Psychic ‘cheats hundreds of thousands of dollars out of customers by telling them money is evil’
Nancy Marks also persuaded gullible clients to hand over their credit card numbers because she wanted to check there were not too many sixes on them. The 54-year-old used the information to go on wild spending sprees at top fashion stores.
Police in Colorado believe she has able to get more than £250,000 out of people who came to use her psychic services. One woman handed over more than £180,000 after being told money was evil and that it contained bad energy.
Full article at Mail Online
The Men with X-Ray Eyes – Exclusive Clip
In the next episode of Derren Brown Investigates (Monday 10pm Ch4) Derren is accompanied by blind British woman Judy Dunk on his second journey into the world of the extraordinary. They travel to Holland to meet Vyacheslav Bronnikov, who claims to be able to teach the blind to psychically see again..
Click here to visit our Derren Brown Investigates Page and watch an exclusive clip.
Calls for Separation of Religion and State in Lebanon
In Lebanon parliament is allocated on a sectarian basis, there are 18 official sects in power but the general population have decided they have had enough of religion dictating the law.
Via Atheist Media
Researcher claims alien abduction of Voyager 2 probe
German researcher Hartwig Hausdorf has claimed that information coming back from the Voyager 2 probe, is coming back in a completely different format from what should be expected and could be due to extraterrestrial life. Hausdorf stated, “It seems almost as if someone had reprogrammed or hijacked the probe – thus perhaps we do not yet know the whole truth…”
Sent out on a 4 year mission with it’s sister probe Voyager 1 in 1977 the probe is currently around 92 Astronomical Units from the sun – 1 AU is equal to 149,597,871 kilometers and has visited more planets than any other spacecraft.
NASA said that Voyager 2 suddenly began transmitting data back in a different format. Scientists have had trouble interpreting the data but have put it down to a glitch in the onboard systems. Apart from this incident, the on-board computer is said to be working completely fine.
Project scientist Ed Stone said the most likely cause of the hiccup is a “bit flip”, where parts of a stream of data are improperly formatted.
Hausdorf is a prominent science fiction writer.
Voyager 2 – Wikipedia (Thanks @UKgnome)
Female touch can influence decisions
“Just a pat on the back or a reassuring touch on the arm can be a powerful tool to influence behavior, according to new research. And it could determine whether someone invests in a risky financial venture or decides to play it safe. “It’s a very effective way of suddenly influencing people’s behavior without them realizing they are being influenced,” said Jonathan Levav, a professor of business and marketing at Columbia University in New York. “If you’re a doctor, or are in sales, this is a form of communication you might want to keep in mind,” he added in an interview.
Levav ‘s findings, which are reported in the journal Psychological Science, are based on a series of experiments involving touch. In one study 67 men and women were asked to choose between a cash payoff and a risky gamble and then touched on the shoulder and back by male and female researchers. Levav and his co-author Jennifer Argo, of the University of Alberta in Canada, found that both sexes were more likely to select gambles with no guarantees of a payoff if they had been made to feel more comfortable, especially if touched by a woman.
In another experiment, 105 people were asked to allocate their money between two investments — a bond that delivered a four percent yearly return or a risky deal with no guaranteed return. Again, people who were lightly touched on the shoulder by a woman were more likely to select the option with the most risk. Levav and Argo suggested that the connection between comfort and risk goes back to our earliest recollections of human bonding. “A simple pat on the back of the shoulder by a female in a way that connotes support may evoke feelings that are similar to the sense of security afforded by a mother’s comforting touch in infancy,” they wrote in the study.”
Read more at Yahoo News
Pentagon Turns To Brain Implants To Repair Damaged Minds
“An estimated 10 to 20 percent of troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering from traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, which afflict 1.7 million Americans each year. Now the Pentagon’s rolling out a revolutionary initiative to treat the condition: brain implants that one researcher likens to ‘replacement parts’ for damaged gray matter.
‘When something happens to the brain right now, there’s so little that the medical community can do,’ Krishna Shenoy, associate professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering at Stanford University, told Danger Room. ‘Our goal is to understand — and then be able to change — how a brain responds to trauma.’
No surprise that military extreme science agency Darpa is behind the project, which is called REPAIR, or Reorganization and Plasticity to Accelerate Injury Recovery. Yesterday, they announced an initial two-year round of $14.9 million in funding for four institutions, led by Stanford and Brown universities, that will collaborate on the brain-chip project. All in, it’ll involve 10 professors and their research teams, working in neuroscience, psychiatry, brain modeling and even semiconductors.
Significant progress has already been made in understanding brain injury. Scientists can create conceptual, mathematical models of brain activity, and are also able to record the electrical pulses emitted by individual neurons in the brain, which offers insight into how those neurons communicate. That knowledge has spurred rapid progress in neural-assisted prosthetic devices, a program that Shenoy collaborated on with Geoffrey Ling, the same Darpa program manager behind REPAIR.”
Read more at Wired (thanks, Soulmate02)
Girl Frozen In Time May Hold Key To Ageing
“Scientists are hoping to gain new insights into the mysteries of ageing by sequencing the genome of a 17-year-old girl who has the body and behaviour of a tiny toddler.
Brooke Greenberg is old enough to drive a car and next year will be old enough to vote — but at 16lb in weight and just 30in tall, she is still the size of a one-year-old.
Until recently she had been regarded as a medical oddity but a preliminary study of her DNA has suggested her failure to grow could be linked to defects in the genes that make the rest of humanity grow old.
If confirmed, the research could give scientists a fresh understanding of ageing and even suggest new therapies for diseases linked to old age.
‘We think that Brooke’s condition presents us with a unique opportunity to understand the process of ageing,’ said Richard Walker, a professor at the University of South Florida School of Medicine, who is leading the research team.
‘We think that she has a mutation in the genes that control her ageing and development so that she appears to have been frozen in time.
‘If we can compare her genome to the normal version then we might be able to find those genes and see exactly what they do and how to control them.’”
Read more at Times Online (thanks, DG)
Impossible Motion Wins Illusion Contest
“A gravity-defying illusion has won the 2010 Best Illusion of the Year Contest, held yesterday in Naples, Florida.
The visual trick involves a 3D construction of four slopes that appear to extend downwards away from a common centre (see video). When wooden balls are placed on the slopes, however, they bizarrely roll upwards as if a magnet is pulling them.
But the “Impossible Motion” illusion, created by Kokichi Sugihara of the Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences in Kawasaki, Japan, is soon dispelled when it’s viewed from a different perspective – each slope is actually sloping downwards towards a common centre.
We’re fooled because we make the assumption that each supporting column of the object is vertical, and that the longest column in the centre is the highest. But in reality, the columns and slopes are angled to create the illusion.”
Read more at New Scientist
3D Optical Illusion Street Art By Former NASA Scientist
“They may look like a computer-generated images but these incredible scenes are in fact hand drawn using chalk. Master artist and former NASA worker Kurt Wenner uses his mathematical skill to create illusions on cobbles and pavements across the world. The 3D artist, who was once commissioned to draw for the Pope, will soon be heading to London to unveil his latest creation. This is one of three interactive pavement art pieces commissioned for Buick motor company in 2009 in Herald Square in New York.”
Read more at The Telegraph (thanks, Tammy)
Derren Brown Investigates – Now on 4OD
If you missed last nights episode or just want to see it again, you can now find it available for viewing on 4oD:
Or if you have already seen the show and want to join in the discussions and find out further information about each of the shows, head over to our Derren Brown Investigates pages.
