Wired Wild West: Cowpokes chatted on fence-wire phones

Before phone lines gave barbed wire the boot (Image: Kevin Taylor/Alamy) Personalised ringtones, chat rooms and online music – 19th-century ranchers pioneered social networking LONG before Facebook or Twitter, there was a different kind of social network. Born in the Old West, it allowed communities to share updates and music, and to spread news and gossip. For a brief period at the start of the 20th century this network, owned by no one, was a model...

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Today on New Scientist

2014 preview: Paralysed teen scores in Brazil The millions tuning into the opening match of the World Cup will see the world's most advanced mind-controlled exoskeleton take the ceremonial first kickWe want to know meat's origin – but not if it costs 90 per cent of consumers thought that all meat products should be labelled with their country of origin, but most weren't willing to pay extra for the infoAthletes' biological passports will track steroid...

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2014 preview: Paralysed teen scores in Brazil

Read more: "2014 preview: 10 ideas that will matter next year"It will be quite some show of skill. The first kick of the 2014 Football World Cup in Brazil might not come from the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi. Instead, if all goes to plan, a teenager paralysed from the waist down will use the world's most advanced mind-controlled exoskeleton to swing at the ball.The spectacle will showcase the Walk Again Project, an international collaboration...

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We want to know meat's origin – but not if it costs

WE WANT to know where our meat comes from, but not if it will cost us to find out, it seems.A report published on 17 December by the European Commission found that 90 per cent of consumers thought it important that the country of origin should be indicated on all meat products. But only 20 per cent of respondents said they were willing to pay 5 to 10 per cent more money for the information.UK consumers' sensitivity to the origins of their meat has...

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Athletes' biological passports will track steroid use

SPORTS cheats beware. As of 1 January, professional athletes became subject to routine checks on steroid concentrations in their urine. These tests won't be used to spot specific drugs, but to form a baseline by which to detect any future suspicious deviations from the athlete's normal physiology. The checks have been added to the World Anti-Doping Agency's , a procedure for monitoring every athlete's metabolic profile.Since WADA introduced the...

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Texas repels creationist threat to biology textbooks

Children in Texas will spend the next decade reading biology textbooks free of anti-evolution propaganda, thanks to the defeat last month of creationist attempts to cast doubt on the evolution content of such books.Creationists on the 15-member Texas State Board of Education had been trying since 2009 to force textual changes designed to undermine the scientific consensus on evolution.If the changes had been accepted, the "contaminated" books would...

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Water plumes spark a race to Jupiter moon Europa

Editorial: "We don't need to land to find life on Europa"LET'S put Mars in our rear-view mirror. Recent signs of water gushing from Europa could make Jupiter's icy moon the next hot destination in the hunt for alien life. And novel ways to propel tiny, cheap satellites could get us there within the next decade – although such a trip won't be easy.Europa has long been one of astrobiologists' most desired destinations. The Galileo probe, which toured...

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Elvis vs Jesus: PageRank for people says who's bigger

Book information Who's Bigger? Where historical figures really rank by Steven Skiena and Charles B. WardPublished by: Cambridge University PressPrice: £18.99Descartes: arguably the 82nd most significant person in history (Image: Dumesnil, Pierre-Louis the Younger (1698-1781)/Bridgeman Art Library) Which historical figures command most attention? A computer scientist and a Google engineer have devised an algorithm to rank them all in Who's Bigger?ISAAC...

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Higgs boson could reveal deviant behaviour in 2014

The Higgs boson could reveal exotic physics even before the Large Hadron Collider switches back on in 2015, thanks to a new list of ways the famous subatomic particle could misbehave.First predicted almost 50 years ago, the particle was only discovered in 2012 by scientists working at the LHC, the world's largest particle accelerator at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland.Misbehaviour sounds like a strange thing to catalogue, but when it comes to the standard...

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Ice-loving sea anemones found in Antarctica

Talk about being chilled out: a species of sea anemone has been found on the underside of Antarctica's ice sheets. They are the only marine animals known to live embedded in the ice, and no one is sure how they survive.Frank Rack of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and colleagues made the surprise find when they drilled through the ice for a geological study. They were using a camera attached to a remote-controlled drill to explore the underside...

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Replacement artificial heart keeps first patient alive

(Image: Carmat) If you stayed awake during biology in school, you might recognise the shapes at the left and top right of this image: they are models of the heart. The object at lower right, looking like a cross between a tape dispenser and a second-world-war gas mask, will be less familiar.Developed by French firm Carmat, this is an artificial heart designed for people whose hearts are so weak that they can no longer pump enough blood to sustain...

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Improvise! Shoestring solutions to big physics

(Image: Getty) What do you do when the money's too short to run your expensive experiment? Reach for the duct tape, ping pong balls and taco sauce In 1996, Andre Geim was a junior professor at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. His day job was teasing out the magnetic properties of superconductors, but he itched to investigate a more basic question: could you make water magnetic?The textbook answer was no. "But sometimes if something...

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2014 preview: Three-parent babies close to conception

Read more: "2014 preview: 10 ideas that will matter next year"The first three-parent baby could be on its way next year, when the UK parliament votes on whether to legalise a novel form of IVF. The procedure would allow thousands of women with mitochondrial mutations to have a child without the fear of passing on disease.Mitochondria, the energy generators of cells, have their own DNA, passed down by the mother and distinct from the chromosomes in...

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Rude awakenings: How swearing made us human

(Image: Andy Smith) Our crudest outbursts can unravel ancient links between words and thoughts. They may even hint at our ancestors' first utterances IT WAS the first time one of us swore at Dad. My older sister was 13, and had been looking forward to the school trip to Washington DC for years. It was the pinnacle of middle school – a long bus ride to the capital, two days visiting important sites and an overnight stay in a hotel with her friends.But...

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Today on New Scientist

Continue reading page |1|2 2014 preview: Google Glass for the masses Many of us will have our view of the world transformed if Google Glass, due to launch in 2014, proves to be a hitMagical giant: The story of a much-loved museum whale Created in the 1930s, the life-size model blue whale at London's Natural History Museum has lost none of its ability to thrill crowdsSnow monkey leaps into hell Macaques love Jigokudani monkey park in Nagano prefecture,...

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2014 preview: Google Glass for the masses

Read more: "2014 preview: 10 ideas that will matter next year"This time next year, we might all be wearing computers on our heads. Already a hit with early adopters, the much-hyped Google Glass headset will be released to the public in 2014. And in response to feedback from those testers, it is likely to boast a few extra features.For starters, developers are keen to incorporate eye-tracking so that the device can overlay information on top of objects...

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Magical giant: The story of a much-loved museum whale

(Image: Peter Hall/Keystone Features/Getty Images) Created in the 1930s, the life-size model blue whale at London's Natural History Museum has lost none of its ability to thrill crowds THIS month, thousands of people will fall under the spell of a giant.But this is no fairy tale or pantomime giant. It's a life-size model of the blue whale, the world's largest mammal. Now celebrating its 75th birthday, the 28.3-metre-long model dominates the mammal...

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Snow monkey leaps into hell

(Image: Diane McAllister/naturepl.com) WELCOME to hell. This is the Jigokudani monkey park in Nagano prefecture, Japan. – although it is actually a rather heavenly place for monkeys.Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata fuscata) are the only monkeys native to Japan, and live further north than any other non-human primate. Famous for their habit of bathing in hot springs, they can also leap, as can be seen in this shot by US photographer Diane McAllister....

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The great white lie: What snowflakes really look like

The classic image of a symmetrical, six-sided snowflake is everywhere at this time of the year. But that's not what you'll see falling from the sky WHEN Bing Crosby dreamed of a white Christmas, chances are he imagined one fashioned by flurries of perfect, six-sided snowflakes. This image of what a snowflake looks like has become ubiquitous. It is found on everything from cards and woolly jumpers to shop windows during the festive season. So you...

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2014 preview: Private internet to beat the spooks

Read more: "2014 preview: 10 ideas that will matter next year"What's the price of loss of trust? We will find out in 2014 as the after-effects of the revelations about the spying campaigns on the world's internet and cellphone networks become apparent.The financial costs are already mounting. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington DC think tank, reckons US firms could lose $35 billion in sales in the next two years because...

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All spruced up: Breeding a better Christmas tree

It's easier to get a tree from the attic (Image: Plainpicture/ESTA) If you're pining for a real tree but not for its needles in your carpet – or green just isn't your colour – we have glad tidings for you IF YOUR household celebrates Christmas, you may well have chosen to put up an artificial tree this year. Fake Christmas trees have been around almost as long as the real thing, but they first began to sell in large numbers in the 1930s, when a toilet-brush...

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2014 preview: Hydrogen SUV ready to hit the road

Read more: "2014 preview: 10 ideas that will matter next year"Did you know that the Empire State Building's spire was designed as a mooring point for hydrogen airships? That proved too dangerous, though, and then a deadly fire on the Hindenburg in 1937 brought the hydrogen fad to an abrupt end. Now the lightest of elements is making a comeback as the first mass-market hydrogen car gears up to hit the road.Whereas airships harnessed hydrogen's buoyancy,...

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