Woman declared brain dead gives birth to twins

Christine Bolden, a 26-year-old woman from Michigan who was declared brain dead due to two brain aneurysms, recently gave birth to two boys, 24 Hours News 8 reports.
The twins, Alexander and Nicholas, were delivered by C-section and, at 25 weeks, are severely premature. Nicholas weighs only 1 lb and 9 oz, and Alexander weighs 1 lb 4 oz, according to mlive.com. They are both only about six inches long.
On March 6 this year, Christine was walking out of a building in Grand Rapids with her boyfriend and 3-year-old son when she felt a sudden pain in her head and immediately collapsed, mlive.com reports.
“It was a hurting feeling,” her aunt Danielle Bolden told 24 Hours News 8. “Going [to the hospital] seeing her laying there.”
But even as the family grieved Christine’s condition, they hoped that the boys would survive.
“We used to rub on her belly and talk to the babies,” Danielle told the news channel.
Eventually, Christine’s blood pressure became too high and the twins had to be taken out.
Danielle told the news channel that Christine’s grandmother even told the doctors not to “numb her” during the surgery in the hope that she’d feel the pain and wake up.
“God, he could have took her and the boys,” said Danielle. “But he left the boys. That’s a miracle.”
“I can’t wait to be able to touch them and pick them up and tell them all about their mother and give them so much love,” Vance Terrell, Christine’s brother told mlive.com. “They’re so precious.”
There have been other instances of women in comas being able to give birth. In 2001, a woman, Chastity Cooper, was able to carry her baby to full-term after falling into a coma after a car accident. She was only two weeks pregnant at the time of the accident.

Via HUFFINGTONPOST.COM

Quantum physics mimics spooky action into the past

 

This abstract illustration shows four particles of light can be produced and manipulated in such a way that one can later decide in which quantum state two of the particles have been.

Physicists of the group of Prof. Anton Zeilinger at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), the University of Vienna, and the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology (VCQ) have, for the first time, demonstrated in an experiment that the decision whether two particles were in an entangled or in a separable quantum state can be made even after these particles have been measured and may no longer exist. Their results will be published this week in the journal “Nature Physics”.According to the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, entanglement is the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics. In addition to its crucial role for the foundations of physics, entanglement is also a key resource for upcoming quantum information technologies such as quantum cryptography and quantum computation. Entangled particles exhibit correlations which are stronger and more intricate than those allowed by the laws of classical physics. If two particles are in an entangled quantum state, they have perfectly defined joint properties at the expense of losing their individual properties. This is like having two dice which have no orientation until they are subject to measurement, upon which they certainly show the same (random) side up. In contrast, so-called separable quantum states allow for a classical description, because every particle has well-defined properties on its own. Two dice, each one of them with its own well-defined orientation, are in a separable state. Now, one would think that at least the nature of the quantum state must be an objective fact of reality. Either the dice are entangled or not. Zeilinger’s team has now demonstrated in an experiment that this is not always the case.

The authors experimentally realized a “Gedankenexperiment” called “delayed-choice entanglement swapping”, formulated by Asher Peres in the year 2000. Two pairs of entangled photons are produced, and one photon from each pair is sent to a party called Victor. Of the two remaining photons, one photon is sent to the party Alice and one is sent to the party Bob. Victor can now choose between two kinds of measurements. If he decides to measure his two photons in a way such that they are forced to be in an entangled state, then also Alice’s and Bob’s photon pair becomes entangled. If Victor chooses to measure his particles individually, Alice’s and Bob’s photon pair ends up in a separable state. Modern quantum optics technology allowed the team to delay Victor’s choice and measurement with respect to the measurements which Alice and Bob perform on their photons. “We found that whether Alice’s and Bob’s photons are entangled and show quantum correlations or are separable and show classical correlations can be decided after they have been measured”, explains Xiao-song Ma, lead author of the study.

According to the famous words of Albert Einstein, the effects of quantum entanglement appear as “spooky action at a distance”. The recent experiment has gone one remarkable step further. “Within a naïve classical word view, quantum mechanics can even mimic an influence of future actions on past events”, says Anton Zeilinger.

via Quantum physics mimics spooky action into the past.

Xenotransplantation as a therapy for type 1 diabetes

…Type 1 diabetes is caused by autoimmune destruction of the insulin-producing beta cells. Over 250,000 patients suffer from type 1 diabetes in Germany who are treated with daily insulin injections to maintain glucose metabolism. Replacement of the destroyed beta cells by transplantation of either a complete pancreas organ or isolated human beta cells is the only effective way to cure the disease. However, due to the shortage of organ donors this method can be offered to only few patients. As an alternative approach researchers are exploring xenotransplantation, i.e. transplantation of the organ from another species. The most obvious barrier in xenotransplantation is the strong immune rejection against the transplant. A research team led by LMU’s Professor Eckhard Wolf and Professor Jochen Seissler has now generated a genetically modified strain of pigs whose beta-cells restores glucose homeostasis and inhibit human-anti-pig immune reaction. So far, the efficacy of this approach has been demonstrated only in an experimental mouse model. “Whether the strategy will work in humans remains to be demonstrated,” says Professor Wolf. “Nevertheless, we consider the approach as very promising and plan to test it further in other settings.”

Type 1 diabetes is caused by an autoimmune reaction which ultimately leads to the destruction of the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, and usually becomes manifest during adolescence. Thereafter, insulin must be administered by regular insulin injections. Since insulin therapy cannot reproduce the complex pattern of physiologically controlled insulin secretion, patients are at risk of hypoglycemia and many patients develop severe vascular complications such as myocardial infarction or stroke.

Transplantation of a healthy pancreas or pancreatic beta cells that synthesize insulin may represent the best treatment option. Unfortunately, the availability of donor organs falls far short of requirements. Over the course of the last several years, fewer than 200 pancreas transplantations have been carried out. “Pigs represent a possible alternative source, because glucose metabolism in this species is very similar to that in human beings,” Professor Seissler points out. …

via Xenotransplantation as a therapy for type 1 diabetes – LMU Munich.

Caller: Help, a speeding car is following me. Police: Yes we know, it’s us

A motorist scared at being followed by a car on the motorway called 999 to be told it was two plain clothed police officers in the car behind him.

Strathclyde Police has been heavily criticised by the Police Complaints Commissioner for Scotland for the way it pursued the man for seven miles in an unmarked car.

In a decision released by the commissioner on Thursday, the man claimed that the unmarked car following him on the motorway last January started flashing its headlights at him.

The report found that the motorist was being pursued by the officers because they thought he was driving dangerously, but he “did not know that the car was a police car”.

In his findings, the commissioner Professor John McNeill found that the unnamed driver became “increasingly concerned at his being followed by a car containing two males and eventually he telephoned 999 whilst driving in order to report the matter”.

He added: “The applicant drove for several minutes until the 999 operator was able to advise him that the car following him was in fact a police car. By the time the applicant stopped his car he had driven for around seven miles of motorway from the point at which he claims to have first become aware of the car being driven behind him.”

The commissioner found that the force had displayed a “poor” handling of three of the four complaints made by the man, who was charged with road traffic offences after pulling into the hard shoulder once the police operator informed him it was an unmarked car pursuing him.

Professor McNeill cited guidance which prohibits police form using of unmarked vehicles which do not have any audible or visual warning equipment. He went on to recommend that Strathclyde Police apologises to the man for the pursuit in the unmarked vehicle and for having been stopped when the plain clothes officers lacked the power to do so.

The commissioner also asked the force to respond to concerns raised by the motorist in his complaints about his personal safety during questioning in the unmarked vehicle, which the detective constable and detective sergeant had stopped on the hard shoulder of the motorway. …

via Caller: Help, a speeding car is following me. Police: Yes we know, it’s us | Glasgow and West | STV News.

DARPA releases cause of hypersonic glider anomaly

An unmanned hypersonic glider likely aborted its 13,000 mph flight over the Pacific Ocean last summer because unexpectedly large sections of its skin peeled off, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said Friday.The Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., atop a rocket and released on Aug. 11, 2011, was part of research aimed at developing super-fast global strike capability for the Department of Defense.The vehicle demonstrated stable aerodynamically controlled flight at speeds up to 20 times the speed of sound, or Mach 20, for three minutes before a series of upsets caused its autonomous flight safety system to bring it down in the ocean, DARPA said in a statement.

A gradual wearing away of the vehicle’s skin was expected because of extremely high temperatures, but an independent engineering review board concluded that the most probable cause was “unexpected aeroshell degradation, creating multiple upsets of increasing severity that ultimately activated the Flight Safety System,” the statement said.

Initial shockwaves created by the gaps in the skin were more than 100 times what the vehicle was designed to withstand, but it was still able to recover and return to controlled flight, said Kaigham J. Gabriel, DARPA’s acting director.

Eventually the upsets grew beyond its ability to recover.

The 2011 flight was the second time an HTV-2 was launched. The first flight, in April 2010, also ended prematurely.

Data from that flight was used to correct aerodynamic design models for the second test, resulting in controlled flight, and now data from the latest flight will be used to adjust assumptions about thermal modeling, Air Force Maj. Chris Schulz, the DARPA program manager, said in the statement.

“The result of these findings is a profound advancement in understanding the areas we need to focus on to advance aerothermal structures for future hypersonic vehicles. Only actual flight data could have revealed this to us,” he said.

Most specific details of the program are secret. DARPA has released artist renderings showing a craft that looks something like the tip of a spear. After the 2011 flight the agency released handheld video, taken aboard a monitoring ship, that showed a dot streaking across the sky.

The HTV-2 would have splashed down in the ocean regardless of the anomaly. The vehicles are intended to be used once and are not recovered.

via DARPA releases cause of hypersonic glider anomaly ~ Incredipedia.

Strange Exits: Brazil actor playing Judas dies from accidental hanging

A Brazilian actor has died after accidentally hanging himself while playing Judas in an Easter Passion play.

Tiago Klimeck, 27, was enacting the suicide of Judas during the performance on Good Friday in the city of Itarare.

The actor was hanging for four minutes before fellow performers realised something was wrong.

Klimeck was taken to hospital suffering from cerebral hypoxia but died on Sunday.

The Passion play was being performed in Itarare, 345km (214 miles) west of Sao Paulo.

Klimeck was re-enacting the scene in which Judas commits suicide in repentance for his betrayal of Jesus Christ.

Police are investigating the apparatus that was meant to support Klimeck. It appears the knot may have been erroneously tied.

When the actors realised something was wrong, Klimeck was taken down and found to be unconscious.

The Santa Casa de Itapeva hospital has confirmed the death and an autopsy will take place on Monday.

via BBC News – Brazil actor playing Judas dies from accidental hanging.

White killer whale adult spotted for first time in wild

… Scientists have made what they believe to be the first sighting of an adult white orca, or killer whale.

The adult male, which they have nicknamed Iceberg, was spotted off the coast of Kamchatka in eastern Russia.

It appears to be healthy and leading a normal life in its pod.

White whales of various species are occasionally seen; but the only known white orcas have been young, including one with a rare genetic condition that died in a Canadian aquarium in 1972.

The sightings were made during a research cruise off Kamchatka by a group of Russian scientists and students, co-led by Erich Hoyt, the long-time orca scientist, conservationist and author who is now a senior research fellow with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS).

Footage apparently shows adult white orca. Courtesy of Far East Russia Orcas Project

“We’ve seen another two white orcas in Russia but they’ve been young, whereas this is the first time we’ve seen a mature adult,” he told BBC News.

“It has the full two-metre-high dorsal fin of a mature male, which means it’s at least 16 years old – in fact the fin is somewhat ragged, so it might be a bit older.”

Orcas mature around the age of 15, and males can live to 50 or 60 years old, though 30 is more commonplace.

“Iceberg seems to be fully socialised; we know that these fish-eating orcas stay with their mothers for life, and as far as we can see he’s right behind his mother with presumably his brothers next to him,” said Dr Hoyt.

The cause of his unusual pigmentation is not known. The captive white orca, Chima, suffered from Chediak-Higashi syndrome, a genetic condition that causes partial albinism as well as a number of medical complications.

It is possible that an attempt may be made to take a biopsy from Iceberg; but with researchers reluctant to do so unless there is a compelling conservation reason, they are hoping instead for closer observations including a detection of eye colour. …

via BBC News – White killer whale adult spotted for first time in wild.

Meteor Explosion, Fireball Over California-Nevada, April 22, 2012

Astronomers say a loud explosion heard across a large swath of Nevada and California on Sunday morning was likely caused by a meteor, just after the peak of an annual meteor shower.

The sound of the explosion around 8am prompted a flood of calls to law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Sierra Nevada in the two states.

Observers in the Reno-Sparks area of Nevada reported seeing a fireball at about 8 a.m. local time, accompanied or followed by a thunderous clap that experts said could have been a sonic boom from the meteor or the sound of it breaking up high over the Earth.

“It made the shades in my room shake hard enough to slam into the window a couple times,” said Nicole Carlsen of the Reno area. “I kept looking for earthquake information, but (there was) nothing. I even checked the front of my house to make sure no one ran into the garage. I wish I had seen the meteor.”

Some people in the two states reported seeing a fireball streak across the sky at the same time.

Being daylight, most of the reports are of a white object with blue and green being most mentioned secondary colors. The average brightness reported by witnesses was between that of the sun and the light produced by a full moon. While this is most likely a random event, there is a possibility this fireball was a member of the Lyrid meteor shower.

“From the reports, I have no doubt it was a fireball,” said Robert Lunsford of the Geneseo, N.Y.-based American Meteor Society. “It happens all the time, but most are in daytime and are missed. This one was extraordinarily bright in the daylight.”

Marcia Standifer of Spring Creek, near Elko, and her husband were out drinking coffee when they saw the fireball at the same time. “It was a very bright ball of white light, then dimmer to the horizon,” she said. “We thought this was very unusual due to the bright daylight and how vivid the object was.”

Tracey Cordaro of North Las Vegas said the sighting “took my breath away.” “It was amazing,” she said. “It looked as if it was disintegrating rapidly, but was still quite large when it disappeared from my view … (It was) bright green, visible in the bright sunlight.”

A fireball is a meteor that is larger than normal. Most meteors are only the size of tiny pebbles. A meteor the size of a softball can produce light equivalent to the full moon for a short instant. The reason for this is the extreme velocity at which these objects strike the atmosphere. Even the slowest meteors are still traveling at 10 miles per SECOND, which is much faster than a speeding bullet. Fireballs occur every day over all parts of the Earth. It is rare though for an individual to see more than one or two per lifetime as they can also occur during the day (when the blinding sun can obscure them), or on a cloudy night, or over the ocean where there is no one to witness them. Observing during one of the major annual meteor showers can increase your chance of seeing another bright meteor.
Very few meteors actually reach the ground as 99.99% completely disintegrate while still 10-20 miles up in the atmosphere.

 

Dan Ruby of the Fleischmann Planetarium at the University of Nevada, Reno, says the reports indicate the meteor broke up above Earth somewhere over the Sierra southwest of Reno. When debris enters the atmosphere it creates explosions similar to the sonic boom of a fast-moving aeroplane, according to meteorologists.

There were no reports of earthquakes at the time.

 

via Meteor Explosion, Fireball Over California-Nevada, April 22, 2012 ~ Incredipedia.

Mystery surrounds deaths of 877 dolphins washed ashore in Peru

… Environmental authorities are investigating the deaths of more than 800 dolphins that have washed up on the northern coast of Peru this year.

The dolphins may have died from an outbreak of Morbillivirus or Brucella bacteria, said Peruvian Deputy Environment Minister Gabriel Quijandria, according to Peru’s state-run Andina news agency. Speaking to CNN, he said he expects test results to be ready within the week.

“Right now, the most probable hypothesis is that it’s a virus outbreak,” he said.

Quijandria said Thursday that 877 dolphins have washed up in a 220-kilometer (137-mile) area from Punta Aguja to Lambayeque, in the north of the country.

More than 80% of those dolphins were found in an advanced state of decomposition, making it difficult to study their deaths, according to Andina.

Earlier last week, the Peruvian government put together a panel from different ministries to analyze a report by the Peruvian Sea Institute (IMARPE). Officials have been able to conclude that the dolphins’ deaths were not due to lack of food, interaction with fisheries, poisoning with pesticides, biotoxin poisoning or contamination by heavy metals.

“When you have something this large, my gut would tell me that there’s something traumatic that happened,” Sue Rocca, a marine biologist with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, told CNN. She floated a number of number of possibilities as to what could have killed the animals, including acoustic trauma, but concluded that investigators just don’t know yet. …

via Mystery surrounds deaths of 877 dolphins washed ashore in Peru – CNN.com.

Claude Monet and the Subjectivity of Color « Galileo s Pendulum

Monet’s paintings of the same scene, using his cataract-afflicted left eye (left) and his right eye with the lens removed (right).

… When he was 82 years old, Claude Monet suffered from such severe cataracts that he agreed to have the lens removed from his right eye. Cataracts that occur in elderly people turn the lens of the eye cloudy and yellowed, much like old glass can become discolored. The yellowing of the lens works as a filter, reducing the amount of blue light that reaches the retina. However, normal, healthy lenses filter out ultraviolet UV light, so when Monet’s lens was removed, he not only could see the blue hues again, he could also see a limited amount of UV—which he attempted to paint, as the images below demonstrate.

Visible light is a term relative to us humans: the combination of our crystalline lens and especially the cone cells on our retinas dictate what wavelengths of light we can perceive. That range of colors is relatively small compared to the entire spectrum of light, encompassing wavelengths from roughly 400 to 700 nanometers 0.0000004 to 0.0000007 meter , where the short wavelengths correspond to violet light and the longer wavelengths are red light. An average human can see light across these colors, but as the image at right shows, response by the cone cells isn’t perfect: some colors will show through more strongly than others. The brain takes electric signals produced by the cone cells and constructs the colors we perceive by combining the signals with their appropriate strengths. Note also that a little bit of UV light can sneak in, assuming the lens doesn’t block it; perhaps Monet’s retina was more sensitive to UV than average, though that sort of thing is hard to demonstrate. Human evolution has obviously selected for seeing this way; other animals don’t have equivalent vision.

Bees can see UV light but have less sensitivity to red light; some flower species have patterns only visible in the UV, indicating a certain amount of coevolution. After all, it takes “effort” in a certain sense to make patterns; if that effort isn’t rewarded by reproductive success, then the strain of plant bearing the pattern won’t make as many baby plants. Some species have more color receptors than humans do, and others have fewer. However, the range of vision in most species lingers around visible light, and that’s due to our Sun and Earth’s atmosphere. …

via Claude Monet and the Subjectivity of Color « Galileo s Pendulum.