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This week's magazine

26 October 2013

Issue 2940

New Scientist issue 2940 cover
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Editor's picks

The end of anonymity: A way to stop online abuse?

Life

The end of anonymity: A way to stop online abuse?

Features
What's happening to the weather-making jet streams?

Earth

What's happening to the weather-making jet streams?

Features
Four hearts, one hole: A problem worth fixing?

Health

Four hearts, one hole: A problem worth fixing?

Features
Population paradox: Why richer people have fewer kids

Life

Population paradox: Why richer people have fewer kids

Features

Table of contents

News

Chimp calls suggest language evolved from a song

Life

Chimp calls suggest language evolved from a song

Once more with meaning Was the evolution of spoken language more of a song or a dance? The responses of chimpanzees to a stuffed snake suggest it might have been more like a stage show, with vocal and gestural modes of communication both being fundamental building blocks of language . Darwin suggested we sang our …

News

Life

Brain damage in American football linked to head trauma

News

Life

Universal law of urination found in mammals

News

Health

Virus-sabotaging protein may help people defy HIV

News

Life

Complete skull of 1.8-million-year-old hominin found

News

Health

Sleep boosts brain's self-cleaning system

News

Space

Astrophile: Soggy bogs swallow craters on Titan

News

Earth

Deadly fungus cripples frog immune systems

News

Life

Women's breasts age faster than the rest of their body

News

Earth

Record hot year causes fire emergency in Australia

News

Life

New UK nuclear reactors get go-ahead after price deal

News

Life

Zoologger: Galloping dung beetles are puzzlingly slow

News

Life

3D drops raise hopes of cure for baldness

News

Health

Threatwatch: Polio re-awakens in Syria

News

Earth

Mars air turned to stone to cool planet

News

Earth

Gold leaves mark the spot for buried treasure

News

Earth

Mars on Earth? Ask The Catalogue of Planetary Analogues

News

Technology

Minecraft gets quantum blocks in Google mod

News

Earth

Puzzling moose deaths hint at climate shock to forests

News

60 Seconds

News

Life

Reprogrammed bacterium speaks new language of life

News

Space

No need for inflation if cosmos was a bouncing baby

News

Technology

Body-worn cameras put police evidence beyond doubt

News

Technology

Smuggler-spotting software sniffs out dodgy shipments

News

Technology

Dolphin sonar inspires coin-sized bomb detector

News

Technology

One Per Cent

News

Earth

Hawaiian island restricts genetically modified crops

News

Space

India blasts off for Mars: here's what it will do

News

Opinion

School achievement isn't just in your genes

Life

School achievement isn't just in your genes

Anyone who asserts that educational attainment is in large part inherited needs a lesson in modern genetics, says a professor of biology

Opinion

Life

Craig Venter: Why I put my name in synthetic genomes

Opinion

Earth

My verdict on Gaia hypothesis: beautiful but flawed

Opinion

Technology

Has the time come to abandon online anonymity?

Opinion

Earth

Gaia: The death of a beautiful idea

Opinion

Space

Mars could fire up Asian space race

Opinion

Analysis

Meal-sharing sites send hungry tourists to home chefs

Technology

Meal-sharing sites send hungry tourists to home chefs

Eating like a local, anywhere TO REALLY experience a place, you've got to eat like a local. Review websites like Yelp and TripAdvisor help out-of-towners dodge overpriced tourist traps, but what about travellers seeking a unique, home-cooked meal in a foreign land? The rise of the sharing economy has already transformed finding somewhere to stay …

News

Aperture

The Photo Ark: We have to see them to save them

Life

The Photo Ark: We have to see them to save them

(Images: Joel Sartore) JOEL SARTORE travels the world photographing endangered animals from zoos and rescue centres for his Photo Ark project . He has photographed more than 2600 species so far. "The goal of all this is to simply get the public to finally wake up and pay attention," says Sartore. "Half of all species …

Regulars

Features

The end of anonymity: A way to stop online abuse?

Life

The end of anonymity: A way to stop online abuse?

Warning: This feature begins with language that some readers may find upsetting

Biometrics may soon make it impossible to hide your identity online. It could bring a new age of internet civility – if we don’t mind losing our liberty too

Features

Earth

What's happening to the weather-making jet streams?

Features

Health

Four hearts, one hole: A problem worth fixing?

Features

Life

Population paradox: Why richer people have fewer kids

Features

Culturelab

Babies know good from evil – is this morality?

Life

Babies know good from evil – is this morality?

Small children comforting others may be an evolved trait (Image: Ghislain & Marie David de Lossy/Getty) Morality is innate and has evolutionary origins, argues Paul Bloom in Just Babies: The origins of good and evil , which highlights the inherent goodness of babies PUT on a puppet show for 3-month-old babies and they seem able …

CultureLab

Earth

Diary from 2050: How we made a better world

CultureLab

More

The changes Obama wants in US public colleges

The changes Obama wants in US public colleges

Time for change "IT'S TIME to stop subsidizing schools that are not producing good results." When US president Barack Obama addressed the State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo in August this year, he pulled no punches in his critique of the country's universities . Obama plans to implement a set of changes – including …

Careers

Enigma Number 1772

Regulars

Regulars

Feedback: Ship of fools

Feedback: Ship of fools

Caption Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more Ship of fools SUPERYACHTS and their owners can be friends of the earth. Oh, yes. "Build a yacht. Protect the forests," says Philippe Mondielli, scientific director of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation. He was writing in a …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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