Science Special News

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'Hogwarts' dragon unveiled

A dragon-like dinosaur named after Harry Potter's alma mater has performed a bit of black magic on its own family tree, say paleontologists who unveiled the "Dragon King of Hogwarts" on Monday in Albuquerque. The newly described horny-headed dinosaur Dracorex hogwartsia lived about 66 million years ago in South Dakota, just a million years short of the extinction of all dinosaurs. But its flat, almost storybook-style dragon head has overturned everything paleontologists thought they knew about the dome-head dinos called pachycephalosaurs."What you knew about pachycephalosaurs -- you can chuck it," said Spencer Lucas, curator of paleontology at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History."Dracorex hogwartsia is a rather fantastic new dinosaur," affirmed paleontologist Robert Sullivan of the State Museum of Pennsylvania.For years dinosaur experts had thought the classic dome-headed, head-butting sorts of pachycephalosaurs evolved from earlier flat-headed ancestors.

The last thing they expected to find at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs was a dramatically flat-headed pachycerphalosaurs, or "pachy.""If you were going to predict the kind of dinosaur that would live at that time, it would not be this," said Lucas.Without so much as a nod of the head or the waving of a wand, hogwartsia has reversed the pachy family tree."Instead of going from flat-headed to domed, you're going from dome-headed to flat," Sullivan told Discovery News. Along with several colleagues, Sullivan co-authored the first detailed study of the new dinosaur, published this week in the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science Bulletin.

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Britons report 'psychic powers'

More than half of Britons believe in psychic powers such as mind-reading and premonitions, a survey suggests. Of 1,006 adults polled for Readers Digest Magazine, 43% reported reading others' thoughts or having theirs read. More than half had had a dream or premonition of an event before it happened and 26% said they had sensed when a loved-one was ill or in trouble. A fifth said they had seen a ghost and 29% believed near-death experiences were evidence there was an afterlife. Of those questioned, 43% claimed to have tapped into other people's thoughts or to have had their own minds read by someone else. More than two-thirds said they could sense when someone was looking at them and 62% could tell who was ringing before they picked up the phone. More than 10% thought they could influence machinery or electronic equipment using their minds. One in 10 said something bad had happened to another person after they had wished for it to happen.

Women were more likely to believe in the paranormal than men, though 53% of males said they sometimes knew who was ringing before picking up the phone and 45% had experienced dream or premonition before an event. Despite the high numbers who said they had experienced such phenomena, only 9% described themselves as psychic. Simon Bacon, lecturer at London's College of Psychic Studies and a practising medium, said: "When you say psychic, many people have an image of an old woman in a gown with a crystal ball. They don't associate themselves with that."

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Robot hand controlled by thought alone

A robotic hand controlled by the power of thought alone has been demonstrated by researchers in Japan. The robotic hand mimics the movements of a person's real hand, based on real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of their brain activity. It marks another landmark in the advance towards prosthetics and computers that can be operating by thought alone.The system was developed by Yukiyasu Kamitani and colleagues from the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, and researchers from the Honda Research Institute in Saitama.Subjects lay inside an MRI scanner and were asked to make "rock, paper, scissor" shapes with their right hand. As they did this, the MRI scanner recorded brain activity during the formation of each shape and fed this data to a connected computer. After a short training period, the computer was able to recognise the brain activity associated with each shape and command the robotic appendage do the same.An fMRI machine probes activity within the brain by monitoring blood flow to different regions. It uses a powerful magnetic field combined with radiofrequency pulses to probe the magnetic state of hydrogen atoms in water molecules within body tissue.

An alternative and more portable method is to measure electrical activity inside the brain using electrodes either implanted in brain tissue or attached to the scalp. US researchers have previously used brain implants to allow monkeys to remotely operate robotic arms.Electrodes attached to a person's skull can also be used to control the movement of a cursor across a computer screen. Klaus-Robert Mueller at the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin, Germany, has developed such a system. He says the fMRI technique is cumbersome and expensive but could help scientists better understand how the brain works because it provides higher resolution.

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1970's UFO case solved ?

A spate of mysterious UFO and alien sightings which gripped a Welsh community 30 years ago may have finally been explained. A former US Navy sailor claims the furore gripping the Broad Haven area of Pembrokeshire in the late 1970s was caused by an officer in a special fireproof uniform, and new RAF jets.The sailor, who served in the area shortly after most of the sightings, says a fellow officer admitted he had been responsible.The clamour around the possibility of little green men visiting Pembrokeshire in the late 1970s led to numerous tabloid reports, including one of an entire class of schoolchildren claiming to have seen a UFO landing.Many others reported being petrified by a strange silver alien.It all happened in what became known as the Broad Haven Triangle, and canny tourist operators even started running UFO sighting weekends. However behind the hype, Government officials took some of the tales seriously, and it was revealed last year by UFO expert Dr David Clarke that a secret MoD investigation had been carried out.

Now, following publicity about the investigation, James Carlson from Albuquerque, New Mexico, has written to the Fortean Times - a magazine about the supernatural - with what he believes are answers to West Wales' paranormal riddle.He was stationed at the US Naval Facility in Brawdy in the 1980s.In his letter Carlson tells how one of his supervisors, who is identified only by the name Steve, saw him reading a book about paranormal incidents around Brawdy, which was also an RAF base.The book quotes an RAF officer, who states the descriptions of "alien" suits were in no way similar to military uniforms at the time.However Carlson was told by Steve that the description was identical to firefighting gear used by American personnel.He said, "Steve told me that while serving on the fire team of his division, he would often don the asbestos suit and oxygen breathing apparatus provided.

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Prehistoric ecosystem found in Israeli cave

Submitted by Rick Hamell: Israeli scientists said on Wednesday they had discovered a prehistoric ecosystem dating back millions of years. The discovery was made in a cave near the central Israeli city of Ramle during rock drilling at a quarry. Scientists were called in and soon found eight previously unknown species of crustaceans and invertebrates similar to scorpions."Until now eight species of animals were found in the cave, all of them unknown to science," said Dr Hanan Dimantman, a biologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.He said the cave's ecosystem probably dates back around five million years when the Mediterranean Sea covered parts of Israel. The cave was completely sealed off from the world, including from water and nutrients seeping through rock crevices above.

Scientists who discovered the cave believe it has been intact for millions of years."Every species we examined had no eyes which means they lost their sight due to evolution," said Dimantman.Samples of the animals discovered in the cave were sent for DNA tests which found they were unique, he said. The cave has been closed off as scientists conduct a more detailed survey."This is a cave of fantastic biodiversity," Dimantman said.

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"The Omen" remake uses Satanic '666' promo

With the clamor over religious thriller "The Da Vinci Code" barely fading, a major Hollywood studio is mining the same vein with a Satanic "666" marketing campaign for its new horror film. "The Omen", a remake of the 1976 horror classic, is the kind of film that routinely makes it big at the box office, appealing to the coveted demographic of young and predominantly male thrill-seekers.Twentieth Century Fox has banked "The Omen" on a promotional campaign based on "666", the number associated with Satan, based on Revelation, the last book in the Bible.Even the film's worldwide debut is set for June 6, 2006, or 06/06/06, which the studio conveniently has shortened to 666 in the film's logo.In the Christian culture, the number "666" is the symbol of the devil, as related by Revelation 13:18: "This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666.""The Omen" is the story of a father who realizes his adopted infant son, Damien, who has a 666 birthmark on his skull, is a reincarnation of Satan. A maelstrom of death surrounds the boy."The prophecy is clear, the signs unmistakable: Armageddon is upon us. On 6/6/06, the omen is revealed...and our darkest fears are realized," says the 20th Century Fox website.

The use of a Satanic promotional campaign comes at a sensitive time, after this month's release of "The Da Vinci Code" provoked an outcry from religious groups protesting the film's controversial theme of a married Jesus Christ and a Top of Form 1Bottom of Form 1Vatican <http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?p=Vatican> cover-up."Normally, a marketer is going to be very, very wary about using the devil," said Robert Thompson, professor of television at Syracuse University in New York state."But 666 has really emerged in the popular culture as a funny thing you bring up when you're talking about a kid misbehaving on the playground, you say 'I bet this one has a 666 on his scalp'," he said.

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Top scientist gives up on creationists

A leading British scientist said yesterday that he had given up trying to persuade creationists that Darwin's theory is correct after repeatedly being misrepresented and, he said, branded a liar. Speaking at the Guardian Hay festival at Hay-on-Wye, the evolutionary biologist Steve Jones spoke of his frustrations when trying to debate with religious opponents. "I don't engage with creationists directly," he said, saying that, when he had, they had frequently quoted him out of context or accused him of lying. "If somebody has decided to believe something - whatever the evidence - then there is nothing you can do about it." The University College London professor spoke to the provocative title, Why Creationism is Wrong and Evolution is Right. He pointed out that acceptance of Darwin's theory on a global scale was a "minority belief". According to polls, 100 million Americans believe in creationism. His talk laid out some of the evidence for evolution, such as that of changes in the HIV virus after infecting people. He also hinted at a puzzle thrown up by the human genome project. Far from the hundreds of thousands of genes many geneticists expected, there seem to be around 30,000.

Another revelation was the notion that the chimpanzee genome project has shown that women are closer to chimps then men. Prof Jones explained that is because the X chromosome has changed less than the Y chromosome since we split from a common ancestor with chimps. Women have two X chromosomes compared with XY in men. The most important difference between evolutionists and creationists, Prof Jones concluded, is that scientists are always prepared to say, "I don't know". "If there weren't any unknown parts of evolution, bits we don't understand, it wouldn't be a science," he said, "That's one thing that believers never say, because it's all written down in a big book." In 1997, Prof Jones was awarded the Royal Society's Michael Faraday prize, the UK's foremost award for communicating science to the public.

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Black cats played many roles

Oct.31 is Samheim, the New Year's Eve of the Wiccan year. Most of us know the holiday as Halloween, a time of ghosts, goblins, spirits and black cat silhouettes clinging to our windows of cats and witches, and children waiting to get into their costumes. We have made Halloween a fun, social time for children and our neighbors. But you must remember while we find this whole costume thing nostalgic, and a reminder of what we did as children, the animals often find these same sights frightening. Please remember your cats and dogs should be indoors during the trick or treating times and also kept away from Halloween candy. Chocolate especially, is quite dangerous to animals. One could not have the mystery of Halloween without including the superstitions of the black cat.

We often see the cat with arched back, glowing eyes, curled lips, claws drawn, ready to pounce. The black cat has consistently been blamed for the ills of the world, and so becomes an important part of the world of witches during Samheim.For thousands of years, black cats have been regarded as mysterious creatures with supernatural power. It is believed witches can turn into cats and they could make the change nine times -- hence, the belief cats have nine lives. Since the black cat was once considered a witch in disguise, and is still viewed as a witch's familiar, history has given this animal many special powers.

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