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This week's magazine

26 August 2023

Issue 3453

New Scientist issue 3453 cover
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Editor's picks

Technology

Chip shortages are producing winners and losers in the AI gold rush

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RDMM8C Corporate data management system or DMS as a business user privacy concept and social media connection in a 3D illustration style.

Technology

It is more vital now than ever that we reclaim our digital privacy

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Unravelling the secrets of the vagus nerve will revolutionise medicine

Health

Unravelling the secrets of the vagus nerve will revolutionise medicine

Features
How we broke the water cycle and can no longer rely on rain to fall

Environment

How we broke the water cycle and can no longer rely on rain to fall

Features
Nowhere to hide: Data harvesters came for your privacy – and found it

Technology

Nowhere to hide: Data harvesters came for your privacy – and found it

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

RDMM8C Corporate data management system or DMS as a business user privacy concept and social media connection in a 3D illustration style.

Technology

It is more vital now than ever that we reclaim our digital privacy

Ignore the use of your digital data at your peril: today’s personal data businesses are profiling you in ways that could have a profound impact on your life

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Someone being vaccinated against covid-19 in LA, California, in April 2021

Health

Covid-19 antibodies may give us partial immunity to SARS and MERS

Antibodies from people who have had covid-19 or been vaccinated against it may give them partial protection against most other pathogens in the coronavirus family

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Space

Aliens on low-oxygen worlds may never discover fire

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Mind

Negative emotions really do make events seem to last longer

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Environment

Wildfires made worse by plants starting to grow earlier in the year

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Technology

Google AI predicts floods four days early in South America and Africa

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Technology

Multilingual AIs are better at responding to queries in English

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Life

Sick blackbirds go to bed earlier just like us

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Health

Air-purifying lampshade reduces indoor pollution via chemical reaction

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Humans

Ötzi the iceman was dark-skinned and balding, suggests genome analysis

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Technology

Gene-edited yeasts transform bread and give rice wine a banana taste

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Mind

Consciousness traced to specific clusters of nerve cells in the brain

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Physics

Springy ice seen for the first time may explain how clouds make rain

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Health

Wiping stem cells 'clean' could make them easier to produce

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Health

Pig kidney transplant in brain-dead man still functions after a month

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Environment

Extreme fires caused by ancient humans wiped out Californian megafauna

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Life

Flies riding on a carousel suggest that insects like to play

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Space

All of Neptune’s clouds have vanished – it may be because of the sun

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Technology

IBM has just made error correction easier for quantum computers

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Technology

3D-printed toilet is so slippery that nothing can leave a mark

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Space

Russia's Luna 25 moon mission ends in catastrophic crash

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Analysis

2MGE43Y Supporters of the Rhodes Must Fall group, wearing protective masks against the spread of coronavirus, participate in a protest calling for the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, a Victorian imperialist in southern Africa who made a fortune from mines and endowed the university's Rhodes scholarships, beneath the statue which stands on the facade of Oriel College, in Oxford, England, Tuesday, June 9, 2020. More statues of imperialist figures could be removed from Britain's streets, following the toppling of a monument to slave trader Edward Colston in the city of Bristol, the mayor of London s

Life

Is it time to do away with species names that honour odious people?

Taxonomy is embroiled in its own version of the statues culture war, and the case for abandoning names such as Anophthalmus hitleri is strong, says Graham Lawton

Comment

Technology

Chip shortages are producing winners and losers in the AI gold rush

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Environment

Climate change isn't only hammering species that live in cold places

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Aperture

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Humans

These ancient sand drawings could be a fifth type of palaeoart

Was this perfect circle with a central depression drawn by our ancestors in the sand, around 136,000 years ago? Palaeontologist Charles Helm certainly thinks so

Regulars

Features

How we broke the water cycle and can no longer rely on rain to fall

Environment

How we broke the water cycle and can no longer rely on rain to fall

We thought Earth's water cycle was resilient to human meddling, but new analysis shows our supplies of water in plants and soil that are critical to generating rainfall are dangerously low. Here is what we must do to repair the damage

Features

Health

Unravelling the secrets of the vagus nerve will revolutionise medicine

Features

Technology

Nowhere to hide: Data harvesters came for your privacy – and found it

Features

Culture

Painting showing Gregor Mendel, Austrian scientist who experimented with garden peas to establish the principle of heredity.

Comment

Disputed Inheritance review: Why do we still bother with Mendel?

Where does "father of genetics" Gregor Mendel fit in a post-genomic world? Gregory Radick has written an excellent reset

Culture

Comment

51¶¯Âþ recommends: Light-hearted crime series Poker Face

Culture

Comment

Viewfinder review: Perspective is all in a unique first-person puzzler

Culture

Comment

Whalefall review: Stunning novel about being swallowed by a whale

Culture

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.

Puzzle #236: In which order should my shopping be carried in?

Can you solve this week’s logic puzzle, Picky eaters? Plus the answer to puzzle #235

Regulars

Life

Why you shouldn't worry about keeping plants in your bedroom at night

Regulars

Tom Gauld: 'If that's Cern, I'm not here'

Regulars

Twisteddoodles on what's new in science

Regulars

Regulars

Young adults fall over if texting while walking, find scientists

Young adults fall over if texting while walking, find scientists

Feedback is disappointed to realise that older adults aren't considered in a piece of research about how texting while walking interferes with "locomotor tasks", but delighted to discover an academic with no fewer than 22 abbreviations attached to their name

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Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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