The adult brain is far more malleable that we thought, and so learning can be child's play if you know how. By David Robson (full text available to subscribers)
In the race for world domination, cockroaches have scored another point against Homo sapiens. Their weapons? A distaste for sugar and a helping hand from evolution
A series of hydroelectric dams on the river, to be constructed from 2015, could generate twice as much energy as China's record-breaking Three Gorges dam
Geneticist Paolo Gasparini is exploring the ancient Silk Road to find out how important our genes are in shaping what we can taste and what we like (full text available to subscribers)
Cotard's syndrome is the belief that your brain or body has died. New Scientist has the first media interview with someone who has come out the other side
This brazen, beautiful, evidently male Javan leopard doesn't show obvious signs of stress – despite being recently added to the Red List of endangered species
The planet-spotting Kepler telescope seems doomed, but its discoveries along with a new version of the famous Drake equation will sharpen the hunt for ET (full text available to subscribers)
Hypothetical conscious entities that randomly pop into existence may undermine our view of the universe – string theory may banish these Boltzmann brains
The North Atlantic is now wide enough to create exceptionally high tides, making the rate of the moon's retreat faster now than it was 50 million years ago
We no longer have to wonder what self-awareness looks like, says neuroscientist Daniel Bor – now we can see for ourselves (full text available to subscribers)
The Bonobo and the Atheist and How Animals Grieve show that we must be careful when studying animals to learn about the origins of human traits and behaviours
The race is on to revamp the accelerator that found the Higgs boson, doubling its energy by February 2015. Michael Brooks samples the action at CERN (full text available to subscribers)
