Google wants to rank websites based on facts not links

The trustworthiness of a web page might help it rise up Google's rankings if the search giant starts to measure quality by facts, not just links THE internet is stuffed with garbage. Anti-vaccination websites make the front page of Google, and fact-free "news" stories spread like wildfire. Google has devised a fix – rank websites according to their truthfulness.Google's search engine currently uses the number of incoming links to a web page as a...

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To save the rainforest, let the locals take control

Global intervention in tropical forests to combat climate change could sideline their most effective guardians SATELLITE images of the Amazon rainforest are startling. Islands of green are surrounded by brown areas of land cleared for farming. In places, the brown advances, year by year. But in others, the forest holds firm. Why the difference? Mostly, the surviving green areas belong to local tribes.Brazil's Kayapo, for instance, control 10.6 million...

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Amazon deforestation soars after a decade of stability

Deforestation in the Amazon has skyrocketed in the past half a year, according to analysis of satellite images issued by Brazil's non-profit research institute, IMAZON.The results compared the deforestation in a particular month with figures from the same month a year before, and the difference ranged from a 136 per cent increase in August to a 467 rise in September."Rates have way more than doubled over the equivalent period in the previous year,"...

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Why US law on guns and mental health needs to change

Earlier this week, eight US professional organisations, including the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Public Health Association collectively took a stand against a law that on the face of it, seems like plain common sense.For the past couple of years in New York, Colorado and Connecticut, psychiatrists have been compelled by law to report patients with mental illness to the criminal justice...

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Today on New Scientist

A user's guide to touch Ever wondered why being stroked produces wildly different sensations depending on where you're being touched? We have the answersDrone buzzes South America's first wildlife bridge Aerial footage reveals a unique green overpass designed to reconnect habitats sliced in two by an Argentinean roadGreat white sharks attack prey under cover of sun It seems great white sharks exploit the glare of the sun to catch their prey unawaresBody...

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A user's guide to touch

Pinches, punches, tickles and reading Braille: touch plays many roles in our lives . But our ability to detect different types of touch varies greatly across different parts of our body, from the ticklish soles of our feet to the relaxing sensation of a shoulder or head massage. Want to know exactly what effect you're going to have when you touch someone? Read on for our user's guide to touch. FingersEach of your fingertips has more than 3000 touch...

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Drone buzzes South America's first wildlife bridge

Video: Drone's eye view of green overpass It looks like a bridge from a fantasy world. The grassy structure is a green overpass, the only one of its kind in Latin America, designed to connect wildlife populations and habitats that have been separated by a road. Built in 2010 in the Misiones province of Argentina, it is also meant to reduce roadkill.Photographer Tomás Thibaud of the Drone Films Project filmed the structure to raise awareness of the...

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Great white sharks attack prey under cover of sun

Daa dum. Daa dum. You'll never look at the sun setting over water in the same way again. Great white sharks exploit the angle of the sun to hunt down their prey, perhaps concealing themselves in the reflected glare. This is the first time any non-human animal has been shown to use the sun as part of its hunting strategy, say the authors of a new study.It's common knowledge that sharks like to hunt at dawn and dusk. But Charlie Huveneers, from Flinders...

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Feedback: Ferrari jumps the units shark

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more FURTHER to Feedback's report on competition between the blue whale and the double-decker bus as metaphorical masses (14 February), we delve into our piling system and wonder, not without pride, whether colleagues on other publications are competing for a mention here. Or is there another explanation for the proliferation of articles...

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What colour is the dress? Here's why we disagree

(Image: Swiked/http://bit.ly/17Cbamm) It could be simultaneously both the biggest and the smallest controversy to hit the internet since, well, ever. What colour is the dress? A Tumblr user uploaded a picture of a dress, saying that they were having an argument about what colour it is. Is it white and gold or blue and black? Buzzfeed republished it and it broke even their records for traffic.There are already many explanations, and most are wrong....

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The dress is white and gold. But here's why we disagree

(Image: Swiked/http://bit.ly/17Cbamm) It could be simultaneously both the biggest and the smallest controversy to hit the internet since, well, ever. What colour is the dress? A Tumblr user uploaded a picture of a dress, saying that they were having an argument about what colour it is. Is it white and gold or blue and black? Buzzfeed republished it and it broke even their records for traffic.There are already many explanations, and most are wrong....

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Treating inherited disease could start in the womb

For a baby born with genetic disease, a lifetime of treatment can ensue. But research in mice suggests that treatment for haemophilia – and maybe other inherited diseases – could start in the womb, boosting the success of therapies after birth.Our immune systems are pretty good at identifying and destroying foreign material. Once we've encountered a particular invader, our immune cells mount a quicker response should it ever turn up again. This is...

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Programmable pop-up materials can morph on command

Normally you can rely on solid objects to hold their shape: aeroplane wings are skinny teardrops, paper is flat and chairs are good for sitting on. But the US air force has found a way to change that. They have made flat surfaces pop into complex 3D shapes when heated – an ability that could find uses in fields from medicine to flight."Think of an antenna that changes its radiation properties depending on its shape, or morphing wings where the shape...

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Kitchen-table physics lets you do big science at home

(Image: Spencer Wilson) Five groundbreaking experiments for a low-tech lab: from a solar storm detector in a jam jar to a Large Hadron Collider in your salad bowl JAMIE EDWARDS is every bit the nuclear scientist – curious, diligent and passionate about unlocking the energy stored inside atoms. Last year, having scoured the web for parts and blueprints, he built his first working fusion reactor. The project would have been a tremendous feat for anyone,...

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Britons may have imported wheat long before farming it

Prehistoric people living on the British Isles were more than hunter-gatherers: they were bakers, too, a discovery suggests. They seem to have been eating wheat some 2000 years before it was cultivated in the region.A find of plant DNA challenges the assumption that the grain didn't arrive until agriculture took hold there around 4000 BC. People were in fact enjoying flour imported from mainland Europe some 2000 years before this."Rather than being...

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Future-predicting neurons discovered in the brain

We meet in a pub, we have a few drinks, some dinner and then you lean in for a kiss. You predict, based on our previous interactions, that the kiss will be reciprocated – rather than landing you with a slap in the face.All our social interactions require us to anticipate another person's undecided intentions and actions. Now, researchers have discovered specific brain cells that allow monkeys to do this. It is likely that the cells do the same job...

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The Nether: Real morality for a virtual world

A new play uses the idea of paedophilia in a simulated reality to raise tough questions about how we should behave in virtual spaces The play relies on suggestion, not shock (Image: Johan Persson) "Who are we when we live without consequences?" That's the question a detective poses angrily to the owner of the Hideaway, a virtual clubhouse catering to paedophiles in The Nether, Jennifer Haley's charged, compact play about online morality. The "Nether"...

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Today on New Scientist

Memory lapse draws bumblebees to untried flowers Bumblebees can recall which flowers yield nectar, but like people they can get mixed up – leading them to home in on flowers they have no experience of6 things you're dying to ask about head transplants Read about the proposed head transplant surgery? Here are answers to questions on the tip of your tongue. And no, we can't defrost all the cryogenic headsFirst photo of Earth from space was from deadly...

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Memory lapse draws bumblebees to untried flowers

Ever remembered something wrongly? Sworn blind that something had happened, when in fact it hadn't? Bumblebees also appear to have the same problem.In their everyday lives, bumblebees have a lot to remember: the colours, patterns, scents and symmetries of flowers, the best ways to get food from the best ones, as well as their locations and how to get to them. Relative to their lifespan, bumblebees have a good long-term memory for these details. They...

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6 things you're dying to ask about head transplants

Read about the proposed head transplant surgery? Here are answers to questions on the tip of your tongue. And no, we can't defrost all the cryogenic heads Why are we calling this procedure a head transplant rather than a body transplant?The head transplant moniker is partly a hangover from monkey and dog experiments of the last century. This was how the surgeons that carried out those experiments referred to the procedure, and it stuck.Technically,...

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