4 April 2018
London pea-soupers and the "great smog" of 1952 led to the Clean Air Act of 1956. In the 1980s, Mexico City was talked about as the place with the most polluted air. In recent years, Beijing and Delhi have often had terrible air quality. How do the levels...
4 April 2018
I can usually make sense of my kitchen radio, even if someone else is talking or the phone is ringing. This isolation of a single noise among others is known as the "cocktail party effect". However, just crumpling the bag inside a cereal packet renders...
4 April 2018
During the recent total solar eclipse in the US, I overlapped my hands, using the gaps between my fingers to form "pinholes". Just before the start of totality, someone noticed that the shadows formed through this "pinhole camera" onto a whiteboard were...
4 April 2018
Record seizure by Turkish police is busted by scientists. Plus: parenting styles of dog owners, Welsh MP lambasts "alarmists" at IPCC, and more
4 April 2018
There are a terrifying number of ways to be unsafe, as a look through the April archives of New Scientist shows
4 April 2018
Walk barefoot through the grass in South Africa and you may step on one of these spiky seeds, which lie in wait, hoping to catch a ride to someplace new
