October 2010 archive

200 million-year-old skull helps solve sauropod evolution

This beautifully preserved fossilised skull belongs to Yizhousaurus sunae, a new species of dinosaur recently discovered in China

Arctic narwhals reveal climate-model errors

"Sea unicorns" equipped with temperature-depth gauges and transmitters provide a wake-up call to climate modellers

Adult flamingo: I'm ready for my close-up now

Flamingos apply make-up to brighten their feathers, particularly when they are trying to attract a mate

The tongue in your lung that fights asthma

Bitter taste receptors discovered in the lung dilate airways better than anti-asthma drugs, paving the way for future treatments

Did life begin with a bolt from the deep blue?

Thermal vents in the early Earth's oceans could have generated electrical currents and forged complex organic molecules

Best of web video: Halloween special

October's pick of web video features 10 science and tech shockers guaranteed to tingle your spine

Feedback: Has your death affected your life?

What to do if you have a family history of death, advertisers "up to" no good, and a cure for chronic woman disease

Dream job 5: Rare-plant resuscitator

Another real life story from our Graduate Careers Special: the fate of the some of the world's rarest plants lies in the green fingers of botanist Jonathan Kendon

Moving illusions: Fascinating spiral makes eyes at you

Spirals can make men lose themselves in a woman's eyes

Will we cope if the rare earths live up to their name?

China produces 97 per cent of rare earth elements but is cutting exports - so researchers are devising new ways to reduce, reuse and recycle them

Everyone's going bananas over baby gorilla

Coo over our primate baby video - it's the first gorilla to be born at London Zoo in 20 years

Monsters - the most realistic alien movie ever?

With his new film, writer-director Gareth Edwards wanted a film about what might happen if aliens really had invaded Earth, says Rowan Hooper

Heavy hydrogen keeps yeast looking good

Organic molecules containing a heavy isotope of hydrogen seem to resist the kind of cell damage that happens with ageing

Innovation: Better hands may help robots grasp meaning

Some fresh thinking is changing the way roboticists think about robot hands - and what they could mean for robot learning

Buckyballs abound in space

Molecular cages made up of 60 carbon atoms have been found beyond the Milky Way for the first time

Hints of lightweight dark matter particle found in space

A relatively puny dark matter particle might be responsible for a gamma-ray glow at the centre of the Milky Way, says a pair of researchers - though others are sceptical

Sharp Stone Age spearheads were cooked then flaked

An ingenious trick for making sharp stone spearheads was invented 50,000 years earlier than we thought

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

(Image: Dr. Sankar Chatterjee)

This beautifully preserved fossilised skull belongs to Yizhousaurus sunae, a new species of dinosaur recently discovered in China.

The 9.2 metre Yizhousaurus was an early representative of the sauropods, a group of long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs who walked on all fours and later reached huge proportions.  Well known sauropods include Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus, the giant sauropod Argentinosaurus weighed in at 80 tonnes and grew up to 30 metres in length. 

A complete sauropod skull is a rare find, yet Yizhousaurus was part of a larger find that included a nearly complete set of bones.  The skull will help palaeontologists unravel the early evolution of the sauropod group. Yizhousaurus lived 200 million years ago on the flood plains around what is now Lufeng in the Yunnan Province of South China.

Rachel Courtland, reporter

(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle/SSC/Caltech)

Buckminsterfullerenes, spherical cages composed of 60 carbon atoms, have been found beyond the Milky Way for the first time, suggesting they are quite common in space. The molecules may have delivered extraterrestrial organic compounds to the early Earth, helping to give life its start.

Resembling the geodesic domes designed by architect Buckminster Fuller, "buckyballs" were first detected in the lab in 1985. The molecules have also been found in meteorites, Earth rocks, and candle soot.

This year has seen the first solid detections of the structures beyond Earth's surface. In July, a team reported the first confirmed detection of buckyballs in space. They found the molecules' telltale signature in infrared light emitted by the dust and gas sloughed off by an old star.

Now two teams are reporting evidence of the carbon structures in other such clouds of stellar debris, called planetary nebulae, and in the interstellar space near young stars. "It turns out that buckyballs are much more common and abundant in the universe than initially thought," astronomer Letizia Stanghellini of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, said in a statement.

Brain link lets people choose images by thought alone

A brain-machine interface that lets users to control which of two images they view on a screen by thought alone could help paralysed people communicate

Seeing a galaxy beyond the purple in high-res

More than 300 ultraviolet images taken by NASA's Swift spacecraft have been assembled to make a high-resolution picture of the Andromeda galaxy, M31

Dream job 4: Intellectual property lawyer

Tim Austen hasn't been near a Petri dish in years but he uses his biochemistry degree every day: another real-life story from our Graduate Careers Special

Superhero suit to strengthen astronauts' bones

A skin-tight suit that compresses the body in the same way its own weight does on Earth could help future astronauts stave off bone loss

Are we having another food crisis?

Food prices are rocketing, fuelled by crop losses and financial speculators. New Scientist finds out what can be done to restore stability

Edward Norton: What's the first rule of Peace Club?

The star of Fight Club, long an active conservationist and fundraiser, is a United Nations goodwill ambassador on biodiversity

Moving illusions: Lopsided line-up

A trick of the brain can make stationary objects shift out of line

Google cars nabbed email addresses and passwords

Search giant Google admitted last week that its fleet of Street View cars often captured private data from wireless routers

Naked and ugly: The new face of lab rats

The naked mole rat lives for ages, shrugs off chemical stings and never gets cancer. No wonder scientists are keen to learn the secrets of this small, bald Methuselah

Smallest electric engine could power nanomachines

Blueprints for the smallest electric engine have been sketched out - and are now turning into reality

The many faces of freedom

Amy Maxmen reviews Free, an exhibition of internet photography at the New Museum in New York

Evacuation expert: Why Hollywood gets it badly wrong

The media's portrayal of our response to emergencies is harmful, says Ed Galea, a mathematical modeller who specialises in disasters

Coming soon: LHC for molecules

The Large Hadron Collider speeds charged particles to collision, but soon electrically neutral molecules might get a smasher of their own

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

(Image: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler (GSFC) and Erin Grand (UMCP))

More than 300 ultraviolet images taken by the ultraviolet/optical telescope on NASA's Swift spacecraft were assembled to make this high-resolution picture of the Andromeda galaxy, M31.

M31 is the nearest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way. It lies 2.5 million light years from Earth, is 220,000 light years across and contains 1 trillion stars. Despite its distance it is visible to the naked eye and can be seen as a faint smudge in the sky on dark nights.

Thank ancient fertiliser for complex life

A great global ice age could have fertilised a slew of new plants, leading to the rise of modern animals

Take the ultimate intelligence test

A team of brain scientists has come up with the ultimate intelligence test - take it here

Interactive sculptures make mesmerising motions

Sculptor Ivan Black reinterprets notions of motion in his hands-on artworks - see images of his latest exhibition

Twitter tool roots out disguised mass postings

Concerted political campaigns masquerading as independent tweets by grassroots campaigners can now be exposed for what they are

No link between earthquake and eruption in Indonesia

Indonesia is struggling with disaster on two fronts, after a volcano and earthquake struck within days

Caught on video: Why BA 009 rose from the ashes

All four engines on a 1982 flight from London to Auckland failed after it passed a volcanic ash cloud, but started again before a crash. Now we may know why

Moving illusions: Now you see it, now you don't

Moving backgrounds can trick the eyes into making objects disappear

Solar power could crash Germany's grid

Soon there could be so many solar cells in Germany that the country's power system will be overwhelmed

All eyes on California for marijuana ballot

If voters say yes to legalising marijuana use in California, it will send a shock wave around the world

Dream job 3: Environmental consultant

Working as an environmental consultant takes Adinah Shackleton from Brazilian biofuel plantations to the slums of Nigeria: another true-life story

Ten years to save the touchscreen

A wonder material makes your smartphone screen work. But with the world's stocks running out fast, the hunt is on for new stuff to keep us in touch

Stars stick together

A new image taken by theHubble Space Telescope shows the globular cluster known as NGC 1806.

Almost a fifth of vertebrate species are endangered

The latest Red List of threatened animals and plants makes grim reading, but also holds glimmers of good news

Zoologger: Lemmings swap suicide for infanticide

The cute and cuddly Arctic mammals do not hurl themselves off cliffs en masse, but they may practise some judicious infanticide

Anti-obesity drug dulls brain response to 'food porn'

A weight-loss drug changes the way reward pathways in the brains of obese people respond to pictures of appetising, high-calorie food

Suicide-by-pesticide study ranks compound toxicity

Some pesticides are more poisonous to humans than research with animals suggests

Michael Marshall, environment reporter

(Image: AP/PA)

Residents of a village hit by pyroclastic flows from the Mount Merapi eruption in Indonesia cover their noses to protect themselves from volcanic ash. Tuesday's eruption on the island of Java has so far killed at least 28 people.

It is one of two natural disasters to have struck Indonesia this week. The country is also dealing with the damage caused by Monday's earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, hundreds of miles away, which triggered a tsunami that swept over the Mentawai Islands. 272 people are so far confirmed dead.

The New York Times reports that the two events were probably not linked. Indonesia lies on the "Ring of Fire", a seismically active region of the Earth's crust that circles the Pacific and is prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter
(Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA)

This new image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the globular cluster known as NGC 1806. Comprised of tens of thousands of stars,  it sits within the Large Magellanic Cloud - a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way - and was first seen by the British astronomer John Herschel in 1806.
 
The picture is a composite of images taken at different wavelengths by the Wide Field Channel of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys through blue, yellow and red filters and with exposure times of 770 s, 720 s and 688 s, respectively. 
 
NGC 1806 can be seen in the constellation of Dorado, which is best observed from the Earth's southern hemisphere.
 

Prizewinning chatbot steers the conversation

The winner of the 2010 Loebner prize for intelligent chatbots leads discussion back to topics it knows about

Haiti capital braced for cholera

Emergency water stems cholera outbreak in Haiti, at least until it reaches the capital Port-au-Prince

Dream job 2: Cyber crime expert

Defusing viruses and killing worms are all in a days work for cyber crime expert, Ross McKerchar: another true-life story from our Graduate Careers Special

Device gives parents their child's eye view

A child safety device undergoing a trial in Japan allows parents to view online pictures of what their child sees and monitor their vital signs

Structure of egg 'glue' may bring new contraceptives

Understanding the 3D structure of the human egg protein that binds to sperm could lead to new contraceptives and infertility treatments

Moving illusions: Impossible objects made real

Computers can now turn "impossible" pictures like those of M. C. Escher into reality

Putting the craft in spacecraft

NASA has teamed up with craft website Etsy to celebrate the end of the space shuttle programme in homemade style

Contraceptive gel could replace the pill

Women may no longer need to suffer side effects from the birth control pill now that there's a contraceptive gel that can be rubbed into skin like moisturiser

How to make a prizewinning wildlife photo

Wildlife Photographer of the Year winners share the secrets of their success

Charming computers can help us understand ourselves

How can we evaluate complex human interactions clearly and precisely? By recruiting silicon-based research assistants, says psychologist Clifford Nass

Thermogeddon: When the Earth gets too hot for humans

According to a recent study, parts of the Earth could start to become uninhabitable within a century. Surely it cannot be true?

Air of defeat at Japan's biodiversity summit

If nations fail to sign the Convention on Biological Diversity, it could signal the end of an era of optimism about environmental diplomacy

Type O blood may be a fertility barrier

Should women trying to get pregnant really factor in their blood type alongside diet and age?

Space tourism could have big impact on climate

Soot from suborbital spaceships could melt ice at the poles, suggest the first detailed simulations of the climatic effects of space tourism

Ancient bugs reveal early link from India to Asia

By the time India crashed into Asia 50 million years ago, the two were already connected by archipelagos

Giant virus with tiny victims carries a monster genome

CroV has the largest genome of any marine virus, including a host of genes not normally found in viruses

Robots could ditch fingers for beanbags

Using fingers to grip delicate objects without breaking them is difficult for robots - a simpler beanbag hand could be the answer

Photography, minus the camera

What might photography have done if it hadn't become obsessed with the camera and the lens? A London exhibition, Shadow Catchers, seeks to find out

Helen Thomson, biomedical news editor

Forgetting to moisturise could soon have serious consequences. Researchers at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine meeting in Colorado this week report that rubbing a clear gel into your shoulders, arms, legs or abdomen every day could prevent a woman from getting pregnant.

A woman's blood group dictates her fertility, according to a study presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference in Denver, Colorado, this week.

Blood levels of follicle-stimulating hormone are used as an indicator of fertility. A woman with FSH blood levels higher than 10 units per litre is considered to have a diminished ovarian reserve - a low egg count.

Edward Nejat at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and his colleagues measured the levels of FSH in 563 women younger than 45 with an average age of 35.

After adjusting for age and body mass, the team found that women with blood type O were twice as likely to have an FSH level higher than 10 than women with any other blood type. Women with either A or AB blood groups, on the other hand, were significantly less likely to have such a high score.

Dream jobs 1: Penguin wrangler

Kicking off this week's series of true-life stories: zookeeper Evelyn Guyett braves leopard seals to pick feathers from the rumps of Antarctic birds

Brilliant SF books that got away

The sci-fi books that we should have read, but probably haven't - as nominated by leading scientists and writers. Plus our flash fiction competition

Bisphenol A is everywhere - is it safe?

Mounting evidence against a chemical we are exposed to daily is being ignored. What more do regulators need, ask David Melzer and Tamara Galloway

Manchester gets a neutrino detector made of balloons

A new exhibition brings visitors face to face with a replica of the Super Kamiokande neutrino detector in Japan

How to catch the 'jihadi bug'

In Talking to the Enemy Scott Atran explains the social dynamics of terrorism: extremists radicalise their friends

Moving illusions: Brain-tricking motion

Visual researchers have come up with some mind-bending new motion perception illusions. Here, New Scientist brings you our pick of the best videos

Intruders beware: armed robots on patrol

Autonomous roving robots are being deployed to guard sensitive installations and national borders - and some of them are armed

Constant change: Are there no universal laws?

It looks like physics works differently in different places. If so, everything we think we know about the cosmos may be wrong

Game characters to get authentically rumpled clothes

Computer games characters' clothes normally stay crease-free even after hours of running and jumping. New software could see them crumple realistically

New protein target for antidepressants

A protein involved in the growth and development of brain cells could play a role in depression and provide a possible target for antidepressants

Now that's what a tweet should sound like

A future smartphone app called AudioFeeds could provide Facebook and Twitter alerts to you as 3D sound delivered via headphones

Vaccines could help elephantiasis spread

Parasitic worms adjust their survival strategy based on their host's immune response, meaning vaccines against elephantiasis might help it spread

Virtual faces get some colour in their cheeks

Animated characters will be able to blush and show the after-effects of alcohol thanks to new face colour software

Indian neutrino lab to boast world's biggest magnet

The planned Indian Neutrino Observatory will be made of 50,000 tonnes of magnetised iron buried beneath more than a kilometre of rock

Malaria deaths in India 10 times as many as thought

An unprecedented survey suggests that malaria is killing many more people worldwide than we realised

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter
(Image: Nick Ballon)

Nelly Ben Hayoun's installation, Super K Sonic Booooum 2 opened at the Manchester Science Festival this weekend.  The exhibition brings visitors face to face with a replica of the Super Kamiokande neutrino detector in Japan.

Visitors are taken down a 22 metre, water-filled tunnel lined with thousands of "detectors" - silver balloons. They are exposed to the loud booms and bright flashes of what could be Cherenkov radiation - representing the interactions between neutrinos and atoms of pure water in a real detector.

The real Super K detector, located in Higashi-Mozumi, Gifu, Japan,  consists of a tank 1000m below ground containing 50,000 tons of pure water surrounded by over eleven thousand golden photomultiplier tubes which measure light emitted when neutrinos collide with water nuclei. Physicists monitor these reactions to gain insight into basic nature of matter, the universe, and the laws of physics.

Competition: 50 ideas to change science forever

Which of the 50 ideas presented this week and last do you think is most likely to change the face of science? Tell us, and you could win a tablet PC

Sun flares up again

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory has seen one of the most intense flares of the past few months, with a 500,000-kilometre magnetised filament

Ant pioneer brought back to life

The book Kingdom of Ants tells the story of one man's adventures in early natural history - and provides a rare glimpse of science in the making

Innovation: how to delete corporate logos from view

A number of artists are using augmented reality to allow you to subvert or remove the logos and adverts that are all around

Should schoolchildren be typecast into science?

Students who choose science tend to be more shy and more conscientious than others. Should we encourage them to break out of their mould?

Morality: My brain made me do it

Understanding how morality is linked to brain function will require us to rethink our justice system, says Martha J. Farah

Nick Lane: Winner of the Royal Society book prize

Nick Lane's book Life Ascending won the Royal Society 2010 Prize for Science Books. New Scientist caught up with him at the event

Past climate change influenced human evolution

As the world warms, will humans evolve to cope with arid conditions? Maybe, if the Yoruba people of west Africa are anything to go by

Film festival: 'A well-trained monkey could do my job'

Luis Nieto, maker of Capucine, explains that creativity is nothing more than free association - something even a monkey movie-maker can do

50 ideas to change science forever: Engineering

We'll haul rocks from Mars, a continent-sized telescope will look back to the universe's dark ages and we'll make a model of everyone alive

'It's just an animal': Award-winning photoessay

Mark Leong has won the Wildlife Photojournalist of the Year award for his work exploring the cruelty behind international trade in wildlife products

Formula for the perfect marathon carb load

Online calculator shows just how much carbohydrate you need to consume to run a marathon without "hitting the wall"

Galaxies get real when the dark side warms up

New simulations of our corner of the cosmos suggest that dark matter might be warm, with relatively fast-moving and lightweight particles

Synthetic DNA makers warned of bioterrorism threats

To frustrate bioterrorists to build dangerous viruses from scratch, guidelines for firms that supply "custom DNA" are being introduced in the US

Morality: Brain roots of right and wrong

We are figuring out how the brain and its chemicals give rise to moral and social values, says Patricia Churchland

LCROSS mission may have struck silver on the moon

A spacecraft that was crashed into the moon last year threw up debris that included not only water but also higher-than-expected amounts of silver

Alzheimer's protein can move from blood to brain

Mice injected in the belly with brain plaques from other mice go on to develop an Alzheimer's-like brain disease

Bill Gates's road map for saving 4 million lives

Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda are in London to promote their Living Proof campaign, highlighting the value of development aid

What the US midterm elections mean for science

Science is under fire in the US midterm election campaign, with anti-science views popular and stimulus spending on research described as waste

Cyber-security test range to test critical networks

New UK facility will give hackers a crack at the computer systems of banks and utilities

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter
(Image: NASA)

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory observed this ultraviolet image of one of the most intense solar flares witnessed in the past few months in sunspot 1112. A filament of magnetised material can be seen streaking 500,000 kilometres across the sun's southern hemisphere. The bright spot just above the filament's midpoint is UV radiation released from the sunspot.

A solar flare occurs when magnetic energy that has built up in the solar atmosphere is suddenly released, emitting radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum. In this case, the energy has been released into deep space. There have been no reports of energetic particles from this flare interfering with spacecraft or making their way towards Earth.

Earlier this week the Solar Dynamics Observatory witnessed its first lunar transit when the moon passed directly between the spacecraft and the sun.

Morality: Our hidden judgements

Our moral judgements affect our thinking in surprising ways, says Joshua Knobe. Test your own intuition

Be afraid. Be very afraid: Fly photo scoops prize

An image of a 20-hour-old embryo of a fruit fly has won the close-up category in the Society of Biology´s photographic competition

How did the leopard get its spots?

Coat patterns of big cats are determined by ecology, with cats in jungles developing more intricate camouflage than those on plains or mountains

Low levels of vitamin B₁₂ linked to Alzheimer's

Vitamin B₁₂ may help to suppress amino acids that can damage the brain

Universal flu vaccine one step closer

A protein that elicits immunity against every flu family known to attack people could lead to a vaccine

Flash fiction competition 2010: Forgotten futures

Send us your very short stories about futures that never were

What does the UK spending review mean for science?

Recently announced UK spending cuts have left science funding frozen for four years - but that doesn't mean that British science is secure just yet

Why complex life probably evolved only once

The mystery of why complex life evolved only once might finally have been solved - suggesting it's unlikely to exist elsewhere

50 ideas to change science forever: Light and matter

The Nobel-winning material of the future, how to make light do our bidding, the missing link for electronic brains, why T is the new X-ray

China sparks concern over rare earth metal supply

Reports that China has halted some exports of rare elements, used in everything from iPods to electric cars, are worrying the technology industry

Coddled male wolf cubs father fewer pups

Sibling helpers make for larger male cubs, but may leave those big boys less reproductively fit later in life

Morality: Infant origins of human kindness

The behaviour of babies shows that we've got kindness built in, says Paul Bloom, but extending it to strangers takes some work

Universal cancer marker shows new treatment options

The discovery of a marker that highlights a wide range of cancers could give surgeons a "dotted line" to cut out tumours

Dim galaxy is most distant object yet found

Light from a recently discovered galaxy has travelled for more than 13.1 billion years, making its source the most distant object known

Halley's meteors streak past

Watch the skies this week and you could see a piece of Halley's comet, even though it won't be passing Earth until 2061

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter
(Image: Samantha Warrington/ University of Sheffield)

Samantha Warrington, a postgraduate at the University of Sheffield's Biomedical Science department, won the close-up category in the Society of Biology´s photographic competition with this eye-catching image of a 20-hour-old embryo of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

The image, captured on a confocal microscope, shows a 20-hour old embryo with three cell membrane proteins fluorescently labelled in blue, green and red. The head end is on the left.

The photo is a cross section showing several internal structures: the outer layer (the epidermis) is in green; the blue branches along the top are part of a network of air-carrying tubes called the tracheal system; and the hindgut stands out as two distinct curved green lines. 

Sonia Van Gilder Cooke, reporter

(Image: Steve Winter/Getty)

Rudyard Kipling was half-right, say William Allen and colleagues of the University of Bristol, UK.

The team googled pictures of big cats and matched their coats to computer-generated patterns. The resulting classification was used to test the relationship between a cat's patterning, where it lives, and how it hunts. The researchers found that nocturnal tree-dwellers have evolved complex coats to match a dappled, dark forest, while cats stalking the open plains tended to be more plain.

One exception is the cheetah, whose patterned coat contrasts with its monochromatic hunting grounds. Allen said this might be explained by the cheetah's hunting strategy, which relies not on camouflage, but on speed. Low genetic diversity might also be a cause.

"It may be that there isn't variety in the population to become anything other than spotted," says Allen. For other cats, however, camouflage evolves in response to environment over short periods of time, suggesting a leopard can actually change its spots.

Allen drew inspiration for the title of his study from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. "Rudyard Kipling was wrong by suggesting how leopards got their spots as the fingerprints of a man," Allen told the Telegraph.  "But he was right about the reason because they provide the perfect camouflage in a forest habitat with dappled light."

Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.1734

Emma Davies, contributor

Rare elements are an essential component of gadgets in your home, from iPods to LCD TVs - and most of the world's supply comes from China.

That's why many technology manufacturers will be concerned by press reports suggesting that China has halted some exports of the elements to the US and Europe.

China currently provides 97 per cent of the world's rare earth elements (REEs), but it has been imposing export quotas for some time. Last July, it slashed the quotas for REEs and recently made plans for further dramatic cuts, according to the China Daily newspaper.

In September 2010, China was reported to have temporarily stopped rare earth exports to Japan during a territorial dispute.

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter



(Image: Meteor Physics Group, University of Western Ontario)

Watch the skies this week and you could see a piece of Halley's comet, even though it won't be passing Earth until 2061.
 
As the comet travels on its 76-year trip around the sun, it leaves small pieces of itself behind.  These meteoroids of dust and ice, travelling at over 237,000 kilometres per hour, collide with the Earth's atmosphere as it crosses the comet's orbit in early May and mid-October.  The meteoroids burn up quickly high in the atmosphere, creating the streaks of a meteor shower.

October's meteors appear to come from the direction of the constellation of Orion and earn it the name of  the Orionid meteor shower. Last year, NASA recorded 43 Orionid meteors, most of which burned up more than 96 kilometres above the ground.
 
The shower peaks tomorrow and is best viewed in a clear, dark sky after 11 pm in your local time, when the sky will be at its darkest.

Prospective fathers should watch what they eat

What fathers eat influences whether their daughters inherit diabetes - in mice, at least

Gene therapy proposed to treat depression

Injecting a gene into the brains of people with depression could help them - it would be the first attempt to treat mental illness this way

Creationism lives on in US public schools

"Intelligent design" is still creeping into US schools, five years after the court ruling that banished it from Pennsylvania classrooms

Climate change battle moves to courtrooms

The little guys are suing energy giants for the effects of climate change - could they succeed in changing US legislation where Congress has failed?

Heavy atoms set to collide at the LHC

After meeting its 2010 proton collision target, the LHC is set to begin experiments with lead

Tritium shortage threatens US nuclear disarmament goal

A new tritium plant to maintain existing US nuclear weapons could send the wrong message to the rest of the world

Can neuroscience help Gap produce a better logo?

Neuroscientists have delved into volunteers' brains to find out exactly why there was such a backlash against Gap's new logo

Morality: Do your worst, virtually

Immersive virtual reality technology allows researchers to see how people respond to real and risky moral dilemmas, says Samantha Murphy

Green machine: Trees may spell trouble for wind power

Burgeoning forests not only keep CO₂ levels in check, they also cut wind speeds - with unfortunate effects for energy generation

Asia tops climate change's 'most vulnerable' list

Ten of the 16 countries most vulnerable to climate change are in Asia; to escape the worst, move to Scandinavia, Ireland or Iceland

Humans eradicate a disease for only second time ever

The cattle plague rinderpest has been wiped off the planet, say global health authorities

All-electric spintronic semiconductor devices created

Electron spin could become the universal language of computers - now it has been created and measured electronically in a standard semiconductor

50 ideas to change science forever: Nanotechnology

Quantum mechanics will go mechanical and your computer will run on ghostly knots, or spintronics, or maybe even slowed-down light

Zoologger: The slow-moving mystery of the sloth's neck

Sitting quietly on a tree branch in South America, brown-throated sloths don't do much - except break a law of mammalian evolution

Morality: 'We can send religion to the scrap heap'

Sam Harris says that science can show us the best ways for human beings to thrive - and we can then junk religion forever

Jessica Hamzelou, reporter 

(Image: Gap)

Gap, the American clothing brand valued at $4 billion, took a big chance in abandoning its well-known logo (above left) for an updated version (above right).

And it didn't pay off.

The proposed new logo was greeted with a wave of online fury as digital protests broke out on Facebook and Twitter. The new logo was universally declared a #fail. One site even offered the opportunity to design your own version, by inserting a derogatory word of your choice.

After attempting a crowd sourcing project to get the whingers to come up with something better, the company caved and announced they were reverting back to the old logo, just days after showcasing the new one.

Gap president Marka Hansen released the following statement:

We've learned a lot in this process. And we are clear that we did not go about this in the right way. We recognize that we missed the opportunity to engage with the online community. This wasn't the right project at the right time for crowd sourcing.

But what was it about the new logo that made it the centre of an instant online hate campaign? Neuroscientists claim they know the answer.

Solar eclipse witnessed from space

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded its first lunar transit when the moon passed directly between the spacecraft and the sun

Film festival: The humble beginnings of a genius

Marius Borodine is a wonderfully imagined tale of overnight success enjoyed by a fictional struggling inventor

Finding Britain's butterflies

Patrick Barkham enthusiastically seeks out the UK's 59 butterfly species in The Butterfly Isles: A summer in search of our emperors and admirals

Neanderthals did not shop at prehistoric Tiffany's

Jewellery and tools from a cave in France were actually made by modern humans, if a new radiocarbon dating study is to be believed

Gigantic Sissi creates world's longest rail tunnel

On Friday, the gigantic drilling machine Sissi broke through the last 1.5 metres of rock to complete the Gotthard Base rail tunnel in Switzerland

Quantum mechanics: A tale fit for a superhero

James Kakalios takes an original and highly readable approach to his subject in The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics

Film festival: Visions of the not-so-distant US future

Fascist food corporations, accelerated pregnancies and pontificating grocery bags all feature in a series of films imagining the future in the US

Ghostly 'Smeagol fish' found 7km down in trench

A new species of reclusive, skulking fish has been discovered 7 kilometres underwater in the Peru-Chile trench

Film festival: Can monkeys make movies?

Capucine by Luis Nieto is an hilarious behind-the-scenes look at how a smart monkey made film history

Film festival: Movies that tell the stories of science

Higgs and Green Porno show the range of films on show at the third annual Imagine Science Film Festival in New York this week

Big promises ahead of biodiversity conference

Countries around the world are making major commitments to safeguard the world's endangered species, but the evidence suggests they aren't enough

Why we need iconic engineering

Chris Noble has held the world land speed record for 27 years and shows no sign of slowing down

Next: solve world hunger

One year in and Emma already has designs on the world's big problems - after she's got her PhD, that is

Seven ways to make a new thing

Steven Johnson runs into trouble when he tries to construct a universal theory of how innovation happens in Where Good Ideas Come From

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

(Image: SDO/NASA)

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded its first lunar transit when the moon passed directly between the spacecraft and the sun.

In this newly released image, the dark edge of the moon forms a partial eclipse of the sun. This sharp edge can be used to help calculate the effects of light diffraction on the telescope's optics, allowing operators to correct for this effect.

Onboard the SDO is the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager instrument. This measures magnetic fields, as well as visible ripples on the surface of the sun caused by the sun's convection zone. This data helps researchers understand our star's influence on Earth and near-Earth space.

The spacecraft was launched on board Atlas V from Cape Canaveral on the 11th of February 2010.

Michael Marshall, reporter

Over the years we've lavished a lot of love on the Neanderthals, arguing that the popular image of them as dumb, primitive brutes is wrong. In fact they were intelligent, engaged in a lot of complex behaviours, and may even have been able to speak

However, the image of sophisticated Neanderthals attending dinner parties wearing their fancy jewellery has just taken a knock: one of the central pieces of evidence may not be reliable.

In 1959 in the Grotte du Renne in central France, archaeologists found a wide range of ornaments and tools, including some that look like primitive jewellery. Think of it as a Stone Age Tiffany's. Later, a study showed that the artefacts were jumbled up with Neanderthal teeth, suggesting that the Neanderthals made them some time between 35,000 and 40,000 years ago.

But if a new study of the remains is correct, the ornaments have nothing to do with Neanderthals.

Valerie Jamieson, chief features editor

(Image: clawan/Shutter/stock)

Benoît Mandelbrot, who died a month shy of his 86^th birthday on Thursday, wanted to be remembered as the founding father of fractal geometry – the branch of mathematics that perceives the hidden order in nature.

He became a household name, thanks to the psychedelic swirls and spikes of the most famous fractal equation, Mandelbrot set. (Recently, a 3D version of the set was discovered, called the Mandelbulb.)

Fractals are everywhere, from cauliflowers to our blood vessels. No matter how you divide a fractal nor how closely or distantly you zoom in, its shape stays the same. They have helped model the weather, measure online traffic, compress computer files, analyse seismic tremors and the distribution of galaxies. And they became an essential tool in the 1980s for studying the hidden order in the seemingly disordered world of chaotic systems.

By his own admission, Mandelbrot spent his career trawling the litter cans of science for fractal patterns and found them in the most unusual places. His job title at Yale University in New Haven, Conneticut, was deliberately chosen with this diversity in mind. "I'm a mathematical scientist," he told me. "It's a very ambiguous term."

Gigantic Sissi creates world's longest rail tunnel

On Friday, the gigantic drilling machine Sissi broke through the last 2.9km of rock to complete the Gotthard Base rail tunnel in Switzerland

50 ideas to change science forever: Cosmology

Are you ready for the massive hidden reality promised by supersymmetry? Or the evolution of quantum mechanics? How about a black hole in your tool shed?

Quantum mechanics: A tale fit for a superhero

James Kakalios takes an original and highly readable approach to his subject in The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics

Airwolf 2010: The race to build superfast choppers

A new generation of 500 kilometre-per-hour helicopters are showing that choppers needn't be the slowcoaches of the air

The chaos theory of evolution

Forget finding the laws of evolution. The history of life is just one damn thing after another

Special report: Morality put to the test

Can science teach us right from wrong? New Scientist explores the insights of a new generation of researchers who say it can

Competition: 50 ideas to change science forever

Which of the 50 ideas presented this week and last do you think is most likely to change the face of science? Tell us, and you could win a tablet PC

Robot limbs to plug into the brain with light

Light-based sensors that detect nerve impulses could allow the brain to control artificial limbs directly, and feed sensations into the nervous system

Grey whales took to high seas to survive the ice ages

Clues to how these ocean giants survived the last ice age may be lurking in a population of grey whales off the Canada's Pacific coast

A 3D model of the ultimate ear

Refining the standard model of the human outer ear will help bring headphones, cellphones and other audio gadgets closer to perfection

T. rex was a cannibal

Whether T. Rex were fearsome predators or cowardly scavengers is hotly disputed. Now it seems the legendary dinosaurs were cannibals

Grisly death forecast for planet found spiralling into star

Exoplanet OGLE-TR-113b's orbit seems to have shrunk steadily since 2002 - and in 1.4 million years, it may meet a violent end

Ghostly Smeagol fish found 7km down in trench

A new species of reclusive, skulking fish has been discovered 7 kilometres underwater in the Peru-Chile trench

Film festival: Can monkeys make movies?

Capucine by Luis Nieto is an hilarious behind-the-scenes look at how a smart monkey made film history

Floating 3D virtual objects appear at British Library

A new projector allows floating 3D objects - from a model of the heart to a talking human head - to be viewed from any angle

Film festival: Movies that tell the stories of science

Higgs and Green Porno show the range of films on show at the third annual Imagine Science Film Festival in New York this week

Being in love eases the pain

Cupid's victims are less sensitive to pain, at least in the dizzy days of young love

Big promises ahead of biodiversity conference

Countries around the world are making major commitments to safeguard the world's endangered species, but the evidence suggests they aren't enough

Men beware: moving country could affect your libido

Levels of hormones that influence sexual arousal and disease susceptibility are in part determined by where men live

Cellphones reveal emerging disease outbreaks

People's pattern of movement and communication alter when they have the flu virus, and these changes can be used to spot emerging epidemics

A warming world could leave cities flattened

Crumbling volcanoes unleashed rock avalanches and landslides the last time the world warmed - and the same could soon happen again

Seven ways to make a new thing

Steven Johnson runs into trouble when he tries to construct a universal theory of how innovation happens in Where Good Ideas Come From

50 ideas to change science: Artificial life

Cells, enzymes, photosynthesis - soon we'll be remaking life our own way. Not to mention making our own spare body parts, and taming flu once and for all

Briefing: Cancer is not a disease of the modern world

Few if any tumours have been found in Egyptian mummies and ancient skeletons. New Scientist examines the evidence and what it means

50 ideas to change science: Neuroscience

Thanks to better brain imaging and biological insights, we're closing in on the neurons of consciousness and the subtleties of our mental machinery

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

(Image: Christian Hartmann/AP/Press Association Images)

On Friday, the gigantic drilling machine Sissi broke through the last 1.5 metres of rock to complete the Gotthard Base rail tunnel in Switzerland, the world's longest at 57 kilometres.
 
Eight 3000 ton drilling machines, each 400 metres long and fitted with 60 drill heads, worked simultaneously for 8 years to complete the pair of parallel tunnels 40 metres apart and 10 metres in diameter, connected every 320 metres by a cross passage.  In total, 153.5 kilometres of tunnel was drilled and 24 million tons of rubble removed by a team of 2600 workers.
 
The machines advanced at a rate of 20 to 25 metres per day, though in areas where the rock was brittle, miners used explosives, advancing 6 to 10 metres per day. Eight workers died during construction.
 
The €9.1 billion tunnel connects Erstfeld, a municipality in the Swiss canton of Uri, with Bodio in the Swiss canton of Ticino.
 
The New Transalpine Rail Link, also known by its German acronym, NEAT, will ease pressure from trucks on Swiss roads. High-speed trains will begin connecting Zurich to Milan from 2016 or 2017.


 

Grisly death forecast for planet found spiralling into star

Exoplanet OGLE-TR-113b's orbit seems to have shrunk steadily since 2002 - and in 1.4 million years, it may meet a violent end

Ghostly Smeagol fish found 7km down in trench

A new species of reclusive, skulking fish has been discovered 7 kilometres underwater in the Peru-Chile trench

Film festival: Can monkeys make movies?

Capucine by Luis Nieto is an hilarious behind-the-scenes look at how a smart monkey made film history

Floating 3D virtual objects appear at British Library

A new projector allows floating 3D objects - from a model of the heart to a talking human head - to be viewed from any angle

Film festival: Movies that tell the stories of science

Higgs and Green Porno show the range of films on show at the third annual Imagine Science Film Festival in New York this week

Being in love eases the pain

Cupid's victims are less sensitive to pain, at least in the dizzy days of young love

Big promises ahead of biodiversity conference

Countries around the world are making major commitments to safeguard the world's endangered species, but the evidence suggests they aren't enough

Men beware: moving country could affect your libido

Levels of hormones that influence sexual arousal and disease susceptibility are in part determined by where men live

Cellphones reveal emerging disease outbreaks

People's pattern of movement and communication alter when they have the flu virus, and these changes can be used to spot emerging epidemics

A warming world could leave cities flattened

Crumbling volcanoes unleashed rock avalanches and landslides the last time the world warmed - and the same could soon happen again

Seven ways to make a new thing

Steven Johnson runs into trouble when he tries to construct a universal theory of how innovation happens in Where Good Ideas Come From

50 ideas to change science: Artificial life

Cells, enzymes, photosynthesis - soon we'll be remaking life our own way. Not to mention making our own spare body parts, and taming flu once and for all

Briefing: Cancer is not a disease of the modern world

Few if any tumours have been found in Egyptian mummies and ancient skeletons. New Scientist examines the evidence and what it means

50 ideas to change science: Neuroscience

Thanks to better brain imaging and biological insights, we're closing in on the neurons of consciousness and the subtleties of our mental machinery

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

This new species of snailfish was discovered 7 kilometres down in the Peru-Chile trench in the south-east Pacific Ocean using a deep-sea baited camera system.

A team of marine biologists from the Hadal Environment and Educational Program (HADEEP) - a collaborative research project between Oceanlab at the University of Aberdeen, UK, and the Ocean Research Institute at the University of Tokyo, Japan, with support from New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research institute (NIWA) - captured 6000 images at depths between 4.5 and 8 kilometres in the trench over a three-week expedition.

As well as the reclusive, skulking fish, the team also found large groups of cusk-eels and crustacean scavengers called amphipods at these depths for the first time.

Michael Marshall, environment reporter

The promises are coming thick and fast in the run-up to the United Nations biodiversity conference in Japan later this month, as countries fall over each other to commit to protect the world's endangered species.

The US announced today that it was writing off $30 million of Costa Rica's debt. In exchange, Costa Rica will create a host of new protected areas, increase the management of its existing ones and create a series of protected corridors between them so that species can move freely.

This follows a 2007 agreement that saw $26 million of Costa Rica's debt wiped out in exchange for protecting 1000 hectares of tropical forest. Debt-for-nature swaps like this were pioneered in 1987 by the US and Bolivia. Despite some early failures, more recent deals have worked well.

$17 million has already been pledged to Costa Rica by private donors. A spokesperson for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the international treaty that administers UN biodiversity programmes, was "hopeful" that a further $3 million would be committed during the conference, meaning Costa Rica could receive $50 million in new donations.

More such announcements are expected over the next few weeks.

Cane toad tadpoles relish cannibal caviar

Cane toads actively hunt members of their own species. Now it emerges that cane toad larvae also have a taste for toad flesh

Mammal rush: furry new kids on the block

Over 400 new mammal species have been identified since 1993 - and we take a look at some of the most striking of them

Coal state fires at the cap-and-trade bill. Literally

A new study shows West Virginia has plenty of geothermal energy to be tapped - but local Senate candidates stick with anti-green, pro-coal message

Enzyme-blocker boosts memory in old mice

A drug that aids memory in elderly mice could one day help people, too

Curious mathematical law is rife in nature

Earthquakes, stellar remnants, and a host of other natural phenomena all conform to a little known mathematical law, which could now find new uses

Five-year 'Jesus box' trial comes to an end

Provenance of an ossuary inscribed "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" is about to be decided by an Israeli court

People with ME banned from giving blood in UK

The UK's blood transfusion service last week became the latest to refuse donations from people who have had ME or chronic fatigue syndrome

Trying to create a star - and burning out

At the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, they are trying to create stars

Visions of toxic industrial splendour

From the paraglider vantage of photographer Kacper Kowalski, Poland's polluted industrial landscape has a strange beauty

First life-friendly exoplanet may not exist

Two weeks after one team of astronomers announced finding the habitable planet Gliese 581 g, another team says it can find no evidence of the world in its data

Sujata Gupta, reporter

Joe Manchin does not like the US cap and trade bill, and he intends to show it. In a new ad, the democratic West Virginia governor and Senate candidate points a hunting rifle at a piece of paper labelled "cap and trade" and fires. "I'll take dead aim at the cap-and-trade bill," he intones.

Manchin wants his constituency to know that he will vote against green initiatives that hurt the "mountain state's" core industry - coal. Cap and trade, by definition, would limit greenhouse gas emissions and coal happens to emit a lot. Indeed, Manchin and his Republican rival, John Raese, have been sparring over who is least like green-energy-touting president Barack Obama.

(Image: Melissa Farlow/Getty)

So it's not surprising that neither candidate has so much as mentioned a new study showing that West Virginia's future may rest not in black gold but molten rock: the state turns out to be rich in clean, green geothermal energy.

Researchers at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, have found that rock temperatures 3 to 8 kilometres below the eastern part of the state hover around 200 °C - similar to geothermal fields that already produce power in Iceland and California.

"The temperatures are high enough to make this the most attractive area for geothermal energy development in the eastern third of the country," say the authors.

Map of temperature-at-depth for West Virginia

Could West Virginia become a leader in alternative energy? The late senator Robert Byrd, who died in June, would have been thrilled at the prospect. Having spent most of his 50-year tenure in the Senate vigorously defending the rights of the coal industry, he changed his stance during the last few years of his life. "The old chestnut that 'coal is West Virginia's greatest natural resource' deserves revision," he said in May.

But in Manchin and Raese's bitter fight to claim Byrd's vacated seat, those words have been all but forgotten. Who cares about hot rocks, anyway?

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

Big bounce cosmos makes inflation a sure thing

If our universe is a recycled version of an earlier cosmos, it could solve one of the great cosmic puzzles

Robot arm punches human to obey Asimov's rules

Powerful robots must know their limits to avoid injuring humans - and the only way to learn is from experience

Zoologger: How weakness makes the crayfish stronger

The spiny-cheek crayfish is a shape-shifter, spending part of the year feeble and unable to reproduce. This might be a really good idea

50 ideas to change science: Genetics

After the genome, it's time for the next level: the interactome and phenome. Expect biotech wizardry and a stream of Jurassic Park headlines along the way

Lax laws led to Hungary's caustic flood

Holes in European legislation are to blame for the tide of toxic red mud that escaped an alumina plant in Hungary last week

Extreme close-up: from mosquito hearts to soy sauce

See the colourful and detailed winning microscopic images from the 2010 Nikon Small World Competition

Chile's rescued miners: the psychological after-effects

As the miners emerge one by one, New Scientist asked psychologists what needs to be done to maintain their mental well-being

Science and the Soviet Union

In his new book, Red Plenty, Francis Spufford combines fact and fiction to tell a story of economic and scientific growth in the Soviet Union

Green Machine: Where do solar cells go when they die?

The first generation of solar panels is about to expire - and their disposal risks tarnishing the industry's green credentials

LHC chief: Finding nothing 'would be interesting'

As things hot up at the Large Hadron Collider, Sergio Bertolucci tells of what lies ahead for the world's largest atom smasher

NASA 'intrusions' may deter rocket scientists

Space researchers are at the heart of a legal battle over privacy. If they lose, NASA may have trouble attracting top talent

Ocean asteroid hits will create huge ozone holes

Tsunamis won't be the only worry if an asteroid hits the ocean. Even a modest rock would throw up enough water and salt to puncture the ozone layer

Eating Skippy: Is kangaroo the kindest meat?

Can kangaroo meat's green credentials convince a dedicated veggie to turn kangatarian? New Scientist goes hunting for an answer

Oil drilling to resume in Gulf of Mexico's deep waters

Mixed reactions greet the end of a government-imposed moratorium, says Sujata Gupta

How much would you pay for planet Earth?

Putting a cash value on nature may give officials heading to a biodiversity summit the jolt they need

50 ideas to change science: Ecology

If you think evolution is just about individuals passing on their genes to offspring, get set for a radical reweaving of the web of life - and finance

Undersea army deployed to save ecosystem

A grey angelfish swims past the newest additions to the Underwater Art Museum in Isla Mujeres National Marine Park in Mexico

The man who knows how to get The Last Word

Jon Richfield has answered so many Last Word questions that readers think New Scientist must have made him up. We talk to the man behind the name

Jaundice at birth may be linked to autism

Having jaundice as a baby may increase the risk of developing autism, though the increase is small

Changes caused by smoking block tumour-fighting genes

The first direct evidence has been found linking smoking to epigenetic changes in genes involved in fighting cancer

Computer beats human at Japanese chess for first time

A computer running a software system called Akara 2010 has beaten a human at shogi - the much more complicated version of chess played in Japan

Tea Party luring US into adventures in irrationality

Compared with what may be in store for the US, George W. Bush's administration looks positively friendly to science, says Chris Mooney

Tiger video catches illegal loggers red-handed

Candid camera trap exposes tiger threat in Sumatra as bulldozers are filmed illegally clearing a protected area

Unweaving the cosmic web: Relativity goes large

We're on the verge of being able to see the structure of the entire universe. That could help us go beyond Einstein's masterwork, says Pedro Ferreira

Hunter-gatherers cared for first known ancient invalid

Too old to hunt, he probably needed a cane and suffered terrible back pain - and other early humans 500,000 years ago must have looked after him

Giant Antarctic balloon sees surprise cosmic rays

A neutrino telescope that makes use of thick Antarctic ice and a giant balloon is doubling up as a cosmic ray detector

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

(Image: Jason de Caires Taylor/Barcroft Media/Getty Images)
A grey angelfish swims past the newest additions to the Underwater Art Museum in Isla Mujeres National Marine Park near Cancun, Mexico.
 
British artist Jason de Caires Taylor used casts to mould 400 statues of real members of the public, which he placed on the sea floor to form the foundations of an artificial reef. 
 
The sculptures are made from porous materials that will encourage coral to grow. It is hoped the installation will provide a habitat for marine life, and relieve pressure on natural reefs from over half a million water-going tourists who visit the region every year.
 

Rowan Hooper, news editor

(Image: Flashfilm/Getty)

A computer has beaten a human at shogi, otherwise known as Japanese chess, for the first time. No big deal, you might think. After all, computers have been beating humans at western chess for years, and when IBM's Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov in 1997, it was greeted in some quarters as if computers were about to overthrow humanity.

That hasn't happened yet, but after all, western chess is a relatively simple game, with only about 10¹²³ possible games existing that can be played out. Shogi is a bit more complex, though, offering about 10²²⁴ possible games.

The Mainichi Daily News reports that top women's shogi player Ichiyo Shimizu took part in a match staged at the University of Tokyo, playing against a computer called Akara 2010. Akara is apparently a Buddhist term meaning 10²²⁴, the newspaper reports, and the system beat Shimizu in six hours, over the course of 86 moves.

First person treated in milestone stem cell trial

Person with spinal injuries first to receive cells originating from human embryonic stem cells

What will you do in a driverless car?

Google's decision to develop driverless cars may be part of a wider push to bring the web, apps and TV into your vehicle

50 ideas to change science: Earth

From wipe-outs in life's deep history to future dead oceans, Earth sciences have no shortage of apocalyptic visions to offer

Innovation: The smartphone's shape-shifting future

The solid outer shell of today's cellphones might be replaced by a squeezable, breathing, wriggling version in future

The green city that has a brain

An eco-city in Portugal that its makers are aiming to build by 2015 takes its cues from the nervous system

Photo competition: The texture of science

October's photo competition is now open. This month, we'd like your pictures on the theme of "Texture of Science".

Prodigy psychologist: The gifted child's curse

You may think that for a "gifted" child, the world is their oyster - but Joan Freeman explains that the label has as many negatives as positives

Gliding spaceship brings space tourism closer

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo cruised through its first test to assess its performance when returning to Earth after a suborbital space shot

Hey! Osborne! Leave our geeks alone

Hundreds of scientists protested on Saturday at the UK government's planned cuts to science funding

New meat-eater emerges in Madagascar

A feisty cat-sized creature from Madagascar is the first new species of carnivorous mammal to be discovered in 24 years

50 ideas to change science forever

There are still plenty of big problems left, from the nature of consciousness to the fate of the cosmos. Here's where to start looking for answers

Too much screen time is bad for active kids too

Children who watch TV or play computer games for 2 hours or more a day are more likely to have behavioural problems, even if they're physically active

Water cycle goes bust as the world gets warmer

The amount of water evaporating off the land and into the atmosphere hit a maximum 12 years ago and is now in decline

Quantum thermometers usher in the big chill

In the quantum world, simply measuring temperature can cool things down

Meet the oldest dino ancestor yet

Footprints left by a dinosaur ancestor show the animals were around earlier than previously thought

Paul Marks, chief technology correspondent

With little fanfare on Saturday night, Google revealed that it has been furtively testing and refining driverless cars on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles, clocking up an incredible 225,000 test-driving kilometres as they did so. 

Google says it has quietly gotten into the automotive automation research business by hiring some of the robotics engineers who won (or at least, performed well) in the Pentagon's 2004, 2005 and 2007 self-driving car competitions - the so-called DARPA Grand Challenges. DARPA wants Humvees and trucks to drive themselves so supplies can be delivered without risking the lives of troops.

But where the DARPA competitions started in a desert and ended up in a simulated city, Google has taken to real streets with real people in them. While that raises all kinds of legal and insurance issues, Google told the New York Times that it has stuck to the letter of Californian law.

Paul Marks, chief technology correspondent

(Image: Virgin Galactic)

SpaceShipTwo, the craft in which Virgin Galactic hopes to fly more than 370 paying space tourists to suborbital altitudes, made its first solo unpowered flight on 10 October - in a flight test designed to assess its performance when returning to Earth.

Slung between the twin fuselages of the carbon-fibre, four-engined WhiteKnightTwo mothership, SpaceShipTwo - named the VSS Enterprise - was carried to an altitude of 13.7 kilometres (45,000 feet). Then, using a novel release mechanism developed by Mojave, California based Scaled Composites, the maker of both the aircraft and the spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo was released to fly alone for the first time.

Video footage shows a smooth release and a seemingly trouble-free glide back to a landing at Mojave Air and Space Port in California. Much post-flight analysis remains to be performed, but Virgin and Scaled Composites say the release mechanism, handling, and flight controls appear to have worked as they were designed and simulated to.

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

This feisty cat-sized creature from Madagascar is the first new species of carnivorous mammal to be discovered in 24 years.
 
Durrell's vontsira (Salanoia durrelli) was found in the threatened Lac Alaotra wetlands in central eastern Madagascar in 2004. Zoologists took photos of it at the time, and have now confirmed it is a new species after comparing it to specimens of the closely related brown-tailed vontsira (Salanoia concolor).
 
Named in honour of the late conservationist Gerald Durrell, the new vontsira weighs just over half a kilogram and belongs to a family of carnivores – Eupleridae – only known in Madagascar. It is likely to be one of the most threatened carnivores as their Lac Alaotra wetland habitat becomes threatened by agricultural expansion, burning and invasive plants and fish.  

(Image: Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust)

Evidence of water in megacanyon on Mars

An image of Melas Chasma, a huge canyon forming part of the 4000 km Valles Marineris rift valley on Mars, shows evidence of liquid water

Deep space drama: Top 10 views of the southern skies

The European Southern Observatory's huge telescopes are some of the world's most advanced - here are its top 10 pictures of all time

Honeybee disapperance mystery may be solved

Has the curious case of the disappearing honeybees been solved? An attack by virus and fungus may have dealt the insects a deadly double-whammy

Tune in to the live whale song network

A new website lets you listen live to a network of underwater listening stations around Europe and Canada

Sweaty palms and puppy love: The physiology of voting

People with a more active sweat response are more likely to take part in political actions

Chemistry Nobel winner: My work is not done

Not content with winning a Nobel prize for his work on palladium catalysts, Ei-ichi Negishi says he still has a lot left to do

Stuxnet: the online front line

Forecasts of cyberwar have been dismissed as hype, but the worm running rampant through Iran's nuclear facilities suggest otherwise, says Paul Marks

Robot prima ballerina debuts

A theatre director, a choreographer and a computer scientist have created a robotic swan that dances to a remix of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake

Ancient tattoos linked to healing ritual

Mysterious tattoos on a Peruvian mummy's neck correspond to modern-day acupuncture points

Black widow pulsar is fattest collapsed star yet

New measurements of pulsar B1957+20 bust predicted limits for how big a neutron star can get before collapsing into a black hole

Anti-dengue mosquitoes to hit Australia and Vietnam

Mosquitoes infected with bacteria that stop them transmitting dengue fever will be released into the wild next year

Body organs can send status updates to your cellphone

Android cellphones could become lifesavers, working as the wireless hub of a body-wide network of medical sensors

Exoskeleton helps the paralysed walk again

A pair of robotic legs could soon help people with spinal injuries to walk with a natural gait

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

Melas Chasma, a huge canyon forming part of the 4000 km Valles Marineris rift valley on Mars, plunges 9 km below the surrounding plains in this image, which was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter, making it one of the deepest depressions on the planet.

Released today by the German Aerospace Centre, the image also shows evidence that water once flowed and lakes once stood on the Martian surface.  White lines are channels cut by water and lighter-coloured regions indicate deposits of sulphate components.   Rock formations display evidence of flow textures, indicating that they were once deposited by liquid water, water ice or mud.

(Image: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum))

Jessica Hamzelou, reporter

Has the curious case of the disappearing honeybees finally been solved? A twin attack of virus and fungus may have dealt the insects a deadly double-whammy.

Colony collapse disorder - the mysterious phenomenon that has led to thousands of beehives being abandoned by their occupants - has puzzled beekeepers and researchers for years. The disappearance of the bees has made it difficult to figure out the cause of CCD, though there has been no shortage of contenders including a paralysing virus, a parasite, and even radiation from mobile phones. 

Now Jerry Bromenshenk at the University of Montana and his colleagues have a new theory: virus + fungus = lethal beehive conditions.

Could an 'elixir of life' really increase your lifespan?

Media reports claim an amino acid cocktail can extend your lifespan by 10 years. But only if you're a lab mouse

First frictionless superfluid created

Chill them enough and some atoms creep up walls or through tiny cracks. Now superfluid molecules have been made too

SF author: I am a spaceman

Award-winning science fiction author Charles Stross talks about economics, becoming a spaceman and rule 34 of the internet

Art scaled up and down

Reality has different rules when you play with scale, shows an exhibition curated by a Harvard physicist

You too can have a dream body - in your movies

Tweaking someone's height and weight on film has till now been a laborious frame-by-frame business - but new software makes it easy

Forget a climate deal - we need a carbon police first

There may be no deal on carbon emissions at the upcoming United Nations summit because those emissions cannot yet be measured accurately enough

Large Hadron Collider detected above ground

A giant mural unveiled yesterday depicts the ATLAS particle detector at CERN

Grey wolf hunt creates bitter row in US

Idaho and Montana's controversial hunts are at the centre of a legal battle over the once-endangered species

Call for ban on codeine

The widely used painkiller has variable and sometimes even lethal effects, and should be taken off the shelf, say Canadian researchers

Jessica Hamzelou, reporter

A chemical elixir can add 10 years to your life! According to the media, anyway. How much of the claim that an amino acid cocktail can boost longevity should be taken with a pinch of salt?

For starters, the study was carried out in mice. Giuseppe D'Antona at Pavia University in Italy and his colleagues added a cocktail of three branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) - isoleucine, leucine and valine - to the feed of young nine-month-old mice.

Compared with mice that were fed regular, unsupplemented chow, which survived an average 774 days, the BCAA-fed mice on average lived to the ripe old age of 869 days. As D'Antona's team point out, the BCAA-fed mice lived 12 per cent longer.

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter



This giant mural by American artist Josef Kristofoletti depicts the ATLAS particle detector at CERN. The mural, unveiled yesterday, is three stories tall yet still only one-third the size the actual detector, which gathers data on particle collisions in the Large Hadron Collider 100m directly underfoot.

The detector recently discovered evidence of elusive "excited" quarks, suggesting that quarks have even smaller constituent parts.

(Image: CERN)

Sun's activity flies in face of climate expectations

If new satellite data can be trusted, changes in solar activity warmed the Earth when they should have cooled it

Louisiana revival: Eco-engineering on a giant scale

The bays and bayous of coastal Louisiana were in trouble even before the Deepwater Horizon disaster. How far should we go to return them to their former glory?

Photo competition: Science in motion

Take a look at our pick of the best pictures from last month's Science in Motion photo competition, from snow flow to human kinetic sculpture

Toxic red mud forces state of emergency in Hungary

Hungary has declared a state of emergency in three counties following a toxic red mud spill when a reservoir burst at an alumina plant near Budapest

'Matchmaker' reactions scoop chemistry Nobel

Chemistry a dying subject? Not with this year's Nobel, which is for devising reactions that are vital to drug-making

Photo competition: The motion and texture of science

Here's the winner of last month's photo contest - and details of the touchy-feely competition for October

How to find out if exo-Earths host life

The space mission needed to find out if Gliese 581 g has life has been shelved, but other habitable worlds will offer better views in the next decade

Zoologger: The heaviest animal in the air

Great bustard males are three times the weight of the females - but in case you didn't notice, they have whopping great whiskers too

Oliver Sacks: Why I'm a resident alien

The neurologist who wrote Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat recalls his "lost years" and explains why he prefers to be an outsider

Antibody reverses final throes of cancer in mice

A treatment has shown promise against the final stages of cancer in mice, giving hope that it might one day prevent secondary tumour growth in people

New species discovered in Papua New Guinea

Brightly coloured frogs, spiny ants and a katydid with pink eyes were among finds from the remote rainforests of Papua New Guinea's mountain ranges

Thighs and abs have a different take on fat

Fat cells in the stomach get bigger to store fat, thigh cells increase in number. The degree to which this occurs may make you an apple or a pear

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

(Image: Tomas Benedikovic/Isifa/Getty Images)

Hungary has declared a state of emergency in three counties following a toxic red mud spill when a reservoir burst at an alumina plant in Ajka, 160 kilometres south-west of the capital Budapest. Four people died and 120 were injured in the floods, which were 2 metres deep in places flooding hundreds of houses over an area of 40 square kilometres.

The sludge is a mixture of water and mining waste containing heavy metals. Hungary says it will take at least a year and millions of dollars to clean up the damage. In 2000, Hungary suffered large-scale pollution when a gold mine flooded.

Andy Coghlan, reporter

Last year the Nobel prize in chemistry went to scientists who studied the ribosome. In 2008, it was scooped by the discoverers of green fluorescent protein, both advances rooted in biology.

Signs of a dying subject? Think again. This year the prize is for chemistry proper, awarded to the three organic chemists who devised reactions that allow carbon-based molecules to be joined together using palladium as a catalyst.

Thanks to these chemical reactions, chemists have been able to synthesise anti-cancer drugs such as paclitaxel, also known by its brand name Taxol, previously only obtainable from the bark of the yew tree, weedkillers such as prosulfuron and a poison from Panamanian frogs called pumiliotoxin, which kills mosquitoes.

The prize was shared by Richard Heck of the University of Delaware in Newark, Ei-ichi Negishi of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and Akira Suzuki of Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan, each of whom has a reaction based on palladium named after them.

Daily choices can affect long-term happiness

Your family values, weight and even your partner's neuroticism can have a significant effect on long-term happiness

White House turns green with solar panels

After stalling climate change campaigners for a month, Barack Obama has agreed to install solar panels on the White House's living quarters

Innovation: Online army turns the tide on automation

Computers can take jobs away from people, but thanks to Amazon's Mechanical Turk workforce, humans are fighting back

Genetic fruit, thoughtful trees: Academy treasures

A new exhibition showcases the best of the US National Academy of Sciences' collection of work exploring the relationship between the arts and sciences

Should psychoanalysis be in the Science Museum?

Is psychoanalysis worthy of a place in London's Science Museum? Of course it is, says Robert Bud. Certainly not, counters Mario Bunge

Lunar rainbow recreates Dark Side of the Moon

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has snapped the surface of the moon - and what looks like a rainbow

'Buoyancy bazooka' wins James Dyson prize

A device that takes inspiration from a grenade launcher to fire a floating ring to drowning victims has won the annual Dyson award for invention

Physicists win Nobel using sticky tape and pencil

Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov have won the Nobel prize for discovering graphene, the atom-thick sheets of carbon graphite with exotic properties

Video highlights best candidates for IVF

A model that can predict which early-stage embryos are most likely to develop into a fetus may increase the success rate of IVF treatment

Superpowers, science and sex: the panda story

The Way of the Panda by Henry Nicholls explains how there's more to these animals than simply being cute, cuddly and endangered

Audio zoom picks out lone voice in the crowd

Sports broadcasters can now zoom in to almost every sound that's made on the field

Romanian moon 'rockoon' finally takes off

In a bid to win $20 million in the Google Lunar X Prize, a Romanian team has used a balloon to launch a rocket from 14 km above the Black Sea

Andre Geim: Why graphene is the stuff of the future

The Nobel prize in physics has been awarded to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov for their work on the two-dimensional material graphene

Breaking the noise barrier: Enter the phonon computer

Noise is a chip designer's worst enemy. But handled properly it could become a powerful ally - and usher in the age of phonon computing

Australia blames a flu vaccine for child convulsions

Australia's main seasonal flu vaccine, Fluvax, caused convulsions in almost 100 children, but the benefits of vaccination still outweigh the risks

Census of Marine Life reveals bizarre deep-sea sights

See some of the strange-looking new species found by the first global Census of Marine Life

Extreme PowerPoint places you in 3D slide show

Microsoft's new presentation technology LightSpace allows users to touch and play with projected virtual items in three dimensions

Michael Marshall, environment reporter

After a month of stalling, US president Barack Obama has finally agreed to install some solar panels on the White House's living quarters.

The Associated Press reports that the solar panels are to be installed by spring 2011, and will heat water for the first family and supply some electricity.

Campaigners from the climate action group 350.org travelled to Washington DC early in September to push for this, bringing with them a set of solar panels that were installed on the roof of the West Wing between 1979 and 1986. At the time they didn't manage to extract any promises, but Obama seems to have changed his mind.

Paul Marks, chief technology correspondent

It's a cross between Rambo and Baywatch. The "buoyancy bazooka" is a pneumatic gun that lifeguards can use to fire a foam ring to a person struggling in water up to 150 metres away.

The device was announced today as the winner of the 2010 James Dyson Awards, an annual international invention competition set up by the British entrepreneur.

Dubbed the buoyancy bazooka by Dyson judges, the Longreach Buoyancy Deployment System looks like a grenade launcher and fires a tightly packed, lightweight "shell" comprising a ring made of a hydrophobic foam. When the shell touches the water, the foam takes 15 seconds to expand to 40 times its volume - leaving a flotation ring the victim can grab hold of until rescue arrives.

Kate McAlpine, reporter

You may first have heard of Andre Geim in the late 1990s when he was part of a team that levitated live frogs in mid-air (video demonstration) using giant magnetic fields, a feat that led to an Ig Nobel prize in 2000.

Now, together with his colleague Konstantin Novoselov, he has garnered the Nobel Prize in physics for a totally different achievement: the discovery of an exotic, potentially revolutionary form of carbon known as graphene.

It turns out that these atom-thick sheets of graphite are produced every time you put humble pencil to paper. But that wasn't known until 2004, when Geim and Novoselov, both of of the University of Manchester, UK, first used sticky tape to pull tiny sheets of carbon off a piece of graphite. Previously, two-dimensional carbon sheets weren't thought to be stable.

In some ways, it may be seen as an unusual choice: Nobel laureates often aren't recognised until decades after their original discovery.

(Image: ARCA)

Rachel Courtland, reporter

After a year spent battling tangled lines, bad weather, and a ruptured balloon, a Romanian team has finally fired its first "rockoon", a rocket lofted into the air by balloon.

The non-profit Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA) is one of 22 registered teams competing for the Google Lunar X Prize. The competition will award $20 million to the first team who send a robot to the moon that can travel 500 metres across the lunar surface, snap photos of the surroundings, and beam them back to Earth.

Pink hippo needs mudscreen protection from sun

This rare pink hippo, spotted in Kenya last week, is not albino - it is leucistic, and it better get out of the sun

Homebrew technology: Electronics out of play dough

A recipe for play dough that insulates or conducts electricity means anyone can get to grips with electronics

Test tube baby pioneer wins medicine Nobel

Robert Edwards of the University of Cambridge has scooped the prize for developing in vitro fertilisation

Jeffrey Sachs: Poverty is multidimensional

Poverty, disease, women's rights - we have to tackle them all, says the economist who helped draw up the Millennium Development Goals

Census of Marine Life reveals extent of ocean mystery

Ten years, 1200 new species and 9000 days at sea - but there are still at least 750,000 species waiting to be discovered

Inside the UK's Robot World Cup team

A humanoid robot coached at the University of Plymouth represented the UK in this year's FIRA Robot World Cup in India

New route to stem cell therapy opens up

A breakthrough in turning adult skin cells into stem cells without the need for embryos gets round a major safety obstacle

Gravity genius: How I will spend half a million bucks

Quantum non-demolition is just one of the far-out ideas that gravitational wave hunter Nergis Mavalvala may fund with her MacArthur genius grant

Brian Eno and Al Reinart fly you to the moon

Video footage of the Apollo moon landing was fused with a musical score in the 1989 film For All Mankind - but now you can experience it live

Scratched glasses give perfect vision for any eyesight

Engraving lenses with concentric rings could allow your eyes to focus on any object no matter how far away

Yoda-like creature snapped in Borneo

A photo of a western tarsier, one of the world's smallest primates, has been highly commended in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition

Mental muscle: six ways to boost your brain

Brain training games won't make you smarter - but a dose of blue light or an electrical shock just might

The slippery slope to obesity

Reward centres in the brain become less responsive as people gain weight causing them to eat more, reducing the reward response still further

Homebrew technology: Love letter meets jewellery

A device that generates a wire representation of the spoken word performs double duty as a nifty jewellery maker

Cosmic accidents: The certainty of chance

Tiny changes at the beginning make big differences in the end. That's why our existence is perilously perched on a great pyramid of trivia

Homebrew technology: The $100 airplane

With some scrap materials, a few cheap electronics and a bit of improvisation, even a child can build a $100 aircraft

Artificial fertility treatments create a sex bias

Fertility treatments alter the natural sex ratio, with IVF more likely to produce boys while ICSI favours girls

Anyone can dupe biometric scanner

Natural changes in the human body may leave biometrics systems inherently fallible - something their manufacturers will have to accept

Cosmic accidents: Inventing language, the easy way

Fresh pastures meant a cosier life for early humans - if they hadn't, we would never have loosened up enough to learn to speak

Cosmic accidents: Killer asteroid with a silver lining

A 10-kilometre-wide rock did for the dinosaurs, but smashed open a window of opportunity for unimpressive little animals called mammals

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

This rare pink hippo was spotted on the banks of the Mara River in Kenya last week. The hippo is not albino - it has dark eyes and dark patches on its back - rather it is leucistic, which means it has a reduction in all types of skin pigment, not just melanin. Such animals do not typically survive long in the wild as they are conspicuous to predators. They also suffer from sunburn.

(Image: Will Burrard-Lucas)

(Image: Tim Laman)

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

No, it's not a gremlin. It's not Yoda's long-lost cousin. It's a western tarsier (Tarsius bancanus), photographed in the Danum Valley Conservation Area in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.

Among the world's smallest primates, tarsiers are nocturnal and live in south-east Asian rainforests feeding on insects and small vertebrates. Their eyes lack the reflective layer - the tapetum lucidum - which makes cats' eyes shine in torchlight. Each eye is as large as the tarsier's brain to compensate.

The image, Night Eyes, has been highly commended in the Gerald Durrell Award for Endangered Wildlife, part of this year's Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, curated by the Natural History Museum, London.

Homebrew technology: Meet New Scientist's junk robot

Build a robot that can draw out of little more than an old computer fan

Ban all tobacco advertising, say US paediatricians

The glamour generated by the $25-billion-a-year US tobacco advertising spend confuses the non-smoking message from parents and teachers

Large brains bust baggage allowance for migratory bats

Migratory bats have smaller brains than their stay-at-home cousins, suggesting they cannot afford the luxury of lugging a large brain on long journeys

Tuskegee 2: How the US gave syphilis to Guatemalans

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has apologised for a 1940s study that deliberately infected Guatemalans with syphilis

Best of the Ig Nobel prizes 2010

A $10 trillion prize, reversed-order footwear, video too explicit to show and words too foul to print all featured in this year's Ig Nobel awards

China's Chang'e 2 blasts towards moon

Night launch for the next step in China's robotic lunar programme, which ultimately aims to bring samples from the moon to Earth

Cosmic accidents: One giant leap for a single cell

A freak event created the ancestor of all multicellular life on Earth. Without this unconventional genesis, we might never have become more than bacteria

Work light twice as hard to make cheap solar cells

The most energetic photons hitting a solar cell pack enough of a punch to free up two electrons, rather than the usual one, and generate more current

Sound can leap across a vacuum after all

Sound waves are carried by vibrating particles, so how could the waves pass through a vacuum devoid of atoms? The key lies in crystals

Social sensitivity trumps IQ in group intelligence

If you want to build a smart team, recruit people who are socially sensitive - and women - rather than chasing down intellectual stars

Ditch the glasses for lifelike 3D

The race is on to find ways to display 3D images without clunky glasses - and gamers will get in first

Hawaii will face more frequent cyclones

As the global climate warms, tropical cyclones will move from south-east Asia towards the centre of the Pacific

Charge your phone with a beach towel

A photovoltaic liquid lets you spray-paint solar cells onto almost any surface

Modified contraceptive treats cancer of the uterus

Women with endometrial cancer have been successfully treated with a hormone-releasing IUD, avoiding the need for a hysterectomy

The Social Network: Fact, fiction and Facebook

The Social Network may no more resemble reality than a Facebook profile resembles a person, but it's an electrifying film, says Sumit Paul-Choudhury

US congress clears private space taxis for lift-off

The House and Senate have reached a détente over NASA's future, boosting support for commercial spaceflight - Henry Spencer breathes a sigh of relief

Trademark swimsuit gave penguin ancestors the edge

Adopting black and white garb may have given the giant ancestors of today's penguins a vital extra turn of speed

Homebrew technology: Imagination hacking

Scientists and creatives make uneasy bedfellows? Videos from the World Maker Faire in New York last weekend show that is far off the mark

Have gene findings taken the stigma from ADHD?

A genetic explanation for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder emerges, weakening the blame put on parenting and food additives

Debora MacKenzie, reporter

It probably isn't often that the Journal of Policy History manages to elicit an apology from the White House within 24 hours of posting an article.

But that is exactly what Susan Reverby, professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Wellesley College in  Massachusetts, managed to do with an article posted yesterday. No wonder: it's entitled "'Normal Exposure' and Inoculation Syphilis: A PHS 'Tuskegee' Doctor in Guatemala, 1946-48".

Reverby has published several studies of the Tuskegee syphilis study, in which the US Public Health Service watched, but did not treat, hundreds of African American men with late stage syphilis - an unpleasant thing to have - from 1932 to 1972. Reverby says her studies have aimed in part to correct a popular belief among African Americans, that the subjects were deliberately infected, as well as untreated. They were not.

The Guatemalans, however, were.

(Image: AFP/Getty)

Rachel Courtland, reporter

China's second lunar probe, Chang'e 2, took to the skies today. The spacecraft is the next step in China's robotic lunar exploration programme, which ultimately aims to retrieve samples from the moon and return them to Earth.

Chang'e 2 is expected to reach the moon in roughly five days, less than half the time it took its predecessor Chang'e 1 to take the trip when it launched in 2007. Once it reaches lunar orbit, Chang'e 2 will be able to snap pictures of the surface with 10 times the resolution of Chang'e 1. One area of interest is the lava-flooded Bay of Rainbows, China's top destination for its first lunar lander, which could launch in 2013.