Science Special News

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Semi-identical twins discovered

Waspie and Hurrikane: Scientists have revealed details of the world's only known case of "semi-identical" twins. The journal Nature says the twins are identical on their mother's side, but share only half their genes on their father's side. They are the result of two sperm cells fertilising a single egg, which then divided to form two embryos - and each sperm contributed genes to each child. Each stage is unlikely, and scientists believe the twins are probably unique. These twins were born in the US, but neither their identity or their exact location is being revealed. Their case is also reported in the journal Human Genetics. Normally, twins either develop from the same egg which later splits to form identical twins - who share all their genetic material, or from two separate eggs which are fertilised by two separate sperm. This creates non-identical (fraternal) twins - who share on average 50% of their genetic material.

Sometimes, two sperm can fertilise a single egg, but this is only thought to happen in about 1% of human conceptions. Most embryos created this way do not survive. These twins, who were conceived normally, only came to the attention of scientists because one was born with sexually ambiguous genitalia. The child was discovered to be a hermaphrodite, and has both ovarian and testicular tissue, while the other child is anatomically male.

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Former governor saw Phoenix lights

Former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington trotted out an aide dressed as an alien 10 years ago to spoof the frenzy surrounding mysterious lights in the Phoenix sky. Now he says he saw the lights himself and believed from the start that they were extraterrestrial.Now a pastry chef and business consultant, Symington said he didn't acknowledge his own encounter at first because he didn't want people to panic. The former governor, who faced fraud charges at the time, also said he didn't need the additional problems such an admission would have created.Symington discussed the sighting with a UFO investigator making a documentary, and in media interviews this week."I'm a pilot, and I know just about every machine that flies," Symington, a former Air Force captain, told the Arizona Daily Star on Thursday. "It was bigger than anything that I've ever seen. It remains a great mystery. Other people saw it, responsible people. I don't know why people would ridicule it."Symington told CNN the craft he saw March 13, 1997, was "enormous. It just felt otherworldly. In your gut, you could just tell it was otherworldly."Symington said he initially told no one but his wife that he had seen the lights.

During a news conference that June, Symington, in his second term as governor, told reporters that an alien had been captured. He then ushered out his chief of staff, Jay Heiler, dressed in a costume complete with oversized head and eyes."This just goes to show that you guys are entirely too serious," Symington said then.Later in 1997, Symington was convicted of bank fraud charges stemming from his bankrupt real estate empire. The conviction later was overturned and he was pardoned by President Clinton in 2001 before federal prosecutors decided whether they would retry the case.Heiler, who says Symington is one of his closest friends, said he isn't surprised he believes in UFOs. He described his former boss as a "Trekkie" who believes earthlings will travel to distant solar systems at above the speed of light "in our lifetimes."

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Group finds dog-sized gigantic toad

An environmental group said Tuesday it had captured a "monster" toad the size of a small dog. With a body the size of a football and weighing nearly 2 pounds, the toad is among the largest specimens ever captured in Australia, according to Frogwatch coordinator Graeme Sawyer."It's huge, to put it mildly," he said. "The biggest toads are usually females but this one was a rampant male ... I would hate to meet his big sister." Frogwatch, which is dedicated to wiping out a toxic toad species that has killed countless Australian animals, picked up the 15-inch-long cane toad during a raid on a pond outside the northern city of Darwin late Monday.Cane toads were imported from South America during the 1930s in a failed attempt to control beetles on Australia's northern sugar cane plantations. The poisonous toads have proven fatal to Australia's delicate ecosystems, killing millions of native animals from snakes to the small crocodiles that eat them.

As part of its so-called "Toad Buster" project, Frogwatch conducts regular raids on local water holes, blinding the toads with bright lights then scooping them up by the dozen.

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ESP research a dying trend

Since age 6, Bryan and James Williams, twins, have been able to read each other's minds -- to an extent. Bryan, sophomore in agricultural education, said if asked to choose a number between one and 10, his brother will guess it correctly every time.In addition to this, he said when his twin is struggling, he can sense it."If he's ever in a bad situation, I can feel something," he said.James, a sophomore in chemical engineering, agreed and said he gets a "weird feeling" when his brother is in trouble, but nothing as specific as sudden knowledge of a certain injury.This perception of his brother's thoughts may fall into the category of extrasensory perception, which is a field of parapsychology researchers have studied for decades. However, it may be a dying subject, as prominent laboratories dedicated to the study of ESP close. The New York Times reported last month that Princeton University shut down its lab, which has been used to study ESP since 1979.Douglas Gillan, the psychology department head at N.C. State, said the department focuses on "normal everyday perception" in its research and instruction, and said he is not an expert in the field of parapsychology.Gillan said he can neither validate nor discredit research done in the field.

"I wouldn't discount the possibility [of ESP] -- from what I know, the research is still an open question," he said. "I wouldn't discount it, but I wouldn't support it either."In the 1920s, at neighboring Duke University, J.B. Rhine, a professor of psychology, began completing thousands of experiments to test hypotheses relating to parapsychology.

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Mammal rise 'not linked' to dinos

Submitted by Hurrikane & Waspie: The extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago had little effect on the evolution of mammals, according to a study in the journal Nature. One theory had suggested the rise of the mammals was directly linked to the disappearance of the dinosaurs. The evidence challenging the connection comes from the most complete family tree compiled for mammals. It shows how different groups, such as primates and rodents, are related and when they diverged. An international team compiled the mammal "supertree" from existing fossil data and from genetic analyses. Throughout the Cretaceous Period, when dinosaurs walked the Earth, mammals were relatively few in number, and were prevented from diversifying and evolving in ecosystems dominated by the ancient reptiles. According to the established view, the extinction of the dinosaurs removed this constraint, allowing mammals to diversify and flourish, and placing them on course to their present position of dominance on Earth. Under this model, placental mammals split into major sub-groupings, which originated and rapidly diversified after the mass extinction event - thought to have been caused by an asteroid or comet striking Earth 65 million years ago (a point in time recorded in rocks and referred to by geologists as the K-T boundary).

Co-author Kate Jones, from the Zoological Society of London, told the BBC Radio 4's Leading Edge programme: "The meteor impact that killed off the dinosaurs has traditionally been thought to have given mammals the edge they needed." However, the supertree shows that the placental mammals had already split into these sub-groups by 93 million years ago, long before the space impact and at a time when dinosaurs still ruled the planet.

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Bizarre hexagon spotted on Saturn

One of the most bizarre weather patterns known has been photographed at Saturn, where astronomers have spotted a huge, six-sided feature circling the north pole. Rather than the normally sinuous cloud structures seen on all planets that have atmospheres, this thing is a hexagon. The honeycomb-like feature has been seen before. NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged it more than two decades ago. Now, having spotted it with the Cassini spacecraft, scientists conclude it is a long-lasting oddity. "This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn's thick atmosphere, where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate, is perhaps the last place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is."

The hexagon is nearly 15,000 miles (25,000 kilometers) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it. The thermal imagery shows the hexagon extends about 60 miles (100 kilometers) down into the clouds. At Saturn's south pole, Cassini recently spotted a freaky human eye-like feature that resembles a hurricane.

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Many planets may have double suns

The dual suns that rise and set over Luke Skywalker's homeworld in the film Star Wars may be more than just fantasy, according to data from Nasa. In a classic scene from the 1977 movie, the hero gazes into the distance as two yellow suns set on the horizon. Nasa's Spitzer Space Telescope has found that planetary systems are as common around double stars as they are around single stars, like our own Sun. Details of the research have been published in the Astrophysical Journal. In the study, a team of researchers used an infrared camera on the Spitzer telescope to search for so-called dusty discs around binary, or double, stars. Dusty discs are made from the leftover debris of planet formation. "We knew the stars would be there, the question was whether there was a planet to be the place where you could stand and see these sunsets," said Karl Stapelfeldt, a scientist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

"The inference is getting stronger now that there must be such planets based on what Spitzer has found." The presence of planets in dusty discs is thought likely, but is by no means certain. "In our Solar System, asteroids collide with each other and produce showers of dust and that is, we assume, what we're seeing in these other discs - the dust produced by the collision of two bigger bodies," lead author David Trilling, from the University of Arizona, told BBC News.

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A healing worthy of a saint

For months she was known as the "mystery nun," an unidentified member of a religious order who told a Catholic Church investigator that she was miraculously cured of advanced Parkinson's disease after she and other nuns prayed to the late Pope John Paul II. Her testimony -- describing the kind of medically inexplicable recovery that could help advance the pontiff toward sainthood -- was published anonymously on an Italian Catholic Web site. It bore the signature "A French Sister." Church officials, proceeding with a confidential inquiry into the claims, refused to name her.On Friday morning, Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, an unassuming 46-year-old who works in a Paris maternity clinic, stepped before a bank of microphones on French national television and, in a voice choked with emotion, declared that she was the nun.She described going to bed one night barely able to write or walk and waking up at 4:30 a.m. fully cured. "All I can say is that I was ill and now I'm healed," said Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, smiling widely. "Now the church will decide if it's a miracle."

Church officials said Sister Marie Simon-Pierre's recovery from the advanced stages of a disease with no known cure could be instrumental in the canonization process, which can sometimes take centuries to complete but has been fast-tracked for John Paul.In Rome on Monday, Sister Marie Simon-Pierre will take part in ceremonies commemorating the second anniversary of John Paul's death and the completion of the first phase of efforts to declare the pontiff "blessed," an intermediate step toward sainthood. This step, known as beatification, requires confirmation of one miracle brought about by the posthumous intercession of the candidate.

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UFO flap over Ontario, Canada

British Columbia's UFO Researcher Brian Vike, Director of HBCC UFO Research sat listening to a radio show by way of the internet on March 11, 2007 from his home in Houston, B.C., a small town in northern British Columbia Canada. Mr. Vike thought he would check his http referrals to see what people were searching for on the internet. He was surprised to see the large number of sighting reports coming out of the province of Ontario, where most people were searching for the March 11, 2007 meteor. Believing an amazing light show took place in the province he thought to place a short, quick note to his website requesting that if anyone may have been witness to a meteor sighting over the Ontario province to please get in contact with him at HBCC UFO Research.It didn't take long before a few sighting reports of a possible meteor event started to arrive in Mr. Vike's email box. The following day, March 12, 2007 letters came flying in, one after another from different locations in the province of Ontario, and other areas as well. From Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and the object was witnessed also from some locations in New York.

There was no question as to what folks had been witness to, which was a fireball/meteor. The descriptions on what was seen were roughly the same. Some reports did vary from a round flaming green ball to a very bright red and orange ball with long green tail. Meteor reports still came in over the following next few days.What came as a surprise to Vike was the large amount of UFO sightings that was also happening in the province of Ontario. Over a short period of time the cases started rolling in and never stopped, and this over a lot of unusual reports of strange/unexplained UFOs seen by many eyewitnesses in the province.

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Stonehenges all around us

Archeologists recently discovered what appears to be the other half of Stonehenge, illuminating what they believe is a much larger Neolithic complex than has long been envisioned. What is coming to the surface seems strangely familiar. Looking closely at Stonehenge and other Neolithic sites, we find the formative patterns of our modern world.Step out of your house and you might notice your street is fixed on a cardinal grid: north, south, east, west. This pattern defines many American and European cities, as well as Neolithic sites such as Anyang in China and the Mexican city of Teotihuacan. The new discovery, two miles from Stonehenge itself, is an elaborate residential compound now being excavated. It is a site where the builders of Stonehenge may have lived and where pilgrims may have stayed while attending feasts and ceremonies. Fascinating tidbits have been unearthed: a timber version of Stonehenge, evidence of different kinds of occupations in the 4,600-year-old village and a processional "road" leading to the nearby Avon River. These finds add to the picture of an enigmatic Neolithic religion, in which stone-paved roads are aligned with celestial features and great circles frame the rising and setting sun at key times of the year.

This all has an uncanny resemblance to Neolithic sites in different parts of the world. The Big Horn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming, dating back several hundred years, is a complex celestial calendar, its 28 spokes of aligned stones pointing to risings and settings of the sun and various stars. This medicine wheel, in turn, is similar to the Nonakado Stone Circle of Japan, from the 1st millennium BC, where standing stones mark important, calendrical events on the horizon.My friend and colleague, Kim Malville, recently discovered an Egyptian Stonehenge in the Sahara dating back more than 6,000 years. Malville believes that it acted as both a calendar and a temple for people living along the edge of an ancient lake, and it is the oldest known megalithic site in the world.

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A close encounter in Victoria

It was around 10 p.m. one night in mid-March that the Victoria woman, standing in the driveway of her acreage, saw a UFO. "I heard a very powerful blowing noise, almost a white noise as it grew louder just to my left and just over the tree line. What came first was a very large, but dull, flashing red beacon in the centre of what began to appear as a massive triangular shape. It was like nothing I have ever seen before."As it approached very low, just over the trees and my house, it had a very strange white light on each side of the triangle; they seemed to be extremely bright but did not illuminate the ground at all. As it crossed overhead I thought I should be able to get a good look at it as it was a clear, starry night, but it brought a darkness with it. Darker than the night. Blacker than black, making it unable to distinguish any actual lines." Well, must admit that's not something you see every day (unless you've been hanging around crematoriums with Keith Richards), which is why UFOlogist Brian Vike, after receiving the written report, forwarded it to the TC.

Vike lives up in Houston, B.C., where for the past seven years he has run HBBC UFO Research -- collecting reports on unexplained sightings, doing an Internet radio show.He gets maybe 900 UFO reports a year worldwide, had 274 from Canada alone last year. Of those 274, he says maybe 200 could be readily explained away -- aircraft, Venus hanging low on the horizon, that sort of thing. He tries to weed out the hoaxers and kooks, discounts any report where the e-mail address bounces back. That still leaves plenty that's intriguing.