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All the latest stories on newscientist.com: evolution by flower power, Texas blast, robot builders for architects' dreams, and more

A former military fort controlled by the Triads, Kowloon Walled City was demolished 20 years ago. Here's what life was like there. Manhattan has the highest population density of any city in the United States, at 27,000 ...

Los Zetas, an infamous Mexican cartel, is apparently lowering its standards--it's now recruiting Americans. Previously, Zetas recruited largely based on skill, with ex-police and ex-military folk targeted. Now? Turns out...

The new BART extension will bring riders to one of the best exposures of the Hayward fault.

The investigation is a human-led endeavour, but machine vision is already good enough to start lending a hand

When Antarctica froze over it transformed the ecosystems in the surrounding oceans, and may even have driven the evolution of baleen whales

The Kepler space telescope has revealed three worlds suited to life - two are in one solar system, so any inhabitants could already have found each other

Electrical brain signals that reflect an awareness of surroundings have been recorded for the first time in the infants

What happens to your package after it leaves your arms Recently I found myself in need of shipping several valuable and highly breakable items, and I dreaded what would become of them after their boxes left my care. Woul...

One of the most common elements on Earth is used to make both fertilisers and explosives. We explain why nitrogen is the key ingredient

Though consumers have demanded a better way to secure their phones besides passwords, they may have had the answer all along without even knowing it: their body parts. Biometric identification will almost certainty becom...

We wouldn't be here if the first primates hadn't evolved some special features - to discover why it happened we have to go out on a limb (full text available to subscribers)

A musical examination of computer pioneer Alan Turing's life is a subtle rendition of a complex and sensitive story

You can walk on water if it contains corn starch. Knowing how and why this miracle "oobleck", shatters could guide its use in soft body armour

A stark black-and-white photo of an access tunnel 1,500 meters underground at the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics' Gran Sasso National Laboratory and a colorful close-up of a detector at INFN's Frascati National La...

NASA will give the ISS lithium-ion cells similar to those in Boeing's grounded 787 Dreamliner - but claims it can overcome the batteries' known fire risks

The biggest, smallest, and most robotic stargazing tools. When China completes its newest telescope project in 2016, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), it will have a dish nearly half the s...

In lieu of a whirlwind trip round the world, check out some highlights courtesy of Google Earth.

Changes to DNA in 6000-year-old remains may reveal how environmental changes drove human evolution

Lab-grown organs could be a boon for those on transplant waiting lists - but they also raise ethical questions

East African fossils are famous, but new work on Australopithecus sediba suggests that the earliest human remains may lie in an area near Johannesburg

Chinese culture reflects the customs and traditions of one of the largest countries in the world, with 1.34 billion people.