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Archive for July, 2011

The chaotic close of this year's IWC meeting had to be seen to be believed.

And for those who argue the body is ill-fit for purpose, archaic, hopelessly riven and suited only for the scrapyard, it provided perfect ammunition.

Let me try to set the picture out for you as best I can.

At the start of the final day, the Buenos Aires group of 14 Latin American countries demanded that their bid to have the South Atlantic Ocean declared a whale sanctuary be heard, debated and resolved, and voted upon if necessary.

This was despite the fact that there was no chance of them gaining the three-quarters majority needed to usher it through.

For the "pro-sustainable-use" bloc, headed by Japan and Iceland, this was unnacceptable.

At the last two IWC meetings, the proposal had formed one small component of a much larger compromise package that also included acceptance of Japan's Atlantic whaling programme in scaled-down form, and quasi-commercial quotas for their coastal whaling towns.

The package was formally declared dead at last year's meeting, with each bloc blaming the other for intransigence.

So for Japan and its allies, to have the sanctuary proposal aired again in isolation, when they had been prepared to concede it as part of the big package if they also gained things they wanted, was just unnacceptable.

Once it became clear that the Latin Americans were determined to have a vote, the pro-whaling countries got up and walked out, in a bid – as they made clear – to make the meeting inquorate.

The solution was for national representatives to go into a private meeting, to try to find a mutually acceptable way forward.

Even more extraordinarily, the meeting also had to discuss and decide what was meant by "quorate".

Half of the organisation's countries need to be present in order for votes to count; but was that half of all members, half of countries present at the beginning of the meeting, half of the number in the room at the time of the vote?

Different delegates gave me all three definitions; and despite the IWC having existed for 65 years, it's clear that no-one really knows.

You might also be wondering why the chairman and so many of the delegations were anxious to avoid having a vote.

After all, decisions are taken by voting in most national parliaments and in many other international organisations as well.

A two-week meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) might have 50, maybe even more – and it doesn't fall apart.

The issue here is that votes in the IWC used to be ritualised, meaningless, ridiculous, an excercise in grandstanding – because neither bloc was ever going to come near to gaining the three-quarters majority needed to make major changes.

During the two-year "peace process", IWC governments agreed new rules mandating they would strain every sinew to reach consensus where possible, and avoid going back to the years of pointless fractious discord.

The pro-whaling countries said the Latin Americans were doing precisely this, by calling a vote on something that was extracted from a bigger compromise package and which they could not win.

Behind closed doors, reportedly, quite a few other anti-whaling countries told them the same thing – the US and some Europeans, at least.

On the other hand, the Latin Americans insisted that the sanctuary was important to them and they were entitled to call for a vote – which, of course, they were.

Eventually a compromise was found… but finding it took nearly nine hours, time the meeting did not have, as it was already many hours behind schedule.

What the document says is that further efforts to find consensus will be made before the next meeting – and if it can't be found, the issue will go to a vote as the first item on the agenda next time.

The coming year will also be spent deciding what a quorum means in the world of the IWC.

In a sense, what was agreed is less telling than the fact that the process happened in the way it did.

This is my seventh IWC meeting. But many of the other journalists here were on their first – and there's been widespread and wide-eyed amazement along the press balcony at how little time is spent discussing things like whales, or even whaling.

And if next year does see a return to the old days of sterile stand-offs and unwinnable votes, we'll probably see even more points of order, procedural matters and accusations of bad faith – and even less time spent on the things this commission is supposed to be here to do.

Officially, every member government wants to be constructive and take things forward.

But there are two distinct versions of what "forward" means; and beneath the veil of harmony heaves a roiling discordant stew that occasionally, inevitably, boils over.

It's hard to see how this can change unless each side is really willing to yield ground.

This week, the Latin Americans weren't prepared to yield anything because they believe they are right in trying to bring extra conservation measures into force, because they believe the world should be about saving whales, with hunting consigned to the past.

The problem they face is that the other side believes it is right as well.

Genetically identical forest trees raised in different environments react differently when exposed to drought conditions, a study has shown.

He added that unlocking the secrets of the nursery effect would also help solve a scientific conundrum of how genetically identical long-lived organisms that propagate vegetatively, such as aspens via suckers growing from the root system, can be resistant to extreme weather, pests and pathogens.

He said it would be fair to assume that if one individual fell foul of the weather or a pest, then all the specimens would be considered vulnerable.

But that would suggest that vegetative propagation would have been neither a very good nor successful evolutionary strategy, yet it is a method of reproduction adopted by plants all over the world.

Professor Campbell asked: "So might there be something similar to a nursery effect that offers protection in the natural world?"

In order to test this, the team used clones of three widely grown varieties of poplar tree from a number of regions within Canada that had markedly different climates and environments:

As Populus is a genus of trees that require sizeable volumes of water and are sensitive to changes in the water content within soil, the team felt subjecting half of the samples to drought conditions would trigger a stress response within them.

"As we were looking at genetically identical individuals, the hypothesis was that if you grew them under identical conditions, and you monitored them at a time when they would be responding physiologically in an equivalent fashion, then what was happening behind the scenes – the way in which the genes are functioning – should also be the same," Professor Campbell explained.

"We looked at the way genes functioned. We had the capacity to take a snap shot of how 45,000 genes in poplars were responding at any particular point in time.

"By comparing the snapshots between water and drought conditions, we could then understand how those genes responded."

'Stunning findings'

The team found that the samples of Okanese, the youngest variety, did behave in a manner that supported the hypothesis.

"Individuals of Okanese that we obtained from Alberta performed identically to those we examined from Saskatchewan," he revealed.

"They were sourced from the two locations, brought into the same garden and treated the same way – and responded in the same way.

However, Professor Campbell explained, samples of the two older varieties provided "stunning findings" because the specimens from Saskatchewan performed differently when compared with clones taken from other locations.

"As you looked at an older clone, the response was more divergent. Okanese had no difference in response, Walker was intermediate, and DN34 was the most divergent."

He said that the findings suggested that time played a key part in how plants responded to changes in their environment, adding that the findings matched the results of studies on human identical twins.

"Spanish research showed that very young twins (three-year-olds) showed no difference in the way their genes responded," he recalled.

"But as they looked at older and older twins such as 50-year-olds, they had divergent patterns of gene activity. If the individuals were brought up in different environments (for example being put up for adoption) then the patterns of divergence was even more marked."

Professor Campbell said that he envisaged carrying out many more years of research in this area, but said that the study's findings presented a "double-edged sword".

"On a cautionary note, it suggests that people need to watch where they get their trees and plants from," he said.

The precise location nursery trees are sourced from, he said, "could have a profound effect on how they would perform in later years".

"But there is a positive note as well, and it is one that I think will drive research," he added.

"You might be able to find the means in which to create conditions that will train the genome so then it will be better suited for whatever environmental conditions are further down the line."

Plants in cities and towns make a major contribution towards removing carbon from the atmosphere, a study suggests.

The authors say the research is the first of its kind in Europe to quantify how much carbon is stored within this urban vegetation.

They add that the data are vital because local authorities are key in helping the UK reach its target of cutting CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050.

The findings will be published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

In this study, the researchers used information from satellite data and from field research to survey the amount of vegetation across Leicester – a city with a population of about 300,000 people.

The assessment included domestic gardens, public spaces, road verges and derelict industrial land.

The team estimated that 231,000 tonnes of carbon, equivalent to 3.16kg per square metre, was locked away in the city's vegetation – most of which was stored by trees.

"Large trees are particularly important carbon stores," said lead author Zoe Davies from the University of Kent.

"Most of the publicly owned land across Leicester is grassland.

"If just 10% of this was planted with trees, the existing carbon pool across the city could be increased by 12%."

Urban world

The researchers noted that during the past century, the planet's urban population grew ten-fold. Now more than than half of the world's population is living in urban areas.

As a result of this rapid expansion, urban areas continue to grow at a faster rate than any other land-use type.

Yet, the team observed: "Despite the importance of urbanisation as a major driver of land-use change, there have been surprisingly few attempts to explicitly quantify the provision of ecosystem services at a city-wide scale.

"This is likely to be a legacy of the perception that urban ecosystems have limited ecological value because they are heavily modified by humans and relatively small in size."

Dr Davies said current assessments hold that once land in the UK is classified as urban, its biological carbon density is assumed to be zero.

"Our study illustrates that this is not the case," she explained.

"There is a substantial pool of carbon locked away in the vegetation within a city – another reason why urban trees and green spaces should be valued."

The study is part of £2.5m project, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), that is investigating the size of the urban carbon footprint.

The programme, involving five universities, is divided into four areas: domestic buildings, non-domestic buildings (offices, schools, factories etc), transport and biological sequestration.

A half-male, half-female butterfly has hatched at London's Natural History Museum.

A line down the insect's middle marks the division between its male side and its more colourful female side.

Failure of the butterfly's sex chromosomes to separate during fertilisation is behind this rare sexual chimera.

Once it has lived out its month-long life, the butterfly will join the museum's collection.

Only 0.01% of hatching butterflies are gynandromorphs; the technical term for these strange asymmetrical creatures.

"So you can understand why I was bouncing off of the walls when I learned that… [it] had emerged in the puparium," said butterfly enthusiast Luke Brown from London's Natural History Museum.

Mr Brown built his first butterfly house when he was seven, and has hatched out over 300 thousand butterflies; this is only his third gynandromorph.

It is not only the wings that are affected, he explained. The butterfly's body is split in two, its sexual organs are half and half, and even its antennae are different lengths.

"It is a complete split; part-male, part-female… welded together inside," he told the BBC.

The dual-sex butterfly is an example of a Great Mormon, Papilio memnon – a species that is native to Asia.

With a shortage of butterfly-specific gender neutral pronouns, the butterfly is being referred to as "it", and is already middle-aged at three and a half week's old.

So the public has only a narrow window of opportunity to see it alive.

Though rare, gynandromorphy isn't unique to butterflies; individual crabs, lobsters, spiders and chickens have all been found with a mix of two sexes.

There are likely many more cases in the natural world, but sexual chimeras are more difficult to spot in animals where females and males look alike.

Are we in a new tech bubble?

The burst of the dotcom bubble dampened a lot of the enthusiasm for internet stocks, but companies who were slow to pay attention to the fact the world had nevertheless changed forever are still feeling the repercussions today.

Julie Meyer founded networking group First Tuesday in 1998 during the first internet boom. She now runs Ariadne Capital, a technology-focused investment and advisory firm. Julie Meyer and Ariadne Capital neither have an investment in Groupon nor do they advise the company.

The opinions expressed are those of the author and are not held by the BBC unless specifically stated. The material is for general information only and does not constitute investment, tax, legal or other form of advice. You should not rely on this information to make (or refrain from making) any decisions. Links to external sites are for information only and do not constitute endorsement. Always obtain independent, professional advice for your own particular situation.

How personalised is the web? That's the question that Click listeners all over the world have been helping us answer.

The worry is that we are cosseted in an information cocoon based on personalised results from search engines, automated recommendations from online bookstores and social networks that feed us gossip and news only from our innermost circle of friends.

On Click radio a few weeks ago, we interviewed Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You. He told us "People don't use Google as a tool which is personalised; they don't expect it to deliver a subjective version of the world. Google has this whole mythology around page rank, this algorithm that collects the truth from all of these different web sites and democratically arrives at the right answer and that's not really how the search engine works any more."

Mr Pariser is concerned that there is an illusion of objectivity in Google search results, when in fact they are filtered according to what we are most likely to click on when we browse the all important front page of results. He cites the hypothetical conspiracy theorist who searches for '9/11 bombings' and only sees other conspiracy websites rather than articles that debunk the crackpots.

Before we spoke to Eli Pariser, we asked Click listeners to put his theory to the test by Googling the same word whatever their location, browser, platform, device or language. After much consideration in the office, we came up with the word 'platform'. It is a widely used word, largely politically neutral and with multiple meanings whether pertaining to computing, railway stations, oil drilling or outlandish shoes from the 1970s.

We suggested that listeners try the same search with the personalisation settings on or off and also logged in and out of Google. To share their results, we invited our volunteers to post screen grabs to our Facebook listeners group.

Our Facebook group was soon deluged with screen grabs. As I write this, three weeks on, they are still coming in. To date, over 150 Click listeners have taken part from 29 countries across Europe, Asia, Africa, the USA, South America and Oceania. With nearly 300 individual screen grabs to pore over, Click team member Nelida Pohl was enlisted to try and make sense of them.

If Eli Pariser is correct then one might expect significant variations in search results, based on each user's own interests. However Nelida says "the same websites showed up over and over again, especially within countries. In an individual country, most had the same seven or eight websites in the first five hits and most of the differences I found were between countries".

In all countries, the Wikipedia entry for 'computing platform' came up. This was mostly in English, but also in other languages depending on the country. In the UK, most of the top five searches included an intermediary of the Co-operative Bank called 'Platform'. There was a software company called 'Platform' in the US. The listings also included the electoral platform of the American Libertarian Party. Google Canada listed the equivalent pages for country's Green party. In Australia, a common return was a modelling agency.

We were surprised to find that it did not make much difference whether users were logged in or out of Google or whether they had disabled the personalisation settings. When we put these initial results to Eli Pariser on our Click programme a few weeks ago, he suggested that the apparent lack of personalisation may have been down to the word we chose. "Google handles different queries quite differently from each other and there are some queries that mostly seem to return similar types of results and others that you'll see different results depending on different people."

This experiment was part of a series on openness we have been making in association with the Open University. In a specially recorded podcast on the subject, Tony Hirst of the University's Department of Communication and Systems joined me to discuss the results and provide expert analysis.

Even though within countries the same links tended to appear in the top few results, Tony Hirst believes the changes in rankings, however subtle, should not be understated and that they are evidence of personalisation. "If you have just a slight change in the ordering, particularly something that might bubble up from eighth to third or fourth on the screen where you're far more likely to see it, then just that simple change in ordering might have a huge influence on what you click on".

The Filter Bubble suggests paternalism to Google's search algorithms; that we are always fed just what we want to read. Tony Hirst says that relevance is a key part of Google's offering but equally it is not good for business to overdo the filtering. "It's in Google's interest to keep people engaged and to spend time looking at the results page where they have adverts. So if they can give results that are of interest to you whilst not necessarily directly reinforcing your opinion, you may go back to that results page and click on one of those links".

On Click, we like to put theories to the test, no matter how persuasive they appear at face value. With the help of our listeners we've done that with The Filter Bubble. Of course our survey is far from scientific; the sample size is relatively small and is only based on one search term. It does not refute Eli Pariser's hypothesis. In fact his book serves a valuable purpose by reminding us that the services we use online are becoming increasingly personalised and that there is more to search results than purely objective page rank.

I have been blown away by the enthusiasm of Click listeners to go to the trouble of taking all those screen grabs and posting them on Facebook. Thanks to some impressive Click-style crowd-sourcing, we have a slightly better idea of whether or not we really are all living in the filter bubble.

A Scottish law firm has launched an iPhone app which will help employers calculate compensation claims.

The free HR Adviser app includes an interactive unfair dismissal compensation calculator and an interactive redundancy calculator.

Law firm MacRoberts said its app was designed to give employers useful information about UK employment law.

It will also have links to government sites and bodies such as Acas and the Equal Opportunities Commission.

Graham Mitchell, employment law partner at MacRoberts, said: "We have listened very carefully to our HR clients and have developed a practical, useful and relevant app which addresses the issues HR professionals face every day in an increasingly difficult employment law environment.

"Many of our clients are large employers and they have issues with employment law all the time. It is an area in which reliable information is often needed quickly and it lends itself to an information-based system such as HR Adviser."

The app includes sections on unfair dismissal, redundancy, maternity and paternity leave and equal pay and discrimination.

Details of the current statutory rates, such as the minimum wage, are automatically updated.

The interactive redundancy calculator allows the user to input details such as age, length of service and salary, after which the app will calculate the estimated statutory redundancy payment.

The compensation calculator will provide an estimate of the likely award at tribunal should an employee raise an unfair dismissal claim.

Mr Mitchell added: "Others have shied away from compensation estimates because of the considerable amount of variables involved, but we have included – and highlighted – some reasonable presumptions, allowing us to provide an informed assessment which will be of real value to HR professionals."

If you feel treating hemorrhoids forever is a piece of cake, think again. The majority of folks think you can possibly merely utilise a hemorrhoid treatment to clear up hemorrhoids so they can’t come back. This cannot be more untrue. Even so, you can possibly clear up hemorrhoids forever. To achieve this you must learn about what’s producing hemorrhoids to start with then just stop doing them.

If you can’t alter your life-style it’s not going to very much matter what variety of hemorroid treatment you end up getting including surgical removal, your hemorrhoids will in all probability reoccur. Hemorrhoids develop from abnormal pressure to your rectal area which squeezes the blood vessels into a bulb. This is generally caused by a poor dietary regimen, one that includes minimal fiber. Ingesting fruits and veggies can alleviate that. A lack of regular exercising can result in hemorrhoids resulting from decreased flow of blood. When the blood isn’t flowing with a lot of pressure it cannot push obstructions through your veins. You should not be impatient when going to the bathroom.

You can not in truth look forward to any hemorrhoid treatment to clear up hemorrhoids forever. You really can’t expect to get rid of any problems forever without taking care of the contributing factors for this problems. So, the best solution is to recognise specifically what creates hemorrhoids and after that to simply just modify your life-style don’t do those things. Get into doing things to maintain your body. Adjust your life-style to accomodate the principles as published above.

When ever a blood clot develops inside of a problematic artery, the illness is recognized as thrombosis. Dependant on the size of the clot it could perhaps provoke serious harm. If the blood clot is large enough it may stop the supply of oxygen and also a number of other needed ingredients that can end up killing cells. A hemorrhoid is basically swollen swollen veins inside of rectum or on the anus brought about by far too much pressure to the anal cavity, customarily during a bowel movement. Anytime clots of blood emerge inside of these swollen veins it is has developed into a thrombosed hemorrhoid.

If you are enduring discomfort and itching within your anus you likely have got hemorrhoids. If you encounter bluish bulbs within your anus they are probably thrombosed. The blue coloration is from solidified clots of blood lessening the blood flow and are restricting the oxygen. Nearly always they are hard to the touch brought about by the clotting of blood. You can not always detect thrombosed hemorrhoids. Occassionally hemorrhoids are inside of the anal cavity.

What you really don’t want is a bad case of hemorrhoids that got infected, specially internal hemorrhoids. If you happen to have external thrombosed hemorrhoids, then you no doubt know how horribly debilitating they can be. Worse yet they may just get infected which would be likely to increase the problem significantly. Still, you should be able to quite easily sense infections on your anus and you can get it cleared up easily. Internal infections in contrast are harmful. Not only are they quite problematic to find, they’re problematic to cure. Internal infections may cause blood poisoning which can kill you.

There are plenty of distinctive varieties of hemorrhoid treatment that may operate successfully on thrombosed hemorrhoids. You could go for surgical treatment or choose from numerous all natural or holistic methods. The most critical thing you must do to cure hemorrhoids would be to pay attention to what foods you eat. Consuming dinners prepared with nutritional foods for example fruits and veggies goes a long way toward getting hemorrhoids cleared up. Plus it is going to help deter hemorrhoids from developing ever again. In addition to paying attention to your dietary habits ingesting lots of water and regular exercising can assist a lot. To get rid of the itching, discomfort, redness and over all discomfort you ought to be able to uncover numerous distinctive varieties of creams and gels. Witch hazel is acclaimed for its ability to minimize discomfort and itching. It is advisable to keep your anal location clean. Use topical antiseptics very often.Washing your anal location in a sitz bath can not just help to keep your anal location clean it can help quite a lot with soothing the inflammed location.

Severe cases of hemorrhoids might justify surgical procedures . Severe cases of hemorrhoids are when the entire anal opening is completely covered with hemorrhoids or maybe more so, cases of bleeding hemorrhoids which need intense hemorrhoid treatment. In the event that you are enduring hemorroids that are just merely uncomfortable, you can quite likely heal them with home hemorrhoid treatment and without surgical procedures except if they have already ended up being thrombosed or began to bleed.

This report looks at the wide selection of individual hemorrhoid remedies that involve surgical procedures . Several of the earlier types of surgical procedures are highly uncomfortable plus they are known to take a considerable time to get better. However, a lot off the more recent types of surgical procedures are not quite as painful but they are also relatively effective in over coming hemorrhoids. If you are researching surgical procedures as a hemorrhoid technique be sure to read through the rest of this report to find out about what remedies at hand.

Of all the several different varieties of hemorrhoid surgical procedures you can find, Rubber Band Ligation is among the most well known. With this method of operation a rubber band about 1/25″ is shot securely right onto the root base of the hemorrhoid. The swollen arteries that make up hemorrhoid eventually whither up and fall off for the reason that the oxygen to them is restrict. It generally takes about a few days give or take for the hemorrhoid to shrink.

You can possibly look into laser surgery. Laser surgery treatment entails making use of a lazer gun to zap the hemorrhoid off. The surgery needs a reasonably short time so that you can return home on that day. it’s an out-patient hemorrhoid treatment. Laser surgical procedures doesn’t carry the typical potential risks associated with surgical procedures , especially bleeding since the laserlight cauterizes the hemorrhoid.

There is a variation of hemorrhoid treatment that requires stapling the hemorrhoid with a specific variation of circular staple. This is known as a Stapled Hemorrhoidectomy and it’s rather popular . It fairly often made use of to get rid of any form of bleeding hemorrhoids but mainly prolapsed hemorrhoids.

There is a variation of hemorrhoid treatment that entails identifying and thereafter stitching up all of the blood vessels that’re providing blood to the hemorrhoid. Once the the flow of blood is cut off the hemorrhoid withers. Inside around a week give or take it mearly drops off. This technique, recognized as Hemorrhoidal Artery Ligation Operation or HAL is becoming popular simply because it is relatively painless.

If you have discovered blood in the vicinity of your anus, particularly when going to the bathroom then you quite likely have bleeding hemorrhoids. If you have spotted this then not only have you been going through agonizing painfulness it likely scared you . The fact is that, bleeding hemorrhoids are not lethal. Hemorrhoids are just blood vessels which have swollen as a result of having under gone an uncommon amount of pressure. This often transpires when going to the bathroom. If you fail to eat well and are impatient when going to the bathroom and are overweight or expectant, that may be the cause for the pressure. The swollen blood vessels are clotted with blood, creating a bulbous swelling. If it erupts that can cause your anus to bleed a good deal. Although it is not lethal it might become infected which could very well turn into a lethal disorder. In the event that you conclude that you have bleeding hemorrhoids you ought to seek advice from a qualified medical professional asap. Do this because, you want to take advantage of the required hemorrhoid treatment so you can cure your hemorrhoid well before it gets to be a substantial dysfunction. This content will address several of the different hemorrhoid treatment programs that you have available .

If you are suffering from bleeding hemorrhoids, odds are you’ll be getting surgery. That’s why you really should try to take care of this disorder as soon as you can to circumvent complicating your disorder . Hemorrhoid surgery is known for awful physical pain after surgery, and it almost always takes quite a while to remedy.

A good hemorrhoid treatment technique would be the stapled hemorrhoidectomy. This hemorrhoid treatment doesn’t produce significant discomfort, because it uses a circular stapler to minimise the bleeding of the swollen blood vessels. This hemorrhoid treatment technique is typically used to treat prolapsed hemorrhoids, but also works well on virtually all bleeding hemorrhoids. Another good hemorrhoid treatment is referred to as hemorrhoidal artery ligation, which employs a proctoscope. It also employs a Doppler transducerto identify and ligate the problematic veins that causes your hemorrhoids to bleed. With the ligation of your problematic veins , the pressure will be somewhat lessened. This process is relatively painless and safe, and is a preferred alternative than other unpleasant hemorrhoid treatment programs.

While a qualified medical professional is certain to recommend surgical treatment in order to mend your bleeding hemorrhoids,you can deal with bleeding hemorrhoids with alternative hemorrhoid treatment options. You could apply ointments and creams to help lessen the itching and swelling. You can apply a ‘sitz’ bath also. Essentially, if you can get yourself to eat fruit and greens as well as fiber this can help a great deal. Try not to exert a lot of pressure on your pelvis, especially when going to the bathroom. If you’re expectant or overweight be particularly mindful to not speed the process. Hemorrhoids, even bleeding hemorrhoids can, and frequently do, remedy if you possibly can attend to them.

A pair of musical gloves that allow wearers to manipulate music using just hand gestures have been shown off for the first time by singer Imogen Heap.

The performance kicked off TEDGlobal in Edinburgh, a conference renowned for showcasing cutting-edge technologies.

The gloves were developed to give Ms Heap far more control over the music she creates.

The ultimate aim is to give a performance in which the gloves control all the music being played.

The gloves were created by a team at the University of West England, led by Professor Tom Mitchell, a music technology specialist.

He used fibre-optic gloves developed for gaming and added chip boards.

The gloves were programmed based on Ms Heap's movements, so for instance to make a sound louder she opened her arms wide and to quieten it, she closed them.

"We were still programming them up to the last minute," Ms Heap revealed.

She has been keen to gain more freedom on stage and came across a similar project when visiting the Massachusetts Institute of Technology several years ago.

"I wanted to develop ways to be more expressive and spontaneous on stage. I began using wireless lapel microphones on my wrists but the missing element was to be able to wirelessly control the music," she told the BBC.

Chips built into the gloves contained both accelerometers and magnetometers, which created precise data about both the position of her hands and the speed of her movements.

Similar technology is used in health care to help injured people learn to walk again.

The project is ongoing and the team's next job is to add an extra layer which will allow Ms Heap to create different modes of music depending on exactly where she is standing on stage.

"The aim is to connect to the audience and for them to fully understand how the sounds are created and maybe even contribute their own," said Ms Heap.

She is also keen to introduce a visual element with holograms connecting her to other performers around the world.

The technology provided an exciting start to TEDGlobal 2011.

The five-day conference is an invitation-only event eagerly anticipated by the 850 delegates, who all pay a hefty fee to attend.

The programme of speakers includes an eclectic mix of scientists, activists, technologists and artists from around the world.

Actress Thandie Newton, popular science writer Malcolm Gladwell and philosopher Alain de Botton are among the big names due to speak.

The event is being held for the first time this year in Edinburgh.

(CNN) — It’s hard to escape buzz about Spotify this week — especially since Britney Spears and others are "so excited" about it.

Trent Reznor, from Nine Inch Nails, says "it’s great."

The rapper Talib Kweli says "music is about to be fun again."

But what makes Spotify — a music-streaming site that’s already popular in Europe and launched in the United States on Thursday — so awesome that it would cause these tweets from musicians?

Many U.S. music fans will have to wait a few weeks to find out. As CNN’s Mark Milian reports, Spotify is available in the U.S. by invitation only — or for paying customers.

So before you shell out your cash for this music-streaming service, here’s a look at what makes Spotify unique.

The music catalog is huge

First, a little background: Spotify — the name is a combination of "spot" and "identify" — is a music streaming service, which means it lets you play songs off the Internet. So it’s kind of like Pandora, except that you can search for songs and create playlists from a catalog of 15 million tracks. On Pandora, you just pick a "radio station" and listen to whatever songs a computer chooses for you. You can’t pick which songs come up.

Spotify also faces competition from Rdio and Turntable.fm, which offer versions of this playlist approach.

It’s free

Well, mostly. With an invitation, users in the U.S. can play songs with some ads sprinkled in for good financial measure. For $5 per month, the ads go away and you get unlimited streaming. For $10, you can listen to Spotify’s music on your mobile phone, too.

Again, the response from the tech world is largely positive.

"I’ve been using Spotify for a year and a half here in England, and it’s been a real test: I left my CD collection packed up in boxes," CNET’s Stephen Shankland says.

It works like iTunes

iTunes, Apple’s hugely popular music player, is easy to use. So is Spotify. In reviews, tech writers note how fast the system works, and how easy it is to find music and add songs to your playlists.

It’s social

If you sign in with Facebook, you can see what all of your friends have been listening to on Spotify — and even play their playlists.

That may sound obvious or boring, but remember that you don’t have to own your friends’ songs in order to play them. It’s the modern mixtape.

It changes the way people think about music

Record stores and iTunes taught music lovers that songs and albums must be purchased individually. While you can purchase music on Spotify, the site also promotes a pay-by-the-month approach. For a monthly fee — which is less than the cost of a single album — you get access to tons of music. And you can play it from wherever you want. Spotify also offers download options, so you can play some songs even if you don’t currently have an Internet connection.

And this all works smoothly, writes Rosa Golijan at MSNBC:

"I constantly forget that all the music I’m listening to is not actually on my computer or mobile device, but instead being consistently streamed at a reasonable quality — no matter how slow my Internet connection occasionally can be. (Mind you, songs can be stored for offline play so that you’re never music-less even if stuck without an internet connection or decent mobile data service.)"

It’s been years in the making

Spotify was founded in Sweden in 2006. Since then, U.S. tech heads have been clamoring for the service to skip across the pond.

That launch has been stalled in negotiations with record labels, and that’s caused anticipation about the service to build. With all those negotiations said and done, it appears Spotify is now a legal product in the states.

It lets you take music anywhere

If you pay $10 a month for the premium service, you can listen to all of your Spotify playlists — keep in mind, this is music you’re "renting," not music that you have purchased by the song — right on your phone. If you lose your Internet connection (or if you’re getting on a plane), you can download Spotify songs into the company’s app and listen to them offline — for no extra charge.

Any drawbacks?

OK, so those were all the good things. What about the bad stuff?

Some analysts say Spotify will have a hard time busting into the U.S. market, which is already full of music streaming sites that are popular. Pandora says it has 100 million users, which makes it a particularly formidable foe.

There’s also some question about whether the Spotify model is actually good for the artists whose songs you’re listening to so freely.

Artists earn only $0.004 when you listen to one of their songs, according to analyst Mark Milligan, quoted by the BBC.

But, as the Twitter chatter shows, some artists support this alternative.