Study Reveals How Magic Works. By Charles Q. Choi

Scientists are figuring out how magicians fool our brains in research that also helps uncover how our mind actually works

Who wants to be a cognitive neuroscientist millionaire . By Ogi Ogas

A researcher uses his understanding of the human brain to advance on a popular quiz show.

PHOTO COURTESY:Valleycrest production

Hew Yon Long claims his book gives a guide to proper relationships.

Keys to secret code

By MAJORIE CHIEW


MALAYSIAN civil engineer Hew Yon Long, 42, has a new theory to explain and predict human behaviour. In Correlativity, The Secret Code of Life, Hew’s fifth and latest book, he claims to provide the keys to unlock the secret code of life (that is, to predict human behaviour).

Renaissance masterpieces found behind bedroom door

ANGELICO

Books

GOOGLE,
With the cooperation of prestigious libraries, has been digitizing books to make them findable.

Web 3.0

"We are going from a Web of connected documents to a Web of connected data."
Said Nova Spivack, the founder of a start-up firm whose technology detects relationships between nuggets of information by mining the World Wide Web.

NYTIMES.COM BY JOHN MARKOFF

Solar flare largest ever seen

The most colossal x-ray flare ever detected has been caught in the act of zapping its solar system with planet-killing radiation.

The star is II Pegasi in the constellation Pegasus, about 135 light-years from Earth.

UK supercomputer sets faster pace

More than 1,200 processors have been added to the system
The UK's fastest-proven supercomputer used by the academic community has doubled in size and performance.

Pacific Ocean gives birth to new volcanic island: eyewitnesses

One mile in diameter and with four peaks and a central crater smoking with steam and once in a while an outburst high in the sky with lava and ashes. I think we're the first ones out here," a crew member who identified himself as Haken wrote on the yacht's web log.

Z machine melts diamond to puddle

Sandia’s Z machine, by creating pressures more than 10 million times that of the atmosphere at sea level, has turned a diamond sheet into a pool of liquid.

The object of the experiment was to better understand the characteristics of diamond under the extreme pressure it would face when used as a capsule for a BB- sized pellet intended to fuel a nuclear fusion reaction.

The experiment is another step in the drive to release enough energy from fused atoms to create unlimited electrical power for humanity. Control of this process has been sought for 50 years.

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Art and the Conscious Brain

<<... There are two aspects to viewing art: nativistic perception--the synchronicity of eye and brain that transforms electromagnetic energy into neuro-chemical codes--which is "hard-wired" into the sensory-cognitive system; and directed perception, which incorporates personal history and knowledge--the entire set of our expectations and past experiences. Both forms of perception are part of the appreciation of art, and both are products of the evolution of the conscious brain over hundreds of thousands of years...>> . ( Robert L. Solso in The Psychology of Art and the Evolution of the Conscious Brain ).

When science dissects art

The noted neuroscientist Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran of San Diego has attempted to answer this question, using the principles of cognitive neurosciences.



He believes that there is such universality. He further proposes ten universal `laws' of art, or basic features that evoke responses in the human brain.

These are (1) peak shift, (2) grouping, (3) contrast, (4) isolation, (5) perceptual problem solving, (6) symmetry, (7) abhorrence of coincidence/generic viewpoint, (8) repetition, rhythm and orderliness, (9) balance and (10) metaphor. These might be thought of as the ten features that form the basis of `neuroaesthetics.' And they may well have an evolutionary origin and basis.

Robotics