2013 Smart Guide: More people than ever 'mentally ill'

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year" Mental illness could strike more of us in 2013 than ever before. But don't blame the strain of modern living: changes to diagnostic guidelines mean unprecedented numbers of people could be...

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2013 Smart Guide: Arctic melt will spark weird weather

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year" Melting, rather than warming, is likely to be the big climate issue of 2013. Predictions...

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2012 review: The year in health science

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year" The first half of 2012 will be remembered for the saga over whether or not to publish controversial research involving versions of the H5N1 bird flu virus engineered to spread...

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2013 Smart Guide: Curiosity to reach Mars mother lode

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year" NASA'S Curiosity rover is about to have its cake and eat it too. Around September, the rover should get its first taste of layered sediments at Aeolis Mons, a mountain over 5 kilometres...

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Today on New Scientist: 28 December 2012

Best videos of 2012: Rare view of Challenger tragedy Watch a rare amateur video of the Challenger explosion, our most-viewed video of the year Strong jet stream super-charged US Christmas storms Record snowfall and dozens of tornadoes snarled holiday travel as a powerful winter storm plowed across much of the US, while rainstorms battered the UK 2012 review: The year in life science The year's...

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Today on New Scientist: 28 December 2012

Best videos of 2012: Rare view of Challenger tragedy Watch a rare amateur video of the Challenger explosion, our most-viewed video of the year Strong jet stream super-charged US Christmas storms Record snowfall and dozens of tornadoes snarled holiday travel as a powerful winter storm plowed across much of the US, while rainstorms battered the UK 2012 review: The year in life science The year's...

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2013 Smart Guide: Wave goodbye to the mouse

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year" If the Leap is anything to go by, the days of the mouse are numbered. The 3D-gesture-sensing device lets you control your computer with a wave of your hand - and it could be yours early next...

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2013 Smart Guide: Next-generation video games

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year" Bigger, better and far more immersive. With Nintendo's launch of the Wii U in November and Microsoft and Sony both expected to pitch in with successors to the Xbox...

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2013 Smart Guide: Hot computing for a cool billion

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year" It has been called science's X Factor: six mega-projects vying for two prizes, each worth a cool €1 billion. ...

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New Scientist 2012 holiday quiz

Continue reading page |1 |2 THIS was the year we held our breath in almost unbearable anticipation while we waited to see whether physicists at the Large Hadron Collider would finally get a clear view of the Higgs boson, so tantalisingly hinted at last December. Going a bit blue, we held on through March when one of the...

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How does a traffic cop ticket a driverless car?

Rapid progress means self-driving cars are in the fast lane to consumer reality. Is the law up to speed too, asks legal expert Bryant Walker Smith EVER since the 1930s, self-driving cars have been just 20 years away. Many of those earlier visions, however, depended on changes to physical infrastructure that...

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Today on New Scientist: 21 December 2012

Cadaver stem cells offer new hope of life after death Stem cells can be extracted from bone marrow five days after death to be used in life-saving treatmentsApple's patents under fire at US patent office The tech firm is skating on thin ice with some of the patents that won it a $1 billion settlement against SamsungHimalayan dam-building threatens endemic species The world's highest mountains...

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Today on New Scientist: 21 December 2012

Cadaver stem cells offer new hope of life after death Stem cells can be extracted from bone marrow five days after death to be used in life-saving treatmentsApple's patents under fire at US patent office The tech firm is skating on thin ice with some of the patents that won it a $1 billion settlement against SamsungHimalayan dam-building threatens endemic species The world's highest mountains...

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2013 Smart Guide: Searching for human origins in Asia

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year" Move over Africa. It is where humanity began, where we took our first steps and grew big brains. But those interested in the latest cool stuff on the origins of our...

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Fail-safe software could stop flash crashes

HIGH-FREQUENCY trading algorithms are seriously profitable. But they are also a serious problem, leading to mysterious "flash crashes" on the world's financial markets. So would emergency fail-safes of the kind used to prevent medical robots and nuclear reactors going haywire be any help? ...

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Twin attack could deliver universal flu vaccine

A UNIVERSAL vaccine. It is the stuff of dreams for flu scientists, but it could be within reach if a new type of vaccine that elicits an immune response from white blood cells is combined with traditional vaccines. Every year, between...

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'The idea we live in a simulation isn't science fiction'

If the universe is just a Matrix-like simulation, how could we ever know? Physicist Silas Beane thinks he has the answer The idea that we live in a simulation is just science fiction, isn't it?There is a famous argument that we probably...

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How human biology can prevent drug deaths

Thousands of people die from adverse effects of medicines that have been tested on animals. There is a better way, say geneticist Kathy Archibald and pharmacologist Robert Coleman ADVERSE drug reactions are a major cause of death, killing 197,000 people annually in the European Union and upwards of 100,000...

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