Today on New Scientist: 5 February 2013

Engineering light: Pull an image from nowhere A new generation of lenses could bring us better lighting, anti-forgery technology and novel movie projectors Baby boomers' health worse than their parents Americans who were born in the wake of the second world war have poorer health than the previous generation at the same ageNew 17-million-digit monster is largest known prime A distributed computing...

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8.0 quake strikes off Solomon Islands

WASHINGTON: A major magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck off the Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean and a tsunami warning was issued for South Pacific islands, US officials said.The US Geological Survey said the quake struck at 0112 GMT near the Santa Cruz Islands, which are part of the Solomon Islands nation, with a depth of 3.6 miles (5.8 kilometers). The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center...

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Zillow's new Digs app offers remodeling ideas, advice

Zillow Digs, the real estate aggregator's new app for home improvement information.(Credit:Zillow)Online real estate listing aggregator Zillow launched an app today that aims to help home shoppers and home buyers with their home improvement projects.Available for the iPad and the Web, Zillow Digs is a free app designed to offer inspiration as well as information about remodeling projects. The free...

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The Real Richard III

It's a question that actors from Laurence Olivier to Kevin Spacey have grappled with: What did Richard III, the villainous protagonist of Shakespeare's famous historical drama, really look and sound like?In the wake of this week's announcement by the University of Leicester that archaeologists have discovered the 15th-century British king's lost skeleton beneath a parking lot, news continues...

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White House: Drone Strikes on Americans 'Legal'

Feb 5, 2013 3:54pm The White House today defended the use of targeted drone strikes against U.S. citizens abroad suspected of high-level terrorist activity, but declined to detail the criteria for ordering such an attack.“Sometimes we use remotely piloted aircraft to conduct targeted strikes against specific al Qaeda terrorists in order to prevent attacks on the...

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Ice-age art hints at birth of modern mind

Sumit Paul-Choudhury, editorFigurines from the Don river valley (Images: Kirstin Jennings)The world’s oldest portrait, the world’s first fully carved sculpture, the world's oldest ceramic figure, the world’s earliest puppet - there’s no shortage of superlatives in the new exhibition of art from the ice age at the British Museum in LondonBut focus too closely on the exhibits’ record-breaking ages...

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"Wild Thing" singer Reg Presley dies at 71

LONDON: Reg Presley, lead singer of British 1960s rock band The Troggs, has died aged 71, a friend said late Monday.Presley, best known for hits including "Wild Thing" and "Love Is All Around", had announced a year ago that he was battling cancer and would retire from the band.Veteran music journalist Keith Altham, a close friend of Presley's, wrote on his Facebook page that the singer...

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Hackers hit U.S. Department of Energy

The U.S. Department of Energy said that hackers have stolen personal data of its employees and contractors.The U.S. Department of Energy has confirmed that its computer systems were hacked into last month. According to The New York Times, the federal agency sent around an internal e-mail on Friday telling its employees about the cyberattack. "The Department of Energy has just confirmed a recent cyber...

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Space Pictures This Week: A Space Monkey, Printing a Moon Base

Illustration courtesy Foster and Partners/ESAThe European Space Agency (ESA) announced January 31 that it is looking into building a moon base (pictured in an artist's conception) using a technique called 3-D printing.It probably won't be as easy as whipping out a printer, hooking it to a computer, and pressing "print," but using lunar soils as the basis for actual building blocks could be a possibility."Terrestrial...

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Boy Safe, Kidnapper Dead After Hidden Camera Tip

A week-long standoff in Alabama, where a retired trucker held a 5-year-old boy hostage in an underground bunker, has ended with the kidnapper dead and the child safe, according to law enforcement.Officials had been able to insert a high-tech camera into the bunker to monitor the movements of the suspect, Richard Lee Dykes, and they had become increasingly concerned that he might...

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