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This week's magazine

11 October 2014

Issue 2990

New Scientist issue 2990 cover
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Editor's picks

Nowhere to hide: the danger of satellite spies

Space

Nowhere to hide: the danger of satellite spies

Opinion
Wonder stuff: Glass that will store your info for ever

Technology

Wonder stuff: Glass that will store your info for ever

Features
Wonder stuff: Shrimp plus spider kills plastic

Technology

Wonder stuff: Shrimp plus spider kills plastic

Features
Wonder stuff: Frozen smoke to clean the world

Technology

Wonder stuff: Frozen smoke to clean the world

Features
Wonder stuff: Heat scavengers promise energy bonanza

Technology

Wonder stuff: Heat scavengers promise energy bonanza

Features
Wonder stuff: Amazing material that <i>does</i> grow on trees

Technology

Wonder stuff: Amazing material that does grow on trees

Features
Upside-down world: the goggles that remake reality

Life

Upside-down world: the goggles that remake reality

Features
Automatic authors: Making machines that tell tales

Life

Automatic authors: Making machines that tell tales

Features
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.

Technology

Wonder stuff: Electron freeway for cool gadgets

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

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.

Life

Cave art discovery is rewriting human prehistory

IF YOU look at the cave paintings pictured in " World's oldest hand stencil found in Indonesian cave ", you could be forgiven for thinking that they were from Lascaux, Pech Merle, or another celebrated site in western Europe. But you'd be a long way wide of the mark. They are actually from Sulawesi, about …

Opinion

Space

Nowhere to hide: the danger of satellite spies

Opinion

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Cerebellum's growth spurt turned monkeys into humans

Life

Cerebellum's growth spurt turned monkeys into humans

All the bits work together, with the cerebellum helping to orchestrate it all When we search for the seat of humanity, are we looking at the wrong part of the brain ? Most neuroscientists assume that the neocortex, the brain's distinctive folded outer layer, is the thing that makes us uniquely human. But a new …

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Health

'Perfect storm' turned HIV from local to global killer

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Earth

The world is warming faster than we thought

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Space

Vast glaciers carved out Martian Grand Canyon

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Technology

Snowflake-shaped networks are easiest to mend

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Health

What drug-data ruling means for pharma firms and you

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Life

Birds colour-match their nests for camouflage

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Technology

Real Holodeck turns your living room into a game

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No fear: thrill-seekers fail to recognise a threat

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Space

World's first space detective agency launched

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Technology

Chicago uses big data to save itself from urban ills

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Space

One Per Cent

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Health

Womb transplant: old uterus as good as a 20-year-old's

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Space

Super-close supernova used to map the Cigar Galaxy

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Space

Moon water blew in on solar wind

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Earth

Clever clams and algae show how best to harvest light

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Nobels scooped by blue LEDs and our brain's satnav

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Health

All countries likely to see Ebola cases by year's end

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Earth

World not on course to meet 2020 biodiversity targets

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Earth

Martian methane sniffer adapted for Earth

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60 Seconds

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Life

Found: closest link to Eve, our universal ancestor

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Life

World's oldest hand stencil found in Indonesian cave

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Technology

Computer mind meld gives voice to man after a stroke

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Health

Exercise may be the best anti-ageing pill

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Physics

Inside exotic dead stars are piles of waffles

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Earth

Wild panda land threatened by China's forest reforms

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Health

LSD's ability to make minds malleable revisited

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Environment

No escape from hunting harvestman's sticky grasp

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Opinion

Let science decide the voting age

Life

Let science decide the voting age

Research on the adolescent brain can help us decide whether 16-year-olds should have the vote

Opinion

Health

We must try a lot harder to beat fake antimalarials

Opinion

Technology

What I'd ask Spider-Man, mascot of bio-inspiration

Opinion

Analysis

Virtual reality throws you in at the deep end

Technology

Virtual reality throws you in at the deep end

The latest prototype of virtual reality headset Oculus Rift allows you to step right into the movies you watch and the games you play

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Technology

Gamers polled on Xbox can predict US election results

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Aperture

Grizzled veteran chimp shares snack with stripling

Life

Grizzled veteran chimp shares snack with stripling

(Image: Anup Shah shahrogersphotography.com) MEET Siri, the fresh young eastern chimpanzee on the left. When this photo was taken Siri was 4. Faustino, on the right, is a grizzled 22-year-old. They aren't related, so it's a little strange to see the veteran male sharing a snack (in this case, lemongrass berries) with a youngling. What's …

Regulars

Features

Wonder stuff: Glass that will store your info for ever

Technology

Wonder stuff: Glass that will store your info for ever

(Image: Dik Wiersma/SPL) Hard drives can be wiped. DVDs degrade. So let's do like Superman and record our most precious memories in shards of data-hungry glass In the Superman comics, the eponymous hero occasionally flies to a crystal fortress where he can access memories of his long-obliterated homeland, stored in shards of crystal. Wouldn't it …

Features

Technology

Wonder stuff: Shrimp plus spider kills plastic

Features

Technology

Wonder stuff: Frozen smoke to clean the world

Features

Technology

Wonder stuff: Heat scavengers promise energy bonanza

Features

Technology

Wonder stuff: Amazing material that does grow on trees

Features

Life

Upside-down world: the goggles that remake reality

Features

Life

Automatic authors: Making machines that tell tales

Features

Technology

Wonder stuff: Electron freeway for cool gadgets

Features

Culturelab

How big data algorithms see us – while they eat us up

Technology

How big data algorithms see us – while they eat us up

Algorithms know nothing of the heart, but they still cash in on it (Image: Plainpicture/Beyond) From home shopping to homeland security, big data's sausage machine is devouring us all, according to Christian Rudder's future-looking Dataclysm FOUR years ago I interviewed Sam Yagan, then CEO of OKCupid, about the mathematics underlying his free matchmaking site. Yagan …

CultureLab

Life

A life spent chasing down how whales evolved

CultureLab

More

Lighting dark: Fixing academia's mental health problem

Health

Lighting dark: Fixing academia's mental health problem

(Image: Gary Waters/Ikon Images) Academia is starting to acknowledge the depression and anxiety that some faculty members, students and postdocs experience – and help is there As an academic, Sarah Boon was extremely successful. She landed a tenured position a mere six years after completing her PhD. A stack of publications in high-end journals led …

Careers

Regulars

Feedback: Einstein said: I didn't say that

Feedback: Einstein said: I didn't say that

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more Einstein didn't say that ALBERT EINSTEIN'S name appears to be a magical talisman on internet quotations, we have noted (6 September) . Our request for examples of it being taken in vain produced an enthusiastic, if disgruntled, response from you. …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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