1. 13 things that do not make sense

Our most clicked story of 2005. The placebo effect, cold fusion, dark energy, the “wow” signal and bizarre homeopathy results – these were just a few of the mysteries that fascinated you.

2. Pentagon reveals rejected chemical weapons

The chemical “sex-bomb” designed to make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other, thus destroying an enemy’s morale.

3. 11 steps to a better brain

Like a personal trainer for the brain, without the strain. We expect the IQ of our readers to be much greater now than at the start of 2005.

4. US military sets laser PHASRs to stun

The PHASR is an impressive looking beast, larger than Captain Kirk’s trusted phaser, but the risk of blinding innocent bystanders shrouded this prototype weapon in controversy.

5. Details of US microwave-weapon tests revealed

The US military raised temperatures further in 2005 by trying their new microwave weapons on a test crowd – with mixed results.

6. Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age

In a year dominated by climate-change fear and greenhouse gas emissions targets, the news of a 30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water north from the Gulf Stream sounded a loud note of alarm.

7. Antarctic ice sheet is an ‘awakened giant’

A slumbering giant, the massive west Antarctic ice sheet, previously assumed to be stable, started to collapse noticeably in 2005, adding extra heat to the climate debate.

8. Bionic suit offers wearers super-strength

Many kids dream of growing into a bionic adult, able to perform superhuman deeds. This dream moved one mechanical step closer to reality this year.

9. Out-of-this-world sex could jeopardise missions

Sex and romantic entanglements among astronauts could derail missions to Mars, said a top-level panel of US researchers. Their recommendation for NASA – more study of the issue.

10. Centrifugal weapon could deliver stealth firepower

Another weapon, this time a gun that spits out ball bearings after spinning them to extreme speeds – and there’s a video of the beast in action.

— My 2 cents : Do not miss to read each of the stories. All of them are very interesting. After all, they did make it to the top 10 stories of the year !

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  &#8220;One of the common ways was to make spectrographs &#8211; looking at how the spectrum of sound waves developed over time &#8211; and in this we saw the unique signal.&#8221;
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  The two researchers describe the unique signal found on spectrograph plots recorded by Indian Ocean hydrophones as a &#8220;chirp&#8221;.
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  What it means is that low-frequency vibrations are arriving before those of higher frequencies, producing a distinctive upward curving slope.
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  &#8220;In this frequency range &#8211; and these are very low frequencies, well below 1Hz &#8211; this is a unique signal,&#8221; said Dr Bowman.
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  &#8220;I think he is as close as you are going to get to a living Albert Einstein today.&#8221;
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A very nice piece of trivia that i enjoyed. The actual article is short and to the point. The following excerpt explains enough.

Humans blink every four seconds, on average. How come they never notice? University College London scientists have solved the riddle. When the eyes shut, even for a fraction of a second, the visual system of the brain shuts down too. So you cannot know that you are fleetingly in the dark, they report in Current Biology. Read more…

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Just stuff i’ve been reading through in between my code runs. Makes some interesting read. Here are some of them.

• A neat site with lots of links and lots of junk news and trivia. Nice site to spend some time.
• Live, Jobs Tells Stanford Grads – I’ve seen a similar talk of his before but this one makes me think that he’s going nuts. Well but thats just me !
• Jackie and the Brain – A neat story about the evolution of an AI being !
• Who Will Google Buy Next? – If you are one of those people who love Google and are interested in what they are going to do next, then check this story. Nevertheless, it gives you lots of links to many other interesting services, free and paid which could be very helpful.
• ScienceMatters@Berkeley, June issue – Not much but if you are scientifically motivated, then watch the issues regularly. The boys at the Big school do post some nice research material here.
• The Simnuke project – Sheer craziness if you ask me but oh well, who isn’t ???
• Why We Need Friendly AI – Nice site with all the Asimov laws. Frankly, i’ve got to confess that i was blown away by the book(I Robot) and there are some other interesting perspectives in this site which are weirdly cool !
• Toll Free 800 Directory provides information about 1-800 numbers, reverse lookup and tracing 1 800 numbers – Well if you are stuck in the US, like I am, this could be a handy reference at times you never expect !
• Cool Fractals @ freaky-fractals.com – Its all about Fractals. I’ve always loved the idea behind them. Nice site.

pla·ce·bo
Pronunciation Key{.linksrc} (pl-sb)n. pl. pla·ce·bos or pla·ce·boes

A substance containing no medication and prescribed or given to reinforce a patient’s expectation to get well.

Why am i even talking about something that useless ?! Well here it is.

The placebo effect

Don’t try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.

This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing can be very powerful. Except it’s not quite nothing. When Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. The shocking result? The pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared.

So what is going on? Doctors have known about the placebo effect for decades, and the naloxone result seems to show that the placebo effect is somehow biochemical. But apart from that, we simply don’t know.
Benedetti has since shown that a saline placebo can also reduce tremors and muscle stiffness in people with Parkinson’s disease (Nature Neuroscience, vol 7, p 587). He and his team measured the activity of neurons in the patients’ brains as they administered the saline. They found that individual neurons in the subthalamic nucleus (a common target for surgical attempts to relieve Parkinson’s symptoms) began to fire less often when the saline was given, and with fewer “bursts” of firing – another feature associated with Parkinson’s. The neuron activity decreased at the same time as the symptoms improved: the saline was definitely doing something.

We have a lot to learn about what is happening here, Benedetti says, but one thing is clear: the mind can affect the body’s biochemistry. “The relationship between expectation and therapeutic outcome is a wonderful model to understand mind-body interaction,” he says. Researchers now need to identify when and where placebo works. There may be diseases in which it has no effect. There may be a common mechanism in different illnesses. As yet, we just don’t know.

Also read more about the psychological theory behind it all that says “It’s all in your mind”. Sounds like “The Matrix” doesn’t it ?