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New Scientist

Issue: 06/06/2009

Ref: NS060609

Availability: 59 in stock.

No.2711

• Affairs of the pig-human heart

  Editorial p5

  Many people are alive and well thanks to pig parts, so why not a heart or another organ?

• Inflatable stairway to heaven

  Editorial p5

  A titanic hybrid between a bouncy castle and a Tinkertoy could let us climb into space without the need for a rocket – and the technology to build it is available now

• Just do the swine flu tests

  Editorial p5

  Doctors and flu scientists are saying what New Scientist revealed two weeks ago: swine flu could be spreading round Europe undetected because many ill people aren't being tested

• What's hot on NewScientist.com

  Editorial > What's hot on NewScientist.com p5

• Drastic action may be needed over US flood risk

  News > Upfront p6

  Measures such as river barrages and floating buildings may be needed to protect people on the north-east coast of North America from rising seas

• Make or break time for space station research

  News > Upfront p6

  The debate over the value of the International Space Station is set to heat up, as its crew prepares to dramatically expand scientific research

• Ocean rules could lead to Arctic 'pole of peace'

  News > Upfront p6

  Individual countries have begun staking claims over the parts of the Arctic – but under marine law, a large chunk of it is effectively beyond national control

• Pressure builds for action on global warming

  News > Upfront p6

  Activists, and scientists backed by Kofi Annan, reveal true cost of climate change, ahead of negotiations this week

• Ocean volcano surprise, Witches begone, and more

  News > 60 Seconds p7

• Genetically modified crops get the Vatican's blessing

  News > Upfront p7

  The pope's scientists endorse GM food as a solution to world hunger, but their conclusions prove controversial

• New swine flu cases point to invisible pandemic

  News > Upfront p7

  Chance testing of two Greek students reveals that community spread of H1N1 swine flu is happening – testing rules should change, say health experts

• Revealed: Why curve balls are so hard to hit

  News > Upfront p7

  An animation, which has been voted Visual Illusion of the Year, suggests that the spinning balls are difficult to hit because they are perceived by two different visual systems

• Hybrid hearts could solve transplant shortage

  News > This Week pp8-9

  Stripped-down pig tissue seeded with human cells has the potential to create a virtually limitless supply of human-compatible organs

• 'It's a matter of time before resistance to artemisinin is widespread. The concern is that it will spread before we can develop a new drug to replace it'

  News > Soundbites p10

  Biologist Glenn McConkey of the University of Leeds, UK, warns of malaria's growing resistance to the most effective anti-malarial drug (The Guardian, London, 29 May)

• Earth's clearest skies revealed

  News > This Week p10

  Possibly the clearest skies on Earth have been found in the Antarctic – but to exploit them, astronomers will have to set up a telescope in one of the planet's harshest climates

• Hot rock power scheme could brew trouble in Eden

  News > This Week p11

  The launch of a UK project to extract geothermal energy from hot dry rocks comes soon after two high-profile setbacks elsewhere in the world

• Parasite may increase your odds of an auto accident

  News > This Week p11

  People who lack a certain protein on their blood cells, and are infected with a parasite caught from cats, may be more likely to have slow reaction times

• Time moves too slowly for hyperactive boys

  News > This Week p12

  Children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder might appear rowdy and indisciplined, but they are actually trying to cope with a faulty perception of time

• Mice get human language gene

  News > This Week p13

  The transgenic mice have different calls from those of normal mice and certain learning pathways in their brains appear to be enhanced

• Probiotic bug is a frog lifesaver

  News > This Week p14

  A deadly fungus is spreading fast among the world's amphibians, but a protective skin bacterium offers conservationists hope of a defence

• Will summer never end in Titan's south?

  News > This Week p14

  Clouds are lingering in the southern hemisphere of Saturn's moon Titan much later than expected and summer is refusing to end

• Why cockiness counts for more than expertise

  News > This Week p15

  Humans prefer confident advisers to cautious ones even when they're wrong, a guessing game suggests

• Broken dwarf planet may have scarred the moon

  News > In Brief p16

  The shattered remnants of a dwarf planet may have bombarded the inner planets in the early solar system, suggests a new analysis of craters on the moon

• Diseased cells could be 'fixed' and mass produced

  News > In Brief p16

  Ordinary cells from people with a genetic disease can be corrected by gene therapy and then reprogrammed to be stem cells that will produce a limitless supply of healthy cells

• Stretched neutrinos could span the universe

  News > In Brief p16

  Neutrinos left over from the big bang may stretch billions of light years across the universe, say researchers

• Yeast genes inspire anti-ageing drugs

  News > In Brief p16

  Genes that protect yeast DNA from oxidising free radicals could one day lead to drugs that prevent cancer and ageing in people.

• Botox could stop disease in its tracks

  News > In Brief p17

  The neurotoxin, commonly used as a wrinkle smoothing treatment, has been modified so that it could potentially be used to treat asthma and possibly cancer

• Continental jigsaw puzzle may reveal hidden treasures

  News > In Brief p17

  Rewinding the movement of the continents back 2.5 billion years could reveal new deposits of valuable mineral deposits

• Did first hominids live in Europe?

  News > In Brief p17

  A 12-million-year-old fossil from Spain suggests that hominids migrated into Africa before modern humans evolved

• Whales form babysitting circle

  News > In Brief p17

  Sperm whale mothers look after each other's young, giving each other the opportunity to take deep dives for food

• Cellphones could unite to broadcast disaster alerts

  Technology > News p19

  Cellphones could pass alerts from phone to phone during emergencies – even if most of the network is down, says Motorola

• Cyber security drive must 'start at home'

  Technology > News p19

  From cyber attacks on nation states down to Viagra spam, it's the home PC running malicious software that is the main weapon in criminals' arsenal, say experts

• SpaceShipTwo success puts fatal explosion in the past

  Technology > News p19

  A new solid-liquid hybrid rocket motor for SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic's commercial spacecraft, has been successfully tested

• Net gives pirate radio the last laugh

  Technology > Feature pp20-21

  The internet makes it easy for radio pirates to evade the law and even get on the air quickly again if they are caught and closed down

• Map-reading hybrids help drivers chill out

  Technology > Feature p21

  The aircon in petrol-electric hybrid vehicles tends to stop when the car does, but a GPS-enabled system can give a chilly boost just before a halt

• Inflatable tower could climb to the edge of space

  Technology > Feature p22

  A giant pneumatic structure could let people climb 20 km without the need for a rocket – and it could be constructed with current technology

• Radio-controlled bullets leave no place to hide

  Technology > Feature p22

  A rifle capable of firing explosive bullets that can be detonated within a metre of a target could let soldiers fire on snipers hiding behind objects

• Comment: Human subjects have human rights

  Comment and Analysis p24

  Biologist Jared Diamond is being sued by people he studied. The case has serious lessons for all field researchers, says Daniel Everett

• Comment: Stop these stealth drug adverts

  Comment and Analysis pp24-25

  In medical publishing, the line between editorial and advertorial has become dangerously blurred, says Sheldon Krimsky

• Interview: The father of Ida

  Opinion > Interview p25

  Jørn Hurum on what lies ahead for his "missing link" primate fossil following its controversial high-profile introduction

• Alternative medicine

  Letters p26

  David Allen Green suggests that there is an increasing trend towards complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioners threatening libel action against those who criticise them...

• Healthy vocabulary

  Letters p26

  Helen Pilcher highlights the strength of the nocebo effect, in which negative expectations can produce harmful effects. A study of the...

• Enigma Number 1548

  Opinion > Enigma p26

• How to see yourself

  Letters pp26-27

  Out-of-body experience (OBE) is an intriguing and controversial topic on which there are only a handful of publications. In their letter...

• Antimatter universe

  Letters p27

  Could it be that there is an anti-universe and that it existed, or exists, before our universe? It might explain where all the antimatter...

• Dopey regulations

  Letters p27

  The recent flurry of letters about smoking regulations in various countries prompted me to comment on the lunacy that can sometimes result from the application...

• Our unique bubble

  Letters p27

  There were excellent illustrations in your article on the multiverse...

• Pitch-perfect position

  Letters p27

  Hazel Muir reports that those who speak tonal languages are more likely to have perfect pitch. I do not have perfect...

• Power of love

  Letters p27

  The feature on ways of encouraging creativity was interesting, but there was one glaring omission - love, especially the unrequited kind...

• Power to the people

  Letters p27

  If a severe climatic or violent event were to take out several large generators, for example the Severn barrage in the UK...

• Problem participles

  Letters p27

  I found the article "Seeing with sound" by Daniel Kish inspiring. Thank you for including it in New Scientist...

• Yogi boo-boo

  Letters p27

  I won't try to represent Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's quantum physics, but I take issue with Amanda Gefter's contention that he didn't...

• Virtual twins could bring the end of animal research

  Opinion > Essay Competition p28

  Soon, we'll each have an alter ego on which to assess our medication regimes, says the winner of our "Beyond animal research" essay competition, organised in conjunction with NC3R

• Berners-Lee: We no longer fully understand the web

  Interview p29

  The inventor of the World Wide Web says its size and power over society have become so great that we no longer fully understand how it works – but he has a solution

• How to unleash your brain's inner genius

  Features > Cover Story pp30-33

  Savants have phenomenal talents in music, art and mathematics, but their brains are not fundamentally different from the rest of society – can we all develop similar abilities?

• Can science reinvent the economy?

  Features > Feature p35

  As we pick over the rubble of the world's markets, ideas from physics, engineering and biology could help to build new, more robust financial systems

• Science reinvents the economy: Bubble math

  Features > Feature p36

  Common sense would have suggested that the huge housing bubble would lead to disaster: so why did some financial institutions assess risks with models that ignored the possibility that prices might fall?

• Science reinvents the economy: The human factor

  Features > Feature pp36-37

  Purely mathematical approaches to predicting the economy have a big drawback – the irrational behaviour of people

• Science reinvents the economy: Network solutions

  Features > Feature pp37-38

  Bubbles are nothing new, but now a bubble in just one country can cause the whole world's economy to collapse – so how do we stop the dominoes toppling?

• Science reinvents the economy: Predicting the big one

  Features > Feature p38

  According to classical economics, financial crises don't happen – clearly, then, there is a lot wrong with classical economics

• Science reinvents the economy: An economy in a computer

  Features > Feature p40

  Can we pack an entire economy, with all its complex human and political interactions, into a computer? Yes, say experts, as long as we're bold enough about it

• Can science reinvent the economy 6: Out of kilter

  Features > Feature pp41-42

  Trying to predict markets in the same way as earthquakes comes with the same limitations – it does not tell us when and where the next cataclysmic event will be

• Can science reinvent the economy 7: Will it be enough?

  Features > Feature p42

  For all science can tell us, we might in the end have to accept that we are at the mercy of the markets – and ultimately human nature

• Obama's success isn't all good news for black Americans

  Features > Feature pp44-46

  The "Obama effect" has given African Americans a huge boost, but in some respects they may now face greater obstacles than before the election

• How fire made us human

  Opinion > Books & Arts p47

  Two authors argue that taming fire, and learning to cook, led to the evolution of modern humans

• Review: Beware Invisible Cows: My search for the source of the universe by Andy Martin

  Opinion > Books & Arts p48

  Ranging from tiresomely hyperbolic to transcendent, this book expresses the author's genuine wonder at the universe and our place within it

• Review: Paradise Found: Nature in America at the time of discovery by Steve Nicholls

  Opinion > Books & Arts p48

  Finely written and elegantly researched, Paradise Found is a chilling portent of how even today's depleted ecosystems will seem a cornucopia to biologically bereft future generations

• The End of the Line: Plenty of fish in the sea?

  Opinion > Books & Arts p48

  Watch this searching documentary about the plight of the world's oceans and you may think a little harder before ordering your next tuna sandwich

• How I learned to see in 3D

  Opinion > Books & Arts p49

  Cross-eyed since early infancy, neurobiologist Susan Barrys world was flat, but she defied expectation by teaching herself to see in three dimensions

• Why new radios should not be launched in tunnels

  Feedback p68

  This week's Feedback reveals how Sony regretted its choice of venue for a recent product launch, why some dinosaurs are a scam, and further proof that marketing people can be a bit special sometimes…

• Monkey business

  The Last Word > Last Word Answer p69

• Taste tribulation

  The Last Word > Last Word Answer p69

• Life on Uluru

  The Last Word > Last Word Question p69