Meet Yoda - The Cat With Four Ears

Meet Yoda, a household pet born with an extra pair of ears.

Chicago, Illinois, couple Valerie and Ted Rock took the cat in two years ago after they visited a local bar, where a group of drinkers were handing the animal around and making fun of him.

Since being adopted by the Rocks and after getting his picture posted on the Internet, the two-year-old feline has become an international media celebrity.

The Rocks have received calls from Good Morning America, Fox News and The Tyra Banks Show. The moggy's mugshot has graced the pages of the London Guardian and British tabloids.

Despite his strange appearance, Yoda - named after the pointy-eared Star Wars character - is a perfectly normal and affectionate cat and a delight to have around.

His extra ears are thought to be the result of a genetic mutation.

But Yoda's owners are keeping a close watch on their much-loved pet. They are concerned he could be catnapped because he is so different.

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Tree Man!

Tree Man who grew 'roots' offered hope of new life by doctor:
- December 24, 2007 - Indonesia



Above: Dr Anthony Gaspari believes that he has diagnosed Dede's rare condition.

An Indonesian fisherman who is "half man half tree" has been offered new hope of recovery by an American doctor - and Vitamin A.

32-year-old Dede, who lives in a remote village in Indonesia with his two children, feared that he would be killed by the tree-like growths that cover his body.

Known locally as 'Tree Man' his condition has baffled local doctors for 20 years.

He has root like structures growing out of his body - branches that can grow up to 5cm a year and which protrude from his hands and feet, and welts covering his whole body.

In an attempt to earn a living to support his family, he is part of a circus troupe, displaying his Tree Man limbs along with others afflicted with skin deformities in 'freak' shows.

The former fisherman was the subject of a documentary "Half Man Half Tree", part of the "My Shocking Story" series on Discovery Channel TV.

Dede's story began when wart-like "roots" started growing out of his arms and feet after he cut his knee in a teenage accident. The medical world was completely baffled.

The welts spread rapidly across his body and soon he was not able to carry out ordinary household tasks.

Dede was sacked from his job and deserted by his wife. He has been raising two children, now in their late teens, in poverty. He is resigned to the fact that local doctors have no cure for his condition.

To try to support his family he even joined a local "freak show", parading in front of a paying audience along with victims of other peculiar diseases.

While he has the support of his extended family, he has frequently been a target of ridicule and abuse in rural fishing village where he lives.

But now new hope has emerged for Dede after an American dermatology expert flew out to his home village south of the capital Jakarta.

Dr. Anthony Gaspari of the University of Maryland claims to have identified Dede's condition, and has proposed a treatment that could completely change his life.

Following the testing of samples of the lesions and Dede's blood, Dr. Gaspari says his condition is caused by the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). This is a fairly common infection that usually causes small warts to develop on sufferers.

Dede's problem is that he has a rare genetic fault that impedes his immune system. This means his body is unable to contain the warts.

According to Dr. Gaspari, the virus was able to "hijack the cellular machinery of his skin cells", instructing them to produce huge amounts of the substance that caused the tree-like growths known as "cutaneous horns" on both his hands and feet.

The doctor became involved in the case through the Discovery Channel documentary, and he is convinced that Dede's condition can be largely cleared up by a daily doses of a synthetic form of Vitamin A, which has been demonstrated to stop the growth of warts in severe cases of HPV.

Dr. Gaspari said that Dede's warts should reduce in size to the point where he can use his hands. He said he had never seen anything like this in his entire career.








Dede with his teenage daughter. He fears that his children may also become infected

Weird Trees

Here are some really strange trees from around this weird wonderful world. From the top down you can see: the Bike Tree, Fat Tree, Fork Tree, Six Branches Tree, Smiley Tree and the Snake Tree.

Science of Mentos - Diet Coke explosions explained

Science of Mentos-Diet Coke explosions explained
* 11:31 12 June 2008
* NewScientist.com news service
* Hazel Muir

The startling reaction between Diet Coke and Mentos sweets, made famous in thousands of YouTube videos, finally has a scientific explanation. A study in the US has identified the prime factors that drive the fizzy plumes from Coke bottles: the roughness of the sweet and how fast it plummets to the bottle's base.

"If you drop a pack of Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke, you get this huge fountain of spray and Diet Coke foam coming out," says Tonya Coffey, a physicist at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. "This was a good project for my students to study because there was still some mystery to it."

When mint or fruit Mentos are dropped into a fresh bottle of Diet Coke, a jet of Coke whooshes out of the bottle's mouth and can reach a height of 10 metres. Theories abound as to why this happens, with some bloggers speculating that it is an acid-base reaction because Coke is acidic.

Experiments in a 2006 edition of the Discovery Channel programme Mythbusters suggested the chemicals responsible for the reaction are gum arabic and gelatine in the sweets, and caffeine, potassium benzoate and aspartame in the Coke. But there have been no rigorous scientific studies of the reaction until now.



Fizzy liquids

To find out more, Coffey and a team of students tested the reactions between Diet Coke and fruit Mentos, mint Mentos, and various ingredients such as other mints, dish-washing detergent, table salt and sand. They also compared reactions using other fizzy liquids such as caffeine-free and sugary colas, as well as soda water and tonic water.

All the reactions took place in a bottle angled at 10° off vertical and the fountain trajectories were recorded on video. The team also investigated the total mass lost in the fountain and the influence of the sweet's surface roughness.

The results showed that Diet Coke created the most spectacular explosions with either fruit or mint Mentos, the fountains travelling a horizontal distance of up to 7 metres.

But caffeine-free Diet Coke did just as well, suggesting that caffeine does not accelerate the reaction, at least at the normal levels in the drink.

Measurements of the pH of the Coke before and after the experiments showed that its acidity did not change, ruling out the idea that a simple acid-base reaction drives the fountains.

Instead, the vigour of the jets depends on various factors that affect the growth rate of carbon dioxide bubbles.

The rough, dimply surfaces of Mentos encourage bubble growth because they efficiently disrupt the polar attractions between water molecules, creating bubble growth sites.

Diet Coke & Mentos:


Rough candy

"Water molecules like to be next to other water molecules, so basically anything that you drop into the soda that disrupts the network of water molecules can act as a growth site for bubbles," Coffey told New Scientist. "And if you have rough candy with a high ratio of surface area to volume, then there's more places for the bubbles to go."

Low surface tension also helps bubbles grow quickly. Measurements showed that the surface tension in water containing the sweetener aspartame is lower than in sugary water, explaining why Diet Coke creates more dramatic fountains than sugary Coke.

Another factor is that the coatings of Mentos contain gum arabic, a surfactant that further reduces surface tension in the liquid. Rough-surfaced mints without the surfactant did not create such large fountains.

Mentos are also fairly dense and sink rapidly, quickly creating bubbles that seed further bubbles as they rise. Crushed Mentos that fell more slowly created puny fountains that only travelled about 30 centimetres.

"Middle-school teachers are getting their students out onto the baseball field next to their school and doing this reaction, and their students love it," says Coffey. "It's a great way to get students excited about science and learn something new."

Mentos Geyser World Record:

What Is Therapeutic Cloning?

BBC NEWS
Q&A: Therapeutic cloning
For the second time, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has given the go-ahead for a team of British scientists to clone human embryos.

BBC News Online examines the implications of the case.

Cloning could tackle disease

What are the scientists hoping to do?

Professor Ian Wilmut and a team at Kings College in London will clone early stage embryos to study a condition called motor neurone disease (MND).

What is MND?

MND is caused by the death of cells - called motor neurones - that control movement in the brain and spinal cord.

It affects about 5,000 people in the UK. Half of people with MND die within 14 months of diagnosis.

Weakness in the muscles that supply the face and throat also cause problems with speech and difficulty chewing and swallowing.

What will the research involve?

The team are investigating a cloning technique called cell nuclear replacement (CNR), in which the nucleus of a human egg cell is removed and replaced with the nucleus from a human body cell, such as a skin cell.

The replacement nucleus will come from patients with MND so the embryo also has MND.

The egg would then be stimulated to develop into an embryo.

The embryo would be allowed to develop for around six days, until it was at the blastocyst stage, before being destroyed.

What is the point of the research?

By cloning cells from MND patients, the researchers will be able to see how the illness develops in an embryo.

They would remove cells from the embryo while it was still in the earliest stages of development, before destroying it.

How is this different from earlier cloning research?

Up until now, scientists have wanted to create cloned embryos to see if they can be grown into tissues to repair damaged body parts.

Experts at the University of Newcastle, who were the first to be given the go-ahead by the HFEA, have been investigating new treatments for conditions including diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease.

Could it be done a different way?

Cloning opponents have said scientists should look for alternative ways to investigate MND, such as studying embryos that have been rejected from IVF use because they carry an inherited disease.

But Professor Peter Braude, from the Centre for Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis at King's College, London, said: "Unlike other genetic disorders like cystic fibrosis and Huntington's disease, for which stem cell lines have already been created from affected embryos following preimplantation genetic diagnosis, there is no other way of producing a motor neurone stem cell line other than using cloning techniques."

Is it legal?

Yes. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority decided to make "therapeutic" cloning legal in 2001.

This means that scientists can apply for a licence to clone human embryos provided they intend to use them to study disease in a laboratory situation only.

The cloning of human embryos with the intention of creating a baby - reproductive cloning - is still strictly banned in the UK.

Embryos used for research must be destroyed when the work is finished. At this stage, they are still in an early stage of development, a bundle of several hundred cells.

It is controversial?

Yes. Opponents say an embryo, regardless of its stage of development, is still potentially a human being in the making.

Others question the potential benefits of the work.

A spokesman from Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE) said: "Human cloning remains dangerous, undesirable and unnecessary."

But proponents argue that experimentation takes place long before an embryo begins to develop any nervous system, or sense of self - and as such cannot be defined as a human life.

They argue that the work is vital if effective treatments are to be found for debilitating diseases.

Have other scientists created cloned human embryos?

Yes. A South Korean team announced earlier this year that they had 30 embryos that were the exact genetic copies of the women who donated the eggs and cells to make them.

The embryos were allowed to develop for several days, and embryonic stem cells were extracted from them.

The eventual aim, in this case, is to use such cells to replace those that have failed in patients with degenerative diseases, such as some heart conditions and Parkinson's, or in spinal cord injuries.

Published: 2005/02/08 09:13:56 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

The Human Cloning Milestones!

Will the future humans be just redesigned, reengineeed genetic copies and mass produced on a production line?? Will this be happening in the very near future? It's like watching a science fiction movie except that...this is for REAL man! My mind boggles! .....


THE CLONING MILESTONES

As the most advanced human embryo clones yet are produced, BBC News Online looks back at some of the landmark moments since 1997, when British scientists unveiled the first successful mammal clone.

• 1997: Dolly the sheep and the big breakthrough - the first successful mammal clone from an ordinary adult cell.

• 1997 to 2000: Scientists at various institutes cloned various species of animal - as other scientists claimed to be working towards the first human clone.

• 1998: American Dr Richard Seed said he was ready to begin experiments on cloning a human being within the next three months.

• January 2001: Controversial Italian doctor Severino Antinori announced plans to clone human babies for infertile couples at his fertility clinic in Rome.

• April 2001: Dr Antinori reportedly said that a woman he was treating was pregnant with a cloned embryo. It was later denied.

• July 2002: Authorities in South Korea investigated a company's claim that it had implanted a cloned human embryo in a South Korean woman.

• November 2002: Dr Antinori announced that the first human baby clone would be born in January 2003.

• December 2002: Clonaid, founded by the Raelian sect, claimed the first human clone was born, sparking surprise and condemnation. It has never provided DNA proof of its cloning claims.

• February 2003: Dolly the sheep is put down after a veterinary examination showed she had a progressive lung disease.

• July 2003: The first UK research licence of its kind permitting a technique that creates embryonic stem cells from human eggs was granted to the scientists who cloned Dolly the sheep in Edinburgh. This is therapeutic, not reproductive, cloning.

• September 2003: Dr Panos Zavos claims to have created the world's first cloned human embryo. He announced plans to implant the human embryo in a surrogate mother later in the year.

• October 2003: Scientists in China claimed they had created twins which effectively had two "genetic mothers" and one father, but the experiment did not create any live babies. One expert called the experiment "proof of principle" for human cloning, but others disagreed. The work was not aimed at producing genetic copies of humans.

• January 2004: Dr Zavos announces a 35-year-old woman is hoping to give birth to the world's first cloned baby.

• February 2004: South Korean scientists clone 30 human embryos and develop them over several days to a stage where special cells known as embryonic stem cells could be extracted. The researchers hope to obtain cells that could one day be used to treat disease.

There is controversy around human cloning

© BBC MMVIII

Conjoined Twins: Abigail & Brittany Hansel

Abigail “Abby” Loraine Hensel and Britanny Lee Hensel are dicephalic conjoined twins. Britanny is the left twin while Abigail is the right twin. They have two spines which join at the pelvis. They have two stomachs, three lungs and at birth three arms of which one of them was amputated in infancy.



It is not easy to be born sharing a single body with your other twin and they are incredible that they had tried their best in leading a normal life.














Below is a television appearance on The Learning Channel around the time of their 16th birthday which was aired in December 17, 2006. The Learning Channel looks into the life of Abby and Britanny on how they coordinate between each other during school and daily activities.

a 2 dans un seul corp Siamois
by fazerillusion

Tissue of dead humans to be cloned!

Friends, we are now 'looking' at what's to come! What is the future of human beings
gonna be like? Let us all ponder on this report and figure out the future of our children .....


From The Sunday Times
June 1, 2008

Tissue of dead humans to be cloned

Marie Woolf, Whitehall Editor

Scientists are to be permitted to use tissue from dead people to create cloned human stem cells for research, under a legal change put forward by the government.

Health ministers have proposed that laboratories should be allowed to use stored human tissue to create cloned embryonic stem cells without the explicit consent of the tissue donor. This would allow research to be done on tissue donated for medical research as long as 30 years ago. Scientists would also be able to use cells from people who have died since they donated their tissue or who cannot be contacted.

Many laboratories have banks of stored tissue which act as DNA libraries that can play a vital role in finding cures for serious disorders such as diabetes and motor neurone disease.

Ministers have until now insisted that scientists contact tissue donors to gain explicit consent before DNA can be used to create cloned embryonic stem cells.

Leading scientists, including three Nobel prize winners, say gaining such consent is sometimes impossible because the donors have died, donated anonymously or cannot be contacted. They say the ban on using DNA without consent could hold up vital research.

Ministers have tabled an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, now passing through parliament, which would allow stored tissue and cells to be used without the explicit consent of donors. The amendment, which is expected to be supported by most MPs, will be debated this week.

Cow - Human Hibrid Alien In Thailand?

Is this for real? You be the judge!

This dead alien-like being found in a small town in Thailand was claimed to be born from a cow and seems at first to be a severe case of birth malformation defect. A closer examination however revealed that the alien being resembled too much of a human baby with its front legs looking more like hands than feet.

In the form of a ritual, the local residents pour baby powder onto the dead 'body' and burned incense in their belief of cleansing the area of evil and hopeful that it would be reincarnated peacefully.