Derren Brown's Blog, page 19

Dolphins demonstrate a "remarkable" ability to recover from very serious injury

Washington, DC – A Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) scientist who has previously discovered antimicrobial compounds in the skin of frogs and in the dogfish shark has now turned his attention to the remarkable wound healing abilities of dolphins.

A dolphin's ability to heal quickly from a shark bite with apparent indifference to pain, resistance to infection, hemorrhage protection, and near-restoration of normal body contour might provide insights for the care of human injuries, says Michael Zasloff, M.D., Ph.D.

"Much about the dolphin's healing process remains unreported and poorly documented," says Zasloff. "How does the dolphin not bleed to death after a shark bite? How is it that dolphins appear not to suffer significant pain? What prevents infection of a significant injury? And how can a deep, gaping wound heal in such a way that the animal's body contour is restored? Comparable injuries in humans would be fatal. "

Full article at Eurekalert

Kid claims "fish accidentally slipped in to my penis" whilst cleaning aquarium

Above image is of a fish in someones bladder.

"Details of the case, which was documented in The Internet Journal of Urology, have revealed that the patient claimed that the fish "slipped" into his penis while he was maintaining his aquarium.

"While he was cleaning the fish tank in his house, he was holding a fish in his hand and went to the toilet for passing urine. When he was passing urine, the fish slipped from his hand and entered his urethra and then he developed all these symptoms."

Full story at Geekologie

Woman accidentally paid for 12 years of no work

AOL NEWS: For the last 12 years, a Virginia woman hasn't set foot in her office and has done zero work, yet she's been collecting an annual salary that has totaled more than $300,000. Recently, the bookkeeping mistake was discovered and her payments were discontinued, but now she's filing for wrongful termination and unemployment benefits.

It all started more than a dozen years ago, when Jill McGlone, who had been working as an office assistant for the Norfolk Community Services Board, was suspended for "revealing confidential medical information." Apparently, authorities forgot to suspend her pay, however, and the checks, which totalled about $26,000 per year, kept going out.

Her situation was only uncovered recently, when a new supervisor, Maureen Womack, came in to take the reigns of Norfolk CSB. She went over the budget, discovered the human resource department's mistake, and fired McGlone with alacrity.

Full story at AOL

Transforming robotic clothing – incredible video

A bit NSFW as it contains nudity at 2:00 onwards.

In Time: A movie where time is literally money

Staring none other than Justin Timberlake, Olivia Wilde and Cillian Murphy, In Time looks at an idea visited in the Sci Fi classic Logan's Run, where everyone lives until the age of 25. In this society everything you pay for is done so in "life hours". By working you earn more time, but as things get more expensive society becomes more unfair and the super rich have all the time in the world.

Lulz and Anonymous issue joint official warning to the FBI

In light of the recent hacking scandals, corporate corruption and government arrests, the focus on less-than-legal activities has thrown up an official statement by the now well-known underground groups Anonymous and Lulz.

People are well divided on this issue with some saying they fully support both groups, others saying they admire their balls but worry about unregulated renegade activity, others against it but feel it's a natural unstoppable phenomenon and of course those calling for their arrests.

The main part of the statement posted is as follows:

Let us tell you what WE find unacceptable:

* Governments lying to their citizens and inducing fear and terror to keep   them in control by dismantling their freedom piece by piece.

* Corporations aiding and conspiring with said governments while taking   advantage at the same time by collecting billions of funds for   federal contracts we all know they can't fulfil.

* Lobby conglomerates who only follow their agenda to push the profits   higher, while at the same time being deeply involved in governments around   the world with the only goal to infiltrate and corrupt them enough so the status quo will never change.

These governments and corporations are our enemy. And we will continue to fight them, with all methods we have at our disposal, and that certainly includes breaking into their websites and exposing their lies.

We are not scared any more. Your threats to arrest us are meaningless to us as you cannot arrest an idea. Any attempt to do so will make your citizens more angry until they will roar in one gigantic choir. It is our mission to help these people and there is nothing – absolutely nothing – you can possibly to do make us stop.

Read the full statement here.

China's experimental fast neutron reactor begins generating power

The experimental fast neutron reactor, with a nuclear heat power of 65 megawatts and a power-generating capacity of 20 megawatts, is among a few experimental, power-generating fast reactors in the world, according to the company.

The reactor is similar, in terms of layout and reference, to a large fast reactor power plant, while its safety requirements have reached those of a fourth-generation nuclear power plant.

"Fast neutron reactor is a major type of fourth-generation nuclear power plant, and it sets the direction for the development of the fourth-generation nuclear power plants," said Xu Mi, chief expert for the experimental fast neutron reactor.

According to the chief expert, a fast reactor can make better use of the nuclear energy by increasing the utilization rate of uranium to 60 percent, from the 1 percent of utilization rate of a traditional pressurized water reactor.

Full Story at News CN

 

Egyptian names his daughter Facebook

WIKINEWS claims: An Egyptian man in his early twenties has named his newborn daughter 'Facebook' following the 2011 Egyptian Revolutionwhich was almost solely organized on the social-networking site Facebook. The father, Gamal Ibrahim, told the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram that he gave his child the name to "express his joy at the achievements made by the January 25 youth."

Fake Apple Stores in China

You have already guessed the punchline, of course: this was a total Apple store ripoff. A beautiful ripoff – a brilliant one – the best ripoff store we had ever seen (and we see them every day). But some things were just not right: the stairs were poorly made. The walls hadn't been painted properly.

Apple never writes "Apple Store" on it's signs – it just puts up the glowing, iconic fruit.

Story at Bird Abroad (Via BoingBoing)

 

Report accidentally finds pirate movie website to be full of law abiding citizens

In June, police across several countries raided the operators of streaming video links portal Kino.to. This massive operation was one of the largest of its type and site admins and users alike were branded as enemies of the TV and movie business. However, it now appears that in respect of the latter group, the opposite was found to be true.

The June raids against Kino.to, which involved as many as 250 police and other authorities, dwarfed even the 2006 raids against The Pirate Bay.

Following the event the Kino.to site displayed notices which stated that the site had been "closed on suspicion of forming a criminal organization to commit professional copyright infringement." While noting that several operators of the site had been arrested, it also criticized the site's users.

"Internet users who illegally pirated or distributed copies of films may be subjected to a criminal prosecution," read the warning.

But were the site's users all criminals hell-bent on destroying the movie industry? According to a report from Telepolis, a recent study found the reverse was true. This, the survey claims, leads pirate site users to buy more DVDs, visit the cinema more often and on average spend more than their 'honest' counterparts at the box office.

"The users often buy a ticket to the expensive weekend-days," the report notes.

In the past similar studies have revealed that the same is true for music. People who pirate a lot of music buy significantly more music than those who don't.

Full report at Torrent Freak