Choking China: The struggle to clear Beijing's air
As pollution levels return to normal in China's capital after a record-breaking month of smog, what can be done to banish the smog?
New Scientist
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Global biodiversity estimate revised down
Talk about overestimation. Only 5.5 million species may share our planet, a much smaller number than the older, often quoted estimate of more than 30 million. Most vertebrates and plants and many microorganisms have been documented. Much of the uncertainty in such global estimates lies with arthropods, a phylum that includes insects and spiders.
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Don't waste lab animals
Too many animal studies are badly designed and reported. It's high time biomedicine cleaned up its act, says Simon Festing.
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Shape-shifting islands defy sea-level rise
Against all the odds, a number of islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean are standing up to the effects of climate change.
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Eat less, live longer?
People trying to delay ageing by cutting calories may have a surprise in store.
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How climate scientists can repair their reputation
Climatologists can't just hope that the public will regain trust in their work. They need to go on a PR offensive, says Bob Ward.
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Biofuels learn to eat less
Production of bioethanol has attracted global controversy because it uses important food crops. That could be about to change.
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Breakthrough in quest to boost rice yields
If any crop needs an evolutionary boost, it's rice. Nearly half of humanity relies on the stuff, and yields must increase more than 50 per cent by 2050 to feed growing demand, so the discovery of a gene mutation that can bump up yields by a full 10 per cent is exciting news.
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How to persuade us to swallow nanofood
Imagine a new kind of food, dramatically lowered in fat, salt and sugar but tasting just as good as the real thing - in fact, it is the real thing. Thanks to nanotechnology, such foods could soon become reality. Yet their promising future is already in jeopardy.
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The taste of tiny: Putting nanofoods on the menu
Nothing says summer holidays quite like ice cream. On a hot afternoon by the sea, there's little to beat the simple pleasure of a cooling scoop of your favourite flavour. Can food get much more satisfying than this?
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Meltdown: Why ice ages don't last forever
At last we understand why the monstrous ice sheets that periodically entomb continents vanish when they do.