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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

It’s time to save our rivers • Why we are shining a light on the UK’s waterways crisis

New Scientist International Edition

Bird flu’s pandemic risk • Amid the global outbreak in wild birds and poultry, the virus could evolve to spread among people. Are we prepared, asks Clare Wilson

Doubts over the wood wide web • Claims that trees communicate via an underground network have been widely propagated, but a review suggests they aren’t based on solid science, reports Luke Taylor

Couples are most in love in Hungary, according to science

Your brain produces more entropy while you are awake

Why our rivers matter • There are 200,000 kilometres of wildly varying waterways in the UK, but do we understand their true value and the threats they face, asks Graham Lawton

Curly hair protects us from the sun • Tightly coiled hair stops heads overheating more effectively than straight or moderately coiled hair, which may explain why it evolved in the first humans, writes Michael Le Page

Distant, tiny world Quaoar has a ring that seems to defy laws of physics

Massive tick-killing effort fails to reduce Lyme disease cases

Twist in tale of ancient tool use • A trove of artefacts from Kenya shows that relatively sophisticated stone tools were crafted by even our very early relatives, reports Michael Marshall

Analysis Calorie restriction • Does permanently cutting calories slow ageing? A blood test suggests that restricting our calorie intake reduces the rate at which we age, but the jury is out on whether this strategy really works, writes Clare Wilson

Bandicoots can be trained to flee predators faster

Blocking sunlight with moon dust may ease global warming

Brain pathway could be key to treating opioid addiction

Chronic fatigue linked to gut bacteria • People newly diagnosed with ME/CFS have distinctive changes in their gut microbiomes

Multiple tools help cockatoos get the job done

Lower incomes mean longer waits for basic services

Severe drought may have doomed the Hittite empire

Dust ring orbits the sun with Mercury

Orca mothers care for their adult sons

Millions live in possible flood path for glacial melting

Really brief

No miracle required • A focus on revolutionary “green” technologies is slowing the uptake of existing solutions to problems such as climate change, says Mark Jacobson

This changes everything • Old connections A telecommunications museum in Seattle, with a working exchange from the 1940s, shows how telephones brought us together – but also tore us apart, says Annalee Newitz

Nature’s finest

Your letters

Don’t use the Q word • From love to cancer cures, the word “quantum” has been hijacked. This book arms us all against hawkers of quantum rubbish, finds George Bass

Lost in space • A new documentary highlights the psychological costs of our efforts to explore the solar system, finds Katie Smith-Wong

Don’t miss

The TV column • Identity crisis Jack Billings is selling holiday homes on the moon in Apple TV+’s latest science-fiction show, Hello Tomorrow! But this is no paean to shiny robots or hover cars, more a mid-20th century social drama, finds Bethan Ackerley

Into the void • Far from being irrelevant nothingness, interstellar space is...