Science Special News

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Humans show big DNA differences

Scientists have shown that the genetic make-up of humans can vary hugely - far more than was previously thought. A UK-led team made a detailed analysis of the DNA found in 270 people and identified vast regions to be duplicated or even missing. A great many of these variations are in areas of the genome that would not damage our health, Matthew Hurles and colleagues told the journal Nature. But others are - and can be shown to play a role in a number of disorders. "We were certainly surprised; we expected to find that there would be some variation, but we weren't expecting to find quite this much," Dr Hurles told BBC News. To date, the investigation of the human genome has tended to focus on very small changes in DNA that can have deleterious effects - at the scale of just one or a few bases, or "letters", in the biochemical code that programs cellular activity. And for many years, scientists have also been able to look through microscopes to see very large-scale abnormalities that arise when whole DNA bundles, or chromosomes, are truncated or duplicated. But it is only recently that researchers have developed the molecular "tools" to focus on medium-scale variations - at the scale of thousands of DNA letters.

This analysis of so-called copy number variation (CNV) has now revealed some startling results. It would seem the assumption that the DNA of any two humans is 99.9% similar in content and identity no longer holds. The researchers were astonished to locate 1,447 CNVs in nearly 2,900 genes, the starting "templates" written in the DNA that are used by cells to make the proteins which drive our bodies. This is a huge, hitherto unrecognised, level of variation between one individual and the next. "Each one of us has a unique pattern of gains and losses of complete sections of DNA," said Matthew Hurles, of the UK's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. "One of the real surprises of these results was just how much of our DNA varies in copy number. We estimate this to be at least 12% of the genome.

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Alien abduction real even if imagined

There are some people in the world who believe without the need for provable facts, and hold to the idea that aliens kidnap people from time to time, maybe though not necessarily counting themselves among those who have gone into space when they thought they were going to bed or for a walk in the woods. The belief in, and experience of, alien abduction is not too far removed at all from spiritual ideas and experiences of all kinds. It is essentially benign. When you consider that there are some truly dangerous people walking the streets who we should be really concerned about, people who should be locked away, psychos and paedophiles and murderers, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that it’s very wrong to try to force often gentle and sincere people into silence, or push them to the margins of society simply because their ideas are seen as ridiculous and kooky.

There is a reason for everything. And not everything is what it appears to be upon first examination. Alien abduction is real to those who experience it, whether it happens or not. Fairies, too, are real in the same sense, as is the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot or Spring-Heeled Jack. Despite the advance of science down the centuries, the powerful need for myth and mystery is undiminished since we first started daubing paint on cave walls.

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Maps of ancient Earth need revising

A section of the Appalachian Mountains discovered in Mexico is forcing scientists to redraw their maps of ancient Earth. The Appalachians are a series of mountain ranges in eastern North America that extend from Southern Quebec in Canada to northern Alabama. A piece of the chain was recently uncovered in a large Mexican outcropping of rock, known as the Acatlan Complex.Analyses of the rocks revealed they were formed on the ocean floor, and dating showed they were much younger than previously thought."This will change the way geologists look at Mexico," said study leader Damian Nance of Ohio University.It also challenges current theories about the creation of the Appalachians, mountain ranges that have revealed valuable clues about the planet's early geography. Previously, scientists thought that 420 million years ago Earth contained two main land masses that were separated by a large expanse of sea, called the Rheic Ocean.

In the south was Gondwana, a supercontinent consisting of South America, Africa, India, Australia and Antarctica. And to the north was Laurussia, made up of North America, Greenland , Europe and parts of Asia.According to the standard scenario, the Acatlan Complex was once part of Gondwana, but it broke off the supercontinent about 500 million years ago. The complex, along with a few other chunks of land, drifted northward, and in the process blocked a stretch of sea known as the Iapetus Ocean. The Acatlan Complex eventually collided with North America, and with the force of a colossal bulldozer sent the once flat land into mountain-size ripples—forming the Appalachian Mountains.

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Police warn of 'big cat' in hills

Police are warning people to be on their guard after receiving several reports and photographs of a big cat in hills above a mid Wales village. Dyfed-Powys Police said seven different people had reported seeing a large cat-like animal in recent weeks in the Talybont area, near Aberystwyth. Pc Pat Jalloal of Dyfed-Powys Police in Aberystwyth said the pictures of the big cat were inconclusive. But he said there had been a "huge jump" in reported sightings. In Wales, big cat sightings are investigated by the Welsh Assembly Government, in the form of the wildlife management unit based at Aberystwyth. "From the police's point of view, we have had a huge jump in reported cases in the past few weeks and we want people in the area to be aware of this," said Pc Jalloal. "Images received by the police look very similar to a big cat so we are asking people to stay vigilant." PC Jalloal also warned people not to hunt and shoot the animal.

In March, a radio producer said his own research into sightings of big cats in the Welsh countryside appeared to be backed up by findings from the British Big Cat Society (BBCS). Wales is fourth on the list of big cat "hotspots" in the society's UK survey. BBC programme maker Aled Jones collated more than 100 sightings in north and mid Wales over an 18-month period. The BBCS study said it found sightings increasing across the UK.

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Black hole spins at the limit

A black hole close to our Solar System spins at close to the maximum theoretical speed and has far-reaching implications for high-energy events in our universe, according to new U.S. study. "We have measured the spin frequency of a famous black hole which goes by the name of GRS 1915+105," said Ramesh Narayan from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in the U.S. "According to theory, it can have a maximum spin rate of 1,150 times per second. Our measurements indicate that the hole is spinning between 950 and 1,150 times per second - that is, it is spinning quite close to the maximum." When any mass, such as a star, becomes more compact than a certain limit, its own gravity becomes so strong that the object collapses to a singular point called a black hole. A black hole has so few properties that it is completely described by only two numbers: its mass and its spin. Astronomers have been successful in measuring the mass of about 30 black holes, but the second fundamental property has been much more elusive. "It has been a major goal of the field to estimate black hole spins but nobody had succeeded until now," said Narayan, who is co-author of the paper published in the Astrophysical Journal.

"Our work is, for the first time, beginning to provide information on the spin distribution of real black holes in nature."GRS 1915+105 lies in our galaxy, the Milky Way, approximately 35,000 light-years from Earth. Gas from a nearby orbital star gets pulled off by the immense gravitational field and spirals onto the black hole, forming a disc of gas around it. As the gas spirals in towards the black hole, getting closer to the centre, it heats up to millions of degrees. At a certain distance from the centre, the gas becomes so hot that it begins to emit X-rays with only slightly less energy than gamma rays. The specific types of X-rays produced depend on how close the gas is to the centre.

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Mystery still surrounds missing F-89 jet

Fifty-three years ago this month, a U.S. Air Force F-89 Scorpion jet vanished from radar screens over Lake Superior after being sent to intercept an unknown aircraft. On the evening of Nov. 23, 1953, Air Force radar tracked the missing jet until it merged with an unidentified object 70 miles off the Keweenaw Peninsula, at an altitude of 7,000 feet.Newspaper reports said the missing plane, which had left the Kinross Air Force Base at 5:22 p.m. “was last heard from when it radioed the base from somewhere out over the lake.”Pilot 1st Lt. Felix E. Moncla Jr., 27, of Mercauville, La. and radar operator 2nd Lt. Robert Wilson, 22, of Ponca City, Okla. were presumed dead, likely somewhere under the snow-swept waters of Lake Superior.The U.S. military said the object the plane chased was a Royal Canadian Air Force Mohawk C-47 transport plane, but that claim was later denied by the Canadian government, saying there were no such aircraft in the area at the time.Algoma Central Railway workers roughly 100 miles north of Sault Ste. Marie said they heard a crash that occurred shortly contact with the F-89 was lost by the military. But after a search, no sign of the crew or fighter jet was discovered.In autumn 1968, prospectors in the Cozens Cove area of Ontario found mechanical parts north of Sault Ste.

Marie, including a tail stabilizer section, that military officials said were from a high-performance jet aircraft.A newspaper article from the time said the parts were thought to have perhaps been from the missing Kinross plane, but that idea was later discounted. The article doesn’t say why.Over the years, a great deal of speculation has surrounded the “Kinross Incident,” with some UFO investigators suggesting the Scorpion may have struck, or even been devoured by, a craft from another planet.“It is a compelling mystery with an interesting UFO twist,” said Gord Heath, a British Columbia resident interested in the Kinross incident since 2000. “Many people at radar tracking stations observed the F-89’s return merging with the blip from the other craft before it disappeared. The possibility that a UFO ‘swallowed’ the F-89 makes this an interesting puzzle.”Now, more than five decades after the crew disappeared without sending a distress signal, the mystery of what happened to Moncla, Wilson and the Scorpion jet has been given new life.Reports from The Great Lake Dive Company — a downstate venture said to be made up of Michigan natives with a common interest in shipwreck hunting and historical preservation — say they used side-scan sonar equipment to discover the missing plane, along with a piece of the object it presumably collided with.

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Triangular UFO sighted in Venezuela

Three people witnessed the transit of a triangular UFO on November 16 as it passed over a state banking institution located on Av. Urdaneta, bordering the central district of Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. According to information provided by Israel Urbaneja, the appearance of this strange object lasted from 9:30 to 10:00 PM approximately, allowing two of his relatives to join the observation from their home on Av. Baralt.Likewise, he said that the object "was white in color but presented luminous variations of blue, red and green" and moved with a "zig-zagging" motion from south to north over the capital area's airspace until it became lost in the clouds, which was present at all times, althought with various degrees of clearing, accompanied by heavy rains earlier during the day."This is the first time that I've seen anything like it and I'm certain it wasn't an airplane or satellite by the way it moved.

Furthermore, the object left a glowing, cone-shaped white wake as it flew, which caused a sensation akin to nausea," said the witness.It should be noticed that this is not the first time that an unknown object with intelligent behavior has been seen over the central district of the Venezuelan capital, where major government offices are located.

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Scientists regrow chicken embryo's wing

According to a study published in Genes and Development last week, a research team at the Salk Institute for Biological studies has been able to regenerate a wing in a chick embryo. This new study adds to the evidence that mammals can also regrow limbs, an ability once thought to be restricted to certain amphibians and lizards. The new study demonstrates that even mammalian vertibrate regeneration is under control of the a cellular process called the Wnt signaling system. "In this simple experiment, we removed part of the chick embryo's wing, activated Wnt signaling, and got the whole limb back—a beautiful and perfect wing," said the lead author, Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, Ph.D., a professor in the Gene Expression Laboratory. "By changing the expression of a few genes, you can change the ability of a vertebrate to regenerate their limbs, rebuilding blood vessels, bone, muscles, and skin—everything that is needed." This new discovery "opens up an entirely new area of research," Belmonte says. "Even though certain animals have lost their ability to regenerate limbs during evolution, conserved genetic machinery may still be present, and can be put to work again." The Wnt signaling pathway is a complex network of proteins best known for their roles in embryogenesis and cancer, but also involved in normal physiological processes in adult animals.

To manipulate animals' regeneration ability, the Salk researchers used inhibitory and excitatory factors for Wnt signaling, which they delivered directly to the remaining bulge after they cut a limb from the experimental embryos. "The [exitatory Wnt] signal restarted the process, and genes that were involved in the initial development of the limb were turned back on," Belmonte says. "It is simply amazing."

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Finding meaning in dreams

Imagine, for a moment, that the new president begins his inaugural address by saying he has written down and studied his dreams. With a level head, and without detouring into the psychic or prophetic, he says he hopes to understand himself better by doing some dream work. "I mean, how would that go over in the press?" says Gayle Delaney, who for the past 30 years has striven to mainstream dream work - the practice of sidestepping classical dream interpretation for a more nuanced, personalized meditation on one's dreams.Delaney is the founding president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. She has written books and virtually shorted out the lecture circuit in the United States and Europe. Still, many people think dream work is bosh and bunkum."Prejudice against dreaming is huge, in part because so much nonsense is written about it," Delaney says.

Ask any professional with dream experience, and their message is clear: Ignore quick-fix dream "doctors" on TV and the Internet. Toss your conventional dream dictionaries to the curb; they are too strict, too patrician. And their meanings? Meaningless.

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Bizarre deep-sea creatures photographed

The weird and wonderful creatures living by methane vents in the southwest Pacific have been photographed for the first time. The deep-sea communities live around methane seeps off New Zealand’s eastern coast, up to 1 kilometre beneath the sea surface. The team of 21 researchers from the US and New Zealand, who spent two weeks exploring the area, have just returned to shore. “It's the first time cold seeps have been viewed and sampled in the southwest Pacific, and will greatly contribute to our knowledge of these intriguing ecosystems,” says Amy Baco-Taylor from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US.Cold seeps are areas of the seabed where methane or hydrogen sulphide gas escape from stores deep underneath. Like hydrothermal vents, the gases support unique life forms that can convert the energy-rich chemicals into living matter in the absence of any sunlight. Animals living around methane seeps off Chile and Japan have been observed before, but not near New Zealand.

“The seeps here are remarkable in the sheer extent of their chemosynthetic communities,” says Baco-Taylor, whose team visited eight such sites between 750 and 1050 metres beneath the surface.

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Iceland's museum of sorcery & witchcraft

Museum of Sorcery & Witchcraft in west Iceland, where visitors can observe obscure magical objects and learn how to scotch ghosts, is steadily growing in popularity. The Witchcraft Museum in Hólmavík, Strandir, opened in 2000. “The Strandir area has always been notorious for witchcraft and that sparked the idea of the museum,” Sigurdur Atlason told icelandreview.com. He is the manager of Strandagaldur, the company behind the museum’s exhibitions. The Witchcraft Museum has gained popularity in recent years, last year it had 8,000 visitors. So far mostly Icelanders have visited the museum, but tourists are becoming increasingly interested. “All the information is in Icelandic, English, German, French, and by next summer in Italian too,” Atlason says. He adds: “It is important to us that tourists from all nations can enjoy the exhibitions.” In Hólmavík visitors can learn about the witch hunt in Iceland in the 17th century, take a look at magical objects on display and take part in scotching ghosts on special ghost days. The most popular object in the museum are the so-called necropants. “Necropants are part of a complicated sorcery for gaining money,” Atlason explains.

“The owner of necropants had to make a deal with a male friend while still alive about digging up his body after a natural cause of death, skinning it below the waste and wearing the skin as necropants.” Atlason continues: “Then the necropants-owner would have to steal money from a poor widow and draw a magical symbol on a piece of parchment. After placing both in the necropants’ ‘pouch,’ the owner would magically come into possession of money.”

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Mystery of orange UFOs

Bright lights in the skies have baffled police and air-traffic controllers. The unidentified flying objects have been likened to similar strange orange glows seen over Liverpool and Essex.Witnesses said thousands of people may have seen the bizarre floating orbs.Air-traffic controllers at Shoreham Airport and Brighton police said they had received inquiries about the UFOs, with as many as eight seen in the sky at one time.James Gordon-Johnson, of Preston Park Avenue, Brighton, said he was leaving a restaurant in Shoreham with his brother at 11.30pm on November 18 when he saw "what appeared to be a very big orange light in the sky".He added: "It was very, very bright but static - it wasn't rising or falling. Another one then appeared in mid-air. Then another."It must have been somewhere over Hove Lagoon but the lights were so bright thousands of people must have seen them."The next morning I got a phone call from a friend of mine who saw the exact same thing."Mark Sztopel, from Brighton, told The Argus he saw seven lights moving slowly in an easterly direction across the city at midnight.

He added: "I'm a big plane enthusiast so I know what the lights and characteristics of a plane look like at night, and I can tell you now that these definitely weren't planes."A spokeswoman for Shoreham Airport said staff had received emails from people inquiring about the glowing objects.She said: "We closed at 7pm so there was nothing happening here. We've no idea what they could have been."Police said they also received a report from a man in Hove who said he saw "approximately eight planes coming in over the sea, with no flashing navigation lights, towards Gatwick, in a dead line".

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Ancient tombs found in Luwan

An ancient tomb uncovered during construction of a subway line between Xintiandi and the future World Expo site on Monday contains the remains of at least two couples who lived during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), archaeologists said yesterday. The tomb was discovered by workers during construction of Metro Line 9 at the intersection of Xujiahui Road and Huangpi Road S. in Luwan District. Archaeologists are sure two of the bodies are female, including one that is very well preserved, and speculate the two other bodies are their spouses. "In some ways, the tomb and the well-preserved body once again symbolized the city's economic status more than 700 years ago," said He Jiying, an archaeologist with the Shanghai Cultural Relics Management Commission who worked on the site. She said the site where the tomb was found was commonly used to bury the dead hundreds of years ago when it sat on the outs***t of the city. During excavation since Monday, He and her colleagues unearthed a batch of artifacts from the coffins including a bronze mirror, embroidered cloth and a pair of metal earrings. Mercury drops were found on the well-preserved female body, proving that rich people had started using mercury to preserve bodies during the Ming Dynasty. That also shows the level of social wealth during the period, archaeologists said.

More than 300 ancient tombs have been dug up in the city's downtown core. In November 2004, a Ming Dynasty tomb was found in Yangpu District by construction workers. Shanghai began as Huating County in 751 in today's Songjiang District. In 1292, the then central government established Shanghai County in the area.

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Pharaoh's curse or coincidence ?

Scientists who recently conducted a high-tech examination of King Tut's mummy insist they don't believe in the "Curse of the Pharaohs." Still, some awfully strange things happened when the team X-rayed the boy king's body with a medical CT scanning machine. On the way to the Egyptian site, one researcher's vehicle nearly hit a child. Then a huge storm hit. The CT machine, usually reliable, wouldn't work at first. And when researchers finally began the CT scan, one scientist came down with such a violent coughing attack he had to leave. "It was a very interesting moment, and a very scary moment at the same time," said Cairo University radiologist Dr. Ashraf Selim. But Selim added: "I don't believe in the curse. I'm a scientific man." National Geographic, which helped fund the study, announced preliminary results last year. On Monday, Selim detailed the findings for the first time at a scientific setting -- a meeting at McCormick Place of the Radiological Society of North America. King Tutankhamun was about 9 years old when he was crowned around 1332 B.C. It was the golden age of pharaohs, and Egypt was a mighty empire.

Unlike other royal tombs, Tut's burial chamber remained undisturbed through the ages. When British archeologist Howard Carter finally discovered it in 1922, the tomb was filled with 5,000 breathtaking artifacts, including jewels, statues, magical amulets, furniture and a solid gold coffin. But an inscription on the tomb supposedly warned: "Death shall come on swift wings to him that disturbs the peace of the king."

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Is full UFO disclosure advisable ?

UFO investigators and researchers have a burning desire not only to educate the public about UFOs, but also point out the importance of being ready just in case "it" really happens. The "it" being contact from intelligent beings not of this world.Just as scientists and military hardware personnel struggle to have an adequate response to a large meteor heading straight to Earth, Ufologists attempt to involve the powers to be in being ready just in case an intelligent race of aliens from another planet did decide to make themselves known to the populace of Earth. Science, at this time, just won't involve themselves in this possibility. And, if the military is considering the possibility, they are not telling us about it.The public has a right to know what the government knows about UFOs, and should reinitiate their research on the subject, and release more top-secret documents to the general public. If the citizenship of America can handle issues as delicate and controversial as war on foreign soil, and the loss of our young men and women, we can handle the truth about UFOs. Top government officials, including science advisors, stand hard against public disclosure, and view the UFO mystery as a frivolous matter.Today, even though the government has ended funding for the original SETI project, this endeavor is important enough to be driven by private donations from interested, generous individuals. It is an important paradox that so many private citizens feel that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is important enough to open their wallets to its cause, and yet the government will not match their enthusiasm. At least, this is the official stand. But who knows what really goes on at top secret installations like Area 51, and others. It is a proven fact that a number of top secret aircraft had their birth there, so why not also house the important task of contacting other worlds with intelligent beings there also? Or, is this already the case? Officially, the United States Air Force discontinued its Project Blue Book in 1969, citing the reason that UFOs did not present any threat to national security. This statement was taken by many to mean that there was nothing to the many, well documented cases of UFO sightings.

Most of them could easily be explained by everyday means. Although the Air Force did have a small number of "unexplained" cases, their reasons for scrapping the entire project was only that no security issues were at stake. This, in itself, may mean only that; this does not necessarily mean that there is nothing to UFOs at all. Many documents exist today, still hidden under the veil of national security, that hold evidence that only a small group of elite, well chosen individuals have seen. These highly select individuals are a modern version of Majestic 12, and other similar groups that have had this information passed down to them through the years.