Derren Brown's Blog, page 25

Learn Something New Every Day, By Email

Dan Lewis has created a lovely little idea for his site. Everyday he sends you something new to learn that will help brighten your day, like the fact that carrots were originally purple until the Dutch got their hands on them.

Learn Something New

55 foot long unidentifiable monster washes up on the Chinese shore

A 55 feet long fish has been found in the seashore of Guangdong, China. According to a local newspaper, the big fish weighs at least 10,000 pounds. Hwang, a 66-years-old fisherman living in the near area, said he has never seen anything like this in his whole life and that the fish was tied with ropes when it was first found.

Many people have flocked to see this strange specimen since its discovery, although its rotting corpse already emits a foul smell. The people living in the area think the fish was caught by some fisherman but was abandoned due to its heavy weight, hence the ropes.

Due to the serious decay of the fish's body, it is almost impossible to identify the species, according to the local newspaper.

Via LBtimes

 

 

Derren Brown Svengali at the Wycombe Swan 2012

Tickets for the Wycombe Swan have just gone on sale. For those of you in the Buckingham  area who've not been able to get to London – now is your chance.

Click here to book tickets as they are likely to sell out fast.

Why the media screws up science

Svengali Review: The eeriest, most captivating, brain-baffling show I've ever seen

After press night there's been a lot of reviews in the press. If you spot one, do send it to us. Here's a recent one that we (the Web Team) came across, featuring Davina McCall and DB's parents.

Throughout Derren Brown's long and successful career, there have always been questions about whether or not he possesses supernatural powers – such is the extent of his magical ability.

And, after seeing his latest offering Svengali, I might be joining in with these debates, given that the show was the most brain-baffling two hours of my life.

While Brown requested nothing about the actual content of Svengali should be given away, I might add that it is undoubtedly Brown's darkest show yet, concentrating significantly on 'wonders of the occult'.

As with Brown's other shows, such as last year's Enigma, the performance relies a lot on audience participation – leading to many cynics to question the legitimacy of the members chosen to be involved in tricks on-stage.

But Brown contends that he has never been one to use plants or 'stooges'.

'It used to frustrate me that some people think I use stooges, as I have genuinely never used them, but if it's a sign that they can't work something out (and therefore resort to the old standby) then I'm probably doing something right,' he said.

'If no one thought it, I imagine I'd need to change something! I expect and receive all sorts of reactions, from the overly-credulous to the overly-cynical.'

Read the full review here.

Japan builds computer that does 8 quadrillion calculations per second

TOKYO—A Japanese supercomputer built by Fujitsu Co. grabbed the title of world's best-performing machine from a Chinese competitor, returning Japan to the top of the computer arms race for the first time in seven years.

Installed at Japan's Institute of Physical and Chemical Research and also known as Riken, the Japanese government-funded "K Computer" performs more than eight quadrillion (8,000 trillion) calculations per second. K Computer is a play on the Japanese word "kei" for the number 10 quadrillion, which will be the number of calculations the machine is targeted to handle once it is completed in 2012

The Japanese machine is a major step up from existing supercomputers. It is more powerful than the next five fastest computer systems combined, and can perform three times as many calculations per second as the No. 2 supercomputer, designed by China's National University of Defense Technology, according to the "Top500," a compilation of the 500 most powerful computer systems in the world, determined by a group of academic and government researchers.

Investing more than 100 billion yen ($1.25 billion) in the K Computer project, the government aims to position Japan among the leaders for supercomputers, which can be used to tackle complex problems related to climate change and weather patterns. The project also aims to increase the competitiveness of Japan Inc. by providing a powerful computational tool to develop breakthroughs in drugs, materials and new technologies.

The K Computer is packed with computing muscle. It stitches together 68,544 processors, each equipped with eight cores for a total 548,352 electronic brains. At full capacity, it aims to have 640,000 electronic brains. Fujitsu said this would provide the machine with enough horsepower to slash the time required to run a simulation of a beating human heart reacting to new medicine to two days from two years.

Japan last held the top spot in 2004, with NEC Corp.'s Earth Simulator. In a sign of the rates of improvement for supercomputers, the K Computer is more than 200 times more powerful than the Earth Simulator. By 2018, Japan, the U.S. and China are targeting the development of supercomputer capable of doing 1 quintillion (1 million trillion ) calculations per second.

Read the full article over at WSJ

Astronomers find stars that blast out huge quantities of "water bullets"

Seven hundred and fifty light-years from Earth, a young, sunlike star has been found with jets that blast epic quantities of water into interstellar space, shooting out droplets that move faster than a speeding bullet.

The discovery suggests that protostars may be seeding the universe with water. These stellar embryos shoot jets of material from their north and south poles as their growth is fed by infalling dust that circles the bodies in vast disks.

"If we picture these jets as giant hoses and the water droplets as bullets, the amount shooting out equals a hundred million times the water flowing through the Amazon River every second," said Lars Kristensen, a postdoctoral astronomer at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

"We are talking about velocities reaching 200,000 kilometers [124,000 miles] per hour, which is about 80 times faster than bullets flying out of a machine gun," said Kristensen, lead author of the new study detailing the discovery, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Full article at National Geographic

We're All Mutants: The Average Human Has 60 New Genetic Mutations

When parents pass their genes down to their children, an average of 60 errors are introduced to the genetic code in the process, according to a new study. Any of those five dozen mutations could be the source of major differences in a person's appearance or behavior as compared to his or her parents — and altogether, the mistakes are the driving force of evolution.

Sixty mutations may sound like a lot, but according to the international team of geneticists behind the new research, it is actually fewer than expected. "We had previously estimated that parents would contribute an average of 100 to 200 mistakes to their child," Philip Awadella, a geneticist at the University of Montreal who co-led the project, said in a press release. "Our genetic study, the first of its kind, shows that actually much fewer mistakes, or mutations, are made."

That means human evolution happens more slowly than they previously thought.

The researchers analyzed the complete genetic sequences of two families that had previously been collected as part of the 1,000 Genomes Project. They looked for new mutations present in the children's DNA that were absent from their parents' genomes. "Like very small needles in a very large haystack," Awadalla said, there was only one new mutation in every 100 million letters of DNA.

The number of mutations that came from each parent was drastically different in the two different families. In one family, 92 percent of the mutations in the child's genes derived from the father, whereas in the other family, 64 percent came from the mother.

"This was a surprise: many people expected that in all families, most mutations would come from the father, due to the additional number of times that the genome needs to be copied to make a sperm, as opposed to an egg," said Matt Hurles, of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the U.K. More work must be done to explain the disparity.

More at YahooNews

 

A funny bit of research reveals how laughter is contagious

According to a new study, laughter truly is contagious: the brain responds to the sound of laughter and preps the muscles in the face to join in the mirth.

"It seems that it's absolutely true that 'laugh and the whole world laughs with you," said Sophie Scott, a neuroscientist at the University College London. "We've known for some time that when we are talking to someone, we often mirror their behavior, copying the words they use and mimicking their gestures. Now we've shown that the same appears to apply to laughter, too–at least at the level of the brain."

Scott and her fellow researchers played a series of sounds to volunteers and measured the responses in their brain with an fMRI scanner. Some sounds, like laughter or a triumphant shout, were positive, while others, like screaming or retching, were negative. All of the sounds triggered responses in the premotor cortical region of the brain, which prepares the muscles in the face to move in a way that corresponds to the sound. The response was much higher for positive sounds, suggesting they are more contagious than negative sounds–which could explain our involuntary smiles when we see people laughing.

More lolz at unikz

 

Saudi women are driving for change

Thousands of women activists in Saudi Arabia planned to start driving on Friday in defiance of a longstanding ban that prohibits women from even getting a drivers license.

The protest action comes after a campaign launched on social media began calling for women's right to drive in the Kingdom.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are banned from driving in major cities and towns, although they may drive in small towns and villages or in private housing compounds—some of which extend to many square miles. The Saudi Shura Council recommended in 2008 that the ban be relaxed, allowing young women to drive subject to some restrictive conditions.