Mafia using football show to send messages to jailed bosses
The Telegraph is making the claim that Italian gangsters are using a TV’s shows text ticker to send coded messages to their jailed bosses.
The Italian programme, which is hosted by a former showgirl, allows football fans to send SMS text messages which then run along a ticker tape at the bottom of the screen when the show is being broadcast.
Anti-mafia prosecutors believe that members of organised crime gangs have caught onto the interactive feature, sending seemingly innocuous comments and remarks which in fact contain important messages for imprisoned mafia godfathers, many of whom continue to run their criminal empires despite being behind bars. One of the messages, allegedly of significance for a jailed criminal mastermind, simply read: “All is well, Paolo”. Full article here.
This is not the first case of an incident like this – in the past there have been multiple claims about hidden codes displayed in public such as the very recent FBI accusations about Russian spies using US newspapers to hide messages in newspapers. This was also a main theme of the film A Beautiful Mind based on the life of John Nash, the inventor of Game Theory. So whilst it may seem inventive for some, the idea stetches back to the 1930′s.
Drug firms hiding negative research are unfit to experiment on people
“This week the drug company AstraZeneca paid out £125m to settle a class action. More than 17,500 patients claim the company withheld information showing that schizophrenia drug quetiapine (tradename Seroquel) can cause diabetes. So why do companies pay out money before cases get to court?
An interesting feature of litigation is that various documents enter the public domain. This is how we know about the tobacco industry’s evil plans to target children, the fake academic journal that Elsevier created for Merck’s marketing department, and so on.
One of the most revealing documents ever to come out of a drug company emerged from an earlier quetiapine case: an email from John Tumas, publications manager at AstraZeneca. In it, he helpfully admits that they do everything I say drug companies do.
“Please allow me to join the fray,” Tumas begins, in response to a colleague. “There has been a precedent set regarding ‘cherry picking’ of data.” Cherry picking is where you report only flattering data, and ignore or bury data you don’t like. The ears of lawyers prick up at any use of the word “bury” in relation to drug company data, as it implies something deliberate, and luckily John uses this word himself. The precedent, he explains, is “the recent … presentations of cognitive function data from trial 15 (one of the buried trials)”.
In trial 15, commissioned by AstraZeneca, patients with schizophrenia who were in remission were randomly assigned to receive either AstraZeneca’s quetiapine, or a cheap, old-fashioned drug called haloperidol. After a year, the patients on Seroquel were doing worse: they had more relapses and worse ratings on various symptom scales. These negative findings were left unpublished: to use Tumas’s word, they were “buried”.
But in among all these important negative findings, on a few measures of “cognitive functioning” – an attention task, a verbal memory test – Seroquel did better. This finding alone was published in a research paper in 2002. AstraZeneca kept quiet about the fact that patients on Seroquel had worse outcomes for schizophrenia. The research paper went on to become a highly influential piece of work, cited by more than 100 academic research papers. Many researchers can only dream of publishing such a well cited piece of work.
Trial 15 also found that patients on Seroquel gained, on average, 5kg in weight over a year. This put them at increased risk of diabetes, which is what AstraZeneca is now paying to settle on (and in any case, a 5kg weight gain is a serious side-effect in itself).”
Read more at The Guardian (Thanks @nettmac)
Indian Officials Held Pigeon Captive on Suspicion of Spying
“Indian police, seemingly terrified that a rat with wings will glean some secrets for neighboring enemies in Pakistan, recently took into custody a white pigeon found near the border of the two countries. The cause for suspicion: a ring around the bird’s foot and written on its body in red ink a phone number and address from Pakistan.
Although it was taken into captivity in late May, seeing as how Indian police took a pigeon to jail, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to assume that it’s still there for refusing to talk. No note was found with the pigeon, so unless it has a little camera somewhere in that band of his, I don’t think keeping the bird in captivity is going to do much good.
Despite this, at least the pigeon is being kept safe. The health of the bird was a major concern, and its lodgings in captivity are being kept nice and air conditioned for maximum comfort.
The best part of the story is the news that the pigeon is being kept on lock down under armed guard. I’m guessing a cage and a small room wasn’t official enough?”
Read more at Weird Asia News
Brain’s reward system helps drive placebo effect
“Want to maximize the placebo effect? A good way to do this, according to a new study, is to tell someone they have a decent chance of getting the real treatment instead of a fake pill, but keep them guessing. In the study, Parkinson’s disease patients given a placebo after being told they had a 75 percent chance of receiving an active drug produced significant amounts of dopamine, a chemical key to the brain’s reward system that is scarce in the brains of patients with this disease. But no dopamine response occurred in patients given placebo after being told they had a 25 percent, 50 percent, or 100 percent chance of getting real treatment.
The findings show that expectations directly regulate the power of the placebo effect by kicking the brain’s reward system into gear, probably not just in Parkinson’s patients but in a number of different illnesses, such as chronic pain and depression, according to Dr. A. Jon Stoessl of the Pacific Parkinson’s Research Center in Vancouver, British Columbia, and his colleagues. “The greatest form of reward is really to get better, so expectation of improvement is akin to expectation of reward,” Stoessl explained in an interview.
Stoessl and his colleagues first demonstrated a relationship between the placebo effect and dopamine release in Parkinson’s patients nine years ago. Given dopamine’s role in the reward system, he explained, “perhaps it would be important for the placebo effect in other conditions.” In the current study, the researchers used PET scans to examine whether patients’ expectations of getting an active drug would be related to the amount of dopamine released in their brain after they took a placebo. They randomly assigned 35 patients to be informed that they had a 25 percent chance, 50 percent chance, 75 percent chance, or 100 percent chance of receiving an active drug. But all were given inactive placebo. “There was a substantial amount of dopamine released, but only when the stated probability was 75 percent,” Stoessl explained. “What that means is when you’re told that the outcome is certain, that there’s a 100 percent chance, you don’t activate reward pathways. At lower probabilities, you just don’t think there’s much chance, so you don’t activate the reward system either.”"
Read more at Reuters (Thanks @XxLadyClaireXx)
Some Penn & Teller tickets left!
Penn and Teller – my favourite magicians – are so rare amongst conjurors: they have remained cool in a way that others seem to find impossible. I believe this is due mainly to the fact that their agenda has never been about themselves: they have never postured and apotheosised themselves in the hollow way magicians invariably do. And although they have always been the ‘bad boys’ of magic, disclosing methods and ridiculing the fraternity, they produce some of the finest pieces of magic you will ever see.
As you will probably know, they are performing at the Hammersmith Apollo this coming week. The show is fantastic: astonishing, in-your-face, gasp-out-loud, and very funny. There are some tickets left and it’s well, well worth going to see them. They so rarely come to the UK: this is a real treat.
Tickets can be bought here.
Make your own Impossible Triangle
“This photo has not been edited one bit. This is a picture of the penrose impossible triangle that is sitting in front of me on my desk. If I look at it from the right angle, it appears exactly as it does in the picture above. Many people think it can’t be done. But it is actually possible! And now, you can build your own “impossible triangle” in less than 5 minutes!
How did I do it? First, I studied the triangle, look at all the angles. Next, I whipped out my trusty scissors and started cutting away. It was a blur of strips of paper flying in the air and hitting the floor. And when I finished with some very pretty snowflakes… I got to work on doing the impossible. The impossible triangle, that is.
Many other sources said it couldn’t be built, but I knew I had remembered seeing some pictures of it…
Honestly, after many hours of trial and error, I have come up with what I believe to be the best (and easiest) way to make your own. To make this incredibly easy, just download and print the PDF.”
Read more at Cool Optical Illusions (Thanks Tracey)
How Old Is The Magic Circle?
You mean you don’t know? No, it doesn’t count if you had to Google it.
The Magic Circle is 105 this year.
It was founded in 1905, when stage magic was incredibly popular with the theatre-going public and was initially proposed by Neil Weaver and Martin Chapender, both magicians, who felt that there was an open risk of the exposure of trade secrets.
In the wake of Chapender’s untimely death at the very young age of 25 a group of amateur and professional magicians assmebled to found an exclusive society. Louis Nikola suggested The Magic Circle as its name and pointed out that it incorporated Chapender’s initials.
Over the past several years The Magic Circle has seen a surge of new interest in the medium, spurred on by the Harry Potter franchise as well as successes of several high-profile stage and television illusionists (including one with a finely chiselled beard).
To join the Circle you have to be nominated by two current members. Being as that’s unlikely to happen for any of us, we can still poke our noses around their headquarters (best unusual venue by the hospitality industry )via an online virtual tour.
The Umbilical Brothers
The Umbilical Brothers’ crazy act. Enjoy!
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
