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This week's magazine

12 March 2016

Issue 3064

New Scientist issue 3064 cover
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Editor's picks

nudge

Humans

Wise interventions – when your brain needs a stronger nudge

Opinion
brain power

Life

A mind trick that can break down your brain's barrier to success

Features
plastic shapes

Plastic fantastic: The quest to create the smartest materials

Features
Europe apes

Life

Key moments in human evolution happened far from our Africa home

Features
shadow

Health

I can tell you how to heal yourself with hypnosis

Features
pills

Health

Tap the placebo effect to unlock your body's healing powers

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

nudge

Humans

Wise interventions – when your brain needs a stronger nudge

You’ve probably heard of nudges. You’re probably been nudged. Now there’s a new way to make you a better person on the horizon

Opinion

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Solar panels on roof of building in New York City

Technology

Blockchain-based microgrid gives power to consumers in New York

Solar power equals off grid electricity Something odd is happening on President Street in Brooklyn. While solar panels on the roofs of terraced houses soak up sun, a pair of computers connected to the panels quietly crunch numbers. First, they count how many electrons are being generated. Then, they write that number to a blockchain. …

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Life

The secret of beetles that waterski so fast they vanish

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Health

Shock of good news can hurt your heart as much as grief

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Life

Rare Australian bird farms nourishing manna from trees

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Life

Anxious people hear some sounds as more important than they are

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Space

Exclusive photos: Clouds seen on Pluto for first time

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Earth

Many of world’s lakes are vanishing and some may be gone forever

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Space

Galactic collisions doom entire star systems to black-hole death

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Life

Ghostly deep sea octopus filmed at record depth of 4290 metres

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Technology

Virtual reality could be an ethical minefield – are we ready?

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Life

Dinosaur-era geckos and chameleons perfectly preserved in amber

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Life

Orangutan population in Sumatra more than doubles after census

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Life

What do chimp ‘temples’ tell us about the evolution of religion?

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Space

Mercury once had a graphite crust floating on a sea of magma

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Space

ExoMars probe set to sniff out signs of life on the Red Planet

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Technology

A social network built for donating aims to fix slacktivism

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Life

Urine from premature babies could repair damaged kidneys

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Technology

Bionic fingertip gives amputee a feel for different textures

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Life

Farmers may have been accidentally making GMOs for millennia

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Technology

One Per Cent

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Life

China unveils vision of greener future in its five-year plan

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Health

Banned drug used by Sharapova staved off fatigue in animal tests

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Health

Zika virus disease renamed to reflect range of impacts on fetus

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Space

Billion-light-year galactic wall may be largest object in cosmos

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Life

Hands off our health records, say 1 in 6 UK adults

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Space

Space X reusable rocket won't be reused after heavy landing

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Life

60 Seconds

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Opinion

New York

Earth

Nature's fair share? Behind the call to hand back half of Earth

Veteran ecologist E. O. Wilson is unleashing his big idea for staving off irreversible damage to the planet. Will conservationists embrace it, wonders Fred Pearce

Opinion

Technology

A new wave of tech will test our automatic faith in machines

Opinion

Humans

Female orgasm debates reveal the sexism in sex medicine

Opinion

Analysis

A field of crops

Earth

Will biggest danger from global warming be the change in diets?

On the menu for now Global warming will make it harder for people to eat more fruit and vegetables, leading to 500,000 deaths in 2050 that would otherwise have been avoided, according to a modelling study. That means the biggest health impact of climate change in the short term could result from its effect on …

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Aperture

toothpaste

Earth

Little mountains of toothpaste highlight the plight of the Alps

IF THE small mounds in the image above brings to mind the mountains below, that's deliberate. They have been arranged as a ghostly rebuke to their removal from the Apuan Alps in Tuscany, Italy. These mountains are the source of prized Carrara marble, the same pure white stone that was used to create Michelangelo's David …

Regulars

Features

plastic shapes

Plastic fantastic: The quest to create the smartest materials

Plastics transformed life in the 20th century, but we’re still amateurs at making them. Can we create another polymer revolution by mimicking nature?

Features

Life

A mind trick that can break down your brain's barrier to success

Features

Health

Tap the placebo effect to unlock your body's healing powers

Features

Health

I can tell you how to heal yourself with hypnosis

Features

Life

Key moments in human evolution happened far from our Africa home

Features

Culturelab

The Imitation Game Tove Kjellmark

Technology

Art tries to pass the Turing test

Manchester, the old hometown of artificial intelligence, hosts two exhibitions with very different takes on thinking machines and synthetic life

CultureLab

Humans

A Natural History of Human Morality: Why being good is a miracle

CultureLab

Life

Animal Electricity: How the forces inside cells actually behave

CultureLab

Regulars

soup cartoon

Humans

Feedback: most herbal remedies missing a key ingredient – herbs

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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