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Good memory for a face? Thank the love hormone

11:51 07 January 2009

Oxytocin – a hormone dubbed the "cuddle chemical" for its role in long-term love – might also help us recall the faces of friends

Inside the mind of an autistic savant

INTERVIEW:  11:40 07 January 2009  | 8 comments

We could all unleash extraordinary mental abilities if we learned to think like savants, says Daniel Tammet

We have the technology to rebuild ourselves

FEATURE:  11:28 07 January 2009  | 2 comments

With better, stronger and faster components, the bionic age has finally arrived, says Julian Smith

Supernova's ghost caught expanding in new videoMovie Camera

Cassiopeia A is the ghostly remnant of a supernova that exploded in the Milky Way some 330 years ago (Image: NASA/CXC/SAO/D Patnaude et al.)

10:00 07 January 2009  | 1 comment

A time-lapse movie suggests the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A may be channelling its energy into creating high-speed cosmic rays

Alien asteroid dust hints at Earth-like planets

White dwarfs can chew apart errant asteroids, leaving only dusty remains. New infrared observations suggest the dust left behind in six such stars has a composition similar to rocky objects in the inner solar system, suggesting the stars may have hosted rocky planets. (Illustration: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

17:22 06 January 2009  | 18 comments

Dust with a similar composition to the Earth has been found swaddling six stars, suggesting rocky planets may be common

Yellowstone quakes raise explosion fears

15:36 06 January 2009  | 27 comments

Hundreds of earthquakes rippling through the national park have prompted fears of dangerous steam explosions

Dino 'graveyard' reveals first Asian triceratops

13:32 06 January 2009

The first big discovery has already emerged from China's huge new fossil site – horned dinosaurs that were previously only known in North America

Nanobot lets DNA legs do the walking

FEATURE:  10:48 06 January 2009  | 2 comments

A two-legged molecular machine that is designed to walk unaided along a single strand of DNA could soon carry cargo and may one day deliver drugs inside cells

Love skews your sense of smell

10:26 06 January 2009  | 9 comments

Women who are deeply in love are less able to smell men who might be rivals for their affections

Why storms are good news for fishermen

FEATURE:  10:09 06 January 2009  | 6 comments

You might think fish are unaffected by winds and storms, but in fact what ends up on our dinner plates today depends on what the weather was like a few years ago

FROM THE BLOG

Cheap climate-engineering schemes show promise

Plans to engineer the climate to counter climate change have tended to look like science fiction - but they are now gaining popularity

INTERVIEW

The man who collects molten lava for a living

If it's ultra-fresh gas and lava you want, there's nothing for it but to climb into the mouth of a volcano, says geologist Ken Sims

LIFE

Deep-sea fish uses mirror magic to reflect light

Incoming light from a distant light source, such as a bioluminescent flash, is imaged efficiently by the mirror on the right onto a point on the retina, left (Image: Julian Partridge, University of Bristol)

The bizarre-looking spookfish has eyes that use mirrors to pick up on the ocean's bioluminescence

COMMENT OF THE DAY

Richard Hammond presents science show for kids

"Surely it's snobbery to teach science to children by assuming they want crassness and everything to be blown up all the time?" The Aspirant Redbrick Class

SHORT SHARP SCIENCE BLOG

God's own space race

19:12 06 January 2009 - updated 19:30 06 January 2009

Talk of an Islamic space agency raises questions about the role of religion in space

Cheap climate-engineering schemes could get off the ground

15:40 06 January 2009 - updated 17:02 06 January 2009

Plans to engineer the climate on a global scale in order to counter climate change have often been presented as near-science fiction scenarios - shooting a cloud of mirrors into space to reflect the sun's rays, for instance. But now some of these ideas - such as sulphur sunshades and cloud seeding - are slowly gaining pace and popularity, and reputable scientists are working on computer models to simulate their effects...

Fred's Footprint: Migration controls are the new apartheid

11:45 06 January 2009 - updated 16:59 06 January 2009

I like heretical ideas. Especially ones that make more sense the longer you think about them. So here is my New Year offering: let's open the world's borders to migrants...

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VIDEO

Best videos of 2008

12:19 24 December 2008

Watch the five most popular videos posted to New Scientist this year, including rat-brained robots and the world's deepest-living fish

COMMENT

Why kids are natural-born scientists

TV presenter Richard Hammond asks why so many children get turned off science at school – and what we can do to rekindle their excitement

GALLERY
Chick embryo taken by Tomas Pais de Azevedo, Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Portugal, using stereomicroscopy.

Most stunning images of 2008

12:08 31 December 2008

A selection of the most stunning science images from our Galleries this year including the propagation and reflection of a blast wave, a planetary nebula and a baby kangaroo suckling in a pouch...

DRUGS

Radical alternatives proposed for cannabis controls

Cannabis is the world's most widely used illegal drug – now a team of experts says governments should rethink how they control it

This week's issue

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03 January 2009

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