Science Special News

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Dog dials 911, saves owner's life

A US dog has won an award for saving her owner's life by dialling a phone number that alerted emergency services to her owner's diabetic seizure. Belle the beagle triggered a call to an ambulance crew by biting on her owner, Kevin Weaver's, mobile phone. The dog was trained to detect potential diabetic attacks by licking and sniffing Mr Weaver's nose to check his blood sugar levels and pawing him. Belle resorted to dialling for help when Mr Weaver fell unconscious. The dog used her teeth to press the number nine key, which the phone was programmed to interpret as a "911" call to emergency services. Ambulance workers answered the phone and, hearing nothing but barking at the end of the line, rushed to the caller's house in the city of Ocoee in Florida state.

The dog is the first animal to receive the Vita Wireless Samaritan Award. "I am convinced that if Belle wasn't with me that morning, I wouldn't be alive today," Mr Weaver said. "Belle is more than just a life-saver. She's my best friend."

[Rasputin]

Cryopreservation of human beings

The latest research on water - still one of the least understood of all liquids despite a century of intensive study – seems to support the possibility that cells, tissues and even the entire human body could be cyropreserved without formation of damaging ice crystals, according to University of Helsinki researcher Anatoli Bogdan, Ph.D. He conducted the study, scheduled for the July 6 issue of the ACS Journal of Physical Chemistry B, one of 34 peer-review journals published by the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.In medicine, cryopreservation involves preserving organs and tissues for transplantation or other uses. Only certain kinds of cells and tissues, including sperm and embryos, currently can be frozen and successfully rewarmed. A major problem hindering wider use of cyropreservation is formation of ice crystals, which damage cell structures.Cyropreservation may be most familiar, however, as the controversial idea that humans, stricken with incurable diseases, might be frozen and then revived years or decades later when cures are available.

Bogdan's experiments involved a form of water termed "glassy water," or low-density amorphous ice (LDA), which is produced by slowly supercooling diluted aqueous droplets. LDA melts into highly viscous water (HVW). Bogdan reports that HVW is not a new form of water, as some scientists believed."That HVW is not a new form of water (i.e., normal and glassy water are thermodynamically connected) may have some interesting practical implications in cryobiology, medicine, and cryonics." Bogdan said.

[Rasputin]

Front garden yields ancient tools

The Britons of 250,000 years ago were a good deal more sophisticated than they are sometimes given credit for, new archaeological evidence suggests. It comes in the form of giant flint handaxes that have been unearthed at a site at Cuxton in Kent. The tools display exquisite, almost flamboyant, workmanship not associated with this period until now. The axes - one of which measured 307mm (1ft) in length - were dug up from old sand deposits in a front garden. "It is a site where there would once have been a slow-moving river," explained Dr Francis Wenban-Smith, from the Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins at the University of Southampton. "It would have periodically overflowed its banks; and there would have been occasional sand bars and islands that got exposed. Obviously, at some point, Palaeolithic man was doing something there, left his handaxes, and they got covered up."

The biggest of the tools - the second largest of its type found in Britain - is beautifully preserved and sharply pointed. It was probably used to butcher prey, which at that time would have included rhino, elephants, large deer and an extinct type of cattle known as aurochs.

[Rasputin]

UFO research: Findings vs. facts

For decades now, eyes and sky have met to witness the buzzing of our world by Unidentified Flying Objects, termed UFOs or simply flying saucers. Extraterrestrials have come a long way to purportedly share the friendly skies with us.UFOs and alien visitors are part of our culture—a far-out phenomenon when judged against those "low life" wonders Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster.And after all those years, as the saying goes, UFOs remain a riddle inside a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Why so? For one, the field is fraught with hucksterism. It's also replete with blurry photos and awful video. But then there are also well-intentioned and puzzled witnesses.Scientifically speaking, are UFOs worth keeping an eye on? There have been advances in the field of UFO research, said Ted Roe, Executive Director of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP), based in Vallejo, California. "The capture of optical spectra from mobile, unpredictable luminosities is one of those innovations.

More work to be done here but [there are] some good results already."NARCAP was established in 2000 and is dedicated to the advancement of aviation safety issues as they apply to, what they term Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).Roe said that a decade from now, researchers should have even better instrumentation at their disposal and better data on UAP of several varieties. His forecast is that scientific rigor will prevail, demonstrating that there are "stable, mobile, unusual, poorly documented phenomena with quite unusual properties manifesting within our atmosphere," he told SPACE.com.

[Rasputin]

South Korea plans search for alien life

South Korea plans to launch a new space program to search for extraterrestrial life, government officials said Wednesday. The country's National Science Museum, which the government plans to open in September, is scheduled to initiate the program, dubbed SETI, by setting up a high-powered radio telescope in its exhibition hall, the officials said. SETI, which stands for search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, is a program which analyzes all kinds of radio waves from outer space in an effort to find non-human intelligent life forms. The museum will be the world's second institution to seek alienlife forms through a radio telescope after a program at the University of California at Berkeley in the United States, according to the officials. The radio telescope with a 6-meter radius will be set up in the museum under construction in Gwacheon, a city 18 kilometres south of Seoul.

Participants in the SETI program, in which the public will be allowed to take part, will assess the possibility of alien life through analysis of radio wave data transferred to their personal computers. Incoming radio waves will also be used to map out hydrogen distribution in space as areas of high hydrogen concentration are considered to play a main role in the creation of new stars. "We expect a large number of youths to take part in the SETI program as there is no minimum qualification required to participate," said Lee Kang-hwan, head of the SETI program.

[Rasputin]

Test tube meat nears dinner table

What if the next burger you ate was created in a warm, nutrient-enriched soup swirling within a bioreactor?Edible, lab-grown ground chuck that smells and tastes just like the real thing might take a place next to Quorn at supermarkets in just a few years, thanks to some determined meat researchers. Scientists routinely grow small quantities of muscle cells in petri dishes for experiments, but now for the first time a concentrated effort is under way to mass-produce meat in this manner.Henk Haagsman, a professor of meat sciences at Utrecht University, and his Dutch colleagues are working on growing artificial pork meat out of pig stem cells. They hope to grow a form of minced meat suitable for burgers, sausages and pizza toppings within the next few years.Currently involved in identifying the type of stem cells that will multiply the most to create larger quantities of meat within a bioreactor, the team hopes to have concrete results by 2009. The 2 million euro ($2.5 million) Dutch-government-funded project began in April 2005.

The work is one arm of a worldwide research effort focused on growing meat from cell cultures on an industrial scale."All of the technology exists today to make ground meat products in vitro," says Paul Kosnik, vice president of engineering at Tissue Genesis in Hawaii. Kosnik is growing scaffold-free, self-assembled muscle. "We believe the goal of a processed meat product is attainable in the next five years if funding is available and the R&D is pursued aggressively."

[Rasputin]

100,000-year-old jewels identified

Our ancestors were adorning themselves with jewellery - pierced seashells - more than 100,000 years ago, according to a discovery published on Friday. The beads, which are 25,000 years older than any previously known, suggest that modern human culture emerged earlier than scientists had imagined.Until recently most scientists believed that modern culture began in Europe about 40,000 years ago. Then in 2004 archaeologists found a cache of 75,000-year-old shell beads in Blombos cave, South Africa. That discovery prompted an intensive search through the world's museum collections for similar artefacts that might have been overlooked - and the journal Science announces today the identification of three pierced shells even older than the Blombos beads.The two oldest shells, dating back at least 100,000 years and possibly as far as 135,000 years, were collected in the 1930s from the Skhul human burial site in what is now Israel; they are in London's Natural History Museum. The third shell, which may be 90,000 years old, was excavated in the 1940s at Oued Djebbana, Algeria, and is in Paris's Musée de l'Homme.The three shells came from the same marine snail, Nassarius, as the South African beads and were perforated in a similar way. The scientists said the holes could only have been bored by humans - and in any case the sites were too far from the sea for the shells to have got there by natural processes.

Marian Vanhaeren of University College London, the study leader, said archaeologists considered personal adornments, along with art, to indicate "symbolic thinking" and modern behaviour."This research shows that a long-lasting and widespread bead working tradition associated with early modern humans extended through Africa to the Middle East well before comparable evidence appears in Europe," said Chris Stringer, head of human origins research at the Natural History Museum. "The research also supports the idea that modern human anatomy and behaviour have deep roots in Africa and were widespread by 75,000 years ago, even though they may not have appeared in Europe for another 35,000 years."

[Rasputin]

The chimp messiah, the cow Christ ?

Is it possible that animals have a sense of God? Do animals worship, have religion, possess a belief of afterlife? There is evidence that they do, and we began with man’s closest cousin -- the chimpanzee. Dr. Jane Goodall spent more than 40 years observing chimpanzees in their natural environment. One day in 1960, she witnessed something amazing. Watching a group of chimps that had just finished eating, a bolt of lightening suddenly struck nearby, followed by a loud clap of thunder. Immediately, one of the big male chimps stood up and started dancing rhythmically, foot to foot. It then rushed up to a small tree, climbed it and tore off a branch. Two other males, watching, tore off their own branches and began moving toward the chimp in the tree, seemingly using their branches as talismans or wands, waving them ahead of themselves as they ran. The rest of the chimps in the group watched the ceremony, and then joined the males in odd chanting and rhythmic behaviors.Goodall also noticed that certain places, especially those involving moving water, seem sacred to chimps.

At one particular 80-foot water fall in the African jungle, Goodall said: “Sometimes the chimpanzees, hair bristling, perform their displays in the stream bed below the falls, swaying rhythmically upright, hurling rocks, climbing the slender hanging vines, and pushing out into the spray. Afterwards a male may sit on a rock at the edge of the streams, looking up at the sheet of living water as it falls, watching as it flows past him on its way to the lake.”Elephants have large brains and are obviously very intelligent. It seems they mourn their dead, perform funeral-like ceremonies, and even gather the bones of dead elephants into graveyards. Early European explorers found many “elephant graveyards,” collections of elephant bones arranged in tell-tale patterns. At first, human cults were suspected, until explorers actually observed elephants themselves collecting the bones of their dead.Elephants have also been observed mourning a recently killed member of their pack, performing elaborate rituals around a dead elephant's body, and sometimes, sitting with their back to corpse, touching it with their tails, while facing the setting sun. You can see photos of this by Wouter Theron at the AnimalSentience.Com web site.All of this makes me recall one spring day when I was 16 years old. My uncle kept a herd of beef cattle on his small northern Minnesota farm. I got an unexpected call one afternoon from my uncle who asked if I could come out and help him butcher a young bull.

In a bizarre accident, the bull had broken both its front legs. The only thing my uncle could do was shoot it, and take the meat.By the time I arrived, my uncle was out in the cow pasture. He had the dead bull hoisted up and hanging upside down the front-end loader of a tractor. I joined him, he handed me a large knife. We began the grisly task of gutting and skinning the bull. As we continued our gory job, the rest of the herd of about 30 cows gathered in a near-perfect circle around us. They stood wide-eyed and silent, watching us with their soft bovine eyes, breathing evenly, rhythmically through wide, moist nostrils.My uncle, a Polish Catholic, was nevertheless fond of making slightly irreverent jokes of a religious nature. He said to me: “They way they’re looking at us, it’s like we’re crucifying the Cow Christ.” Never to be outdone, I quipped back at my uncle: “Yes, and remember what Christ commanded. ‘Take my body, and eat of it.’ ”I stopped for a moment, covered with blood up to my armpits, and looked back at the cows. They looked me in the eyes, and looked back to their fallen herd mate. Despite my and my uncle’s waggish humor, the sense of solemnity was palpable. The very air in the center of that cow circle in that green pasture seemed to vibrate at a different level.

I felt like an ancient Druid performing a sacrifice, or perhaps like a shaman of the mysterious Catal Huyuk culture of the neolithic, a forgotten civilization known to worship bulls.When our job was done, my uncle trundled the cleaned body of the bull away on the tractor, and the spell was broken. Yet, that feeling -- that sacred cow vibration -- stayed with me. A few years later during my study of physics, I learned about a phenomenon called “entrainment.” My mind leapt back to that day I helped my uncle butcher a bull. Here’s how entrainment works: Put ten grandfather clocks in a small room, and set all of their pendulums going at different times. Come back an hour later, and all the pendulums will be swinging in unison. The reason is entrainment. The vibrations created by each pendulum are transferred through the air, causing all them all to swing in alignment.Maybe that’s what was happening in the center of those cows I had stood among on that day, long ago. Perhaps the prayerful solemnity emanating from the brain impulses of 30 cows in prayer had entrained the very atmosphere within that circle, catching me up in a sacred send-off composed of pure animal spirituality -- of Buddha nature. And get this: There is a famous story of a young Buddhist monk who asked the Zen master Chau chou if it was possible for “a dog to have Buddha nature.” And Chao chou’s famous reply? He said: “Mu.”

[Rasputin]

Stonehenge-like tomb also marks solstice

An ancient British tomb monument contemporary with the first phase of Stonehenge’s construction suggests one prehistoric culture built the two structures to mark the summer solstice, according to archaeologists. The tomb is called Bryn Celli Ddu, which in Welsh translates to "the mound in a dark grove." It is located on the island of Anglesey off the northwest coast of Wales. New radiocarbon dating of postholes outside of the burial monument determined the mound is over 6,000 years old. Stonehenge dates to around 2800 B.C., but some historians think it could be much older.According to research published in the current issue of British Archaeology and the National Museum Wales Book "The Tomb Builders in Wales: 4,000-3,000 B.C.," both Bryn Celli Ddu and Stonehenge are aligned with the summer solstice.The heel stone at Stonehenge marks this event, while a passageway and quartz-rich stone located in the back of the burial monument lights up in a dramatic sun show.The exterior postholes indicate a wooden structure may have preceded the current tomb monument, which consists of a stone circle surrounding a stone-lined passageway that leads to an internal chamber.

Steve Burrow, curator of Neolithic archaeology at the National Museum Wales, suspected that the tomb might mark the midsummer rising sun, so he stood in the chamber last year at dawn on the summer solstice to see what would happen."It’s stunning," said Burrow, who made the discoveries and led the research. "First there is a sparkle through the trees, then the sun rises out. It’s quite exhilarating."Although Stonehenge and the mound were erected at approximately the same time, Burrow told Discovery News that the construction of the mound "reflects a much older tradition."Stonehenge is a more complex structure. For example, it consists of two stone circles, the first of which is topped with smaller blocks. The inner circle additionally contains two horseshoe-shaped sets of stones that are set inside of each other.

[Rasputin]

Tap your dreams to change your life

They were one of the hottest new bands in England, by they had a big problem. So far, they were only a cover band. They desperately needed to start writing original music, but their first efforts were lukewarm, to say the least. Then one night, while sleeping fitfully in a hot hotel room, the band’s young guitarist had a startling dream. In this dream, he suddenly began hearing the most amazing guitar riffs. It was unlike anything he had ever heard -- dangerous, aggressive, powerful blasts that made the guitar sound like a deadly weapon. He awoke abruptly. In a near panic, he grabbed his guitar turned on a recorder and played the riffs from his dream before they faded from his mind. The resulting song became the band’s first No. 1 hit -- and not only that -- the song revolutionized rock music, and is considered by most musicologists today to be the greatest rock song of all time. The young guitarist was Keith Richards. His band was the Rolling Stones. The song that had come to him in a dream? “Satisfaction.” And the rest is history.Richards’ experience with a “million dollar” dream is just one example of how dreams have changed the world.

Time and again, some of the most important and astounding breakthroughs have come to people in dreams. Consider, for instance, the case of Canadian scientist Dr. Frederich Banting. He had been doing research on diabetes. One night, while sleeping, he suddenly awoke and wrote down this: “Tie up the duct of the pancreas of a dog. Wait for a few weeks until glands shrivel up. Then cut it out, wash it out and filter the precipitation.” The result was the isolation of insulin for diabetics, which has saved millions of lives ever since.One more example: A man by the name of Elias Howe had been struggling for years to perfect the first mechanical sewing machine. He was stumped, but then one night he had a frightening dream in which he was about to be boiled alive in a pot by cannibals. But he became suddenly fascinated by the spears of his dream cannibals because the spears had eye-shaped holes in their tips. A needle with an eye-shaped hole was the final innovation he needed to make the first successful sewing machine.The great Swiss psychologist Carl Jung said: “Every dream left unexamined is like leaving a gift unopened.” He was right. All of us have the power to dream, but most people dismiss their dreams as random nonsense or crazy, if not sometimes entertaining scenarios, which have little to do with reality. Yet, if we all started to take our dreams more seriously, and learned to harness their power, more of us might start having one of those revolutionary dreams that could not only change our own lives, but the world.Many people think they don’t dream, or at least, do not remember their dreams. But the fact is, everyone dreams every night, whether they know it or not.

Scientists have proved that the brain must dream to function properly. If you did not dream, you would go insane. Fortunately, there are many good ways to increase the power of your own dreams, and there are methods you can use to help you remember your dreams. You can also learn to “program” what kind of dreams you want to have, and what you want to dream about. You can even learn to become lucid within your dreams -- that is, you can become aware that you are dreaming and take active part in them --it’s like using your own brain as a virtual reality machine!One of the best ways to get started is to keep a dream journal. Place a notepad by your bed and tell yourself that you are going to remember your dreams. Whenever you wake up -- even in the middle of the night -- grab a pen and write down any dreams you have had before you forget them. Also, write down your dreams in the morning. The most active dream time is just before you awake in the morning. If you want, set your alarm clock to go off every 90 minutes. Most people enter REM state, the dream state, exactly 90 minutes after they fall asleep.This is what the great science writer A.E Van Vogt did. Science fiction icon Ray Bradbury also writes only from dream inspiration. In fact, Robert Louis Stevenson, author of such classics as Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, said that “dream elves” came to him at night and gave him all of his story ideas, complete with plots fully laid out and ready to go. Stevenson was so amazed by these dream “brownies” as he called them, he was convinced that they were more than dreams characters. He thought they were real.One important thing to remember about dream inspirations or discoveries is this: You are most likely to have a million dollar dream if you are working very hard and diligently on a particular project during the days, and for an extended period.

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But if you remember to dream about your project at night, your dreams may very well pitch in and help. By letting your dreaming mind get involved in whatever you are working on or struggling with, you are tapping into the vast power of your subconscious mind in a more direct way. You are using the symbolic language of dreams to show you a new and innovative way at looking at things.Your dreams can also help you solve personal problems, work out issues of anxiety or depression, and even solve problems in your personal relationships. In short, the potential of dreams is all but unlimited -- because they are as vast as the human imagination, which I believe is infinite.In the future, I will write more about this very rich subject, and my own extensive experiments with dreams, especially the incredibly fascinating practice of lucid dreaming. Also, I have a column on file here at Unexplained Mysteries describing one of my lucid dream adventures; it’s called “Restaurant on the Edge of Time.” Forgive the shameless plug, but my greater motive here truly is to get readers interested and excited about the enormous potential within their own minds, creative potential that is yours for the asking.

[Rasputin]

"Yeti hand" picture goes on display

Cryptozoologist Marc E.W. Miller and four of his colleagues left Ohio for Nepal and the Tibet border in February 1986 to search for evidence of a yeti - commonly known as the abominable snowman or Bigfoot. When Miller, a Lancaster native, left for his great adventure 22 years ago, he never imagined he would hold what was believed to be the scalp of a yeti, receive possible hair samples from a yeti and take a picture with what is believed to be a yeti's hand."To find something is unexplainable," Miller said. "It's how you feel when you win. ... It's that adventure and excitement." A cryptozoologist is a researcher who studies creatures that haven't been proved to exist. The picture of Miller holding a case with the yeti's hand is now displayed for people from all over the world to see while enjoying the thrills of "Expedition Everest" at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom. The Everest Expedtion rollercoaster train stops in the museum briefly during the ride. The ride opened two months ago in the Buena Vista, Fla., Disney theme park and features an exciting real-life depiction of what the Himalayan mountains are like - including a life-like encounter with the yeti. But finding possible evidence of the yeti is the outcome of only one of Miller's world expeditions.

Miller, who has practiced as a neuropsychologist in Lancaster for more than 20 years, has been all over the world. He has explored primitive society in Africa, searched for rare animals in China and Egypt, withstood various types of climates and dangerous situations and wrote two books about his adventures. One of his most prized finds was a rare species of the Asian elephant in China. "I was paralyzed when I saw it," he said.

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Exotic animals found in Tanzanian mountains

In the first field survey of the Rubeho Mountains in Tanzania, scientists have documented more than 160 animal species. Among the mix were a new species of frog, several bush babies, and 11 species found only in the Rubeho region.However, deforestation in the Eastern Arc region—the heavily forested mountain chain that includes the Rubehos in eastern Tanzania—threatens these animals and human residents too.An international team of scientists used a slew of photo traps, audio recordings, and tracking techniques over the course of two years to identify the animals. Photo traps, which are remotely-triggered cameras set off my animal movement, captured images of mammals such as a red duiker (Cephalophus natalensis) and a Mountain dwarf galago (Galagoides orinus).

Galagos are small, nocturnal primates with large, round eyes and are commonly known as bush babies, a name which likely stems from the animal's human baby-like cries.Other endemic species spotted in the Eastern Arc include two chameleons, a Zanzibar bush baby, the checkered elephant shrew (Rhynchocyon cirnei), and several birds.In one small valley, researchers discovered a new species of frog (Arthroleptis nikeae). The amphibian is a little over 2 inches from snout to bottom and has smooth, brown-patterned skin.

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Contrails and the dark side

By now we're all familiar with global warming and its predicted consequences, even to the extent where people are finally listening to longtime environmentalist Al Gore! But in order to curb global warming it's likely that there'll be a number of lifestyle sacrifices we'll need to make. Arguably, one of the most inconvenient of these would be air travel. Jets certainly pump out their fair share of greenhouse emissions, which would be reason enough to consider cutting back air travel, but jets add to global warming in yet another way. In case you haven't heard, the long trails of condensation known as "contrails" emitted by jet airliners are now considered to be a significant factor in global warming. Furthermore, a group of UK meteorologists recently found that night flights make contrail troubles considerably worse. With airlines expected to continue expanding their routes and increasing frequencies of flights; what can be done to make airline travel greener?

While floating peacefully high above the Earth's surface, shuttle astronaut Dr. Fred W. Leslie says that he "remembers seeing contrails stretched across the planet." Australian astronaut Andy Thomas also considered contrails one of the planet's most striking features. "One of the most readily visible signs of human presence is the occurrence of contrails from aircraft in the upper atmosphere. They are very long lasting, and can be seen over virtually all parts of the world... radiating out from cities, like spokes in a wheel," recalls Thomas.

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Dr. Richard P.Feynman

“What I cannot create, I do not understand” Richard P.Feynman

Richard P. Feynman was born in New York City on the 11th May 1918. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he obtained his B.Sc. in 1939 and at Princeton University where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1942. He was Research Assistant at Princeton (1940-1941), Professor of Theoretical Physics at Cornell University (1945-1950), Visiting Professor and thereafter appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology (1950-1959). At present he is Richard Chace Tolman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology.

Professor Feynman is a member of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the National Academy of Science; in 1965 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society, London (Great Britain).

He holds the following awards: Albert Einstein Award (1954, Princeton); Einstein Award (Albert Einstein Award College of Medicine); Lawrence Award (1962).

Richard Feynman is married to Gweneth Howarth, they have a son, Carl Richard (born 22nd April 1961), and a daughter Michelle Catherine (born 13th August 196.

“Physicists always have a habit of taking the simplest example of any phenomenon and calling it "physics," leaving the more complicated examples to become the concern of other fields...”