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New Scientist

Issue: 06/03/2010

Ref: NS060310

Availability: 90 in stock.

No. 2750

• Time to accept that atheism, not god, is odd

  Editorial p3

  The more we learn about the "religion instinct", the clearer it becomes that atheism needs some explanation

• Where coercion has failed, why not try persuasion?

  Editorial p3

  Coercive interrogation is ineffective and damaging – we need a more effective and humane approach

• What's hot on NewScientist.com

  Editorial > What's hot on NewScientist.com p3

• Climategate scientist questioned in Parliament

  News > Upfront p4

  Beleaguered climate scientist Phil Jones from the University of East Anglia yesterday answered critics before a British parliamentary committee

• New element copernicium wins a symbol at last

  News > Upfront p4

  Element 112 has been given the symbol Cn, to avoid confusion with another element, an organic compound and an abbreviation used by physicists

• Volcanic explosions expected in Chile quake's wake

  News > Upfront p4

  Geologists will be watching for increased levels of volcanic activity caused by the powerful quake that struck Chile

• Massive Antarctic iceberg threatens ocean circulation

  News > Upfront pp4-5

  The loss of a huge tongue of ice off east Antarctica could affect local marine life and global ocean currents

• 60 Seconds

  News > 60 Seconds p5

  Vaccine fears in the US, a flu shot from tobacco, the Large Hadron Collider wakes up for spring, and more

• Adding oxygen to booze speeds sobriety

  News > Upfront p5

  It sounds like a drinker's dream, but could end up being their downfall if it encourages heavy drinkers to consume even more

• Mars rover Spirit could rise again

  News > Upfront p5

  NASA's declaration last month that the rover would henceforth be a stationary lander was "a little bit premature", says a rover scientist

• Organic pesticide doubles up as worm killer

  News > Upfront p5

  The protein could drag hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, if cash can be found for human trials

• The brain scanner that feels your pain

  News > This Week pp6-7

  A new technique for determining pain intensity has reignited debate over whether it can be measured objectively

• Dino-eating snake killed in action

  News > This Week p8

  A snake had just slithered into a sauropod's nesting ground, looking for dinner, but a sudden landslide enveloped and killed all involved, as stunning fossils show

• Star and flower-shaped moulds tell stem cells what to be

  News > This Week p8

  The shape makes a cell become fat or bone, which could lead to new ways of coaxing stem cells into specific tissues for transplant into people

• Brain scans now catch chemicals too

  News > This Week p9

  A way to visualise chemicals washing through the brain could vastly extend the power of fMRI, a workhorse of neuroscience

• The US is lagging on nuclear reactor technology

  News > This Week p9

  Fears over weapons proliferation has led the Obama administration to blow hot and cold over novel, safer more efficient designs

• Puffed-up planets are heated like toast

  News > This Week p10

  Wind-driven electrical currents could explain why some exoplanets are much bigger than expected – and account for Jupiter's stripes

• Decision-makers betrayed by their wide eyes

  News > This Week p11

  When people make a decision, their pupils dilate – a cue that could betray intentions, or even converse with people with locked-in syndrome

• Females wear the horns in the battle for dung

  News > This Week p12

  It is usually the male of the species who bears arms, but in the epic battle for dung, female beetles have resorted to horned aggression

• New DNA technique gives names to the unknown dead

  News > This Week p12

  More DNA can be extracted from fragments of bone or tooth, so that badly damaged victims of war or shipwrecks can be identified

• Oldest 'writing' found on 60,000-year-old eggshells

  News > This Week p13

  Could lines etched into the ancient ostrich shells be the earliest examples yet found of humans using graphic art to communicate?

• Flies' self-righting reflexes akin to early aircraft

  News > In Brief p14

  Fruit flies use stabilisation systems similar to the gyroscopes of early planes to fly straight after they're knocked off course

• Happiness ain't all it's cracked up to be

  News > In Brief p14

  Being cheery can make you selfish, and that's just the latest in a series of findings that happiness changes you – not in a good way

• Shields down! Earth's mag field may drop in a flash

  News > In Brief p14

  Even our best models would fail to predict whether Earth's magnetic field will flip, exposing us to space radiation

• Sleep wrong and you'll feel the bad fat

  News > In Brief p14

  Too much or too little sleep piles on pounds – and it's the worst kind of fat

• Mars glacier lubricant could fuel rockets

  News > In Brief p15

  The ice at the planet's north pole may be moving on a bed of salty sludge, which one day could be handy for fuel

• Mind-controlled prosthetics without brain surgery

  News > In Brief p15

  Intricate, three-dimensional hand motions have been "read" from the brain using nothing but scalp electrodes

• Women with good genes may have more sexual partners

  News > In Brief p15

  Female students with a genetically diverse immune system said they had sex with more people than their peers did

• World's most sensitive neutrino experiment begins

  News > In Brief p15

  A neutrino has travelled under Japan to hit the Super-Kamiokande detector – the experiment could shed light on why the universe is full of matter

• Automatic secretary can tame a bulging inbox

  Technology > News p17

  A new planning tool makes it easier to spot the most urgent messages in a mass of emails

• Pest control that's too hot for bugs to handle

  Technology > News p17

  A new heat treatment system turns bug-infested buildings into temporary ovens, hot enough to desiccate the pests but leaving the property unharmed

• The self-charging cellphone

  Technology > News p17

  An inner frame that allows components to slide up and down rails could allow the device to harvest power from its user's motion

• Will the anaconda or the oyster rule wave power?

  Technology > Feature pp18-19

  There's no shortage of designs to convert wave energy to electricity – now they're proving their worth at sea

• Bloom didn't start a fuel-cell revolution

  Technology > News p19

  The Californian company has grabbed the headlines, but fuel cells are already sparking a new era in energy

• Body acoustics can turn your arm into a touchscreen

  Technology > News p20

  No more fumbling with tiny touchpads: by combining acoustic sensors and a mini-projector, you can now have a keypad on your arm

• Finding the facts that online news leaves out

  Technology > News p20

  A prototype service called Tell Me More trawls the web to source quotes, figures and other information to augment any given online article

• Hybrid fusion: the third nuclear option

  Comment and Analysis pp22-23

  Fission is unsafe and fusion is decades away, but put them together and the problems melt away, say Julian Hunt and Graham O'Connor

• Journal editor: Tobacco-funded studies are bad for us

  Opinion > Interview p23

  Several journals will no longer publish research supported by the tobacco industry. Ginny Barbour, the chief editor of one of them, explains why

• Aliens can't hear you

  Letters p24

  The comments by David Brin and others about broadcasting our presence to aliens leave me doubting the validity of the inverse square law governing the...

• Evolving argument

  Letters p24

  Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini discuss what they see as flaws in Darwin's theory (6 February, p 28). They argue that Darwin, and...

• Wonderful water

  Letters p24

  In his article on the unusual properties of water (6 February, p 32), Edwin Cartlidge failed to mention the weirdest property of all: the "Mpemba"...

• Enigma Number 1585

  Opinion > Enigma p24

• Climate confusion

  Letters p25

  In his letter detailing why the Nobel committee rejected calls for new prize categories, Michael Sohlman claims that the Nobel prize in chemistry for 1995...

• Code-breaking codon

  Letters p25

  In his article on horizontal gene transfer, Mark Buchanan erroneously states that the genetic code is "universal, shared by all organisms" (23 January, p 34...

• Darwin's conscious

  Letters p25

  Our yearning for distinction from the animal world induces us to explore some weird mental byways, one of which being that we are special because...

• For the record

  Letters p25

  • We lost our sense of proportion when stating how many people there are in the world without access to banking services who could benefit from...

• Quantum petunias

  Letters p25

  In your editorial on quantum biology, you write that "the pigments used in photosynthesis use quantum calculations" (6 February, p 5...

• Weather isn't climate

  Letters p25

  Michael Payton criticises Michael Le Page's suggestion that one cannot logically draw conclusions about climate change from a single severe weather event (6 February...

• Where do atheists come from?

  Opinion > The Big Idea pp26-27

  Social scientists have long wondered why so many people believe in God. We should ask why the rest don't, say Lois Lee and Stephen Bullivant

• A measure for the multiverse

  Features > Cover Story pp28-31

  Is our universe just one of many? The idea divides physicists, but now one researcher has found the first hint that the multiverse really exists

• Extermination in paradise

  Features > Feature pp32-35

  Rats have long wreaked bloody devastation in the wildlife haven of South Georgia – now conservationists are planning brutal retaliation

• Bugging bugs: Learning to speak microbe

  Features > Feature pp36-39

  Far from being silent loners, bacteria are little chatterboxes – when they're not snooping on us. Perhaps we should brush up our conversational skills

• Beyond torture: the future of interrogation

  Features > Feature pp40-43

  Coercive techniques like waterboarding can inflict as much psychological harm as crude physical torture. But do they work?

• Extreme physics and the ends of the earth

  Opinion > Books & Arts p44

  Anil Ananthaswamy visits some of the bleakest locations on Earth to explore the most tantalising mysteries of the cosmos in The Edge of Physics

• Night at the museum

  Opinion > Gallery p45

  Photographer Richard Barnes explains the allure of museums for artists and why nothing beats the renovation of an old-fashioned diorama

• How to build a way out of disaster

  Careers > The Insider pp46-47

  When it comes to earthquakes, there's lot of scope for engineers to help

• 50 per cent less fat than fat

  Feedback p64

  Products that contain less fat than fat, the expensive powers of energy resonance, and a black hole that eats only 7-year-olds

• Bee alert

  The Last Word > Last Word Answer p65

• Modern remains

  The Last Word > Last Word Question p65

• Sound retail

  The Last Word > Last Word Question p65

• Wipe-clean surface

  The Last Word > Last Word Question p65