Subscribe now

This week's magazine

31 May 2014

Issue 2971

New Scientist issue 2971 cover
Previous issue Next issue
arrow
Subscribe
Access our magazine content direct via our website, app or print magazine
arrow
View in the app
Check out this magazine in our easy-to-navigate mobile app
arrow
Find a previous edition online
Search through our digital archive of over 30 years of magazines

Editor's picks

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.

Health

Don't kill the painkiller, educate the people

Opinion
Obsession engineers: Mind control the <i>Candy Crush</i> way

Life

Obsession engineers: Mind control the Candy Crush way

Features
People of secrets: The slave sanctuary anti-language

Life

People of secrets: The slave sanctuary anti-language

Features
What's wrong with the world's favourite painkiller?

Health

What's wrong with the world's favourite painkiller?

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

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.

Don't let new boundaries cut off UK science

Many scientists in the UK could soon find themselves isolated from their colleagues in Europe and Scotland. That must not happen

Opinion

Health

Don't kill the painkiller, educate the people

Opinion

News

Baby's first gut bacteria may come from mum's mouth

Life

Baby's first gut bacteria may come from mum's mouth

The placenta's microbiome may hold surprising secrets Babies in the womb are not as sheltered from the outside world as you might think. The placenta harbours a unique ecosystem of bacteria which may have a surprising origin – the mother's mouth. Disturbances of the placenta's bacterial community may explain why some women give birth prematurely, …

News

Space

Earth-eating suns can help us hunt life-friendly worlds

News

Physics

Neutrinos top list of targets for US particle physics

News

Life

Emu-style birds have abandoned flight six times

News

Earth

Dancing honeybees assess the health of the environment

News

Life

Lifespan boost for mice that feel less pain

News

Health

Fixing leaks in the gut may stall progression of HIV

News

Humans

Best ever English football team revealed by statistics

News

Earth

History shows that parched Aral Sea can be restored

News

Earth

Fracking south-east England for oil may be pointless

News

Health

Refugees forced to return to Syria for cancer treatment

News

Life

Zoologger: Only known 'potter' frog packs eggs in mud

News

Health

Brain tweak could let you pop a pill to stop seizures

News

What the data says about Europe's lurch to the right

News

Technology

Crystal seen growing in slow motion one atom at a time

News

60 Seconds

News

Space

It's crunch time for dark matter if WIMPs don't show

News

Scotland: Four futures for an independent Scotland

News

Earth

Scotland: Oil and gas at heart of Scots' future wealth

News

Life

Scotland: What if independence goes horribly wrong?

News

Technology

Suicide watch prison sensor keeps an eye on inmates

News

Life

App takes the strain out of tricky moral dilemmas

News

Technology

Pirates incoming! Ship radar keeps watch and hits back

News

Technology

One Per Cent

News

Technology

Smart collar brings poorly pooches to heal

News

Earth

Scotland: Wind will power the Scots' green ambitions

News

Life

Ebola vaccine for chimps works but may never be used

News

Space

Space hopefuls dine on worms in 'Moon Palace' module

News

Earth

Traffic fumes cost rich countries $0.8 trillion a year

News

Technology

Sex harassment app helps women map abuse

News

Opinion

Low-cost production will mean the end of jobs

Technology

Low-cost production will mean the end of jobs

The future is bright for Jeremy Rifkin Houses with their own solar panels are bringing down the cost of electricity in Germany The internet and low production costs will free us from work and want, says social theorist Jeremy Rifkin – but what will we do then? Stephen Jay Gould called an early book of …

Opinion

Space

Wannabe Mars colonist endured 10 South Pole winters

Opinion

Vote UKIP and risk the future of British science

Opinion

Health

I'm cracking the code to regrow human limbs

Opinion

Analysis

Curved screens make our brains light up with pleasure

Technology

Curved screens make our brains light up with pleasure

Why are ever more curved-screen gadgets being launched? It seems bendiness has deep aesthetic appeal and will spur new materials and manufacturing methods

News

Aperture

See the Minecraft nebula that Twitter found

Space

See the Minecraft nebula that Twitter found

(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech) "CAPTURE & name your own NASA Spitzer space image! It's easier than you might think." With this tweet , the operators of the Spitzer Space Telescope invited people to roam around a gigantic mosaic of the Milky Way. Composed of more than 2 million infrared images taken by the telescope over the last …

Regulars

Features

Obsession engineers: Mind control the <i>Candy Crush</i> way

Life

Obsession engineers: Mind control the Candy Crush way

Why are we addicted to games? (Image: Patrick George) How do you design a hit video game? Psychologists are diagnosing what gets us addicted – a recipe for obsession that could hurt or heal us IN APRIL, a landfill in New Mexico disgorged proof of a decades-old rumour. The story goes back to 1983, when …

Features

Life

People of secrets: The slave sanctuary anti-language

Features

Health

What's wrong with the world's favourite painkiller?

Features

Culturelab

All systems Tao: Holistic view of life's networks

Life

All systems Tao: Holistic view of life's networks

Causality works bottom-up and top-down at once (Image: David Maitland/Millennium Images) Fritjof Capra goes beyond The Tao of Physics with The Systems View of Life , a much-needed vision of biology with a dash of Eastern mysticism WHEN I was about 17, I was briefly transfixed by the teachings of Eastern mysticism. I read everything …

CultureLab

Life

The fascination of hoverflies on a small island

CultureLab

More

Scotland: Ape Israel to build a start-up nation

Technology

Scotland: Ape Israel to build a start-up nation

On 18 September, the people of Scotland will vote on whether their country should become independent of the UK. This article is part of our "Four futures for an independent Scotland" special report, looking at the choices a newly independent Scotland could make

Careers

Regulars

Feedback: Mammoth tidings

Feedback: Mammoth tidings

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more Mammoth tidings GOOD news for South Carolina. Earlier, its House of Representatives opposed creationist references that the state Senate slipped in while enacting 8-year-old Olivia McConnell's proposal to name the Columbian mammoth as the state fossil (26 April) . Then …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

Browse past issues

View all
Piano Exit Overlay Banner Mobile Piano Exit Overlay Banner Desktop