Three women in Zimbabwe Charged With Raping Men (weird)

Three women in Zimbabwe accused of raping at least four men to get their sperm for traditional rituals.
The women, who have been charged with 17 counts of aggravated indecent assault, go on trial today in a case that has shocked the country.

Police officials in Zimbabwe believe the alleged perpetrators are part of a nationwide syndicate that may be using the sperm for a traditional ritual claiming to make people lucky and wealthy.

They were apprehended in a town about 170 miles outside of the capital city of Harare after police found 31 used condoms in their car. At least nine men have come forward with similar stories of being attacked.
One of the alleged victims told his story on a popular national talk show called Maichiamba. He said he was raped after accepting a car ride from the women.

"One of the women threw water in my face and they injected me with something that gave me a strong sexual desire. They stopped the car and made me have sex with each of them several times, using condoms," he said. "When they had finished they left me in the bush totally naked."
The man said he went to the hospital to be treated for the drug's effects and called the police. After facing ridicule and scorn over the attack, he said he came forward publicly because he wanted to help other victims.
Female Rapists Go On Trial Today

"I've noticed that the men who have come forward are really traumatized after seeking medical assistance of these rapes and need counselling," Kelvin Hazangwi, National Director of the Padare Menâ's Forum on Gender, tells ABC News. "Some of them, their partners left them and they could not go back to their families. Their social networks have broken down."

Hazangwi says that male rape is still a taboo subject in a society that has very clear definitions of masculinity. For example the women have been charged with aggravated indecent assault rather than rape because a man being sexually assaulted by a woman is not recognized under Zimbabwean rape laws.

"This case is shocking not only for the men but also for the society as a whole," says Hazangwi. "Many people drove to the police station just to get a glimpse or a view of the women that would rape men."
The women have denied the charges, claiming they are prostitutes and did not have time to dispose of the condoms. Cousins Rosemary Chakwizira, 24, and Sophie Nhokwara, 26 told local media that since being out on $300 bail, they've been in hiding after having their lives threatened.

"Are we not suspects until proven guilty? It's as if people have already made their judgments and found us guilty," Nhokwara said in an interview with New Zimbabwe.com.
Regardless of the outcome, the case has started a dialogue in the country about attitudes and treatment of sexual violence against men
"We are realizing that rape whether it happens to grandmother, a child, or a man is wrong," Hazangwi says.

Story : ABC News

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Scientists question if wi-fi laptops can damage sperm/BBC News

Scientists are questioning if using wi-fi on a laptop to roam the internet could harm a man's fertility, after lab work suggested ejaculated sperm were significantly damaged after only four hours of exposure.
The benchside tests showed sperm were less able to swim and had changes in the genetic code that they carry.

Experts stress this does not mean the same would occur in a real-life setting and say men should not worry unduly.
But they are recommending more studies.
The preliminary research, published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, looked at semen samples from 29 healthy donors.
Each donor sample was separated out into two pots. One of these pots was then stored for four hours next to a laptop that was wirelessly connected to the internet. The other was stored under identical conditions, minus the laptop.
The scientists, from Argentina and the US, suspect that the effect seen is unrelated to the heat kicked out by a laptop, although heat can damage sperm.
Under investigation

The UK's Health Protection Agency has been closely monitoring the safety of wi-fi.
It says people using wi-fi, or those in the proximity of wi-fi equipment, are exposed to the radio signals it emits - and some of the transmitted energy in the signals is absorbed in their bodies.
However, the signals are very low power.
The HPA says there is no consistent evidence to date that exposure to radio signals from wi-fi adversely affects the health of the general population.

UK fertility expert Dr Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield, said: "The study is very well conducted, but we should be cautious about what it may infer about the fertility of men who regularly use laptops with wi-fi on their laps.
"Ejaculated sperm are particularly sensitive to many factors because outside the body they don't have the protection of the other cells, tissues and fluids of the body in which they are stored before ejaculation. Therefore, we cannot infer from this study that because a man might use a laptop with wi-fi on his lap for more than four hours then his sperm will necessarily be damaged and he will be less fertile.
"We need large epidemiological studies to determine this, and to my knowledge these have not yet been performed."

He said men should still be cautious about balancing a laptop on their thighs for hours on end.
"We know from other studies that the bottom of laptops can become incredibly hot and inadvertent testicular heating is a risk factor for poor sperm quality.
"There is a case report of a man who burnt his penis after using a laptop resting on his lap for a long time. Therefore, there are many reasons to try and use a laptop on a table where possible, and this may in itself ameliorate any theoretical concerns about wi-fi."

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Oldest Hairy Microbe Fossils Discovered (weird science)

This microscopic fossil closely resembles a modern tintinnid, a single-celled organism that is a type of plankton. Fossil ciliates including this one were recently identified in a deposit in Mongolia, and they are more than 100 million years older than the previously known fossils of this type. Image credit: Tanja Bosak

This microscopic fossil closely resembles a modern tintinnid, a single-celled organism that is a type of plankton. Fossil ciliates including this one were recently identified in a deposit in Mongolia, and they are more than 100 million years older than the previously known fossils of this type.

Ancient rock deposits, laid down between two massive ice ages, reveal the oldest known fossils for two types of single-celled creatures: Tube-shelled foraminifera and hairy, vase-shape ciliates.

Both closely resemble microbes living today. But the climate they lived in may have been quite different. The fossils appear in limestone deposited on the ocean floor between 635 million and 715 million years ago. This period was marked by two "Snowball Earth" events, when ice may have covered the entire planet.

These fossils date back more than 100 million years earlier than the oldest foraminifera and ciliates previously known. Even so, scientists think these organisms were around much longer, based on changes accumulated in their DNA since they split from close relatives. Some believe these types of single-celled creatures have been around for considerably more than 1 billion years, said Tanja Bosak, a study researcher and assistant professor of geobiology at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology.

"We can't claim we have seen something that is exactly like the modern species," Bosak said. "(But) here we have something that has looked very similar for 700 or more million years."

The fossils have evaded researchers not only because they are so tiny, but also because these deposits do not contain a type of rock that typically preserves fossils, particularly something this small and fragile, she said.

Fossils belonging to foraminifera were found in rocks from Namibia, while ciliates were found in rocks from Mongolia. Both types first appear in layers of rock called cap carbonates, laid down as the world was leaving the earlier snowball state, which occurred 716 million years ago.

Foraminifera, ancient and modern, build protective shells by picking up tiny grains of mineral that they stick to their exterior using a sugary compound. They aren't the only shelled organisms Bosak and her colleagues found. They also discovered amoebas that appeared to be building the same sort of shells.

While this wasn't the first fossil evidence for these amoebas, the nature of their resistant covering was ambiguous in the earlier fossils. The most recent fossils are the first amoebas to show evidence of primitive shell building, Bosak said.

Ciliates, meanwhile, are covered with tiny hairs called cilia. And the fossils found closely resemble modern, planktonic organisms called tintinnids.

Life at the time was quite simple, but it soon became more complex. For instance, the first animal embryos show up after the end of the latest Snowball Earth event, around 635 million years ago.

It's possible the arrival of abundant microbes, particularly the ciliates, may have had some hand in the change, by helping to bump up the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere.

Even after free oxygen dramatically increased in the atmosphere, a change called the Great Oxidation Event, the oxygen level was much lower than it is today. The ciliates lived in the surface waters, then died and sank, taking organic carbon with them and tucking it away in sediments low in oxygen where the organisms would decompose only slowly. The burial of this carbon meant it could not be converted to carbon dioxide by respiration. As a result, oxygen produced by the photosynthesis of other microbes like algae would have built up.
The discovery of these organisms reveals a possible mechanism by which the oxygen levels in the atmosphere increased, allowing life to become more complex, she said.

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The research has been published in articles published online in October and November in the journal Geology, and online in June in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

| via LiveScience

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Weird News/The World’s Most Expensive Tea: Made From Panda Poo!?

When one thinks of tea, they may think of sitting back and relaxing in a comfortable armchair, cozying up to a roaring fire and then indulging in a warm, chewy chocolate chip cookie.

They don’t think about pandas and certainly not panda poo.
But, turns out, it’s all about the panda dung. Wildlife expert and Sinchuan University lecturer An Yashi is debuting a special blend of green tea that is expected to go for as much as approximately $35,000 per pound, Australia’s SBC.com reported. And guess what? It’s fertilized using panda excrement.
Why is the poo so popular? Turns out panda excrement is loaded with various vitamins and minerals that come from bamboo – what pandas primarily eat.
“Pandas have a very poor digestive system and only absorb about 30 percent of everything they eat,” Yashi told the Australian website. “That means their excrement is rich in fibers and nutrients.”
According to Yashi, those important nutrients end up in the tea through that fertilization process.
These nutrients are no joke, and Yashi claims that they are immensely powerful.
“Just like green tea, bamboo contains an element that can prevent cancer and enhance green tea’s anti-cancer effects if it is used as fertilizer for the tea,” he told SBC.com.
Yashi, who collects the dung at a panda breeding center in southern China, is hoping the discovery – along with it’s hefty price tag – will earn him a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records.
He might not be far off track with that idea. Kopi Lupak, an Indonesian coffee, is brewed from beans that have been eaten and then digested by the Asian palm civet, a catlike wild animal. That java can sell for as much as $150 per pound.

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Weird/World's largest underpant that fitted 57 people

(AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

Participants in their underwear pose for a group photograph with their certificate after breaking a world record for the most number of people, 57, to fit in an over-sized pair of underpants measuring 5 meters by 1.5 meters in the Canary Wharf district of London, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011.
It marks Guinness World Records Day in which the organization estimates some 20,000 people around the world will attempt to break a wide range of records to showcase their country.

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Weird/Hungry mosquitoes fly farther than you think

How far does a mosquito fly? Harry Boerema wants to know.

Boerema lives near a drainage project, where Dutch authorities are dredging a huge meter-deep (3-foot) basin in the northern rural landscape to head off flood waters and protect towns and villages from disaster.
The project threatens to inflict hordes of mosquitoes on people living around the water retention area, so scientists set out to calculate how to keep the boundaries of the ditch far enough from human habitation to protect residents from pest infestation.
The question they needed to find out: How far does a common European human-biting mosquito fly?
What they found surprised them: A hungry female looking for a "host" will fly at least 150 meters (yards), three times farther than previously thought, said Piet Verdonschot, who conducted the research.
The 1,700 hectare (4,200-acre) basin, begun in 2003, is designed to collect heavy rainwater that will slowly be channeled to the North Sea. But frequent wet-dry cycles will be perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
Buzzing pests are nothing new for Boerema, a retired professor of architectural history who has lived for 36 years in his quiet cottage set amid dairy farms.
"I don't mind them to a certain extent. But not in surplus," he says. "I'm a nature lover, and mosquitoes are part of nature — although not the most likable ones."
Not everyone took the prospect of living on water's edge with such equanimity, and local complaints led authorities to commission the mosquito research, said project manager John Tukker.
At the outset, Verdonschot believed mosquitoes stay within about 50 meters (yards) of their breeding ground. The biggest nuisance for humans often originates in flower pots, buckets of collected rainwater or any kind of water left stagnant in the back garden or barnyard.
"The assumption in the literature is that people who suffer bites have bred their own specimens in their own gardens," he said.
Hundreds of mosquito species exist around the world — 36 in the Netherlands alone — but Verdonschot concentrated on the two species most common in the Dutch climate: the culex pipiens, which prefers birds to people but will still keep you awake at night during the summer, and the Culiseta annulata, larger, more aggressive insects active year-round. Neither normally carries dangerous diseases.
Verdonschot, an aquatic ecologist working for the private environmental research institute Alterra, hatched 40,000 mosquitoes in large tents in a grassy field. The tents were surrounded by concentric circles of traps set at 50 meters, 100 meters and 150 meters. Around the edges of the field were ditches with tall reeds and wild grasses on the banks.
The traps drew mosquitoes into smoke from dry ice then instantly froze them. At the end of each day researchers collected the corpses and counted them one-by-one, using tweezers under a microscope.
Verdonschot expected most mosquitoes to be caught in the closest traps. Instead, about 80 percent were found in the farthest, meaning most flew at least 150 meters from the tent where they were hatched.
Verdonschot then refined his experiment, placing evergreen shrubs within the inner circle of traps. The numbers caught in the closest ring of traps shot up by one-third. The bushes offered both shelter from predators and moisture evaporating from the leaves.
That discovery led Tukker, working in the north, to create small raised islands of vegetation in the middle of the retention area, which becomes a swamp after a heavy rain. Those islands deflect mosquitoes from nearby farms.
The experiments produced a few other surprises, too.
Mosquitoes are mostly quiet during the day, preferring to concentrate on the edge of a body of water. When females hunt for blood — necessary for reproduction — they move for about an hour at dusk or at dawn, staying close to the ground.
"They move differently than we thought, they move farther than we thought," Verdonschot said.
Verdonschot believes his team's research adds to scientific knowledge about mosquitoes. Tomes have been written about mosquito bites and the effects on human health, but little research has been done on their habits, he said.
Verdonschot's simple experiments this summer have value for others building catchment areas around Europe and for housing developers.
"The whole northwestern European climate is becoming more dynamic because of climate change, because of wetter summers. And all this urban infrastructure has to be protected from water excess," he said.
Boerema also has a mosquito trap in the hedge around his cottage, helping to keep track of the mosquito population during wet and dry periods. He is anxious to see the water storage project completed, recalling that he was ordered to evacuate his home during a 1998 flood.
"I think it will ease the danger," he said, even though he's likely to have more mosquitoes.
"We've always been bitten. I don't react very much, but my wife hates them — but not to the extent that we find it unbearable to live here."

Associated Press

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Weird/Fashion made from milk

Anke Domaske is the German designer of an award-winning new textile made entirely from milk that's environmentally friendly as well as soothing to people with skin allergies. Called "Qmilch," it drapes and folds like silk, but can be washed and dried like cotton.

German fashion designer Anke Domaske speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at her studio in Hannover, Germany. Domaske, 28, is the designer of an award-winning new textile made entirely from milk that's environmentally friendly as well as soothing to people with skin allergies. Called "Qmilch," it drapes and folds like silk, but can be washed and dried like cotton. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

Model Britta presents a dress designed by German fashion designer Anke Domaske in Hannover, Germany.  (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

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Weird/Graham Lord, Man Misdiagnosed With Stomach Cancer, Sues Health District After Stomach Removed

After undergoing rounds of chemotherapy and surgery that removed 80 percent of his stomach, Graham Lord found out he never had stomach cancer.

The 59-year-old is now suing Australia's Central Coast Local Health District, after he said a 2010 post-op evaluation shed light on the false diagnosis.

"I was told that the tissue taken from me during that gastrectomy was examined through the pathology department at Royal North Shore [Hospital] and the lymph nodes that were taken out showed no evidence of cancer," he told the Sunday Telegraph. A second test confirmed the results.

Lord said he has suffered from anxiety and depression as a result of the surgery and can no longer eat sitting down.
"He would be seeking an apology from the hospital in terms of an admission of liability and compensation for his injuries," Anna Walsh, Lord's lawyer, told ABC Sydney.
Walsh told the Sunday Telegraph that a pathologist at Gosford Hospital, where the initial flub occurred, already apologized to Lord.

ABC News

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Meet the $2.18 Million Dolan Sheep

For the man who has everything, this year’s prize bauble is a 14 million yuan ($2.18 million) Dolan sheep from the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar in the China’s far west. Only 1,000 Dolan sheep exist in the world, according to breeders, and their extraordinary features have made them the latest collectors’ item for ultra-rich Chinese.

Dolan Sheep - The World's Most Expensive Sheep Worth $2.18 Million

The Dolan breed has a distinctive curved nose and twin tails, as well as a long floppy ears. Originally bred from sheep in Kashgar to grow quickly and to yield more meat, the breed has since become ornamental. The price depends on the pedigree, said Liu Fenghua, a 48-year-old sheep breeder in the city of Aksu, in the far western region of Xinjiang. The darker the fleece, the better. The bigger the ears the better. The more curved the face, the better, like an eagle’s beak. The best ones have a dark body and white tail. I started breeding Dolans in 2009, buying a couple for 25,000 yuan ($3,900). The next year, I had an offer of 250,000 ($39,000) yuan for them, and the price keeps rising.
The most valuable sheep is a six-year-old owned by Majid Abdul Reyim, a breeder in Kashgar. Mr Reyim said he had received offers of 14 million yuan ($2.18 million) for it, but had not yet succumbed to a sale. That sheep is the grandfather of all the best pedigree Dolans in the region, said Mr Liu. I have one of its grandsons and that one is worth some six million yuan. I have 19 in total and I feed them dates and walnuts as well as grass.
Dolan breeders said that several families often clubbed together to buy a single sheep as an investment and then charge for its breeding rights. The top sheep can command fees of up to 300,000 ($47,000) yuan per dose of semen.
China’s sudden wealth has produced bubbles in all sorts of commodities, from tea to fine wine to jade. Last year, a Tibetan Mastiff puppy called Big Splash became the world’s most expensive dog when it was sold for close to $1.5 million in the city of Qingdao. 

[Telegraph]

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Meet the World’s Largest and Most Valuable Gold Coin

 Perth Mint chief executive Ed Harbuz with the 1 Tonne Gold Kangaroo Co

World’s largest, heaviest and essentially most valuable gold coin was unveiled by Perth Mint of Australia. Featuring a kangaroo on one side and the Queen’s motif on the other, this coin, weighing over one tonne, is the 99.99 per cent pure gold, and based on the current market price of gold, it has a value of more than $55 million.
Perth Mint chief executive Ed Harbuz said: The largest coin in the world up to now has been 100 kilograms, made by a competitor mint, and we thought well, we’d better make it so much bigger that it’ll stay the biggest coin in the world for a long time. To cast and handcraft a coin of this size and weight was an incredible challenge – one which few other mints would even consider.
A team of a dozen people have worked since late last year to create the coin which measures 80 centimetres wide and 12 centimetres deep. Creating process had lasted 18 months.
Previous holders of the title of world’s largest gold coin include a 31 kilogram Gold Philharmonic coin struck by the Austrian Mint in 2004, which carried a €100,000 denomination. This was followed by a 100 kilogram Gold Maple coin struck by the Royal Canadian Mint in 2007, which carried a face value of CA$1,000,000.

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John Lennon's tooth sells for more than $31,000 at auction

The winning bid for John Lennon's tooth came in at $31,200, according to auction results posted online.

(CNN) -- The tooth fairy's trash became another man's treasure Saturday when a discolored molar that once belonged to John Lennon was put up for auction.
The winning bid came in at 19,500 pounds (U.S. $31,200), according to auction results posted online.
Michael Zuk, a Canadian dentist, is claiming responsibility for the winning bid. Omega Auction House, which sold the tooth, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday.
Lennon gave the tooth to Dorothy "Dot" Jarlett when she worked as his housekeeper at his Kenwood home in Weybridge, Surrey, according to her son, Barry. Jarlett, who was employed between 1964 and 1968, developed a warm relationship with Lennon, her son said.
"She was very close with John, and one day whilst chatting in the kitchen, John gave my mother the tooth (he had been to the dentist to have it removed that day) and suggested giving it to my sister as a souvenir, as she was a huge Beatles fan," he said. "It has been in the family ever since."
With the exception of the past two years, the tooth has been in Canada for 40 years after Dot Jarlett's daughter married a Canadian.
Barry Jarlett, who said his mother is now 90 years old, said it was the right time to pass it on rather than to risk the tooth getting lost.
Karen Fairweather, the owner of Omega Auction House, told CNN last month that the tooth is too fragile for DNA testing but she has no doubt about its authenticity.
"Because it's coming directly from Dot, we don't doubt the provenance of the item," she said.
Some fans will sink their teeth into anything if they feel it's worth plunking down thousands to get closer their idols. A clump of hair believed to have been trimmed from Elvis Presley's head when he joined the Army in 1958 sold for $18,300 in 2009 at Chicago's Leslie Hindman auctioneers.
Jarlett said Lennon gave his family many gifts over the years. He plans to keep a leather wallet, and his mother still has a pearl necklace Lennon gave her when he returned from Japan.

(CNN)

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Devil found in detail of Giotto fresco in Italy's Assisi

A detail of a fresco by Giotto in the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi is seen in this picture released on November 5, 2011. REUTERS/Basilica of St Francis in Assisi/Handout

ROME (Reuters) - Art restorers have discovered the figure of a devil hidden in the clouds of one of the most famous frescos by Giotto in the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi, church officials said on Saturday.
The devil was hidden in the details of clouds at the top of fresco number 20 in the cycle of the scenes in the life and death of St Francis painted by Giotto in the 13th century.
The discovery was made by Italian art historian Chiara Frugone. It shows a profile of a figure with a hooked nose, a sly smile, and dark horns hidden among the clouds in the panel of the scene depicting the death of St Francis.
The figure is difficult to see from the floor of the basilica but emerges clearly in close-up photography.
Sergio Fusetti, the chief restorer of the basilica, said Giotto probably never wanted the image of the devil to be a main part of the fresco and may have painted it in among the clouds "to have a bit of fun."
The master may have painted it to spite someone he knew by portraying him as a devil in the painting, Fusetti said on the convent's website.
The artwork in the basilica in the convent where St Francis is buried was last restored after it was severely damaged by an earthquake in 1997.

Reuters

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Queen Victoria's big bloomers fetch £10,000

A large pair of silk bloomers that belonged to Queen Victoria have sold for more than three times their original estimate.

The undergarment, auctioned alongside hundreds of other royal artefacts, sold for £9,735.
Two pairs of silk stockings worn by Britain's longest serving monarch also went under the hammer in Edinburgh - one pair selling for more than £5,000.
The collection belonged to the US publishing dynasty, the Forbes family.
It had previously been held in Old Battersea House - the London home of the family.
More than £3m was made in the sale of Victorian treasures held by auctioneers Lyon and Turnbull at their Edinburgh salesroom.
Two paintings were sold for more than £500,00 each.
A painting by Sir John Everett Millais titled "For The Squire" went for £553,092. Another - "The Princess Chained To A Tree" by Sir Edward Burne-Jones - made £505,000.
'Global interest'
And an oil painting of Queen Victoria and her faithful servant, John Brown, went for £145,250.
Nick Curnow, managing director at Lyon & Turnbull, said the 20in by 24in painting was particularly valuable, because it was a personal gift from the Queen to Mr Brown.
It depicts the pair on 26 August 1876, the year her servant celebrated his 50th birthday.
The sale also included more than 500 royal paintings, letters, furniture and other items from the Forbes home.
Simon Edsor, director of The Fine Art Society and art adviser to the Forbes family, said: "This is a great result and demonstrates how much interest from around the globe there is in royal memorabilia."
The Forbes family home hosted many public visitors over the years, including former US president Ronald Reagan and Hollywood star Dame Elizabeth Taylor.
The bed slept in by Dame Elizabeth and her seventh husband Lord Fortensky made £9,375.
Old Battersea House was bought and restored in 1970 by Malcolm Forbes and his son Christopher Forbes, vice-chairman of the Forbes publishing company, under the guidance of architect Vernon Gibberd.

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Weird/A new alarm clock only wake users up once they were ready

Indian scientists are working on an alarm clock that would monitor the user's brain activity, and wake them up only when they weren't in deep sleep

Have you ever noticed how your alarm clock sometimes wakes you up in a much more jarring fashion than usual? That's because on those occasions, you happen to be in one of the deeper states of sleep when it goes off. Not only is it more difficult to wake from these states, but people who do so also end up feeling less rejuvenated by their time in the sack. Scientists in India, however, think they may be on their way to designing an alarm clock that only wakes you up when the time is right.
There are five levels of brain activity that people vary between while sleeping, ranging from the relatively close-to-awake Stages 1 and 2, to the deep-sleeping Stages 3 and 4, followed by REM. Researchers at Jerusalem College of Engineering in Tamil Nadu would like to see a consumer alarm clock that monitors the user's brain activity, and waits until they're in Stage 1 or 2 before waking them.
In lab tests, they had volunteers set a wake-up time on a modified alarm clock, which was receiving output from electrodes that were wired to those peoples' scalps. The volunteers then proceeded to go to sleep. Ninety seconds before the set time arrived, the system started to monitor their brain activity. If they were in one of the first two stages within that period, the alarm would go off. If they stayed in the deeper stages, however, the clock would automatically go into "snooze" mode, and try again later.
While it's doubtful that anyone would want to wire themselves up every night, the Jerusalem College team envision a simpler commercial version of the system, in which users would wear a headband that wirelessly transmitted their sleep data. People could also use the system to obtain a timetable of their typical sleep pattern, so they could set their alarm for a time when they tended to be in one of the lighter sleep stages. Although this could result in their being woken considerably earlier than they would be otherwise, the scientists state that they would nonetheless end up being more refreshed and relaxed.
Other "bio alarm clocks" do already exist, such as the aXbo and the SleepTracker, although these monitor the user's sleep stages through an attachment on their wrist. Would a headband work better?
A paper on the research was recently published in the International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology.
Source: EEG Info - www.eeginfo.ch

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Apollo Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, Who Tried to Sell Camera Used on Moon

Astronaut Ed Mitchell was part of the crew for the third successful lunar landing mission. (SSPL/Getty Images)
Federal prosecutors and former astronaut Edgar Mitchell have reached an agreement over a camera Mitchell brought home from his 1971 Apollo 14 moon mission.
Mitchell said the camera was a gift from NASA, and earlier this year he tried to auction it through the British firm Bonhams.
NASA says the camera is U.S. government property and sued Mitchell to get it back after learning in March it was up for sale.
In papers filed Thursday, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami stated Mitchell will give up any claim to the 16 mm motion picture camera and agree to return it to NASA. NASA will in turn give it to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington for display within 60 days.
Both sides will pay their own legal expenses. A judge was expected to sign off on the settlement in the coming days.
Mitchell's attorney Armen R. Vartian said his client decided the settlement was the best way to resolve a conflict with NASA.
"I think both sides saw the lawsuit as something that should not continue," he added.
Mitchell is one of 12 humans to have walked on the moon. He later received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The camera was one of two that went to the moon's surface on the Apollo 14 mission, which Mitchell piloted.
During the mission, Mitchell and Alan Shepard spent hours collecting nearly 100 pounds of lunar samples.
They also demonstrated that astronauts could walk long distances safely, covering about two miles on one expedition. Shepard's attempt at swatting a golf ball on the moon can be viewed on the internet.
Mitchell later said he attempted to communicate using telepathy with friends on Earth during the mission.
Since his retirement, Mitchell has devoted much of his life to exploring the mind, physics, the possibility of space aliens and ways of linking religion with scientific fact.

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Dutch artist to make ice in desert

In this handout image provided by Ap Verheggen, a digital artist impression shows a solar panel installation in the desert with ice-making capabilities.

ZOETERMEER, Netherlands (AP) 

Is it a piece of art, or a groundbreaking water experiment in the desert?
Take the design of a leaf — nature's master at absorbing the sun's energy — and cover its 200 square meter (2,153 square feet) surface with solar cells. Under the face of the elm leaf-shape structure are cooling condensers that soak up humidity from the desert air. Even in the hottest conditions, it will produce a layer of ice on the leaf's ridged underside — so the theory goes.
Ap Verheggen's vision of creating a "glacier" in the desert is a statement. It's not meant to solve the world's ever-worsening water problems, but to demonstrate, as he says, that the seemingly impossible is indeed possible.
For the Dutch artist, his sculpture will be a cry of alarm at the rapid pace of global warming. Impractical in itself, it is meant to spur others to strive for innovative responses to the evolving circumstances of changing climates.
"I give inspiration. What you can do with it is up to others," he says.
"You have to open the borders of your thinking," he said, in his apartment surrounded by his works. "To make ice in the desert is breaking down the border, and that is opening a new world."

Verheggen's giant sculpture is so far only a sketch and a series of charts in a laboratory in Zoetermeer, near his home in The Hague. Cofely, a refrigeration company that makes ice rinks and custom-designed cooling units for food storage, is testing the principles of creating ice in desert conditions.
Tests should be concluded by next year, then the task of sculpting the massive work will begin, said Verheggen. An unidentified north African country will be the first to host it.
Scientist Andras Szollosi-Nagi says Verheggen's work falls at the crossroads of art, environment and science. "It's an amazing piece, it's very unusual and that makes it very exciting."
In Zoetermeer, engineers have produced a 10-centimeter (4-inch)-thick layer of ice on a slab of aluminum inside a shipping container-sized box that simulates desert conditions, with the temperature set at 30 Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) and plans to crank it up to 50C (122F). A humidifier provides the moisture, and a fan is directed at the ice like a desert breeze, resulting in a pool of water dripping off the surface of the ice sheet even as it thickens.

The company is using off-the-shelf technology. "Everybody thinks it's dry in the desert, but it's roughly the same amount of moisture in the air as here," said project manager Erik Hoogendoorn.
It's unlikely the idea will be developed anytime soon on an industrial scale to bring water to arid areas for human or agricultural use.

But Verheggen's work will carry symbolic importance, says Szollosi-Nagi, the rector of the UNESCO Institute for Water Education, an arm of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The institute, which brings students from developing countries to study water issues, will use the work on its website and in promotional movies, he said.
"We are not good at conveying simple messages in a powerful way. Science has its own limits, beyond which art can go," he said at his office in the nearby city of Delft.
"The project demonstrates that in a totally hopeless environment you can still generate hope. The message is that what many call the looming water crisis is not inevitable. There are solutions, and it all depends on human ingenuity. It all depends on us," he said.
Last year, Verheggen, a cultural ambassador for UNESCO, erected a huge sculpture on an iceberg off the coast of Greenland, an area he has visited annually for many years.
It was the struggle of the indigenous Inuits to cope with extreme temperatures and shrinking ice that prompted thoughts of building an ice-making piece of art in the desert.
"Let's accept the climate is changing," he says. "We have to see that as a challenge, to find new ways to deal with the changes in climate circumstances."
Associated Press | AP

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Woodpeckers could hold key to head injury prevention

Woodpeckers could hold the key to making helmets that better protect people from head injuries, a new study has found.

Researchers believe that woodpeckers may have an answer for minimizing devastating head injuries.
They say their analysis of woodpecker anatomy and behaviour revealed some features that could potentially be put to use in designing more effective helmets.
Woodpeckers are able to peck at a tree trunk at high speed, resulting in intense deceleration forces on impact, without sustaining any brain injury.
To investigate the source of the protection, the researchers - led by Yubo Fan of Beihang University in Beijing and Ming Zhang of Hong Kong Polytechnic University - recorded the birds using two synchronous high-speed video cameras.
They also took scans of the birds' heads to reveal details about the micro-structural parameters such as the bone volume, thickness and density.
Woodpeckers could hold key to head injury prevention
Woodpeckers could hold the key to making helmets that better protect people from head injuries, a new study has found.
Researchers believe that woodpeckers may have an answer for minimizing devastating head injuries.
They say their analysis of woodpecker anatomy and behaviour revealed some features that could potentially be put to use in designing more effective helmets.
Woodpeckers are able to peck at a tree trunk at high speed, resulting in intense deceleration forces on impact, without sustaining any brain injury.
To investigate the source of the protection, the researchers - led by Yubo Fan of Beihang University in Beijing and Ming Zhang of Hong Kong Polytechnic University - recorded the birds using two synchronous high-speed video cameras.
They also took scans of the birds' heads to reveal details about the micro-structural parameters such as the bone volume, thickness and density.
They then constructed 3D models that allowed for further testing and measurement of the forces involved.
The results showed that specific details of the cranial bones and beak - such as the relative "spongy"-ness of the bone at different places in the skull and the unequal lengths of the upper and lower parts of the beak - were crucial for preventing impact injury.
The researchers conclude that the shock absorption system is not based on a single factor, but is a result of the combined effect of a number of different morphological features.
Dr Fan said: "This combination may be useful in guiding design for new protective gear."
The findings were published in the latest issue of the online journal PLoS ONE.

Source: The Telegraph

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Weird Science/Goats Could Increase the Risk of a Rare Lung Cancer

Exposure to goats could increase the risk of a certain type of lung cancer, according to French researchers.

The study, presented at the European Respiratory Society's Annual Congress in Amsterdam, has linked a professional exposure to goats with a distinct subset of lung cancer, known as pneumonic-type lung adenocarcinoma (P-ADC).
This form of lung cancer has a weak association with tobacco smoking when compared with other types of the disease. In attempting to identify other triggers that may cause the disease, scientists have previously noticed similarities between P-ADC and a viral infection which causes growths in the lungs of sheep. Given these similarities, the researchers have investigated whether a viral agent found in sheep and goats could be easily transferred to people who work with the animals, leading to a partiality for P-ADC.
The current epidemiologic study involved 44 patients with P-ADC and 132 controls without the disease. All participants were given a questionnaire assessing a number of risk factors including their smoking status, their personal history of cancer and their exposure to goats.
The results showed that people who had experienced a professional exposure to goats during their lifetime were five times more likely to get P-ADC compared with other types of lung cancer.
The findings also showed that P-ADC was significantly associated with females, and people who had never smoked or had any personal history of cancer.
Dr Nicolas Girard, from the Louis Pradel Hospital, Hospices Civils de Lyon, said: "Scientists have noticed similarities between P-ADC and a contagious viral infection in sheep before. This led us to explore the possibility that professional exposure to cattle could make humans more susceptible to P-ADC. These findings demonstrate that exposure to goats could be a risk factor for this type of lung cancer, however further studies are needed to assess other potential risk factors for the disease."

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Why Ghosts Are Spooked by HD Camera

"Paranormal Activity 3," the latest in a series of successful low-budget horror films about amateur ghost hunters, opens on Friday (Oct. 21). The first film, released in 2007, was a surprise indie hit around the world.
The films are shot in a "found footage" style, in which the audience is treated to footage supposedly taken in real life from home videos and security cameras. This technique, often involving handheld cameras and actors talking to the camera operator, has been around for years but as widely popularized in the 1999 film "The Blair Witch Project."
The grainy, low-budget look of the films is no accident; it was done partly because the films actually are low-budget, and partly for added "realism." The fact that the low-quality picture skips and jitters adds to the suspense, and Horror Filmmaking 101 teaches that a dark, partly obscured monster is much scarier than one that's seen clearly in bright light.
It's been an effective technique in the first two films, scaring up hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. And it's also true in real-life ghost hunting: Virtually all of the "evidence" for ghosts appears in the form of brief, ambiguous anomalies recorded with low-quality cameras (or good-quality cameras sabotaged by low-light conditions).
People have long reported weird, ghostly and paranormal activity, but perhaps the biggest mystery is why the evidence — especially the photographic evidence — hasn't improved. Are ghosts afraid of high-definition cameras?
The idea that amateur ghost hunters wandering in the dark with crummy video cameras are going to uncover genuine evidence of a spirit realm unknown to science seems absurd. Nonetheless, the SyFy show "Ghost Hunters" has been wildly popular for years — it was recently picked up for an eighth season — despite the fact that the team has never found scientific evidence for ghosts. The show is, of course, entertainment television instead of real investigation, but what about the hundreds of amateur ghost-hunting groups around the world inspired by the show?
If ghosts exist, you would expect the photographic and video evidence for them should improve dramatically as more and more people look for them with better and better equipment. There are more people actively trying to document paranormal activity than ever. And, thanks to smartphones, at no time in history have so many people had high-quality cameras on hand virtually all the time. Today there's no excuse for anyone to capture grainy photos or video images of anything, whether it's your aunt in a horrid floral hat, Bigfoot in the woods, or paranormal activity in your hallway. And yet that is so often the quality of the footage that makes the rounds on the internet. [Mythical Creatures: Beasts That Don't Really Exist (or Do They?)]
This past weekend, Apple sold 4 million iPhone 4S units, each of them equipped with a built-in high definition 1080p camera featuring state-of-the-art optics, image stabilization, automatic lighting adjustment and other features that rival cameras used by Hollywood videographers only a few years ago. Perhaps one of those iPhone users will finally record some clear evidence of ghosts.
High definition provides more image information, which helps identify things often mistaken for ghosts, such as random shadows, unnoticed reflections and video artifacts. With those ghost impostors more easily dismissed, any real ghostly images should be sharper and clearer than ever before. The age of amateurs posting questionable video evidence of the paranormal should be coming to an end. Professional ghost hunters, however, might well continue using cameras that produce low-quality images. After all, that's where the ghosts appear.

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Weird News/Compensation after wrong side of heart removed

Steve Edwards said he learned the procedure had gone wrong 10 weeks after the operation

A man who had the wrong side of his heart removed in surgery has received a six-figure sum in compensation.
Steve Edwards, 51, from Weston-Super-Mare, North Somerset, was operated on at the Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI) in 2008 for an irregular heartbeat.
But during the operation a piece of equipment slipped causing the wrong side of his heart to be burned away.
BRI has apologised and said changes had been made to "policies and procedures as a direct result".
Mr Edwards, a practice manager at St George's and Worle GP surgeries, was awarded the undisclosed sum after the third attempt at corrective surgery went wrong.
"I could hear some commotion, I was under heavy local anaesthetic and I was shaken awake by the consultant to tell me there was a problem and they needed to put a pacemaker in," he said.
'Technical errors'
"I wasn't really clear what was going on, it was only some weeks afterwards that I realised."
Mr Edwards said he learned the procedure had gone wrong 10 weeks after the operation during an outpatient's appointment.
"I was really concerned that the mistake hadn't been admitted to me from the start...," he said.
Mr Edwards added that as a result of having a pacemaker fitted he would have to undergo surgery every seven years to replace the battery "which as I get older carries more and more risks".
In a statement, the BRI said: "Technical errors during Mr Edwards cardiac ablation procedure resulted in the catheter moving and radio frequency energy being delivered to the wrong side of his heart.
"Further checks have been introduced to ensure that the catheter is perfectly placed before radio frequency energy is delivered."
BBC NEWS

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