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This week's magazine

29 October 2011

Issue 2836

New Scientist issue 2836 cover
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Editor's picks

Science in America: Decline and fall

Science in America: Decline and fall

Features
Science in America: Selling the truth

Science in America: Selling the truth

Features
Oil spill X Prize: Winning inventors clean up

Earth

Oil spill X Prize: Winning inventors clean up

Features
The real you: Say goodbye to online anonymity

The real you: Say goodbye to online anonymity

Features

Table of contents

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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

Chronic fatigue syndrome eased by cancer drug

An anti-cancer drug could hold the key to treating chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Symptoms of the disease eased in 10 of 15 patients given rituximab, an anti-lymphoma drug. Rituximab works by destroying white blood cells that make antibodies, called B cells. The results of the trial therefore suggest that these white blood cells might be …

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Life

Zoologger: Female monkeys indulge in synchronised sex

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Life

Harness viruses to make dazzling colours without dye

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Earth

Sceptical climate scientists concede Earth has warmed

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Space

First icy star-disc hints at source of Earth's water

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Life

Mosquito vs raindrop match video settles urban myths

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Space

Astrophile: The sticky star cluster that's mostly black hole

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Life

Libyan plan to trace mass graves and missing people

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Earth

UK's carbon-capture failure is part of a global trend

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Physics

Agreement to tie kilogram and friends to fundamentals

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Health

Sanatoriums could battle drug-resistant TB boom

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Physics

Faster-than-light neutrino result to get extra checks

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Health

The Israeli children who are suing for being born

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Technology

Inside Facebook's massive cyber-security system

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Life

Dinosaur teeth hold first clues to migration

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Turkey earthquake reveals a new active fault zone

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60 Seconds

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Physics

Quantum upgrade removes need for spooky observer

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Earth

Dust bowl looms if US Southwest drought plans fail

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Flood-fearing parrots commit 'gendercide' for survival

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Life

Fish and birds gave Neanderthals fine dining

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Health

Sunbathe in the morning for a safer tan

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Technology

Screen-spy program can read texts and emails

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Technology

Quantum keys let submarines talk securely

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Technology

How innovative is Apple's new voice assistant, Siri?

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Technology

Video 'radar' to stop drone mid-air collisions

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Opinion

Contagion's virus adviser tracking the next pandemic

Contagion's virus adviser tracking the next pandemic

On the hunt for the next pandemic Nathan Wolfe travels to viral "hotspots" to find dangerous viruses before they go global. He talked to Linda Geddes about why we are more vulnerable than ever to a deadly pandemic You advised on the film Contagion , in which a lethal virus spreads across the globe within …

Opinion

Why America should put its trust in reason

Opinion

Let's dare to question quantum magic

Opinion

Earth

Britain should welcome climate refugee species

Opinion

Life

We must ask big brain questions, says neuroscientist

Opinion

Aperture

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.

Balloons snapped popping

BALLS of shadow dissolve into a seething mist of droplets. To capture the way a balloon deforms as it bursts, James Huse, Josh Eaton and Steve Keylock spent hours working in darkness. They filled balloons with milk, hung them up in a studio (the photos are inverted), turned out the lights and left a camera …

Regulars

Features

Science in America: Decline and fall

Science in America: Decline and fall

The US is the most powerful scientific nation on Earth and yet the status of science in public life has never been so low. Why?

Features

Science in America: Selling the truth

Features

Earth

Oil spill X Prize: Winning inventors clean up

Features

The real you: Say goodbye to online anonymity

Features

Culturelab

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.

How we travelled beyond infinity

Frank Close tells the human story of how we solved The Infinity Puzzle – once the bane of physics INFINITY. In mathematics, it's a curiosity. In physics, it's a disease. It reared its head back in the 1940s, with quantum electrodynamics (QED), the theory of electromagnetism. QED's equations predicted that the electron's mass and charge …

CultureLab

Pacific Ocean chokes on plastic pollution

CultureLab

Behind the scenes of 15 great discoveries

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 1670

How mean? I recently set a class the following puzzle: "Write down four positive whole numbers less than 100 and then write down their average: choose the original numbers so that overall the five numbers written down use each of the digits 1 to 9 exactly once." Three Scandinavian lads in the class were successful. …

Regulars

Regulars

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.

Feedback: Bigger than Ben-Hur

Bigger than Ben-Hur BEN HUR – how big? On 3 September we expressed our puzzlement over a landslip blocking a road in the Manawatu gorge in New Zealand. It was going to take a week to clear and was described in the New Zealand Herald as "bigger than Ben-Hur". Several readers from that part of …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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