Today on New Scientist: 6 February 2013

Open Richard III DNA evidence for peer review A good case has been made that a skeleton unearthed from a car park is that of the last Plantagenet king of England - it's time to share the dataUniversal bug sensor takes guesswork out of diagnosis A machine that can identify all bacteria, viruses and fungi known to cause disease in humans should speed up diagnosis and help to reduce antibiotic...

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Obama hands drone war guidelines to US lawmakers

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama will hand lawmakers classified documents outlining the legal justification for drone strikes which kill US citizens abroad who are conspiring with Al-Qaeda.An administration official disclosed the move on Wednesday on the eve of a Senate hearing on Obama's nomination of his top White House anti-terror advisor John Brennan to lead the Central Intelligence...

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Ubuntu OS smartphones hitting stores in October

The open-source Ubuntu OS is coming to a smartphone near you.(Credit:Ubuntu)It's been said that Ubuntu's open-source operating system would be available on smartphones by the end of the year, and now it's confirmed that consumers can get their hands on such devices in October. Ubuntu is made by Canonical, and according to the Wall Street Journal, the founder and CEO of Canonical Mark Shuttleworth...

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Humans Swap DNA More Readily Than They Swap Stories

Jane J. Lee Once upon a time, someone in 14th-century Europe told a tale of two girls—a kind one who was rewarded for her manners and willingness to work hard, and an unkind girl who was punished for her greed and selfishness.This version was part of a long line of variations that eventually spread throughout Europe, finding their way into the Brothers Grimm fairytales as Frau Holle, and...

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Armstrong May Testify Under Oath on Doping

Facing a federal criminal investigation and a deadline tonight to tell all under oath to anti-doping authorities or lose his last chance at reducing his lifetime sporting ban, Lance Armstrong now may cooperate.His apparent 11th-hour about-face, according to the U.S. Anti Doping Agency (USADA), means he now might testify under oath and give full details to USADA of how he cheated...

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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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Asian markets rebound, weaker yen boosts Tokyo

HONG KONG: Asian markets climbed Wednesday following big losses in the previous session, with Tokyo surging as the yen tumbled after Bank of Japan governor Masaaki Shirakawa said he will step down early.Traders also took a lead from Wall Street and Europe, where encouraging economic data offset concerns over political uncertainty in Spain and Italy.Tokyo soared more than three per cent...

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Dueling disks: Apple's 128GB response to Surface Pro

Not all disk subsystems are created equal. Microsoft has opted for a speedy mSATA-based SSD for its Surface Pro.(Credit:Micron Technology)With the 128GB iPad, Apple is obviously trying to steal thunder from Microsoft's Saturday roll out of the Surface Pro. But that doesn't mean you can equate the iPad's disk performance with the Surface Pro's. Apple's carefully-timed release of the 128GB iPad ostensibly...

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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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