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This week's magazine

10 March 2012

Issue 2855

New Scientist issue 2855 cover
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Editor's picks

How to dismantle a nuclear reactor

Earth

How to dismantle a nuclear reactor

Features
Middle age: A triumph of human evolution

Humans

Middle age: A triumph of human evolution

Features
Medieval modern master: Colour decoded before its time

Physics

Medieval modern master: Colour decoded before its time

Features
Intergalactic subway: All aboard the wormhole express

Space

Intergalactic subway: All aboard the wormhole express

Features

Table of contents

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Wild bear uses a stone to exfoliate

Life

Wild bear uses a stone to exfoliate

Can't "bear" that itch IT IS impossible not to scratch an itch, so it's no wonder this brown bear reached for some help. It was seen scratching its skin with rocks – the first bear definitively known to use a tool. In July 2011, Volker Deecke of the University of Cumbria , UK, was on …

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Health

Gas-filled aspirin is a potent anti-cancer drug

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Health

Exercise instantly boosts fat-busting genes

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Spider silk spun into violin strings

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Tevatron collider's mighty boost for Higgs hunt

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Mutant bird flu virus still as deadly as first thought

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Oceans acidifying at unprecedented speed

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Health

Symptoms of late-stage Alzheimer's can be delayed

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Cheetah robot breaks land speed record

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Seedy scientists are polluting Antarctica

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60 Seconds

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Health

Exotic electrical effect pops up in soft mammalian tissue

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Fukushima meltdown: the nuclear industry, one year on

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Earth

Fear after Fukushima to push up carbon emissions

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Earth

Japan's refusenik farmers tackle nuclear waste

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Technology

Physics 'demon' reveals fundamental heat of forgetting

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Life

Extra female genes make men more masculine

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Life

Gorilla DNA unlocks secrets of our species

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Life

Bonobos are caring because they are led by females

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Technology

Metal detector can identify buried bombs

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Health

Cancer chimeras complicate therapy

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Snakes on an inclined plane control scales to climb

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Peaceable matter-antimatter pairs glimpsed in the lab

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First Americans: were they Iberian, not Siberian?

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Broken coral embryos become clone army

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Technology

AI designs its own video game

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Technology

Avatars set to shape real-world habits

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Life

Be school prom queen in 'social physics' game

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Technology

A different way to game

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Technology

Splish, splash games with the water controller

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Life

Superfast drugs target shape-shifting enzymes

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Opinion

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.

Fukushima's dirty inheritance

A YEAR on, the world is still feeling the effects of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated eastern Japan. The dual catastrophe is estimated to have killed almost 20,000 people. Yet it is the consequences of the subsequent partial meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which has so far killed no one, that …

Opinion

Midlife needn't be a crisis

Opinion

Health

Should we rewrite the autism rule book?

Opinion

How LulzSec kept itself safe during the summer of 'lulz'

Opinion

Life

The story of language: culture not nature

Opinion

Aperture

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.

The first portable digital camera – cassette included

See more: To see the image this article refers to, keep checking Picture of the Day on our news blog Short Sharp Science WEIGHING in at 4 kilograms and standing a proud 22 centimetres tall, this is the world's first portable digital camera. In 1975, Steve Sasson and his team at Kodak's Elmgrove plant in …

Regulars

Features

How to dismantle a nuclear reactor

Earth

How to dismantle a nuclear reactor

The decommissioning of nuclear power plants will become a huge global business in the 21st century

Features

Humans

Middle age: A triumph of human evolution

Features

Physics

Medieval modern master: Colour decoded before its time

Features

Space

Intergalactic subway: All aboard the wormhole express

Features

Culturelab

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.

The only humans left on Earth

See more: An illustrated version of this article will be published within the next two weeks on our CultureLab books and arts blog

In Lone Survivors, Chris Stringer explains how forensic technology offers surprising insights into our evolutionary predecessors

CultureLab

Make yourself more creative

CultureLab

Speed-dating, stolen cars and Scrabble

CultureLab

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.

Enigma Number 1688

Eight prime factors The numbers 38 and 77 are each the product of two primes; furthermore their difference (39) and their sum (115) are also each the product of two primes, and the eight primes involved are all different. There is one other pair of two-digit positive integers for which all this is true. What …

Regulars

Regulars

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.

Feedback: Illegible demand for legibility

Illegible demand for legibility OUR item expressing suspicion that the UK Royal Mail is deliberately smudging the printing on its "write the postcode clearly" messages (18 February) reminded Howard Greenwood that he once received a piece of homework marked by his physics teacher bearing an unreadable scrawl in the usual red ink. Howard took his …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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