Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity
A club DJ, Steve Miller, has claimed he has been forced into exile by a powerful allergy to Wi-Fi internet waves which leaves him feeling dizzy, sick and disorientated. Mr Miller, better known by his stage name Afterlife, says he is unable to use trains, stay in hotels or visit his local high street because of his sensitivity to the “electrosmog” cause by wireless internet waves.
He is among around two per cent of the population who claim they suffer from Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity, while the number of people and businesses pumping out the Wi-Fi signal is rising.Mr Miller told The Sun: “I feel like an exile on my own planet. It’s almost impossible to find somewhere without Wi-Fi nowadays.
“If I fancy a pint I have to travel three miles to the only pub in my area that doesn’t have it. I can’t just go to the shops because huge parts of the high street affect me. ”If I go somewhere, I can instantly sense the Wi-Fi and have to leg it.” Mr Miller, who had a residency at the Ibiza nightclub Pacha before his allergy, said he has missed out on a large number of overseas gigs because all airports and most hotels have Wi-Fi. The only place where he says he can escape the “electrosmog” is in his own home – a detached house with 18in thick granite walls in a village near Falmouth, Cornwall.
Two new Mozart pieces discovered
VIENNA — The International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg announced Thursday that it had discovered two previously unknown compositions written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
“The Department of Research at the International Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg has identified two works, which have long been in the possession of the Foundation, as compositions of the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,” the foundation said in a statement, without giving any more details.
The two pieces for piano are to presented to the press on August 2. They will be performed by clavichordist Florian Birsak on Mozart’s own fortepiano at the family’s old Salzburg residence. The Mozarteum foundation aims to preserve the heritage and works left by the prodigy, conducting research as well as organising concerts.
Mozart, born in Salzburg in 1756, began composing at the age of five and went on to produce some of the most famous concertos, symphonies and operas of his time, until his death in 1791.
Myths About Sleep and Insomnia
Until the industrial era, many Western Europeans divided the night into “the first sleep” and the “second sleep.” They’d go to bed soon after dark, sleep for four hours then wake for an hour or two during which they’d write, pray, smoke, reflect on dreams they’d had, have sex or even visit neighbours.
Insomnia occurs in animals and insects, too, sort of. Technically, insomnia is defined as a “complaint,” and since animals can’t complain, it’s difficult to measure in them. But researchers at Washington University bred “short-sleeping fruit flies” down 90 generations so that they would act like insomniacs. The result? The flies lost their balance and their memory; they could no longer learn.
For most people, sleep switches on and off like a light switch. But for insomniacs and narcoleptics, the switch doesn’t quite work. Instead they inhabit the space in between—never entirely awake, nor entirely asleep. Much like Phillis who was up until 4am teasing Liz H.
Fist-sized Tumor Removed From Brain With Help Of New 3-D Brain Mapping
A new technology involving the fusion of four different types of images into a 3-D map of a patient’s brain has helped University of Cincinnati (UC) specialists successfully remove a fist-sized tumor from the brain of an Indiana woman.
The surgery was performed at University Hospital by an eight-member team from the Brain Tumor Center at the UC Neuroscience Institute.
“This marks the culmination of one of the most important developments in brain tumor surgery in the last 100 years,” says John Tew, MD, a neurosurgeon with the Mayfield Clinic, professor of neurosurgery and clinical director of the UC Neuroscience Institute.
The multiple brain scans were fused and installed into a surgical guidance computer, whose function is similar to a global positioning system. By revealing the tumor’s relationship to all of the functional centers, electrical pathways and arteries and veins in the patient’s brain, the technology enabled Tew and his team to map out a safe pathway to the tumor.
Go review: Derren Brown Portraits
If you have enjoyed Derrens Portraits book then do head over to Amazon and leave a review. If you hate it and have used it for toilet paper then do get in touch first to let us know why – but also head over and review it – we take it all.
We need some quotes for a small project we’re doing and should yours (you’ll know about it) be used we will send you a free special edition A3 signed, mounted and framed print, a spit sample from Coops and a “sailors favour” voucher from Phillis. This is not a competition as we do not wish to encourage false reviewing from biased sources. Not that I would accuse you lot of that. 
Telescopic eye now available
This may look like something you would rather not have implanted in your retina – but for sufferers of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) it’s a fantastic new breakthrough- and when a more powerful version comes out – I want one anyway.
The prosthetic telescope, together with the cornea, acts as a telephoto system to enlarge images 3X or 2.2X, depending on the device model used. The telephoto effect allows images in the central visual field (‘straight ahead vision’) to not be focused directly on the damaged macula, but over other healthy areas of the central and peripheral retina.
This generally helps reduce the ‘blind spot’ impairing vision in patients with AMD, hopefully improving their ability to recognize images that were either difficult or impossible to see.
Crazy packaging design from Japan
Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa has created a series of creative fruit juice packages that have the look and feel of the fruit they contain.
I think my favourite is the strawberry.
Smoke and pollution is making us stupid
Researchers for the first time have linked air pollution exposure before birth with lower IQ scores in childhood, bolstering evidence that smog may harm the developing brain. The results are in a study of 249 children of New York City women who wore backpack air monitors for 48 hours during the last few months of pregnancy. They lived in mostly low-income neighborhoods in northern Manhattan and the South Bronx. They had varying levels of exposure to typical kinds of urban air pollution, mostly from car, bus and truck exhaust.
At age 5, before starting school, the children were given IQ tests. Those exposed to the most pollution before birth scored on average four to five points lower than children with less exposure. That’s a big enough difference that it could affect children’s performance in school, said Frederica Perera, the study’s lead author and director of the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health. Dr. Michael Msall, a University of Chicago pediatrician not involved in the research, said the study doesn’t mean that children living in congested cities “aren’t going to learn to read and write and spell.”
But it does suggest that you don’t have to live right next door to a belching factory to face pollution health risks, and that there may be more dangers from typical urban air pollution than previously thought, he said.
“We are learning more and more about low-dose exposure and how things we take for granted may not be a free ride,” he said.
While future research is needed to confirm the new results, the findings suggest exposure to air pollution before birth could have the same harmful effects on the developing brain as exposure to lead, said Patrick Breysse, an environmental health specialist at Johns Hopkins’ school of public health.
How Twitter was hacked.
The Twitter document leak fiasco started with a simple story that personal accounts of Twitter employees were hacked. Twitter CEO Evan Williams commented on that story, saying that Twitter itself was mostly unaffected. No personal accounts were compromised, and “most of the sensitive information was personal rather than company-related,” he said.
The individual behind the attacks, known as Hacker Croll, wasn’t happy with that response. Lots of Twitter corporate information was compromised, and he wanted the world to know about it. So he sent TechCrunch all of the documents that he obtained, some 310 of them, and the story developed from there.
Half-brain girl sees all in one eye
The 10-year-old, who is from Germany, is able to see with the power of both the left and right eye in a single eye despite the failure of the right hemisphere of her brain to develop in the womb. Scientists at Glasgow University now believe that the girl’s brain rewired itself during its development in the only known case of its kind in the world
In other cases where patients have half of the brain removed – for example to treat severe epilepsy – one field of vision is lost in both eyes. This would leave them only able to see objects on the left or right side of their vision. In the case of the German girl, her left and right field vision is almost perfect in one eye.
Scans on the girl showed that retinal nerve fibres which should have gone to the right hemisphere of the brain diverted to the left. Dr Lars Muckli, of the university’s Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, said: “The brain has amazing plasticity but we were quite astonished to see just how well the single hemisphere of the brain in this girl has adapted to compensate for the missing half.
“Despite lacking one hemisphere, the girl has normal psychological function and is perfectly capable of living a normal and fulfilling life. She is witty, charming and intelligent.” The girl’s underdeveloped brain was discovered when, aged three, she underwent an MRI scan after suffering seizures of brief involuntary twitching on her left side.
Apart from the seizures, which were successfully treated, and slight weakness on her left side, the girl has had a normal medical history, attending school and taking part in regular activities. The study, which also involved researchers in Germany, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA.
Yahoo (Thanks Jo)
