New Scientist magazine - 31 January 2009

Issue number 2693

Who knows what information a determined snoop might mine from DNA obtained on the sly?

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• Editorial: A crazy adventure that inspires us all

  Editorialp3

  One man's attempt to cross the Atlantic in a pedal-powered sub reminds us that the urge to explore remains as powerful a spur to ingenuity as ever

• Editorial: Our right to do ourselves harm

  Editorialp3

  Refusing to hire anyone who smokes is a step too far – the decision whether or not to smoke at home is a personal matter

• Editorial: Why your DNA needs more protection

  Editorialp3

  International action is required to preserve genetic privacy

• Call for agricultural research to help world's poor

  News > Upfrontp4

  Last year's food crisis is far from over – and things could get worse if we can't find new ways to boost production

• Effects of climate change now 'irreversible'

  News > Upfrontp4

  What would happen if in 50 years' time the world suddenly stopped burning fossil fuels? Surprisingly little as far as the climate is concerned

• Particle accelerators could stop isotope shortages

  News > Upfrontp4

  Shifting production of vital medical isotopes from nuclear reactors could help keep hospitals stocked

• US states may regain control of vehicle emissions

  News > Upfrontp4

  President Obama has ordered the US Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider Bush's policy of banning states from implementing their own standards for car emissions

• 60 Seconds

  News > 60 Secondsp5

• Creationism defeated in Texas

  News > Upfrontp5

  Campaigners against teaching creationism in schools scored a victory last week deep in America's Bible Belt

• Historic stem cell trial gets go-ahead

  News > Upfrontp5

  The US Food and Drug Administration approves the first trial to use stem cells derived from human embryonic stem cells

• Is recruitment ban for home smokers discrimination?

  News > Upfrontp5

  Outlawing smoking in the office is one thing, but refusing to hire people who smoke at home may damage their health and exacerbate social inequalities

• Special investigation: Could your DNA betray you?

  News > Special Reportpp6-8

  DNA tests for paternity and infidelity are illegal in the UK if done without consent, but they may still be happening. Peter Aldhous reports

• Exoplanet spotted in Hubble archive

  News > This Weekp9

  A new method of analysing old images from the Hubble Space Telescope has turned up an extrasolar planet – could there be more in the archive?

• Soundbites

  News > Soundbitesp10

• Can we reprogram the immune system?

  News > This Weekp10

  Studies that show immune system cells morphing from one type to another could one day lead to therapies for autoimmune diseases

• Apollo 17 rock helps date moon

  News > This Weekp11

  A tiny grain of the mineral zircon in a rock brought back by astronauts is older than any yet found on Earth

• Caterpillar plague strikes west Africa

  News > This Weekp12

  Hundreds of millions of the black larvae are devouring plants, fouling wells with their faeces and even driving farmers from their fields

• Is the Roman Pantheon a colossal sundial?

  News > This Weekp12

  The temple's courtyard lights up during, and only during, an equinox – was the building designed to track the Sun?

• Global warming could suffocate the sea

  News > This Weekp13

  As climate change sucks oxygen from the world's oceans it could create huge dead zones that will last tens of thousands of years

• Men smell of cheese and women of onions

  News > This Weekp13

  Little girls may be made of sugar and spice and all things nice, but women's armpits smell of onions – and men's are a tad unsavory too

• Ancient creature points to parallel evolution

  News > In Briefp14

  A study of the closest living thing to the ancestor of all animals hints that the nervous system evolved twice

• Europe to feel the heat of climate change

  News > In Briefp14

  Global warming may cause summers in central and north-western Europe to be as hot as those in today's Italy and Spain

• Old tree deaths double across western US

  News > In Briefp14

  Majestic trees in the western US are disappearing twice as fast as they were three decades ago, and climate change may be the reason

• Wood stoves in villages cause Asian brown haze

  News > In Briefp14

  Biomass burning in villages contributes heavily to the cloud of soot that hangs over South Asia in winter – but it also suggests a quick solution to clean up the polluted skies

• Eat a little less, remember more

  News > In Briefp15

  Eating less doesn't just boost physical health: in the elderly, it seems to improve memory too

• Leaky membranes may be key to Parkinson's disease

  News > In Briefp15

  The brain cells of Parkinson's patients may become "leaky" with age, allowing potentially damaging proteins into the nucleus

• Shape-shifting fish fools scientists

  News > In Briefp15

  What were thought to be three separate groups of fish are actually males, females and young from the same species

• The beat goes on, even for newborns

  News > In Briefp15

  Babies are born with a keen sense of rhythm – a finding that might help spot brain abnormalities at an early age

• Devastated forests could be replanted from the air

  Technology > Newsp17

  A technology that fires projectiles containing tree saplings from a helicopter could rapidly replant devastated tropical forests

• Device spots killer melamine in seconds

  Technology > Newsp17

  A device that spots the presence of melamine in seconds could protect consumers from contaminated foods like those that caused a health crisis in China last year

• Taser guns 'raised deaths in custody'

  Technology > Newsp17

  Sudden deaths among people held by police in California increased sixfold in the first year after the state's police departments took up use of Tasers

• Gastric 'condoms' could help obese avoid surgery

  Technology > Featurepp18-19

  Non-surgical technologies to help dangerously obese people shed excess kilos and tackle diabetes could soon be on the market

• City Wi-Fi networks vulnerable to virus attack

  Technology > Featurep19

  A software virus could take just 24 hours to infect half the wireless internet connections in New York, computer security experts warn

• Face-blurring technology raises privacy questions

  Technology > Featurep20

  Clever image processing combined with a GPS cellphone could blur your face in CCTV footage – but should you have to opt in to avoid surveillance?

• Teleporter sends ions on long-distance journey

  Technology > Featurep20

  A new kind of matter teleporter has sent the state of ytterbium ions from one side of a lab to the other

• Why turning out brilliant scientists isn't enough

  Comment and Analysispp22-23

  Universities must teach students to understand how their work affects society at large, says Robert Winston

• Did gung-ho policies cause an earthquake?

  Opinion > Commentaryp23

  The proliferation of dams in the tectonically active Sichuan Province is evidence of skewed values, says A C Grayling, but in China no-one can say so

• Boing!

  Lettersp24

  Anil Ananthaswamy passes on the assumption that all parts of the universe must once have been in causal contact in order for the temperature of the universe to be as uniform as we find it today...

• Isotopes and ageing

  Lettersp24

  Mikhail Shchepinov advocates heavy water and other isotope-labelled molecules to combat ageing...

• Oil be damned

  Lettersp24

  An Exxon-funded study has once again given the enormous Exxon Valdez crude oil spill site "a clean bill of health"...

• What fine-tuning?

  Lettersp24

  Where does everyone get the idea that the universe is fine-tuned for life?

• Enigma No. 1530

  Opinion > Enigmap24

• Fab prices

  Lettersp25

  Joerg Heber notes that the price for abandoning silicon-based technology is "huge". That is the core reason why silicon will not be abandoned...

• For the record

  Lettersp25

• It's a wrap

  Lettersp25

  I worked out the areas of the wrapping of the two-dimensional parcels containing up to seven thin mince pies, in both sausage and cluster formats...

• Multiversality

  Lettersp25

  Peter White suspects our universe is a cosmic engineering undergraduate's final-year project. I thought I had explained that it's the mice...

• Price of popularity

  Lettersp25

  Richard Hammond ponders why kids get turned off science so successfully these days...

• Walk on the mild side

  Lettersp25

  In speculating about the mechanism which causes homosexuality, you write that "perhaps our brains get too much or too little of a crucial hormone in the womb"...

• It's a wrap

  Web Lettersp25

  Mathematician Ian Stewart's thoughts on wrapping mince pies in string looked like a simple way to encourage an interest in maths in my 9-year-old son...

• Multiverse/other

  Web Lettersp25

  If a supernatural theory is an "unfounded leap of logic" (6 December 2008, p 48), so is an assumption that science is the only true path to truth...

• Owt for nowt

  Web Lettersp25

  Responding to Lawrence Krauss's proposal that physics has largely answered the question "why is there something rather than nothing?"), John Turner suggests that Krauss thereby strays into metaphysics by substituting "how" for "why"...

• Price of popularity

  Web Lettersp25

  Michael Brooks and Richard Hammond each ask a question that has occupied the scientific community in the UK for a long time: how can we effectively popularise science and reduce the reported decline of interest in science subjects at school?

• Research economics

  Web Lettersp25

  Terence Kealey's arguments about the economic laws of research and the pros and cons of funding it privately or publicly would be easier to follow if he clearly distinguished science from technology...

• The Curse of the Committee

  Web Lettersp25

  The analysis of the optimum number of members of a committee reminded me of a simple relationship that I speculated on for expressing the potential value of meetings in organisations...

• The pathologist challenging shaken baby syndrome

  Interviewpp26-27

  Irene Scheimberg thinks some parents convicted of killing their babies may be innocent – now she's trying to find out what really happened

• The six biggest mysteries of our solar system

  Features > Cover Storypp28-29

  Astronomers are still grappling with some fundamental questions about our corner of the cosmos. In this special feature, we investigate how our solar system formed, where comets come from, and whether Planet X might really exist

• Unknown solar system 1: How was the solar system built?

  Features > Cover Storypp29-31

  Looking at our neighbouring planets, you could be forgiven for thinking that if they do belong to the same family, it is by adoption rather than kinship. Not so: they are blood siblings

• Why are the sun and moon the same size in the sky?

  Features > Cover Storyp31

  The sun is about 400 times as wide as the moon, but it is also 400 times further away. The two therefore look the same size in the sky – is it more than a coincidence?

• Is there a Planet X?

  Features > Cover Storypp32-33

  Lurking in the solar system's dark recesses, rumour has it, is an unsighted world – Planet X, a frozen body perhaps as large as Mars, or even Earth

• Where do comets come from?

  Features > Cover Storyp33

  These cosmic apparitions have had humans pondering their nature for millennia, yet theories of where comets originate still don't stand up

• Is the solar system unique?

  Features > Cover Storypp34-35

  In the fifth instalment of our Unknown Solar System special, we ask why, out of some 280 alien solar systems that have been identified, most look quite unlike ours

• How will the solar system end?

  Features > Cover Storyp35

  In the final part of our Unknown Solar System special, we discover that the solar system has been relatively peaceful since the ructions that created the planets in the first 100 million years – but this calm can't last

• Across the ocean in a pedal-powered submarine

  Features > Featurepp36-38

  One man's quest to cross the Atlantic in a craft he designed himself is more than a physical challenge – it promises to be a boon for marine science too

• Evolution: The next 200 years

  Features > Featurepp41-43

  To mark the bicentenary of Charles Darwin's birth, New Scientist asked eminent evolutionary biologists to outline the biggest gaps remaining in evolutionary theory

• Review: The Art Instinct by Denis Dutton

  Opinion > Books & Artspp44-45

  Is our propensity to create and enjoy art a product of biological evolution?

• Review: Taking the Medicine by Druin Burch

  Opinion > Books & Artsp45

  By relying on belief rather than evidence, doctors in the not so distant past harmed more often than they healed

• Review: The Hunt for Planet X by Govert Schilling

  Opinion > Books & Artsp45

  A wonderfully entertaining book which conveys the raw excitement of the hunt for new planets

• Review: Time in Antiquity by Robert Hannah

  Opinion > Books & Artsp45

  A fascinating look at how ancient Greeks and Romans marked the seasons and told the time

• Feedback

  Feedbackp72

• Dextrous dilemma

  The Last Word > Last Word Answerp73

• Sting in the mouth

  The Last Word > Last Word Answerp73

• Wound licking

  The Last Word > Last Word Answerp73

• Shampoo pooh-pooh

  The Last Word > Last Word Questionp73