After tweeted rape threats, Twitter promises change

"You better watch your back.... Im gonna rape your ass at 8pm and put the video all over the internet."This is one of the many rape threats UK politician Stella Creasy received on Twitter this week. Creasy put herself in the line of fire after she expressed her outrage at the graphic threats of rape and murder that Caroline Criado-Perez started receiving on 24 July, when she kicked off a campaign to get a picture of author Jane Austen on the UK's...

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Astrophile: How Saturn's tiger moon got its stripes

Astrophile is our weekly column on curious cosmic objects, from the solar system to the far reaches of the multiverse Objects: tiger stripes of EnceladusOrigins: ripped open by a jealous rulerHere is the story of how Saturn's geyser moon got its stripes. Once upon a time, in the blackness of space, there lived a giant gas ball known for his vanity. Unlike most of the other denizens of the solar system, mighty Saturn wore great big rings of ice that...

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Gold-diamond duo takes temperature of single cell

TALK about bling. Miniature diamonds more usually found in quantum computers, combined with fragments of gold, can be used to measure the temperature of individual cells. That could lead to a more accurate way to kill cancers while sparing healthy tissue – and a new way to explore cell behaviour.There are already ways to take a cell's temperature, using glowing proteins or carbon nanotubes. However, these lack sensitivity and accuracy because their...

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US soldiers used in human experiments lose legal case

Editorial: "Beyond the call of duty"FOR decades, in secret military experiments, tens of thousands of US soldiers were deliberately exposed to agents such as mustard gas, sarin and weaponised LSD. It was a voluntary programme, but few soldiers had any idea what they were letting themselves in for. Now the US Department of Defense (DoD) has been ordered to reveal the consequences of what the soldiers were subjected to.They include then-20-year-old...

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Crude-oil spill blights idyllic Thai island

(Image: Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters) Pristine white beaches turned black this week when crude oil spewed out from an offshore pipeline near the Thai island of Ko Samet.The pipeline, owned by Thai oil and gas company PTT Global Chemical, spilled an estimated 50,000 litres of crude oil. This is modest – the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico spilled millions of litres of oil per day – but there are fears that unfavourable ocean currents and...

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Garden of Eden to become Iraqi national park

THE "Garden of Eden" has been saved, even as chaos grows all around. Last week, amid a wave of bombings on the streets of Baghdad, Iraq's Council of Ministers found time to approve the creation of the country's first national park – the centrepiece of a remarkable restoration of the Mesopotamian marshes in the south of the country.This vast wetland of reed beds and waterways, home of the Ma'dan Marsh Arabs, is widely held to be the home of the Biblical...

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Biosphere 2: Saving the world within a world

Editorial: "Reality bites: The lessons of Biosphere 2"See more in our gallery: "Earth in miniature: Tour a mini-world under glass"AROUND 10am, the rain began to fall. It wasn't especially heavy, but it was relentless. Hour after hour the downpour continued, soaking into the deep black soil. After midnight, the hill was saturated, and the water began to pool on the surface and run, carving a gully that deepened and flared as the rain continued.A few...

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Out-of-control oil leaks at Canadian tar sands site

Ah, the beautiful wilds of western Canada. Rivers, mountains, forests… and out-of-control oil leaks that have already spurted thousands of barrels of toxic bitumen into the environment.The leaks were caused by an underground blowout at a tar sand project in north-east Alberta run by Canadian Natural Resources that had been certified safe by government regulators. One of the firm's scientists has been reported saying that they are mystified as to...

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Track change at heart of Spain train crash inquiry

Why did Francisco José Garzón, a train driver with 30 years' experience, hit a bend at 190 kilometres per hour when the speed limit was 80 km/h? Did he ignore the automated warnings? Or did his train's alert system fail at a critical time?An inquiry is under way into the derailing of the packed train, which killed 79 people in Santiago de Compostela, north-west Spain on 24 July. Garzón has admitted to "confusion" over the train's speed and, though...

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Morphing molecule may shine in high-resolution screens

Shape-shifting molecules that emit primary colours have been mixed to create a rainbow of hues for the first time. This morphing ensures that the colours are crisp and clear, potentially giving the molecules a future in high-resolution displays.Modern displays use bundles of micrometre-sized pixels of each primary colour – red, green and blue – to create a range of colours. But even such small pixels become noticeable on devices that are held close...

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NASA's upcoming astronaut capsule has hints of Apollo

A flashback to the space future (Image: NASA/Robert Markowitz) For an out-of-this-world commute, you need a perfectly tricked-out vehicle. With sky-blue LED lighting and seating for seven, this space capsule certainly fits the bill.This photo gives a glimpse inside of the CST-100, a commercial crew capsule being built by Boeing with support from NASA, which aims to restore the US's ability to independently launch astronauts into space.The full-scale...

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Today on New Scientist

Teen jabs to prevent cervical cancer stall in USOnly 33 per cent of eligible US girls are getting all the vaccinations to protect them from human papillomavirus, well short of the 80 per cent target Wacky spaces: The odd orbits that boost rocket tripsGo direct or take the scenic route? Whether you're taking a trip to the space station or into deep space, it's a dilemma for space travellers too DNA fails to take offEven crucial science doesn't necessarily...

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Teen jabs to prevent cervical cancer stall in US

Rwanda doesn't do many things better than the US, but in some ways it protects its teenage girls better. It is more than twice as successful as the US at vaccinating girls against human papillomavirus (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer."Our vaccination rate is stuck at one-third of our teen girls, yet Rwanda has vaccinated more than 80 per cent of its target population," says Tom Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...

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Wacky spaces: The odd orbits that boost rocket trips

ON HER second morning in space, Anousheh Ansari was filled with excitement. She slipped out of her sleeping bag and somersaulted effortlessly through the Soyuz spacecraft. Then it all went horribly wrong.Her head and back throbbed with pain owing to the effects of weightlessness. Even the slightest movement made her feel sick. The joy of watching Earth spin was replaced with a much stronger emotion. The telecoms entrepreneur, who had paid $20 million...

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DNA fails to take off

For every dollar invested in the Human Genome Project, $141 was returned to the US economy (Image: Donald E. Hurlbert and James di Loreto/Smithsonian) Even crucial science doesn't necessarily translate into an exciting exhibition, to judge by Genome: Unlocking life's code, an exhibition in Washington DC Genome: Unlocking life's code, National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC, until 1 September 2014, then across North America WHITE, filamentous...

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Natural chemical boosts organ regeneration

Your body naturally contains a chemical that can boost organ regeneration and speed up wound healing.Epoxyeicosatrienoic acids (EETs) help new blood vessels to form, so Dipak Panigrahy at Harvard Medical School in Boston and colleagues wondered whether they might also accelerate other types of growth. To find out, they injected mice with EETs straight after the surgical removal of a lung or part of their liver.Four days later, treated mice had 23...

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Monogamy evolved to keep baby-killers away

Why stick with just one member of the opposite sex when there are so many to choose from?Love and tax breaks may be the reasons we cite today, but our primate ancestors had other motivations. Preventing a newborn from being killed by an unrelated male was top of the list.Social monogamy – when a male and female of the species stick together for the long term, although may mate with others – is rare in mammals generally. However, it occurs in over...

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Crocodiles may need their fruity five-a-day

Even crocodiles need their five a day, it seems. At least half of all species of alligator and crocodile supplement their meaty diet with the flesh of fruit.Reports that crocodiles have a taste for fruit go back decades, says Thomas Rainwater at the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Charleston, South Carolina. "But since these animals were long considered carnivores, no one paid much attention."In a routine analysis of American alligators (Alligator...

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Shiny new teeth concocted from mice and human urine

Is a missing tooth ruining your smile? Here's an unlikely recipe for cooking up a replacement – with the help of a mouse and some of your own urine.Duanqing Pei from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guangzhou and colleagues took stem cells from human urine and used them to grow teeth inside mouse kidneys. The stem cells, implanted under the outer layer of the mouse's kidney, transformed into dental epithelial tissue, which develops into the enamel,...

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