Lake Of Ice Found On Mars

The presence of water makes life a more likely possibilityA giant patch of frozen water has been pictured nestled within an unnamed impact crater on Mars. The photographs were taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board Mars Express, the European Space Agency probe which is exploring the planet. The ice disc is located on Vastitas Borealis, a broad plain that covers much of Mars' far northern latitudes. The existence of the water-ice patch on Mars raises the prospect that past or present life will one day be detected. It also boosts the chances that manned missions could eventually be sent to the Red Planet - because they would probably need accessible water to survive. The highly visible ice lake is sitting in a crater which is 35 km (23 miles) wide, with a maximum depth of about two km (1.2 miles). Scientists believe the water-ice is present all year round because the temperature and pressure are not sufficient to allow it to change states. Researchers studying the images are sure it is not frozen carbon dioxide (CO2), because CO2 ice had already disappeared from the north polar cap at the time the image was taken. The team has also been able to detect faint traces of water-ice along the rim of the crater and on the crater walls. Mars is covered with deep gorges, apparently carved out by rivers and glaciers, although most of the water vanished millions of years ago. Earlier this year, the European Space Agency detected what they called a huge "frozen sea", but it is located below a crust of surface deposits. Large reserves of water-ice are also known to be held at the poles on Mars, and probably at great depth at many locations around the planet.

Large New World Discovered Beyond Neptune

Council Chairman, Muzammil SiddiqiObservations of 2003 EL61 from the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory on May 6, 2004. These three images taken 1-1/2 hours apart show the very distant object and its moon slowly moving across the sky.A newfound object in our solar system's outskirts may be larger than any known world after Pluto, scientists said today. It also has a moon. Designated as 2003 EL61, the main object in the two-body system is 32 percent as massive as Pluto and is estimated to be about 70 percent of Pluto's diameter. Other news reports that the object could be twice as big as Pluto are false, according to two astronomers who found the object in separate studies and another expert who has analyzed the data. If the mass is only one-third that of Pluto, then theory holds that it can't be larger than Pluto, according to Brian Marsden of the Minor Planet Center, which serves as a clearinghouse for data on all newfound objects in the solar system. Marsden, who was not involved in the discovery but has reviewed the data, told SPACE.com that the mass estimate is very firm, within 1 or 2 percent. "I don’t think it is bigger than Pluto," he said. This is still a big world, once again raising the prospect that something larger than Pluto might still lurk out there. Scientists base their size calculations in part on the object's reflectivity. Since they don't know exactly how much the surface brightness of distant objects varies, there is some wiggle room in their size estimates. A team led by Mike Brown of Caltech has been observing 2003 EL61 for a year but was seeking more data before announcing the discovery. Brown said today it may possibly be larger than Sedna, which has been the largest known world beyond Neptune other than Pluto. Sedna is between 800 and 1,100 miles in diameter. Pluto is about 1,400 miles across. Brown figures 2003 EL61 has a diameter of around 930 miles. Is there any chance it is bigger than Pluto? "No," Brown said in a telephone interview. "Definitely not." In fact, Brown's team got the new data they had been waiting for, from the Spitzer Space Telescope, last week. While not fully analyzed, he said the Spitzer observations show "absolutely" that the object is not bigger than Pluto. The object was spotted independently by a group led by Jose-Luis Ortiz of the Sierra Nevada Observatory in Spain. Ortiz' team announced the finding in astronomy circles recently and the finding, including the claim that it might be twice as big as Pluto, was reported by an online news site today. Ortiz said that based on his team's observations, there was one outlying theory could allow 2003 EL61 to be larger than Pluto, but he does not think it is right. "I do not think it is larger than Pluto," Ortiz told SPACE.com today. Brown was surprised last night to learn that Ortiz' group had independently found the object, which only yesterday gained the tag 2003 EL61 from the Minor Planet Center. It was a rare case of one group of astronomers unwittingly scooping another. Brown said that Ortiz' group rightfully deserves credit for making the discovery. 2003 EL61 orbits the Sun on an elliptical path beyond Neptune in a region of space known as the Kuiper Belt. It is significantly inclined to the main plane of the solar system where most of the planets travel. It is one of several objects out there now known to have a satellite. The moon around 2003 EL61 is small, making up only about 1 percent of the mass of the system, Brown said. "This satellite is the smallest satellite relative to its primary known in the Kuiper belt," Brown said. "Pluto's satellite, Charon, is about 10 percent of the mass of Pluto. Marsden, of the Minor Planet Center, said it is surprising the object was not discovered earlier. He said it was probably just barely too faint to be spotted in the sky survey done by Clyde Tombaugh that led to the discovery of Pluto 75 years ago. Brown's team first spotted 2003 EL61, which had no name at the time, using the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory on May 6, 2004. They did not realized they had found it until Dec. 28, 2004, after scrutinizing their data in and ongoing effort to find Kuiper Belt Objects. In a series of three images, the object is seen moving across the sky in relation to relatively fixed background stars. Ortiz's group initially detected the object in 2003 and spotted it again this year, leading to their announcement.

Mental Hospital Horrors

Patients at a state mental hospital overdosed on illegal drugs, were improperly restrained for hours on end and were forced to spend 12 hours in soiled diapers, according to a scathing report issued by the U.S. Justice Department. The report said the problems were among "widespread and systematic deficiencies" at Napa State Hospital, including suicide and inadequate medical care. Some patients were bathed only every two to four weeks, the report said. State officials were given until Aug. 15 to implement "minimum remedial measures" at the mental hospital, which has about 1,100 patients. Lupe Rincon, a hospital spokeswoman, said many allegations were based on inaccurate information from family members, advocates and old surveys. But she said she could not respond to specific complaints. "Releasing further information could compromise our negotiations for a settlement agreement" with the Justice Department, she said. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office had no response to the report, contained in a June 27 letter to him, and directed inquiries to the state Department of Mental Health. The Justice Department investigation began in January 2004. The California Department of Mental Health has refused to cooperate, repeatedly preventing access to the facility, said the letter from Bradley J. Schlozman, acting assistant attorney general. A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Department of Mental Health spokeswoman Kirsten Macintyre said Thursday the department did not deny access, but simply asked for a delay because an investigation is "a huge diversion of resources" and because time and money was already being spent on preparing for the hospital's reaccreditation, which takes place this fall. "I'm not saying we're perfect on patient care," said Macintyre, who added that the department already has improved some of its problem areas. "But you have to present things in a fair light." The report also said that hospital staff punished patients who sought release, failed to provide English interpreters and refused to intervene during violent episodes among patients. Three patients also overdosed on methamphetamine or cocaine in the fall of 2004 and one died, according to the report. Three other patients were able to use heroin, the report said. Restraints and seclusion also are overused at Napa, according to the Justice Department. The report cited one patient who was restrained for 369 consecutive hours.

Coke's Calorie-Burning Enviga Slated For 2006 Debut

Coca-Cola is planning to launch Enviga, a soda that is said to burn 50 to 100 calories just by drinking a 12-oz. serving, next year, per one executive. Enviga, a green tea-based, caffeinated, carbonated drink, is in clinical testing and is said to speed up the user's metabolism. The beverage will target active lifestyle consumers. A Coke rep said, "Some [of our projects] may find their way to market and some may not." Studies have shown that drinking green tea may promote weight loss by stimulating the body to burn calories.

Japanese Develop 'Female' Android

Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet devised - a "female" android called Repliee Q1. She has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, and a number of sensors and motors to allow her to turn and react in a human-like manner. She can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She even appears to breathe. Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University says one day robots could fool us into believing they are human. Repliee Q1 is not like any robot you will have seen before, at least outside of science-fiction movies. She is designed to look human and although she can only sit at present, she has 31 actuators in her upper body, powered by a nearby air compressor, programmed to allow her to move like a human. "I have developed many robots before," Repliee Q1's designer, Professor Ishiguro, told reporters, "but I soon realised the importance of its appearance. A human-like appearance gives a robot a strong feeling of presence."Before Repliee Q1, Professor Ishiguro developed Repliee R1 which had the appearance of a five-year-old Japanese girl. Its head could move in nine directions and it could gesture with its arm. Four high-sensitivity tactile sensors were placed under the skin of its left arm that made the android react differently to differing pressures. The follow-up has the appearance of a Japanese woman. To program her motion, a computer analysed the motions of a human and used them as a template for the way Repliee Q1 moves. She can be designed to follow the movement of a human wearing motion sensors or to act independently. "Repliee Q1 can interact with people. It can respond to people touching it. It's very satisfying, although we obviously have a long way to go yet." Professor Ishiguro believes that it may prove possible to build an android that could pass for a human, if only for a brief period. "An android could get away with it for a short time, 5-10 seconds. However, if we carefully select the situation, we could extend that, to perhaps 10 minutes," he said. "More importantly, we have found that people forget she is an android while interacting with her. Consciously, it is easy to see that she is an android, but unconsciously, we react to the android as if she were a woman."

Answers On "Bigfoot" DNA

A hair sample some claimed came from a Sasquatch in the Yukon has turned out to be from a bison. A geneticist from the University of Alberta who did tests on the sample says the DNA match for a bison was 100 per cent. David Coltman says the DNA was highly degraded, suggesting the hair sample was not fresh. Coltman isn't speculating on whether that suggests somebody was trying to pull a fast one on the existence of Bigfoot. The sample was reportedly plucked from a bush near Teslin, Yukon, earlier this month at a spot where several people heard - and swear they saw - a large, hairy creature. There was also an unusually large footprint.

The Sounds Of Saturn

Saturn is a source of intense radio emissions, which have been monitored by the Cassini spacecraft. The radio waves are closely related to the auroras near the poles of the planet. These auroras are similar to Earth's northern and southern lights.This is an audio file of radio emissions from Saturn. The Cassini spacecraft began detecting these radio emissions in April 2002, when Cassini was 374 million kilometers (234 million miles) from the planet, using the Cassini radio and plasma wave science instrument. The radio and plasma wave instrument has now provided the first high resolution observations of these emissions, showing an amazing array of variations in frequency and time. The complex radio spectrum with rising and falling tones, is very similar to Earth's auroral radio emissions. These structures indicate that there are numerous small radio sources moving along magnetic field lines threading the auroral region. Time on this recording has been compressed, so that 73 seconds corresponds to 27 minutes. Since the frequencies of these emissions are well above the audio frequency range, we have shifted them downward by a factor of 44. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radio and plasma wave science team is based at the University of Iowa, Iowa City.

Life On Titan?

If life exists on Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, we could soon know about it - as long as it's the methane-spewing variety. The chemical signature of microbial life could be hidden in readings taken by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe when it landed on Titan in January. Titan's atmosphere is about 5 per cent methane, and Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffet Field, California, thinks that some of it could be coming from methanogens, or methane-producing microbes. Now he and Heather Smith of the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, have worked out the likely diet of such organisms on Titan. They think the microbes would breathe hydrogen rather than oxygen, and eat organic molecules drifting down from the upper atmosphere. They considered three available substances: acetylene, ethane and more complex organic gunk known as tholins. Ethane and tholins turn out to provide little more than the minimum energy requirements of methanogenic bacteria on Earth. The more tempting high-calorie option is acetylene, yielding six times as much energy per mole as either ethane or tholins. McKay and Smith calculate that if methanogens are thriving on Titan, their breathing would deplete hydrogen levels near the surface to one-thousandth that of the rest of the atmosphere. Detecting this difference would be striking evidence for life, because no known non-biological process on Titan could affect hydrogen concentrations as much. One hope for testing their idea rests with the data from an instrument on Huygens called the GCMS, which recorded Titan's chemical make-up as the probe descended. It will take time to analyse the raw data, partly because hydrogen's signal will have to be separated from those of other molecules. "Eventually, I hope, we will have numbers for at least upper limits for hydrogen," says Hasso Niemann of Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, principal investigator of the GCMS. Acetylene could be easier to analyse, McKay says, and it too might betray life. "I would guess that there would be a similar fall-off of acetylene if the microbes are eating it."

Debris Spotted Falling From Shuttle

NASA officials are analyzing video of a portion of Tuesday's shuttle launch "frame-by-frame" after one of several cameras aboard the craft captured what appeared to be pieces of debris separating from Discovery. The News aired video showing the pieces apparently coming loose while the shuttle's solid rocket boosters separated. There also appears to have been a large piece of debris coming off the external fuel tank two minutes into the flight -- but it doesn't appear to have hit the orbiter. "I did get an early report before we left the firing room from the radar team that said they saw no tracks prior to SRB sep. (solid rocket booster separation) and of course at SRB sep., we put off booster covers and different things we know come off," Space Shuttle deputy program manager Wayne Hale said. "So far, I think the best shot was that of the external tank looking back at the orbiter as it flew away and it looked really good to me. We will have to see though. The guys are going over that frame-by-frame and tomorrow we will have a better story for you." NASA officials said they were expecting popcorn-sized pellets of foam to pop off during launch. "They knew that this foam was going to shed anyway, that was one of recommendations by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board," Donald Forbes said. "To completely eliminate any foam shedding, they simply couldn't do it." Two chase planes and more than 100 cameras monitored the liftoff from every possible angle to capture any sign of flying debris which is what doomed the Columbia in 2003. One camera angle showed the piece flying off. NASA has been especially concerned about debris since a chunk of foam from the external fuel tank punched a hole in the wing of the shuttle Columbia, leading to the re-entry disaster in 2003. "The question was asked whether this was a danger to the orbiter?," Forbes said. "Officials said they did not think so but they are still going to analyze the video." During the 12-day mission, commander Eileen Collins and her crew will deliver supplies to the international space station and test new techniques for inspecting and patching the shuttle in orbit.

Possessed By The Devil? Or Just Plain Old Greed

An attempt to sell a 12-year old boy for N5million has been foiled by the Nigerian Immigration Service in Niger State. Luck ran out on those involved in the deal and the father of the child who was said to have staked his son for the amount as they were rounded up by officers of the immigration while negotiation on the final price was on. Reporters gathered that the father, who played the role of traitor to his son, had approached two prospective buyers, Ahmadu Wakala from Kura village, 40, and Mohammadu Sani, a cobbler, 50, from Sakda village in Kontagora Local Government Area of Niger state for the sale of the boy. The duo allegedly facilitated the business by getting in touch with another prospective buyer who is “deep” into the business in Kaduna State. While the business transaction was going on, the guardian of the boy identified as Ibrahim Musa was informed of the intention to sell the boy but was enraged over the development and had to inform the immigration officers of the deal. The immigration officers then arranged with the guardian on how those involved in the deal could be assembled for a possible arrest. The guardian told them to choose a venue to meet him, pay and collect the boy. Our correspondent learnt that the excited duo, who serve as the go-between, Wakala and Sani, immediately went to the father of the boy and told him that all was “well” as they had succeeded in getting a buyer. The go-between, the father, the guardian and the boy were already in the compound of the father, perfecting their final negotiation when officers of the immigration service swooped on them and arrested all. They were immediately transferred from the Kontagora office to the Minna office for further interrogation. Answering questions from our correspondent at the immigration office Minna, one of the suspects, Wakala confessed being involved in the deal with his partner, Sani. Wakala, who spoke in Hausa, said the amount put on the boy was N5m but added that they, the collaborators, had not been promised what would accrue to them after the deal would have pulled through. He denied having been in the business before, saying “it was our first attempt and it was the Devil that pushed us into it.”

Asked if he could be tempted to sell his own child for money, the suspect simply said, “I couldn’t have attempted to sell my own child since I will not take my child to anyone to sell for me. It was the father of the boy who brought him to us for sale. The state comptroller of immigration, Alhaji Kasim Muhammed Ibrahim, confirmed the story. According to him, “this type of case is rampant and being perpetrated by some people amongst us and we should all watch out because your child could be the next target.” The comptroller said investigations into the case were on and promised that all those involved in the deal would be arrested and prosecuted immediately.

Monster Mice Eating A Million Baby Birds A Year

Baby seabirds are being eaten alive on a remote island by Monster Mice three times their usual size. The rampaging rodents scoff more than a million petrel, shearwater and albatross a year. And the chicks are so immobile they can’t fight back — even though baby albatross are 3ft tall and 250 times the weight of their attackers. Expert Ross Wanless discovered the horror on uninhabited Gough Island, a British territory in the South Atlantic and site of a giant seabird colony. He said: “Gough is the only place we know where this happens. The mice gnaw into the bird’s body and it dies over several days.” Gough Island"Supersize" mice on a British Island are eating seabird chicks alive. The house mice, three times the size of those in the UK, attack at night and are devouring more than one million petrel, shearwater and albatross chicks on Gough Island every year.

Too Raw For Public

An artist has shocked gallery visitors by filming herself with her face covered in raw meat. Gabriela Rivera's video forms part of a controversial exhibition at Santiago's Sala Juan Egenau gallery.She said: "My work is a metaphor for the relationship that people have with themselves every day when they look in the mirror." The exhibition also includes videos of women urinating in the street and smashing boiled eggs with their hands. Las Ultimas Notician reports that many visitors have complained that they found it disgusting.

Vampire Fraudsters Take Bite Of Sicilian's Savings

An Italian couple stole 50,000 euros (34,700 pounds) from a woman in the Sicilian city of Palermo after convincing her they were vampires who would impregnate her with the son of the Anti-Christ if she did not pay them. The man, a cabaret singer, and his girlfriend took the money from their victim over four years by selling her pills at 3,000 euros each that they said would abort the Anti-Christ's son. Police uncovered the fraud after the 47-year-old woman's family became concerned when they discovered she had spent all her savings, local news agencies reported.

New Observatory For Arizona

Ground broken for one of the largest new generation telescopes in the world. Gold shovels on hand, officials broke ground last week for the $35 million Discovery Channel Telescope to be built at the Lowell Observatory in Happy Jack, Arizona. The partnership between the 111-year-old observatory and Discovery Communications began when Discovery caught wind that Lowell was looking into building a next generation telescope. "The Discovery Channel Telescope and Lowell Observatory match up with Discovery's core genre," said Carrie Passmore, Senior Vice President of Public Partnerships at Discovery Communications. "It made perfect sense for us to make this move." The Discovery Channel Telescope (DCT) will be one of the most sophisticated ground-based telescopes of its size. At 4.2 meters, it will be the fifth largest telescope in the continental United States. It's scheduled to see "first light" in 2009 and should be fully operational by 2010. "We're sponsoring the creation and development of the telescope. Lowell of course will be the principle party responsible for maintenance and research," Passmore said. "Our hope is to be able to pipe that content and findings into schools across the U.S. and across the world. Our other programming will benefit from it as well." The DCT will have a significantly wider field of view compared to other telescopes of its size. In its wide-field mode, the telescope will soak up light and provide deep, detailed images of the night sky. "Because the telescope has such a large aperture it can image at faint light levels quickly," said Robert Millis, director of the Lowell Observatory. "You can cover a lot of sky at low levels of light." The DCT, which will cover wavelengths from the ultraviolet to near infrared, has great capability as a survey instrument and will be able to scan the sky at nearly eight times the capacity of the next largest survey telescope. "You can search the sky for objects of a particular type and find as many of these objects as you can," Millis said. "We will be using the telescope to survey the sky for objects like near-Earth asteroids, Kuiper Belt objects, and planets orbiting other stars." Asteroids, objects and planets-especially a possible 10th planet-are all the types of things that Discovery hopes the new telescope will spot. "Those types of findings will be exciting for us to bring to the public," Passmore said. Besides being big, what really sets the DCT apart from other survey scopes is that it can be quickly reconfigured from its primary wide-field mode to a prime focus configuration. This option makes it possible to look very narrowly at objects and measure spectrometry, said Millis. It also makes the telescope be useful during brighter phases of the moon, when the added light pollutes the sky and makes it difficult to use standard wide-field survey scopes. In addition to the reconfiguring option, the DCT is loaded with other technology, which while not unique to this telescope, is state-of-the-art, said Millis. The primary mirror-14-feet across and extraordinarily thin-will be equipped with an active support system constantly evaluating the images taken by the telescope and maintain the shape of the mirror to provide optimum imaging. Although the Discovery Channel is paying for the telescope, that doesn't mean that the prime time lineup will be shaken up with tons of telescope-themed shows. "The telescope is primarily a research telescope,"Millis said. "The research programs will be driven by agencies like NASA, which help fund research here at Lowell." While research will be the main focus of the telescope, Millis suggests that big events in space will give Lowell a chance to partner with Discovery to showcase their work. "Events like the recent Deep Impact mission or when the Shoemaker Levy 9 impacted Jupiter would be good opportunities to broadcast our work," he said.

Wanted By Friday: Female Corpse, Price $640.

A Peruvian state university has posted an advertisement on a government Web site offering 2,070 soles ($640) for a corpse for its medical students to practice on, despite the fact that buying and selling cadavers is illegal.The macabre want ad was posted on the site of the Center for the Promotion of Small and Micro Businesses (www.prompyme.gob.pe), where state institutions are required to publish tenders for supplies to ensure transparency. The National University of Cajamarca, in northern Peru, gave bidders until July 22 to submit offers. It was also seeking chalk, white boards and anatomical models. "We have told the university they have to cancel this request ... it's negligence," said Laura Gutierrez, an official at the state contracts agency, Consucode. The university said administrative staff had the day off and no one was immediately available for comment. Gutierrez said Consucode could suspend whoever was responsible. A spokeswoman for the center said she believed it was the first time a request had been posted on its site for a corpse."So far there haven't been any responses," she said. The center is not involved in the bid process. A Health Ministry spokesman said the sale of corpses was illegal, though medical students were allowed to practice on unclaimed corpses from the morgue. Paolo Allanca, a doctor, said he remembered he and four others paid 50 soles each for an arm or a thorax at a state university in Lima. "My friend bought a whole corpse for 300 soles between five students, with the head on and everything," he added.

The Creature From Cambridgeshire Quarry

The remains of a giant sea monster that ruled the oceans 90 million years ago have been unearthed - at a Cambridgeshire quarry. Parts of the skeleton of an ichthyosaur, and some of its teeth, have been found on the Cemex site at Barrington. The discovery was made by quarry manager John Drayton, who has worked there for 35 years and who is an amateur geologist. "I was walking along and I saw what looked like the claws of something lying on the ground," says John. "I e-mailed a photo of them to a friend of mine - and he quickly replied to say they were the teeth of an ichthyosaur." Icthyosaurs were denizens of the sea during the Cretaceous period, eating mainly fish, and could grow to be 30 feet (nine metres) long. The base of the quarry excavations where the bones and teeth have been found is about 50 metres below ground level, and millions of years ago it would have been a sandy seabed - much of Cambridgeshire was underwater at the time. The find has excited palaeontology staff at the Natural History Museum in London. A team from the museum is working in the quarry, carefully excavating the area where the remains were found. Scott Moore-Fay, who is in charge of fossil preparation for the museum, said: "It's a very exciting find, and possibly the best one that has been unearthed in the county. "We don't know yet whether we will uncover an entire skeleton, or whether there will be just parts of it remaining. "As well as the ichthyosaur, we have found sharks' teeth, so it is possible the reptile was predated itself. We'll perhaps know if and when we find any of its bones with teeth marks on them." So far about four ichthyosaur teeth have come to light, but a fully-grown creature would have had between 100 and 200 of them. A number of vertebrae from its backbone have also been found. "We think this specimen was about seven metres (23 ft) long, and when we have finished looking over the site, we will take all the bones and teeth back to London and decide whether they should be displayed," Scott says.

Loch Lloyd Monster Dead

A security guard at Loch Lloyd shot and killed a 7 ½-foot alligator that mysteriously appeared in the up-scale subdivision’s lake. Darrell Lancaster shot the gator Thursday after a resident reported seeing it swimming near his home. Lancaster said he was skeptical at first, but investigated the alleged sighting because residents of the Cass County community swim and fish in the lake. He didn’t spot the gator Wednesday evening when the report came in, but returned early Thursday. After conferring with Missouri Department of Conservation officials, Lancaster used a .308 deer rifle to kill the gator. “We have no idea where it came from,” Lancaster said today. “But this lake has a 3,000-acre watershed so it could have come from miles away.”

Realistic Time Machine? New Design Could Forgo Exotic Ingredient

The laws of physics seem to allow time travel, but no one has had much hope of building an actual time machine because it would take such exotic conditions and materials. Now, physicist Amos Ori of the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa has come up with a potentially more practical time machine design. Unlike most previous proposals, this one requires only normal matter and the vacuum known to exist in space, says Ori. One type of time travel occurs routinely here and now: our inexorable one-way drift into the future. Einstein's special theory of relativity revealed the possibility of accelerated travel into the future. Suppose a person spends a year in a rocket that's traveling slightly less than the speed of light. Because motion at such enormous speeds drastically slows the clock for the traveler, that person could return to Earth to find that many years had elapsed at home. In that way, a traveler could leap into the future. Retreating into the past is another matter, but one that relativity theory also suggests might be possible. The theory shows that gravity curves space-time and slows clocks. That's why time-travel theorists have proposed that regions of space-time might naturally, or by human intervention, be made to curve back onto themselves. Someone moving around such a loop could travel back in time. A new version of such a loop is what Ori proposes in the July 8 Physical Review Letters. The loop would form within an empty, donut-shaped region of space-time enveloped by a sphere of normal matter, he says. The distortion of space-time in the central donut would result from other huge nearby masses, perhaps including a black hole, or from interference of gravity waves propagating through the donut. To return to the past, a traveler in a rocket would zip around inside the donut, receding a little further into the past with each orbit, Ori says. Ken D. Olum of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., is skeptical that Ori's concept could succeed. Until now, scientists have called for using prodigious amounts of an exotic entity known as negative energy, which theorists expect to exist only in minuscule quantities, for time machines. In 1992, Stephen W. Hawking of Cambridge University in England proved a theorem that rules out time machines built without negative energy, Olum notes. Ori counters that Hawking's analysis involves certain conditions that don't apply to his concept. Igor D. Novikov of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen finds Ori's concept of a donut-shaped core "very original and probably without unrealistic parts." The new proposal "is a valuable contribution to studies of potential time machines," he says.

Would You Eat Tattooed Fruit?

For those who are tired of peeling those teeny, gluey stickers off fruit, the produce industry has a new solution called tattooed fruit.Unless you're growing your own fruits and vegetables in your home, you've probably seen an array of fruits and vegetables that have these teeny stickers on them. A big problem with these stickers is that you can't get them off without damaging the fruit. But now there's new technology called tattooed, or "Laser-Coded," fruit, and it uses the same sort of laser technology that is used in surgery: it cuts and cauterizes at the same time. Does this permanently damage the fruit? Apparently, it does not. Durand-Wayland of LaGrange, Ga., which holds the patent on this laser technology, says laser coding is an "all natural, edible label." It's permanent, and it may be a better way to track and trace food. Syler says one of the aims of tattooed fruit is to keep track of what Americans eat, whether for profit or security reasons. So consumers may have two options now: tattooed fruit or stickers. That's good news for people who have trouble getting those stickers off. Syler says it took one woman a half hour to get all these stickers off her purchases. The next morning, she woke up and had two stickers trapped her hair.

Star Trek's James Doohan Dies At 85, Immortalized For 'Beam Me Up, Scotty'

The publicist for James Doohan says the actor who played Scotty on "Star Trek" has died at his home in Redmond, Wash. He was 85. The cause of his death was pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease. In Doohan's biography on the official Star Trek Web site, Doohan is described as once being the "craziest pilot in the Canadian Air Forces." Doohan's "Star Trek" character often played a central role in the series and movies, troubleshooting problems on the Starship Enterprise to save the day. Doohan was born March 3, 1920, in Vancouver, British Columbia, and left home at age 19 to join the Canadian Forces, fighting with the Allies in World War II. He then became a Captain in the Royal Canadian Artillery and led troops into battle on D-Day. Besides starring as the chief engineer aboard the "Enterprise" in the original Star Trek series, which debuted on NBC in 1966, Doohan had parts in more than 100 motion pictures and television series, including "The Twilight Zone," "Outer Limits," "Fantasy Island," "Loaded Weapon 1" and "Double Trouble." He also appeared in the first seven "Star Trek" motion pictures. The actor's ashes are to be sent into space -- as Doohan had wanted -- by a company called Space Services Inc., according to the agent. The Houston-based company teams with commercial launch organizations in offering out-of-this-world memorial services and it has sent into space the ashes of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry. James Doohan, known best for his role as chief engineer Scotty (Montgomery Scott) aboard the USS Enterprise in the original Star Trek TV series and seven films, poses with former cast members George Takei (left) and Nichelle Nichols while he accepts his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles last year.

Massive Shark Caught Off Vineyard

It wasn't too little, but it was too late. Fishermen who hauled in a massive 1,100 pound tiger shark off Massachusetts failed to capture first place in the monster shark derby on Martha's Vineyard. The reason: The boat was six minutes too late in returning to Oak Bluffs harbor with its catch. The toothy tiger shark may not have won the competition, but it did win the admiration of other fishermen. Steven James of the Boston Big Game Fishing Club said this truly was a monster shark, and one that "could eat you."

Bigfoot Spotted In Yukon

9 People In Canada Claim To See Giant Creature In Backyard
Roger Smarch of Teslin, Canada, shows off track where mysterious creature was spottedThe legendary creature "Bigfoot" has been spotted again, this time in Canada, where nine people in the Yukon community of Teslin claim to have seen the legendary creature. According to the CBC, the witnesses, some of whom are children, saw the hairy, human-like creature pass in front of a house window, and then later behind an abandoned car near some houses last weekend. Those who claim to have seen Bigfoot, which is also known as a sasquatch, said they heard trees snapping and creaking despite the lack of wind at the time. They say the figure was running too quickly for them to keep up with it. "He ran through the backyard, and that's when I seen him," said one man who was on his porch at the time. "You could see a big, black thing go by, and you couldn't see no head or nothing. So, I figured it was somebody messing around." "We weren't gonna tell anybody at first 'cause we thought everybody was gonna look at us and say we're all snakin' out or we're crazy," said another eyewitness. "It wasn't too much fun explaining it at first, but once everybody starts believing us, it's not so bad. They wanted to see the track, they wanted to see the pictures, they wanted to see the hair and stuff like that. ... I wouldn't want to run into him in a dark, back alley or anything like that. Geez, it stands over ten feet tall, [it would] proabably tear my head off or something." The men said some evidence was left, including a footprint about twice the size of a human print, and a patch of hair which has already been sent to a conservation officer in Whitehorse for possible DNA review.

Pig Sperm In Space

China is planning to study the effects of space on sperm, by sending the semen from pedigree pigs into orbit. Some 40 grams of pig sperm will be taken on board the Shenzhou VI spacecraft for its October launch. Some of the sperm will be kept outside the spacecraft's biological capsule and some inside, according to China's Xinhua news agency. Surviving sperm will be returned to Earth and used to understand better the processes involved in pig reproduction. The pigs chosen are a breed called Rongchang, named after an area in the southwest of the country and famed for their physique and for the quality of their meat. Agricultural experts hope to use the sperm to fertilise pig eggs back on Earth - to see what effect a period of microgravity will have had on the sperm's activity. China's first manned spaceflight two years ago made it the third country able to launch a human into space on its own, along with Russia and the United States. During the upcoming mission, two astronauts will orbit the planet five or six times.

Jesus Christ In The Desert

There's some very good news today for those readers who do not have the good fortune to live in either the UK or the US of A - you now officially exist according to Google. Yup, maps.google.co.uk has now restored those bits of the the globe previously not thought worthy of inclusion in the big map - which was everywhere except Blighty and the States, Canada, Central America, some Caribbean islands and the Irish Republic. There's more on the terrifying conspiracy theory behind this mass erasure in our previous report into the matter. But before the black helicopters can return to base, we must ask this simple question: Why has Google Maps chosen to remain silent on the small matter of having located Jesus Christ in a Peruvian sand dune? We find it impossible to believe that Google didn't spot this ghostly Turin shroudesque image of Our Lord in the South American sands. What are they not telling us? A quick phone call to Erich von Däniken confirmed our initial suspicions that the image was hewn from the sand by an ancient civilisation using hot air balloons and alien laser technology borrowed from the scientists of Atlantis. Either that or someone is projecting a picture of Charles Manson onto the desert from a low Earth orbit, Erich told El Reg before popping out to discover a representation of an extraterrestrial wearing an Apple iPod carved into a stone by Mayan artisans in 500BC. Whatever the truth, the implications of this discovery are chilling indeed. Sinister things are afoot at Google, make no mistake.

Ukrainian Vampire Drugged Children And Drank Their Blood

A vampire has been arrested in Ukraine after luring street children into her home for their blood. Diana Semenuha, 29, believed that drinking blood could fend off a muscle-wasting condition. She kept the children intoxicated on drugs and alcohol and bled them regularly, selling the surplus to other black magic practitioners. When that weakened them, she dumped them back on the streets and lured replacements with the promise of a place to sleep and a hot meal. Police raided Semenuha's apartment in the Black Sea port of Odessa after a tip-off. Olga Buravceva, a spokesman, said: "The apartment was painted black, with all the windows covered with thick black cloth to stop natural light coming in. The only light came from black candles, and there was a heavy, sickening odour of some sort of incense in the air." Detectives found seven drugged children strapped to beds and benches, and a large, black knife and silver goblet engraved with satanic symbols. Ukraine has an estimated 200,000 street children, whose widespread addiction to glue sniffing and alcohol made them easy prey for the woman dubbed the "vampire witch" by local media. Semenuha's arrest exposed an occult network in the city. Many claimed to have been taught by Semenuha and said that she would cut herself and let them drink her blood. One of the children, named only as Andrei, told police: "She gave me vodka and I sniffed some glue. But than she came up to me with a syringe and asked me to stretch out my hand. I didn't feel any pain because I was too scared. She drew the blood with the syringe and a needle and than put it in her silver bowl and drank it, murmuring in some strange language." Semenuha, who when arrested gave her profession as "witch", has admitted holding the children. "I let them sniff glue, but I paid for it and took a small amount of blood in return," she said. "But there was no violence involved, I also fed them and gave them shelter." Police fear that she could escape prosecution for corrupting minors and plying them with alcohol because the seven children found at her home have since escaped from care and gone back on the streets.

Death Linked To Silicone Injection Party

A 45-year-old transgender he/she who received illegal silicone injections at a party in a private home in San Diego has died after nearly a month on life support, the county medical examiner said. Patricio Gonzalez, who police said received silicone injections to its hips, buttocks, cheeks and lips, died on Sunday. Gonzalez and at least nine other people were injected at a so-called "pumping party" on June 19, police said. "Pumping parties," where people seeking a more feminine appearance have silicone injected into their bodies, have been on the upswing in the last few years, experts say. The silicone used at the parties is often industrial-grade material like floor sealant. The Food and Drug Administration banned direct injections of silicone in 1992 and the substance has been known to migrate within the body and cause chronic, degenerative illnesses. Gonzalez and another transgender woman received more silicone than the other party guests and suffered immediate respiratory problems, prompting the Los Angeles-area woman who was administering the silicone to flee, police said. Police have issued an arrest warrant for Sammia "Angelica" Gonzalez, 39, who was injecting the party guests with silicone, is believed to have fled to Mexico. The second transgender he/she, 30, was also comatose after the party. There was no update on her condition from police on Monday. Deaths stemming from "pumping parties" are on the rise, with at least five fatalities reported in Florida, Texas and Georgia since 2003. The illegal silicone injections are in demand because it remains cheaper and easier than plastic surgery, said Dr. Walter Bockting, the coordinator of transgender health services at the University of Minnesota's Center for Human Sexuality. Transgender women often have humiliating experiences with traditional surgery clinics, and surgeons often require a psychological exam before they will consider treatment, he said. "The greatest danger is that people don't know what they're getting," Bockting said. "People are very vulnerable because of the self-esteem issues they suffer from and they are willing to risk long-term disaster to feel better." A.J. Davis, public policy director for the San Diego Gay and Lesbian Community Center, said the center does everything it can to discourage silicone injections. "We talk to people about the dangers and we provide lots of information for nonsurgical alternatives," she said.

Deep-Sea Animal Caught Red-Limbed

The first deep-sea red-light district - glowing appendages on a newly discovered jellyfish relative - appear to flash their come-hither message to lure prey. Jellyfish and other types of sea creatures are known to produce light, but this is the first deep ocean invertebrate known to use red fluorescent light, said Steven H.D. Haddock of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, Calif. Three of the animals were found by scientists using a remote-controlled research vehicle at depths between 5,200 feet and 7,500 feet off the coast of California. The discovery was reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The new find is a previously unreported species in the genus Erenna, which is a member of the group that includes coral and jellyfish. The animal, which has not yet been named, has tentacles with side branches that consist of stinging cells attached to a central stalk. The researchers said that inside the stalk are spots that produce blue-green light when immature and red when mature. And they noted that the two colors are produced by different methods. The blue-green light is produced by a process called bioluminescence, which emits energy as light instead of heat. The red light comes from fluorescence, a process in which short-wavelength light such as blue is re-emitted as long-wavelength red light. There are not many fish at the depth at which the specimens were found, but two of the Erennas had fish inside them. Judging by the shape, size and motion of the tentacles, and the fish found in the stomachs, Haddock said the researchers believe the red lights are being used to attract fish that can then be captured and eaten. Stephen D. Cairns, a research scientist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, called the discovery a "quaint example of a primitive life form [a jellyfish, an organism without a brain], outwitting a vertebrate - a deep-water fish in this case - by mimicking the red light the fish is purported to emit. "This is another fascinating case of deep-sea ecology, an event that probably happens millions or billions of times a day, but one that we glimpse for the first time only now," said Cairns, who was not part of Haddock's research team. Previously many scientists had thought that most fish living at this depth could not see red light, Haddock said in a telephone interview. But, he said, there is evidence that some fish can see red, possibly giving them an advantage in finding certain organisms to eat that are red.

450 Sheep Jump To Their Deaths

First one sheep jumped to its death. Then stunned Turkish shepherds, who had left the herd to graze while they had breakfast, watched as nearly 1,500 others followed, each leaping off the same cliff, Turkish media reported. In the end, 450 dead animals lay on top of one another in a billowy white pile, the Aksam newspaper said. Those who jumped later were saved as the pile got higher and the fall more cushioned, Aksam reported. "There's nothing we can do. They're all wasted," Nevzat Bayhan, a member of one of 26 families whose sheep were grazing together in the herd, was quoted as saying by Aksam. The estimated loss to families in the town of Gevas, located in Van province in eastern Turkey, tops $100,000, a significant amount of money in a country where average GDP per head is around $2,700. "Every family had an average of 20 sheep," Aksam quoted another villager, Abdullah Hazar as saying. "But now only a few families have sheep left. It's going to be hard for us."

New drug blocks HIV from entering cells

A durable new drug that prevents HIV from entering human cells and causes almost no side effects has been developed by a team of researchers at Kumamoto University. The new drug, code named AK602, was reported by the research team's leader, Hiroaki Mitsuya, at the International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific in Kobe on Tuesday. The drug's main feature is that it shuts out the AIDS virus at the point when it tries to intrude into a human cell. Current AIDS medicines can lose their effectiveness in a few days when the virus changes and develops a resistance to those drugs. But AK602 is different because it reacts to human cells instead of attacking the virus, Mitsuya said. He said the drug sticks to a protein called CCR5 that acts as an entrance into human cells for the AIDS virus. When the new drug becomes attached to the protein, it can prevent HIV from entering, and thus stop the virus from spreading. The researchers conducted clinical tests on 40 AIDS patients in the United States. AK602 not only proved effective against viruses that had become resistant to other drugs, but it also caused almost no side effects, the team said.

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Give this doll the name of your enemies, then torture it. CLICK The Virtual Voodoo Doll

Parents Awake To Find 45 cm Snake Cuddled Up On Baby

An Ontario Canada couple were horrified when they woke up to find a snake lying on their infant's chest. The month-old boy also had a small bite on his neck. The baby was checked out in hospital and is fine. The parents told police their son was sleeping in bed with them and they awoke at about 7 a.m. and spotted the snake. The black and white reptile, a non-venomous California king snake, is about 45 centimetres long. It had slithered away from an neighbour's apartment, where it was kept as a pet. "It was lying on the shoulder-neck area." said Cont. Glenn Hodgson of St. Thomas police. The animal control officer in the southwestern Ontario city was is investigating.

A SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM CRUEL KEV.

A Real Nightmare...

A teenage sleepwalker was rescued after being found fast asleep 130 feet up on the arm of a crane, police said. Emergency services were called to a building site in London after a passer-by spotted the 15-year-old girl curled up on top of a concrete counterweight high above the ground. The teen-ager, who has not been named, had climbed up the crane and walked across a narrow metal beam while fast asleep during the incident. It is believed the teen-ager had walked out unnoticed from her home near the site in Dulwich, southeast London. She was brought down in a hydraulic lift after a two-hour rescue operation. "Police and London Fire Brigade attended and the woman was brought down from the crane at around 4 a.m. and taken to hospital for precautionary checks," a police spokeswoman said. The girl was unharmed and later went home.

New Dolphin Species Found In Australia

A new species of dolphin has been found living in the warm tropical waters of northern Australia. Scientists had always thought the dolphins were a local variation of the Irrawaddy dolphin, a species which ranges into Southeast Asia. But marine biologists have found enough differences in the population to declare it a separate species, the Australian snubfin dolphin. An Australian snubfin dolphin - not a variety of Irrawaddy dolphin but a separate species, named for its stubby dorsal fin.It derives its name from its short, stubby dorsal fin. Identifying a new species is a rare event in the cetacean world and researchers from James Cook University and the Museum of Tropical Queensland, both in Townsville, are celebrating the find. "There are clear differences between the two populations that had not been previously recognised and these were confirmed by the studies on DNA," said Isabel Beasley, a PhD student and research team member. The dolphins, mostly found in shallow coastal waters, are susceptible to being caught in fishing and anti-shark nets. Coastal development may also affect their health. Scientists have no idea how numerous they are - around 200 are believed to live in the ocean off Townsville, northern Queensland, and there is an unknown number living in the rest of the species' range, which extends to Western Australia. "Even though Australia is a developed country ... more is known about the Mekong River dolphin population in Cambodia than the Australian species," said Peter Arnold, of the Museum of Tropical Queensland. They have been given the Latin name orcaella heinsohni, after George Heinsohn, a researcher who studied dolphins in the 1970s.

Bull's Eye

A NASA spacecraft collided with a comet a third the size of Hong Kong, creating a brilliant cosmic smashup that capped a risky voyage to uncover the building blocks of life on Earth. ``We hit it just exactly where we wanted to,'' said Don Yeomans, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The spectacular collision,134 million kilometers from Earth, unleashed a spray of below-surface material formed billions of years ago during the creation of the solar system. It was the first time a craft was in contact with a comet's nucleus. ``As of now, I think we have a completely different understanding of our solar system,'' said laboratory director Charles Elachi. ``Its success exceeded our expectations.'' The washing machine-sized probe, which performed three final targeting maneuvers in the mission's last two hours, crashed into comet Tempel 1's brightest spot right on schedule, snapping images of its rocky terrain up until 3.7 seconds before impact. The craft was vaporized immediately following the collision, which occurred at 37,100 km/h. An image of the crash Monday 12.52am Hong Kong time taken by Deep Impact, the mother ship, showed a brilliant burst of material from the bottom of the avocado-shaped comet. The probe was released by Deep Impact 24 hours before the collision. ``The impact was bigger than I expected, and bigger than most of us expected,'' Yeomans said. ``We've got all the data we could possibly ask for and the science team is ecstatic.'' Scientists and engineers in the US$333 million (HK$2.6 billion) mission's control room cheered and hugged one another upon confirmation of the crash. It could take months to analyze all the data from the crash, according to Mike A'Hearn, the lead scientist. Three hours after the impact, just 10 percent of the data had been transmitted back to Earth. ``We are just basically starting our work now,'' A'Hearn said. ``I look forward to a wealth of data, which will take me to retirement.'' Comets are made of gas, dust and ice from the solar system's farthest regions. They often show bursts of activity, during which their surfaces crack to create tails of dust. Scientists think comets may have been responsible for first bringing water to Earth by crashing into its surface. Images captured by the impactor, showing the nucleus in greater detail than ever before, revealed several circular craters on Tempel 1. The size of the crater formed by the impactor is expected to range from that of a large house to a football stadium.

Man Nearly Hit By Meteorite

A Fairbury Nebraska man was watering his yard last week when he had a very rare and close encounter with a possible meteorite. Brad Kinzie was out watering his yard in the wee hours of the morning Saturday -- trying to avoid the hottest period of the day -- when an object whizzed by his head and landed. "It came over my head, probably, about a foot and a half. I could feel the breeze," Kinzie said. "It was silver and it kind of had red and black on the back of it and smoke." The object landed about 65 feet from where Kinzie was watering. "I stood ... here looking at it, 'cause it was still glowing. I says, 'Wow,'" Kinzie said. Kinzie left it there to cool off, and made two wishes on his falling star. "One of my wishes came true. My oldest brother wasn't speaking to my sister for two years. They got back together," he said. Kinzie is checking with University of Nebraska astronomy professors to see if it is a real meteorite. If it is, Kinzie is in very rare company. The chances of this close of an encounter are one in 100 billion, expert said.. "I just been busy, people calling me on the phone," Kinzie said. Kinzie wouldn't say what his second wish is. After all, he said, it hasn't come true yet. "Only once in a 100 billion years, and it will probably never happen to me again," he said. Kinzie said if it is a meteorite, he will probably sell it. Collectors have been known to pay thousands of dollars for rare meteorites. Brad Kinzie

No Fish Tale: Thais Catch 646-Pound Fish

This Mekong giant catfish was weighed at 646 pounds by researchers working on a project to identify, study and conserve large freshwater fish around the world.Thai fishermen netted a catfish as big as a grizzly bear, setting a world record for the largest freshwater fish ever found, according to researchers who studied the 646-pound Mekong giant catfish as part of a project to protect large freshwater fish. “It’s amazing to think that giants like this still swim in some of the world’s rivers,” project leader Zeb Hogan project leader said in a statement. “We’ve now confirmed now that this catfish is the current record holder, an astonishing find.” “I’m thrilled that we’ve set a new record, but we need to put this discovery in context: these giant fish are uniformly poorly studied and some are critically endangered," added Hogan, a fellow with the World Wildlife Fund, which is partnering with the National Geographic Society. "Some, like the Mekong giant catfish, face extinction.” Hogan said his study of giant freshwater fish "is showing a clear and global pattern: the largest fish species are disappearing. "The challenge is clear," he added, "we must find methods to protect these species and their habitats. By acting now, we can save animals like the Mekong giant catfish from extinction.” Hogan's project includes two-dozen other species, including the giant freshwater stingray, the dog-eating catfish, the dinosaur-like arapaima, and the Chinese paddlefish – "all of which remain contenders for the title of the world’s largest fish," the researchers stated, pending the final results of their work. "Long shots for the title include caviar-producing sturgeon, goliath Amazon catfish, giant lungfish, razor-toothed gars, massive cods, and Mongolian salmon," they added. The Mekong giant catfish was caught and eaten in a remote village in Thailand along the Mekong River, home to more species of giant fish than any other river in the world, the researchers said. Local environmentalists and government officials had negotiated to release the fish so it could continue its spawning migration in the far north of Thailand, near the borders of Thailand, Laos, Myanmar and China, but the adult male later died.