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LY D © oF VEN? CLASSICAL MUSIC MOVES THE HEART IN VEGETATIVE PATIENTS lassical music pulls at the heartstrings of people in a vegetative state as well as those of healthy listeners. If you play music to vegetative patients, their heart rate changes in the same way as that of healthy controls, suggesting that music can affect the neural systems of emotion even when conscious thought is impossible. Francesco Riganello at the Santa Anna Institute in Crotone, Italy, and colleagues played four pieces of classical music to 16 healthy volunteers while measuring their heartbeats. The team then repeated the experiment with nine people who were ina vegetative state. In addition, they asked the healthy volunteers to describe the emotions they had felt while listening. The pieces, each three minutes long and by different composers, were chosen because they have different tempos and rhythms— factors previously shown to elicit EU GIVES US ACCESS TO ITS CITIZENS' FINANCIAL DATA S anti-terrorism U investigators have won the right to scrutinise the private bank details of British and other EU citizens after a crucial vote in the European Parliament. The vote in favour of giving CIA agents access to a giant financial database follows a deal struck between US and EU negotiators. Under the new US EU ) ll = eleeiad Under the new arrangements, the EU police agency Europol will assess whether specific data requests are necessary for the fight against terrorism before the data is sent to the US, and the EU Commission will appoint its own officials to monitor the US investigators’ actions. There is also a requirement that bulk data can never be sent to third countries. The measures were passed by 484 MEPs in favour and 109 against. (Source: The Independent, 9 July 2010, http://tinyurl.com/2824q2m) new positive and negative emotions. Riganello found that the music affected the heart rates of both groups in the same way. Pieces rated as "positive" by healthy volunteers, such as the minuet from Boccherini's String Quintet in E, slowed heart rate, while "negative" pieces like Tchaikovsky's sixth symphony increased heart rate. (Source: New Scientist, 2 July 2010, http://tinyurl.com/33sctju) US PLANS CYBER SHIELD FOR UTILITIES, COMPANIES Th US federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed "Perfect Citizen" to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear power plants. The National Security Agency NSA) would rely on a set of sensors deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure that would be triggered by unusual activity suggesting an impending cyber attack, though it wouldn't persistently monitor the whole system. Defence contractor Raytheon Corp. recently won a classified contract for he initial phase of the surveillance 6 * NEXUS "Premium Octane, Unleaded, Ethanol or Gulf of Mexico Spill?" AUGUST - SEPTEMBER 2010 www.nexusmagazine.com