Hypnosis has “real” Brain Effect research shows
Hypnosis has a “very real” effect that can be picked up on brain scans, say Hull University researchers. An imaging study of hypnotised participants showed decreased activity in the parts of the brain linked with daydreaming or letting the mind wander.
The same brain patterns were absent in people who had the tests but who were not susceptible to being hypnotised. One psychologist said the study backed the theory that hypnosis “primes” the brain to be open to suggestion.
BBC (thanks, Tammy)
The Peeriodic Table Of Illusions
FOR all the fun we have with them, illusions do serious work in illuminating how our brains work, and in particular how perception works. They may also help us understand how consciousness developed, and tell us about our “neuro-archaeology” and the behaviour patterns laid down in the nervous system over evolutionary time.
But let’s concentrate on perception: it is tricky enough. I’ve tried to classify illusions in a way that shows the principles underlying them, starting with physical causes, moving on to physiological disturbances of neural signals, and finally to cognitive processes – where the brain tries to make sense of sensory signals, not always successfully.
New Scientist (thanks, Tiram)
The Vatican Joins the Search for Alien Life
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is holding a conference on astrobiology, the study of life beyond Earth, with scientists and religious leaders gathering in Rome this week.
For centuries, theologians have argued over what the existence of life elsewhere in the universe would mean for the Church: at least since Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk, was put to death by the Inquisition in 1600 for claiming that other worlds exist.
Among other things, extremely alien-looking aliens would be hard to fit with the idea that God “made man in his own image”.
Furthermore, Jesus Christ’s role as saviour would be confused: would other worlds have their own, tentacled Christ-figures, or would Earth’s Christ be universal?
Telegraph (thanks, KirstyJ)
First universal programmable quantum computer unveiled
The world’s first universal programmable quantum computer has been put through its paces. But the test program revealed significant hurdles that must be overcome before the device is ready for real work.
Earlier in the year, a team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, built a quantum computer capable of processing two quantum bits, or qubits. Qubits store more information than the simple “on” or “off” bits of conventional computing, which means that a quantum computer outperform conventional computers in tasks such ascryptanalysis.
As in a classical computer, a series of logic gates processes the information – although here the gates are quantum logic, or qubit, gates. “For example, a simple single-qubit gate would change a ‘one’ to a ‘zero’ and vice versa,” says David Hanneke, a member of the team. But unlike the physical logic gates of a classical computer, the quantum logic gates used in the team’s device are each encoded into a laser pulse.
Full article at New Scientist
The Indian Spiderman
Jyothi Rai is known as India’s call to Spiderman – he has an unusual talent for scaling walls at an impressive speed. Not happy with climbing, well actually it’s more like running up a 6 story structure in just seconds he has perfected a 180 degree breakdance flip half way up.
More impressive photos over at Weird Asia News
Hackers create tools for disaster relief – Random hacks of kindness
Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo may be tough competitors when it comes to Internet software and services, but they are putting their differences aside to build a developer community to tackle bigger picture problems like saving lives in emergencies.
The companies have joined with NASA, the World Bank, and PR agency SecondMuse to organize the first-ever Random Hacks of Kindness event, which was held at a warehouse space-cum community center called Hacker Dojo this weekend. For two days, coders worked on ways to use technology to help solve real-world problems, such as how people can get information and find each other during disasters.
Developers worked on a dozen or so tools that could help disaster and emergency workers in times of crisis. Several tools took advantage of social media sites, like Twitter, and SMS for information sharing. One project envisioned using laptops, routers, mobile devices, USB keys and Wi-Fi to create a mesh network for times when normal networks are down.
Several projects explored the use of maps, including one group that built a widget that allows a user to click on a point in a map to have the coordinates automatically inserted into a message that can then be posted to multiple social networks at once via the HelloTXT service.
How the brain cleans out old info to make way for new
The discovery that new neurons are born in the adult brain overturned decades-old dogma in neuroscience. But it also raised a host of questions about what exactly these neurons do (Science, 17 February 2006, p. 938). Now the authors of a new study suggest that the newcomers clear away the remnants of old memories to make room for new ones.
The brain’s hippocampus is a bit like a secretary’s inbox: Although many memories start out here, they eventually get filed to the neocortex for permanent storage. That’s why the famous patient H.M., who had his hippocampus removed in experimental surgery for epilepsy, could remember events prior to his operation despite being unable to form any new memories afterward (Science, 26 June, p.1634).
Full story at Science Now
The highest man made point in the world
This is the Burj Dubai. It’s that tallest building in world. it’s more than half a mile tall and stands at 2,684ft (818m). It was started in 2004 and is expected to be complete by the very beginning of 2010. The total budget for the Burj Dubai project is a cool $4.1 Billion.
The video above is from the very top point of the mobile mast on the roof and if you don’t like heights it will give you the willies.
China weather manipulation out of control
In The People’s Republic of China, it’s no secret that the Party controls just about everything. But as Beijing suffers through its second major snowstorm this season, residents are growing weary of their leadership’s control-freak tendencies. After all, while the storm came as a surprise to residents, the government knew about it all along. In fact, the government caused it.
China has long tinkered with Mother Nature’s waterworks, even establishing a state organ — the Beijing Weather Modification Office — whose sole purpose is to meddle with the weather. The purpose behind weather modification is less megalomaniacal than it sounds at first pass; a large swath of northeast China, including Beijing, has been mired in a drought for nearly a decade, and the party leadership would like to reverse that trend for both practical reasons and to show the Chinese people exactly who is in charge.
To do so, they’ve turned to cloud seeding, a controversial practice that involves launching (or dropping) chemicals into the atmosphere — silver iodide in China, though dry ice and liquid propane also work — that cause water vapor in the air to crystallize at temperatures it otherwise would not. Its effectiveness is dubious; while it’s generally accepted that it works to some degree, it can only increase precipitation by 20 percent. Sometimes.
Full story at Popsci
Donegal brain surgeon at work in AD 800
BRAIN SURGERY was being carried out in Ireland more than 1,000 years ago – and patients survived.
People with disabilities were treated with compassion and respect within their communities in medieval Ireland but TB and other diseases, possibly including cancer, claimed many lives while others died by the sword.
A multitude of insights about life and death in Gaelic Ireland were gleaned following the discovery of an unknown medieval church and the graves of about 1,300 men, women and children who lived along the banks of the river Erne at Ballyhanna, Co Donegal, several hundred years ago.
The burial ground, which spanned several centuries, was found during the construction of the Ballyshannon/ Bundoran bypass in 2003. Last night, as part of Science Week Ireland, a team of archaeologists and scientists from Sligo Institute of Technology and Queen’s University Belfast, who are involved in the Ballyhanna project, outlined their findings to date.
Dr Jeremy Bird, head of the school of science at Sligo IT, who introduced the lecture The Science of a Cemetery, explained that one of the most exciting aspects of the project is an investigation into whether cystic fibrosis was present in the population 1,000 years ago.
