PICKLED PUNKS – Marvels Under Glass

Picked Punks have been a part of every well stocked cabinet of curiosity and perhaps the most controversial of all sideshow exhibits. A ‘Pickled Punk’ is a sideshow term for a preserved human fetus, usually deformed and usually displayed as a specimen in a jar or other vessel.
The practice of preserving and displaying prodigious births is centuries old. In the 1600’s King Frederick III of Denmark has a personal collection of punks numbering in the thousands – a collection started in the 1500’s by Frederick II. and during that same timeframe Ulisse Aldrovandi, an Italian naturalist, had a collection consisting of eighteen thousand various specimens.
The deformities present in pickled punks are incredibly varied. As varied as the nature of human inflictions.
The earliest and most well documented pedigree for a deformed punk display dates back to 1582 when Mme Colombe Chatri died at the age of sixty-eight – and a twenty-eight year old fetus was removed from her womb. The Stone-Child of Sens should have been born in 1554, however labor came and went with no delivery and in the resulting decades the fetus was calcified and ossified within the womb – which actually formed a shell. Mme Chatri seemed to have lived a normal life, with the exception of regular abdominal pains. Following her death and the ‘delivery’ of the Stone-Child – naturalists clamored to claim the fetus and the right to display the tiny marvel. Jean d’Ailleboust wrote a detailed pamphlet in 1582 – complete with illustrations – about the case, which became an instant best seller. Pare featured the infant in his book Des monstres et prodiges and reveals that the child was sold to M. Prestesiegle, a wealthy merchant in the 1590’s. He sold it to a goldsmith named M. Carteron who in turn sold it in 1628 to M. Bodey, a jewel merchant complete with a sort of ‘certificate of authenticity’. In 1653, the Stone-Child came into the possession of King Frederick III as well as a handwritten copy of the d’Ailleboust paper. By this point, the child was heavily damaged, with both arms broken and the marble-like skin worn off in places.
The Stone-Child remained in the possession of the Royal Museum for decades, cataloged in 1696, 1710, 1737 and was transferred to the Danish Museum of Natural History in 1826. The Stone-Child went missing sometime in the late 1800’s – it is believed that is was literally scrapped by Professor Reinhardt when he was director of the museum as he believed it was not a ‘scientific display’.
Strangely enough, the Stone-Boy condition – known today as lithopedion – is not all that rare as some 290 cases exist in modern medical literature.
The classic pickled punk – floating in a jar of preserving fluid – became most popular during the golden age of sideshow and experienced a great resurgence in the 1950’s and 1960’s. During that era many punks were linked to drug abuse, at least in the banner lines outside. Several sideshows featured extensive punk displays – some authentic and others gaffed (faked). Following this era, laws began to restrict the display of punks. To complicate matters, laws differed from state to state – making traveling displays almost impossible. Furthermore, the question of whether punks qualify as ‘human remains’ further complicates the laws.
The great modern showman, Ward Hall, once had one of the largest punk shows in the United States. During one season he was fined due to the fact that the display of human remains was illegal in the state he had set up his show in. He replaced his punks with rubber replicas – called ‘bouncers’ – and continued his tour only to be fined again in another state for being a ‘conman’, displaying ‘fakes’ and ‘false advertising’.
While there are still a few stationary legitimate pickled punk shows in the sideshow tradition. Today the best place to find pickled punks is in research or university laboratories or medical museums – like the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. The world’s largest collection of pickled punks, once owned by Peter the Great, is currently on display at the Kuntskammer Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Brain waves can cut braking distances, researchers say

 

Volunteers wearing EEG caps used a driving simulator

Tapping into drivers' brain signals can cut braking distances and avoid car crashes, according to scientists.

Researchers at the Berlin Institute for Technology attached electrodes to the scalps of volunteers inside a driving simulator.
The system detected the intention to brake, and cut more than 3m (10ft) off stopping distances, the team report in the Journal of Neural Engineering.
The team's next aim is to check the system in a series of road tests.
The 18 volunteers were asked to keep 20m (66ft) behind the simulated car in front, which braked sharply at random intervals.
Scientists used a technique called electroencephalograhy (EEG) to analyse the drivers' brain signals.
The system was able to pinpoint the intention to brake 13 hundredths of a second before the driver applied pressure to the brakes.
The team reported that at a speed of 100km/h (65m/h) the braking distance was reduced by 3.66 meters (12 feet).
Computer scientist Stefan Haufe told BBC News: "We know that any intention is generated in the brain. So it's no wonder that such things are visible in the brain.
"We were surprised it is so predictive. That is the thing!"
Lead investigator Benjamin Blankertz added: "It's quite easily explained by the fact that we can tap the driver's intention at the source of the build up of intention in the brain.
"It's a longer process, from the very first upcoming cognitive processes and intention building, until finally the muscles start the movement."
The volunteers also had the muscle tension in their lower legs analysed to detect the first signs of leg motion before they released the accelerator and pushed the brake pedal.
This data enabled the scientists to analyse the EEG information to determine which parts of the brain are key to braking. They improved the detection system accordingly.
'Point of no return' The Institute of Physics says this is the first time that EEG has been used to assist in braking.
The technique is, however, already used to help paralysed people control computers, prosthetic limbs and wheelchairs.
The researchers are planning to conduct road trials of their system to test its viability out of the lab.
But Benjamin Blankertz stressed that he suspects there may be some way to go before EEG can be used as a safety aid in real driving situations, not least because it requires the driver to wear a plastic cap with 64 electrodes covered in conductive gel.

 

The technology uses an EEG cap and 64 electrodes

 

This is uncomfortable, takes up to half an hour to fit, and the wearers have to wash the gel out of their hair afterwards. Smaller, more lightweight versions are in development.
The paper also mentions that wearers of EEG caps have to keep fairly still which is not always possible while driving, particularly when executing an emergency stop.
Dr Blankertz also said more work needs to be done on avoiding false alarms - to avoid the possibility that the machine could misread a drivers' brain signals and brake unnecessarily.
He said: "We need to investigate intention-building and decision-taking and self-initiated movement.
"Some recent research suggests that the outcome of free choices can be predicted from brain activity before the experimental subject is consciously aware of their intention.
"A technology that would make possible real time prediction of future decisions could be used to investigate how this relates to the so-called point of no return.
The team ultimately hopes to work with the automotive industry to combine their EEG technique with radar and laser systems that are used in some commercially available crash-avoidance systems, which detect obstacles such as walls, traffic signals and other vehicles.

New Zealand: Emperor penguin 'recovered' after surgery

 

"Happy Feet", the lost penguin, could get back to Antarctica early next month

 

A young emperor penguin found washed up on a New Zealand beach is recovering well and could swim home next month.

Staff at Wellington zoo said results of an X-ray and blood test showed "Happy Feet", as it has been named, is fine after endoscopic surgery.
The penguin was found on Peka Peka beach, about 60km (37 miles) north of Wellington - some 3,000km from its home in Antarctica.
Experts had been reluctant to intervene as the bird appeared to be healthy.
However, it later grew lethargic and was operated on to remove sand from its stomach.
A Zoo spokeswoman, Kate Baker, said the penguin has gained about 4kg (9lb).
It was given a first swim at the zoo earlier this week, in salt water that was cooled to below 0C (32F).
Crowds have been flocking to the zoo to see the bird - the first such arrival of an Emperor penguin in New Zealand in at least 44 years.
The bird's plight has attracted worldwide attention.
Hundreds of people had gathered to watch a leading gastroenterologist from Wellington Hospital perform the endoscopy on the bird at the zoo in late June.
To help it feel more at home, the penguin is being kept in a room chilled to about 8C. There is a bed of ice for it to sleep on.
Zoo staff said the bird would probably be released offshore from the south end of the country early next month.

Dark winters 'led to bigger human brains and eyeballs'

 

Researchers measured skulls from the 1800s

Humans living at high latitude have bigger eyes and bigger brains to cope with poor light during long winters and cloudy days, UK scientists have said.

The Oxford University team said bigger brains did not make people smarter.
Larger vision processing areas fill the extra capacity, they write in the Royal Society's Biology Letters journal.
The scientists measured the eye sockets and brain volumes of 55 skulls from 12 populations across the world, and plotted the results against latitude.
Lead author Eiluned Pearce told BBC News: "We found a positive relationship between absolute latitude and both eye socket size and cranial capacity."
The team, from the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, used skulls dating from the 1800s kept at museums in Oxford and Cambridge.
The skulls were from indigenous populations ranging from Scandinavia to Australia, Micronesia and North America.
Largest brain cavities The largest brain cavities came from Scandinavia, while the smallest were from Micronesia.
Eiluned Pearce said: "Both the amount of light hitting the Earth's surface and winter day-lengths get shorter as you go further north or south from the equator.
"We found that as light levels decrease, humans are getting bigger eye sockets, which suggests that their eyeballs are getting bigger.

 

Barn owls are nocturnal hunters

 

"They are also getting bigger brains, because we found this increase in cranial capacity as well.
"In the paper, we argue that having bigger brains doesn't mean that high-latitude humans are necessarily smarter. It's just they need bigger eyes and brains to be able to see well where they live."
The work indicates that humans are subject to the same evolutionary trends that give relatively large eyes to birds that sing first during the dawn chorus, or species such as owls that forage at night.
Co author Prof Robin Dunbar said: "Humans have only lived at high latitudes in Europe and Asia for a few tens of thousands of years, yet they seem to have adapted their visual systems surprisingly rapidly to the cloudy skies, dull weather and long winters we experience at these latitudes."
The team took into account the overall body size of each individual by measuring the foramen magnum - the hole in the base of the skull that attaches to the spinal column.
They also controlled for the possibility that the larger eye sockets were needed for extra fat around the eyeball to insulate them from freezing temperatures.
The team intends to do more work on establishing a firm link between eyeball size and enhanced visual processing areas in the brain, and to replicate the link found in the 55 original skulls with further study on specimens from other museums.

Less educated 'will age faster'

 

X chromosome: Telomeres are shown in red

People with fewer qualifications are prone to age more quickly, a study which looked at 400 men and women says.

DNA evidence suggests cellular ageing is more advanced in adults with no qualifications compared with those who have a university degree.
Experts think education might help people lead more healthy lives.
The British Heart Foundation said the London-based study, in journal Brain, Behaviour and Immunity, reinforced the need to tackle social inequalities.
The connection between health and socioeconomic status is well established.
Those from poor backgrounds are more likely to smoke more, take less exercise and have less access to good quality healthcare, compared with more wealthy people.
But the new study suggests that education might be a more precise determinant of a person's long term health rather than their current income and social status.
The researchers suggest that education may enable people to make better decisions that affect their long term health.

It's not acceptable that where you live or how much you earn - or lesser academic attainment - should put you at greater risk of ill health”

Professor Jeremy Pearson Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation

They also speculate that well qualified people might be under less long-term stress, or be better able to deal with stress.

Professor Andrew Steptoe, from University College London, who led the study, said: "Education is a marker of social class that people acquire early in life, and our research suggests that it is long-term exposure to the conditions of lower status that promotes accelerated cellular ageing."
Professor Steptoe's team took blood from more than 400 men and women aged between 53 and 75.
They then measured the length of sections of DNA found at the ends of chromosomes.
These sections - called "telomeres" - cap chromosomes, protecting them from damage. Shorter telomeres are thought to be an indicator of faster ageing.
The results showed that people with lower educational attainment had shorter telomeres, indicating that they may age faster.
They also indicated that telomere length was not affected by a person's social and economic status later in life, as was previously thought.
Social factors Professor Stephen Holgate, chairman of the Medical Research Council's Population and Systems Medicine Board, said the key implication of the study backs up the main message from long-term studies funded by the Medical Research Council for over half a century.
"Your experiences early in life can have important influences on your health," he explained.
"Whilst - as with all observational research - it is difficult to establish the root causes of the findings, this study does provide evidence that being educated to a higher level can benefit you more than in the job market alone."
Professor Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said the research reinforces the need to tackle social inequalities to combat ill-health.
He said: "It's not acceptable that where you live or how much you earn - or lesser academic attainment - should put you at greater risk of ill health."
The researchers were based primarily at University College London, but also collaborated with experts at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff and the University of California, San Francisco.

Nazi Rudolf Hess exhumed from 'pilgrimage' grave

 

Neo-Nazis attempted to hold rallies at the grave on the anniversary of Hess's death

The grave containing the remains of Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess has been destroyed to end it being used as a pilgrimage site by neo-Nazis.

Hess's bones were exhumed at the graveyard in the small town of Wunsiedel, southern Germany, in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
The remains will be cremated and then scattered at sea.
Hess was captured in 1941 and sentenced to life in prison. He killed himself in jail in 1987 at the age of 93.
As he requested in his will, he was buried in the Bavarian town of Wunsiedel, where his family had a holiday home and where his parents were already interred.
The local Lutheran church which supervises the cemetery gave its permission for the burial at the time, ruling that the wishes of the deceased could not be ignored, the Suddeutsche Zeitung reports.
But they and local people have since become concerned by the number of far-right groups visiting the grave. Each year on the anniversary of his death, neo-Nazis have attempted to staged a march to the cemetery, saluting the grave, with its epitaph "I dared" and laying floral wreaths.
A 2005 court order banning such gatherings had little effect so the church decided to terminate the family's lease on the grave as of October 2011.
A granddaughter of Hess objected to the decision, the paper reports. She filed a lawsuit in an attempt to prevent it going ahead, but was eventually persuaded by the parish council to drop the case and allow the exhumation to go ahead.
Hess was one of Hitler's closest aides, but in 1941 he parachuted into Scotland in an apparently authorised solo peace mission, which was later denounced by the fuhrer.
He was imprisoned by the British for the duration of the war, and jailed for life at the Nuremberg trials in 1946. He spent 40 years in Spandau Prison in Berlin before being found hanged in his cell.

Mum's stress is passed to baby in the womb

 

There may be a sensitive window for developing stress responses

A mother's stress can spread to her baby in the womb and may cause a lasting effect, German researchers propose.

They have seen that a receptor for stress hormones appears to undergo a biological change in the unborn child if the mother is highly stressed, for example, because of a violent partner.
And this change may leave the child less able to handle stress themselves.
It has already been linked to mental illness and behavioural problems.
The findings, published in the journal Translational Psychiatry, are based on a small study of 25 women and their children, now aged between 10 and 19.
And the researchers point out that the women involved in the study had exceptional home circumstances and that most pregnant women would not be exposed to such levels of stress day in and day out.
Furthermore, the researchers say the findings are not conclusive - many other factors, including the child's social environment while growing up, might be involved.

But they suspect it is the child's earliest environment, the womb, that is key.

For their study, they looked at the genes of the mums and the adolescents to find any unusual patterns.
Some of the teens had changes to one particular gene - the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) - that helps regulate the body's hormonal response to stress.
Such genetic alterations typically happen while the baby is still developing in the womb.
And the scientists believe they are triggered by the mum-to-be's poor state of emotional wellbeing at the time of the pregnancy.
Sensitive window In the study, these mums had been living with the constant threat of violence from their husband or partner. And it would appear this continued stress took its toll on the pregnancy.
When the babies were followed up one to two decades later as adolescents, they had changes in the genetics of their GR that other teenagers did not.
This "methylation" of GR appears to make the individual more tuned in or sensitised to stress, meaning that they will react to it quicker both mentally and hormonally.

 

Stress hormones are regulated by the brain's hypothalamus

 

As people, they tend to be more impulsive and may struggle with their emotions, explain the researchers, who carried out detailed interviews with the adolescents.
Professor Thomas Elbert, one of the lead researchers at the University of Konstanz, said: "It would appear that babies who get signals from their mum that they are being born into a dangerous world are faster responders. They have a lower threshold for stress and seem to be more sensitive to it."
The investigators now plan to carry out more detailed investigations following larger numbers of mothers and children to see if they can confirm their suspicions.
Dr Carmine Pariante, an expert in the psychology of stress at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, said: "This paper confirms that the early foundation years start at minus nine months."
He added: "Pregnancy is uniquely sensitive to a challenging maternal psychosocial environment - much more than, for example, after the baby is born. As we and others have been advocating, addressing maternal stress and depression in pregnancy is a clinically and socially, important strategy."

Plant seeds 'adapt to city life'

Heavier seeds had a better chance of germinating in urban areas

A species of plant found in cities has evolved rapidly in order to adapt to the challenges of surviving in the concrete jungle, a study suggests.
Crepis sancta growing in urban areas produces heavy seeds that fall to the ground rather than lighter seeds that are dispersed by the wind.
Wind-blown seeds are less likely to germinate because most end up on concrete surfaces, scientists say.
The findings appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers from the Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionelle et Evolutive (CEFE), based in Montpellier, estimate that the change in the way the plant disperses its seeds has taken place in as little as five to 12 generations (five to 12 years).
Co-author Pierre-Oliver Cheptou said the team was surprised by the speed of the change.
"Logic would assume that this sort of evolutionary trait would develop more slowly, which is probably the case in less fragmented situations," he told BBC News.
"However, at the same time, it is consistent with the estimation we had for the trait in a fragmented urban situation."
Risky business
The team collected seed samples from the weed, which grows on wasteland or next to roadside trees, from various locations around the French city.

In fragmented situations, the evolution towards lower dispersal leads to more isolated populations; increasing the risk of extinction Dr Pierre-Olivier Cheptou, Report co-author

They then grew them in a greenhouse to see what fraction of the resulting plants' seeds were of the light, wind-dispersible variety.
Compared with specimens taken from the countryside, the urban samples produced far fewer of these seeds.
The researchers said "dispersing" seeds had a 55% lower chance of germinating because the majority ended up on concrete surfaces.
The heavier seeds were at an evolutionary advantage because they would fall down into the patch of soil that had supported the previous generation of the plant.
They added that their findings supported "cost of dispersal" theories.
"When dispersal is passive (wind or water transport) and habitat choice is random, the probability of settling in a suitable site is positively dependent upon the frequency of suitable sites in the landscape," they wrote.
"Many empirical studies have reported a reduction in dispersal structures in organisms that live on islands, such as plants or insects."
Dr Cheptou said that their study showed the same also applied to plants in urban areas, where suitable soil was widely fragmented by buildings, pavements and roads.
He explained that such a strategy, while increasing the odds of survival for the next generation, could have drawbacks.
"We can hypothesise that in fragmented situations, the evolution towards lower dispersal leads to more isolated populations, increasing the risk of extinction."

Beehives stop elephant crop-raids in Kenya, Africa

Farmers maintain the valuable hives

 

Innovative beehive fences have helped a community in Kenya to successfully protect crops from elephants, according to research.

Scientists found the hives to be a very effective barrier; elephants turned away from them in 97% of their attempted raids.
Conservationists suggest that elephants' natural fear of bees could settle ongoing conflicts.
The hives' honey also produced additional profits for farmers.

 

Elephants and farmers compete for limited resources

 

Over the past 20 years, elephant numbers in Kenya have grown to around 7,500 and the population boost is widely heralded as a conservation success story.
However, conflict between elephants and humans, especially farmers, is an ongoing problem.
Elephants frequently "raid" farms searching for food such as ripe tomatoes, potatoes and maize.
To protect their livelihoods, some farmers have resorted to extreme measures including poisoning and shooting elephants.

Buzzing defence

Previous research into natural deterrents showed that elephants avoided African honey bees.

In 2009, experts from the University of Oxford, UK, and the charity Save the Elephants set up a trial project to test whether beehives could prevent conflict on farmland boundaries.
After two years of observations, the full results of the trial have now been published in the African Journal of Ecology.
"Finding a way to use live beehives was the next logical step in finding a socially and ecologically sensitive way of taking advantage of elephants' natural avoidance behaviour to bees to protect farmers' crops," said Dr Lucy King, the University of Oxford biologist who led the study.
"It was very exciting to see that our theoretical work has been converted into a practical application," she said.

AFRICAN BEE FACTS

• Bees cannot sting through elephant hide, but they can and do sting around elephants' eyes and inside trunks
• The bees in Kenya (Apis mellifera scutellata) are small with short tongues and swarm frequently
• African honey bees were crossed with European honey bees in South America and are known as "killer bees" because of their increased aggression

In 32 attempted raids over three crop seasons, only one bull elephant managed to penetrate the novel defences.

The beehives were suspended on wires between posts with a flat thatched roof above to protect from the sun in the traditional Kenyan style.
The team created a boundaries for 17 farms, incorporating 170 beehives into 1,700m of fencing.
"The interlinked beehive fences not only stopped elephants from raiding our study farms but the farmers profited from selling honey to supplement their low incomes," Dr King explained.
"The honey production and consequent income has really incentivised the farmers to maintain the fences."
Conservationists now hope to roll out the scheme to other farming communities.

Westerners 'programmed for fatty foods and alcohol'

 

Obesity levels have risen sharply in many western countries since the 1970s

 

Westerners could be genetically programmed to consume fatty foods and alcohol more than those from the east, researchers have claimed.

Scientists at the University of Aberdeen say a genetic switch - DNA which turns genes on or off within cells - regulates appetite and thirst.
The study suggests it is also linked to depression.
Dr Alasdair MacKenzie conceded it would not stop those moving to the west adapting to its lifestyle.
Obesity levels have risen sharply in many Western countries since the 1970s.
Dr MacKenzie, who lead the study team, told BBC Scotland they found Europeans were more inclined to consume fatty foods and alcohol - but that people from the East could end up with the same problems if adapting to a new culture.

Facts on calories

• In terms of nutrition, values are often given for the number of kilocalories in a food but referred to simply as calories
• The recommended daily calorie intake is 2,000 for women, and 2,500 for men (NHS Choices)
• Factors that influence energy intake include portion size, energy density and the number of meals, snacks and drinks consumed each day

Scientists at the university's Kosterlitz Centre said the switch controls the galanin gene.

Dr MacKenzie said: "The switch controls the areas of the brain which allows us to select which foods we would like to eat and if it is turned on too strongly we are more likely to crave fatty foods and alcohol.
"The fact that the weaker switch is found more frequently in Asians compared to Europeans suggests they are less inclined to select such options.
"These results give us a glimpse into early European life where brewing and dairy produce were important sources of calories during the winter months.
"Thus, a preference for food with a higher fat and alcohol content would have been important for survival.
"The negative effects of fat and alcohol we see today would not have mattered so much then as life expectancies were between 30 to 40 years."
'Emotional state' He explained: "It is possible that during the winter individuals with the weaker switch may not have survived as well in Europe as those with the stronger switch and as a result those in the west have evolved to favour a high fat and alcohol rich diet."
Dr MacKenzie added: "Galanin is also produced in an area of the brain called the amygdala where it controls fear and anxiety.
"Thus, changing levels of galanin in the amygdala will have an effect on an individual's emotional state. Intriguingly, the switch was also active in the amygdala."
The study is being published in the Journal of Neuropsychopharmocology.

Fermi catalogue update shows 'violent Universe' changes

 

Fermi spotted that the Crab Nebula, once thought to be constant, flares violently with gamma rays

 

The catalogue that lists the most violent neighbourhoods in the Universe has been updated.

The Fermi space telescope captures gamma rays - the highest-energy light in nature, which hints at the cosmos' most extreme conditions and processes.
The second Fermi catalogue represents a full two years of data, improving on the first edition's 11 months.
It lists 1,873 gamma-ray sources; some 589 remain unidentified and could represent entirely new cosmic objects.
Dave Thompson, a Nasa astrophysicist who co-led the catalogue's production, told BBC News that the effort was more than just an expanded list.
"The new catalogue is a new data set," he said. "We've reanalysed all the data, reduced our background, developed new methods of analysis. We're convinced that not only is this quantitatively a better catalogue - it's qualitatively a better catalogue."
It is also a snapshot from a slowly unfolding film of the Universe's most extreme environments.
"It's very important to understand that the gamma-ray sky is not static, it's changing all the time," explained Steven Ritz, deputy principal investigator for the Fermi mission's Large-Area Telescope.
"Our great advantage with this facility is that we're able to see the whole sky all the time; every three hours we've covered the whole sky, so there are interesting differences between the first year catalogue and the second and that speaks to the variability of the sky," he told BBC News.
Cosmic mysteries The greatest proportion of the sources - 1,095 of the 1,873 - is made up of what are known as active galactic nuclei, which are thought to be supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies.

While they are known more for drawing material in, black holes can also help generate a jet of material and light; this jet, when pointed straight at the Earth, is known as a blazar.

But the second-most common category that Fermi has spotted, comprising some 572 gamma-ray sources, is "unidentified".
That is, researchers have compared the objects' locations with those of other known sources of light, and found nothing that should be a gamma-ray emitter.
They are hundreds of cosmic mysteries waiting to be solved.
"My guess is that it's not just one class of sources, but there are many sources of types we already know about that we just haven't identified yet at other wavelengths," Dr Ritz said.
"And quite possibly new types of sources, which is what the whole thing is all about."
The Fermi team will continue to collect and refine their data, but the second catalogue represents the most comprehensive list that science has obtained of the Universe's most violent neighbourhoods - yet it remains to find out exactly what is going on in them.
"Our knowledge of the gamma-ray sky is very poor, so our knowledge of how gamma-ray sources tick - what makes them, how particles behave in them - is still fairly new," said Fermi project scientist Julie McEnery.
"It's part of the reason that the gamma-ray astronomy field is so exciting - because it's so fresh. We've been looking at the 'optical' sky since the Babylonians but the gamma-ray sky is definitely a 20th and 21st Century experience."

Tiny snails survive digestion by birds

Excreted snails can survive

Snails are able to survive intact after being eaten by birds, according to scientists.

Japanese white-eyes on the island of Hahajima, Japan feast on tiny land snails.
Researchers found that 15% of the snails eaten survived digestion and were found alive in the birds' droppings.
This evidence suggests that bird predation could be a key factor in how snail populations spread.

 

The Japanese white-eye or mejiro is widespread in Japan but considered an invasive species in Hawaii

 

It is well known that plant seeds are dispersed by birds that eat fruit.
But in findings published in the Journal of Biogeography, researchers from Tohoku University, Japan investigated whether invertebrates could also spread in this way.
Previous research has shown that pond snails can survive being eaten by fish but the same was not known for land snails.
Studies of the diets of birds on the island of Hahajima identified the Japanese white-eye's preference for the tiny land snail Tornatellides boeningi.
In the lab scientists fed the birds with the snails to find out whether any survived the digestive process.
"We were surprised that a high rate, about 15 percent, of snails were still alive after passing through the gut of [the] birds," explained researcher Shinichiro Wada.

They also studied the genetic differences of T. boeningi populations found across the island and discovered considerable variation.

Rather than only mating with nearby snails, these results suggested that different populations made contact despite their geographical isolation.
"Biogeography of wingless terrestrial invertebrates, in particular snails, is often faced with mysterious long distance dispersal patterns that can only be explained by hand waving arguments involving birds' feet or guts or cyclones," said Mr Wada.
"This is the first study showing that birds can indeed transport a substantial [number of] micro land snails in their gut alive."
One snail in particular helped researchers identify how numerous snails could travel over distances via bird droppings.
"One of the snails fed to the bird gave birth to juveniles just after passing through the gut," Mr Wada told the BBC.
The main factor allowing the snails to survive being eaten is their small size, according to the scientists.

 

T. boeningi is the most common species of snail on Hahajima

 

At an average of 2.5mm the micro snails fared much better than larger species in previous studies whose shells were severely damaged when eaten by birds.
Mr Wada and his colleagues said further study is required to find out whether the tiny snails have other adaptations that allow them to survive.
Hahajima lies 1000km south of Tokyo in the Bonin Islands archipelago, known as the Ogasawara Group in Japan.
The islands were recently added to the UNESCO World Heritage List "for the wealth of their ecosystems which reflect a wide range of evolutionary processes".

Polar bears have maternal Irish brown bear ancestors

 

Bones found in Ireland include those of juvenile brown bears

The maternal ancestors of modern polar bears were from Ireland, according to a DNA study of ancient brown bear bones.

Scientists in the UK, Ireland and the US analysed the teeth and skeletons of 17 brown bears that were found at eight cave sites across Ireland.
The new research has been reported in the latest edition of Current Biology.
Previously, it was believed that today's polar bears were most closely related to brown bears living on islands off the coast of Alaska.
However, analysis of mitochondrial DNA - which is passed from mother to child - has shown the extinct Irish brown bears are the ancestors of all today's polar bears, the scientists said.
Their work provides evidence of the two species mating opportunistically during the past 100,000 years or more.

Dr Ceiridwen Edwards Oxford University

Hybridisation has been recorded recently in the wild where grizzly bears have encroached on polar bear territories.

The bears split from a common ancestor to become separate species between two million to 400,000 years ago.
However, just before or during the last Ice Age the two species came together and polar bears mated with female Irish brown bears, the scientists said.
The maternal lineage can still be traced to all polar bears today, they added.
Prof Daniel Bradley, of Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and Dr Ceiridwen Edwards, formerly of TCD and now at Oxford University, collaborated with Prof Beth Shapiro, of Pennsylvania State University, in the study.
Previously, Dr Edwards attempted to carry out DNA analysis of a sample taken from bones of a polar bear washed into caves in north west Scotland 18,000 years ago.
However, DNA had not survived in the remains from the Bone Caves at Inchnadamph in Sutherland.
'Environmental stresses' Brown bear bones have been found across Ireland, with some of the best preserved examples recovered by cavers at Poll na mBear - Cave of the Bears - in County Leitrim, in May 1997.
Eoghan Lynch and Barry Keenan made the first finds, followed by later discoveries by other speleologists.

Bear fact file

• Caves in County Leitrim were named Poll na mBear following the discoveries made by cavers in 1997
• According to the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) there were 200 polar bears registered in zoos worldwide in 2008
• Figures from the same year estimated that there might be 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears in the wild

An adult bear's skull with the teeth still in place and the bones of young bears were among the finds made.

These have since been dated and are the last recorded bears in Ireland.
The scientists who carried out the DNA analysis said the caves' constant and cool temperatures protected genetic material within the bones.
Dr Edwards, the research paper's lead author, sequenced the mitochondrial DNA from different time depths and from bones recovered from the eight sites.
She found that the older bears in Ireland - from between 43,000 and 38,000 years ago and before the last Ice Age arrived - had the same genetic signature as brown bears living today in eastern Europe.
But DNA from bears that roamed Ireland in cooler times, 38,000 to 10,000 years ago, have sequences that are the closest match yet to modern polar bears.
Bone isotope analysis revealed that despite the maternal genetic link, the Irish ice bears did not share the polar bears' marine diet.

All today's polar bears' maternal ancestors were from Ireland

 

Prof Bradley said ancient samples offered a means of going back in time and measuring the movement of species in response to past climate change.
Dr Edwards added: "It's amazing to think that Irish brown bears are the ancestors of the modern maternal polar bear lineage.
"As the hybridisation between the two species occurred at a time when their home ranges overlapped, most likely during environmental stress, this has implications for polar bears in today's climate."
Prof Shapiro said the results of their research pointed to the bears hybridizing opportunistically throughout the past 100,000 years and probably longer.
She said: "While brown bears and polar bears are hybridizing today, our results suggest that a recent hybridisation led to the capture of a mitochondrial DNA sequence that was present in the population of brown bears that were living in Ireland before the peak of the last ice age.
"That mitochondrial sequence replaced the previous sequence across the entire polar bear population."
Previously it was thought modern polar bears were most closely related to brown bears living on the islands of Admiralty, Baranof and Chichagof in Alaska's Alexander archipelago.
Scottish site What are believed to be the only polar bear remains to have been found in Britain were in caves in Inchnadamph in Sutherland.
The bear's skull was found in 1927 and is held in the collections of the National Museum of Scotland.
An almost complete skeleton of another bear was recovered after years of work from the same Scottish site and later confirmed as that of a male brown bear.
The first pieces were discovered in 1995 by cavers exploring a network of caves.
But it was only in 2008 that Edinburgh-based caving club, Grampian Speleological Group, reached some of the final fragments.

US frequent flyer reaches 10 million miles

It took Thomas Stuker 29 years to reach the milestone with United Airlines

 

A US businessman has been rewarded for his loyalty to one single airline company after accumulating 10 million air miles.

Thomas Stuker, a sales consultant, reached the milestone after a flight from Los Angeles to Chicago.
He has boarded 5,962 United Airlines flights and flown the equivalent of 400 times around the globe.
As a reward he will never have to queue at airports, always get upgraded and has even had a plane named after him.
Flying evolution Mr Stuker reached the milestone after arriving to his native Chicago on Saturday.

It took him 19 years to accumulate his first five million miles and another 10 years to double the mileage.

"So we figure that we're going to be here in five years when you hit 15 million miles, because you're cutting it in half every time," Martin Hand, United's Vice-President of Customer Experience, was quoted as saying by NBC.
Before boarding the flight to Chicago, Mr Stuker admitted that many years ago he was scared to death of flying.
"I couldn't get on an aircraft, it really bothered me," he told America's National Public Radio.
"But now it's evolved to a time where if I go a week without a flight something's not right."
Mr Stuker has now enough reward points through the airlines' frequent flyer programme to take several foreign holidays a year - assuming he can find the time.
A few years ago George Clooney played the role of a man who had achieved the same feat in the film Up In The Air.

Eighty million years without sex

Asexual organisms are usually short-lived

The mystery of how an animal has survived for 80 million years without sex has been solved by UK scientists.
A Cambridge team says the creature owes its existence to a genetic quirk that offers some recompense for its prolonged celibacy.
Many asexual organisms have died out because they cannot adapt to changes in the natural world.
But an evolutionary trick allows this pond-dweller to survive when conditions change, researchers report in Science.


The animal is a tiny invertebrate known as a bdelloid rotifer. It lives in freshwater pools. If deprived of water, it survives in a desiccated state until water becomes available again.
The secret to this novel survival mechanism lies in a twist of asexual reproduction, whereby the animal is able to make two separate proteins from two different copies of a key gene.
Prolonged celibacy
Dr Alan Tunnacliffe, from the Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge, who led the research, said his team had been able to show for the first time that gene copies in asexual animals can have different functions.
"It's particularly exciting that we've found different, but complementary, functions in genes which help bdelloid rotifers survive desiccation," he explained.
"Evolution of gene function in this way can't happen in sexual organisms, which means there could be some benefit to millions of years without sex after all."
The researchers discovered that two copies of a particular gene, known as LEA, in the asexual pond-dweller are different - giving rise to proteins with separate functions that protect the animal during dehydration.
One copy stops other essential protein molecules from clumping together as the animal dries out, while the second copy helps to maintain the fragile membranes that surround the creature's cells.
Genetic diversity
Humans and most other types of organism reproduce sexually. The union of sperm and eggs results in two copies (or a pair) of genetic instructions within a cell, one copy inherited from each parent.
This produces two nearly identical copies of each gene in each cell, and therefore two nearly identical proteins.
The "re-shuffling" of genetic material over many generations allows sexual animals to adapt to changes in their natural environment.
In contrast, many asexual organisms have died out because their rigid genetic make-up means they are unable to adapt in this way.
The latest discovery explains why the bdelloids have likely escaped this fate with their mechanism for generating genetic diversity in the absence of sexual reproduction.
The study reported in Science magazine was conducted on a species of bdelloid rotifer known as Adineta ricciae.

Surgeons carry out first synthetic windpipe transplant

 

The replacement windpipe was grown in the lab

Surgeons in Sweden have carried out the world's first synthetic organ transplant.

Scientists in London created an artificial windpipe which was then coated in stem cells from the patient.
Crucially, the technique does not need a donor, and there is no risk of the organ being rejected. The surgeons stress a windpipe can also be made within days.
The 36-year-old cancer patient is doing well a month after the operation.
Professor Paolo Macchiarini from Italy led the pioneering surgery, which took place at the Karolinska University Hospital.
In an interview , he said he now hopes to use the technique to treat a nine-month-old child in Korea who was born with a malformed windpipe or trachea.
Professor Macchiarini already has 10 other windpipe transplants under his belt - most notably the world's first tissue-engineered tracheal transplant in 2008 on 30-year-old Spanish woman Claudia Costillo - but all required a donor.
Indistinguishable The key to the latest technique is modelling a structure or scaffold that is an exact replica of the patient's own windpipe, removing the need for a donor organ.
To do this he enlisted the help of UK experts who were given 3D scans of the 36-year-old African patient, Andemariam Teklesenbet Beyene. The geology student currently lives in Iceland where he is studying for a PhD.
Using these images, the scientists at University College London were able to craft a perfect copy of Mr Beyene's trachea and two main bronchi out of glass.
This was then flown to Sweden and soaked in a solution of stem cells taken from the patient's bone marrow.
After two days, the millions of holes in the porous windpipe had been seeded with the patient's own tissue.
Dr Alex Seifalian and his team used this fragile structure to create a replacement for the patient, whose own windpipe was ravaged by an inoperable tumour.
Despite aggressive chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the cancer had grown to the size of a golf ball and was blocking his breathing. Without a transplant he would have died.
During a 12-hour operation Professor Macchiarini removed all of the tumour and the diseased windpipe and replaced it with the tailor-made replica.
The bone marrow cells and lining cells taken from his nose, which were also implanted during the operation, were able to divide and grow, turning the inert windpipe scaffold into an organ indistinguishable from a normal healthy one.
And, importantly, Mr Beyene's body will accept it as its own, meaning he will not need to take the strong anti-rejection drugs that other transplant patients have to.
Professor Macchiarini said this was the real breakthrough.
"Thanks to nanotechnology, this new branch of regenerative medicine, we are now able to produce a custom-made windpipe within two days or one week.
"This is a synthetic windpipe. The beauty of this is you can have it immediately. There is no delay. This technique does not rely on a human donation."
He said many other organs could be repaired or replaced in the same way.
A month on from his operation, Mr Beyene is still looking weak, but well.
Sitting up in his hospital bed, he said: "I was very scared, very scared about the operation. But it was live or die."
He says he is looking forward to getting back to Iceland to finish his studies and then returning to his home in Eritrea where he will be reunited with his wife and young family, and meet his new three-month-old child.
He says he is eternally grateful to the medical team that has saved his life.

The Mexican criminal who packed in too much

Mexican police foiled a prison inmate's attempt to escape folded inside a suitcase. How is that possible?

Inmate Juan Ramirez Tijerina curled inside a suitcase after he tried to escape from prison.
No wonder Mexican police were gobsmacked when they found an inmate trying to break out of prison – he was folded inside his partner's suitcase. Juan Ramirez Tijerina was found squashed up and wearing only his socks and underwear by officers suspicious after noticing the bulkiness of his girlfriend's wheelie case. But he's not the only criminal with baggage. A flexible 1.78m-tall thief repeatedly hid in a 90cm by 50cm wheelie bag to steal from tourists on a bus route in Spain recently. But how do you pack yourself so small? According to the Guinness Book of Records, American performer Leslie Tipton can be holiday-ready in just 5.43 seconds. While professional contortionist Rubber Ritchie from agency Contraband International can become a carry-on in just 30 seconds. He started his flexible career 10 years ago, after buying a book about yoga at university, and offers his top tips on how to stuff yourself into a suitcase (kids: don't try this at home!): 1 If you want to make ends meet, buy the biggest suitcase you can. I am quite an average-sized man, and not as small as most contortionists. My shoulders are quite broad so they are the biggest problem – you just have to try to curve them round as best you can. 2 Lie the suitcase flat on the floor and open it up completely. 3 Stand in one corner and lower yourself down until you are squatting into a foetal position, then lie on your side. 4 Tuck your head in and try to scrunch yourself up. Keep your arms and hands inside your bent torso – you could try putting them across your chest. 5 Get someone to zip you up. Don't do this all the way as you need some air in there. To be honest it's terrifying to be in there even for a minute, really claustrophobic. 6 There is another hazard that should stop you trying this at home – if you have ever been to a yoga class you know that any foetal position will release wind. Not great in an enclosed space.

Unnecessary Body Parts

We have a number of body parts that are, well, useless. Here are some facts about the body parts we don’t actually need.

38. Coccyx: This collection of fused vertebrae have no purpose these days, although scientists believe it’s what’s left of the mammal tail humans used to have. It may be useless, but when you break your coccyx, it’s still painful.
39. Pinkie toe: There is speculation that since we no longer have to run for our dinner, and we wear sneakers, the pinkie toe’s evolutionary purpose is disappearing — and maybe the pinkie itself will go the way of the dodo.
40. Wisdom teeth: This third set of molars is largely useless, doing little beyond crowding the mouth and sometimes causing pain.
41. Vomeronasal organ: There are tiny (and useless) chemoreceptors lining the inside of the nose.
42. Most body hair: While facial hair serves some purposes, the hair found on the rest of body is practically useless and can be removed with few ill effects.
43. Female vas deferens: A cluster of dead end tubules near the ovaries are the remains of what could have turned into sperm ducts.
44. Male Uterus: Yeah, men have one too — sort of. The remains of this undeveloped female reproductive organ hangs on one side of the male prostate gland
45. Appendix: Yep, your appendix is basically useless. While it does produce some white blood cells, most people are fine with an appendectomy.

Musculoskeletal System

Find out what you didn’t know about your muscles and bones.

31. Bones can self-destruct: It is possible for your bones to destruct without enough calcium intake.
32. You are taller in the morning: Throughout the day, the cartilagebetween your bones is compressed, making you about 1 cm shorter by day’s end.
33. 1/4 of your bones are in your feet: There are 26 bones in each foot, meaning that the 52 bones in account for 25 percent of your body’s 206 bones.
34. It takes more muscles to frown than to smile: Scientists can’t agree on the exact number, but more muscles are required to frown than to smile.
35. When you take a step, you are using up to 200 muscles: Walking uses a great deal of musclepower — especially if you take your 10,000 steps.
36. Your tongue is the strongest muscle in your body: Compared to its size, the tongue is thestrongest muscle. But I doubt you’ll be lifting weights with it.
37. Bone can be stronger than steel: Once again, this is a pound for pound comparison, since steel is denser and has a higher tensile strength.

Body Functions

The things our bodies do are often strange and sometimes gross. Here are some weird facts about the way your body functions.

24. Earwax is necessary: If you want healthy ears, you need some earwax in there.
25. Your feet can produce a pint of sweat a day: There are 500,000 (250,000 for each) sweat glands in your feet, and that can mean a great deal of stinky sweat.
26. Throughout your life, the amount of saliva you have could fill two swimming pools: Since saliva is a vital part of digestion, it is little surprise that your mouth makes so much of it.
27. A full bladder is about the size of a soft ball: When your bladder is full, holding up to 800 cc of fluid, it is large enough to be noticeable.
28. You probably pass gas 14 times a day: On average, you will expel flatulence several times as part of digestion.
29. A sneeze can exceed 100 mph: When a sneeze leaves your body, it does so at high speeds — so you should avoid suppressing it and causing damage to your body.
30. Coughs leave at 60 mph: A cough is much less dangerous, leaving the body at 60 mph. That’s still highway speed, though.