Moi on the radio
I have just done an interview in my dressing room with a nice chap called Roushan for ICRadio (a student broadcast for Imperial College). You can listen, or indeed listen again, at icradio.com on Wednesday evening at eight (hopefully) or for a while thereafter. Have a listen, all the cool people do.
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Are we witnessing the end of science?
Almost all the great revolutions in scientific thinking may be behind us, but the way modern science is conducted stifles radical new ideas.
Wired magazine is well known for its catchy cover lines. I won’t forget one from 2007. Alongside a mocked-up image of a yellowing lab notebook and magnifying lens, it proclaimed: “The end of science: The quest for science used to begin with grand theories; now it begins with massive amounts of data.”
Scientists and science commentators often say that if yesterday’s science needed outstanding individuals such as Darwin and Einstein, tomorrow’s theories will be shaped by the vast quantities of data pouring forth from networked computers and from the labours of big research teams working in areas such as particle physics, the human genome and astronomy.
The End of Science was also the title of a book published in 1996 by science writer John Horgan, though Horgan thought the pursuit of science was coming to an end for different reasons. He claimed that the basic scaffolding of the natural world is now mostly understood – the big bang theory, the structure of DNA and evolution by natural selection and the periodic table of elements are not going to change. Yes, many refinements are needed in our understanding of how things work, but as we are closer to reality in so many fields, the chances of seeing revolutionary new thinking will be that much less.
World memory champ – rather forgetful.
“I forget everything,” says World Memory Champion Ben Pridmore. ”I walk into a room and forget what I am doing there, open the fridge and wonder why I am looking in there. I am famously bad at being able to remember people’s names and faces.”
His record in an hour is an astonishing 27 packs – 1,404 cards. Other records he can lay claim to include memorising a single pack of cards in 26.28 seconds; memorising in 15 minutes an 819-digit number; memorising in 30 minutes a binary number of 4,140 digits.
Note: Derren’s record is just above this but unfortunately he is banned from these competitions as it is deemed “unfair” for him to enter.
This is your brain on a placebo.
As far as the body is concerned, a placebo is nothing—a sugar pill, a sham treatment, an inert compound. But try telling that to the brain, as scientists led by Daniel Cherkin of Group Health Center for Health Studies in Seattle recently saw. They assigned 638 adults with chronic lower-back pain to receive either standard acupuncture therapy, customized acupuncture (tailored to the individual, such as by using nonstandard acupuncture points), sham acupuncture (toothpicks in acupuncture-needle guide tubes that mimic the feel of real acupuncture) or standard back-pain care, such as anti-inflammatory drugs and massage.
As the scientists reported this month in Archives of Internal Medicine, pain diminished significantly for 60 percent of the people in all three acupuncture groups—but for just 39 percent of patients receiving usual care. On average, both fake and real acupuncture reduced pain more than twice as much as standard care. Weirdly, this is being spun as “acupuncture is better than standard medical care for back pain!” I say “weirdly” because the key finding is that sham acupuncture delivered as much benefit as real acupuncture. And the most parsimonious explanation for that finding is inescapable: it is possible to think yourself out of pain.
In fact, the power of thought to relieve pain has been known since 1978, when neuroscientists began studying placebo responses in earnest. Now they have even mapped the brain processes that underlie it. When people expect their pain to diminish, typically because a doctor tells them that a little pill or other treatment will do so, that mere expectation produces activity in the prefrontal cortex, site of higher mental function, which in turn activates other regions to release the brain’s own homemade opioids, says Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin Medical School, a pioneer in placebo research. (A big advance in understanding placebo was showing that a drug that blocks the effects of opioids also blocks the placebo effect on pain, prima facie evidence that the brain’s endogenous opioids are in play.) The higher the expectations, the greater the pain relief, too. When scientists led by Dan Ariely of Duke University gave volunteers identical dummy pills before and after an electric shock, and told some of their human guinea pigs that the pills were analgesics costing $2.50 and others that they cost 10 cents, more of those getting the expensive placebo than the cheaper one reported pain relief (85 percent vs. 60 percent).
Is positive thinking actually negative thinking.
“I CAN pass this exam”, “I am a wonderful person and will find love again” and “I am capable and deserve that pay rise” are phrases that students, the broken-hearted and driven employees may repeat to themselves over and over again in the face of adversity. Self-help books through the ages, including Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 classic, “The Power of Positive Thinking”, have encouraged people with low self-esteem to make positive self-statements. New research, however, suggests it may do more harm than good.
Two-thirds of teenagers don’t believe in God
Nearly two-thirds of teenagers don’t believe in God and think that reality television is far more important than religion, new research has revealed. The survey showed that 66 per cent of teens do not believe a deity exists while 50 per cent have never prayed and 16 per cent have never been to church. Teenagers rated family, friends, money, music and even reality TV shows above faith.
- 59 per cent of children believed religion has had a negative influence on the world
- 60 per cent only go to church for a wedding or christening
- Only 30 per cent of teenagers think there is an afterlife…
- … while 10 per cent believe in reincarnation
- 47 per cent said organised religion had no place in the world
- 60 per cent don’t believe Religious Studies should be compulsory in schools
- However, 91 per cent agreed they should treat others the way they wished to be treated themselves
The study of 1,000 teenagers aged 13 to 18 was carried out by Penguin books. It also revealed the south-east was the region with the least faith as only 28 per cent of those surveyed believed in God. A Church of England spokesman said: ‘Many teenagers aren’t sure what they believe at that stage of their lives, as is clear from the number who said they don’t know whether they believe in God.
Mail (Thanks Liz)
It’s Coops Birthday
(on July 3rd) He’s going to hit 30 and he wants one of these:
if anyone wants to get his one or just send him a birthday card email me here.
Church of Scientology abuse claims
Surprisingly the Church of Scientology isn’t the super-fun-time-happy-club that you all thought it was. Instead it’s a place of physical abuse, bizarre behaviour and mental torture according to several former high ranking officials. I might join up now.
Why do we have fingerprints?
A study by biomechanicist (apparently, there’s such a thing) Roland Ennos and Peter Warman of the University of Manchester, UK, has just blown away decades of conventional knowledge: fingerprints do not increase our grip – instead, it reduces it!
Rather than singe the prints off an unlucky student to compare hands with and without prints, Ennos rigged Warman’s fingers to a special device that slides a weighted sheet of Perspex across a finger and measures the resulting frictional force.
Ennos and Warman determined that the amount of friction generated went up as more of the fingerprint was touching the sheet, but not by as much as expected. This indicated that the skin was behaving like rubber, where friction is proportional to the contact area between the two surfaces.
