Alien life can survive trip to Earth

We could have alien origins, say scientists who sent fossilized microscopic life-forms into space and back inside an artificial meteorite. The researchers attached the baseball-size rock to the outside of the European Space Agency's Foton M3 spacecraft to test whether biological material could survive the round-trip journey. Sculpted from stone from the Orkney Islands in northern Scotland, the rock contained fossilized microbes and the molecular signatures of microbes. The unmanned spacecraft was launched by rocket from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying 43 experiments. The craft landed in Kazakhstan on September 26 after orbiting the planet for 12 days. "In the bit of rock we got back, some biological compounds have survived," said project leader John Parnell from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Preliminary findings suggest that it's possible simple organisms could arrive via meteorites, he said.

The research also suggests that living microbes would likely have survived in a slightly bigger rock, he added. "This study of organic material is completely new," he said. Previous artificial meteorite experiments have examined only the degree to which rocks melt upon entering the atmosphere.

View: Full Article | Source: National Geographic

Fish lives in logs, breathing air

A tiny western Atlantic fish does something never before seen: It makes like a bird, living in mangrove wood for months at a time. A team of U.S. and English scientists accidentally discovered the unique behavior, which they call "logpacking," during recent excursions to Belize and Florida. They were studying how the mangrove rivulus—an animal already infamous for its bizarre sexual behavior—survived the frequent dry spells that strike its swampy forest habitat. "One of us kicked at a log, which broke apart and out came the fish!" said team leader Scott Taylor of Brevard County, Florida's Environmentally Endangered Lands Program. Log-Dwelling Fish The mangrove rivulus, also known as the mangrove killifish, is native to the Americas and is about two inches (five centimeters) long. The fish has long been studied for its many unique features. It's the only vertebrate known to naturally self-fertilize, for example. In some populations, it can become a hermaphrodite, developing both male and female parts simultaneously, to produce clones of itself. (Related: "Sexual Orientation Is Genetic in Worms, Study Says" [October 25, 2007].) The animal can also live out of water for up to 66 days, Taylor said, and is one of very few fish species that spend their entire lives in mangrove swamps. Most fish move in and out of the areas as water sources dwindle.

Taylor and his team had previously found that when small pools of water dried up, the rivulus settled into crab burrows. But even those disappear during extreme dry spells. "Sometimes the pools have very heavy [rivulus] populations, and they have to go somewhere when they dry," he said. "We had seen them under logs and in piles of damp leaves, inside coconuts, even in beer cans—for real."

View: Full Article | Source: National Geographic

Mystery growths plague "tree man"

An Indonesian man whose body is covered with extraordinary tree-like growths has spoken of his hope that an American doctor will cure his unique condition and help him rebuild his family life. Dede, now 35, baffled medical experts when warty "roots" began growing out of his arms and feet after he cut his knee in a teenage accident. Sacked from his job and deserted by his wife, Dede has been unable to look after his two children Entang and Utis, who are now aged 16 and 18. They have been brought up apart from their farther by his extended family on the other side of their remote village south of the capital Jakarta. With Dede's condition considered life threatening, he had resigned himself to missing out on the remaining joys of fatherhood.But now a dermatology expert who flew out from the United States to examine his rare condition says that a course of synthetic Vitamin A should clear up most of the warts, and Dede is contemplating a transformed life. "I can't work, I can't provide money," Dede said. "I want to be able to take care of them [his children].

I hope to live long enough to see my grandchildren." After testing samples of the lesions and Dede's blood, Dr Gaspari of the University of Maryland concluded that his affliction is caused by the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), a fairly common infection that usually causes small warts to develop on sufferers.

View: Full Article | Source: The Telegraph

Lost City of Mu discovered ?

A researcher investigating underwater rock formations off the coast of Japan believes they are the remnants of an Asian equivalent of Atlantis -- an ancient civilization swallowed up by the ocean. Marine geologist Masaaki Kimura says he has identified the ruins of a city off the coast of Yonaguni Island on the southwestern tip of Japan.He has worked for decades to prove the rocks found by scuba diving tourists in 1985 are from an ancient city, which he says may have sparked the fable of Mu -- a Pacific equivalent of the tale of the lost city of Atlantis."Judging by the design and the disposition of the ruins, the city must have looked just like an ancient Roman city," said Kimura, a professor at Ryukyu University and the chairman of the non-profit Marine Science and Culture Heritage Research Association."I can envisage a triumphal arch-like statue stood on the left side of the Colosseum and a shrine over the hill," he told Reuters Television.

Some of the initial divers notices the rocks were unnaturally smooth and formed a sort of staircase near the island's shores. Subsequent dives by Kimura revealed irregular rock outcrops over 1 square km (0.4 square mile) and mounds of rubble.Kimura says he believes the city had a castle, a shrine, an arch, statues and a colosseum."In my estimation, the castle was situated right in the middle of the city. And though not as big as the castle, a lot of ruins of shrine-like structures too have been discovered," he said at his research room.Kimura believes the city was sunk in an earthquake 3,000 years ago.

View: Full Article | Source: Reuters

Can Nessie survive the Internet ?

In the good old days, it would take weeks -- or even months -- to hear about a tsunami washing a dead mermaid ashore. Now we have the photos in our computer's inbox in mere hours. Yes, it's a whole new world for urban legends. Before there was an Internet, or even paper and pen, there were legends and myths. They served as campfire entertainment, passing between friends and generations without much thought as to whether they were true. Sometimes there was a lesson; sometimes it was just a good yarn. But there was always a big, unexplainable mystery, and the fun and wonder of telling an age-old story. Now, in an instantaneous society, everything has changed. Click and it's gone Modern technology can debunk stories that used to be able to travel around the world via word-of-mouth for years. Now, flying saucers become balloons. Bigfoot becomes a superimposed gorilla. Mermaids become papier-mache collections of animal parts. The flip side of that is the Internet is becoming a light-speed-traveling conduit for any crazy tale someone wants to make up.

Technology allows us to make the balloon back into a UFO. As one urban legend gets quashed, several new ones pop up. "The speed by which these legends are transported is ridiculously fast," says April Masini, the author of Web site AskApril.com, an advice and information site that deals with everything from urban legends to relationship advice. "This means more legends, more often. It also means that legends get quashed more easily and more quickly; in fact, there are even Web sites set up to let people know what myths are circulating and what truths are legend."

View: Full Article Source: Contra Costa Times

Sharks have genes for fingers and toes

The basic process for developing fingers and toes in land animals may have existed for more than 500 million years in shark genes, according to a new study. Researchers identified genetic activity in spotted catsharks embryos that signal the creation of digits. The discovery pushes back the date of the evolutionary "fin to limb" advance by some 135 million years. When a gene—essentially a set of instructions—is translated into a trait, such as red hair or an arm, it is said to be expressed. Scientists have long believed that the gene for digit development was first expressed some 365 million years ago in the earliest tetrapodsthe first vertebrates to walk on land. But the new study suggests the finger-and-toe gene was first expressed much earlier, in fish—though not to such an extent that it yielded actual digits. "We've uncovered a surprising degree of genetic complexity in place at an early point in the evolution of appendages," study leader Martin Cohn of the University of Florida said in a statement.

The findings appear this week in the journal PLos ONE. Limb development, which happens in the fetal stage of all limbed animals, is driven by the so-called Hox gene. The early stage of the Hox gene expression regulates the development of limbs down to the forearm and shin. The later phase is responsible for forming fingers and toes. "It has long been thought that fish fins exhibit only the early wave of Hox expression..." Cohn told National Geographic News.

View: Full Article Source: National Geographic

T. Rex quicker than professional athlete

T. rex may have struggled to chase down speeding vehicles as the movie Jurassic Park would have us believe but the world's most fearsome carnivore was certainly no slouch, new research out suggests. The University of Manchester study used a powerful supercomputer to calculate the running speeds of five meat-eating dinosaurs that varied in size from a 3kg Compsognathus to a six-tonne Tyrannosaurus.The study -- believed to be the most accurate ever produced -- puts the T. rex at speeds of up to 18mph, fractionally quicker than a sportsman such as a professional soccer player.The bipedal Compsognathus, by comparison, could reach speeds of almost 40mph -- that's 5mph faster than the computer's estimate for the fastest living animal on two legs, the ostrich.The team -- headed by biomechanics expert Bill Sellers and palaeontologist Phil Manning -- say the accuracy of their results is due to the computer's ability to use data relating directly to each dinosaur.

"Previous research has relied on data from extant bipedal models to provide clues as to how fast dinosaurs could run," said Dr Sellers, who is based in Manchester's Faculty of Life Sciences. "Such calculations can accurately predict the top speed of a six-tonne chicken but dinosaurs are not built like chickens and nor do they run like them."Our research involved feeding information about the skeletal and muscular structure of the dinosaurs directly into the supercomputer so it could work out how the animals were best able to move."Despite its powerful memory and 256 processors the computer still took up to a week to learn the biomechanics of each animal -- starting with the first clumsy steps and developing into a top running speed based on the optimum gait and posture.The first data to be fed into the computer were those of a 70kg human with the muscle and bone structure of a professional sportsman. The computer accurately predicted a top running speed of just under the 8 metres per second of T. rex.

View: Full Article Source: Science Daily

Crop formation appears in Wiltshire

Sam Willey: Cropcircleconnector (crop website) featured a report on July 7 2007 by Mike Murray on a brand new Alton Barnes, Wiltshire, crop formation of at least 90 circles ranging from very small to very large in the East Field famous for crop formations going back to the early 1990s. Mike Murray made the following comments on the formation: "I went to this marvellous formation today, the sheer size is overwhelming. I couldn't even guess the area covered. It seems to ray out from a very large central circle then all the lines of circles decrease in size to nothing. There are lots of grape shot circles, some with tufts."The formation dowsed positive. I borrowed a pendulum from a young lady, when I used it my arm tingled. This happened at New Barn last year. As you can see from my pictures, the lay of the crop is good although after only a day it is jumping up again. I couldn't visualize the formation from above and wait eagerly for an aerial photograph.”

The first reported sighting of this new formation appearing in East Field was made at 4am just after bright flashes of light were seen. Gary King aged 41 who is currently studying at the Cardiff University in Wales UK and claims he has been able to sense when formations have been created on a number of occasions. Mr. King visited a café called the Silent Circle at mid-day were a local resident informed him that there may be a formation at East Field. Mr. King went to investigate and met other researchers and discovered a tiny portion at the edge of the field had been damaged by wind no formation was found. Mr. King decided he would spend the night at the top of Knapp Hill located directly in front of East Field. Mr. King went up to Knapp Hill on a vigil with another researcher by the name of Paula. Once there they met with a UFO Researcher by the name of Winston Keech. Keech had three cameras set up at the top of the hill as well as two others mounted to his jeep seeing both infrared and visible light one was aimed at East Field the other aimed at Milk Hill.

At approximately 1:35am Keech aimed his image enhancing camera and scanned East Field everything could be seen clearly including the road and no formations or anything else was detected within the field. Three images were providing proving no activity occurring within the field at 1:35am only 90 minutes before the formation appeared.

View: Full Article Source: Alien Nation Sam

The Mongolian Death Worm

The Mongolian Death Worm lives in Mongolia, obviously, and is so named because it spits lethal concoctions of poison and/or electricity on whatever it pleases. The creature's never been officially documented, but locals have seen it - lots of locals. It's even 'real' enough that the 1922 Prime Minister of Mongolia asked a man to bring one in.Did the man succeed?No, the man didn't succeed. But that doesn't keep others from trying to catch/document one of the worms. A Mongolian website has this to say about the super-slug: "The Alghoi Khorkhoi (literally intestinal worm) is a mythical animal known by Mongolians since long time but not indexed by science for the reason that no specimen could yet be captured or studied. It is described like a big worm of approximately 80 cm length living in very remote sand areas of Gobi desert and leaving to the free air only very seldom, in summer.

He is considered as a "terrible" animal able to kill in an unexplained way any man who touch it (poison, static electricity?)"The first report on this animal came from the famous paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews which was asked to capture it by the Prime Minister of Mongolia in 1922. The local belief of the existence of Alghoi Khorkhoi is very widespread and could accredit the assumption that an unknown animal, worm or reptile could still remain unknown by science from its great discretion and its desertic and hostile unhabitat." According to locals, the Death Worm chiefly burrows through the sand, but comes to the surface after it rains, or when a particular flower (the Goyo plant) is in bloom. One of the locals has had enough experience with the worm to make a wooden carving of it. It looks to be a much smaller version of the ones Kevin Bacon and the dad from Family Ties had to fight in the movie Tremors.

View: Full Article Source: Heckler Spray

Where is the rest of the universe ?

Scientists trying to create a detailed inventory of all the matter and energy in the cosmos run into a curious problem — the vast majority of it is missing. "I call it the dark side of the universe," said Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, referring to the great mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. In fact, only 4 percent of the matter and energy in the universe has been found. The other 96 percent remains elusive, but scientists are looking in the farthest reaches of space and deepest depths of Earth to solve the two dark riddles. Einstein's famous equation "E=mc^2" describes energy and matter (or mass) as one and the same — maps of the cosmos refer to the energy-matter combination as energy density, for short. The problem with detecting dark matter, thought to make up 22 percent of the universe's mass/energy pie, is that light doesn't interact with it.

But it does exhibit the tug of gravity. Initial evidence for the mysterious matter was discovered 75 years ago when astrophysicists noticed an anomaly in a jumble of galaxies: The galactic cluster had hundreds of times more gravitational pull than it should have, far outweighing its visible mass of stars. "We can predict the motions of the sun and planets very accurately, but when we measure distant things we see anomalies," said Scott Dodelson, an astrophysicist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. "Dark matter is currently the best possible solution, even though we've never seen any of it."

View: Full Article Source: MSNBC

Two crashed UFOs reported in Mexico

According to a news item published on August 21 2007 by the El Mañana de Valles newspaper, two unidentified flying objects allegedly fell in Valles and Xilitla (San Luis Potosi). The first of them was reported on the evening of Sunday, August 19 and the second during early morning hours of Monday the 20th.Reporters Antonio Martínez and Maribor Villalobos state that the initial report was received by Jose Angel Avalos, an officer on duty at the Centro de Control y Comando (C4) through the 066 call line. This report was from Rubén Velázquez, who stated that a silver object measuring 20 cm long had fallen from the sky in a plot of land of the San Miguel collective farm.Another witness, high school student Oscar Gonzalez Mar, a resident of the El Sidral collective farm, told the "El Mañana" newsromm that he had seen a shining object streaming across the skies toward the Gulf of Mexico between 8 and 9 p.m. on August 19 before he lost it from sight, not knowing whether the object crashed or not.

Nearly two and a half hours after the San Miguel incident, Mrs. Saturnina Castillo reported from Xilitla that an object resembling a fireball had impacted a tree in a property located near the "Montoya" metal shop, owned by her husband Juan Montoya, adding that the tree had caught fire.Joaquín Hernández was a direct witness to the sighting. He and his family prepare zacahuil and live next to where the object hit the ground. In fact, Hernández was preparing the zacahuil batter and he saw the "fireball" as it came down over the tree. Afraid that no one would believe him, he screamed for Juan Montoya and his wife to witness the tree bough catching fire.

View: Full Article Source: Inexplicata

Man bitten by beheaded rattlesnake

Turns out, even beheaded rattlesnakes can be dangerous. That's what 53-year-old Danny Anderson learned as he was feeding his horses Monday night, when a 5-foot rattler slithered onto his central Washington property, about 50 miles southeast of Yakima.Anderson and his 27-year-old son, Benjamin, pinned the snake with an irrigation pipe and cut off its head with a shovel. A few more strikes to the head left it sitting under a pickup truck."When I reached down to pick up the head, it raised around and did a backflip almost, and bit my finger," Anderson said. "I had to shake my hand real hard to get it to let loose."His wife insisted they go to the hospital, and by the time they arrived at Prosser Memorial Hospital 10 minutes later, Anderson's tongue was swollen and the venom was spreading. He then was taken by ambulance 30 miles to a Richland hospital to get the full series of six shots he needed.The snake head ended up in the bed of his pickup, and Anderson landed in the hospital until Wednesday afternoon.Mike Livingston, a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist, said the area where the Anderson's live is near prime snake habitat. But he said he had never heard of anyone being bit by a decapitated snake before."That's really surprising but that's an important thing to tell people," he said. "It may have been just a reflex on the part of the snake."If another rattlesnake comes along, Anderson said he'll likely try to kill it again, but said he'll grab a shovel and bury it right there."It still gives me the creeps to think that son-of-a-gun could do that," he said.

View: Full Article Source: Boston.com

Scratching at the door

Anthony North: The poltergeist. No phenomenon is more disturbing than this. In August 1977 a poltergeist manifested in the Enfield home of a single mother and her four children. One of the most virulent and highly researched cases on record, it remained with the family for fourteen months and carried out a host of phenomena from tapping on walls, through moving objects, to levitating some of the children.One child in particular - Janet - found she could communicate with the poltergeist. At various times it took her over, during which she would speak in a deep man’s voice. At one time it claimed to be a resident of a local graveyard. They get everywhere: Did this poltergeist really exist, or was it a figment of the imagination? And if it did, was it really a spirit causing the trouble? The latter is the often used explanation. Researcher Guy Lyon Playfair would blame other forms of energy.In one case he investigated, in Sao Paulo in 1973, activity began in the home of a Portuguese family when the son married. Carrying on for over six months and three house moves, Playfair himself witnessed clothes hurl themselves out of a window and a wardrobe catch fire. In the end the infestation was eased when a mystic blamed malevolent curses put on the house.The word ‘poltergeist’ is German for ‘noisy spirit’. Sometimes it even takes the form of a spirit, as happened in 1966 with the Black Monk of Pontefract. Exhibiting classic poltergeist phenomena, it eventually manifested as a black monk, seen by several members of the Pritchard family. It even physically pulled one of the children downstairs.

Polts from the past: The earliest recorded case of a poltergeist appeared in the ‘Annales Fuldenses’ in 858. It concerned an ‘evil spirit’ which threw stones and made walls shake in a house at Bingen on the Rhine.Another famous case was the Phantom Drummer of Tedworth who infested the home of magistrate John Mompesson, beginning in 1661. A vagrant claimed responsibility in 1663. William Drury had had his drum confiscated, which he liked playing in the streets, by the magistrate. He sent the infestation to get his own back.Samuel Wesley - grandfather of the founders of Methodism - had his home infested with the poltergeist called Old Jeffrey. Phenomena seemed to cling to his daughter, Hetty and included knocking noises and inexplicable footsteps in the night.In 1878 an infestation broke out in Amherst, Nova Scotia after teenager Esther Cox was nearly raped by her boyfriend. Phenomena included noises, floating furniture and spontaneous fires; as well as a strange voice which said things such as ‘Esther, you are mine to kill.’

View: Full Article | Source: Beyond the Blog

Ancient "salt cured" man found in Iran

Submitted by Marvy: Another "natural mummy"—the sixth so far— has emerged in Iran's Chehrabad Salt Mine, archaeologists say. The individual, who was naturally mummified by the preserving properties of salt over the past 1,800 years, was recently exposed when heavy rains pounded the salt mine. The functioning mine is located in the Hamzehlu region near Zanjan, a northwestern Iranian province. Scientists believe the man was a Roman Empire-era salt mine worker killed by falling rocks during an earthquake. Five other "salt men" have been found in the mine in recent years. They range in date from the Achaemenid period (539 to 333 B.C.) to the Sasanian era (A.D. 240 to 640). The salt men have proven to be scientific treasure troves, due to their advanced state of preservation.

For instance, their beards, hair and garments have remained largely intact over time. Some still had food in their stomach. Yet this most recent find has prompted concerns about how Iranian officials will extract and preserve the man. Some Iranian officials say the first five salt men have given scientists plenty to study and the newly discovered man should remain in the ground for the foreseeable future.

View: Full Article | Source: National Geographic

Cairo toe earliest fake body bit

An artificial big toe found on the foot of an ancient Egyptian mummy could be the world's earliest functional fake body part, UK experts believe. A Manchester University team hope to prove that the leather and wood "Cairo toe" not only looked the part but also helped its owner walk. They will test a replica in volunteers whose right big toe is missing. If true, the toe will predate the currently considered earliest practical prosthesis - a fake leg from 300BC. The Roman Capua Leg, made of bronze, was held at the Royal College of Surgeons in London but was destroyed by Luftwaffe bombs during the Second World War. Lead researcher Jacky Finch said: "The toe dates from between 1069 and 664BC, so if we can prove it was functional then we will have pushed back prosthetic medicine by as much as 700 years."

Colleagues at the University of Salford will also be testing a second, even older ancient Egyptian big toe which is currently on display at the British Museum. This artefact, from between 1295 and 664BC, is made from cartonnage, a kind of papier-mâché made from linen, glue and plaster. Like the Cairo toe, this too shows signs of wear, suggesting that it was worn by its owner in life and not simply attached to the foot during mummification for religious or ritualistic reasons.

View: Full Article | Source: BBC News

Brain-injured man 'jump started' awake

A man with severe brain injuries who spent six years in a near-vegetative state can now chew his food, watch a movie and talk with family thanks to a brain pacemaker that may change the way such patients are treated, US researchers say. The 38-year-old man is the first person in a minimally conscious state to be treated with deep-brain stimulation, a treatment that uses a pacemaker and two electrodes to send impulses into a part of the brain regulating consciousness.The man's awakening may change the way doctors think about people with severe brain injuries, who are largely unresponsive but still have some level of consciousness.These patients typically spend the rest of their lives in nursing homes, with little efforts at rehabilitation and slim chance of recovery."This is a group of patients that are really, in many ways, forgotten about," says Dr Ali Rezai, director of the Cleveland Clinic's Center for Neurological Restoration.

"We have to do more research, obviously, but I think down the line it will change the way we are treating or even looking at people with severe brain injury."Rezai and a team of specialists from the JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute in New Jersey and the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York detail the patient's progress in the journal Nature.The doctors used computer-generated maps, image-guided navigation and 3D mapping of the brain to manoeuvre electrodes to areas deep in the brain.They targeted the central thalamus, a region that helps adjust brain activity to match cognitive demands.They then connect the leads to programmable pacemaker batteries, implanted in the chest.

View: Full Article | Source: ABC.net.au

Unexplained material falling from the heavens

We've all heard the accounts of strange things falling from the skies. Everything from squid, fish, frogs, cows, and blood have been reported. Recently a woman saw worms falling in Louisiana, and in India, blood red rain was seen. Most of these incidents can be explained, usually by a waterspout or tornado. In the case of the cows, a Russian aircraft was blamed, and the 'blood' turned out to be water colored by a micro-organism. Plagues of Frogs, Blood and Cows...and Jelly. Even the bible gets in on the game, relating plagues of frogs and brimstone falling from the heavens to punish Pharoah. Brimstone, thought to be sulfur, raining down as part of God's wrath has been lacking since biblical times. But something akin to it may have fallen in New Jersey in 1833. But it wasn't sulfur, it was Jelly. In the town of Rahway people saw what they described as firey rain falling, and on the ground were lumps of a gelatinous substance. By afternoon the jelly had dissappeared, leaving in its place white particles. Another case from 1696 tells us of a substance described as butter falling over large parts of southern Ireland. It was yellow, stank and was consumed by grazing cattle who apparently suffered no ill effects.

The locals promptly collected the material and used it as a medicine.In 1846 in Vilna, Lithuania a grey jelly fell during a rainstorm. When burned the material gave off a sweet smell, and was soluble in water. Angel Hair and a UFO Link.Even stranger is a material known as 'Angel Hair'. There are a number of accounts of this fiberous substance observed to have fallen from the sky, and any attempt at collecting it results in it completely subliming away. It can appear similar to spider webs drifting in the wind, or even has been described as being like cotton. The origin of angel hair has yet to be determined other than an unsatisfying blanket explanation of it being airborne spider webs.

View: Full Article | Source: The Paranormal Report

Who killed the dodo ?

For such an iconic animal, it seems strange that we know next to nothing about the dodo - except, of course, that it is dead. We don't know how it lived, what it ate, how many eggs it sat on or even whether it was fat or thin. But that could all change with a scientific expedition just begun in Mauritius, the remote island in the Indian Ocean where the dodo lived for millions of years before being driven to extinction in the late 17th century, just 80 years after it was sighted by European sailors.British and Dutch scientists have joined forces to excavate a unique dodo burial ground where the bones of hundreds and possibly thousands of birds have been preserved in marshland for more than 10,000 years. It will be the first time scientists have had access to well-preserved dodo remains that have remained untouched. At last, some light maybe shed on a mysterious and emblematic creature that has come to epitomise how easy it is for man to wipe out a species.The Mare aux Songes area of Mauritius was once a dry coastal forest which later became marshland.

Last year scientists said they thought the site contained a mass of bones from a rich variety of animals - giant tortoises, dodos and other extinct birds and reptiles - all of which long pre-date the arrival of the first humans to inhabit Mauritius in 1598. "The discovery is of huge importance and will give us a new understanding of how dodos lived," explained Julian Hume, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Natural History Museum in London who has helped to organise the expedition.

View: Full Article | Source: Independent

Electric fish on verge of evolutionary split

Electric fish emit weak signals from an organ in their tails that serves as a battery. Different emissions signal aggression, fear or courtship. While the fish can apparently understand each others' warning signals, "They seem to only choose to mate with other fish having the same signature waveform as their own," explains neurobiologist Matt Arnegard of Cornell University.But in the Ivindo River in Gabon, Arnegard and colleagues have found fish with the same DNA emitting distinctly different signals. The fish are likely on the verge of splitting into two species, the researchers announced today."We think we are seeing evolution in action," Arnegard said. Because electricity is easily transmitted in water, many species of amphibians and fish have adapted to detect weak electric signals. Some, like sharks, use it to find prey. Others, like the electric eel, generate deadly voltages for defense or to kill prey. Others emit and detect electrical signals primarily as a means to communicate with their own kind.Electric fish are called mormyrids.

The roughly 20 distinct species that have been identified in the river, by their varying DNA, each emit distinct signals, which is the basis for Arnegard's new conclusion.The process of splitting one species into two is called speciation. Scientists figure there are two ways it can happen. Groups can become geographically separated and take on new traits as their genes mutate. Or, animals can stay together but for some reason mate selectively to form distinct groups. The latter method, called sympatric speciation, is seen to be less likely and somewhat controversial."Many scientists claim it's not feasible," Arnegard said. "But it could be a detection problem because speciation occurs over so many generations."

View: Full Article | Source: Live Science

Millipede with 666 legs rediscovered

She is all legs and after 27 years, she is showing not one but 666 of her rarely seen limbs.After years of searching, scientists have rediscovered Illacme plenipes, a millipede that is the world's leggiest creature, in a tiny patch of San Benito County, California. This type of millipede was first discovered in 1926.The word millipede literally means a thousand feet. In reality, no millipede has so many. The I. plenipes, however, comes closest, with the females possessing up to 750 legs based on previous finds.Over the course of three trips to the California Floristic Province, scientists found four male specimens and three females, which they report in the June 8 issue of the journal Nature.The females, as in turned out, were not only longer at about 1.3 inches, but also had up to 666 legs. The males averaged 0.6 inches in length and walked on no more than 402 legs.

The males and females probably start out at the same size. Females grow larger and develop more body segments, explained the report's co-author Paul Marek of East Carolina University. "They are also wider."It isn't known if the females have accelerated growth or just keep growing once the males have stopped. "Females may just continue to add segments," Marek told LiveScience. "It remains a mystery."

View: Full Article | Source: Live Science

7 new wonders of the world chosen

Submitted by Pendekar Timur: The Great Wall of China, Rome's Colosseum, India's Taj Mahal and three architectural marvels from Latin America were among the new seven wonders of the world chosen in a global poll released on Saturday. Jordan's Petra was the seventh winner. Peru's Machu Picchu, Brazil's Statue of Christ Redeemer and Mexico's Chichen Itza pyramid also made the cut.About 100 million votes were cast by the Internet and cellphone text messages, said New7Wonders, the nonprofit organization that conducted the poll.The seven beat out 14 other nominated landmarks, including the Eiffel Tower, Easter Island in the Pacific, the Statue of Liberty, the Acropolis, Russia's Kremlin and Australia's Sydney Opera House.The pyramids of Giza, the only surviving structures from the original seven wonders of the ancient world, were assured of retaining their status in addition to the new seven after indignant Egyptian officials said it was a disgrace they had to compete.The campaign to name new wonders was launched in 1999 by the Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber. Almost 200 nominations came in, and the list was narrowed to the 21 most-voted by the start of 2006. Organizers admit there was no foolproof way to prevent people from voting more than once for their favorite.

A Peruvian in national costume held up Macchu Picchu's award to the sky and bowed to the crowd with his hands clasped, eliciting one of the biggest cheers from the audience of 50,000 people at a soccer stadium in Portugal's capital, Lisbon.Many jeered when the Statue of Liberty was announced as one of the candidates. Portugal was widely opposed to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.Another Swiss adventurer, Bertrand Piccard, pilot of the first hot-air balloon to fly nonstop around the world, announced one of the winners — then launched into an appeal for people to combat climate change and stand up for human rights before being ushered off the stage.The Colosseum, the Great Wall, Machu Picchu, the Taj Mahal and Petra had been among the leading candidates since January, while the Statue of Christ Redeemer received a surge in votes more recently.The Statue of Liberty and Australia's Sydney Opera House were near the bottom of the list from the start.

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Carl Jung - a paranormal Einstein ?

Anthony North: Paranormal research is more than narrating the cases an investigator comes across. Also important is the idea that the cases can be analysed in order to provide theory for what is going on. As data leads to theory in science, so too with the world of mystery.The problem with this approach, however, is that few theorists have achieved the audience they deserve. However, some stand out above the throng. Perhaps the greatest of those was psychoanalyst, Carl Gustav Jung.Young Jung: Arthur C Clarke once commented that not only did the paranormal not have its Einstein, it was still awaiting its Aristotle. I disagree with this statement. Jung fits the bill more than adequately, rationalizing the paranormal like no other researcher.Jung was born in 1875 in Kesswil, Switzerland, the son of a very spiritual family. As an adult he became vain and obsessive and had many affairs, having almost a sex addiction. However, he was very much a genius, trapped between the academic and the more esoteric.This was apparent to him from the age of three when he began to have mystical dreams and was convinced another person lived inside him. He named this person Philemon and saw him as age old wisdom.

The psychologist: If Jung hadn’t become an academic, he would have become a great medium, already exhibiting elements of other personalities inside him. However, he trained medically in Basel before moving to a Zurich psychiatric clinic in 1900, eventually becoming a student of Freud.Vital to this period was his identification of two states of mind - introversion and extroversion. The mentally healthy person formed a balance between these two extremes, finding himself and realising who he is through a process Jung was to call Individuation.Most people only discovered their true self following what Jung termed a ‘midlife crisis’, when material values failed to satisfy, requiring an understanding of the more esoteric.

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Chile's missing lake mystery solved

Scientists said that a lake in southern Chile that mysteriously disappeared last month developed a crack which allowed the water to drain away. A buildup of water opened a crack in an ice wall along one side of the lake. Water flowed through the crack into a nearby fjord and from there into the sea, leaving behind a dry lake-bed littered with icebergs, scientists told Chilean state television on Tuesday."It looks like it's slowly filling up with water again," said Andres Rivera, a glacier expert who headed a team which recently flew over the lake in a bid to solve the mystery.The lake is situated in the Magallanes region in Patagonia and is fed by melt-water from glaciers. Earlier this year it had a surface area of 4 to 5 hectares (10-12 acres) -- about the size of 10 soccer fields.Scientists noticed it had disappeared during a routine patrol of the area in May.Rivera said the incident was evidence of the effects of global warming.

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The many faces of the paranormal

On August 23, 1971 the first of many images appeared on the kitchen floor of Maria Gomez Pereira's home in Belmez, Spain. This first image was of a man and was so disturbing in its grimacing appearance that it prompted Maria to have the cement floor torn out and replaced. A week later, the second of what would be many unique portraits made its ghostly impression on the floor, which the family also - understandably - wanted destroyed. Hearing about the faces, the Mayor of Belmez had part of the floor removed and saved to try to determine what was causing the ghostly faces.Under the slab, human remains from a medieval cemetery were found and properly reburied off the site, however two weeks later yet another face appeared on the new floor. More and more faces in increasingly elaborate arrangements came and went on the floor until the family finally sealed the kitchen, however this simply resulted in more faces appearing elsewhere in the house. By now well publicized and attracting the attention of investigators, the phenomena was intensively studied, including the placement of microphones which reportedly picked up sounds inaudible to the human ear that seemed to be muttering strange languages and agonizing moans seemingly choreographed to the grimaces and painful contortions of the faces on the kitchen floor.

Maria died in 2004, however the faces have continued, calling into question theories that the old woman had been faking the whole affair. Further, chemical studies of the cement have been somewhat unsatisfying, with multiple potential explanations being advanced, from acids to paint but none of them really seem to cover all aspects of the phenomena.The annals of the paranormal are replete with images of people on inanimate objects. From Christ himself to Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, we recognize faces in patterns and often attribute these images to a wide variety of people. Most of these can easily be explained by wishful thinking and recognizing patterns among the chaos, but sometimes a story can be attached to the phenomena that might suggest that the spirit of a disembodied human may be able to manifest a picture of themselves that the living can see.

View: Full Article | Source: The paranormal report

Final your work.. post-mortem

Most ghosts are hopelessly vague, so much so that one wonders if you can accomplish anything at all in the afterlife. They appear and disappear transiently, leave us muffled and hard to understand EVPs, and for the life of them can't do anything on demand or repeatable to prove their existance beyond all shadow of a doubt. Of course, there are exceptions.Two resounding examples come in the form of mediums who have made contact with dead novelists and composers. This in itself isn't out of the ordinary, famous people are allegedly channeled all the time. But this duet of cases stands above the crowd in that actual artistic work resulted from the contact in such a way that the medium should not have been capable of faking.The first is the famous Mrs. Rosemary Brown who died in 2001. Early in life she had been visited by the ghost of Franz Liszt. At the time she had no idea who this white haired man in the flowing black cassock was until she saw a picture of him years later. At the age of seven he told her that he would make her a famous musician one day, before dissappearing for decades. He showed back up unexpectedly in 1964, and literally began releasing new compositions through her. He was soon joined by the spirits of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Rachmaninoff, Chopin and others. Some of them dictated notes directly to her, others controlled her hands on the piano and she wrote the notes down. Often, she couldn't even play the compositions as they were beyond her skills as a musician, but as she got older her piano playing markedly improved. She claimed this was because Brahms, Rachmaninoff and Liszt had been tutoring her on the piano!

The consensus from the music world was, mostly, that the compositions bore a strong resemblance to the works of the composers. Some even stated that the compositions couldn't be faked without years of training, which she clearly never had. Some of the pieces were simple, but others were apparently very complex. In any case, Mrs. Brown was either a very talented composer herself, or she really was in contact with the spirits of a host of deceased composers.The other outstanding example is that of Mrs. J. H. Curran of St. Louis, Missouri who in 1913 made contact through a ouija board with a spirit calling herself Patience Worth. Claiming to have lived in 17th century America and killed by indians, the spirit of Patiences Worth dictated to Mrs. Curran a number of novels from a variety of different historical periods in multiple different literary styles. From a period novel written in medieval English, which Mrs. Curran had no way of studying, to her novel "Hope Trueblood" set in the 19th century which recieved critical acclaim even from reviewers that had no idea that the novel had been dictated by a spirit.

View: Full Article | Source: The Paranormal Report

Butterfly shows evolution at work

Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: Scientists say they have seen one of the fastest evolutionary changes ever observed in a species of butterfly. The tropical blue moon butterfly has developed a way of fighting back against parasitic bacteria. Six years ago, males accounted for just 1% of the blue moon population on two islands in the South Pacific. But by last year, the butterflies had evolved a gene to keep the bacteria in check and male numbers were up to about 40% of the population. Scientists believe the comeback is due to "suppressor" genes that control the Wolbachia bacteria that is passed down from the mother and kills the male embryos before they hatch. "To my knowledge, this is the fastest evolutionary change that has ever been observed," said Sylvain Charlat, of University College London, UK, whose study appears in the journal Science. Gregory Hurst, a University College researcher who worked with Mr Charlat, added: "We usually think of natural selection as acting slowly, over hundreds of thousands of years.

"But the example in this study happened in the blink of the eye, in terms of evolutionary time, and is a remarkable thing to get to observe." The team first documented the massive imbalance in the sex ratio of the blue moon butterfly (Hypolimnas bolina) on the Samoan islands of Savaii and Upolu in 2001. In 2006, they started a new survey after an increase in reports of male sightings at Upolo. They found that the numbers of male butterflies had either reached or were approaching those of females.

View: Full Article | Source: BBC News

New hope over 'extinct' echidna

Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: A species of egg-laying mammal, named after TV naturalist Sir David Attenborough, is not extinct as was previously thought, say scientists. On a recent visit to Papua's Cyclops Mountains, researchers uncovered burrows and tracks made by the Attenborough's long-beaked echidna. The species is only known to biologists through a specimen from 1961, which is housed in a museum in the Netherlands. The team will return to Papua next year to find and photograph the creature. The month-long expedition by scientists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) involved travelling to parts of the mountain range, covered by thick jungle, which had remained unexplored for more than 45 years. Jonathan Baillie, ZSL's Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (Edge) programme manager, said: "We hope that Sir David Attenborough will be delighted to hear that his namesake species is still surviving in the wilds of the Papaun jungle."

The creature had not been recorded since a Dutch botanist collected the only known specimen in the cloud forest of the Cyclops Mountains in 1961. As a result, it was widely assumed that the shoe box-sized species (Zaglossus attenboroughi) was extinct. But while the Edge team were in the area, they spoke to local tribespeople who said that they had seen the creature as recently as 2005. The scientists also discovered "nose pokes", holes in the ground made by the echidnas as they stuck their long noses into soil to feed. In the programme's blog, Dr Baillie wrote: "Attenborough's echidna is one of five monotremes (egg-laying mammals) that first inhabited the Earth around the time of the dinosaurs.

View: Full Article | Source: BBC News

Bigfoot researchers record thermal images

A group that searched for bigfoot in the U.P. woods this weekend plans to return in August. A four-day expedition in Marquette County by the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, collecting evidence supporting the existence of �sasquatches� began with mixed results but concluded with �excitement,� according to BFRO organizer/ researcher Matthew Moneymaker. Just after midnight Saturday, veteran BFRO investigators Pam Porter of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Don Young of Phillips, Wis., saw �grainy blips� through the viewfinder of a thermal imaging camera near where a previous bigfoot sighting had been reported, Moneymaker said, and they caught some of what they saw on film. About the same time, Minnesota-based researcher Chris Perlock filmed �something behind trees� on his thermal camera, �possibly hunkered down or crawling,� Moneymaker said.�We are very excited,� Moneymaker said. �We definitely cannot claim to have bigfoot on video, or even that what we have will impress the rest of the world. We still have to review the footage. But I can say that these are our best thermal images yet, on two cameras.� �We�re going to alter our schedule in order to come back to Marquette in August,� Moneymaker said.

�We�re going into that area again with more equipment.� The exact location will remain confidential, Moneymaker said. The next BFRO expedition is scheduled for Northern Utah July 19-22, followed by New Mexico on Aug. 2-4.It was Wednesday night, Moneymaker said, as BFRO investigators were attempting to �lure� bigfoot into camera range with a series of �howls� and other sounds that Porter captured a single response with her audio recorder. The tape of that response was evaluated during a Thursday briefing by the rest of the BFRO team.�We weren�t sure what it was,� Porter said, �but we were able to rule out an owl, a coyote, or a wolf. It was not any of those animals.�Thursday night that area was �uneventful,� Moneymaker said, and the decision was make to move the search area to remote site near Ishpeming, with only the Minnesota team of Perlock and Andy Peeper remaining behind in their tent. Friday night Perlock and Peeper heard �bi-pedal footsteps� and other sounds.

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World's tallest man meets the shortest

In terms of height they are worlds apart.The world's tallest man, Bao Xishun today shook hands with He Pingping who claims to be Earth's shortest.But these two men actually hail from the same region of Inner Mongolia. While Mr Xishun, 56, towers above everyone at an astonishing 7.9ft, 19-year-old Mr Pingping is a mere 2.4ft high. Bao Xishun, a herdsman from Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, was recently married in a traditional ceremony to a 28-year-old saleswoman from his hometown. At 5ft 6" Xia Shujian only comes up to his elbow and is half his age. He claims he was of normal height until he was 16 when he experienced a growth spurt and reached his present height seven years later.Mr Xishun was confirmed as the tallest person by the Guinness Book of Records last year. Mr Pingping was born nearby in Wulanchabu city, Inner Mongolia. His father claims he was only the size of an adult's palm at birth.

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Full Moon sends dogs and cats wild

Injuries and illness among dogs and cats seems to be higher during full moon than at other times of the month, a new study finds. But researchers don't know why. The study, reported in the July 15 issue of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, finds emergency room visits for these pets increases during or near the full moon. In studying 11,940 cases at the Colorado State University Veterinary Medical Center, the researchers found the risk of emergency room visits to be 23 percent higher for cats and 28 percent higher for dogs on days surrounding full moons. The types of emergencies ranged from cardiac arrest to trauma. "If you talk to any person, from kennel help, nurse, front-desk person to doctor, you frequently hear the comment on a busy night, 'Gee is it a full moon?'" said study leader Raegan Wells of the university's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. "There is the belief that things are busier on full-moon nights."

Belief does not make for good science, however. And despite the newfound numbers, Wells doesn't know what sort of lunacy is at play. "It is difficult to interpret the clinical significance of these findings," she said. Research into mysterious lunar connections has a long history of baffling and mixed results. A pair of studies in 2001 looked into how many humans are bitten by animals during full moons. British researchers found a lunar link, while the separate study in Australia uncovered no connection.

View: Full Article | Source: Live Science

Dinosaurs died agonizing deaths

Fossilized dinosaurs often have wide-open mouths, heads thrown back and tails that curve toward the head. Paleontologists have long assumed the dinosaurs died in water and the currents drifted the bones into that position, or that rigor mortis or drying muscles, tendons and ligaments contorted the limbs."I'm reading this in the literature and thinking, 'This doesn't make any sense to me as a veterinarian,'" said Cynthia Marshall Faux, a veterinarian-turned-paleontologist at the Museum of the Rockies.Faux and a colleague say brain damage and asphyxiation are the more likely culprits.A classic example of the posture, which has puzzled paleontologists for ages, is the 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryx, the first-known example of a feathered dinosaur and the proposed link between dinosaurs and present-day birds.

"Virtually all articulated specimens of Archaeopteryx are in this posture, exhibiting a classic pose of head thrown back, jaws open, back and tail reflexed backward and limbs contracted," said Kevin Padian, professor of integrative biology and curator in the Museum of Paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley. He Faux (pronounced "Fox") published their findings this week in the journal Paleobiology.Some animals found in this posture may have suffocated in ash during a volcanic eruption, consistent with the fact that many fossils are found in ash deposits, Faux and Padian said. But many other possibilities exist, including disease, brain trauma, severe bleeding, thiamine deficiency or poisoning.

View: Full Article | Source: Live Science

Fossil traces deep dinosaur roots

Scientists have described a new primitive dinosaur species, Eocursor parvus, which lived in the Late Triassic - about 210 million years ago. Unearthed in South Africa's Free State, the creature appears to have been a small, agile plant-eater. The team tells a Royal Society journal that Eocursor sheds light on the early evolution of the Ornithischia. This important group included the well known herbivororous dinosaurs Triceratops and Stegosaurus. The fossil specimen was first identified in 1993 but only recently appraised. It is by far the most complete example of a Triassic ornithischian known, comprising skull and skeletal material, including bones of the backbone, arms, pelvis and legs. In its day, Eocursor would have been little bigger than a fox. Its bone structure and light form suggest it moved swiftly. The scientists say the creature provides the earliest evidence for the origins of many skeletal characteristics seen in the ornithischian group, including the backward-pointing pelvis.

A comparison has been done across a wide range of specimens and this indicates that Late Triassic ornithischians were really quite rare. The group then diversified in the subsequent early Jurassic, filling empty herbivorous niches following mass extinctions of other creatures. "We know ornithischians were a very successful and important group of plant-eating dinosaurs that first appeared 220 million years ago, in the late part of the Triassic Period," explained Dr Richard Butler, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum, London, UK.

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Huge bird dino unearthed in China

The fossilised remains of a giant bird-like dinosaur have been uncovered in the region of Inner Mongolia, China. While some have theorised that meat-eating dinosaurs got smaller as they evolved to be more bird-like, this beast weighed about 1,400kg (3,080lbs). That is about 35 times heavier than other similar feathered dinosaurs. Nature journal reports that the beaked animal was 8m (26ft) long and twice as tall as a man at the shoulder; yet it was only a young adult when it died. The authors suggest the dinosaur's enormous size was due to a fast growth rate, faster even than the precocious Tyrannosaurus rex. In truth, though, just what it ate is really mystery. Gigantoraptor erlianensis had some features associated with meat-eating dinosaurs, such as sharp claws for tearing flesh; but it also had some features associated with plant-eaters, such as a small head and long neck.

Chinese researchers uncovered the fossilised remains of the flightless giant in the Erlian basin in Inner Mongolia. The researchers had originally thought they had found the bones of a tyrannosaur - the group of dinosaurs to which T. rex belongs - due to their large size. The team has established that the creature lived about 70 million years ago, in the late Cretaceous Period. According to lines of arrested growth detected on its bones, it died in its 11th year of life. "It was a very surprising discovery, not at all what we expected," said Xu Ling, a palaeontologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and co-author on the Nature paper. "We think it's the largest feathered animal ever to have been discovered."

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Meet the giant spear-fishing penguins

Hollywood gave us all-singing, all-dancing penguins, and surfing penguins, but leave it to evolution to give us giant, prehistoric spear-fishing penguins from Peru. In a case of fact being stranger than fiction, or at least animation, paleontologists have discovered the fossilized remains of a fearsome new species of penguin that lived on the southern coast of Peru about 36 million years ago, according to a study released Monday.The ancient bird, Icadyptes salasi, stood five foot tall and had a pointed seven-inch beak which it probably used to spear its prey.The now extinct penguin species is one of the largest ever reported and was recovered from the coastal desert of Peru.Paleontologists also discovered the skull and partial skeleton of a second extinct penguin species, called Perudyptes devriesi, in the same region.That penguin lived around 42 million years ago and was comparable in size to the modern King Penguin, 0.75 to .90 meters (2.5 to three feet), which makes its home on sub-Antarctic island groups, including the Falkland Islands.The penguin fossils are among the most complete ever recovered and are challenging long-held assumptions about the timing and patterns of penguin evolution and dispersal.

Paleontologists and students of the penguin lineage had assumed that penguins evolved in colder climates in the Antarctic and in New Zealand and had only moved to lower latitudes closer to the equator about 10 million years ago -- long after significant global cooling about 34 million years ago."We tend to think of penguins as being cold-adapted species, even the small penguins in equatorial regions today," said Julia Clarke, a paleontologist and assistant professor of marine, Earth and atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State University, in Raleigh."But the new fossils date back to one of the warmest periods in 65 million years of Earth's history. The evidence indicates that penguins reached low latitude regions more than 30 million years prior to our previous estimates."

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'First west Europe tooth' found

Scientists in Spain say that they have found a tooth from a distant human ancestor that is more than one million years old. The tooth, a pre-molar, was discovered on Wednesday at the Atapuerca site in northern Spain's Burgos Province. It represented western Europe's "oldest human fossil remain", a statement from the Atapuerca Foundation said. The foundation said it was awaiting final results before publishing its findings in a scientific journal. Several caves containing evidence of prehistoric human occupation have been found in Atapuerca. In 1994 fossilised remains called Homo antecessor (Pioneer Man) - believed to date back 800,000 years - were unearthed there. Scientists had previously thought that Homo heidelbergensis, dating back 600,000 years, were Europe's oldest inhabitants.

Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, co-director of research at the site, said that the newly discovered tooth could be as much as 1.2 million years old. "Now we finally have the anatomical evidence of the hominids that fabricated tools more than one million years ago," the statement said. It was not yet possible to confirm to which species the tooth belonged, it said, but initial analyses "allow us to suppose it is an ancestor of Homo antecessor"

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Ancient American bird was glider

The largest bird known to have taken to the skies would have been a remarkable glider, scientists say. A North American team has studied the flight abilities of Argentavis magnificens, which lived six million years ago in Argentina. With its seven-metre (23ft) wingspan, the animal must have been an expert at riding thermals and updrafts. But, the team tells PNAS journal, at 70kg (155lbs) it might have struggled to get airborne by flapping its wings. Instead, the group believes, Argentavis probably used the same technique to get into the air as that employed by modern hang-gliders - by running downhill or by launching from a perch to pick up speed and lift. "How to get airborne was the problem," explained Sankar Chatterjee, a professor of geology at the Museum of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, US. "But once it was on a thermal, it could easily rise up a mile or two without any flapping of its wings - a free ride, just circling.

Then at the top, the bird could simply glide to the next thermal and in this way it could certainly travel 200 miles a day," he told BBC News. Professor Chatterjee and colleagues estimated the flight parameters of fossil Argentavis bones and plugged the information into computer flight models. The results indicate the bird - which would have rivalled some light aeroplanes for size - had all the makings of a high-performance glider.

View: Full Article | Source: BBC News

Behind the curse

Anthony North: It can get to you. It can grip you, turn you inside out, and even kill you. At least, that�s what some people believe. But even if you don�t believe, the idea of the curse can still send a frightening tingle down the spine. From witches sticking pins in an effigy, to the Voodoo bokor placing a curse on you, occult literature is full of incidences of successful curses, driving people mad and making them have accidents. But is there a reality to the curse? Coincidence: The usual sceptic�s answer to the curse is that life is full of coincidences, and some time, some place, life will throw up incidences that suggest a curse could be at work. But in reality, it is nothing at all. It�s just the inevitability of chance.Those who take a Jungian view would add synchronicity to coincidence. Here, coincidences become meaningful, as if your own mind is affecting the world about you. In this scenario, if you believe a curse can work, then you make it happen yourself.And then there are the people who just seem to have bad luck. Obstacles rise up before them, and they can form an attitude that they are cursed throughout life. Studies suggest luck is all to do with being able to calculate odds. Is this important to the issue?

A calculating mind: Clearly if you can calculate odds better than the average, good luck will seem to cling to you; and equally clearly, if you cannot, then you'll go through life from one disaster to another. In one sense, this can be related to an optimistic or pessimistic state of mind.For instance, the optimist tends to walk through life, whilst the pessimist expects to see disaster and so he does. Indeed, pessimism can have an effect if you think you're cursed. And it is all to do with a feeling of absolute hopelessness.There is a medical term called �vegal inhibition.� This is a state where a sense of hopelessness slowly shuts down the autonomic nervous system. If it goes to the ultimate, death can be the result. A belief in a curse can, it seems, be a killer.

View: Full Article | Source: Beyond the Blog

Black magic in Great Britain

Ed Boyle: England is positively crawling with witches, warlocks, wizards and water diviners. There is a hardly a village in the Kingdom where you will fail to find someone gazing into a crystal ball, offering to tell your fortune, or getting involved in close encounters with aliens. Forget Salem, when it comes to the occult, we've cornered the market. Harry Potter isn't just a best seller and an international movie hit - it is real life for many of us. There are parts of England where one in ten of the people believe they have the power to teleport their neighbors - pick them up and spirit them away, literally. The northern county of Yorkshire, for example, is packed with telepathists, time-travelers, enchanters, mediums and astrologers. Essex - to the east of London - contains the highest number of people subscribing to ancient pagan customs and rituals, and my own home county, Kent - just south of the capital - has three times the national average of psychic healers.

This isn't just mumbo jumbo. It is the result of detailed academic research overseen by a leading cleric of the Church of England which normally has a vested interest in playing such things down. But even the Church can't disguise the extent of this occult revival. The survey found only two places in the land where it fails to flourish - the industrial Midlands of England - which is a bit short of the open green spaces most witches prefer (nowhere safe to land your broomstick), and parts of Western Scotland, which is far too cold and bleak for anything.

View: Full Article | Source: CBS News

Indian state gripped by fear of witches

Authorities in a remote area of eastern India have appealed to the public not to conduct witch hunts following rumours that roving bands of witches had been killing people swept the region, media reports said Wednesday. Panic has spread through Chhattisgarh state following reports that witches were knocking on people�s doors and asking for onions and chapatti � local staple foods � and that anyone who handed out the food would die. Chhattisgarh, India�s most impoverished state, remains deeply traditional and superstitions and beliefs in the occult are rampant. Last year at least 10 women were killed there on suspicion of being witches. �We have asked people not to believe in gossip mongering and try and think rationally,� Subodh Kumar Singh, a local government official told the Indian Express newspaper. �Awareness campaigns have also been launched asking people not to harass women by calling them �tonhi� (witch),� Singh was quoted as saying.

Many people, including local politicians, daubed prayers written in cow dung on their walls in the belief that it would ward off witches, the newspaper reported. The paper did not report any actual deaths attributed to the current rumours. Local officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

View: Full Article | Source: Daily Times

UFOs spotted over Northern Ireland

Residents in County Down have raised the possibility of a UFO sighting above the skies of Bangor. Several callers to BBC Northern Ireland have reported a series of strange orange lights in the night sky. Air traffic control at Belfast International Airport said it had also received reports about the sightings, including one from the Coastguard. However, the airport said it had no record of any aircraft in the sky at the time. The callers said the sightings had been made on Saturday evening. Clifford Rossbottom from Bangor told the BBC: "There were three orange globes - nearly in a straight line - they were an absolutely fascinating sight. "I watched them for five minutes, and then very slowly, they just disappeared. "The only thing I thought it could have been was three high-flying aircraft. "If that is not the case, then I have no idea, and the only other thing I can think of is in fact that they were UFOs."

View: Full Article | Source: BBC News