Worshipers sick after eating snail slime
Friday, March 12th, 2010
Devotees of a Miami man claiming to practice a traditional African religion say they had to ingest the mucus of a Giant African Snail that made them ill in the process.
Federal authorities in January raided Charles L. Stewart’s home after receiving complaints.
Stewart has not been criminally charged, but prosecutors and state and federal wildlife agencies are investigating. The Giant African Snail is prohibited in the U.S. without special approval.
Experts say it devastates new ecosystems. The snail grows up to 10 inches long, can reproduce on its own and can even eat plaster.
Stewart says he means no harm, and his religion uses the snails in healing ceremonies.
Followers said they got violently ill, losing weight and developing strange lumps in their stomachs.
Chinese woman, 101, grows mystery horn
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
An elderly Chinese woman has stunned her family and fellow villagers by growing from her forehead a horn than resembles a goat’s.
Grandmother Zhang Ruifang, 101, of Linlou village, Henan province, began developing the mysterious protrusion last year.
Since then it has grown 2.4in in length and another now appears to emerging on the other side of the mother of seven’s forehead.
The condition has left her family baffled and worried.
Her youngest of six sons, Zhang Guozheng, 60, said when a patch of rough skin formed on her forehead last year ‘we didn’t pay too much attention to it’.
‘But as time went on a horn grew out of her head and it is now 6cm long,’ added Mr Zhang, whose eldest brother and sibling is 82 years old.
‘Now something is also growing on the right side of her forehead. It’s quite possible that it’s another horn.’
Although, it is unknown what the protrusion is on Mrs Zhang’s head, it resembles a cutaneous horn.
This is a funnel-shaped growth and although most are only a few millimetres in length, some can extend a number of inches from the skin.
Cutaneous horns are made up of compacted keratin, which is the same protein we have in our hair and nails, and forms horns, wool and feathers in animals.
They usually develop in fair-skinned elderly adults who have a history of significant sun exposure but it is extremely unusual to see it form protrusions of this size.
The growths are most common in elderly people, aged between 60 and the mid-70s. They can sometimes be cancerous but more than half of cases are benign.
Common underlying causes of cutaneous horns are common warts, skin cancer and actinic keratoses, patches of scaly skin that develop on skin exposed to the sun, such as your face, scalp or forearms.
Cutaneous horns can be removed surgically but this does not treat the underlying cause.
Green UFO spotted over windmill
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
Maybe the aliens took a wrong turn or maybe they just love a bit of history. But this UFO curious green light was seen hovering over a 19th century windmill in Norfolk.
The curious green light was spotted by photographer Peter Rye who wanted to take night-time images of Denver mill in Downham Market.
The landmark, which was built in 1835, is lit up at night and so Mr Rye set up his camera on a tripod to take long exposure pictures of the mill.
While he was there he didn’t hear or see anything unusual and it is only when he got home to King’s Lynn that he realised there was something odd about the images he’d taken.
The green light was on some images but not others indicating it was not a smudge on his lens and it appeared to have moved from right to left.
Plane? Helicopter? Gyrocopter? The theories abound in and around the villages close to the windmill, which is 30 miles from an RAF base, about what went on that February night.
Lindsay Abel, manager of the windmill, told Mail Online: ‘It is very strange it has to be said.’
She said the building was an aerial landmark for pilots and had even been used as a navigational tool during World War II.
‘The Germans used it in the war when they headed up to the Midlands to bomb,’ she said.
‘Maybe the UFO looking down saw these strange sails and wondered what the hell it was!’
Malcolm Robinson, founder of Strange Phenomena Investigations, said he thought the photograph showed a Chinese lantern.
He said: ‘[Chinese lanterns] can be from 2 to 6 feet across and a candle can be lit inside them whereupon the individual then releases them into the sky.
‘Chinese lanterns have given rise to many a false UFO report here in the UK.
‘What I think has happened here is that the paper which makes up the Chinese Lantern could have been made of green paper and the candle would shine through the green paper turning the image/light to green.
‘When photographed, the cold night air would intensify around the light making it blur for the camera.’
The 19th century windmill stopped working in 1941 when its sails were struck by lightning but has since been restored and is the last working windmill in Norfolk.
Rare all black penguin spotted
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
An “astonishing” black penguin suffering from a rare condition has been photographed by wildlife enthusiasts.
The penguin, believed to be suffering from a condition known as melanism, was spotted on Fortuna Bay, a sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, about 860 miles off the Falklands.
A group of travellers had travelled to the island to watch local wildlife and one of the group, Andrew Evans, took this picture of the penguin, one of several thousand.
“Observing this black penguin waddle across South Georgia’s black sand beach revealed no different behaviour than that of his fellow penguins. In fact, he seemed to mix well,” he wrote on a National Geographic blog.
“Regarding feeding and mating behaviour there is no real way to tell, but I do know that we were all fascinated by his presence and wished him the best for the coming winter season.”
Biology experts say that because black penguins are particularly rare there is very little research discussing the subject.
Melanism is however, common on other animal species such as squirrels.
It is estimated that about one in every 250,000 penguins shows evidence of the condition.
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology expert Dr Allan Baker, from the University of Toronto, said the Antarctic penguin was black because it had lost control of its pigmentation patterns.
After being shown the pictures by National Geographic, Dr Baker, also the head of the Department of Natural History at the Royal Ontario Museum, described them as “astonishing”.
“I’ve never ever seen that before,” he told the magazine.
“It’s a one in a zillion kind of mutation somewhere. The animal has lost control of its pigmentation patterns. Presumably it’s some kind of mutation.”
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the condition is the darkness in an animal’s skin, feathers, or fur is acquired by populations living in an industrial region where the environment is soot-darkened. It can be gene related
It does, however, mean that the probability that its members will survive and reproduce is enhance.
The condition evolves over the course of several generations.
But due to being lighter in colour, they become more conspicuous to predators.
[via: telegraph.co.uk by Andrew Hough]
Chupacabra captured alive
Monday, March 8th, 2010
We have all heard about the mysterious Texas sightings of an unusual creature, often called a chupacabra. Now, it has been found roaming the countryside in Oklahoma.
This time the creature was caught alive.
The hairless, scared looking critter was captured on a Oklahoma man’s back porch.
The wrinkly, bald creature was spotted by several people wandering around the countryside before being caught . It is now nicknamed the “Dry Gulch Chupacabra” or even “Kojak”.
There have been similar findings in recent years in Texas. Each time many have believed them to be one of those legendary blood sucking chupacabras.
But experts have been quick to disagree, as KENS 5 reporters have documented in the past.
The Dry Gulch Chupacabra, or Kojak , was taken to a wildlife animal rescue center where animal caretakers had to take a much closer look to figure out what she really is.
At first someone thought she was a baby wallaby, but upon closer inspection they determined the animal was actually a raccoon.
Animal caretakers say the raccoon has an advanced case of mange, but will eventually grow its hair back and look like a normal raccoon.
And so, the mystery is solved…this time!
Is there alien life in a Californian lake?
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Do alien life forms exist in a Californian lake? Could there be a shadow biosphere? One scientist is trying to find out
Mono Lake has a bizarre, extraterrestrial beauty. Just east of Yosemite National Park in California, the ancient lake covers about 65 square miles. Above its surface rise the twisted shapes of tufa, formed when freshwater springs bubble up through the alkaline waters.
Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a geobiologist, is interested in the lake not for its scenery but because it may be harbouring alien life forms, or “weird life”. Mono Lake, a basin with no outlet, has built up over many millennia one of the highest natural concentrations of arsenic on Earth. Dr Wolfe-Simon is investigating whether, in the mud around the lake or in the water, there exist microbes whose biological make-up is so fundamentally different from that of any known life on Earth that it may provide proof of a shadow biosphere, a second genesis for life on this planet.
Arsenic is chemically close to phosphorus. While phosphorus is a primary building block of life on Earth — an essential component of DNA and ATP, the energy molecule — arsenic is a deadly poison. In Mono Lake there are micro-organisms that live with arsenic. But they don’t incorporate it into their biology.
Dr Wolfe-Simon has theorised that there may be life that chose an “evolutionary pathway” to utilise arsenic. If such microbes existed, it could suggest that life started on our planet not once but at least twice. In turn this would help to support the idea that life is much more likely to have started elsewhere in the galaxy.
“There is life ‘as we know it’ and there is life ‘as we don’t know it’. What would that look like? I am trying to give us a framework to work with to help us look for what ‘we don’t know’, the particular framework of arsenic,” she says.
Dr Wolfe-Simon has taken samples from the mud and the waters of the lake and is performing a series of multiple dilutions — hugely increasing the levels of arsenic and reducing residual phosphorous to zero. She adds sugar, vitamins and other nutrients to encourage organisms to grow and tests the results.
Her experiments are not yet over but she is quietly pleased with the progress she is making. “We have some very exciting data,” she says. The results should be published by the end of this year.
She points out that Mono Lake arsenic life, if found, may only go as far as proving the extreme adaptability of life on Earth billions of years ago. It is generally agreed that on early Earth the chemical soup was very different because of the material being thrown out of the planet’s depths by volcanoes and hydrothermal vents and the lack of biologically derived oxygen. If arsenic was around in far greater concentrations then, perhaps “arsenolife”, as she calls it, in Mono Lake is evidence of that ancestral life, a finding that would deepen our understanding of how life on Earth got started.
But she hopes that her research may help scientists to reconsider what alien or “weird” life might look like: “It may prove that there are other possibilities that are beyond our imagination. It opens the door for us to think about biology in ways we have never thought. We are going to look for life on other planets and we only know to look for that which we know. This may help us to develop tools to look for something we have never seen.”
Her work is funded by the Nasa Astrobiology Institute and she is based at the laboratories of Professor Ron Oremland, of the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. Does she believe that there are alien life forms out there? “I don’t know how there could not be extraterrestrial life,” she replies.
Did Canadian researcher snap Sasquatch?
Friday, March 5th, 2010
A Canadian researcher managed to take a picture of the face of the legendary hairy giant – the mascot of the Winter Olympic Games 2010.
Randy Brisson, a well-known Canadian cryptozoologist, shared hot information with his Russian colleagues. The researcher sent a photograph of the North American Bigfoot to Igor Burtsev and Dmitry Bayanov, the directors of the International Center for Hominology. The Canadian took the picture of the creature in Vancouver, the capital of Winter Games 2010.
The Canadian cryptozoologist said that he had seen a Sasquatch peeking out from behind a huge stub in the woods near Pitt Lake. The spot, where the creature was supposedly photographed, is quite far from sports objects.
Randy and his son Ray found big tracks on the snow along a hauling road. The footprints were quite big – it was obvious that they had been left by an adult creature. There were smaller footprints found nearby too.
The toes on the feet of both the adult and the youngster were pathologically angled to one side. The researcher claimed that the creatures were breeding since he had found the footprints of both a parent and a baby.
Mr. Brisson also said in his message to the Russian researchers that he and his son decided not to trace the couple because the creatures, when trying to escape, were throwing rocks at them.
The story may sound very strange, but Burtsev and Bayanov said that they had never exposed the Canadian of any falsifications in their studies of the unknown.
Tiny dragon similar to Avatar’s Turoks
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
James Cameron’s Avatar may have boasted gigantic flying lizards called Turoks, but did you know they were more than just virtual reality?
Neither did we until we saw this miniature Indonesian version.
Windermere gadget mystery solved
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
The BBC reported a few weeks back that on a street in Windermere, motorists car remote controls stopped working for some unexplained reason.
What was dubbed the ‘Windermere Triangle’, car key fobs were mysteriously disabled and alarms would go off for no apparent reason.
Some locals looking to science blaming a new set of traffic lights, while others claimed a ghost called Albert said to haunt the nearby bakery was responsible for the electronic shenanigans.
But now, the mystery has been solved with all interference being caused by a hand-held ordering gadget at a local tea shop, Lazy Daisy’s Lakeland Kitchen.
Field engineer Dave Thornber who quickly traced the problem to Lazy Daisy’s said: ‘The source of the interference was a wireless order-taker used by waiting staff in the restaurant.
‘The device is designed to use airwaves that neighbour those used by wireless car keys.’
The culprit gadgets have now been switched frequency and the ghostly gadgetry interference is no more.
For the original BBC report CLICK HERE.
Ice deposits found on the moon
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
Scientists have detected more than 40 ice-filled craters in the Moon’s North Pole using data from a NASA radar that flew aboard India’s Chandrayaan-I.
NASA’s Mini-SAR instrument, lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, found more than 40 small craters with water ice. The craters range in size from 2 to 15 km in diameter.
The finding would give future missions a new target to further explore and exploit, a NASA statement said, adding it is estimated that there could be at least 600 million metric tons of water ice in the craters.
“The emerging picture from the multiple measurements and resulting data of the instruments on lunar missions indicates that water creation, migration, deposition and retention are occurring on the Moon,” Paul Spudis, principal investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, said yesterday.
The new discoveries show that the Moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than previously thought, he said.
Aboard Chandrayaan-I, the Mini-SAR mapped the Moon’s permanently-shadowed polar craters that are not visible from the earth. The radar uses the polarisation properties of reflected radio waves to characterise surface properties.
According to the findings which are being published in the latest issue of the Geophysical Research Letters journal, results from the mapping showed deposits having radar characteristics similar to ice.
“After analysing the data, our science team determined a strong indication of water ice, a finding which will give future missions a new target to further explore and exploit,” Jason Crusan, program executive for the Mini-RF Program for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, said.
The space agency said these results are consistent with recent findings of other NASA instruments and adds to growing scientific understanding of the multiple forms of water found on the Moon.
The agency’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper discovered water molecules in the Moon’s polar regions, while water vapour was detected by NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.
Mini-SAR and Moon Mineralogy Mapper are two of 11 instruments on India’s first unmanned mission to the Moon — Chandrayaan-I.
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