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