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This week's magazine

31 August 2013

Issue 2932

New Scientist issue 2932 cover
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Editor's picks

The knockout enigma: How your mechanical brain works

Life

The knockout enigma: How your mechanical brain works

Features
Out of the shadows: Picking up hints of dark matter

Space

Out of the shadows: Picking up hints of dark matter

Features
Frozen fuel: The giant methane bonanza

Earth

Frozen fuel: The giant methane bonanza

Features
The third factor: Beyond nature and nurture

Life

The third factor: Beyond nature and nurture

Features

Table of contents

News

Time-lapse footage shows snail embryo in high gear

Life

Time-lapse footage shows snail embryo in high gear

Video: Snail development from embryo to hatching Some snails mature faster than others – even before they hatch. Microscopic images have captured those early milestones in a snail's life in minute detail, revealing that a snail's pace of development before hatching is inherited from its parent. Oliver Tills of Plymouth University, UK, and colleagues tracked …

News

Life

Spicy food on the menu 6000 years ago

News

Space

Astrophile: The iron planet with a 4-hour year

News

Life

How many uncontacted tribes are left in the world?

News

Physics

Most precise clock to watch tiniest ever time dilations

News

Earth

Acidifying oceans will heat the planet more

News

Earth

Should Fukushima's radioactive water be dumped at sea?

News

Space

NASA seeks takers for moon-mission launch pads

News

Technology

X Prize for genomes cancelled before it begins

News

Space

Strike blinds the world's largest radio telescope

News

Earth

Yosemite Rim Fire is taste of things to come

News

Technology

Wind and rockets key clues in Syrian chemical puzzle

News

Health

Iraq offers grim lessons for Syrian gas survivors

News

Health

Millions of Chinese at risk of arsenic poisoning

News

Earth

Acid rain's surprising legacy in US rivers

News

60 Seconds

News

Life

Why your brain may work like a dictionary

News

Earth

Whoa! How to rein in the US's wild horses

News

Earth

Planet Earth was blue long before we knew

News

Space

Double blasts may have birthed exotic quark stars

News

Health

Swift treatment halves early death risk in HIV babies

News

Life

Biodiversity app logs insects by their telltale call

News

Technology

Auto-diary turns every action into part of your story

News

Technology

One Per Cent

News

Technology

Tae kwon do VR simulator to train UK Olympians

News

Life

Mini human 'brains' grown in lab for first time

News

Health

Spouse's voice easy to home in on… and easy to ignore

News

Opinion

Separating neuromyths from science in education

Life

Separating neuromyths from science in education

Are you a creative, right-brain type? Do you learn best visually? These are all neuromyths that badly need debunking, says a UK teacher and writer

Opinion

Space

NASA is turning science fiction into fact

Opinion

Health

Syria: Drop medicines, not bombs

Opinion

Earth

Are 'fire ice' methane hydrates the new fracking?

Opinion

Technology

ButtonMasher: DIY video game tools put you in control

Opinion

Life

Meet the man writing a language to program life

Opinion

Analysis

Firms unite to bring internet to billions of new users

Technology

Firms unite to bring internet to billions of new users

Get me cheaper data, please "I BELIEVE connectivity is a human right, and that if we work together we can make it reality." These were the lofty ideals Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg revealed on 20 August, when he declared his intention to bring internet access to "the next 5 billion people" – that is, the …

News

Aperture

Surf's up for pack of hunting sharks

Life

Surf's up for pack of hunting sharks

See the full-sized image to appreciate the sharks in full flow (Image: David Doubilet) IF ASKED to name a marine predator that hunts in groups, it's likely dolphins would be your first answer. But as this unique shot of lemon sharks by underwater photographer David Doubilet shows, these predators are also capable of coordinated hunting. …

Regulars

Features

The knockout enigma: How your mechanical brain works

Life

The knockout enigma: How your mechanical brain works

Your neurons are whirring with movement like clockwork. Understanding how it works may give us a new way to tinker with the brain

Features

Space

Out of the shadows: Picking up hints of dark matter

Features

Earth

Frozen fuel: The giant methane bonanza

Features

Life

The third factor: Beyond nature and nurture

Features

Culturelab

Did a bet on metal prices save the lives of millions?

Earth

Did a bet on metal prices save the lives of millions?

Hot topic: nickel was one of the five metals at the heart of a crucial wager (Image:Jean Guichard/Corbis) Paul Sabin reveals the huge repercussions of a wager in The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and our gamble over Earth's future THIS was a brilliant idea for a book. In The Bet , Paul Sabin has …

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 1764

Secret passages KATHRYN and her school friends have been using a Lorenz-type code to pass covert messages to each other. Each letter is expressed as a five-digit binary number such that A = 1 = 00001, M = 13 = 01101 and so on, but other symbols are represented by 00000 and by 11011 upwards. …

Regulars

Regulars

Feedback: Profitable protection

Feedback: Profitable protection

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more Profitable protection HATS made from tinfoil have become a synonym for paranoia about electromagnetic radiation, spies implanting voices into victim's brains, and all that. Their linguistic usefulness, however, is not matched by economic potential, because of the ease of making …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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