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A nation of willing guinea pigs?

Editorial p1

Opening up the records of the UK's health service could benefit the health of people round the world

Can citizen banking neuter the fat cats?

Editorial p3

Peer-to-peer lending aims to do to banking what P2P software did to the music industry. What if it succeeds?

The Higgs is only half the problem

Editorial p3

Finding the world's most wanted particle would be a triumph for experimenters – and a challenge for theorists

China's consumers emit more than US for the first time

News > Upfront p4

For the first time, carbon dioxide emissions from China's domestic consumption are greater than those of the US

Mathematical matrix multiplier sees first advance in 24 years

News > Upfront p4

A new method of matrix multiplication is a theoretical triumph that might one day have practical implications too

Mystery disease is killing Arctic seals

News > Upfront p4

Veterinarians in Alaska are at a loss to explain a disease that has killed almost 200 Arctic ringed seals since July

Smallest habitable world around sun-like star found

News > Upfront p4

The planet Kepler-22b, which may be rocky, is just 2.4 times as wide as Earth and sits right in the middle of the "Goldilocks" zone around its star

60 Seconds

News > 60 Seconds p5

Goodbye to Phobos-Grunt, why marathons, triathlons and alpine cycling can be bad for your heart, and when the Dead Sea almost died

Embryonic stem cells to be made available for free

News > Upfront p5

The UK Stem Cell Bank is about to receive a deposit of human embryonic stem cells – researchers will be able to withdraw them for free

Indian snakebite deaths 23 times higher than thought

News > Upfront p5

There is a huge mismatch between the true number of deaths from snakebite and official records

Signals point to a light Higgs boson

News > Upfront p5

Rumours abound that teams at the Large Hadron Collider have seen a sign of the Higgs boson. If they have, it will mean the standard model needs extending

Chimp markets reveal evolution of friendship

News > This Week pp6-7

Wild chimps trade tools, food and favours to maintain group harmony

Chimp brains may be hard-wired to evolve language

News > This Week p7

Synaesthesia-like abilities in chimps provide clues to how our early ancestors evolved their first words

Neutrinos give US best shot at post-Tevatron glory

News > This Week pp8-9

The world's science superpower may no longer possess the world's most powerful particle smasher, but it isn't giving up the ghost

Birth simulator reduces chance of emergency C-sections

News > This Week p10

Women who are likely to find giving birth especially difficult can now be accurately identified using a computer simulator and offered a planned caesarean

Ötzi the iceman's stomach throws up a surprise

News > This Week p10

The theory that Ötzi was caught and killed after a lengthy chase clashes with new evidence that he sat down for a leisurely meal an hour before his death

Abused children's brains work like soldiers' do

News > This Week p12

Brain scans show that children from violent homes detect threats in the same way that soldiers do

Sex on the brain is different for males and females

News > This Week p12

As male rats become more sexually experienced parts of their brain disappear, whereas in females, these same parts seem to instigate sexual behaviour

Entangled diamonds blur quantum-classical divide

News > This Week p14

Two diamonds large enough to pick up with your fingers have been made to share one quantum state - the feat is normally achieved with much smaller objects

Did comet killing spark Christmas light show?

In Brief p17

A grisly end for an errant comet may have prompted one of the biggest gamma-ray bursts of all time on 25 December 2010

Fooling immune system reverses mice multiple sclerosis

In Brief p17

Priming mice to produce a protein called interferon-b shuts down the immune attack on nerves that cause MS symptoms

Leaning to the left makes the world seem smaller

In Brief p17

People underestimate everything from the height of buildings to the number of Michael Jackson chart-toppers when they unwittingly lean to the left

Two biggest black holes ever found

In Brief p17

"Supermassive" barely covers it – these holes have smashed the previous mass record of 6 billion suns, and one may weigh six times as much

Naked mole rats make deformed, sluggish sperm

In Brief p18

Perhaps because only one male breeds at a time, the eusocial, queen-led mammals make some of the worst sperm on record

Police can identify suspect's eye colour from DNA

In Brief p18

A new tool can predict whether DNA left at a crime scene has come from someone with blue or brown eyes, or something in between

Voyager space probes show outsiders' view of Milky Way

In Brief p18

A particular wavelength of light can be seen from across the universe, but until now emissions from our own galaxy have been lost in the sun's glare

House-proud frogs boast about their burrows

News > In Brief p18

"Mate with me, I've got a big house," says the male Emei music frog – and the females come flocking

AI to predict sun's next attack on Earth

Technology > News pp21-22

Solar storms can wreak havoc on Earth, but if we can predict them, vital infrastructure could be saved

Facial recognition software spots family resemblance

Technology > News p22

Computers could one day connect you to long-lost relatives just by looking at your photo

Haptic code-entry makes PINs a touch harder to steal

Technology > News p23

Letting users enter a passcode on a smartphone via vibration could thwart nosy criminals

Brave the mall maze with indoor positioning systems

Technology > News p24

Several new technologies aim to keep you on track when traversing giant shopping malls and other confusing buildings

Riot shields could scatter crowds with 'wall of sound'

Technology > News p24

Shields that emit low-frequency pressures waves to hamper breathing would disperse crowds safely, a new patent claims

Epic landscape with guano promises new age of wealth

Aperture pp26-27

Peru is exploiting its guano islands for fertiliser once more, with promises that their ecosystems will be protected

To navigate economic storms we need better forecasting

Comment and Analysis pp28-29

When it comes to handling complexity, finance could learn a lot from meteorology. Time for action, says the Bank of England's Andy Haldane

I want to give poor children computers and walk away

Opinion > Interview p29

Can tablet computers "parachuted" into remote areas transform childhood learning, asks Nicholas Negroponte, the man behind One Laptop per Child

Don't blame the usual suspect for cancer

Opinion > The Big Idea pp30-31

What if proliferation is the norm for cells – and a very different theory of cancers' cause is waiting in the wings, ask Carlos Sonnenschein and Ana M. Soto

How many universes?

Letters p32

In his article on the multiverse, Robert Adler repeats the old trope that there is a universe in which I have just won the Olympic...

Immeasurably good

Letters p32

In Feedback, John Hastings suggested we need an International Committee on Standard Dimensions for Comparative Units (12 November). This is certainly required after the absurdity...

Enigma Number 1676

Opinion > Enigma p32

Life on Mars

Letters pp32-33

So NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, also known as the rover Curiosity, will not be looking for life on Mars (12 November, p 42). I...

Chagos islands

Letters p33

May I clarify some points in your article about sea levels, island erosion and flooding in the Chagos islands (26 November, p 4...

For the record

Letters p33

• In our multiverse feature, we should have said that the radius, not the diameter, of the observable universe is 42 billion light years (26 November...

Meaty challenge

Letters p33

When talking about meat consumption, Sujata Gupta makes the classic mistake of translating an issue inherently about values and relationships into one of efficiency (19...

Nothing matters

Letters p33

I found your articles on nothing interesting but dismaying (13 November, p 40). Strictly speaking, none of them was about nothing. They surveyed the mathematical...

Science vs religion

Letters p33

James Whalley (19 November, p 37) is content to accept Robert Trivers's description of religion as a possible "exercise in self-deception" (8 October...

The blame game

Letters p33

The discussion of a possible increase in legal action connected with the consequences of climate change (12 November, p 6) got me thinking. It is...

Power of Babel: Why one language isn't enough

Features > Cover Story pp34-37

Humans speak 7000 different tongues – and not just to be difficult. Everything from genes to jungles has played a part, says David Robson

Bank says no? Ditch the bank – borrow from the crowd

Features > Feature pp38-41

Traditional banks have failed us. Will online peer-to-peer lending rescue our personal finances, asks MacGregor Campbell

The truth hurts: LHC breaks supersymmetry's beauty

Features > Feature pp42-45

As the search for the Higgs continues, a beautiful theory is in doubt at CERN – pencils are being sharpened with rival interpretations, says Anil Ananthaswamy

DNA death predictors: What do they really tell you?

Features > Feature pp46-49

Genetic tests lay odds on killer diseases, and now a "health check" for your chromosomes spots traits that could reveal your lifespan – if it really works

Jeans that purify the air

Opinion > CultureLab pp50-51

From dissolving dresses to blue jeans such nitrogen oxide from the air, Helen Storey's designs are meant to be sustainable

Why psychiatrists should mind their language

Opinion > CultureLab p51

Richard Noll's American Madness: The rise and fall of dementia praecox is the history of the old name for schizophrenia, showing the problems with such labels

The trouble with time travel

Opinion > CultureLab p52

Physics indicates it may be possible to go back to the future, and in How to Build a Time Machine, Brian Clegg argues that it's never too early to prepare

Feedback: Holiday Apocalypse

Feedback p64

Holidays at the end of time, a terrifying amount of bacteria in your toilet, life imitates a screensaver, and more

Plane thinking

The Last Word > Last Word Answer p65

Squeaky cheese

The Last Word > Last Word Answer p65

Heated debate

The Last Word > Last Word Question p65

Think again

The Last Word > Last Word Question p65