Saturday, June 23, 2012

Today on New Scientist: 22 June 2012

Overtly 'girly' scientists alienate potential students

Aimed at getting more girls into science, a video featuring stiletto-clad scientists and lipstick could backfire, suggests a psychological study

Time to review peer review

As the call for open access publishing gains momentum, Andrew Pontzen asks whether the peer-review process is also broken

The Blue Planet? Martian crater is blue, not red

Detail of an old master oil painting, or the vivid colours of a paua shell? In fact it's the surface of Mars

What Milky Way's deadly smash-up will look like

Watch our galaxy collide catastrophically in the most detailed simulation to date of its evolution

How mammals lost their hair

Humans are often described as naked apes, but we are not the only mammals to have lost our furry coats. Meet some others in our gallery

Feedback: Not so holy brew

Vow of silence on Trappist beer, more academic "scamferences", gelato that's more air than ice-cream, and more

Obscure physics words get sign language equivalents

Milky Way and vacuum are among the terms that now exist in British Sign Language, removing a hurdle for deaf would-be scientists

Sorry Einstein, the universe needs quantum uncertainty

Remove one of quantum theory's weirdest components, and you end up with a perpetual motion machine

Android app swipes contactless credit card details

Google has now banned the app, which can streal data from cards fitted with NFC chips, but it is still downloadable elsewhere

Turing competition results: What would a machine say?

To mark Alan Turing's 100th birthday on 23 June we asked you to speculate on the first words to be spoken by a conscious machine. We have a winner

Is God's mercy to blame for high crime rates?

Fear of eternal damnation in hell could act as a deterrent, but belief in a forgiving god may make crime more tempting

Transforming the city: where to start?

In Berlin, the Guggenheim and FutureCityLab have teamed up to make a space for science in the public square.

Zoologger: Attack of the giraffe assassin bug

A long neck comes in handy if you want to lean into a spider web and stab the arachnid perched in the centre

Brand new bonding skills make boron more like carbon

As well as forming triple bonds, boron atoms can now link up chains - in carbon that makes proteins, plastics and alcohols possible

Scientists who went to war

Like necessity, war breeds invention - meet Alan Turing and other great scientists and engineers who have made significant contributions to warfare

Publication of flu study reveals full nature of threat

A controversial study revealing how H5N1 can mutate into a pandemic threat has been published after much delay. But can nature also produce such mutations?

Astrophile: Exoplanetary bedfellows make odd couple

A hot Neptune and a super Earth are locked in an embrace - but how did two wildly different worlds get so close?

Cobwebs shield the human gut from unwanted invaders

Protein webs trap trespassers in the intestine and may play a role in inflammatory bowel disease

Facebook study reveals what makes someone a leader

A study of more than 1 million Facebook users reveals who wields the most peer power - and who is most easily influenced

Murderous fungi feed their insect victims to plants

Plants get up to one-third of their nitrogen from the bodies of insects killed by fungi in their roots

Loss of Antarctic ice could trigger super-interglacial

The Arctic became unusually warm several times during the last ice age - possibly due to events on the other side of the planet

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