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This week's magazine

9 August 2014

Issue 2981

New Scientist issue 2981 cover
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Editor's picks

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.

Space

Snap-happy space fans deserve quick pics

Opinion
Who's flying this thing? End in sight for pilots

Technology

Who's flying this thing? End in sight for pilots

Features
Let the sunshine in: We need Vitamin D more than ever

Health

Let the sunshine in: We need Vitamin D more than ever

Features
Where the wild things are: Big beasts return to Europe

Life

Where the wild things are: Big beasts return to Europe

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

Who's driving? Autonomous vehicles have a problem

Technology

Who's driving? Autonomous vehicles have a problem

There’s a strong case to be made for remotely piloted planes and self-driving cars – but letting a machine drive flies in the face of human nature

Opinion

Space

Snap-happy space fans deserve quick pics

Opinion

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Dinosaurs shrank for 50 million years to become birds

Life

Dinosaurs shrank for 50 million years to become birds

From left to right: a neotheropod, a tetanuran, a coelurosaur, a paravian and Archaeopteryx (Image: Davide Bonnadonna) It took 50 million years of continual shrinking to turn massive, lumbering dinosaurs into the first small flying birds . "No other dinosaur group has undergone such a long and extended period of miniaturisation," says Mike Lee of …

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Space

Next rover will pull oxygen from Martian air

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Life

Extinct mega penguin was tallest and heaviest ever

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Life

FBI errors throw forensic convictions into question

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Space

Comet-mapping Rosetta spacecraft prepares for duty

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Technology

Messaging app lets you leave secrets on street corners

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Earth

Flip the birds: Migration began in the north not south

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Health

Stem cell scientist found dead in apparent suicide

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Health

Israel withdraws, but Gaza's health system is on brink

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Missing mercury pollution is enough for mass poisoning

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Space

US is wasting money on too many spy satellites

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60 Seconds

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Earth

Deadliest Ebola outbreak being driven by urbanisation

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Language of chemistry is unveiled by molecular make-up

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Technology

Magnets join race to replace transistors in computers

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Life

Human exodus may have reached China 100,000 years ago

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Life

Stomach rumbles start in the back of your brain

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Earth

Massive smart light lab tests tech to slash emissions

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Technology

City and rural super-dialects exposed via Twitter

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Technology

Machine predicts heart attacks 4 hours before doctors

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Technology

One Per Cent

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Technology

How the weirdest designs can become great paper planes

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Earth

How to stop toxic blooms clogging up Lake Erie

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Life

Grizzly bears become 'diabetic' when they hibernate

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Health

Cold potatoes could counter health effects of red meat

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Space

Saturn moon may host its own Dead Sea

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Technology

Japanese paper cuts make graphene extra stretchy

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Earth

Uncertainty surrounds massacre of indigenous group

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Life

Zoologger: Hero ant jumps off cliff to eject invaders

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Opinion

Comet mission must not keep space fans in the dark

Space

Comet mission must not keep space fans in the dark

The European Space Agency should change tack and not sit on pictures from a pioneering mission to a comet, says a space science writer

Opinion

Life

My recreational drugs can defeat organised crime

Opinion

Health

I won the Nobel by experimenting on myself

Opinion

Analysis

Traffic light hackers could cause jams across the US

Technology

Traffic light hackers could cause jams across the US

Sometimes it's easy being green BRANDEN GHENA pulls his car up under a traffic light in a city in Michigan. He plugs a radio transmitter into the car's power adapter, connects it to his laptop and, with a few keyboard strokes, takes control of every traffic light in town. "We were able to advance the …

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Aperture

The spy who bugged me: spook kit from the 1960s

Technology

The spy who bugged me: spook kit from the 1960s

(Image: CIA Museum) ANYONE who read Peter Wright's book Spycatcher will be familiar with the tricks he and his MI5 colleagues used as they "bugged and burgled" their way around London in the 1950s and 1960s, listening and watching for signs of the Red Menace. Drilling silently into walls to plant bugs, they eavesdropped on …

Regulars

Features

Who's flying this thing? End in sight for pilots

Technology

Who's flying this thing? End in sight for pilots

Video: Pilotless jet lands on ship Computer pilots could make human error a thing of the past. But would you get on a plane flown by a machine instead of a captain? 1 JUNE 2009: Air France flight 447 is cruising from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it hits a tropical storm in the …

Features

Health

Let the sunshine in: We need Vitamin D more than ever

Features

Life

Where the wild things are: Big beasts return to Europe

Features

Culturelab

Festival shows the promises and perils of open data

Festival shows the promises and perils of open data

People enjoying the Open Knowledge Festival (Image: Gregor Fischer) Governments and big businesses want information to be free, but how will it work? A Berlin festival last week cast a friendly but critical eye over the idea From science journals to research data, there is a movement towards setting data free for everyone to use. …

CultureLab

Physics

The surprising power of the unseen

CultureLab

Regulars

Feedback: Plumbing to be proud of

Feedback: Plumbing to be proud of

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more Plumbing to be proud of FEEDBACK'S random-access piling system has thrown up Wayne Plummer's intriguing photograph of a sign in a hotel in Saffron Walden, UK. "This en-suite bathroom," it declares, "is fitted with a Saniflow toilet which will not …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

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