Posted on 05 November 2007 by Mat
A toddler born with eight limbs and believed by some to be the reincarnation of the multi-limbed Hindu goddess Vishnu, is set to undergo a 40-hour operation to remove half of her limbs.
Lakshmi Tatma was born joined to a ‘parasitic twin’ and will go under the knife at the hands of 30 surgeons to remove two of her useless arms and legs.
Posted on 03 July 2007 by Mat
I knew cats were no good.
Half of the world’s human population is infected with Toxoplasma, parasites in the body-and the brain. Remember that. Toxoplasma gondii is a common parasite found in the guts of cats; it sheds eggs that are picked up by rats and other animals that are eaten by cats. Toxoplasma forms cysts in the bodies of the intermediate rat hosts, including in the brain.
Dr. E. Fuller Torrey (Associate Director for Laboratory Research at the Stanley Medical Research Institute) noticed links between Toxoplasma and schizophrenia in human beings, approximately three billion of whom are infected with T. gondii:
* Toxoplasma infection is associated with damage to astrocytes, glial cells which surround and support neurons. Schizophrenia is also associated with damage to astrocytes.
* Pregnant women with high levels of antibodies to Toxoplasma are more likely to give birth to children who will develop schizophrenia.
* Human cells raised in petri dishes, and infected with Toxoplasma, will respond to drugs like haloperidol; the growth of the parasite stops. Haloperidol is an antipsychotic, used to treat schizophrenia.
Posted on 05 June 2007 by Mat
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psh9OxnDR7o.
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Covered in a grey putty-like silicone skin the baby bot can roll around and ’speak’. It can even take a few steps if encouraged enough.
Built by Japanese scientists Minoru Asada and Hiroshi Ishiguro (who famously created an android twins of himself), the robot called CB2 weighs 33kg and stands 130cm tall.
It has 197 tactile sensors embedded in its outer layer and 51 compressed air-powered actuators, which allow it to react to touch.
When CB2’s shoulders are tapped, it blinks as if surprised, stops moving, and turns its gaze toward the person who touched it. It will also try and grab a toy dangled in front of it.
Posted on 27 March 2007 by Mat
Scientists have created the world’s first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.
The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep’s foetus.
Posted on 12 February 2007 by Mat
Lene Hau has already shaken scientists’ beliefs about the nature of things. Albert Einstein and just about every other physicist insisted that light travels 186,000 miles a second in free space, and that it can’t be speeded-up or slowed down. But in 1998, Hau, for the first time in history, slowed light to 38 miles an hour, about the speed of rush-hour traffic.
Two years later, she brought light to a complete halt in a cloud of ultracold atoms. Next, she restarted the stalled light without changing any of its characteristics, and sent it on its way. These highly successful experiments brought her a tenured professorship at Harvard University and a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation award to spend as she pleased.
Now Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics, Hau has done it again. She and her team made a light pulse disappear from one cold cloud then retrieved it from another cloud nearby. In the process, light was converted into matter then back into light. For the first time in history, this gives science a way to control light with matter and vice versa.
Posted on 06 October 2006 by Mat
A 60-year-old man with acute pancreatitis developed persistent hiccups after insertion of a nasogastric tube. Removal of the latter did not terminate the hiccups which had also been treated with different drugs, and several manoeuvres were attempted, but with no success. Digital rectal massage was then performed resulting in abrupt cessation of the hiccups. Recurrence of the hiccups occurred several hours later, and again, they were terminated immediately with digital rectal massage. No other recurrences were observed. This is the second reported case associating cessation of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage. We suggest that this manoeuvre should be considered in cases of intractable hiccups before proceeding with pharmacological agents.
(thanks Knighthawk)
Posted on 05 April 2006 by Mat
MIAMI (Reuters) - The New Testament says that Jesus walked on water, but a Florida university professor believes there could be a less miraculous explanation — he walked on a floating piece of ice.
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Professor Doron Nof also theorised in the early 1990s that Moses’s parting of the Red Sea had solid science behind it.
Nof, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University, said on Tuesday that his study found an unusual combination of water and atmospheric conditions in what is now northern
Israel could have led to ice formation on the Sea of Galilee.
Nof used records of the Mediterranean Sea’s surface temperatures and statistical models to examine the dynamics of the Sea of Galilee, which Israelis know now as Lake Kinneret.
The study found that a period of cooler temperatures in the area between 1,500 and 2,600 years ago could have included the decades in which Jesus lived.
A drop in temperature below freezing could have caused ice thick enough to support a human to form on the surface of the freshwater lake near the western shore, Nof said. It might have been nearly impossible for distant observers to see a piece of floating ice surrounded by water.
Nof said he offered his study — published in the April edition of the Journal of Paleolimnology — as a “possible explanation” for Jesus’ walk on water.
Posted on 17 October 2004 by Mat
I wonder if I have this, but only with hot celebrity chicks.
The phenomenon, called sleep sex, was described to doctors at a meeting in Australia.
This is a condition completely distinct from sleepwalking and is a form of sleep disorder called REM behavioural disorder.
Normally, when a person enters the deepest phase of sleep, the REM (rapid eye movement) phase in which we dream, our bodies are immobilised.
In the case of sleep sex, this doesn’t happen and the person can act out their dreams.
I wish.
Posted on 07 September 2004 by Mat
“EXETER, England (Reuters) — Muppets Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant Beaker defeated Dr. Strangelove, Dana Scully of “X Files” fame and Star Trek’s Mr. Spock to be voted Britain’s favorite screen scientists.
They beat their closest rival by a margin of 2 to 1 and won 33 percent of the 43,000 votes cast in an Internet poll published in Monday.
Spock came in a distance second with 15 percent followed by The Doctor, from Dr Who, who garnered 13 percent. Scully, the only woman in the poll, came in sixth.”
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