Derren Brown's Blog, page 93

Mind-controlled prosthetic arm

An Austrian amputee is the first in Europe to be fitted with a new-generation mind-controlled prosthetic limb that moves and feels like a real arm, receiving commands from the brain and sending input back.

Via Reuters (Thanks @nettmac)

Twitter and Scientology: Don't use the 'S'-word

"When he walked past a Scientology centre on a trip to London last year, a councillor from Cardiff cannot have expected that his reaction would end up fuelling another big hoo-hah over free speech on the internet.

Nor that it would end up with him being hauled up in front of his council's ethics committee.

But Councillor John Dixon's mistake was to go on Twitter and say this:

"I didn't know the Scientologists had a church on Tottenham Court Road. Just hurried past in case the stupid rubs off."

So...

Dogs in space: a cosmonaut's best friend

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"A space suit for canine adventurers is one of the highlights in a new exhibition at the National Space Centre in Leicester.

One day you're sniffing a lamppost behind the Kremlin, the next you're an integral part of a top-secret programme sending dogs to boldly go where no dogs have gone before.The search criteria weren't strict. No particular breed was targeted, instead placid mongrels were rounded up from Moscow's streets. There was one stipulation however; the stray had to be female. That w...

Plants Can "Think and Remember"

"When it comes to light, scientists have found that plants can "think" and "remember" in ways very similar to our own nervous system:

In their experiment, the scientists showed that light shone on to one leaf caused the whole plant to respond.

And the response, which took the form of light-induced chemical reactions in the leaves, continued in the dark.

This showed, they said, that the plant "remembered" the information encoded in light.

"We shone the light only on the bottom of the plant and we ...

Why it's increasingly difficult to make discoveries

"If you look back on history, you get the sense that scientific discoveries used to be easy. Galileo rolled objects down slopes. Robert Hooke played with a spring to learn about elasticity; Isaac Newton poked around his own eye with a darning needle to understand color perception. It took creativity and knowledge to ask the right questions, but the experiments themselves could be almost trivial.

Today, if you want to make a discovery in physics, it helps to be part of a 10,000-member team...

Brightest star explosion seen blinds satellite

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"The brightest explosion of a star ever seen temporarily blinded a satellite set up to watch such events, astronomers said on Wednesday. The gamma-ray burst and explosion of X-rays that followed came from a star that died 5 billion years ago, far beyond our own Milky Way galaxy, NASA and British scientists said. It took this long for the radiation to reach the Swift orbiting observatory.

The bright X-ray burst blinded Swift on June 21, and the observatory's software ignored it as if it were...

DNA repair 'scissors' discovered

"Researchers say they have unlocked a "major part" in the puzzle of understanding how DNA repairs itself. A team from the University of Dundee said they believed the finding could have implications for the future treatment of cancer.

They have discovered a protein, known as FAN1, which plays a vital role in maintaining healthy DNA. Researchers described the protein as "molecular scissors" which repair damaged DNA in human cells. This could help to prevent mutations which eventually lead to...

Power of the hidden message revealed?

"Advertising men once used it to try to increase sales of popcorn, and Formula One teams have been accused of indulging in it to sell cigarettes. But it turns out that subliminal messaging – flashing an image or words on a screen for a fraction of a second – works best if it leaves the viewer in a state of fear.

An experiment by British researchers has found that even though subliminal messages are shown so briefly that the human eye cannot consciously read them, the brain is particularly...

Record Collapse of Earth's Upper Atmosphere Puzzles Scientists

An upper layer of Earth's atmosphere recently collapsed in an unexpectedly large contraction, the sheer size of which has scientists scratching their heads, NASA announced Thursday.

The layer of gas – called the thermosphere – is now rebounding again. This type of collapse is not rare, but its magnitude shocked scientists.

"This is the biggest contraction of the thermosphere in at least 43 years," said John Emmert of the Naval Research Lab, lead author of a paper announcing the finding in the J...

Is nuclear fusion finally on its way?

Fusion is arguably the perfect way to power the world. For one thing, there is enough fusion fuel to supply all of the world's energy needs for millions of years. Furthermore, it produces no environmentally damaging wastes, no carbon dioxide emissions and there could be no accidents that require evacuating the population surrounding a fusion power plant. Fusion plants would also not need significant land area, and fusion fuels (lithium and deuterium) are available in seawater. Unfortunately, ...