Added sugar in raisin cereals increases acidity of dental plaque

Elevated dental plaque acid is a risk factor that contributes to cavities in children. But eating bran flakes with raisins containing no added sugar does not promote more acid in dental plaque than bran flakes alone, according to new research at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Some dentists believe sweet, sticky foods such as raisins cause cavities because they are difficult to clear off the tooth surfaces, said Christine Wu, professor and director of cariology research at UIC and lead investigator of the study.

But studies have shown that raisins are rapidly cleared from the surface of the teeth just like apples, bananas and chocolate, she said.

In the study, published in the journal Pediatric Dentistry, children ages 7 to 11 compared four food groups — raisins, bran flakes, commercially marketed raisin bran cereal, and a mix of bran flakes with raisins lacking any added sugar.

Sucrose, or table sugar, and sorbitol, a sugar substitute often used in diet foods, were also tested as controls.

Children chewed and swallowed the test foods within two minutes. The acid produced by the plaque bacteria on the surface of their teeth was measured at intervals.

All test foods except the sorbitol solution promoted acid production in dental plaque over 30 minutes, with the largest production between 10 to 15 minutes.

Wu says there is a “well-documented” danger zone of dental plaque acidity that puts a tooth’s enamel at risk for mineral loss that may lead to cavities. Achint Utreja, a research scientist and dentist formerly on Wu’s team, said plaque acidity did not reach that point after children consumed 10 grams of raisins. Adding unsweetened raisins to bran flakes did not increase plaque acid compared to bran flakes alone.

However, eating commercially marketed raisin bran led to significantly more acid in the plaque, he said, reaching into what Wu identified as the danger zone.

Plaque bacteria on tooth surfaces can ferment various sugars such as glucose, fructose or sucrose and produce acids that may promote decay. But sucrose is also used by bacteria to produce sticky sugar polymers that help the bacteria remain on tooth surfaces, Wu said. Raisins themselves do not contain sucrose.

In a previous study at UIC, researchers identified several natural compounds from raisins that can inhibit the growth of some oral bacteria linked to cavities or gum disease.

via Added sugar in raisin cereals increases acidity of dental plaque.

Iran troops ‘seize Iraq oil well’

Iranian troops have entered southern Iraqi territory and taken control of an oil well, reports say.

An Iraqi official played down the incident, saying the area was abandoned and right on a disputed border section.

Iranian soldiers crossed the border and raised an Iranian flag over the Fakkah oil field, a US military spokesman told the AFP news agency.

But an Iranian oil company spokesman denied the accusation, saying no troops had taken control of any oil well.

“The company denies Iranian soldiers taking control of any oil well inside Iraqi territory,” the National Iranian Oil Company spokesman was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

Confirmation

Iraq’s Deputy Interior Minister confirmed the Iranians stayed in Iraq and were in control of the well.

Earlier it was reported that they had withdrawn back across the border.

Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Ali al-Khafaji initially told the Reuters news agency the reports of the Iranian incursion were not true.

But Mr Khafaji later confirmed the incursion had taken place, and said 11 Iranians had dug-in at the oil well and had not left.

“At 3:30 this afternoon, 11 Iranian soldiers infiltrated the Iran-Iraq border and took control of the oil well. They raised the Iranian flag, and they are still there until this moment,” he told the Reuters news agency.

He said there had been no military response from Iraqi forces..

“We are awaiting orders from our leader,” he said.

The incursion is one of several that have occurred in the last few days, he said. …

via BBC News – Iran troops ‘seize Iraq oil well’.

Now do you understand the war in Iraq?

Terahertz waves, a hand held device, privacy concerns, seeing through walls

Alexey Belyanin focuses his research on terahertz, otherwise known as THz or T-rays, which he says is the most under-developed and under-used part of the electromagnetic spectrum. It lies between microwave radiation and infrared (heat) radiation.

Belyanin, associate professor in the Texas A&M Physics Department, has collaborated with colleagues at Rice University and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory to publish findings about their T-ray research in the renowned journal “Nature Physics.”

“THz radiation can penetrate through opaque dry materials. It is harmless and can be used to scan humans,” Belyanin says. “Unfortunately, until recently the progress in THz technology has been hampered by a lack of suitable sources and detectors.”

Belyanin and his team have offered hope: The researchers are able to control the T-rays by varying external parameters like temperature or magnetic field, making it possible to build THz sensors, cameras and other devices.

Traditionally, powerful photons from visible or near-infrared laser pulses are used to probe semiconductors, knocking electrons out of the atoms. Belyanin and collaborators use the less powerful T-rays instead, which only excite the waves in the electron gas because T-rays do not have enough energy to knock out electrons. …

via Physicist Sees With “T-rays” – Texas A&M University News & Information.

Related:

“T-rays” have been touted as the next breakthrough in sensing and imaging, but the need for bulky equipment has been an obstacle to reaching the field’s potential. Enter Brian Schulkin, winner of the first-ever $30,000 Lemelson-Rensselaer Student Prize. Schulkin has invented an ultralight, handheld terahertz spectrometer — an advance that could help catapult T-ray technology from the lab bench to the marketplace.

Related:

A camera that can “see” explosives, drugs and weapons hidden under clothing from 25 metres has been invented.

The ThruVision system could be deployed at airports, railway stations or other public spaces.

It is based on so-called “terahertz”, or T-ray, technology, normally used by astronomers to study dying stars.

Although it is able to see through clothes it does not reveal “body detail” or subject people to “harmful radiation”, according to the designers.

“It is totally and utterly passive – it receives only,” said a spokesperson for Thruvision.

The portable camera, which has already been sold to the Dubai Mercantile Exchange and Canary Wharf in London, will be shown off at the Home Office scientific development branch’s annual exhibition later this week.

“T-rays” may make X-rays obsolete as a means of detecting bombs on terrorists or illegal drugs on traffickers, among other uses, contends a Texas A&M physicist who is helping lay the theoretic groundwork to make the concept a reality. In addition to being more revealing than X-rays in some situations, T-rays do not have the cumulative possible harmful effects. – bbc

Related:

X-ray cameras that would “undress” passers-by in a bid to thwart terrorists concealing weapons, could be coming to a street near you, according to reports.

Aside from the obvious privacy issues, would such a plan work?Leaked documents said to have been drawn up by the Home Office and seen by the Sun newspaper say cameras which can see through clothes could be built into lamp posts to “trap terror suspects”.

While Home Secretary John Reid has denied knowledge of the plans, the technology is not dissimilar to that already found in some UK airports. Currently, air security officials pick out individuals to stand in a booth while three pictures are taken of the person in slightly different positions.

Within seconds, an X-ray scanner produces an image of the body, minus the clothes. What shows up is the naked human form and anything that may be concealed on the person, such as coins, a gun or drugs.

There are other variations on the X-ray technology. Millimetre wave machines give more of a three-dimensional image, while terahertz radiation also penetrates clothing. …

the US military are trialling millimetre wave machines at military checkpoints to combat the threat of suicide bombers. The use of cables mean they can be operated from any distance.

- bbc

I’ve long wondered how much can our best satellites can see. Can they spot and track individual people, even through walls?

When the Hubble Satellite was launched in 1990, the joke was that it was the third best optical satellite in space, but that the two better ones were pointed in the opposite direction. While it is still true today that more satellites are looking downward than upward, satellites are now much more likely to include sensors for other than just the optical portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. They now involve many other bands, including millimeter-waves, for specific data collection tasks. – encyclo

On the ground some devices may see through walls, but this device uses radar, not T-waves.

Regulars here know about the problems faced by innovators whose ideas do not conform to the FCC’s technical rules.A recent case in point is L-3 CyTerra, a division of L-3 Communications Corporation. Its new radar device, intended for police, fire, and homeland security personnel, can look through walls to detect people on the other side – even immobile hostages or unconscious fire victims.

Most civilian radars use the same principles worked out during World War II. They emit a short pulse of radio waves at some frequency and analyze the echo to deduce the direction, the distance, and possibly the speed of the target. The FCC routinely approves this kind of product.

But that approach would not do the job for L-3 CyTerra. It is easy enough to send a radar pulse through a wall and into a room on the other side. Coming back, though, would be dozens of echoes bouncing off multiple walls, furniture, and people, with no way to sort them out.

Instead, the L-3 CyTerra device sends pulses on 200 different frequencies, one at a time, ranging in sequence from 3101 to 3499 MHz at 2 MHz intervals. The whole cycle repeats 54 times per second. Each of the pulses still reflects from multiple surfaces. But the circuitry combines the echoes at different frequencies in such a way that the echoes from stationary objects fade into the background while those from moving objects stand out. The system is sensitive enough to detect the chest motions of a person who is unconscious but breathing, or the slight swaying of a person trying to stand perfectly still. … – link

Yale study ‘uncouples’ reading and IQ over time in Dyslexics

Illustration from  “Dyslexia – how to win” by Dawn Matthews

Contrary to popular belief, some very smart, accomplished people cannot read well. This unexpected difficulty in reading in relation to intelligence, education and professional status is called dyslexia, and researchers at Yale School of Medicine and University of California Davis, have presented new data that explain how otherwise bright and intelligent people struggle to read.

The study, which will be published in the January 1, 2010 issue of the journal Psychological Science, provides a validated definition of dyslexia. “For the first time, we’ve found empirical evidence that shows the relationship between IQ and reading over time differs for typical compared to dyslexic readers,” said Sally E. Shaywitz, M.D., the Audrey G. Ratner Professor in Learning Development at Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics, and co-director of the newly formed Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity.

Using data from the Connecticut Longitudinal Study, an ongoing 12-year study of cognitive and behavioral development in a representative sample of 445 Connecticut schoolchildren, Shaywitz and her team tested each child in reading every year and tested for IQ every other year. They were looking for evidence to show how the dissociation between cognitive ability and reading ability might develop in children.

The researchers found that in typical readers, IQ and reading not only track together, but also influence each other over time. But in children with dyslexia, IQ and reading are not linked over time and do not influence one another. This explains why a dyslexic can be both bright and not read well.

“I’ve seen so many children who are struggling to read but have a high IQ,” said Shaywitz. “Our findings of an uncoupling between IQ and reading, and the influence of this uncoupling on the developmental trajectory of reading, provide evidence to support the concept that dyslexia is an unexpected difficulty with reading in children who otherwise have the intelligence to learn to read.”

Typical readers learn how to associate letters with a specific sound. “All they have to do is look at the letters and it’s automatic,” Shaywitz explained. “It’s like breathing; you don’t have to tell your lungs to take in air. In dyslexia, this process remains manual.” Each time a dyslexic sees a word, it’s as if they’ve never seen it before. People with dyslexia have to read slowly, re-read, and sometimes use a marker so they don’t lose their place.

“A key characteristic of dyslexia is that the unexpected difficulty refers to a disparity within the person rather than, for example, a relative weakness compared to the general population,” said co-author Bennett A. Shaywitz, M.D., the Charles and Helen Schwab Professor in Dyslexia and Learning Development and co-director of the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity.

Sally Shaywitz estimates that one in five people are dyslexic and points to many accomplished writers, physicians and attorneys with dyslexia who struggle with the condition in their daily lives, including Carol Greider, the 2009 Nobel laureate in medicine. She hopes to dispel many of the myths surrounding the condition.

“High-performing dyslexics are very intelligent, often out-of-the box thinkers and problem-solvers,” she said. “The neural signature for dyslexia is seen in children and adults. You don’t outgrow dyslexia. Once you’re diagnosed, it is with you for life.”

Shaywitz also stresses that the problem is with both basic spoken and written language. People with dyslexia take a long time to retrieve words, so they might not speak or read as fluidly as others. In students, the time pressure around standardized tests like the SATs and entrance exams for professional schools increases anxiety and can make dyslexia worse, so the need for accommodations is key in helping those with the disorder realize their potential, she says.

via Dyslexia defined: New Yale study ‘uncouples’ reading and IQ over time.

Gene linked to rare form of progressive hearing loss in males identified

A gene associated with a rare form of progressive deafness in males has been identified by an international team of researchers funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. The gene, PRPS1, appears to be crucial in inner ear development and maintenance. The findings are published in the Dec. 17 early online issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics.

“This discovery offers exciting therapeutic implications,” said James F. Battey, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., director of the NIDCD. “Not only does it give scientists a way to develop a targeted treatment for hearing loss in boys with this disorder, it may also open doors to the treatment of other types of deafness, including some forms of acquired hearing loss.”

The gene is associated with DFN2, a progressive form of deafness that primarily affects males. Boys with DFN2 begin to lose their hearing in both ears roughly between the ages of 5 and 15, and over the course of several decades will experience hearing loss that can range from severe to profound. Their mothers, who carry the defective PRPS1 gene, may experience hearing loss as well, but much later in life and in a milder form. Families with DFN2 have been identified in the United States, Great Britain, and China.

The NIDCD-funded researchers led by Xue Zhong Liu, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, discovered that the PRPS1 gene encodes the enzyme phosphoribosylpyrophosphate (PRPP) synthetase 1, which produces and regulates PRPP (phospho-ribosylpyrophosphate), and appears to play a key role in inner ear development and maintenance. The four mutations identified in the PRPS1 gene cause a decrease in the production of the PRPP synthetase 1 protein that results in defects in sensory cells (called hair cells) in the inner ear, and eventually leads to progressive deafness.

“PRPS1 is an interesting example of a human disease gene in which gain of function or loss of function mutations cause several different and distinct hereditary disorders,” says Dr. Liu. “Our findings emphasize the body’s need for tight regulation of PRPP synthetase 1 since a drop in activity can lead to deafness.” Other mutations in the PRPS1 gene have been linked to neurodegenerative disorders such as Arts syndrome and a form of Charcot-Marie Tooth disease, both of which feature deafness in the constellation of symptoms.

Knowing that a reduction in the amount of PRPP synthetase 1 is what causes deafness in DFN2, Liu and his colleagues are now exploring potential enzyme replacement therapies to either restore hearing or prevent further hearing loss in boys with DFN2. They believe that since the PRPS1 mutations can be used as a genetic marker for DFN2, in the future at-risk boys could be tested at birth and immediately put on enzyme replacement therapy to reduce or prevent the hearing loss that would ordinarily come later in life.

In addition, the knowledge that scientists gather about the mechanisms of PRPS1 potentially could be used to develop treatments to combat acquired hearing loss, such as the hearing loss caused by drugs that are used in some chemotherapy regimens and treatments for HIV/AIDS. These are powerful and helpful medications, but they have the unfortunate side effect of damaging, even killing, hair cells in the inner ear. The results from this study open the possibility for improving these life-saving treatments by eliminating or reducing the disabling side effect of hearing loss.

In addition to NIDCD support, the following institutions collaborated in this study: Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing; University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei; Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei; Guizhou Provincial People’s Hospital, GuiYang, China; UCL Institute of Child Health, London; Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Shanghai Second Medical University, Shanghai; Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston; Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Boston; and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston.

via NIH

I hope this is not what is causing my hearing loss and tinnitius because this disease also leads to eventual problems walking and seeing! (But if I do have it, this research is encouraging.)

… affected male patients invariably develop sensorineural hearing loss of prelingual type followed by gating disturbance and visual loss. The family of European descent was reported in 1967 as having Rosenberg-Chutorian syndrome, and recently a Korean family with the same symptom triad was identified with a novel disease locus CMTX5 on the chromosome band Xq21.32-q24. PRPS1 (phosphoribosyl pyrophosphate synthetase 1) is an isoform of the PRPS gene family and is ubiquitously expressed in human tissues, including cochlea. The enzyme mediates the biochemical step critical for purine metabolism and nucleotide biosynthesis. The mutations identified were E43D, in patients with Rosenberg-Chutorian syndrome, and M115T, in the Korean patients with CMTX5. We also showed decreased enzyme activity in patients with M115T. PRPS1 is the first CMT gene that encodes a metabolic enzyme, shedding a new light on the understanding of peripheral nerve-specific metabolism and also suggesting the potential of PRPS1 as a target for drugs in prevention and treatment of peripheral neuropathy by antimetabolite therapy. – link

Would you really want to look into the crystal ball of your DNA? Even if you do, do you see why keeping your DNA profile private may be important? Many potential diseases may not be expressed but you could end up being discriminated against based on your genetic potentials.

Avatar’s Moon Pandora Could Be Real + Avatar Movie Trailer

In the new blockbuster Avatar, humans visit the habitable – and inhabited – alien moon called Pandora. Life-bearing moons like Pandora or the Star Wars forest moon of Endor are a staple of science fiction. With NASA’s Kepler mission showing the potential to detect Earth-sized objects, habitable moons may soon become science fact. If we find them nearby, a new paper by Smithsonian astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger shows that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be able to study their atmospheres and detect key gases like carbon dioxide, oxygen, and water vapor.”If Pandora existed, we potentially could detect it and study its atmosphere in the next decade,” said Lisa Kaltenegger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

So far, planet searches have spotted hundreds of Jupiter-sized objects in a range of orbits. Gas giants, while easier to detect, could not serve as homes for life as we know it. However, scientists have speculated whether a rocky moon orbiting a gas giant could be life-friendly, if that planet orbited within the star’s habitable zone (the region warm enough for liquid water to exist).

“All of the gas giant planets in our solar system have rocky and icy moons,” said Kaltenegger. “That raises the possibility that alien Jupiters will also have moons. Some of those may be Earth-sized and able to hold onto an atmosphere.”

Kepler looks for planets that cross in front of their host stars, which creates a mini-eclipse and dims the star by a small but detectable amount. Such a transit lasts only hours and requires exact alignment of star and planet along our line of sight. Kepler will examine thousands of stars to find a few with transiting worlds.

Once they have found an alien Jupiter, astronomers can look for orbiting moons, or exomoons. A moon’s gravity would tug on the planet and either speed or slow its transit, depending on whether the moon leads or trails the planet. The resulting transit duration variations would indicate the moon’s existence.

Once a moon is found, the next obvious question would be: Does it have an atmosphere? If it does, those gases will absorb a fraction of the star’s light during the transit, leaving a tiny, telltale fingerprint to the atmosphere’s composition.

The signal is strongest for large worlds with hot, puffy atmospheres, but an Earth-sized moon could be studied if conditions are just right. For example, the separation of moon and planet needs to be large enough that we could catch just the moon in transit, while its planet is off to one side of the star.

Kaltenegger calculated what conditions are best for examining the atmospheres of alien moons. She found that alpha Centauri A, the system featured in Avatar, would be an excellent target.

“Alpha Centauri A is a bright, nearby star very similar to our Sun, so it gives us a strong signal” Kaltenegger explained. “You would only need a handful of transits to find water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and methane on an Earth-like moon such as Pandora.”

“If the Avatar movie is right in its vision, we could characterize that moon with JWST in the near future,” she added.

While alpha Centauri A offers tantalizing possibilities, small, dim, red dwarf stars are better targets in the hunt for habitable planets or moons. The habitable zone for a red dwarf is closer to the star, which increases the probability of a transit.

via CfA Press Room.

I won’t see the movie Avatar for a few more days. Here is the trailer:

Marine scientists discover deepest undersea erupting volcano

Scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NOAA have recorded the deepest erupting volcano yet discovered–West Mata Volcano–describing high-definition video of the undersea eruption as “spectacular.”

“For the first time we have been able to examine, up close, the way ocean islands and submarine volcanoes are born,” said Barbara Ransom, program director in NSF’s Division of Ocean Sciences. “The unusual primitive compositions of the West Mata eruption lavas have much to tell us.”

The volcanic eruption, discovered in May, is nearly 4,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, in an area bounded by Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.

“We found a type of lava never before seen erupting from an active volcano, and for the first time observed molten lava flowing across the deep-ocean seafloor,” said the expedition’s chief scientist Joseph Resing, a chemical oceanographer at the University of Washington.

“It was an underwater Fourth of July, a spectacular display of fireworks nearly 4,000 feet deep,” said co-chief scientist Bob Embley, a marine geologist at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Newport, Ore.

“Since the water pressure at that depth suppresses the violence of the volcano’s explosions, we could get an underwater robot within feet of the active eruption. On land, or even in shallow water, you could never hope to get that close and see such great detail.”

Imagery includes large molten lava bubbles three feet across bursting into cold seawater, glowing red vents exploding lava into the sea, and the first-observed advance of lava flows across the deep-ocean floor.

Sounds of the eruption were recorded by a hydrophone and later matched with the video footage.

Expedition scientists released the video and discussed their observations at a Dec. 17 news conference at the American Geophysical Union (AGU)’s annual fall meeting in San Francisco.

The West Mata Volcano is producing boninite lavas, believed to be among the hottest on Earth in modern times, and a type seen before only on extinct volcanoes more than one million years old.

University of Hawaii geochemist Ken Rubin believes that the active boninite eruption provides a unique opportunity to study magma formation at volcanoes, and to learn more about how Earth recycles material where one tectonic plate is subducted under another.

Water from the volcano is very acidic, with some samples collected directly above the eruption, the scientists said, as acidic as battery acid or stomach acid.  …

via Marine scientists discover deepest undersea erupting volcano.

Blue whale songs get lower

Blue whales’ songs are hauntingly deep, filled with extraterrestrial vibratos, and utterly mysterious. Despite many attempts to interpret them, scientists still don’t know what the world’s largest animals are saying.

Now, the mystery only thickens. For decades, blue whales have been singing with increasingly deeper voices, reports a new study. In some cases, the pitch of their songs has dropped by more than 30 percent. Frustrated researchers cannot yet explain why.

“It’s a worldwide phenomenon,” said Mark McDonald, an ocean acoustician and independent researcher in Bellvue, Colo. “All blue whales are shifting their frequencies downward. They are all going in the same direction, and we really don’t understand it.”

“Maybe by putting this data out there,” he added, “someone will have a eureka moment and see something that really explains this.”

McDonald first suspected something was going on about eight years ago, when he started setting up underwater detectors to study blue whales across the Pacific Ocean.

To get the devices to work, he and colleagues noticed that they had to shift the detector frequencies downward every year. At the time, they didn’t know if something was amiss with the detectors or with the whales.

For the new study, McDonald and colleagues collected acoustical data on blue whales from as far back the 1950s. Some recordings came from underwater microphones put in place by whale researchers or the military. More recently, researchers have developed new technologies to monitor whale sounds over large distances and time-spans.

via Blue whale songs get even bluer – Discovery.com- msnbc.com.

Over the Arctic, Auroras Collide

Two curtains of light known as the aurora borealis have been caught in a collision by NASA cameras deployed around the Arctic, creating a spectacular explosion of light.

These auroral collisions, which had never been seen before or known to exist, were described for the first time here today at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

The unexpected collisions were spotted by a network of all-sky imagers set up by NASA and the Canadian Space Agency for the THEMIS (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms) mission. Their aim was to find out why some auroras occasionally exploded in light, an event known as a substorm.

Auroras are created when particles in the solar wind rushing off the sun interact with Earth’s magnetic fields at its poles.

Earlier this year, UCLA scientist Toshi Nishimura assembled continent-wide scale movies from the individual cameras. The first movie he made showed a pair of auroras crashing together in December 2007.

“Our jaws dropped when we saw the movies for the first time,” said space scientist Lary Lyons of UCLA, a member of the team that made the discovery. “These outbursts are telling us something very fundamental about the nature of auroras.”

The collisions occur on such a vast scale that someone looking up from a single vantage point on Earth’s surface wouldn’t notice them. But the cameras, which look over a much wider distance, can see the whole picture.

After the evidence from the first movie, the team looked for more such collisions and “our excitement mounted as we became convinced that the collisions were happening over and over,” Lyons said.

The scientists think that the spectacular light explosions are a sign of dramatic goings-on in the space around the Earth, or its “plasma tail.” …

via Over the Arctic, Auroras Collide – Yahoo! News.

UFO lands in Texas, multiple eyewitnesses of two ‘creatures’

This from MUFON via Examiner.com. Doesn’t seem to be on the UFO Stalker map yet.

“A group of Texas witnesses near Monahans watched an oval-shaped UFO near ground level with two “strange men” nearby on December 11, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) database.” – examiner

Perhaps a hoax, but a good little story. Regarding the story, somehow I doubt anyone would “burst out laughing” about anything shortly after witnessing something like this.

We were having a family/friends get together to celebrate a birthday. During the celebration two of my nephews and a neice came tearing into the house, screaming at the top of their lungs, saying that a plane crashed in one of the adjacent pastures. My Brother, myself and about 3 others walked outside to see what was causing all the ruckus.

We didn’t see anything out of the ordinary except a strange burning smell that smelled like burning mesquite. we didn’t think anything of it since it was kind of nippy and someone could have been burning some wood in thier fireplaces. We told them to show us where they saw the plane go down and we walked over to the place they showed us.

The first thing we noticed was that all the dogs in the area were going bonkers. They were barking up a storm, like they were all seeing the same thing.

The area we live in is pretty much a rural community, unless you live in the city of Monahans, many of the houses are set on large plots of land, usually 4-5 acres per house. Although we can see the houses of many of our neighbors and we do have traffic on the road, you do get the feeling of being all to yourself out here. Some of the land by our house is over run by wild mesquite tree’s. only a small portion of the land surrounding the house is cultivated and cleared out. Beyond the stand of trees runs a small barbed wire fence that seperates us from our neighbors, who I could see were home from the lights on in the house.

We walked around the edge of the trees, not wanting to really go into the stand at night. Even though its technically winter, there could be rattlesnakes seeking shelter in amongst the tree’s, not to mention that mesquite trees have some wicked thorns that protrude from them, they are razor sharp and quite capable of punching through a pair of jeans or boots and they hurt like hell to get out.

As we looked around, we started noticing a sort of electrical charge to the very air around us. Almost like the kind you feel when you approach a large electrical substation or a charged and active radio antenna.

As we made our way around the trees, one of my brothers noticed some light peeking through the trees, I told him it was probably one of the neighbors leaving or coming home. He promptly told me that it couldn’t be head lights because the light seemed too defused and not as concentrated as a car’s headlight.

We moved around and as we cleared the stand of trees, we were shocked to see an oval shaped object hovering, maybe 4-5 feet off the ground. We stood there in total shock, and awe. I can only imagine that our jaws were probably on the ground. As we stood there watching this object hover there without a sound, I took note that the object was maybe about 30-40 feet from front to back, it was maybe the same dimensions around. The object seemed to be of a highly polished material that reflected the area around it. The reflection of the distant street lights from the surrounding neighbors properties seemed to reflect off the surface of the object. There was also a small dull glow to the object, barely noticable unless you were really looking, almost like an aura of sorts, a irredecent blue of sorts.

As we stood there in total shock, My brother next to me expressing his disbelief, we saw two strange looking “Men” appear from around the object. They at first didn’t notice us, they were busy running around and gathering objects from the ground, from the trees. They didn’t seem to notice us at first. They looked to be about the size of my oldest nephew, about 4 feet tall, but they looked very skinny, like they had no meat on their bones. Their heads were large and their arms were long, skinny and hung down around their knee’s. About this time my two nephews came walking up behind us (scaring the hell out of us). They saw the object and the strange “men” and in a voice that only a kid can project, screamed out loud “WHAT ARE THOSE THINGS!”.

Thats when the creatures turned and noticed us. The sight of these creatures was something that will haunt me till the day I die. It turned and looked right at us. It’s eyes were large, almost like the eyes of a praying mantis, except they were jet back and wrapped around its head. the two creatures looked at us for about 7 seconds, not an ounce of movement, before they calmly walked around the craft, one right after the other. they disappeard behind the craft and we never saw them again.

A few seconds later the craft lifts up, not a sound coming from the object, no rush of wind, not even a swaying of the nearby branches of a mesquite tree. It rose quietly and hovered about 40 feet from the ground, and shot out like a bat out of hell. As it zoomed away, it started glowing and made it easier to track as it zoomed away getting higher and higher till it faded away.

We stood there in complete silence as we tried to make heads or tails of what the hell we just saw. My brother finally piped up and said “Should we call the police?” After which, I burst out in laughter and replied to him ” And tell them what?” My nephew looked like he had just seen the devil himself, which considering what we just saw I don’t blame him.

He didn’t want to talk about it, and after we made our way back to the house, he still didn’t talk about. I tried to ask him about it yesterday and he basically told me that he didn’t want to think about it yet, he was still processing what had happened to him. I was more than happy to leave it at that.

I never really believed in the subject of UFO’s or Alien’s, but after the events of this night, I’m seriously going to re-evaluate that belief.

I know that I plan to keep my mind open, and start looking up towards the sky a little bit more from now on.

Thank you

- original submission link

There have been two recent Texas sightings with entities reported:

Date Submitted	Date of Event	Short Description	Location of Event
2009-12-15	2009-12-05	Saw UFO land and occupants come out	TX, US
2009-12-14	2009-12-11	Object hovering just off the ground, strange “men” scurrying about around the craft	TX, US