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New Scientist covers the latest developments in science and technology that will impact your world. New Scientist employs and commissions the best writers in their fields from all over the world. Our editorial team provide cutting-edge news, award-winning features and reports, written in concise and clear language that puts discoveries and advances in the context of everyday life today and in the future.

Elsewhere on New Scientist

We must avoid complacency • What is happening in India could occur elsewhere if rising case numbers are ignored

New Scientist

India crisis: What happens next? • How bad will India’s covid-19 crisis get, what can be done to stop it and will it be mirrored elsewhere? Michael Le Page and Clare Wilson report

What is India’s ‘double mutant’?

Vaccine side effects • What side effects can you expect from the covid-19 vaccines and what do they mean? Clare Wilson reports

Lockdown inactivity in England proves long-lasting

The oldest burial in Africa • 3-year-old child from the Middle Stone Age found in a purposefully dug pit

Female black widow spider mates with and eats many males

Birthplace of the Anthropocene • Humanity has left a geological mark on Earth – now we need to decide where it begins

Your finger can feel the change of one atom in a material

Negative events before birth increase mental health risk

Billion-year-old microbe took steps towards internal organs

Car batteries could provide a new use for driftwood

Yeast species has strange form of sexual reproduction

Ancient Arabian monuments • The 1000 structures may have been used in rituals and predate Stonehenge

Frigid molecules act as a single quantum object

Battle of the billionaires • Elon Musk’s SpaceX has won a NASA contract to land humans on the moon. Do his rivals, including Jeff Bezos, have cause to complain, asks Leah Crane

A baby’s first stool reveals risk of allergies

‘Smart’ immune cells kill tumours and stop them regrowing in mice

Third UK lockdown didn’t cut as much air pollution as the first

Amazon exodus may have begun before colonisation

Distant mice adapted to cold in same way

Venus finally reveals some inner secrets

Really brief

Blast of sound could avert bird collisions

Welcome to the gang: tiny, toxic frog is a new species

Skin patch can tell when you scratch

Discrimination is still a problem in STEM • Harassment and discrimination based on gender, age and ethnicity continue to be major issues in the workplace that affect a significant proportion of STEM industry workers, according to the 2021 New Scientist Jobs/SRG survey. Gege Li reports

Life under ice • I lived under a glacier studying methane-producing microbes. We still have much to learn about their climate impact, says Jemma Wadham

Crimes against nature • There have long been calls for international laws to recognise ecocide as a crime. Now that movement may finally have a chance, writes Graham Lawton

Your letters

Flying feats

Making electronic waves • A group of pioneers made many electronic music breakthroughs but their work hasn’t always got the recognition it deserves, finds Bethan Ackerley

When worlds collide • A documentary tells the remarkable story of a chimp that lived like a human and a human that lived like a chimp, finds Elle Hunt

Don’t miss

Finding a new you • In Disco Elysium, you play a detective solving a murder, but the game is more concerned with taking the opportunities to reinvent yourself – and not worrying if you fail, says Jacob Aron

The power of self-reflection • Greater self-awareness could be the secret to success. It is time to get...