlife trade meeting

News

60 Seconds

News

Health

Are breast milk stem cells the real deal for medicine?

News

Health

Lowly aspirin fights deadly skin cancer in women

News

Technology

Cellphone sniffer hunts down illicit prison calls

News

Technology

Clawed drone grabs prey on the fly just like an eagle

News

Technology

Robotic swim buddy snaps your stroke from below

News

Opinion

Nobel-winner Watson: Do antioxidants promote cancer?

Health

Nobel-winner Watson: Do antioxidants promote cancer?

Antioxidant foods and pills could heighten the risk of cancer and diabetes, argues James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

Opinion

Health

Averting the antibiotics apocalypse now

Opinion

Technology

Quantum computers leap into the real world

Opinion

Physics

Should business be allowed to patent mathematics?

Opinion

Life

Smartphones can help us keep stress at bay

Opinion

Analysis

What your Facebook 'likes' really say about you

Technology

What your Facebook 'likes' really say about you

Facebook never forgets We are already aware that our every move online is tracked, aggregated and analysed. But you couldn't have known how much Facebook can learn about you from the smallest of social interactions – a "like". Researchers from the University of Cambridge designed a simple machine-learning system to predict Facebook users' personal information …

News

Space

Reality TV paves way for Neil Armstrong of Mars

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.

World's largest nests are socialist bird collectives

See more: To see the image this article refers to, keep checking Picture of the Day on our news blog Short Sharp Science NO, IT'S not a giant haystack – it's an example of one of the largest structures constructed by birds. Sociable weavers ( Philetairus socius ) build huge communal nests – multistorey apartment …

Regulars

Features

The body: Born to run... and throw

Humans

The body: Born to run... and throw

Our bodies may seem feeble when compared to other organisms, but in an Animal Olympics we could challenge for gold in two sports

Features

Life

The body: Your curious behaviours and what they reveal

Features

The body: It takes all shapes and sizes

Features

Humans

The body: You've got to hand it to the hands

Features

Humans

The body: Can you eat yourself to death?

Features

The body: Your nose knows more than you think

Features

Life

The body: The great skin safari

Features

The body: Who owns the bits you leave behind?

Features

The body: The continuum of you

Features

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 1740

Sudoprime The grid on the right shows a cross-figure with two digits given as a start. The 11 answers are distinct primes and none has a leading zero. No digit appears more than once in any row, column or either of the two long diagonals. What are the numbers in the shaded regions? WIN £15 …

Regulars

Technology

The radioactive legacy of the search for plutopia

Books & Arts

Light Show tricks meaning out of physics and biology

Books & Arts

Growing a family alongside a science career

Careers

Regulars

Feedback: Placebos for sale

Feedback: Placebos for sale

Placebos for sale PLACEBOS are now available to the general public "for the first time ever". Simon Norburn forwards a press release from journalism.co.uk announcing the good news (see bit.ly/placebosale ). "Never before has the ordinary person been able to go and get placebos for themselves or their family," it says. "Although used in virtually …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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