Circumcision's Benefits Outweigh Risks

Circumcision's Benefits Outweigh Risks, Doctors Say - The health benefits of circumcision outweigh the procedure's risks, and the operation should be covered by insurance, according to new recommendations from an influential group of doctors.

The recommendations, released today (Aug. 27) by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), say the procedure's benefits include reducing the risks of HIV infection, urinary tract infection and penile cancer.

But the AAP also says the benefits of circumcision are not weighty enough to broadly recommend circumcision for all male infants.

Instead, "parents ultimately should decide whether circumcision is in the best interests of their male child," the AAP says. "They will need to weigh medical information in the context of their own religious, ethical, and cultural beliefs and practices."

The new advice is a shift from the Academy's previous policy on circumcision, released in 1999. Those recommendations acknowledged the potential health benefits of circumcision, but did not did make clear whether the benefits outweighed the risks, and made no mention of insurance.

The previous policy may have influenced the percentage of infants circumcised in the United States — in recent years, it has declined — as well as insurance reimbursement for the procedure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although nearly 80 percent of U.S. boys born in the 1970s and 1980s were circumcised, that number decreased to 62.5 percent in 1999, and 54.7 percent in 2010, according to a recent study. And in recent years, Medicaid policies in 18 states have stopped covering routine infant circumcision.

The new statement "demonstrates a consensus that there are clear medical benefits to circumcision," said Dr. Marty Ellington, Jr., chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, who was not involved in writing the policy.

"Hopefully the trend towards state Medicaid programs not covering circumcision will be reversed," Ellington said.

Health benefits

For the new policy statement, the AAP reviewed studies on circumcision conducted between 1995 and 2010.

Studies from Africa showed that circumcision reduces the risk of acquiring HIV by 40 to 60 percent in men, the AAP says. There is also good evidence to suggest circumcision lowers the risk of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, and infection with some strains of genital herpes.

Circumcision may prevent transmission of some sexually transmitted diseases because the region beneath the foreskin is "thought to 'trap' pathogens and bodily secretions, and favor their survival," the AAP says. In addition, the foreskin itself contains a higher proportion of a type of skin cell that is thought to ease the entry of HIV into the body.

Circumcision has also been linked with a threefold to 10-fold reduction in the risk of urinary tract infection in boys age 2 or younger. However, the risk of urinary tract infection in young boys is less than 1 percent; studies show about 100 boys would need to be circumcised to prevent one case of urinary tract infection.

Considerations

Acute complications of circumcision, including infection and bleeding, are rare, and occur in about 1 in every 500 circumcisions, the AAP says.

Circumcision does not appear to affect male sexual function or sexual sensitivity, the AAP says.

"It is important that clinicians routinely inform parents of the health benefits and risks of male newborn circumcision in an unbiased and accurate manner," the policy statement says.

Circumcision should only be performed on healthy infants by trained practitioners, and using effective pain management, the AAP says.

A study published earlier this week suggested a significant decline in male circumcision rates could lead to millions of extra dollars yearly in health care costs, mainly due to increased infections.

Pass it on: The benefits of circumcision outweigh the risks, but are not great enough to recommend the procedure for all infants, doctors say. ( myhealthnewsdaily.com )

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Five distinct psychiatric disorders

Five distinct psychiatric disorders—autism, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia — may share some genetic risk factors, a new study finds.

During the study, researchers found four genetic markers that may play a role in all five diseases. These  markers were more common in people with the one of the psychiatric disorders compared to healthy people.

Two of these markers are found in genes thought to be involved in balancing the level of calcium in brain cells, the researchers said. (Calcium plays a role in many different cell functions, including communication between cells.) Of these two markers, one has been previously linked to bipolar disorder and depression, and the other to schizophrenia.

Although these five psychiatric disorders are thought of as separate conditions, they share some symptoms. For instance, mood and thinking problems can occur with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression. And children with ADHD often have symptoms of other developmental disorders, such as autism. In fact, a 2011 study detected genetic changes that were common to both ADHD and autism.

Because these psychiatric disorders share symptoms, researchers have not always agreed on how to classify them. The new findings might one day help researchers reclassify psychiatric conditions in a way that incorporates genetics, the researchers said.

The new study will be published online Feb. 28 in the journal The Lancet.

To find the shared genetic markers, Dr. Jordan Smoller from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and colleagues analyzed information from 33,332 people who each had one of the psychiatric disorders and 27,888 people who did not.

Because the study involved only people of European ancestry, it's not clear whether the results apply to other populations as well. In addition, the study only found an association between the four genetic markers and these conditions, but cannot prove that the markers play a role in causing the disorders. (That is, just because a person has one of these markers, does not mean that he or she will develop a psychiatric disorder.)

The findings confirm what many researchers already thought — that genetic risk factors aren't necessarily specific to one disease, said Dr. Joachim Hallmayer, an associate professor of psychiatry at Stanford University who was not involved with the study.

Some psychiatric disorders already share some treatments, such as medications aimed at easing symptoms. But genetic studies like these may reveal new targets for drugs "that go more to the root of the condition and prevent the condition," Hallmayer said.

However, more research is needed to determine how these genetic markers cause problems that might lead to disease, Hallmayer said. Future studies might investigate whether environmental factors could interact with these genetic markers to trigger disease, he said.

Ellen Quillen, a geneticist at Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio, said genetic studies that analyze several disorders at the same time are important to identify the genetic risk factors these various disorders share. Previously, evidence has shown that multiple disorders run in the same family.

"I hope these results will encourage more researchers to look for shared variants underlying clinically distinct disorders, as well as focusing on particular shared symptoms," Quillen said.

Pass it on: Autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia may share genetic risk factors. ( LiveScience.com )

Blog : Contents Of Human Life | Depression, Autism &  ADHD May Share Genes

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Whale Songs Found in Seismic Recordings

Whale Songs Found in Seismic Recordings - A rich, but untapped trove of whale calls hides in decades of recordings collected by geologists surveying the ocean floor.

The recordings come from seismic studies that shoot powerful air guns underwater to jiggle the Earth and learn more about its makeup. Sensors listen to acoustic waves in the water before, during and after the shots, capturing the reflections from the ground. But they can also pick up songs from any passing marine life that chats on the same frequency — fin whales and blue whales, in this case.

Blue whales do a graceful turn before lunging at their prey from below, a new study finds.

Whale calls recorded during a seismic survey in the Gulf of California. Top: This spectrogram of ocean sound was recorded by a hydrophone during an air gun seismic experiment in the Gulf of California in 2002. Color indicates the loudness of 

Extracting those squeals, squeaks and moans from the recordings could greatly improve scientist's understanding of the air gun's effects on whales. The noise could potentially confuse or even harm marine life, according to researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Woods Hole, Mass. The calls may reveal how whale behavior changes in response to the sudden, sharp bursts in many different settings.

"We're really excited about the potential for it," said Laela Sayigh, a WHOI marine biologist. "There is a treasure trove of data."

Funding needed

The goal: Create a computer algorithm to extract the whale calls from data collected during a 2002 research cruise in Mexico's Gulf of California. The Gulf is a birthing ground for blue whales, and teems with marine life. Researchers will analyze whale behavior before, during and after the air gun blasts.

The cruise included onboard observers to track the effects of airguns on marine life, so scientists could potentially link calls to individual animals by matching the calls with those observations.

"We have a huge amount of data that can say, 'Did they change their behavior? Did they stop feeding? Did they stop talking? Did they talk louder?', and that's what we want to know," said WHOI seismologist Dan Lizarralde.

For now, the project is only an idea, because Sayigh and Lizarralde have no money for the research. Woods Hole turned the researchers down for an internal grant. This month they will apply for a grant from the Navy, which uses sonar and underwater explosions during training, and funds research exploring the effects of ocean noise on marine life.

Whale calls recorded during a seismic survey in the Gulf of California. Top: This spectrogram of ocean sound was recorded by a hydrophone during an air gun seismic experiment in the Gulf of California in 2002. Color indicates the loudness of the sounds, with yellow the loudest. Dark blue represents when the air guns were not being fired. The bright yellow signals ranging from about 17 to 30 Hertz are calls from fin whales, according to WHOI researchers.

Middle: A 5-hour span from the first panel shows more detail in the sounds. The brief blank periods between are short silences between intense whale call activity.

Bottom: A 5-minute span from the second panel show the presence of at least two fin whales, one much close to the hydrophone than the other.

Ocean noise and marine life

Parking hydrophones underwater to listen to whales is not new, but looking for the calls in seismic survey data is. As long as whales are calling, this precise method of monitoring them could track individuals and groups of whales through the water, showing researchers how the whales react to the blasts, Sayigh said.

Whale researchers have tracked the animals with underwater devices for decades, said Susan Parks, a bioacoustics expert at Pennsylvania State University who studies right whales with underwater recordings. "This is proven technology," she said. "I think it's an interesting idea, and it's really quite promising," she said. 

Dorian Houser, director of bioacoustical research for the National Marine Mammals Foundation, said Sayigh's and Lizarralde' project has potential. "We are really in the dark in a lot of the response of the animals to [ocean noise]," Houser told OurAmazingPlanet. "There's a big push to try and understand these exact questions: How does a whale's behavior change when they are exposed to these exact sounds, and what is the consequence?"

Sayigh thinks the project may also answer questions about the beaching of two Cuvier's beaked whales. Those whales came ashore while the 2002 research cruise that collected this data was in the Gulf, and the cruise was accused of playing a role in the deaths. "They know the exact amplitude of all their shots, and could extrapolate the likely location for the whales," Sayigh said.

If Sayigh and Lizarralde succeed in getting funding, there's a huge archive of seismic data waiting for future studies. Since 1999, all recordings from research cruises like Lizarralde's, funded by the National Science Foundation, go into an open-access archive called IRIS, the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology.

"We'll keep trying," Lizarralde said. "I really want to see what the behavior is associated with these air guns.

"I've convinced myself from observations that the whales are completely uninterested, that it's probably annoying but not damaging, but I'd like to know that better," he said. ( LiveScience.com )

Blog : Contents Of Human Life |  Hidden Tracks: Whale Songs Found in Seismic Recordings

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Why Some Voices Carry

Why Some Voices Carry - You know that guy with the voice heard 'round the world? The one who — no matter how far away he is — sounds as if he is shrieking directly into your ear? He seems to show up at every party, restaurant and (worst of all) office.

Voices that "carry" contain a pitch of sound that strongly resonates with both the human vocal tract and the human ear, said acoustics expert John Smith, a biophysicist at the University of New South Wales in New Zealand. This piercing pitch, dubbed the "speaker's formant," has a frequency around 3,000 hertz, or 3,000 beats per second

By comparison, most human speech falls in the gentler 80- to 250-hertz (Hz) range.

A human mouth.

How do loudmouthed people generate that much faster and much more earsplitting frequency? Understanding their method requires a short lesson on how speech works.

We generate sound by rapidly vibrating two small flaps of mucous membrane called vocal folds in our voice boxes, Smith said. The back-and-forth motions of these folds interrupt the flow of air from our lungs to create "puffs" of sound. If our vocal folds wiggle back and forth 100 times each second, they produce puffs with a frequency of 100 beats per second (Hz). However, additional motions of the vocal folds, such as collisions with each other, can generate additional frequencies that are multiples of that fundamental frequency: "harmonics" at 200 Hz, 300 Hz, 400 Hz and so on. 

All these frequencies travel together through the vocal tract — the tubelike cavity leading from the voice box up through the throat and mouth to the outside world. Depending on its shape, this tract resonates at certain frequencies, meaning it vibrates in time with them. In the same way that an organ pipe increases the amplitude of the sound waves that travel through it, the resonance of the vocal tract amplifies those resonant frequencies, making them louder.

And that's the trick: Loud talkers have somehow learned to harness the natural resonances of their vocal tracts to pump up the volume of their voices. First, they manipulate their vocal folds to generate a harmonic frequency up around 3,000 Hz. "This could involve using a stronger flow of air from the lungs and controlling the folds so they undergo a motion that results in a sound that is intrinsically richer in harmonics," Smith told Life's Little Mysteries. Most people produce harmonics at much lower frequencies.

Second, they alter the shape of their vocal tract, often narrowing or restricting the tract just above the vocal folds, so that it will resonate at that high frequency, making the high frequency louder. "This increase in sound level occurs in a frequency range where the ear is more sensitive and where background noise is usually reduced," Smith said. "Coupled with any increased harmonic content from the vocal folds, it can produce a large increase in subjective loudness."

Recent and ongoing research by Smith and his colleagues shows that singers make similar adjustments to their vocal tracts in order to project their voices. The scientists have managed to characterize how this is done at different pitches. In a report published in January in the Journal of the Acoustic Society of America, they showed that even trumpet players seem to control their own vocal resonances in order to play very high notes. ( LiveScience.com )

Blog : Contents Of Human Life | The Physics of Loudmouths: Why Some Voices Carry

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Poor Math Skills Costing Americans Big Bucks

Attention shoppers : You may want to brush up on your math skills before your next bargain hunt. New research finds that American consumers are missing out on the best deals because they lack basic math skills.

Shoppers in a study conducted by the University of Miami School of Business Administration were unable to tell which of two different types of product offers was the better bargain.

In one example, almost three-quarters of study participants purchased hand lotion when it was labeled "50 percent more" than when it was labeled "35 percent off," even though the deal is slightly better on the lotion whose price is reduced 35 percent. (If you normally paid $3 for eight ounces of lotion, a "50 percent more" offer would be $3 for 12 ounces, or 25 cents an ounce, while a "35 percent off" offer would be $1.95 for eight ounces, or about 24 cents an ounce.)

Poor Math Skills Costing Americans Big Bucks

"When faced with a scenario of converting percentages, most of us are helpless and simply guess when it comes to figuring out the better deal," said Michael Tsiros, chair and professor of marketing, who conducted the research. "It is clear from the study that shoppers often, and incorrectly, assume more product is better."

This information has huge implications for for marketers, who can use it to help explain which product options appear more attractive to consumers, as well as for companies.

"Marketers could take this information and rework their sales strategies and messages to focus more on bonus packs with odd numbers than easy-to-convert percentages or the more typical 'percent off'-type sales," said Tsiros. "To avoid getting tricked, consumers should evaluate products in terms of unit pricing – how much they cost per pound or liter – and should pack a calculator to calculate them!"

Tsiros conducted the research with Howard Marmorstein, of the University of Miami, Allan Chen at Texas A&M University, and Akshay Rao at the University of Minnesota. ( LiveScience.com )

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Free Downloads of ‘Da Vinci Code’ to Promote ‘Inferno’

Free Downloads of ‘Da Vinci Code’ to Promote ‘Inferno’- How about this for a promotional thriller: Beginning Monday, on the 10th anniversary of the release of the mega-bestseller “The Da Vinci Code,” its publisher, Doubleday, will allow anyone to download the entire book free for a week.

The move is part celebration and part marketing experiment, because the download will come with the prologue and one chapter of Dan Brown’s forthcoming book, “Inferno.”

It is common for publishers to tease an author’s coming thriller by including the first chapter of the next book in the back of the paperback version of a best seller. This free e-book is an extension of that practice.

“The Da Vinci Code” preceded the e-book era, but it has sold solidly ever since in all forms. Doubleday is betting that any loss of sales of “Da Vinci,” which has outlived its golden goose days, will be offset by the fire it will light under the new book.

“Inferno,” which will be published on May 14, will once again feature the Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, the protagonist of “The Da Vinci Code” as well as the best-selling “Angels and Demons” (Simon and Schuster, 2000) and “The Lost Symbol,” (2009).

All of the Langdon books have been best sellers, but “Da Vinci” was a blockbuster. Doubleday says it was the “fastest-selling adult hardcover of all time with 81 million copies sold.”

For “Inferno,” Dr. Langdon will go back into the heart of Europe and untangle a mystery involving the poet Dante. The tight-lipped Mr. Brown has revealed little else about the book, but clearly Doubleday is expecting a sensation and has ordered four million copies for the first printing.

The free download will be available only in the United States and Canada through all e-book retailers, through March 24. A serialization in print only of the prologue and first chapter of “Inferno” will begin Sunday in The Daily Mail in Britain.

Mr. Brown will make his sole United States promotional appearance on May 15 at Lincoln Center in Manhattan, where he will discuss codes, symbols, art, religion, publishing and filmmaking. Doubleday is providing a live stream to interested bookstores and libraries, and says that some 150 outlets have already signed on. ( nytimes.com )

Blog : Contents Of Human Life | Free Downloads of ‘Da Vinci Code’ to Promote ‘Inferno’

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Massive meteorite crater found in Canadian Arctic

Massive meteorite crater found in Canadian Arctic - Researchers in Canada's western Arctic have found evidence of a crater that formed when a huge meteorite slammed into Earth millions of years ago.

Measuring about 15 miles (25 kilometers) across, the formation was named the Prince Albert impact crater after the peninsula where it was discovered. Researchers don't know exactly when it was created, but evidence suggests the crater is between 130 million and 350 million years old, according to a statement from the University of Saskatchewan.

Meteors are fragments of asteroids or comets that enter Earth's atmosphere at high speeds; most are small, some as tiny as a grain of sand, so they disintegrate in the air, and only rarely are they large enough to make it to Earth's surface. When meteors slam into Earth, they are called meteorites.

A team of geologists spotted this newly identified meteorite crater while surveying the region for possible energy and mineral resources. They were initially intrigued by steeply tilted strata visible in river gorges and other features in the flat tundra of northwestern Victoria Island.

"Unless you recognized the telltale clues, you wouldn't know what you were looking at," researcher Brian Pratt explained in the statement. "You might see a bunch of broken rocks and wonder how they got there, but we found abundant shatter cones."

Shatter cones are surface features with distinctive wavy patterns that are known to be created only by the tremendous force of a meteorite impact or an underground nuclear explosion. What's more, Pratt said his map showed that the feature is circular, which is characteristic of impact craters.

"Impact craters like this give us clues into how the Earth's crust is recycled and the speed of erosion, and may be implicated in episodes of widespread extinction of animals in the geological past," Pratt said. "It's an exciting discovery."

There are about 180 known impact craters on Earth. Geologists think they would find countless more if plate shifting, volcanic activity and erosion didn't hide the evidence of most ancient impacts.

Earlier this summer, researchers in Greenland documented possibly the oldest and largest meteorite crater ever found on Earth. The crater, estimated to be 3 billion years old, currently measures about 62 miles (100 km) across. But the researchers believe its width before erosion was likely more than 310 miles (500 km) — much bigger than the largest visible crater, the 2-billion-year-old Vredefort crater in South Africa, which measures 186 miles (300 km) across. ( LiveScience.com )

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Berkeley scientists convert seaweed into ethanol using E. coli

Berkeley scientists convert seaweed into ethanol using E. coli - Your sushi wrap could be soon powering your car. Berkeley-based Bio Architecture Lab's scientists have figured out how to break down seaweed and make ethanol and other chemicals.

Sugar cane and corn may soon be sharing the biofuel spotlight with a new contender: seaweed. A new breakthrough to break down sugars in seaweed may make the abundant marine algae central to replacing fossil fuels.

The breakthrough is credited to scientists from the Berkeley-based Bio Architecture Lab, Inc (BAL). According to the Scientific American, the BAL researchers used a genetically modified version of Escherichia colito (E. coli) to digest and convert seaweed into fuel and chemical compounds. Their findings have been reported in the January 20 issue of the Science journal.

The reason for the engineered microbe is that industrial microbes cannot digest alginate, the main sugar in brown seaweed. As BAL co-founder and synthetic biologist Yasuo Yoshikuni said, “the form of the sugar inside the seaweed is very exotic.”

So, Yoshikuni and the BAL researchers decided to look into a microbe that could digest the alginate called Vibrio splendidus. They then isolated the genes carrying the desired traits and placed the DNA into the E.coli. To test the new version of the stomach bacteria, the researchers mixed it up with some ground seaweed and a little water and let it stew for two days. The scientists found that the solution yielded 5 percent ethanol and water in temperatures between 25 and 30 degrees Celsius. Yoshinkuni believes that ethanol is just the start and that the microbe could also be used to turn seaweed into a variety of molecules; isobutanol, for example.

Seaweed could be an ideal for biofuel as it seems to be low maintenance; it requires no watering or fertilizer, and nutrients are drawn from the ocean. Jonathan Burbaum, program director at the US Department of Energy’s ARPA-e, points out that seaweed could address land concerns as well, since the algae grows naturally in the “two thirds of the planet that we don’t use for agriculture.” Burbaum says a portion of the agency’s funding will be used to test out the viability of seaweed with a small aquafarm experiment. ( digitaltrends.com )

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Are insects the answer to global malnutrition?

Are insects the answer to global malnutrition? – Serge Verniau is a man with a mission: to persuade the world to swap the chicken wings and steaks on their plates for crickets, palm weevils and other insects rich in protein and vitamins.

Verniau, the Laos representative of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), is only half-joking when he says his dream is "to feed the big metropolises from Tokyo to Los Angeles, via Paris" with the small arthropods.

He plans to present the lessons drawn from a pilot project to the world at a conference on edible insects, probably in 2012.

"Most of the world's population will live in urban areas. Trying to feed the whole planet enough protein from cows won't work," Verniau told AFP.

It is not by chance that the dream was born in landlocked Laos, one of the world's poorest countries.

Almost one quarter of its population of six million people, and nearly 40 percent of children below the age of five years old, suffer from malnutrition, according to figures from the Laos government.

The typical rice-based diet provides insufficient nutrients for development -- a shortfall that could be filled by insects, highly rich in protein and vitamins.

Plates of fried insects,, are seen - Plates of fried insects ready to eat, including crikets and grasshopers, are seen here at a local market in Vientiane. Raising crikets for foods is seen as a solution to the malnutrition in the poor landlock country where a great number of people, especially children, suffer from it.

Eaten as snacks, grilled or fried, they are already part of Laos cuisine, but most people do not know how to breed them, said Oudom Phonekhampheng, dean of the faculty of agriculture at the National University of Laos.

"They just take them in the wild and eat them, and then it is finished and destroyed. They have to think about the future," he said.

In a modest building in the suburbs of the capital, his department's laboratory collects scientific data on this new area of breeding.

Along with house crickets -- which are already widely farmed in neighbouring Thailand -- there are experiments in breeding mealworms, palm weevils and weaver ants, which are appreciated for their larvae.

The students are trying out different foods for the insects in an attempt to reduce costs while maintaining quality, explains Yupa Hanboonsong, a Thai entomologist supervising the project for the FAO.

Up to now, the roughly 20 cricket farms operating in Laos have used chicken feed, like thousands of Thai farms, but it is expensive and must be imported.

Vegetables or waste left over from the production of the national beer, BeerLao, could be one solution, said Yupa, who hopes to "train the whole country."

Beyond the fight against malnutrition, this new economic activity can also generate revenue for farmers, added Yupa.

Phouthone Sinthiphanya, 61, seized the opportunity in 2007 to supplement his meager pension after a career in the tobacco industry.

The 27 cylindrical concrete vats, about 50 centimetres (20 inches) tall, installed in the garden of his house in Vientiane produce 67 kilos (148 pounds) of crickets every two months, he explains.

One kilo of live insects fetches 60,000 kips (7.5 dollars). The same quantity crushed sells for 50,000 kips.

"I worked for a tobacco company and then retired. My pension was not enough so I started farming insects," he said.

"Our customers are restaurants, villagers, markets," he said, adding that breeding the small creatures was "easy".

It requires little space or natural resources and only their singing might annoy the neighbours.

"Insect farming creates less damage to the environment. It is a green protein," said Yupa.

Proponents believe such nutritional and environmental advantages could be beneficial beyond Laos, particularly in other developing countries where people are used to eating cicadas and grasshoppers.

"You can make powder from crickets that is very rich in protein. It's low in fat and it can be added to biscuits in problem areas where food rations are distributed," said Verniau.

Nor has he given up hope of persuading sceptics in the West.

"When you look closely, a grey shrimp or a cricket, it has the same appeal," he joked. ( Agence France Presse )

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Mind-boggling discovery: Perfectly preserved brain of Iron Age man unearthed in York

Mind-boggling discovery: Perfectly preserved brain of Iron Age man unearthed in York - Archaeologists believe they have discovered one of the world's oldest brains that once belonged to a man in Iron Age Britain who was sacrificed in a ritual killing.

Scientists found the cranium in a muddy pit when they were excavating a site before a new campus was to be built at the University of York. When a researcher reached inside the skull, she was stunned to discover the soft tissue of the 2,500-year-old brain still preserved.

Fractures and marks on the bones suggest the man, who was aged between 26 and 45, died most probably from hanging, after which he was carefully decapitated and his head was then buried on its own.

Grey matter: The 2,500-year-old preserved brain has baffled scientists after it was found during an excavation at the University of York

Scientists have been baffled by how the brain tissue - which usually rots after a couple at years - managed to remain intact for so long.

'The survival of brain remains where no other soft tissues are preserved is extremely rare,' said Sonia O'Connor, research fellow in archaeological sciences at the University of Bradford.

'This brain is particularly exciting because it is very well preserved, even though it is the oldest recorded find of this type in the UK, and one of the earliest worldwide.'

Philip Duffey, a neurologist at York Hospital who scanned the skull, said: 'I'm amazed and excited that scanning has shown structures which appear to be unequivocally of brain origin.'

Baffled: Dr Sonia O Connor, from the University of Bradford, examines the remains of the brain

'I think that it will be very important to establish how these structures have survived, whether there are traces of biological material within them and, if not, what is their composition.'

Experts from York Archaeological Trust were commissioned by the university to carry out the exploratory dig last year before building work on the £750million campus expansion started.

They discovered the solitary skull face-down in the pit in dark brown organic rich, soft sandy clay.

The university put together a team of scientists, archaeologists, chemists, bio-archaeologists and neurologists, to establish how the man’s brain, could have survived when all the other soft tissue had decayed leaving only the bone.

Remains: Archaeologists sift through the muddy pit at the site near the University of York where the brain was found

The team is also investigating details of the man’s death and burial that may have contributed to the survival of what is normally highly vulnerable soft tissue.

The research, which was funded by the University of York and English Heritage, is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Since the discovery, the brain and skull have been kept in strictly controlled conditions, but scientists have examined samples using a range of sophisticated equipment, including a CT scanner at York Hospital and mass spectrometers at the University of York.

Samples of brain material had a DNA sequence that matched sequences found only in a few individuals from Tuscany and the Near East. Carbon dating suggests the remains date from between 673-482BC.

Fractures on the second neck vertebrae point to some kind of trauma before the man died and and a cluster of about nine horizontal fine cut-marks made by a thin-bladed instrument, such as a knife, can be seen on the front of the brain.

Preserved: Brain material shows as dark folded matter at the top of the head in this computer-generated view of the skull

Clean: Scientists said there was no trace on the brain of the usual preservation methods such as embalming or smoking

Scientists are now investigating how lipids and proteins found in the brain preserved the brain and what happened between the man dying and his burial.

Dr O’Connor said: 'It is rare to be able to suggest the cause of death for skeletonised human remains of archaeological origin. The preservation of the brain in otherwise skeletonised remains is even more astonishing but not unique.

'This is the most thorough investigation ever undertaken of a brain found in a buried skeleton and has allowed us to begin to really understand why a brain can survive thousands of years after all the other soft tissues have decayed.'

Despite the place that ‘trophy heads’ appear to have played in Iron Age societies and evidence for the preservation of human remains in the Bronze Age, the researchers say there is no evidence for that in this case. They found no marks indicating deliberate preservation by embalming or smoking.

Dr O’Connor added: 'The hydrated state of the brain and the lack of evidence for putrefaction suggests that burial, in the fine-grained, anoxic sediments of the pit, occurred very rapidly after death. This is a distinctive and unusual sequence of events, and could be taken as an explanation for the exceptional brain preservation.' ( dailymail.co.uk )

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Creationists say this petroglyph in Utah is proof dinosaurs and humans co-existed. But is it just a mud stain?

Creationists say this petroglyph in Utah is proof dinosaurs and humans co-existed. But is it just a mud stain? - It certainly looks like a dinosaur. Then again, it also looks like a mud stain.

Either way, this apparent ancient cave drawing high on a rock formation in Utah has ignited a firestorm.

Creationists are claiming the famous dinosaur petroglyph at the Kachina Bridge formation in Natural Bridges Natural Monument in south-eastern Utah is proof that dinosaurs and humans co-existed.

Now you see it... A lighter patch of this rock at the Kachina Bridge formation in Utah appears to form the image of a dinosaur - but is it?

Above left: What appears to be the head and neck of the dinosaur. Above right: What is apparently the body and legs of the dinosaur - but a new paper argues that the image is merely a petroglyph of a snake, with mud stains that confuse the eye into thinking it is seeing legs

The image looks very much like a hand-drawn, plant-eating dinosaur - a diplodocus, perhaps.

But scientists say that is impossible.

Now a new research paper is stirring up the controversy with the claim that the petroglyph is in fact a drawing of a snake. The 'legs' of the dinosaur are nothing more than mud stains, according to the paper published in Palaeontologia Electronica.

The paper was co-authored by biology professor Phil Senter, at Fayetteville State University.

Had Native Americans seen one of these? A sauropod, which is similar in shape to the dinosaur-like image in Utah

He hiked the region with his fianceé in 2009 - and when he came upon the famous image, he said, 'I couldn't believe it.

'It looked just like a sauropod,' he told Discovery News.

Curious, he contacted archaeologist Sally Cole, considered an expert in petrogylphs, which are common throughout parts of Colorado, Utah and New Mexico.

The images are usually found on cave walls or rock faces, drawn several thousand years ago by Native Americans.

Usually they depict deer and other animals. The one at Kachina Bridge was different - as are a few others scattered around the area.

Cole examined the drawing and came to the conclusion that it was actually a composite of two separate drawings.

One is a snake or a serpent. The 'legs' of the 'dinosaur', she said, were actually just stains from minerals or mud.

The result, the paper claimed, was a kind of 'paraeidolia, the psychological phenomenon of perceiving significance in vague or random stimuli, e.g., seeing animals in clouds or the face of a religious figure in a food item.'

Officials at the Creationist Museum, one of several creationist organisations featuring the petroglyph, quickly criticised the report and Cole.

David Menton, a biologist at the museum, told Discovery News that Cole's findings had to be disregarded as she examined the petroglyph from a distance with binoculars - not close up.

He said he was prepared to accept it was a dinosaur - or even some other creature. But, he was quoted as saying, 'I'm not prepared to accept... that the artist climbed up there but the authors didn't climb up.'

The Kachina Bridge formation in south-eastern Utah, where there are many petroglyphs

Cole's paper claimed the area was too rugged for a ladder.

Menton said the image looked like a sauropod and rejected the theory that it has no meaning at all. He said he wished Senter and Cole had provided other possibilities for what the drawing might be.

Several other drawings at Kachina Bridge appear to be of dinosaurs also, including one apparently of a triceratops and another of a monoclonius.

But Senter and Cole claimed in their paper that those images, also, are either composites or do not resemble any four-legged animal they can identify. ( dailymail.co.uk )

READ MORE - Creationists say this petroglyph in Utah is proof dinosaurs and humans co-existed. But is it just a mud stain?

Obesity tied to poorer sperm quality

Obesity tied to poorer sperm quality – Adding to evidence that obesity may affect a man's sperm quality, a new study finds that obese men tend to have less-mobile sperm than their thinner counterparts.

Studies have come to conflicting conclusions as to whether obesity impairs a man's fertility. But several recent ones have found that obese men tend to have poorer quality sperm than leaner men do -- including lower sperm counts and fewer progressively motile sperm, which refers to sperm that swim forward in a straight line rather than moving about aimlessly.

In the new study, published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, researchers from Argentina evaluated semen samples from 749 men who were each part of a couple seeking help for fertility problems.

They found that the 155 obese men tended to have fewer motile sperm and fewer rapidly moving sperm than their normal-weight and overweight counterparts.

Obese men also had generally lower levels of neutral alpha-glucosidase, or NAG -- an enzyme secreted into the fluid of the epididymis, which is a structure at the back of the testes where sperm mature and acquire their motility.

The concentration of NAG in the semen is considered a marker of how well the epididymis is functioning.

"To our knowledge, ours is the first study proposing a deleterious effect of obesity on epididymal function," lead researcher Dr. Ana Carolina Martini, of the National University of Cordoba in Argentina, told Reuters Health in an email.

However, the effects she and her colleagues found on sperm quality would not have a significant effect on a man's fertility, according to Martini.

"A man would not become sterile because of some weight increase," she said.

While the study linked obesity to lesser sperm motility, it found no effects on other measures of semen quality, including sperm count, testosterone levels and the percentage of normally shaped sperm.

Still, Martini said, it might be possible for an obese man to improve his sperm quality by shedding some weight. Research has shown that weight loss can reverse the imbalance in reproductive hormones that is linked to obesity, she noted.

The study had a number of limitations, Martini and her colleagues point out. One is that it focused on men who were part of couples with fertility problems; whether the findings extend to obese men in general is unknown.

Another is that the researchers gauged obesity using the men's body mass index, or BMI, a measure of weight in relation to height. The problem is that BMI does not directly reflect a person's level of body fat, and other studies have suggested that abdominal fat is more closely related to sex-hormone levels than BMI is.

More studies, the researchers conclude, are needed to better understand the relationships among obesity, sperm quality and fertility.

"Because the incidence of obesity is growing," they write, "it is expected that the number of obese men with reduced fertility will increase as well." (Reuters Health)

READ MORE - Obesity tied to poorer sperm quality

"Big Bang" collider may reveal mystery particle

"Big Bang" collider may reveal mystery particle – Scientists operating the "Big Bang" particle collider at CERN could solve the mystery of what gives mass to matter during a nearly two-year non-stop run lasting until late 2011, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

James Gillies told Reuters the long-sought but elusive Higgs Boson particle could well appear during the extended experiment after the world's biggest and most expensive scientific machine is turned on again later this month.

Reuters – Scientists look at a computer screen at the control centre of the CERN in Geneva September 10, 2008. …

"If it is there, we have a reasonable chance of seeing it," said Gillies, referring to the particle which Scots physicist Peter Higgs said three decades ago would explain how matter came together and created the universe and everything in it.

Gillies said the 18-24 month operation of the machine, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research on the Swiss-French border near Geneva, would produce a huge amount of information.

Even if the Higgs Boson was not revealed, it would not mean that it did not exist. After the first long run and a year's break for preparations, the LHC would be turned on again at the highest possible energy level.

"It may be that we require that intensity to capture it," Gilles added.

The LHC was first turned on in September 2008 but had to be shut down after a huge explosion in the 27-kilometre (16.78 mile) circular tunnel through which it runs deep underground. The focus of the LHC is the collision of particles moving in opposite directions at high energy.

The billions of collisions, each creating conditions that existed a minute fraction of a second after the "Big Bang" when the universe began 13.7 billion years ago, will produce data that some 10,000 scientists at CERN and around the world will record and analyze.

The matter spewed out by the primeval explosion eventually produced the stars, planets and life on Earth -- but the Higgs theory says this was only possible if something like the Boson brought matter together, giving it mass.

The LHC ran for some two months at the end of last year, staging particle beam collisions in the tunnel at an energy up to 2.36 tera-electron volts (TeV), the highest ever achieved.

The next, long run with no winter break was decided at a meeting of CERN physicists, engineers and managers in Chamonix, France, last week. Gillies said the collision energy would be turned up gradually to 7 TeV when it got under way.

Toward the end of next year, the collider will be closed down again for up to 12 months, allowing engineers to prepare the tunnel and the huge amount of equipment there for collisions at 14 TeV in the following run, probably starting in 2013. ( reuters )

READ MORE - "Big Bang" collider may reveal mystery particle

Was the moon created by a nuclear explosion on Earth?

Was the moon created by a nuclear explosion on Earth?. How the Moon was created and came to orbit the Earth has long puzzled scientists.

The most commonly held theory is that when the solar system was first formed, an object collided with Earth, knocking off a chunk of rock that fell into orbit around it.

But now two scientists have come up with a new explanation. They believe the Moon did not break away from the Earth because of an impact or an explosion in space, but because of a nuclear explosion on Earth itself.

Similarities: Lunar samples from moon landings have shown that the material of the moon is nearly identical to Earth's

Their idea is based on the fission theory which was first outlined in the 19th century.

The fission theory suggested that the Earth and Moon were both created out of the same blob of spinning molten rock - with a part becoming separated which later became the moon.

However, aside from an impact, scientists couldn't explain how the blob which became the moon spun off.

Rob de Meijer at University of the Western Cape and Wim van Westrenen at VU University in Amsterdam believe the Moon was blasted out of the Earth by a nuclear explosion on our planet.

In their research paper, 'An alternative hypothesis for the origin of the Moon', they explain that if the moon had been separated from the Earth by an impacting external force, the moon would be composed of whatever knocked into it and the Earth.

'Models of solar system evolution show that it is highly unlikely for the chemical composition of the Earth and impactor to be identical,' they state.

Yet recent lunar samples show that the moon is almost identical in chemical composition to the Earth - suggesting there was no impactor involved.

'A more likely possibility for the large degree of compositional similarity... is that the moon derives directly from terrestrial material,' the research paper states.

Full moon: Look to the skies tonight for a lunar spectacle

They believe that the energy that caused the moon to break into orbit around Earth was
'supplied by a supercritical georeactor in Earth’s core-mantle boundary producing sufficient heat to vaporize and eject part of the bulk silicate earth'.

Clay Dillow from Popular Science supports the theory. He states: 'According to their explanation, the centrifugal forces on Earth concentrated heavier elements like uranium and thorium near the surface around the equatorial plane.

'Enough of these elements in high enough concentrations could set off a runaway nuclear chain reaction, similar to the kind that cause nuke plant meltdowns.

'In this way, a natural-born nuclear georeactor was pushed to supercritical levels and: BOOM! The moon was cleaved from the Earth and rocketed into orbit by a massive nuclear explosion.

'It’s a tough theory to test, but we do know that nuclear georeactors existed, their legacy left behind in the uranium we mine from the Earth today. '

De Meijer and van Westrenan conclude that proving their theories will depend on future moon missions returning lunar samples from greater depths.

● MARS AND MOON PROVIDE SPECTACLE TONIGHT

The Red Planet will pair up with the full Moon in the night sky tonight to provide a grand celestial spectacle.

Sky watchers will be able to gaze on the biggest and brightest full Moon of the year tonight. They will also be treated to a particularly dazzling Mars.

Our planetary neighbour, now 62 million miles from Earth, has been at its brightest for two years, this week.

This is because the Red Planet is in opposition, which means Mars and the Sun are on directly opposite sides of Earth. Our moon is in opposition during the full moon.

Therefore the Sun's light reflects off the whole surface of Mars instead of just part of it and it is particularly bright from our perspective.

As Earth is closer to the Sun is goes round its orbit faster than Mars. It means around every two years they are in opposition

From our perspective, Mars rises in the east just as the sun sets in the west.

At around 9pm, Mars will be above and to the left of the Moon, about the length of an outstretched fist away.

A standard SLR camera fitted with a telephoto lens is all you need to capture the scene, says Robin Scagell, from the Society for Popular Astronomy.

'Mars is looking really quite red and impressive at the moment, and the Moon will be full,' he said.

'It's going to be a great sight and rather fun to look for.'

The forecast for the UK tonight is mainly clear, although there could be cloud over North-East England and Northern Ireland.( dailymail.co.uk )

READ MORE - Was the moon created by a nuclear explosion on Earth?