Chilean boy born with fetus in his stomach

SANTIAGO, Chile – A boy has been born in Chile with a fetus in his stomach in what doctors said was a rare case of “fetus in fetu” in which one twin becomes trapped inside another during pregnancy and continues to grow inside it.

Doctors carried out a scan on the boy’s mother shortly before she gave birth on Nov. 15 in the southern city of Temuco and noticed the 4-inch-long fetus inside the boy’s abdomen.

It had limbs and a partially developed spinal cord but no head and stood no chance of survival, doctors said. After the birth, doctors operated and removed the fetus from the boy’s stomach. The boy, who has not been named, was recovering at Temuco’s Hernan Henriquez hospital.

“It’s very rare,” said Maria Angelica Belmar, head of the hospital’s neonatal wing, speaking of fetus in fetu cases.

“It occurs in only one in every 500,000 live births,” she told Reuters, adding that the number of cases recorded worldwide was fewer than 90. – msnbc

It is difficult for some people to live a normal life without a head.

Professor Devises New Form of Solar Cell

A University of Idaho professor is devising a new form of solar cell she says could lead to a breakthrough that would make solar energy commercially feasible. Chemist Pam Shapiro, her graduate students and her colleagues at the university are working on creating better materials and combining them in new ways that could more than double the efficiency of present solar cells. If successful, she said the new technology could help the U.S. break its oil dependency.

“People are trying to make solar cells that are more efficient,” Shapiro told The Lewiston Tribune. “But it’s so much cheaper to use fossil fuels, despite all the obvious advantages of solar cell technology.”

So far, Shapiro’s team has created a compound called a “quantum dot” that is made of elements that include copper, indium and selenium. Shapiro said that the quantum dots would be embedded between layers of a solar cell and would absorb energy that is otherwise wasted due to overheating.

“These solar cells based on quantum dots aim to make better use of that excess energy,” Shapiro said.

She said her team has created the quantum dots, but that a working prototype is years away and completion will likely require the combined skills and knowledge of her colleagues at the school. – physorg

The “Deadlies”: Atomic Automobile

In our competition to find “Deadlies” — technology which may be feasible but still looks like a really bad idea — there have been plenty of atomic nominations. In the 50’s and 60’s there were plans for nuclear powered ships, trains, aircraft, missiles and spaceships which have attracted nominations for the “Deadlies.” But nobody has mentioned the Atomic Automobile yet.

These days we’re a bit wary about nuclear power, but back in it’s heyday it was selling like (radioactive) hot cakes. Nuclear power was the future, it was cleaner than fossil fuels, endlessly abundant and so inexpensive that Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, forecast that: “It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter.”

… So when the Atomic Age really got under way in 1958 it was no surprise when the Ford Nucleon concept car was rolled out. This had the pasenger compartment placed well forward to keep away from the nuclear plant at the back. The company suggested that the Nucleon would travel 5,000 miles before needing to have the atomic core replaced at a charging station, the future equivalent of a gas station. Unsurprisingly enough, the car never went beyond concept stage. – deftech

Early sketch of Stonehenge found

They got the date wrong by some 3,000 years, but the oldest detailed drawing of Stonehenge, apparently based on first hand observation, has turned up in a 15th century manuscript.The little sketch is a bird’s eye view of the stones, and shows the great trilithons, the biggest stones in the monument, each made of two pillars capped with a third stone lintel, which stand in a horseshoe in the centre of the circle. Only three are now standing, but the drawing, found in Douai, northern France, suggests that in the 15th century four of the original five survived.

In the Scala Mundi, the Chronicle of the World, Merlin is given credit for building Stonehenge between 480 and 486, when the Latin text says he “not by force, but by art, brought and erected the giant’s ring from Ireland”. Modern science suggests that the stones went up from 2,500 BC, with the bluestone outer circle somehow transported from west Wales, and the double decker bus-size sarsen stones dragged 30 miles across Salisbury plain. – guarduk

1986 SPY GHOST HUNTING SURVEILLANCE PARAPSYCHOLOGY VAN

One of a Kind. Originally used on Miami Vice and Nash Bridges TV shows. Purchased by the American Institute of Parapsychology for investigations of allegedly haunted locations! – ebay

Long Lost Star Catalog Found in Plain Sight

The long lost star catalog of Hipparchus has been under our noses ? or, more accurately, slightly above them ? for more than 1,800 years.

Sitting atop the broad shoulders of a seven-foot statue known as the Farnese Atlas is a sky globe depicting the nighttime sky. Scientists have been able to match the constellations shown on the globe with descriptions from Hipparchus?s only surviving work, Commentaries, and have concluded that this is a marble copy of his star catalog.

Hipparchus, who was Greek, was one of the greatest of the ancient astronomers and did his most important work between 140-125 BC. He calculated the length of the year to within six and a half minutes, developed a scale to rate the brightness of stars, was the first to record a nova, theorized on the motions of the Sun and Moon, provided high quality planetary observations and created the first ever catalog of 1,000 stars.

Scientists Levitate Small Animals

Scientists have now levitated small live animals using sounds that are, well, uplifting.

In the past, researchers at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an, China, used ultrasound fields to successfully levitate globs of the heaviest solid and liquid?iridium and mercury, respectively. The aim of their work is to learn how to manufacture everything from pharmaceuticals to alloys without the aid of containers. At times compounds are too corrosive for containers to hold, or they react with containers in other undesirable ways.

“An interesting question is, ‘What will happen if a living animal is put into the acoustic field?’ Will it also be stably levitated?” researcher Wenjun Xie, a materials physicist at Northwestern Polytechnical University, told LiveScience.

Xie and his colleagues employed an ultrasound emitter and reflector that generated a sound pressure field between them. The emitter produced roughly 20-millimeter-wavelength sounds, meaning it could in theory levitate objects half that wavelength or less.

After the investigators got the ultrasound field going, they used tweezers to carefully place animals between the emitter and reflector. The scientists found they could float ants, beetles, spiders, ladybugs, bees, tadpoles and fish up to a little more than a third of an inch long in midair. When they levitated the fish and tadpole, the researchers added water to the ultrasound field every minute via syringe.

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UFO Nut Sells Spy Poison Online

Polonium-210, which experts say is many times more deadly than cyanide, can be bought legally through United Nuclear Scientific Supplies, a mail-order company that sells through the Web, based in Sandia Park, N.M. Chemcial companies sell the Polonium-210 legally for industrial use, such as removing static electricity from machinery. United Nuclear claims that it’s “currently the only legal Alpha source available without a license.”

The type of Polonium-210 sold emits alpha radiation, which can’t penetrate the skin, but is deadly if swallowed, depending on the amount ingested. The Polonium available on United Nuclear’s site can be purchased without a license because the level of radioactivity, 0.1 microcurie, does not pose a danger, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.

“At that level, it’s exempt from licenses,” NRC spokesman David McIntyre said. “At any exempt quantity, it’s not considered a health hazard.”

Such small amounts of Polonium could be used to calibrate devices used to detect radiation, McIntyre said. If used for that purpose, the material would remain in its sealed container, and never actually handled.

United Nuclear is run by Bob Lazar, who, some 20 years ago, claimed to have worked on alien spaceships on a secret military base in Nevada…

In April, United Nuclear was ordered by the Department of Justice to stop selling chemicals that it claimed could be used to make explosives, the Albuquerque Journal reported. At the time, Lazar said he was fighting the legal challenge.

On the site, United Nuclear says it will not sell anything illegal, including explosives or the materials to make explosives. “Because our products can be potentially hazardous in the wrong hands, we will occasionally terminate and refund orders, if we feel you are a juvenile posing as an adult, inexperienced with the materials ordered, or using our products to make any sort of explosive device,” the company says.

Wired ran a story about Lazar and other science salesmen a few months back. Somehow, the Area 51 stuff never made it into the piece.

UPDATE 11:50 AM: Be sure to check out Arms Control Wonk’s take on the polonium poison mystery.

UPDATE 1:55 PM: “Authorities grounded three British Airways jetliners in London and Moscow on Wednesday and drew up plans to contact thousands of airplane passengers as they broadened their investigation into the radiation poisoning death of a former Russian spy,” the AP says. “Two planes at London’s Heathrow Airport tested positive for traces of radiation, a third plane has been taken out of service in Moscow awaiting examination.”

“The radioactive material that killed a former Russian spy in Britain can be bought on the Internet for $69,” Information Week is reporting. – detch

Mysteries of computer from 65BC are solved

Mechanism hailed as more valuable than Mona Lisa, Device with gear wheels tracked sun and moon

A 2,000-year-old mechanical computer salvaged from a Roman shipwreck has astounded scientists who have finally unravelled the secrets of how the sophisticated device works.

The machine was lost among cargo in 65BC when the ship carrying it sank in 42m of water off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera. By chance, in 1900, a sponge diver called Elias Stadiatos discovered the wreck and recovered statues and other artifacts from the site.

The machine first came to light when an archaeologist working on the recovered objects noticed that a lump of rock had a gear wheel embedded in it. Closer inspection of material brought up from the stricken ship subsequently revealed 80 pieces of gear wheels, dials, clock-like hands and a wooden and bronze casing bearing ancient Greek inscriptions.

Since its discovery, scientists have been trying to reconstruct the device, which is now known to be an astronomical calendar capable of tracking with remarkable precision the position of the sun, several heavenly bodies and the phases of the moon. Experts believe it to be the earliest-known device to use gear wheels and by far the most sophisticated object to be found from the ancient and medieval periods.

Using modern computer x-ray tomography and high resolution surface scanning, a team led by Mike Edmunds and Tony Freeth at Cardiff University peered inside fragments of the crust-encased mechanism and read the faintest inscriptions that once covered the outer casing of the machine. Detailed imaging of the mechanism suggests it dates back to 150-100 BC and had 37 gear wheels enabling it to follow the movements of the moon and the sun through the zodiac, predict eclipses and even recreate the irregular orbit of the moon. The motion, known as the first lunar anomaly, was developed by the astronomer Hipparcus of Rhodes in the 2nd century BC, and he may have been consulted in the machine’s construction, the scientists speculate.

Remarkably, scans showed the device uses a differential gear, which was previously believed to have been invented in the 16th century. The level of miniaturisation and complexity of its parts is comparable to that of 18th century clocks.

Some researchers believe the machine, known as the Antikythera Mechanism, may have been among other treasure looted from Rhodes that was en route to Rome for a celebration staged by Julius Caesar.

One of the remaining mysteries is why the Greek technology invented for the machine seemed to disappear. No other civilisation is believed to have created anything as complex for another 1,000 years. One explanation could be that bronze was often recycled in the period the device was made, so many artefacts from that time have long ago been melted down and erased from the archaelogical record. The fateful sinking of the ship carrying the Antikythera Mechanism may have inadvertently preserved it. “This device is extraordinary, the only thing of its kind,” said Professor Edmunds. “The astronomy is exactly right … in terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa.” The research, which appears in the journal Nature today, was carried out with scientists at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens where the mechanism is held and the universities of Athens and Thessaloniki. – guarduk

Score one for we ancient advanced civilizations believers. What does it mean to say the astronomy is exactly right? Does the accuracy of this device show knowledge of the planets which we think was not available at that time?

U.S. Will Pay $2 Million to Lawyer Wrongly Jailed

The federal government agreed to pay $2 million Wednesday to an Oregon lawyer wrongly jailed in connection with the 2004 terrorist bombings in Madrid, and it issued a formal apology to him and his family. …The unusual settlement caps a two-and-a-half-year ordeal that saw the lawyer, Brandon Mayfield, go from being a suspected terrorist operative to a symbol, in the eyes of his supporters, of government overzealousness in the war on terrorism.

?The United States of America apologizes to Mr. Brandon Mayfield and his family for the suffering caused? by his mistaken arrest, the government?s apology began. It added that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which erroneously linked him to the Madrid bombs through a fingerprinting mistake, had taken steps ?to ensure that what happened to Mr. Mayfield and the Mayfield family does not happen again.?

At an emotional news conference in Portland announcing the settlement, Mr. Mayfield said he and his wife, an Egyptian immigrant, and their three children still suffered from the scars left by the government?s surveillance of him and his jailing for two weeks in May 2004.

?The horrific pain, torture and humiliation that this has caused myself and my family is hard to put into words,? said Mr. Mayfield, an American-born convert to Islam and a former lieutenant in the Army.

?The days, weeks and months following my arrest,? he said, ?were some of the darkest we have had to endure. I personally was subject to lockdown, strip searches, sleep deprivation, unsanitary living conditions, shackles and chains, threats, physical pain and humiliation.? – nytimes

Does he get two full weeks to chain up and beat the living crap out of the people who were involved in wrongly abusing him? That would be nice in addition to the money. In the big picture, something is broken. Bush has inserted a terror virus into our justice system. It is a loophole, a back door which allows those in power to jail forever and torture anyone. Yet now, with the Democrats in power in congress, we see a little justice for one person. By the way, these are $2 million of your tax dollars being paid out to one person due to Government incompetence which led to his false imprisonment and physical abuse.