Science Special News

[Rasputin]

Japanese man in mystery survival

A Japanese man has survived for 24 days in cold weather and without food and water by falling into a state of "hibernation", his doctor has said. Mitsutaka Uchikoshi, 35, went missing on 7 October after going with friends to climb Mount Rokko in western Japan. He had almost no pulse, his organs had shut down and his body temperature dropped to 22C (71F) when he was found. Medics say they are still puzzled how he survived because his metabolism was apparently almost at a standstill. Mr Uchikoshi is believed to have tripped and lost consciousness after leaving his party to descend from the mountain on his own. "I lay down... in a grassy area, which felt good in the sunshine, and eventually I fell asleep," Mr Uchikoshi told reporters at a news conference at a hospital in Kobe, where he was treated. "That's the last thing I remember," he said. He was found by rescuers on 31 October. "He fell into a hypothermic state at a very early stage, which is similar to hibernation," said Dr Shinichi Sato, who treated Mr Uchikoshi. "Therefore, his brain functions were protected without being damaged and have now recovered 100%. This is what I believe happened," he said.

Mr Uchikoshi - who had been treated for severe hypothermia, multiple organ failure and blood loss - was released from hospital and returned home on Tuesday. Professor Hirohito Shiomi, a hibernation expert at a university in Hiroshima, was quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying the case was "revolutionary, if the patient truly survived at such a low body temperature over such a long period of time".

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

Juicing the brain

Physicians have long tinkered with ways to "improve" the human brain, but as our understanding of that organ's inner workings quickly grows, artificial enhancement is becoming more feasible. Military research is at the forefront of this work, much of it focused on drugs. The goal is to produce a better soldier, but the emerging techniques could just as easily be applied to any individual. The military wants to juice up personnel's brains because the human being is the weakest instrument of warfare. Although for centuries astonishing and terrifying advances have been made in the technology of conflict, soldiers are basically the same. They must eat, sleep, discern friend from foe, heal when wounded, and so forth. The first state (or nonstate) actor to build superior fighters will make an enormous leap in the arms race. In the short run, researchers are trying to devise aids that would overcome a person's inherent limitations, such as mental fatigue.

Long-term results could lead to individuals everywhere who are tireless, less fearful or even better speakers. Reducing human error caused by mental fatigue is crucial because death by "friendly fire" is a shockingly frequent occurrence.

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

Sea levels rise: Islands disappearing

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true. As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.Eight years ago, as exclusively reported in The Independent on Sunday, the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of ***ibati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.It has been officially recorded in a six-year study of the Sunderbans by researchers at Calcutta's Jadavpur University. So remote is the island that the researchers first learned of its submergence, and that of an uninhabited neighbouring island, Suparibhanga, when they saw they had vanished from satellite pictures.

Two-thirds of nearby populated island Ghoramara has also been permanently inundated. Dr Sugata Hazra, director of the university's School of Oceanographic Studies, says "it is only a matter of some years" before it is swallowed up too. Dr Hazra says there are now a dozen "vanishing islands" in India's part of the delta. The area's 400 tigers are also in danger.Until now the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea were expected to be the first populated ones to disappear, in about eight years' time, but Lohachara has beaten them to the dubious distinction.

[Rasputin]

Why death may no longer be a fact of life

It is a mystery older than Methuselah: why are we born to die after our allotted three-score years and ten? Now scientists have discovered how genetic damage to cells and our ability to carry out repairs are the major factors in determining how long we will live. The research could lead to new treatments for horrific diseases which cause young children to age prematurely and die, with trials expected within a year. And while Methuselah's 969 years and an elixir of eternal life are still in the realms of religious belief and science fiction, researchers believe it is now theoretically possible at least to extend lifespan "significantly". It was once thought the ageing process was pre-programmed, hardwired into the human condition, and that death was simply a fact of life. But life expectancies in developed countries have stubbornly continued their upwards rise, by about two years every decade or about five hours a day. A paper made public yesterday by the journal Nature detailed a study of mice which grew old and died within three weeks because they lacked genes involved in repairing damage to DNA, and also the discovery of a new disease which results in premature ageing. Professor Laura Niedernhofer, of Pittsburgh University, said their findings showed that DNA damage and the ability to repair it were crucial in determining lifespan.

"Damage, including DNA damage, drives the functional decline we all experience as we age," she said. "But how we respond to that damage is determined genetically, in particular by genes that regulate growth hormone and insulin. "Avoiding or reducing DNA damage caused by sources such as sunlight and cigarette smoke, as well as by our own metabolism, also could delay ageing."

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

Enthusiast builds 'flying saucer'

Some people may call Alfie Carrington crazy or foolish. How else do you describe a man who has spent more than half his life building a flying saucer? By day a construction worker, Carrington spends his free time inside a rented storage garage in Clinton Township where he broods over a 14-foot-wide, carbon fiber, fiberglass vessel."Something genius is hiding away in Alfie's eccentricities," friend D.L. Bradley, a pastor in Clinton Township, said last week.Thirty years ago, when Carrington of Clinton Township was 27 and obsessed with science fiction, he set out to build a UFO look-alike. But something inside him cried out for more.Inspired by ordinary Americans like Orville and Wilbur Wright, who piloted the first heavier-than-air aircraft 103 years ago this month, Carrington pored over books, magazines and studies about aviation. Never mind his lack of engineering experience.He has spent nearly $60,000 for some of the materials he believes are needed to launch his creation -- a lot for a man who drives a rusted 1986 Mercury Cougar.Carrington does it because he believes he has discovered a simple design for an aircraft that aeronautical engineers have spent countless millions trying to build.

"People are going to say I'm nuts," Carrington shrugged.Unlike aeronautical engineers who have tried to build vessels for commercial flight -- most notably those who entered the X-Prize contest for a reusable privately built suborbital spacecraft -- Carrington's aim is more terrestrial. He wants to replace the automobile with a Jetsons-style vehicle."Why drive when you can fly 500 m.p.h.?" he asked.

[Rasputin]

Nepal's "Buddha Boy" reappears

A Nepalese teenaged boy who was hailed as a reincarnation of the Buddha has reappeared after nine months of wandering through the jungles of eastern Nepal, police said. "A team of police found the Buddha Boy sitting under a tree in the Piluwa jungle after there were rumours that some locals had spotted the boy on Monday afternoon," said Rameshwor Yadav, a police officer in the Bara district, 170 kilometers (106 miles) east of Kathmandu. Ram Bahadur Bomjan, 16, had disappeared in March after he reportedly shunned food and water for almost 10 months while he meditated under a pipal tree in Bara near a holy site <http://search.breitbart.com/q?s=%22holy+site%22&sid=breitbart.com> in Nepal revered by Hindus and Buddhists. The event had drawn hundreds of devotees daily who offered money and gifts for the "Buddha Boy," but were barred by Bomjan's supporters from reaching within 50 metres of his meditation spot. Local officials however had expressed scepticism on the impossible fasting claims and said the boy was being used by supporters to fleece funds from villagers.

The Gautam, or Enlightned, Buddha was born a prince in Lumbini located in Nepal's low-land jungle around 500 B.C. He shunned his life of privilege and wandered for many years before he obtained enlightenment at Bodh Gaya in the eastern Indian state of Bihar on Nepal's southern border. Bomjan reportedly told local villagers that he disappeared from the previous meditation site because of noisy crowds, Yadav said.