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This week's magazine

30 August 2014

Issue 2984

New Scientist issue 2984 cover
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Editor's picks

Let's talk about the weather to revive climate debate

Earth

Let's talk about the weather to revive climate debate

Opinion
A to zinc: What supplements are worth taking?

Health

A to zinc: What supplements are worth taking?

Features
Sliding stones of Death Valley: Rocky riddle resolved

Earth

Sliding stones of Death Valley: Rocky riddle resolved

Features
Formula E: Roar power matters for electric racing cars

Technology

Formula E: Roar power matters for electric racing cars

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

Let's talk about the weather to revive climate debate

Earth

Let's talk about the weather to revive climate debate

Explaining how climate change is affecting today's weather will be tricky, but it might bring home to the public the everyday reality of global warming

Opinion

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Swelling Australian cities harbour ever bigger spiders

Life

Swelling Australian cities harbour ever bigger spiders

Little Miss Muffet had better move to the countryside As if Australia's spiders weren't big and scary enough, it turns out denser, busier cities are allowing some of them to grow even bigger. The same thing could be happening the world over. Most Australians will have seen the large but mostly harmless golden orb-weavers that …

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Technology

China sting shows censors fear posts that incite unrest

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Physics

Earliest stars lived short, fiery lives

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Life

Chimps show empathy by mimicking pupil size

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Health

Botox blitz could work against stomach cancers

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Technology

Eye implant turns smartphone into a glaucoma monitor

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Life

Sex secrets of the weevil with a curiously long snout

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Health

Open schools later so teens can lie in, say US doctors

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Life

Modified yeast makes opiates for the first time

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Space

Five sites shortlisted for Rosetta's comet landing

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Technology

The high-tech hunt for James Foley's killer

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Earth

Californian earthquake piles stress on dangerous fault

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Health

Ebola ripple effect: riots, looting, healthcare failure

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Life

Every living thing in the Antarctic Ocean mapped

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60 Seconds

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Earth

And now the weather, featuring climate change blame

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Life

Your death microbiome could catch your killer

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Space

Source of sun's power revealed by ghostly particles

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Health

Mapping the web of disease in Nairobi's invisible city

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Earth

Earth's tectonic plates have doubled their speed

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Space

Vibrations in rings reveal Saturn's inner secrets

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Technology

Supercomputers make discoveries that scientists can't

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Technology

Emailing angry? Your keyboard feels your pain

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Technology

One Per Cent

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Technology

3D-printed books make pictures real for blind children

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Technology

Stretchy plastics hide secret pictures

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Space

Europe launches two satellites into wrong orbit

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Technology

Beautiful spiral cracks could be a feature, not a flaw

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Opinion

Crowd-control policing in the US is stuck in riot mode

Life

Crowd-control policing in the US is stuck in riot mode

Protest policing in the US adheres to outdated, aggressive tactics that only deepen tensions. There is a better way

Opinion

Health

More autopsies on a body don't mean more answers

Opinion

My 'verbal autopsies' reveal what really killed people

Opinion

Analysis

Ferguson protests spark calls for cops to wear cameras

Technology

Ferguson protests spark calls for cops to wear cameras

On-body cameras mean police use less force, and a range of new apps are giving citizens new ways to hold errant police officers to account

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Aperture

Soviet-era hyperboloid tower saved from destruction

Soviet-era hyperboloid tower saved from destruction

(Image: Pavel Golovkin/AP/Press Association Images) MODERN technology appears to have saved a Soviet relic, following a smartphone vote on the fate of the extraordinary Shukhov Tower. Often described as a Muscovite Eiffel Tower, the 92-year-old structure had fallen into disrepair since it stopped transmitting TV signals in 2002. Plans to dismantle and relocate the tower …

Regulars

Features

A to zinc: What supplements are worth taking?

Health

A to zinc: What supplements are worth taking?

Vitamins, minerals, fish oils… the list of nutritional supplements you can buy keeps growing. Some are worth it, some aren't. We sift the evidence for you

Features

Technology

Formula E: Roar power matters for electric racing cars

Features

Earth

Sliding stones of Death Valley: Rocky riddle resolved

Features

Culturelab

Biography of our ingenious species is full of twists

Life

Biography of our ingenious species is full of twists

Industrialising agriculture was one of our biggest responses to crisis (Image: Ted Aljibe/AFP/Getty Images) Humans innovate to dodge disaster, and we are pretty good at it, according to The Big Ratchet by Ruth DeFries – but can we do it indefinitely? HUMANITY'S roller-coaster ride is either a unique, exhilarating one-way journey of escape from our nasty …

CultureLab

Earth

Nature and conservation from a perfect point of view

CultureLab

Life

Beautiful but doomed: Demise of the passenger pigeon

CultureLab

Regulars

Feedback: Dowsing the night away

Feedback: Dowsing the night away

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more Dowsing the night away BOMB detection is big business, so it's no surprise that it attracts scams. It does seem to have more than its fair share, whatever "fair share" might mean. First, a recap. A while ago we reported …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

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