Derren Brown's Blog, page 22

Man receives world's first synthetic windpipe

A 36-year-old man returned home this week after receiving the world's first "synthetic" trachea in an operation at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden.

Made of a bendy polymeric nanocomposite material, the trachea could be the first of many "off-the-shelf" organs for transplant.

Performed by Paolo Macchiarini of the Karolinska Institute, the surgery on 9 June built on earlier pioneering procedures in which Macchiarini transplanted into a female patient a section of windpipe taken from a dead donor, stripped chemically of the donor's cells and recoated beforehand with the patient's own cells.

The advantage of the synthetic trachea is that no death or donation is needed. "The big conceptual breakthrough is that we can move from transplanting organs to manufacturing them for patients," says David Green, the president of Harvard Bioscience in Holliston, Massachusetts, which provided the technology for coating the synthetic trachea with the cells.

Full story at New Scientist

 

US Panel Proposes Killing Webb Space Telescope

The House Appropriations Committee proposed Wednesday to kill the James Webb Space Telescope, the crown jewel of NASA's astronomy plans for the next two decades. Successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, and it was designed to study the first stars and galaxies that emerged in the first hundred million years or so after the Big Bang.

Astronomers reacted with immediate dismay, fearing that the death of the Webb telescope could have the same dire impact on American astronomy that killing the Superconducting Supercollider, a giant particle accelerator in Texas, did in 1993 for American physics, sending leadership abroad.

Canceling the Webb telescope would "have a profound impact on astrophysics far into the future, threatening U.S. leadership in space science," said Matt Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which would run the new telescope. "This is particularly disappointing at a time when the nation is struggling to inspire students to take up science and engineering," he added.

Full story at NY Times

Despite this the good news is that the European Union is to head to the front of space technology with it's incredible Gaia Spacecraft launching in 2012.  Its billion-pixel imaging sensor will be among the largest digital cameras ever to exist, and over the course of its mission, it's estimated that Gaia will detect 15,000 new alien planets.

Gaia's gigantic sensor is comprised of 106 separate CCD detectors, mosaiced together to form a monster camera over three feet wide. The resulting imaging system is so powerful that it will be able to precisely measure the width of a hair from over 600 miles away, and from here on Earth, it could spot a dime on the moon.

Full story at Esa Gaia

Scientists Turn Memories Off and On With Flip of Switch

Scientists have developed a way to turn memories on and off — literally with the flip of a switch. Using an electronic system that duplicates the neural signals associated with memory, they managed to replicate the brain function in rats associated with long-term learned behavior.

"Flip the switch on, and the rats remember. Flip it off, and the rats forget," said Theodore Berger of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Berger is the lead author of an article that will be published in the Journal of Neural Engineering. His team worked with scientists from Wake Forest University in the study, building on recent advances in our understanding of the brain area known as the hippocampus and its role in learning.

Full article at ScienceDaily

 

Derren Brown tellyshow entries, cut off for entries – midnight tonight

Entries to apply for a certain future TV show will be closing tonight. For those of you who have tried emailing and not got a response, we suggest you find a different email address to use (you can apply through a friends or relatives as long as they haven't applied).

There's been a lot of questions which have been updated and answered here. Sorry if you've not been able to get through, Objective did have a huge influx originally but things have calmed down considerably so if you're still having problems it's very likely to be at your end.

Sorry – but we cannot let ANYONE know if we received your application you'll just have to put your trust in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

After midnight tonight the golden email doors will be shut and further applications will be not accepted, no matter how bizzare an excuse you have.

Those who have been accepted, will be contacted in due time. We will email and phone so don't worry about missing a message from Objective if you're on holiday for a week.

We cannot answer any questions about when this will be either.

Good Luck.

Myth-busting: As you get older your mind deteriorates, tell that to the man who just got his PhD at 82

"Cognitive fitness" is defined as the results of the overall functioning of brain processes such as comprehension, decision-making, problem-solving, learning and retention of knowledge. Most interesting are the capacities of abstraction, generalization, and meta-cognition (thinking about thinking) – which all aid in the ability to assess our environment, solve problems creatively, and act decisively.

Roderick Gilkey and Clint Kilts claimed in Harvard Business Review—"Cognitive fitness is a state of optimized ability to remember, learn, plan, and adapt that is enhanced by certain attitudes, lifestyle choices, and exercises. The more cognitively fit you are, the better you will be able to make decisions, solve problems, and deal with stress and change."

Evidence of very strong mental ability in later life can be seen in the likes of Arthur C Clarke who at 90 was still giving advice on the future, David Attenborough (85) continues to produce excellent books and TV programs and Noam Chomsky (82) is one of the most quoted intellectuals alive today and is quickly approaching his 200th book publication.

Also joining the list of brilliant octogenarian is 82-year-old Moreshwar Abhyankar. He has a string of degrees and diplomas to his credit, including a masters in arts, business administration, LLB, MMS and diplomas in journalism and social work.

It took Abhyankar nine years to complete the PhD on the subject 'Impact of training interventions on the development and competencies of employees in private sector units in Pune'.

Abhyankar, who retired in 1988, chose this particular topic for his thesis because of his teaching experience of over 50 years.

"During my experience in training and teaching, I often wondered if the training programmes designed and conducted by the companies helped these employees at practical level."

More on Abhyankar Times of India

Arthur C. Clarke

David Attenborough

Noam Chomsky

Feel free to list any other 80+ year old minds in the comments.

Paranormality free mind bending magic app

For those of you in need of a Richard Wiseman fix, there's plenty to keep you happy even if you live in the US. His recent book has had trouble finding a publisher open minded enough to distribute it, despite the fact it's had rather wonderful endorsements from:

James Randi

PZ Myers

The Magic Newswire

and many others including Richard Dawkins who has said that in the book "Wiseman shows us a higher joy as he skewers the paranormal charlatans, blows away the psychic fog and lets in the clear light of reason".]

Available in the UK here: Amazon Book, Amazon Kindle

Available in the US here:  Amazon Book, Amazon Kindle

Official website here.

Paranormality free mind bending magic app – free

For those of you in need of a Richard Wiseman fix, there's plenty to keep you happy even if you live in the US. His recent book has had trouble finding a publisher open minded enough to distribute it, despite the fact it's had rather wonderful endorsements from:

James Randi

PZ Meyers

The Magic Newswire

and many others including Richard Wiseman who has said that in the book "Wiseman shows us a higher joy as he skewers the paranormal charlatans, blows away the psychic fog and lets in the clear light of reason".]

Available in the UK here: Amazon Book, Amazon Kindle

Available in the US here:  Amazon Book, Amazon Kindle

Official website here.

Murder victims skull found David Attenborough's garden

ABC AU: A murder mystery dating back to 1879 was finally resolved overnight when a skull unearthed in BBC legend David Attenborough's garden was formally recognised as that of a woman murdered by her maid 132 years ago.

Julia Martha Thomas, a wealthy widow aged 55, was killed by her 29-year-old housekeeper, Kate Webster, very close to Park Road in well-to-do Richmond area, but her head was never found.

The case became known as the 'Barnes Mystery', which gripped London at the time.

Webster, a convicted thief and fraudster, chopped up Ms Thomas with an axe, boiled the remains and gave the dripping to local children to eat.

A box containing human flesh was found in the nearby River Thames days after the killing and one of the victim's feet was found on an allotment.

Webster was tried and executed, but the head was never found until it was unearthed in October by workmen building an extension at the home of Mr Attenborough, the face of BBC natural history programs for more than 50 years.

Ms Thomas lived at almost exactly the same spot as the 85-year-old broadcaster, while the garden where the skull was found is said to be the site of a pub favoured by the killer.

West London coroner Alison Thompson formerly identified the recovered skull as that of Ms Thomas.

ABC News

Epic Fail: Wife caught smuggling husband out of prison in a suitcase

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A woman has been caught trying to sneak her common-law husband out of a Mexican prison in a suitcase following a conjugal visit.

A spokesman for police in the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo said staff at the prison in Chetumal noticed that the woman seemed nervous and was pulling a black, wheeled suitcase that looked bulky.

Full Story at Belfast Telegraph.

Hacker dumps internal Florida voting system online to show lack of security

Election fraud and accusations of rigged voting might be as old as US election systems themselves, but some may wonder, if a hacker can gain access to the election voting system, how secure are elections anyway?

The AntiSec movement is definitely rolling along, but Anonymous is pointing to a recent hack that could raise some serious questions over the integrity of voting in Florida. It seems that a hacker obtained parts of the Florida voting database which has been subsequently posted online.

It appears that the hacker in question wanted to show that voting fraud can easily happen today and dumped parts of the Florida database to prove it. From the comments of the release:

"So, this is a little ironic. Here is inside details of florida voting systems. Now.. who still believes voting isn't rigged? If the United States Government can't even keep their ballot systems secure, why trust them at all? FAIL!"

Full story at ZeroPaid.com