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This week's magazine

7 February 2015

Issue 3007

New Scientist issue 3007 cover
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Editor's picks

Living with the algorithms that run our lives

Technology

Living with the algorithms that run our lives

Opinion
No one in control: The algorithms that run our lives

Technology

No one in control: The algorithms that run our lives

Features
The secret life of your home

The secret life of your home

Features
Secrets of the home: What your house says about you

Earth

Secrets of the home: What your house says about you

Features
Secrets of the home: My house made me do it

Earth

Secrets of the home: My house made me do it

Features
Secrets of the home: The weather in your hallway

Earth

Secrets of the home: The weather in your hallway

Features
Secrets of the home: The chemical reactor you live in

Earth

Secrets of the home: The chemical reactor you live in

Features
Secrets of the home: Befriend your microbe roommates

Life

Secrets of the home: Befriend your microbe roommates

Features
Secrets of the home: Is your toaster spying on you?

Technology

Secrets of the home: Is your toaster spying on you?

Features
Cormorants: the world's most hated bird?

Life

Cormorants: the world's most hated bird?

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

Living with the algorithms that run our lives

Technology

Living with the algorithms that run our lives

Most of us don't understand the software that hones internet searches and our newsfeeds, but we don't need to in order to come to terms with them

Opinion

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Just four credit card clues can identify anyone

Technology

Just four credit card clues can identify anyone

Guess who Drop the disguise: your metadata still gives you away. Four pieces of information is all that's needed to match individuals to their anonymised credit card records. The findings suggest that tougher measures must be put in place to protect users' privacy, because real identities may be too tied in to the rich metadata, …

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Health

Sync your sport to your body clock for a personal best

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Earth

Ancient microbes formed Earth's biggest hoard of gold

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Health

Virtual hearts get to the crux of sudden cardiac death

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Earth

Urban rabbits downsize to smaller, 'studio' warrens

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Life

Mushroom kills with cookie cutter trick

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Health

New treatment for endometriosis preserves fertility

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Physics

Wave function gets real in quantum experiment

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Life

Lava could have preserved the origins of life on the moon

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Life

Formation-flying birds swap places to share out lift

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Earth

The computer that crunches cloud data to heat your home

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Technology

Doc-watcher spots when physicians stop listening

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Technology

One Per Cent

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Life

Green light for mission to Jupiter moon Europa

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Health

UK parliament gives three-parent IVF the go-ahead

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Earth

Subglacial Lake Vostok cracked for a second time

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Technology

Race to get self-driving cars on the road hots up

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60 Seconds

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Technology

Technology driving rise in abortions of girls in India

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Space

Cosmic inflation's 'smoking gun' goes up in smoke

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Earth

Mini earthquakes reveal lubricant for tectonic plates

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Health

Gut bugs serve up vitamin A the carrot-free way

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Earth

Great Barrier Reef set for surprise electoral win

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Earth

Twin moves on Arctic drilling stir environmental debate

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Health

New one-in-two cancer figure sounds scarier than it is

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Life

Lilac and turquoise are as basic as red and orange

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Life

Zoologger: Judo spider finds armoured foe's Achilles heel

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Technology

Möbius strips of light made for the first time

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Opinion

Trauma of war echoes down the generations

Health

Trauma of war echoes down the generations

Its effects travel far and wide, says psychologist Zahava Solomon, who studies war and captivity trauma in Israel – "the stress laboratory of the world"

Opinion

Life

Why violent crime is plummeting in the rich world

Opinion

Technology

Time to put your digital affairs in order

Opinion

Aperture

Monstrous algal bloom erupts in world's largest lake

Earth

Monstrous algal bloom erupts in world's largest lake

(Image: KARI/ESA) YOU'RE looking at a gigantic algal bloom – seen from space. This is the Caspian Sea, located between Europe and Asia, bordered by Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan and, seen in the lower portion of the photograph, Kazakhstan. The sea – or lake, if you prefer, as it is landlocked – is enormous, with …

Regulars

Features

No one in control: The algorithms that run our lives

Technology

No one in control: The algorithms that run our lives

(Image: David Lemm) Software is deciding who gets a loan, who counts as a citizen and what prices you pay online. Who will step in when the machines get out of hand? "AMAZON is all kinds of broken." If you caught that tweet on 12 December last year, and were quick, you might have grabbed …

Features

The secret life of your home

Features

Earth

Secrets of the home: What your house says about you

Features

Earth

Secrets of the home: My house made me do it

Features

Earth

Secrets of the home: The weather in your hallway

Features

Earth

Secrets of the home: The chemical reactor you live in

Features

Life

Secrets of the home: Befriend your microbe roommates

Features

Technology

Secrets of the home: Is your toaster spying on you?

Features

Life

Cormorants: the world's most hated bird?

Features

Culturelab

<i>The Hard Problem</i> is Stoppard's problem with science

Life

The Hard Problem is Stoppard's problem with science

(Image: Johan Persson) After a long wait and a great track record transmuting science into art, Tom Stoppard's new play takes on the hard problem of consciousness – and loses As I got up to leave at the end of The Hard Problem , a man in the seat behind me was behaving rather strangely. …

CultureLab

Life

An encyclopaedic guide to the dark genome

CultureLab

Regulars

Feedback: What is an irreducibly simple model?

Feedback: What is an irreducibly simple model?

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more An irreducibly simple model A COLLEAGUE forwards a paper with a most wonderful title: "Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model" ( doi.org/znq ). The paper's authors are Christopher Monckton, with whom we have history; Willie …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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