Derren Brown's Blog, page 70

The Platypus Can Poison You 80 Different Ways

"The platypus is a bit like a fruitcake. Shove a bunch of leftover genes in there, mix it up and send it to your relatives see what kind of animal you get.

That's kind of the approach evolution used when designing this odd creature's venom; scientists have just determined that the venom contains over 80 different toxins in 13 different classes. The poison can kill small animals, and can leave humans in pain for weeks. The venom is delivered through a barb on the male's foot–it's thought that the fellas use the poison during mating season to show dominance.

At least three of the toxins are unique to the platypus and the rest are strikingly similar to proteins from a variety of animals including snakes, lizards, starfish, and sea anemones. It seems that some of these toxins have evolved separately in different animal lineages to perform the same function, a process called convergent evolution. The study's lead author, Wesley Warren, told Nature News:

Warren says that this probably happens when genes that perform normal chores, such as blood coagulation, become duplicated independently in different lineages, where they evolve the capacity to carry out other jobs. Animals end up using the same genes as building blocks for venom because only a subset of the proteins the genes encode have the structural and functional properties to become venoms, he adds.

Learning more about how these toxins attack our system and induce inflammation, nerve damage, muscle contraction, and blood coagulation, could teach us how to design drugs with these effects (like coagulation for hemopheliacs), or their opposite (like new pain relievers)."

Read more at Discover Magazine

What Happens When Water is Dropped Onto Water-Repelling Carbon Nanotubes?

"Even though not all of you will understand what "superhydrophobic carbon nanotubes" actually are, everyone will appreciate this video of water droplets shot at varying frame-rate speeds of up to 3,500fps. Except for Martians, perhaps.

Several water droplets were filmed in super slo-mo, as they dropped onto a "superhydrophobic" (massively water-repelling) arrangement of carbon nanotube molecules, which as you know are used in all sorts of materials, including nanotechnology. The water droplets were released at different impact velocities, showing how they react to the surfaces—either by splitting, bouncing, rolling about or even merging together in a big ol' lovefest of H2O."

Via Gizmodo (Thanks Julie H)

Household junk Recycled into Portrait Masterpieces

"For the last decade, Zac Freeman has been saving pieces of household junk that would one day become a part of his masterfully intriguing art collection. He wanted to give his two dimensional portraits three dimensional value by using glue to meld everything from bottle caps, nails and old keyboard pieces onto a board to create faces that can only be seen from a distance. Zac has shown his work in exhibitions across the country."

See more at Home Design (Thanks Christopher C)

Baby Born From Embryo Frozen For 20 Years

"NewsCore – A healthy baby boy was born from an embryo frozen for almost 20 years in what was hailed Sunday as scientific breakthrough that could allow women to start families much later in life. The infant's mother, who is 42, underwent infertility treatment for 10 years before she was given the embryo last year. She gave birth to a baby boy in May this year. News of the birth, reported in the medical journal Fertility and Sterility, comes as British lawmakers extend the period that embryos can be stored for up to 55 years.

The baby boy was born from a batch of five embryos frozen in 1990 in the U.S. by a couple who no longer needed them after they conceived their own child through IVF treatment. That means the two children are siblings although born 20 years apart. The woman's doctor, Sergio Oehninger, director of the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine at the Eastern Virginia medical school said, "She has been going through treatment for a long time. She was a patient here in 2000. She was a persistent lady."

The previous record was a baby boy born to a Spanish woman after having been frozen as an embryo for 13 years. The success story gives hope to single women who want to postpone having children until they find a suitable partner or women who want to delay conceiving for health reasons. Critics argue the techniques could lead to an increase in elderly mothers."

Read more at MyFoxNY (Thanks Mark)

Stephen Fry On Language

(Thanks Mark)

People join the herd even on Facebook

"Technology may have moved on but it seems people cannot shake off the herding instinct, a study of 50 million Facebook users found today. The Oxford University-led research looked at the rate at which members of the networking site added software applications, known as apps, to their pages – and found social influence had a large role to play. Analysing the anonymous data, the researchers found people display a herding instinct, making them want to use the same product as others, but only once it has reached a certain level of popularity.

Dr Felix Reed-Tsochas from Oxford University's Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, said: "Our analysis reveals a very interesting new finding. Users only appear to be influenced by the choices of other users above a certain level of popularity, and at that point, popularity drives future popularity. "Below this threshold, the effects of social influence are imperceptible. Because popularity seems to depend mainly on the choices of others in the community, rather than intrinsic characteristics of the applications themselves, it does not appear possible to predict which applications will succeed and which will fail ahead of time."

A computer was set up to monitor Facebook automatically every hour, recording how many of the website's then 50 million users had signed up for each app. When the research was carried out, Facebook published a list of the most popular apps on its website, and also notified people when their friends downloaded a new one. This meant that users were open to influence not just from their local network, but from the whole community of Facebook members, the researchers found. Dr Reed-Tsochas said: "It was very interesting, because usually when you see the spread of a product or an idea, you don't know to what extent that is because there has been a media campaign, and to what extent it's word of mouth.""

Read more at Sunday Mercury (Thanks @XxLadyClaireXx)

Moonlighting as a Conjurer of Chemicals

"Sir Isaac Newton was a towering genius in the history of science, he knew he was a genius, and he didn't like wasting his time. Born on Dec. 25, 1642, the great English physicist and mathematician rarely socialized or traveled far from home. He didn't play sports or a musical instrument, gamble at whist or gambol on a horse. He dismissed poetry as "a kind of ingenious nonsense," and the one time he attended an opera he fled at the third act. Newton was unmarried, had no known romantic liaisons and may well have died, at the age of 85, with his virginity intact. "I never knew him to take any recreation or pastime," said his assistant, Humphrey Newton, "thinking all hours lost that were not spent on his studies."

No, it wasn't easy being Newton. Not only did he hammer out the universal laws of motion and gravitational attraction, formulating equations that are still used today to plot the trajectories of space rovers bound for Mars; and not only did he discover the spectral properties of light and invent calculus. Sir Isaac had a whole other full-time career, a parallel intellectual passion that he kept largely hidden from view but that rivaled and sometimes surpassed in intensity his devotion to celestial mechanics. Newton was a serious alchemist, who spent night upon dawn for three decades of his life slaving over a stygian furnace in search of the power to transmute one chemical element into another.

Newton's interest in alchemy has long been known in broad outline, but the scope and details of that moonlighting enterprise are only now becoming clear, as science historians gradually analyze and publish Newton's extensive writings on alchemy — a million-plus words from the Newtonian archives that had previously been largely ignored."

Read more at The NY Times (Thanks Christopher C)

Willy Wonka chewing gum could become reality

"Researchers have developed a technology that allows different flavours to be captured inside microscopic capsules, which can be designed to release the flavours at different times. They claim it could be used to produce a real life version of Willy Wonka's three course meal gum, which features in Roald Dahl's famous children's novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The microcapsules were originally developed to provide a way of delivering drugs to specific parts of the digestive system, but now scientists at the Institute of Food Research in Norwich want to use them to recreate Wonka's eccentric creation. Some of the capsules could be filled with flavouring for tomato soup that would break open on contact with saliva, while tougher capsules would contain the flavour for roast beef that would break open as the gum is chewed. A final flavour for blueberry pie could be packaged in capsules that require vigorous chewing to burst.

Professor Dave Hart, a food scientist at the Institute has already developed a boiled sweet that uses different layers to provide changes in flavour, but he hopes the new technology could help produce more dramatic results. He said: "There are a number of groups here at the Institute who have been working with these capsules to provide a new way of delivering drugs to the colon, which means they have to be able to survive passing through the rest of the digestive system. "Researchers in America have been looking at using these capsules as a way of delivering flavour in food. So using it in this way would allow us to provide new experiences for people when eating. "Wonka's fantasy concoction has been nothing but a dream for millions of kids across the world. But science and technology is changing the future of food, and these nanoparticles may hold the answer to creating a three course gourmet gum."

Read more at The Telegraph (Thanks Katherine R)

Magnets Could Turn You From a Rightie to a Leftie

"I don't know why you'd want to be a leftie, but at least we know the choice is out there if now. The magic causing the change of dexterity is called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, and is specifically intended for right-handers.

When magnets are applied to a specific part of the brain (the posterior parietal cortex region, which is involved with planning physical movements), researchers at the University of California Berkeley found that their 33 right-handed guinea pig volunteers started favoring their left hands for smaller tasks instead.

While people weren't beginning to write with their left hands, they did find that they started picking stuff up with their other hand, or pressing an elevator button.

The potential here is obviously vast, and I'm not just talking about which hand we use. Imagine if magnets could make us favor healthy food over fattier food? Earlier mornings instead of long lie-ins? I can almost see horror movies being planned using unauthorized TMS technology, that's how big this could get.

Still, it's only early days for the team in California, but I doubt I'm the only one who's on the edge of their seats over this one."

Read more at Gizmodo (Thanks Christopher C)

Teenage girl can only control rare brain condition by digesting her own spinal fluid

"A 17-year-old girl who suffered crippling migraines due to a rare brain condition has finally found relief thanks to an unusual operation. Melissa Peacock has intracranial hypertension that causes a build up of spinal fluid in her skull which pushes down on her brain. Now the teenager from Bradford has been cured after a tube was attached between her skull and her stomach, allowing her to digest her own brain fluid.

Melissa has suffered with the condition since she was nine. She was often left her with blurred vision as the fluid strained against her optic nerve. Nine operations to remove the fluid failed and finally doctors decided on the more drastic solution to ease the pressure. Medics inserting a tube into Melissa's brain that drains the fluid straight into her stomach – where it is digested along with her dinner. The college student said: 'I was a bit shocked when I realised exactly what the doctors were planning on doing."

Read more at Daily Mail (Thanks Christopher C)