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This week's magazine

31 July 2021

Issue 3345

New Scientist issue 3345 cover
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Editor's picks

The UK has chosen a dangerous path out of the coronavirus pandemic

Health

The UK has chosen a dangerous path out of the coronavirus pandemic

News
Lost art of the Stone Age: The cave paintings redrawing human history

Humans

Lost art of the Stone Age: The cave paintings redrawing human history

Features
Why self-driving cars could be going the way of the jetpack

Technology

Why self-driving cars could be going the way of the jetpack

Features
Thin-air therapy: The unexpected medical benefits of hypoxia

Health

Thin-air therapy: The unexpected medical benefits of hypoxia

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

The UK has chosen a dangerous path out of the coronavirus pandemic

Health

The UK has chosen a dangerous path out of the coronavirus pandemic

DURING the coronavirus pandemic, we have all become amateur epidemiologists, readily discussing R numbers, herd immunity and test sensitivity in everyday conversation. Now, with the virus still nowhere near eliminated, we would do well to concern ourselves with the principles of viral evolution too. It is a widespread misconception that viruses tend to evolve to …

News

News

Kelp surveys on England's south coast monitor a key climate defence

Environment

Kelp surveys on England's south coast monitor a key climate defence

https://youtu.be/V-RL8Ol9_KQ In the 1980s, so much kelp washed onto beaches west of Brighton that the “unsightliness” of the seaweed and the flies it attracted made it a problem worthy of debate in the UK parliament . Farmers took the abundance of washed-up brown algae for fertiliser. Locals talked of the “kelp problem”. Today, the problem …

News

Life

Tomatoes have a kind of nervous system that warns about attacks

News

Technology

Flexible computer processor is the most powerful plastic chip yet

News

Humans

Last meal of a man mummified in a bog reconstructed after 2400 years

News

Life

Male and female mammals kill their own species for different reasons

News

Life

Sharks' spiral-shaped intestines resemble a Nikola Tesla invention

News

Life

Dogs will ignore you if they know you are lying, unlike young children

News

Space

Russia is launching a new module for the International Space Station

News

Technology

DeepMind's AI uncovers structure of 98.5 per cent of human proteins

News

Health

Virtual roller coaster rides may help unravel causes of migraine

News

Space

Astronomers may have spotted a distant alien moon being born

News

Environment

Vacuuming DNA from air can reveal which animals are present in an area

News

Space

Who counts as an astronaut? Not Jeff Bezos, say new US rules

News

Life

Essential oils help to stop invasive beetles from eating palm trees

News

Life

Termite gut microbes can help turn toxic wood into biofuels

News

Space

Stars sped up by black holes may outshine supernovae when they collide

News

Humans

Most detailed human genome sequence yet reveals our hidden variation

News

Health

Eight reasons why the UK's coronavirus cases appear to be falling

News

Health

UK conditions are ideal for evolving vaccine-resistant covid variants

News

Analysis

Ariel view of flooding

Environment

Can we fix climate models to better predict record-shattering weather?

Flooding in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany, on 15 July Record-breaking climate events, such as Canada’s highest temperature on record being exceeded by almost 5°C last month , will be increasingly likely in the coming decades, suggests new research. It comes as the ability of climate models to predict such extremes has been called into question following …

News

Humans

There's room for a green middle ground in the UK's culture wars

News

Life

Why invertebrates should be included in animal welfare protections

News

Aperture

Striking image of covid-19 clean-up is among photo contest finalists

Humans

Striking image of covid-19 clean-up is among photo contest finalists

Wellcome Photography Prize 2021 THESE poignant and intensely personal images are among the winners and finalists in the Wellcome Photography Prize 2021, run by health research foundation Wellcome. The competition focuses on three of the most urgent global health challenges: mental health, global warming and infectious disease. There are two top prizes, one for a …

Regulars

Features

Lost art of the Stone Age: The cave paintings redrawing human history

Humans

Lost art of the Stone Age: The cave paintings redrawing human history

Newly discovered cave art gives fresh insight into the minds of our ancestors - and upends the idea that a Stone Age cultural explosion was unique to Europe

Features

Health

Thin-air therapy: The unexpected medical benefits of hypoxia

Features

Technology

Why self-driving cars could be going the way of the jetpack

Features

Culture

12 Bytes review: Jeanette Winterson on AI and making life less binary

Technology

12 Bytes review: Jeanette Winterson on AI and making life less binary

Katherine Johnson’s computing achievements were sidelined for years 12 Bytes Jeanette Winterson Jeanette Winterson , the award-winning author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit , began circling around artificial intelligence after reading Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near . Since then, the science and technologies of AI have informed her fiction, including her 2019 …

Culture

Health

Settlers review: Powerful sci-fi movie evokes classic westerns

Culture

Don't Miss: A Trillion Trees, a book to help us save the planet

Culture

Mars Horizon review: Fantastic simulator gets you into the space race

Culture

More

The secret to keeping beetroot a beautiful red when you bake it

The secret to keeping beetroot a beautiful red when you bake it

WITH its vibrant crimson hue, beetroot is a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach. It is great to bake with, and clever chemistry can help keep it pretty in pink. Beetroot gets its colour from pigments called betalains. These include betacyanins, which are red-violet, and betaxanthins, which are yellow-orange. Some beetroot varieties, …

Regulars

Puzzle #124: How many rings have thieving jackdaws got in their nests?

Regulars

Tom Gauld on having a whale of a time

Regulars

Twisteddoodles: 'I hear you're planning on throwing a wobbly'

Regulars

Regulars

The strange case of an octopus with 36 arms

The strange case of an octopus with 36 arms

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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