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This week's magazine

6 August 2016

Issue 3085

New Scientist issue 3085 cover
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Editor's picks

India polio campaign

Health

Can polio success help India improve its public health?

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New Scientist logo

Humans

We need a new secular approach to dignity

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Miracle meal or rotten swindle? The truth about superfoods

Health

Miracle meal or rotten swindle? The truth about superfoods

Features
Rwanda

Humans

Does science undermine human rights?

Features
Sheldon and Cole

Life

Enter an ecologist's playground with the birdman of Wytham Woods

Features
Blackhole a/w

Space

Have black holes hurled half the universe into the wilderness?

Features
Chia seeds

Health

Superfoods on trial: How can we know if they work?

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

blueberry

Health

'Superfood' doesn't mean anything, so let's stop using it

Although some foods have superior nutritional value, there’s no incentive for manufacturers to define terms like superfood. The ambiguity hides the true facts

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Humans

We need a new secular approach to dignity

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Controversial pesticides may be lowering the sperm count of bees

Life

Controversial pesticides may be lowering the sperm count of bees

Out for the count Male bees may have inadvertently been taking contraceptives – a possible factor in the alarming decline in bee populations across North America and Europe over the past 15 years. Neonicotinoid pesticides , a controversial class of neurotoxins used in agriculture for pest control, significantly impairs the fertility of male honeybees, according …

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Life

Orangutan learns to mimic human conversation for the first time

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Earth

Spiky new ant species is named after Game of Thrones dragons

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Space

Torn-apart galaxy may be exacting revenge on the Milky Way

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Health

Legal ketone sports supplement pushes athletes further, faster

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Technology

Squishy cubes with a secret smile could be used for prosthetics

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Technology

Detective gulls sniff out illegally dumped trash from the skies

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Life

Inbreeding has destroyed the English bulldog’s genetic diversity

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Health

Autoimmune diseases may be side effect of a strong immune system

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Technology

Now you see me: true invisibility cloak impossible to build

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Technology

US police use machine learning to curb their own violence

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Health

Mysterious dark brain cells linked to Alzheimer’s and stress

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Health

Google firm hopes to control organs with electrical signals

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Health

Child dies in anthrax outbreak linked to thawed reindeer corpse

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Technology

Troll hunters: the Twitterbots that fight against online abuse

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One Per Cent

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Physics

Mathematicians finally starting to understand epic ABC proof

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Health

Pregnant women travel warning as Florida Zika cases rise to 14

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Health

High Court backs campaign to fund preventative HIV drug on NHS

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Space

Fleet of robots could hunt for life on icy moon Enceladus

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Earth

African ibis and South American coati among 37 on EU’s kill list

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Life

First evidence birds nap in flight without dropping out of sky

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Life

60 Seconds

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Life

America's last mammoths died of thirst on an Alaskan island

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Life

Videos reveal the Russian doll parasitic world of the deep seas

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Life

Found: brain switches that wake flies up and send them to sleep

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Space

Ghost particles may explain why gravity is so surprisingly weak

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Analysis

India polio campaign

Health

Can polio success help India improve its public health?

The legacy of polio eradication gives India a golden opportunity to fix its scandalously poor healthcare system. Will it take it?

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Humans

Banking is still risky business as usual despite new rules

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Life

Transgender Olympians in Rio don't have an unfair advantage

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Humans

July was bad news but I’m fine – so why do I feel so terrible?

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Aperture

rocket factory

Space

Inside NASA's towering rocket factory before deep space mission

YOU'RE standing in a colossal edifice, gawping upwards. Towering above your head are the 10 levels of platforms for working on rockets as they are built and readied for launch. One day this structure, the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, will house the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion …

Regulars

Features

Miracle meal or rotten swindle? The truth about superfoods

Health

Miracle meal or rotten swindle? The truth about superfoods

Trendy foods like wheatgrass and goji berries are lauded for their miraculous health benefits, but do the claims stack up? 51¶¯Âþ chews on the evidence

Features

Humans

Does science undermine human rights?

Features

Space

Have black holes hurled half the universe into the wilderness?

Features

Life

Enter an ecologist's playground with the birdman of Wytham Woods

Features

Health

Superfoods on trial: How can we know if they work?

Features

Culture

Brexit

Health

Why we're funny about facts and prefer emotions

From Brexit and vaccines to climate change and GM foods, why do humans find expert advice so hard to take? Two new books have a lot of suggestions

Culture

Life

Brush up against the colourful limitations of our vision

Culture

Space

Iridium: story of a communications solution no one listened to

Culture

Regulars

muclear deterrent

Feedback: It’s sheer madness to give up on MAD, says May

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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