New Scientist magazine - 07 February 2009

Issue number 2694

The label on the Roundup weedkiller purchased by Geoff Palmer warned him: "Avoid contact with the environment

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• Editorial: The Obama factor, revealed

  Editorialp5

  How much of his success is down to policy, spin and charisma – and how much to herd mentality?

• GM faces unfair regulation in Europe

  Editorialp5

  There is a need for regulation of genetically modified organisms to be more consistent

• The credit crunch could be a boon for irrational belief

  Editorialp5

  One thing that science can tell us about hard times is that religion will prosper

• Acid oceans no laughing matter for clownfish

  News > Upfrontp6

  The larvae of the fish that was popularised in the children's film Finding Nemo may have trouble sniffing out a suitable reef home if ocean acidity continues to rise

• Conflict leaves Gaza's agriculture in ruins

  News > Upfrontp6

  Nearly all the territory's farms have been damaged and many destroyed by the 22-day conflict, says the UN

• Mouse brains suggest Ritalin is addictive

  News > Upfrontp6

  Take Ritalin for fun and you run the risk of addiction – that's if the drug causes the same chemical and structural changes in human brains as it does in mice

• Mars Spirit rover reports good health

  News > Upfrontpp6-7

  After a week of troubles, the ageing Mars rover is back to normal operation

• Deep freeze survivors, Cisco quake risk, and more

  News > 60 Secondsp7

• Nigerian Pfizer trial to be heard in US

  News > Upfrontp7

  An appeals court in New York overturned a previous ruling that two lawsuits brought by Nigerian families against Pfizer would have to be heard in Nigeria

• Racial profiling no better than random screening

  News > Upfrontp7

  Racial and religious profiling in airport security may be no better at exposing terrorists than picking people out at random

• World treaty to block illegal sea fishing

  News > Upfrontp7

  Eighty nations have hammered out a draft treaty which will allow them to stop illegal fishing vessels from docking in their ports

• Kepler telescope launches to hunt for alien Earths

  News > This Weekpp8-9

  The space telescope should be able to see Earth-size planets in the 'habitable zone' of their stars for the first time

• Soundbites: Futurologist school, Terrorist rodents, and more

  News > Soundbitesp10

  Two-child limit, Apocalypse now, Remembering killed astronauts, Terrorist rodents and Futurologist school

• Conventional crop breeding may be more harmful than GM

  News > This Weekp10

  Should the regulations governing genetically modified crop strains be applied to other, more traditionally created, varieties too?

• Fatal blow for stem cells from human-animal hybrids?

  News > This Weekp11

  Hopes of producing a limitless supply of stem cells from "cybrid" embryos have been dashed by the news that key genes may fail to switch on

• Asteroid bound for Earth! Warn your grandchildren

  News > This Weekp12

  An asteroid that had initially been thought harmless might just hit Earth 160 years from now

• Can experiences be passed on to offspring?

  News > This Weekp12

  Mother mice that receive mental training before they become pregnant can pass on its cognitive benefits to their young – the phenomenon may exist in humans too

• How to control a herd of humans

  News > This Weekp13

  Fresh insights into why we conform to peer pressure could explain how despotic leaders bend people to their will

• Squid symbiosis may shed light on disease

  News > This Weekp13

  The way bacteria colonise animals for peaceful, symbiotic relationships offers clues to more deadly, disease-ridden interactions

• Early hominins were nutcrackers

  News > In Briefp16

  Australopithecines had premolars that were strong enough to shatter the tough husks of nuts and seeds, suggest an analysis of CT scans

• El Niño in the clear over 'Big Dry'

  News > In Briefp16

  The intense drought that has devastated southeast Australia over the past decade seems to be caused by changes in temperatures in the Indian Ocean, not the Pacific

• Giant snake fossil hints at a hotter future

  News > In Briefp16

  The discovery of a 1-tonne ancestor of the boa constrictor suggests that there may be no cap on temperatures in the tropics as global warming gathers pace

• Sinking crop waste could cut global warming

  News > In Briefp16

  Burying crop waste deep in the ocean could be an effective way to rein in global warming, say researchers

• Blocking 'happiness' chemical may prevent locust plagues

  News > In Briefp17

  Devastating swarms of locusts could be prevented from forming with drugs that block the neurotransmitter serotonin

• Moon linked to earthquakes at last

  News > In Briefp17

  Besides causing ocean tides, the sun and the moon can also pull tectonic plates sufficiently for them to slip past each other, a study suggests

• Mutant worms raise hopes for stroke treatment

  News > In Briefp17

  Suppressing a single gene allows worms to survive at oxygen levels that would normally kill them – a treatment based on the finding may help prevent cell damage

• Rebuilding the immune system may reverse MS

  News > In Briefp17

  A treatment that uses a patient's own stem cells to grown new immune cells appears to stop and sometimes reverse the debilitating disease

• Bosses to blame for computer attacks

  Technology > Newsp19

  The most vulnerable computer in a company is often the boss's, a London conference was told last week

• How the fetal brain wires up for action

  Technology > Newsp19

  Before a fetus is born, its brain undergoes the complex process of refining the connections between its different regions – now a computer model is showing us how

• 'Living doll' made of human cancer cells

  Technology > Newsp19

  Liver cancer cells and connective proteins have been grown into the shape of human – a technique that could allow drugs to be tested on more complex tissue structures

• Unnatural selection: Robots start to evolve

  Technology > Featurepp20-21

  A robot with a brain that grows as its body develops could lead to more versatile humanoid robots and prosthetics

• Google dives beneath the waves

  Technology > Featurep21

  Ever wanted to explore the deep ocean without getting wet? Now you can with Google Ocean, the latest addition to the company's virtual Earth model.

• Laser trick makes lab-on-a-chip more versatile

  Technology > Featurep22

  Light could soon be used to push tiny liquid samples through "microfluidic" devices

• NASA plans to take the boom out of supersonic flight

  Technology > Featurep22

  Sonic booms could be turned into mere rumbles with the results of NASA's latest flight tests

• Beware Earth-shattering headlines

  Comment and Analysisp24

  Just because the popular press seizes on dramatic explanations for planet-shaping events doesn't make them correct, warns Jeff Hecht

• Bringing blue-sky thinking down to earth

  Comment and Analysispp24-25

  Research into the origins and nature of the universe can have surprisingly practical benefits, says Anil Ananthaswamy

• Why the Catholic church can't ignore science

  Opinion > Commentaryp25

  The Vatican's latest report on bioethics demonstrates once more that a morality rooted in outdated, pre-scientific understanding is not appropriate to modern realities, says Lawrence Krauss

• Amoral advances

  Lettersp26

  The oft-expressed idea that science is somehow morally and ethically neutral shows that scientists are just as prone to woolly thinking as the critics of their activities...

• Control carbon

  Lettersp26

  I agree with Simon Reynolds that it makes good sense to apply controls on fossil carbon as near as possible to the point where it is extracted from the ground...

• Energy, and food too

  Lettersp26

  Aria Pearson highlights the importance of upwelling in bringing nutrients from deep ocean to the surface...

• Enigma No. 1531

  Opinion > Enigmap26

• Magic moment

  Letterspp26-27

  May I share a "magic moment"? A girl of about 10 was standing at a supermarket news-stand with a copy of New Scientist open at the lead story, "Resurrection Park"...

• Anaesthetic function

  Lettersp27

  Ian Rubenstein comments on the proposal by Hans Meyer and Charles Overton - whose work on the subject was actually published in 1899 and 1901 - that the effectiveness of inhaled anaesthetics is proportional to their solubility in lipids...

• Cannabis and crime

  Lettersp27

  Andy Coghlan correctly identified minimising the harms caused by cannabis use as the focus for the Beckley Foundation Cannabis Commission's report "Moving beyond stalemate"...

• Domestic beer

  Lettersp27

  I am surprised that anyone should be surprised to discover that "A good night out began at home in ancient Greece". The term "pub" derives from "public house" - a private house opened to the public to enjoy beer, originally brewed on site

• For the record

  Lettersp27

• If only

  Lettersp27

  Like the subject of your article on postponing puberty in transsexual children, I recognised my gender as female very early...

• Amoral advances

  Web Lettersp27

  Is science morally and ethically neutral? I live in a country whose rivers are degraded and whose land is increasingly salinated because farmers in the past followed the advice of accredited scientists about how to increase yield...

• Galileo vs Darwin

  Web Lettersp27

  Discussing which of Darwin or Galileo had more impact, Michael Brooks argues for Galileo because 80 per cent of Americans believe the Earth goes round the sun compared with only 50 per cent who believe in natural selection...

• Status trap

  Web Lettersp27

  Niels Röling is the first commentator on the environment I have seen who seems anywhere near appreciating the root of the problem. He refers to the prisoner's dilemma of game theory, avoidance of which involves adjusting pay-offs until they rank in a different order...

• Three degrees of contagion

  Web Lettersp27

  The "Three Degrees of Contagion" article was timely and intriguing. Unfortunately, the suggestions put forward to help people "detox" their lives didn't seem to follow logically from the findings...

• We need useless technology

  Web Lettersp27

  Responding to your questioning why early and promising Greek technology was not further developed for so long, Nicholas Dore points out that Rome absorbed and continued much of Greek thought, rather than supplanted it...

• What's God got to do with it?

  Web Lettersp27

  Helen Logan asks whether in a universe with different conditions another conscious being might appear and assume in turn that those conditions were finely tuned for its existence...

• Why do we need bras for babies?

  Opinion > Essaypp28-29

  Babies dressed as adults; extreme makeovers, steroids and facelifts for the grown-ups. We're dangerously obsessed with the body, says psychotherapist Susie Orbach

• Born believers: How your brain creates God

  Features > Cover Storypp30-33

  No wonder religion is so prevalent in human society – our brains are primed for it, says Michael Brooks

• Auroras: What powers the greatest light show on Earth?

  Features > Featurepp34-38

  A flotilla of NASA satellites is finally uncovering the mechanisms that cause the solar wind to illuminate the polar skies

• Super clocks: More accurate than time itself

  Features > Featurepp39-41

  The atom clocks that supply the heartbeat of modern life have become so accurate that they are exposing the elusive nature of time itself

• What's the point of being warm-blooded?

  Features > Featurepp42-45

  Having a furnace within makes perfect sense in the chill of winter, but it burns a lot of valuable energy – so why do we constantly generate heat?

• 1709: The year that Europe froze

  Historiespp46-47

  One winter in the early 18th century, it was so cold animals died in their barns, travellers froze to death, and even the Mediterranean iced over. It was Europe's coldest spell for the past 500 years

• Review: Darwin's Island by Steve Jones

  Opinion > Books & Artsp48

  How Darwin's lesser-known books reveal that his reach extended far beyond evolution

• Review: Darwin's Sacred Cause by Adrian Desmond and James Moore

  Opinion > Books & Artsp48

  A striking new analysis of Darwin's thought reveals the battle over slavery as a seminal influence

• Review: Remarkable Creatures by Sean B Carroll

  Opinion > Books & Artsp48

  Charles Darwin inevitably takes the leading role in the search for the origins of species, but here visionaries like Alfred Russel Wallace are rightly given their due

• Darwin in his own words

  Opinion > Books & Artsp49

  Unlike Einstein, Darwin wasn't great at soundbites, but his letters reveal much about his life and mind

• Review: Angels and Ages by Adam Gopnik

  Opinion > Books & Artsp49

  What do Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln have in common? Find out in this book

• Review: Darwin's Lost World by Martin Brasier

  Opinion > Books & Artsp49

  Why an apparent lack of fossils in pre-Cambrian rocks caused a problem for Darwin's theory of evolution

• Review: Evolution: The first four billion years edited by Michael Ruse and Joseph Travis

  Opinion > Books & Artsp49

  This curious hybrid of essay and encyclopedia aims to provide both background on Darwin's theory and a snapshot of modern evolutionary biology

• Review: Evolutionary Writings by Charles Darwin, edited by James A Secord

  Opinion > Books & Artsp49

  This fantastic anthology paints an enthralling and complex portrait of Darwin's ideas and character

• Review: On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

  Opinion > Books & Artsp49

  Controversial artist Damien Hirst celebrates 150 years of one of the most important books ever

• Review: The Young Charles Darwin by Keith Thomson

  Opinion > Books & Artsp49

  Forget the common image of Darwin as a bearded old man – what was he like in his early "slacker" years?

• The unluckiest pig in the world, and more

  Feedbackp76

• Baffling acoustics

  The Last Word > Last Word Answerp77

• Air Spray

  The Last Word > Last Word Questionp77

• Partial recall

  The Last Word > Last Word Questionp77