August 2010 archive

Bjørn Lomborg: climate change is a problem after all

After years criticising climate science, "sceptical environmentalist" Bjørn Lomborg now thinks it's a top priority, says Michael Marshall

Do artefacts belong in museums?

In Finders Keepers: A tale of archaeological plunder and obsession, Craig Childs outlines the opposing views about the proper place for history

Why it's time for change at the IPCC

The forceful analysis of the IPCC's failings published by the InterAcademy Council is a strong dose of realism about the organisation's failings

Scalpels and skulls point to Bronze Age brain surgery

Önder Bilgi talks about his discovery of a razor-sharp 4000-year-old scalpel and what it was originally used for

Arctic ice: Less than meets the eye

The ice may not retreat as much as feared this year, but what remains may be more rotten than robust

New fears over health impacts of Pakistan floods

Malaria outbreaks have hit regions of Pakistan together with increased reports of acute diarrhoea, respiratory tract infection and skin problems

Two Chinese satellites rendezvous in orbit

A new Chinese satellite seems to have nudged another orbiting probe - perhaps paving the way for a space station, or possibly attacks on other satellites

Tortoise banquet: Remains of the oldest feast found

A cave in Israel has given up the secrets of humans' earliest feasts, showing that they were occurring 2500 years earlier than previously thought

Climate panel must 'fundamentally reform' to survive

The IPCC must change how it operates if it is to regain the public's trust, according to a major review

Slavoj Žižek: Wake up and smell the apocalypse

The Marxist philosopher says environmentalism is a new opiate of the people, Bill Gates has privatised part of our intellect, and reality is incomplete

Medical nanotech could find unconventional oil

Nanotechnology is providing medics with a powerful toolbox for imaging and treating diseased tissue. Could it do the same for oil recovery efforts?

The great and the (quite) good: best books of 2009

The UK's Royal Society announces its shortlist for the best science books of 2009, but it misses out on some great reads

The mind's eye: How the brain sorts out what you see

Can you tell a snake from a pretzel? Some can't - and their experiences are revealing how the brain builds up a coherent picture of the world

Real invisibility threads would be fit for an emperor

Combining techniques used to produce light-bending metamaterials with those used to make optical fibres might just make see-through threads a reality

LHC lawsuit dismissed a second time

The latest case against the particle collider's funding agencies for their potentially Earth-destroying activities has been dismissed, reports Kate McAlpine

New Orleans: Are the new defences tough enough?

A $14.5 billion revamp of New Orleans's flood defences is almost finished, but some say the measures aren't tough and comprehensive enough

(Image: Suzanne Plunkett/Bloomberg/Getty)

Michael Marshall, environment reporter

He's back and generating as many headlines as ever. After years as the world's leading climate change critic, "sceptical environmentalist" Bjørn Lomborg is now saying that we need to put it at the top of our priority list.

What's that, he has a new book out? Indeed, and in Smart Solutions to Climate Change, Lomborg, an adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School in Denmark, goes so far as to say we should spend $100 billion a year to sort it out.

The Guardian calls it a major U-turn, one "that will give a huge boost to the embattled environmental lobby".

Lomborg's proposed solutions to the problem haven't changed all that much, however.

Wendy Zukerman, reporter

It was hoped that the initial fears that floods in Pakistan would trigger widespread disease outbreaks were overblown.

But a report in The Australian highlights increasing concern over the spread of malaria:

Cases of malaria are increasing every day as water makes way for mud and mosquitoes

Last week a report by the World Health Organization stated that between the 29th July and 20th August there were 53,707 new cases of suspected malaria, across at least three Pakistan provinces - Punjab, Balochistan and Sindh.

And numbers are quickly rising, with almost half of the cases detected in just six days.

Kate McAlpine, reporter

Have we heard the last of the particle smasher scare stories? The most recent lawsuit to protest the dangers posed by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, has been dismissed.

On 24 August, a Hawaiian appeals court absolved (pdf) the US Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and other funding bodies of responsibility for any dire consequences that might result from the particle collider.

"The alleged injury, destruction of the Earth, is in no way attributable to the US government's failure to draft an environmental impact statement," reads the court's decision.

David Harris of Symmetry Magazine described the 3-page decision as "short and sweet" .

"According to the decision, [the plaintiff] failed to show a 'credible threat of harm', and the US government does not control the operation of the LHC and therefore is not the correct party to bring action against."

The appeal was brought by Walter Wagner of Hawaii and Luis Sancho of Spain. In 2008, as the LHC was nearing completion, the pair filed a lawsuit in Hawaii's US District Court against CERN and US contributors to the project demanding that they not operate the LHC until they proved it safe. According to the Telegraph, that suit was dismissed via a 24-page ruling.

The latest ruling will be welcomed by scientists working on the LHC. But for all the bureaucratic headaches caused by the lawsuits, there's a strong argument to be made that Wagner in fact did CERN and the particle physics community a favour by getting the new collider into the public consciousness.

Black holes + dark matter = light

Two of the darkest things in the universe may together be making light - or at least, gamma rays - detectable from Earth

Renewable power on a grand scale

An exhibition of photographs of the sustainable energy industry includes this shot of a huge hydroelectric turbine shaft

How astronauts' experience could help trapped miners

Experience from space missions shows the trapped miners in Chile may face their most severe psychological challenges in a couple of months' time

Sunspots squeeze and stretch the day

These dark regions may somehow alter the rate of Earth's spin - an insight that could help steer spacecraft more accurately

Innovation: Sunrise boulevards could bring clean power

Could roads surfaced with solar panels bring renewable energy to our doors?

Oxytocin fails 'trust elixir' test

The hormone does make people more trusting, but not gullible, as many internet vendors would have us believe

Sounds of the rainforest versus sounds of the city

Rainforests give more to ears than to eyes - has a sound installation in a huge London greenhouse managed to recreate them, asks Catherine de Lange

Macabre details of suicide hangings revealed

The results of this grisly research could be significant in court cases where prison officers are accused of negligence or foul play

Socket and see: Apple reinvents the audio jack

Apple thinks that the humble jack socket needs a redesign. A microphone buried beneath it could stop dust entering iPhones and iPods, says Paul Marks

Acoustic archaeology: The secret sounds of Stonehenge

Trevor Cox reveals how the acoustic footprint of the world's most famous prehistoric monument was measured

Synchronised planets could help weigh alien Earths

The first multiple planet system found by NASA's Kepler mission shows the telescope can weigh planets that are gravitationally linked with their neighbours

Tobacco plants outsmart hungry caterpillars

When the tobacco hornworm caterpillar munches on its favourite food, it inadvertently helps the plant call in a predatory bug

"Britain has more potential kinetic energy for capture than any other landscape in Europe", says London photographer Toby Smith. His latest project, Renewables, looks at the infrastructure and people involved with sustainable energy, beginning with the hydroelectric dams and associated landscapes found in the Scottish glens.

This giddying view is staring down Turbine Shaft 1 of the 305-megawatt Foyers hydroelectric power station, located at the south-eastern end of Loch Ness. The plant's two generators use a "spinning reserve" system: they spin freely until peak usage hits. This allows the generators to meet increased consumer demand within 30 seconds, rather than 2 minutes from a standing start.

The Renewables project is on display at the Printspace in London until 1 September.

(Image: Toby Smith)

See more: Pictures of the day

Paul Marks, technology correspondent

Although Apple is known for filing patents on complex multi-touch algorithms, anti-piracy measures and advanced user interfaces, it still has a focus on basic hardware engineering. One US patent application filed this week shows the firm reinventing the humble audio jack socket. The reason? There are too many holes in today's gadgets.

Apple complains that building laptops and phones means drilling holes in the casing to allow microphones, headsets, USB plugs and switches to access the electronic innards. Each aperture, however, "breaches the barrier that protects components inside the housing" - allowing dust and liquids yet another way to get in where they can cause short circuits and overheating. And each gadget in each aperture needs circuitry behind it that eats up precious room on the circuit board, too.

Concern over online tobacco ads

Companies have rejected claims that they are bypassing advertising bans by allowing "pro-tobacco" clips to remain on YouTube

Echoes of the past: The sites and sounds of prehistory

Did our ancient ancestors build to please the ears as well as the eyes? Trevor Cox pitches into the controversial claims of acoustic archaeologists

Half a billion eggs recalled in US salmonella outbreak

Thousands of cases of egg-related food poisoning have occurred in the US while investigators search out likely sources of the outbreak

Human cannonball astronaut: My rocket is my clothes

It sounds dangerous, even mad, but Peter Madsen is planning to achieve cosmic immersion by riding the smallest crewed rocket ever to reach space

Pea-sized amphibian is top of the frogs

A tiny frog has been discovered in Borneo - and it revealed itself to researchers through its dusk-time singing

Collagen corneas restore damaged sight

A collagen implant replacing a damaged cornea anchors itself in place after becoming filled with the recipient's own cells

Hand-held detector aims to diagnose disease

Instant diagnosis is the aim of a device that can detect the molecules produced by a range of illnesses

Can we grab electricity from muggy air?

A team of chemists think we can get power from air - if we don't mind violating a long-held chemical principle

Infinite doppelgängers may explain quantum probabilities

Quantum probabilities have been tied to something concrete, if bizarre - the notorious possibility that multiple versions of you exist

How to feel full without pigging out

Two ways in which dieters try to make themselves feel full without stuffing themselves with food have been backed up by separate research teams

What problems will Chilean miners face?

The miners trapped beneath the ground for four months in Chile will face more than just the physical effects of isolation, says Cian O'Luanaigh

Win the best science books of the year

Enter our competition and tell us about the most underrated science books published in the last 50 years

Zoologger: Live birth, evolving before our eyes

An Australian lizard is still working out whether it wants to lay eggs or bear live young

Skirting round advertising laws (Image: Roman Poderni-White/Rex Feature)

Wendy Zukerman, Asia Pacific reporter

The tobacco industry may be benefiting from the fact that internet laws banning tobacco advertising are not being used to prevent "pro-tobacco" clips being shown on YouTube, a study suggests.

This is the claim of public health researchers George Thomson and Nick Wilson at the University of Otago, New Zealand, who trawled through 2000 clips on the online video sharing site YouTube. They found a large number of pro-tobacco videos "consistent with indirect marketing activity by tobacco companies or their proxies," according to a report by the BBC.

The pair searched for five tobacco brands and analysed the first 20 pages of video clips containing any reference to each firm.

This tiny frog was recently discovered in the rainforests of Borneo by scientists from the Institute of Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation at the University of Malaysia, Sarawak.

It was named Microhyla nepenthicola after the pitcher plant Nepenthes ampullaria on which it deposits its eggs. When the eggs hatch, tadpoles develop inside the plant's cavity, which, unlike many pitcher plants, digests mainly leaves.

Adult males grow to a minuscule 10.6 to 12.8 mm - about the size of a pea.

The frog was discovered after tracking the calls of males, which gather around the plants to sing at dusk.

Listen to the frog's call: Microhyla_nepenthicola_call.mp3

(Image: Prof. Indraneil Das/Institute of Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation)

See more: Pictures of the day

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

What mental and physical challenges will the trapped Chilean miners face?

The 33 miners trapped in a copper and gold mine near San Jose were feared dead until they began tapping on a rescue drill that was boring down to look for them on 22 August.

Rescuers are drilling a hole 68 centimetres in diameter - enough to pull a person through - proceeding slowly using diamond tipped drills. It typically takes 10 hours to bore every 300 metres using conventional rotary drills, and the rate slows when drilling through granite or other hard rock.

At the current rate, it could take as long as four months to free the miners.

Superdrill technology currently under development, which is capable of drilling through 150 metres of rock per hour, could aid future rescue attempts.

Time to blame climate change for extreme weather?

Climate researchers are starting to put figures on how much climate change is to blame for weather events, opening the door to claims for compensation

How to survive the long haul in space

Medical records of space station astronauts reveal the gruelling physical costs of the missions - and suggest how to stay healthy on the way to Mars

Problem-solving designs on James Dyson award

The James Dyson award has attracted engineers and designers from 18 countries - here are some of New Scientist's favourites.

Lessons in robotics change children's perceptions

Does meeting real robots inspire children or stifle their imagination?

Orang-utan psychologist: Watching the ape pantomime

Laid-back dudes they may be, but see orang-utans mime "help me open a coconut" and you'll realise they're just as smart as chimps, says Anne Russon

Squirt that berg

A boat uses a powerful water cannon to deflect a small iceberg off the western coast of Greenland, keeping it away from an exploratory oil rig

Whooping cough outbreak could be worst in 50 years

California is experiencing a major outbreak of whooping cough, with around 3000 cases reported so far this year

Virus link with chronic fatigue syndrome resurfaces

New mouse virus variants enter the picture as potential causes of CFS, the controversial condition that leaves people listless and lethargic

How astrocoders have mapped the universe

In A Grand and Bold Thing, Ann Finkbeiner tells the backstage story of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which has made the best-ever map of the universe

Start-up enterprise: Launching the new space race

The next generation of aerospace entrepreneurs have begun their mission: to boldly go where NASA can't afford to go any more

Shake to adjust your smartphone's privacy settings

Location services are gaining popularity on smartphones, so a new app offers a quick way to adjust your privacy settings

Bacteria on the catwalk

A new fabric grown using bacteria might provide a means of creating sustainable, green clothing made in labs rather than factories, says Kat Austen

US-backed stem cell research set to end in months

The Department of Justice says existing federally funded projects can continue for now, but applications for future funding have been put on hold

Anticipation of pain makes it hurt more, even days later

Being told that something will be painful can create a long-lasting nocebo effect, the placebo effect's evil twin

A boat uses a powerful water cannon to deflect a small iceberg in Baffin bay, off the western coast of Greenland, keeping it away from an exploratory oil drilling rig.

Oil and gas company Cairn Energy, based in Edinburgh, UK, which commissioned the water cannon, has two drilling rigs in the region. It announced earlier this week that one of them had found a gas that could be a sign of oil. The operations, 400 kilometres inside the Arctic circle, have angered environmental groups.

Larger icebergs can be roped and towed away.

(Image: Will Rose/Greenpeace)

See More: Pictures of the day

Green machine: Wave power line jacks into the grid

Wave power has caused problems for engineers installing an underwater wave-power testing centre off an English holiday resort

Don't stand in the way of genomes for all

A crackdown on firms selling gene tests direct to the consumer would come at a cost, argue Daniel MacArthur and Caroline Wright

Pee is for power: Your electrifying excretions

Why let your waste go to waste when it could be powering your mobile phone - or even your car?

Court freezes federal funding for embryonic stem cells

An injunction has been granted to scientists who claim that President Obama's policy to widen funding for human embryonic stem cell research is illegal

To hear ET, tune in to alien artificial intelligence

We are more likely to detect signals from artificial intelligence created by aliens than to hear from the aliens themselves, says Cian O'Luanaigh

Jupiter attacked for third time in 13 months

Amateur astronomers bear witness to yet another impact on the giant planet, suggesting such run-ins are fairly common

Frog cells give artificial nose the power of super smell

The addition of biological smell sensors makes artificial noses more sensitive

Geoengineering won't undo sea level rises

None of the proposed technologies will stop sea levels rising this century and swamping low-lying lands, a modelling study finds

Hair gives clues to circadian rhythms

A handful of hair is all it takes to monitor your body clock and check whether it is out of sync with your lifestyle

Cancer muscle loss might be reversible

One injection reversed muscle wasting in mice with cancer and improved survival rates - suggesting a possible future way of treating people

"I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do" (Image: MGM)

Cian O'Luanaigh, contributor

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) should focus on signals created by sentient machines rather than biological life forms, says Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

In his paper "What ET will look like and why we should care", recently published in Acta Astonautica, Shostak argues that the artificially intelligent machines created by an alien life form may be easier to detect than the alien life forms themselves.

As we are more likely to stumble upon civilisations that have been sending signals into space for a long time, those we do find will probably be technologically more advanced than our own, reasons Shostak, and therefore may conceivably have created sentient machines.

What's more, Shostak writes that machine intelligence will be more prolific and long-lived than its biological predecessors. "Making this assumption, we can conclude simply on the basis of technological lifetimes that the aliens - at least, any we hear - will be machines."

Hair gives clues to circadian rhythms

A handful of hair is all it takes to monitor your body clock and check whether it is out of sync with your lifestyle

Fundamental breast and ovarian cancer protein isolated

Three separate groups have isolated the BRCA2 protein involved in inherited breast and ovarian cancer, aiding the development of new cancer therapies

Artificial ape man: How technology created humans

Archaeologist and anthropologist Timothy Taylor explains how a long-vanished artefact explains human evolution and led to "survival of the weakest"

Innovation: Hand-held controls move out of sight

Fat fingers get in the way of touchscreen interaction, so why not banish touch to the back of mobile gadgets?

Online games are a gold mine for design ideas

When gamers play online, they leave a data trail that intelligent algorithms are picking up to build ever more challenging and entertaining games

Biosemiotics: Searching for meanings in a meadow

Are signs and meanings just as vital to living things as enzymes and tissues? Liz Else investigates a science in the making

Is quantum theory weird enough for the real world?

Our most successful theory of nature is bewilderingly remote from reality. But fixing that may require a weirder theory still

Solar system slips back in time

New meteorite evidence has just pushed the age of the solar system back by hundreds of thousands of years

Lung-style fuel cell needs less bling for more oomph

Using "bronchial" structures to channel oxygen and hydrogen to a fuel cell's catalyst produces a device that is more efficient and needs less platinum

Killer T-cells, the fix for organ rejection?

Cells that selectively suppress immune response in the liver of mice could be used to create "immune-tolerant" organs

Harvard confirms misconduct by morality researcher

Bowing to pressure from scientists in animal cognition, Harvard University confirms that an internal investigation has found evidence of misconduct by Marc Hauser

Gulf spill: Is the oil lurking underwater?

What has happened to the 4.9 million barrels of oil from the busted Macondo well? Some say it's all dispersed - others say it'll be around for months

UK promises 'temporary ban' on new legal highs

New versions of the drugs will be banned for 12 months to allow independent experts time to consider potential health risks, says Cian O'Luanaigh

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

A system of temporary bans on new "legal highs" will be introduced in the UK to allow independent experts time to consider potential health risks, the Home Office announced yesterday.

The government says it will only ban substances permanently after receiving full advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD).

The new legislation will allow police to confiscate suspected substances, and the UK Border Agency to seize shipments entering the country.

The penalty for supply of a temporarily banned substance will be a maximum of 14 years in prison and an unlimited fine, but possession for personal use will not be a criminal offence, to "prevent the unnecessary criminalisation of young people," says the Home Office.

How collapsing bubbles could shoot cancer cells dead

Jets of fluid propelled by the collapse of microscopic bubbles could puncture cell walls to deliver drugs directly into cancer cells

Flawed proof ushers in era of wikimath

The latest attempt to prove P ≠ NP may be in trouble, but it has still left its mark with a new way of doing mathematics

You don't need brothers or sisters to be sociable

Does an only child have worse social skills than one with siblings? No, says a study of US students' patterns of friendship

Making light work of LED droop

LEDs suffer from an embarrassing drop in performance when the power goes up. Tweaking their "quantum wells" could perk them up

Ancient Chinese medicine could boost cancer therapy

An 1800-year-old recipe could boost cancer treatment and reduce side effects of chemotherapy, says Cian O'Luanaigh

Hydrogen bonds are caught on camera

They lead to water's high boiling point, ice's ability to float and DNA's double helix - now hydrogen bonds have been imaged for the first time

Shrinking moon may explain lunar quakes

New images show the lunar surface is wrinkled like a raisin, suggesting the moon may still be cooling and contracting

Mystery of the Atlantic's missing plastic flotsam

The amount of plastic floating in an ocean current system has been the same for decades, even though more and more plastic has probably been thrown away

Infrared chlorophyll could boost solar cells

A new form of chlorophyll is the first to absorb infrared light, meaning it can be put to work in solar cells

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

An ancient Chinese remedy for gastrointestinal problems may spare cancer patients the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy drugs, and boost the effectiveness of treatment, new research suggests.

The 1800 year-old recipe, called Huang Qin Tang, consists of a mix of flowers from the Chinese skullcap plant, extract of peonies, liquorice, and the fruit of the buckthorn tree.

The remedy has been used for years to treat stomach upsets and nausea. Now, researchers at start-up pharmaceutical company PhytoCeutica and Yale University School of Medicine, both in Connecticut, have shown that the blend can also aid cancer treatment, reducing diarrhoea and gut damage caused by chemotherapy in colon and rectal cancer patients.

Wasps punish fake fighters

Paper wasps are more aggressive towards rivals who don't display their true physical prowess

Great Barrier Reef's great-grandmother is unearthed

Lying just 600 metres away from the jewel in Australia's crown, another, more ancient, reef has been discovered

Mathematics 'Nobel' rewards boundary-busting work

Four mathematicians have won the Fields medal for work that helps unify the traditionally disparate fields of pure and applied mathematics

Brain training improves acting skills

Learning to control your brainwaves can help actors give a better performance, say neuroscientists

First gold-iron alloy shows power of magnetic attraction

Gold and iron have been made to form an alloy, held together by iron's inherent magnetism. The alloy could one day be put to work as computer memory

Facebook checks in to location services

Facebook has finally introduced location-based services for smartphone users - but has enough been done to address the inevitable privacy concerns?

Ancient terror bird stabbed its prey to death

The extinct, flightless Andalgalornis steulleti had a reinforced skull that allowed it to peck its prey to death

Darwinian medicine: Does intensive care kill or cure?

We've evolved ways to come back from the brink of death - and doctors' efforts to help may just be getting in the way

Dissolving your earthly remains will protect the Earth

Looking for a greener way to leave this world? A liquid burial may be the answer

International rescue: toads airlifted home

The tiny Kihansi spray toads are extinct in the wild, but zoos have preserved them and plans are now afoot to restore them to their habitat

Hayabusa 2 will seek the origins of life in space

A souped-up version of Japan's troubled spacecraft could launch as soon as 2014 - to visit an asteroid thought to be rich in organic molecules

Gareth Morgan, technology editor

Facebook's latest enhancement, launched to much fanfare yesterday, will enable users to use their phone to broadcast location information to their friends.

Facebook Places uses GPS-equipped phones to work out a person's location, presenting them with a list of nearby landmarks where they can 'check in'. That information then appears as a status update.

Atom images raise quantum computer hopes

Silicon-beating quantum computers are a step closer now that two teams have imaged ultracold atom in a grid

How DNA evidence creates victims of chance

In the second part of New Scientist's special investigation, we show that the odds attached to a piece of DNA evidence can vary enormously

Closing in on the inflaton, mother of the universe

The particle that generated the universe and fuelled its faster-than-light inflation is running out of hiding places

The risky business of human trials

Clinical trial "volunteers" take big risks and deserve the same rights as other workers, argues Roberto Abadie in The Professional Guinea Pig

Muscle lab: Bulk up with the science of bodybuilding

Looking to beef up? As research sheds new light on how our muscles work, it may be time to scrap old bodybuilding advice

Zoologger: Sympathy for the piranha

Thanks to Theodore Roosevelt piranhas have a fearsome reputation, but there are only two occasions when they will attack humans

Add salt as required: the recipe for fresh water

Using desalination to slake the world's thirst has been an uphill struggle, but now we're learning to go with the flow

Stop wasting food, save the world's energy

The scandal of food waste is even worse when you consider how much energy is being thrown away, say Sheril Kirshenbaum and Michael Webber

Fossilised mind control, 48 million years ago

See a carpenter ant in the throes of a fungus-induced death grip - the result of an evolutionary arms race that has been running for many millions of years

The genetical evolution of chimp culture

From knuckle-knocking to slapping, chimpanzees' different behaviours are culturally determined - or are they?

Lasers could make virtual particles real

Ghostly particles that, according to quantum mechanics, pop in and out of existence all the time could be captured in large numbers by future lasers

Found: World's oldest animal fossils

Fossilised sponges dating from 650 million years ago add support to the theory that life kick-started Snowball Earth

These tiny Kihansi spray toads are extinct in the wild, wiped out by a combination of habitat loss and the deadly chytrid fungus.

But all is not lost. The species was preserved in captivity in the Bronx Zoo and the Toledo Zoo, and 100 individuals have now been flown out to Tanzania.

They are still under human care, but plans are afoot to release them into their natural habitat: just 0.02 square kilometres of the Kihansi Gorge in the south of the country.

If all goes well with the reintroduction, the Kihansi spray toads may soon join the list of lucky species that made it back from the very brink of extinction.

The small toad in the picture is a newborn, resting on an adult female. The adult is less than 2 centimetres long.

(Image: Julie Larsen Maher / Wildlife Conservation Society)

This carpenter ant (Camponotus leonardi) is caught in the throes of a fungus-induced death grip. It has clamped itself to a leaf 25 centimetres above a forest floor in Thailand, and died.

The reason is growing out of the back of its head. The reddish-brown stalk is made by a fungus called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which has invaded the ant's body and manipulated its behaviour. The exposed position is ideal for releasing spores.

It turns out this parasitic mind-control is at least 48 million years old. David Hughes of Harvard University and colleagues discovered fossilised leaves of this age in Messel, Germany that bore characteristic "death grip" scars, suggesting that ants once clamped themselves onto them.

It is the first time this sort of behavioural control has been discovered in the fossil record, and supports the idea that the ants and fungi have been locked in an evolutionary arms race for many millions of years.

Journal reference: Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2010.0521 (in press)

(Image: David Hughes)

Race to save Pakistan's agriculture

The country must find a way to clear out its irrigation system and plant the winter wheat crop

Milky Way magnets solve cosmic ray conundrum

Our galaxy's magnetic fields could explain why some cosmic rays hitting Earth are heavier than expected

Tron-technology harnessed to restore whaling ship

The world's last surviving wooden whaling vessel is being restored - using an array of modern scientific techniques

Green machine: Fighting the efficiency fallacies

The level of public misunderstanding over energy consumption is laid bare in a new report

Monkeys comfort each other after conflict

Macaques who witness conflict will seek comfort in the company of other bystanders

Fatal cloudburst devastates Himalayan desert town

More than 150 have died in northern India after a freak rainstorm caused flash floods and mudslides in one of the driest places on Earth

Learning from the wisdom of herds

In The Smart Swarm: Using animal behaviour to organise our world, Peter Miller explains the benefits of group behaviour

Alzheimer's test: the real benefits

A "100 per cent accurate" Alzheimer's test seems too good to be true - does it highlight a desperation for early diagnosis, asks Shaoni Bhattacharya

Innovation: Mobile malware develops a money bug

The first hackers to write malware for a new device often do it to impress their peers - but a new smartphone trojan was made to steal money

Sensory hijack: rewiring brains to see with sound

A new device that restores a form of sight to the blind is turning our understanding of the senses upside down

Rabid vampire bats attack Peruvian children

More than 500 people have been bitten by rabies-infected vampire bats in the Peruvian Amazon, says Wendy Zukerman

Science to return to space station

Spacewalking astronauts have replaced a faulty ammonia pump that had been used to cool the station, paving the way for science experiments to resume

Horned turtles butchered to extinction

Hungry humans killed off the giant horned turtles of the Pacific 3000 years ago

It might look like something out of Tron, but you're actually looking at a 3D laser scan of the world's last surviving wooden whaling vessel, the Charles W. Morgan.

The ship, built in 1841, is being restored at a cost of $10 million and it's hoped that it will one day sail again.

X-rays are being used to identify weak spots in the ship's structure, and lasers to form a digital archive of precise measurements. The image above is a 3D laser scan of the entire ship's structure, which is being used for reference during the work.

It's hoped the ship will be fully restored and ready for the water by the end of 2012, although it is unlikely to resume whaling.

(Image: Harry R. Feldman, Inc.)

See more: pictures of the day

Shaoni Bhattacharya, consultant

"One hundred per cent accurate Alzheimer's test!" the headlines declared last week. Sound too good to be true? Possibly.

Perhaps the wildly optimistic headlines reflect just how desperate we are to do something about this disease, and to know in advance if getting Alzheimer's is on the cards for us. But it could also offer hidden benefits for treatment too.

The spinal tap study,  purported by some to give near 100 per cent accuracy in diagnosing Alzheimer's, in fact gave this result in only a subset of patients who already had mild cognitive impairment. However, the study, reported in Archives of Neurology, may well be significant and a positive step in understanding the disease.

Wendy Zukerman, reporter

More than 500 people have been bitten by rabies-infected vampire bats in the Peruvian Amazon.

The BBC reports that "four children in the Awajun indigenous tribe died after being bitten by the bloodsucking mammals. Health workers have given rabies vaccine to more than 500 people who have also been attacked."

When untreated, rabies is almost always fatal. The virus attacks the central nervous system, causing pain, confusion and dementia.

If an anti-rabies vaccine is administered soon after the bite, however,  the survival rate is high.

Maggie McKee, space news editor

A successful third spacewalk to repair the cooling system on the International Space Station should clear the way for its crew to resume scientific research, NASA says.

On 31 July, an electrical short knocked out one of two pumps used to push liquid ammonia through the station's cooling system.

The failure forced parts of the station to be powered down to prevent the outpost from overheating, and science took a big hit. According to CBS News,

experiments in the Japanese Kibo module and the European Space Agency's Columbus module had to be powered down, along with most of the science racks in the U.S. segment of the station. And with only one coolant loop in operation, the space station had no redundancy in a critical system.

Two spacewalks were planned to replace the refrigerator-sized pump, but it took two just to remove the broken pump. A third spacewalk on Monday installed a spare pump that had been delivered to the station in 2006, Space.com reports.

The station should return to normal operations by Thursday, which will allow astronauts to resume their experiments, says Kirk Shireman, deputy manager of the space station program at the Johnson Space Center, according to CBS News:

"The best thing about this is this will allow us to recover and to focus on research, which is the primary purpose of the International Space Station," Shireman said of the repair work. "We plan to accomplish up to 63 hours of research next week. So really looking forward here to getting back to normal and doing the kinds of work the space station was meant to accomplish."

Fortunately, some experiments that had been stored in a freezer that had to be powered down in the Kibo lab were transferred to another freezer in the US laboratory (see image). These include a cucumber plant used to study the effects of gravity on root growth.

(Image: NASA)

Horned turtles butchered to extinction

Hungry humans killed off the giant horned turtles of the Pacific 3000 years ago

The descent of man

Is There Anything Good About Men? by Roy Baumeister fails to offer clear answers to its own questions

Deep blue oceans spawn fewer tropical storms

Plankton have a lot to answer for. By colouring ocean waters, the microscopic plants encourage hurricanes and typhoons

Mystery of most common contact allergy solved

Cells that confuse nickel for invading bacteria are behind the most common contact allergy in the western world

Julian Assange: The end of secrets?

Lifting the lid on the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks and its enigmatic hacker-turned-activist founder

Autism explosion half explained, half still a mystery

Sociologists have accounted for 50 per cent of the sevenfold rise in autism cases in developed nations, but are struggling to explain the other half

X-ray security scans go interactive

Advanced luggage scanners will produce rotatable 3D images of objects - and even reveal their chemical composition

Exploding moss and swinging robots

From 3D supernovae to exploding moss, New Scientist brings you the best science videos on the web this month

To infinity and beyond: The struggle to save arithmetic

Mathematicians are facing a stark choice - embrace monstrous infinite entities or admit the basic rules of arithmetic are broken

Laser sets quail embryos' hearts racing

An infrared laser has been used as an optical pacemaker, tripling the pulse rate of a quail embryo - the technique could one day work in humans too

Thieving parrots hatch a plan to unlock food

Faced with a complicated set of locks, kleptomaniac keas crack the problem faster if they are allowed to study the set-up in advance

Elephants fear humans more than dynamite

Forest elephants become less active during daylight to avoid humans, but seem unfazed by oil prospectors' blasts

'Swiss-army knife' telescope tops astronomers' wish list

A $1.6 billion space mission to study dark energy and hunt for exoplanets should be NASA's top astronomical priority, an expert panel says

Tide turns against million-dollar maths proof

Hailed as a solution to the biggest question in computer science, the latest attempt to prove P ≠ NP now seems to be in trouble

How many dinosaurs could live in Central Park?

Palaeontologists have tried to figure out if house-sized plant-eating sauropods and stegosaurs were rare beasts or swarmed over the Jurassic landscape

Flexible tubes could bring wall-sized TV price crash

A new way of building plasma screens could make it easier and cheaper to build super-sized TVs

Would you like a statin with your burger?

Fast food outlets should hand out statins with their burger and fries, say researchers. Is anyone taking them seriously, asks Nic Fleming

Future on display: Desk lamp turns table top into 3D

Pixar-inspired "lamps" could add another dimension to table-top displays

Antibacterial socks may boost greenhouse emissions

When silver nanoparticles from antibacterial materials escape into waste water they have unforeseen effects on the bugs that are meant to clean it up

Levels of controversial soap chemical rise

Tests on US volunteers show increased levels of triclosan, used in soaps and toothpaste, adding to as yet unconfirmed health fears

Kyoto targets are impossible to verify

In 2012 rich nations must prove that they have cut emissions in accordance with their targets - but that may be an impossible task

Skull electrodes give memory a boost

Applying a small electric current to two areas of the brain leads to a dramatic improvement in visual memory

Berkeley forced to backtrack on genetic testing

A controversial educational scheme has run afoul of California health officials, says Peter Aldhous

Neptune 'dead zones' hold more rocks than asteroid belt

The icy world may have a personal rock collection that dwarfs the objects in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter

The next best thing to oil

The energy from concentrating solar power is already being used to generate hydrogen - it's a short step from there to liquid hydrocarbons

Image: Design Pics/Rex

Nic Fleming, reporter

A suggestion that fast food outlets should hand out statins to counteract the increased risk of heart disease associated with high fat meals has provoked a chorus of criticism.

Darrel Francis at Imperial College London and colleagues compared existing research on the cholesterol-lowering drugs and the cardiovascular dangers of fatty diets.

They concluded that including a daily 200-gram hamburger in the average person's diet increased their chances of developing heart disease by 18 per cent. A daily cheeseburger and a small milkshake boosted this to 23 per cent, according to the study, to be published this weekend in the American Journal of Cardiology.

Peter Aldhous, San Francisco bureau chief

A controversial programme of genetic testing intended to educate students at the University of California, Berkeley, about personalized medicine is being redesigned, following the intervention of state health officials.

In July, 5500 incoming freshmen were invited to "Bring Your Genes to Cal". Each student could volunteer to give a cheek swab, which would then be analysed in a campus lab for genes that may cause lactose intolerance, heightened sensitivity to alcohol or affect the absorption of folate, a nutrient found in large quantities in green vegetables, liver and baker's yeast.

But following a hearing on the issue in the State Assembly in Sacramento on 10 August, the California Department of Public Health has now ruled that providing results to students would constitute clinical testing, and as such needs to run by a lab accredited to run such tests. "[W]hat was meant to be a group educational exercise turned into an education for the university on the politics and policy of medical testing," observes the San Francisco Chronicle.

This is a digest of the stories posted to NewScientist.com from 6pm yesterday until 6pm today.

Future on display: Long-lasting images save on power

Bucking the trend for ever-faster refresh rates is leading to large computer displays that are more economical to run

Gesture-based computing takes a serious turn

Controlling a computer just by pointing at the screen seems weird at first - but perhaps it's something we are going to get used to

Hidden rocks from infant Earth hint at planet's origin

A reservoir of rock that remained intact for 4.5 billion years suggest that Earth's predecessors may have lost their skins

Gas transistor turned on by light

Light of different colours can open and close a new valve membrane - it could provide a safe way to control the flow of flammable gases in fuel cells

Combination punch could fell rainforests

The combined effects of climate change and deforestation threaten 80 per cent of Earth's tropical forests - but they can still be saved

Depression dulls sense of smell

People who suffer depression are less sensitive to odours and the parts of their brains responsible for smelling are smaller

After a miscarriage, no need to put off trying again

Women who conceive soon after miscarrying are at no more risk of another failed pregnancy than those who wait six months

Jupiter swallowed a super-Earth

An impact from a large rocky planet early in Jupiter's life would explain odd features of the solar system's massive gas giant

Dinosaur man: playing creationists at their own game

Palaeontologist Phil Senter has a persuasive strategy for convincing doubters that all life on Earth has a common origin

Is climate change burning Russia?

For weeks Russia has sweltered, recording its highest ever temperatures - here is New Scientist's guide to the causes and consequences

Does NDM-1 herald the end of the antibiotic era?

The spread of a drug-resistant bacterial gene first identified in India could herald the end of antibiotics, reports Jessica Hamzelou

New monkey species already looks scared

Found in a region called Caquetá in south Colombia, cut off by war for many years, the new species is already thought to be critically endangered

E=mc²? Not on Conservapedia

Religious attacks on evolution are nothing new, but now a conservative website is taking aim at a seemingly unlikely target: general relativity

Moonless sky sets stage for dazzling meteor show

A hundred 'shooting stars' may grace the skies every hour during the peak of the Perseid meteor shower this Thursday night

Early humans were butchers 3.4 million years ago

Marks on fossil bones unearthed in Ethiopia push the date at which early humans used tools to eat meat back to 3.4 million years ago

Jessica Hamzelou, reporter

The spread of a drug-resistant bacterial gene could herald the end of antibiotics, researchers warned us yeterday. "In many ways this is it," Tim Walsh at Cardiff University, UK, told The Guardian newspaper. "This is potentially the end."

Walsh's bleak prediction follows his research into a drug-resistant bacterial gene called NDM-1, or New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase 1, which was first identified in India.

In the study, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Walsh's team investigated cases of multi-drug resistant Enterobactericeae infections - which include E.Coli and Salmonella - in India, Pakistan and the UK from 2003-2009, to find out how many NDM-1 had a hand in. They identified 143 cases of NDM-1 across India and Pakistan, but 37 - a surprisingly high figure - in the UK.

Meet Callicebus caquetensis: a new species of titi monkey that has been discovered in the Amazon.

The monkey was found in a region called Caquetá, in the south of Colombia, which had been inaccessible for many years due to a violent insurgence.

About the size of a cat, the Caquetá titi has grey-brown hair and makes an extremely complex call. Unusually for a primate, it forms lifelong monogamous pairs.

It is thought that there are less than 250 Caquetá titis in the wild, thanks to the destruction of their forest habitats, meaning they are critically endangered.

The discovery is described in the journal Primate Conservation.

(Image: Javier García / Conservation International)

See more: pictures of the day.

Rachel Courtland, reporter

Sky watchers could catch a dazzling treat Thursday night and early Friday morning, with the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower.

Meteors are bits of dust or rock that collide with Earth's atmosphere, vaporising and heating the surrounding air to produce a glowing trail. The Perseid shower occurs each year when the Earth passes through a wide stream of debris shed by the comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 130 years or so and last passed through the inner solar system in 1992.

The Perseid shower lasts for weeks, but peaks when the Earth passes through the densest part of the trail. This year, the greatest activity will be between midnight and dawn local time on 13 August. In dark areas, this could afford sky watchers a view of as many as 100 meteors per hour. Views of the shower are expected to be particularly good this year, since the moon will set early in the evening.

Although the peak is still more than a day away, the shower is already well under way. Last week, an inch-wide object moving some 216,000 kilometres per hour entered Earth's atmosphere above Paint Rock, Alabama. It shot across the sky with a brightness about six times that of Venus. You can view a video of the fireball here.

The Perseid meteor shower gets its name because the meteor trails all lead back to a point in the northern constellation Perseus. But meteors will appear all over the sky, so the best strategy for viewing the shower is to lie down and stare at as large a patch of sky as possible.

(Image: Jimmy Westlake (top); Sky & Telescope (bottom))

This is a digest of the stories posted to NewScientist.com from 6pm yesterday until 6pm today.

What's this fractal doing in my superconductor?

Like the internet and networks of amorous couples, a superconducting crystal has been found to show "scale-free" organisation

Fallible DNA evidence can mean prison or freedom

Expert interpretations of DNA profiles can seal a suspect's fate. A special New Scientist investigation reveals how variable such opinions can be

Rubik's cube mystery solved after 15 years

Every possible arrangement of the Rubik's cube can be solved in 20 moves or less, a figure dubbed "God's number"

Fasting mothers raise potential risk for unborn babies

Women who fast while pregnant produce smaller placentas, which is linked to a greater risk of the child having cardiovascular disease in later life

Atomic Jenga could turn domestic refrigerators green

The magnetic properties of some materials depend on a few key atoms only, a finding that could help lower the cost of environmentally friendly magnetic cooling

Zoologger: The world's most fecund vertebrate

Resembling a gigantic severed fish head, the ocean sunfish is the heaviest bony fish in the sea, and the female produces more eggs than any other vertebrate

Hand-held sniffer picks out grave sites

Chemicals emitted by decaying corpses offer investigators a rapid, on-the-spot way to uncover clandestine graves

Misconduct found in Harvard animal morality prof's lab

Paper on primate cognition retracted as prominent researcher Marc Hauser takes leave of absence; primatologists call for more details

Hydrogen bombshell: Rewriting life's history

Oxygen is supposed to have driven the evolution of complex life - but the discovery of animals that thrive without it tells a different story

Play-acting orang-utans signal their desires

Orang-utans have been caught on camera acting out their intentions and desires, proving humans aren't alone in being able to do this

NASA mulls sending part of space station to an asteroid

Agency engineers suggest detaching one of the station's current crew compartments and using it to ferry astronauts to an asteroid by 2025

MRI scans could diagnose autism

Key anatomical differences in autistic brains have been used to train software to distinguish them from those of people without the condition

Frozen jet stream links Pakistan floods, Russian fires

A holding pattern in the jet stream means weather systems stick around with violent consequences

This is a digest of the stories posted to NewScientist.com from 6pm yesterday until 6pm today.

Computer gamers crack protein-folding puzzle

Players of the online game Foldit have beaten dedicated software and human experts in working out the shape that will be adopted by novel proteins

P ≠ NP? It's bad news for the power of computing

Some mathematical problems will remain hard no matter how cunning your computer program, a new proof has shown

Green machine: Don't burn plant waste, bury it

Converting plant waste to biochar leads to bigger cuts in carbon emissions than turning it into biofuels - and brings other benefits too

Early puberty in girls doubles in a decade

Ten per cent of white girls in the US reach puberty aged 7. Prime suspects are obesity and exposure to environmental chemicals that mimic oestrogen

Future on display: Technology you'll want to stroke

You might not be expect it, but a new furry display is the latest in computer technology - and people can't help but stroke it

Cosmology's not broken, so why try to fix it?

Claims that there is something wrong with our standard model of the universe rest on flawed logic, say Andrew Pontzen and Hiranya Peiris

An oversimplified guide to the human mind

In Use Your Head, brothers Daniel and Jason Freeman try to explain experimental psychology but end up relying on trivia and factoids

Hiding files in Flickr pics will fool web censors

Censoring the web is about to become harder thanks to a system which hides news articles in files on innocuous photo-sharing sites

NASA seeks secrets of commercial moon landers

Swallowing its pride, NASA says it wants to learn from future commercial missions to the moon - and it is willing to pay up to $30 million for the privilege

Metamaterials could bring cheaper T-ray scanners

Finding cheap ways to generate terahertz radiation could see them more widely used for astronomy and security - and metamaterials may be the key

This is a digest of the stories posted to NewScientist.com from 6pm yesterday until 6pm today.

The faith that underpins science

In Why Beliefs Matter: Reflections on the nature of science, E. Brian Davies ponders the impossibility of escaping our philosophical beliefs

Slimy fashion, rowing forces and musical genes

In this month's New Scientist TV, find out how clothes can be grown, why maths could help rowers win, and hear a choir sing its own genome

Russia's hotspots revealed from space

This NASA map, generated from data recorded in late July, shows how parts of Russia were much hotter than expected for the time of year

Grey wolves regain protected status

A decision two years ago to remove protection from grey wolves in part of the Rocky mountains has been overturned by the courts

Thank your thalamus for a good night's sleep

Bursts of brain activity from the thalamus may help some people stay asleep despite noises in the night

Toxic leak foils space station repairs

After an ammonia leak and a jammed fitting prevented repairs, the space station is still running on a single cooling system, says Cian O'Luanaigh

Sea mouse boost for nanowire-makers

Hollow spines collected from sea mice could be ideal as a low-cost mould for growing long nanowires

Recreate life to understand how life began

Building artificial cells will tell us much about the origins of life - and may explain how Darwinian evolution began, says Nobel laureate Jack Szostak

Future on display: the flavour-changing cookie

A new headset can transform the taste of a plain cookie to any of seven different flavours

Low-fibre western diets deter 'good bacteria'

Differences in children's gut bugs in Burkino Faso and Italy hint at why allergies and other inflammatory diseases are so prevalent in rich nations

Mind-reading marketers have ways of making you buy

Why ask people what they think of a product when you can just scan their brains instead? New Scientist explores the brave new world of neuromarketing

Rethinking Einstein: The end of space-time

Physicists struggling to reconcile gravity with quantum mechanics have hailed a theory - inspired by pencil lead - that could make it all very simple

How harsh words may hurt your knees

The stress of rejection makes people more susceptible to arthritis and other diseases linked with inflammation

Warning over spray-on hot flushes drug

To protect children from premature puberty, care is needed when using a spray-on treatment for hot flushes, says the US Food and Drug Administration

Human brains have 'Life of Brian' mechanism

Brain regions that deal with negative emotions and self-awareness are dampened down when we confront thoughts of death, scans reveal

9 August 2010

It has been an unusually hot summer in parts of Russia.

This map released by NASA shows how temperatures across Asia deviated from their expected values in the period from 20 July to 27 July this year. It is derived from data collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite, compared with average temperatures in the region between 2000 and 2008.

Exceptionally high temperatures which have led to wildfires around Moscow can be seen marked in red and brown.

At the same time, swathes of northern Russia and eastern Kazakhstan were significantly cooler than normal (shown in blue).

(Image: NASA)

See more: pictures of the day.

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

A toxic ammonia leak and a jammed fitting have foiled plans to fix a cooling pump on the International Space Station, forcing astronauts to delay the repairs until Wednesday at the earliest, reports NASA.

On Saturday, Expedition 24 Flight Engineers Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson suffered setbacks that stretched their space walk to 8 hours 3 minutes - the longest in space station history and the sixth longest ever undertaken, according to NASA.

The astronauts began their excursion outside the International Space Station at 0719 EDT (1119 GMT) as the outpost flew 220 miles (354 km) above Earth.

They planned to remove a broken ammonia coolant pump and install a replacement, which involved disconnecting four ammonia hoses and five electrical cables from the pump on the station's truss.

This is a digest of the stories posted to NewScientist.com from 6pm yesterday until 6pm today.

Prompting hearts to make their own beating muscle

The successful transformation of structural cells into working heart muscle cells is a step on the way to repairing damaged hearts

Education and diet are key to beating dementia

Eliminating depression and diabetes, as well as eating two portions of fruit and veg each day will reduce risk of dementia, a new study has found

Innovation: Reinventing urban wind power

From fish tails and leaves to wind concentrators, there is more than one way to tap into the slow speed of wind in urban areas

Slit pupils help snakes ambush their prey

The vertical slits in snake eyes aren't just for improving night vision, but for aiding hunting

Picture of the day: the smallest monkey in the world

One of the smallest primates in the world - not a gremlin - has been confiscated after being found inside the clothes of a Peruvian citizen

Artificial bee eye could improve robotic vision

A wide-angle camera, based on bees' eyes, could help robots see more of the world around them

Tilting solar sails will ease geostationary congestion

Satellites can be made to hover above a fixed point on the ground without having to orbit exactly on the equator

Rise in childhood obesity is slowing worldwide

The number of obese children is rising more slowly, but are the figures hiding a new problem?

How to be an astronaut 5: Destination unknown

You're strapped in and ready for lift-off, but are you heading for the moon or the middle of nowhere?

Virtual walkers lead the way for robots

Given a few simple rules and some major computing power, animated characters adopt a human-like gait - and soon robots could too

Chlorine study suggests moon is dry after all

A new analysis of Apollo samples throws cold water on the notion of a damp moon

Nic Fleming, reporter

Jamie Condliffe, reporter

Over the course of this week, we have done our best to persuade you that becoming an astronaut is almost impossibly difficult and extremely dangerous. But if you are reading this, then you are probably not buying it. Despite all its drawbacks, many people can't wait to get into space - in fact some think it is the best way to secure humanity's future.

So that just leaves one question: where are you going to go?

This is a digest of the stories posted to NewScientist.com from 6pm yesterday until 6pm today.

#TriceraFAIL: What's in a name?

An online outcry greeted the amalgamation of everyone's favourite dinosaur - triceratops - with the obscure torosaurus

How to be an astronaut 4: Roughing it in orbit

So you've finally made it into space. You're prepared to brave cosmic perils. But can you stand the food?

Deep impact market: the race to acquire meteorites

In a trade that extends from Moroccan souks to eBay, scientists are in a controversial race with dealers to acquire precious specimens

Straight outta Titan: Dr Dre gets astronomical

LHC rapper AlpineKat is excited by Dr Dre's planned instrumental hip-hop album about the solar system

Ancient crocodile chewed like a mammal

The discovery of a croc with molars, incisors and canines like ours indicates that specialised teeth evolved at least twice

Zoo with creationist agenda approved for schools

A zoo that pushes a creationist message has been approved as a destination for school trips by the UK government, says Michael Marshall

Future on display: 3D touchscreens made for two

A new computer display brings together 3D imagery and multi-touch screens for the first time

Neuroscientist: Brain scans may improve careers advice

Mapping grey matter has led Richard Haier to think that neuroimaging could tell people what work will suit them best

Concern over controversial autism drug

Lupron is being offered to autistic children in Florida - but it is being criticised by paediatricians as a sham with potentially harmful side effects

Light-amplifying resin boosts invisibility cloaks

Metamaterials that act as invisibility cloaks give the game away by absorbing too much light - a light-amplifying resin may provide a solution

Briefing: Anyone for a cloned steak and milkshake?

The sale of beef and potentially milk from the offspring of cloned cattle is causing a stir in the UK. New Scientist investigates the key issues

Fever: friend or foe?

High temperatures can help you fight infections - or make you much worse. Now doctors are learning when it's better to let a fever burn itself out

You've won a place at astronaut school, you've survived the training programme, you've faced up to the possibility of sudden, unpleasant death - and you've made it to space. A universe of wonders awaits, but so do some gritty realities.

Bad taste

Space missions can last for months, and the nearest supermarket is a long way off. That means food has to last for the duration. Most fresh food, such as fruit and vegetables, is in any case frowned upon for other reasons: it can decompose and produce persistent, unwelcome odours. Bananas are out of the question. But dry food can be problematic, too: crumbs can get into delicate instruments, or even into the lungs of our intrepid space explorers.

Michael Marshall, environment reporter

Criticising a family-run zoo that introduces small children to the wonder of animals feels a bit like kicking a puppy - but in this case we might have to. A UK zoo that pushes a creationist message has been approved as a destination for school trips by the government.

Noah's Ark Zoo near Bristol was awarded a "quality badge" by the Learning Outside the Classroom program. This is supposed to make it easier for schools to organise trips, by supplying a list of high-quality venues.

The zoo accepts school parties with children of all ages. Most of its educational resources seem absolutely fine - but then you look at their discussion of evolution and it all goes wrong.

Jim Giles, contributor

One of the most controversial and potentially dangerous treatments for autism has gained another small foothold in the United States.

Lupron, a drug that lowers testosterone in men and oestrogen in women, is licensed for the treatment of prostate cancer - but Mark and David Geier, a father-and-son team of self-proclaimed autism specialists, claim that the drug can also be used to tackle autism.

The Geier's were reported last year to have won converts among doctors in several states. Now it appears that the drug is being offered to children in Florida as a treatment for autism.

This is a digest of the stories posted to NewScientist.com from 6pm yesterday until 6pm today.

Artificial life forms evolve basic intelligence

Digital organisms not only mutate and evolve, they also have memory - so how long before they acquire intelligence too?

Sponge genome provides toolkit for multicellular life

The newly sequenced genome of the sponge reveals the ancient origins of key genes involved in human cancer

Ageing irises could confound biometric checks

Scans of a person's iris give slightly different results over time, which could fool biometric identification systems

Voyager: A robotic Columbus for the space age

In Voyager: Seeking newer worlds in the third great age of discovery, Stephen Pyne tells the story of the probes as part of the history of exploration

How to be an astronaut 3: The perils of space

So you've finally won a much-coveted place on a space mission. Are you really sure you want it?

Deep oil in Gulf appears to have vanished

Just two weeks after BP capped its broken Deepwater Horizon well, the plumes of oil and dispersant in the Gulf's deep waters have gone

Zoologger: Whale-eater's helpful sulphur-powered guests

The deep-water mussel Adipicola crypta needs to eat whalebone, but can't. Fortunately it has bacteria living in its gills that do the job for it

Future on display: Interactive inanimate objects

A modern version of the ancient zoetrope lip-syncs images to a user's speech

Deepwater Horizon: Kill it... with mud

Hopes rise on a permanent seal for the Deepwater Horizon well, as BP's static kill procedure looks to be working

Giant balloons could clear out space junk

Satellites in low-Earth orbit could blow helium bubbles at the end of their lives, increasing their drag through the atmosphere

Size isn't everything: The big brain myth

What's so special about the human brain? It turns out that we're no better endowed between the ears than you would expect for a primate of our size

Sci Foo: Rewriting gravity over a tuna roll

A diverse group of people have been at Sci Foo, say Jo Marchant, and it's hard not to be enthusiastic as the event draws to a close

Jamie Condliffe, reporter

Yesterday, we looked at how you could join the elite ranks of those who've visited outer space. But are you sure you want to?

We've all heard about the wonders of space flight - from the sensation of weightlessness to the sight of planet Earth. But it's fraught with peril too; the risks astronauts run have long cast a shadow over the prospects of humans in space.

And this isn't just doom-mongering: the fatality rate for astronauts is a worrying 5 per cent. That's 50 times the death rate for sea fishermen, considered to be the most dangerous Earthbound job.

Read on to find out more about the risks you'll face as a trained astronaut.

Failure to launch

As the famous quip goes, the scariest thing about space flight is the realisation, as you prepare for blast-off, that you're sitting on top of tonnes of explosive fuel and millions of parts, all of which have to work perfectly and all of which have been built by the lowest bidder. Despite endless safety checks and multiple fail-safes, things can still go wrong.

The Challenger space shuttle flew for just 73 seconds before disintegrating, after a seal failed under the stress of launch. Columbia broke up when re-entering the atmosphere - but it, too, was doomed by a failure during its launch phase: a chunk of insulation that broke off its external tank damaged its left wing, leading to uncontrollable build-up of heat as it prepared to land.

The Shuttle's vulnerability to launch accidents was an important factor in NASA's decision to go back to more conventional rockets, which are easier to evacuate. Crew capsules can also be fitted with rocket-powered abort systems that will pull them to safety. These have proved their worth in the past, saving two cosmonauts from a fiery death in 1983 and work is continuing apace to improve their design.

Fragile protection

Once in orbit, there's only a thin skin between you and the vacuum of space. So it's small wonder that astronauts and spacecraft designers worry about the possibility of that skin being pierced by a meteorite or, increasingly, by space junk deposited in orbit by careless humans.That's a very real threat.

The Hubble telescope has racked up over 500 hits from space debris, leaving centimetre-sized craters in its exterior - but it's not just satellites that are at risk. NASA plans Shuttle missions so that they avoid high-risk areas, but its records show that the craft was nonetheless struck no less than 1951 times during 54 missions. Most of those impacts were of little consequence, but a significant number required windows to be replaced, or penetrated the shuttle's radiator.

The obvious risk is that such impacts damaging crucial components, rendering the craft unusable, or expose its passengers to the vacuum of space by piercing the hull. The unhappy fate of three Soviet cosmonauts, who died in 1971 after a mechanical failure depressurised their landing craft, demonstrated what happens next : we'd black out pretty quickly, due to suffocation and oxygen starvation. That's probably a mercy, given that the low pressures would quickly cause nitrogen bubbles to form in our blood and boil our bodily fluids.

Invisible enemies

We can barely see the kinds of debris that could cause catastrophe - and there are other perils we can't see at all.

Chief amongst these for astronauts are cosmic rays. These streams of protons, radioactive particles and high-energy photons pose a huge barrier to space travel: some estimates suggest that they would give 1 in 10 astronauts cancer over the course of a mission to Mars - odds that could put off even the keenest of space explorers. Fortunately, there may be ways to guard against this threat, using that old science-fiction staple: the force-field.

Space travel, at least using today's technology, is still a dangerous business. But that doesn't seem to put people off - and nor do the more mundane downsides of space travel: the boredom, isolation and terrible food. We'll take a look at these tomorrow.

Sujata Gupta, reporter

Mud and cement could permanently plug BP's busted Deepwater Horizon well on the Gulf of Mexico floor this week.

A temporary cap has been containing all the oil gushing out of the broken well on the sea floor for almost three weeks. But if the latest measure - known as a "static kill" - works, the fix could be permanent.

In theory, the idea is simple. Currently, the highly pressurized oil is barreling against the walls of the containment cap trying to get out. "It is pushing up from the reservoir two miles below the Gulf floor, pushing up through the main pipe, and pushing very hard against that cap," says Anderson Cooper of CNN.

Rather than just capping and containing the oil, though, the hefty, 1.56 kilogram's per litre mud is being pumped through lines from a surface ship to the top of the ruptured well 1,500 meters below sea level.

This is a digest of the stories posted to NewScientist.com from 6pm yesterday until 6pm today.

Oil spill dispersant could damage coral populations

The dispersant used by BP to tackle the Deepwater Horizon oil spill could prevent coral larvae from maturing

Who's afraid of radiation?

Our attitude to ionising radiation is irrational, and easing safety limits would do far more good than harm, says Wade Allison

Will Pakistan floods really trigger disease outbreak?

If an epidemic of diarrhoeal and respiratory disease does strike Pakistan in the wake of devastating floods, it would be a rare case

Bumpology: Just how painful is this going to be?

As the big day approaches, I'm wondering whether there is anything that will help me cope with the inevitable pain of giving birth

Take an astronaut and rocket away from normality

Packing for Mars: The curious science of life in the void by Mary Roach explores the many eccentric challenges of putting humans into space

Weaknesses found in US nuclear sleuthing capability

The US National Research Council has flagged weaknesses in the US's ability to track down who is responsible if a nuclear bomb should hit the country

Cheap lasers could capture electrons in motion

Expensive equipment can create light pulses so short they can freeze images of moving electrons - now the same thing has been achieved more affordably

How to be an astronaut 2: Beating boot camp

You may have beaten the odds to secure a training place to become an astronaut - but space is still a long way off

Green light for first embryonic stem cell treatment

Injections containing material derived from stem cells may help people with acute spinal cord damage recover function

Military power law: The equations of body counts

Why do industrialised nations suffer fewer but larger terrorist attacks? Mathematics can help us understand how asymmetric war is being waged

Beyond the touchscreen: Projecting the future

Cookies that change flavour when you look at them and "furscreens" you can stroke: the future of computer interfaces from this year's SIGGRAPH conference

The richest areas of the ocean

The Census of Marine Life has published its reports on life in key regions of the sea. We look at seven of the most diverse

Couch-potato orang-utans make most of rainforest fruit

Though they swing through the forest canopy, these energy-thrifty apes burn fewer calories by body weight than your average human couch potato

'Anti-laser' traps all incoming light

Shine two laser beams at each other through certain materials and the beams should cancel, leaving utter darkness

Jamie Condliffe, reporter

Yesterday, we described how tough it is to get into astronaut school. But it's tougher still to graduate.

Learning to love free fall

One of the most attractive aspects of space travel has to be zero or micro-gravity: something that is, obviously, difficult to prepare for on Earth. But astronaut training programmes do their best.

To get used to the dizzying feeling of weightlessness, astronauts spend a considerable chunk of time in water. The initial test is to swim three lengths of a 25-metre pool without stopping. That might sound easy, but candidates must then do it again, and also tread water for 10 minutes... in a spacesuit. As if that's not enough, each astronaut has to undergo a military water survival training course and become fully scuba qualified to start getting used to the exciting - but risky - sensation of being in space.

Wannabe astronauts get a more authentic taste of weightlessness as passengers in the so-called Vomit Comet - a converted C-9 jet aircraft that performs parabolic manoeuvres to produce periods of weightlessness that last about 20 seconds. Though that might seem fun as a one-off - even Stephen Hawking volunteered for it - prepare to feel queasy: the process is repeated up to 40 times in a day for trainees.

Going back to school

Budding astronauts have to demonstrate more than just physical endurance: they must also go through a year of intensive training in the theoretical and practical skills they'll need to control the spacecraft's systems, recognise malfunctions, and understand how to fix problems and make repairs.

If you have always dreamed of piloting a space ship, the odds are that you should dream on. Only one or two astronauts on any particular flight are fully trained as pilots, and they will have clocked up 1000 hours at the controls of a jet aircraft - and a substantial chunk of those are very likely to have been spent testing new and experimental aircraft.

It's more likely that you'll be given the standard training and then charged with specific duties once assigned to a particular mission, such as conducting medical or scientific research or testing new ways of working in space. You might learn how to conduct experiments in zero gravity, for example, how to space walk, or how to repair equipment already in orbit.

Buying your way to orbit    

The space shuttle has also carried "payload specialists". Some of these have been technical experts who have trained as astronauts so that they can apply their knowledge to a commercial or scientific satellite launch.

Others, however, have been politicians or "guests" from other countries - a rare opportunity to bypass some of the usual application requirements, though if anything it's even more daunting than the usual route.

Not all of these "specialists" have covered themselves in glory: US congressman Jake Garn fared so poorly that he gave his name to the unofficial unit of space sickness. In any case, NASA doesn't envisage that any more such opportunities will arise before the shuttle programme ends next year.

The other option is to pay your own way. So far, seven multimillionaires have stumped up their hard-earned cash to make it into space. Each paid at least a cool $20 million to spend time on the International Space Station, having ridden up on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Space tourism is clearly the preserve of the super-rich right now, but the dawn of commercial space flight should make it achievable by those who are merely very rich indeed.

So right now, it seems as though becoming a bona fide space agency astronaut will remain a fantasy for most people. Even those who complete astronaut training have no guarantee that they'll make it into space. Such boring realities as funding cuts and technical glitches stop many space explorers in their tracks.

But maybe you shouldn't be too upset about this quashing of your dreams. Today's spacecraft are extremely sophisticated, but astronauts still face an array of cosmic perils. We'll explore some of those tomorrow.

This is a digest of the stories posted to NewScientist.com from 6pm on Friday until 6pm today.

The sun sends a charged cloud hurtling our way

Any time now, when the energetic particles hit, they could spark aurorae in the polar skies and even pose a threat to satellites

Off-grid campaigner: Inspiring today's US pioneers

Nick Rosen explains why living off-grid in the US has never been so comfortable

Innovation: Mastering the art of 3D film-making

New Scientist heads along to a 3D-filming boot camp, where directors are taught the tips and tricks of the new format

How to be an astronaut: A beginner's guide

Ever wanted to be an astronaut? Here's New Scientist's guide to the not-so-small steps that will get you into space

Sci Foo: Evolution of music and a dancing cockatoo

Thoughts at the Sci Foo meeting in Google HQ are turning to music - and a particularly famous cockatoo, reports Jo Marchant

Beyond decibels: Planning the new sounds of the city

City-dwellers may hate traffic noise and loud, late parties, but they enjoy a "vibrant calm" soundscape, says Trevor Cox, and we should cultivate it

Green machine: Plug-free electric cars' hidden cost

The convenience of powering electric cars wirelessly comes at a price - energy losses may mean they have a bigger carbon footprint than some diesels

Heat is on to mend cooling problem on space station

Astronauts on the International Space Station are planning how to fix their cooling system after it failed over the weekend

Is a cosmic chameleon driving galaxies apart?

A shape-shifting fifth fundamental force could neatly explain the mystery of dark energy - and some other puzzling astronomical observations

Cholera outbreak in flood-hit Pakistan

Unprecedented rains have killed thousands in north-west Pakistan, reports Wendy Zukerman - and now water-borne diseases have also been confirmed

Google, Twitter and Facebook build the semantic web

Web heavyweights are adopting semantic systems that will give more sensible answers to our online queries by tagging the content of websites

Are you ready for life in world 3?

Jo Marchant reports from the Science Foo camp at Google headquarters, and first on the agenda is how we cope with a life increasingly lived online

Computer supermaterial could stop your shoes smelling

Bacteria don't survive an encounter with graphene, the atom-thick sheets of carbon that are set to soup up computing

Why dogs and their owners are so alike

It seems dogs naturally match human gestures in a phenomenon known as automatic imitation

Gene variant role in Parkinson's uncovered

An RNA fragment known to be implicated in Parkinson's has been shown to cause the death of neurons in the brains of fruit flies

Google tracks political allegiances

Search engines provide a rough and ready way to map political relationships

Solar cycle may drive Venice's floods

If you want to see Venice with dry feet, don't go when the sun has lots of spots. Peaks in solar activity cause the city to flood more often

Which oil-mopping technology will win $1.4m X prize?

Filters, centrifuges, and oil-gulping ships may be among the contenders for a new X prize designed to avert another Deepwater Horizon disaster

What's the best way to eject astronauts during lift-off?

For half a century, engineers have placed escape rockets on top of crew capsules - future craft may stow them below

Jamie Condliffe, reporter

Ever wanted to be an astronaut? You're in good company: for many people, space represents the unexplored, a place free from boundaries. And space flight represents the extreme of human experience.

So it's not surprising that many of us harbour a burning passion to boldly go where few have gone before. But the selection process is extremely tough - there are thousands of applicants for every training place, and even if you make it onto a programme you're far from guaranteed a ticket to orbit.

Still, some make it - here's our beginner's guide to joining them.

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

A cooling system failure on the International Space Station over the weekend has left parts of the structure in danger of overheating.

The ISS crew were woken by alarms late on Saturday night after a circuit breaker tripped in an ammonia cooling pump. The failed pump was one of two ammonia cooling lines on the station that keep electronic equipment from overheating.

The ISS cooling system is similar to a car radiator. Water is used to cool the habitable areas, but pure ammonia, though toxic, is more efficient for cooling the outside.

Wendy Zukerman, reporter

The worst floods in living memory in Pakistan have killed over 1300 people and left tens of thousands stranded or homeless. "Massive devastation has been reported in Swat and Shangla, where link bridges and thousands of houses were washed away," report the Associated Press of Pakistan. 

Pakistan's climate is dominated by a seasonal wind reversal called the Asiatic monsoon. In late June, the monsoon winds reverse direction - from northeast to southwest - bringing a hot and rainy season which lasts until early October.

Billions of people in the region depend on these monsoon rains for agriculture. But over the past few days the rain has been unrelenting, causing flash floods and landslides.