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Wacky & Weird News Thread
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dogs really are quite pervy.
New Solar Power Plants are Incinerating Birds
http://www.weather.com/news/solar-plants-birds-20140818
TRIGGER WARNING: There's a video on the webpage that shows dead burned birds if you go there to play that.
http://www.weather.com/news/solar-plants-birds-20140818
TRIGGER WARNING: There's a video on the webpage that shows dead burned birds if you go there to play that.
Attachments
Growing Penises...
Scientists have successfully grown penises in a laboratory and say they could be tested on humans within five years.
The organs would be used to help men who have suffered a serious injury to the region, had surgery for cancer or are suffering from a congenital abnormality.
The work is being carried out the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, North Carolina.
It is hoped the US Food and Drug Administration will give the green light for testing on humans within five years.
Earlier this year, the same team of researchers declared they had successfully grown vaginas in a laboratory and implanted them into four teenage patients.
The new organs were given to women born with MRKH - Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, a rare genetic condition in which the vagina and uterus are underdeveloped or absent.
The treatment could also potentially be applied to patients with vaginal cancer or injuries.
It is being funded by the US Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, in the hope soldiers with battlefield injuries can be helped.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic ... z3FQ2NrTS6
Scientists have successfully grown penises in a laboratory and say they could be tested on humans within five years.
The organs would be used to help men who have suffered a serious injury to the region, had surgery for cancer or are suffering from a congenital abnormality.
The work is being carried out the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, North Carolina.
It is hoped the US Food and Drug Administration will give the green light for testing on humans within five years.
Earlier this year, the same team of researchers declared they had successfully grown vaginas in a laboratory and implanted them into four teenage patients.
The new organs were given to women born with MRKH - Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, a rare genetic condition in which the vagina and uterus are underdeveloped or absent.
The treatment could also potentially be applied to patients with vaginal cancer or injuries.
It is being funded by the US Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, in the hope soldiers with battlefield injuries can be helped.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic ... z3FQ2NrTS6
Bocefish said:
I do not know if what they are doing really counts as growing a penis. They are taking a "donor" penis and washing all the cells out of it, then putting your cells back into the husk where they follow the old pathways. It is really more of a Frankenstein's penis.
Bachelorette Party Ends With Woman Getting Pregnant By Dwarf Stripper
By Jonathan Wolfe, Thu, October 09, 2014
A newlywed bride had to confess to cheating on her husband with a dwarf stripper after she gave birth to a baby with dwarfism recently. The husband had no clue until the confession that his wife cheated on him. He thought throughout the pregnancy that the child was his.
The woman met the stripper at her bachelorette party and had sex with him afterwards. According to Spanish news sit Las Cinco Del Dia, not even the woman’s closest friends knew about the secret affair.
The woman reportedly confessed to the incident as she held her newborn baby in her arms.
“As you can imagine no-one that sleeps with a stripper at her [bachelorette party] broadcasts it or at least they try to take their secret to the grave,” the media outlet writes. “But the protagonist of this episode had no choice but to confess and could never have pretended the boy was her husband’s because of a little problem - the child was born with dwarfism.”
Somewhere in Spain, a very small stripper is shaking his head in disbelief.
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/ ... f-stripper
By Jonathan Wolfe, Thu, October 09, 2014
A newlywed bride had to confess to cheating on her husband with a dwarf stripper after she gave birth to a baby with dwarfism recently. The husband had no clue until the confession that his wife cheated on him. He thought throughout the pregnancy that the child was his.
The woman met the stripper at her bachelorette party and had sex with him afterwards. According to Spanish news sit Las Cinco Del Dia, not even the woman’s closest friends knew about the secret affair.
The woman reportedly confessed to the incident as she held her newborn baby in her arms.
“As you can imagine no-one that sleeps with a stripper at her [bachelorette party] broadcasts it or at least they try to take their secret to the grave,” the media outlet writes. “But the protagonist of this episode had no choice but to confess and could never have pretended the boy was her husband’s because of a little problem - the child was born with dwarfism.”
Somewhere in Spain, a very small stripper is shaking his head in disbelief.
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/ ... f-stripper
schlmoe
V.I.P. AmberLander
Bocefish said:
She admitted the affair, but this is kind of odd. "Little People" can have "normal" sized offspring, and "normal" size couples can birth a "little person". Genetics tells us that. Sure, it's great that she came clean, but parentage isn't certain until a paternity has been completed. :twocents-02cents:
schlmoe
V.I.P. AmberLander
schlmoe
V.I.P. AmberLander
http://www.newser.com/story/196832/scho ... um=twitter
Just another reason to hate lawyers and insurance companies!
Just another reason to hate lawyers and insurance companies!
schlmoe
V.I.P. AmberLander
http://www.newser.com/story/196985/open ... um=twitter
I haven't laughed this hard in a while! :lol: :lol: :lol:
I haven't laughed this hard in a while! :lol: :lol: :lol:
schlmoe
V.I.P. AmberLander
One of my twitter friends linked this to me. This probably isn't all that wacky, and it's not "news", but I laughed a lot at this.
:lol: :lol: :lol:
" A British backpacker troubled by weeks of nosebleeds found a three-inch long leech had been living up her nose for more than a month.
Daniela Liverani believed the persistent nosebleeds she suffered while travelling around south-east Asia were down to a burst blood vessel from a motorbike crash.
Days after returning to her Edinburgh home, however, she spotted an object in one nostril that she first dismissed as congealed blood.
The 24-year-old graduate was rushed to A&E after realising she had an animal up her nose.
Miss Liverani, originally from Glasgow, told the Sunday Mail: "Two weeks before I came home from Asia, I started having nosebleeds but I'd fallen off a motorbike so thought I'd burst a blood vessel.
"After I got home, the nosebleeds stopped and I started seeing something sticking out of my nostril. I just thought it was congealed blood from the nosebleeds.
"I tried to blow him out and grab him but I couldn't get a grip of him before he retreated back up my nose.
"When I was in the shower, he would come right out as far as my bottom lip and I could see him sticking out the bottom of my nose.
"So when that happened, I jumped out of the shower to look really closely in the mirror and I saw ridges on him. That's when I realised he was an animal.”
Hospital staff examined Miss Liverani with a torch, before trying to remove the parasite with forceps and tweezers as they pinned her to the bed.
She said: “It was agony – whenever the doctor grabbed him, I could feel the leech tugging at the inside of my nose.
"Then all of a sudden, after half an hour, the pain stopped and the doctor had the leech in the tweezers.
"He was about as long as my forefinger and as fat as my thumb.
Mark Siddal, curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and an expert on leeches, said: "Daniela could have picked up this leech from water in Vietnam, if she had been swimming.
"Or it could have gone in through her mouth, as she was drinking water.
"Even though it was there for around a month, these leeches don't grow all that quickly, so it wouldn't have been much smaller when it went up there. It would have been quite sizeable.
"It's interesting that people don't feel these leeches go up their nose."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...had-3-inch-long-leech-living-up-her-nose.html
ACFFAN69 said:
" A British backpacker troubled by weeks of nosebleeds found a three-inch long leech had been living up her nose for more than a month.
Daniela Liverani believed the persistent nosebleeds she suffered while travelling around south-east Asia were down to a burst blood vessel from a motorbike crash.
Days after returning to her Edinburgh home, however, she spotted an object in one nostril that she first dismissed as congealed blood.
The 24-year-old graduate was rushed to A&E after realising she had an animal up her nose.
And thus the night terrors begin. :shock:
More info at the source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/1 ... 03192.htmlThis 80-Foot 'Butt Plug' In Paris Isn't A Giant Sex Toy, It's A Paul McCarthy Sculpture
This week in art news, Parisians are up in arms over an 80-foot "butt plug" imagined by the art world's ultimate enfant terrible, Paul McCarthy.
Of course, the massive sculpture isn't technically a butt plug. It's a Christmas tree, simply dubbed "Tree," that's made its way to Place Vendôme in Paris. The piece is part of the International Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC), writes Citylab's Kriston Capps, and is showing in conjunction with McCarthy's first solo show in France -- "Chocolate Factory."
Yet despite all the seemingly obvious signs -- it's art, McCarthy's an artist, FIAC is an art fair -- the inflatable masterpiece is attracting attention not for its aesthetic uniqueness but for its resemblance to sex toys. In fact, France's far-right is not convinced the 24-meter high plant is an objet d'art at all.
"Anal plug or tree?" Printemps Français pondered on Twitter. "Place Vendôme is disfigured... Paris is humiliated!" On top of this, an unknown assailant allegedly attacked McCarthy during the installation of the piece, "screaming that his sculpture did not belong" in public.
(...)
Wierd, I didn't know virgin births are possible (albeit only in egg-bearing species).
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... s-science/
World's Longest Snake Has Virgin Birth—First Recorded in Species
An 11-year-old reticulated python named Thelma produced six female offspring in June 2012 at the Louisville Zoo in Kentucky, where she lives with another female python, Louise. No male had ever slithered anywhere near the 200-pound (91-kilogram), 20-foot-long (6 meters) mother snake.
New DNA evidence, published in July in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, revealed that Thelma is the sole parent, said Bill McMahan, the zoo's curator of ectotherms, or cold-blooded animals. (Read: "'Virgin Birth' Seen in Wild Snakes, Even When Males Are Available.")
"We didn't know what we were seeing. We had attributed it to stored sperm," he said. "I guess sometimes truth is stranger than fiction."
Virgin births have been observed in other reptiles before, including other pythons and snake species, said James Hanken, a professor of herpetology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Fatherless reproduction in animals that normally require two parents is called parthenogenesis.
This phenomenon occurs when polar bodies, or cells produced with an animal's egg that normally die or disappear, behave like sperm and fuse with the egg.
Optimal Conditions
The number of species known to be capable of virgin births—pythons, boas, birds, sharks, and more—has grown significantly in recent years, noted study leader Warren Booth, a biologist at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. (See "'Virgin Birth' Record Broken by Hotel Shark.")
For instance, until now, scientists had never witnessed the phenomenon in reticulated pythons.
"Pythons are an old, ancient species. We've seen this in more advanced species like garter snakes," said Booth, adding that the discovery helps scientists learn more about the snakes' evolutionary family tree.
It's still a mystery as to why parthenogenesis happens, though Booth hypothesizes that geographic isolation from males and captivity may have a lot to do with it.
In Thelma's case, her virgin birth may have been triggered by ideal living conditions, zoo curator McMahan speculates. (See "Virgin Birth Expected at Christmas—By Komodo Dragon.")
"It takes a lot out of [pythons] to reproduce, and she had everything she needed. I had fed her a really big meal, 40 pounds [18 kilograms] of chicken. She was living in an exhibit larger than the typical size. There were heat pads. Everything was optimal," he said.
No Evolutionary Novelty
Despite having only a mother, Thelma's offspring are all half-clones.
Three of them look like her, retaining her intricate reticulated pattern. The others display a "super tiger" pattern of bright yellow with black stripes.
While the six snakes are all healthy behind glass doors, Booth doubts their ability to survive in the wild as they're "highly inbred and often die early."
Overall, the discovery reveals that there's a lot left to be discovered about parthenogenesis.
"It's something we used to consider an evolutionary novelty," Booth said, "that's much more common than we thought."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... s-science/
World's Longest Snake Has Virgin Birth—First Recorded in Species
An 11-year-old reticulated python named Thelma produced six female offspring in June 2012 at the Louisville Zoo in Kentucky, where she lives with another female python, Louise. No male had ever slithered anywhere near the 200-pound (91-kilogram), 20-foot-long (6 meters) mother snake.
New DNA evidence, published in July in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, revealed that Thelma is the sole parent, said Bill McMahan, the zoo's curator of ectotherms, or cold-blooded animals. (Read: "'Virgin Birth' Seen in Wild Snakes, Even When Males Are Available.")
"We didn't know what we were seeing. We had attributed it to stored sperm," he said. "I guess sometimes truth is stranger than fiction."
Virgin births have been observed in other reptiles before, including other pythons and snake species, said James Hanken, a professor of herpetology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Fatherless reproduction in animals that normally require two parents is called parthenogenesis.
This phenomenon occurs when polar bodies, or cells produced with an animal's egg that normally die or disappear, behave like sperm and fuse with the egg.
Optimal Conditions
The number of species known to be capable of virgin births—pythons, boas, birds, sharks, and more—has grown significantly in recent years, noted study leader Warren Booth, a biologist at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. (See "'Virgin Birth' Record Broken by Hotel Shark.")
For instance, until now, scientists had never witnessed the phenomenon in reticulated pythons.
"Pythons are an old, ancient species. We've seen this in more advanced species like garter snakes," said Booth, adding that the discovery helps scientists learn more about the snakes' evolutionary family tree.
It's still a mystery as to why parthenogenesis happens, though Booth hypothesizes that geographic isolation from males and captivity may have a lot to do with it.
In Thelma's case, her virgin birth may have been triggered by ideal living conditions, zoo curator McMahan speculates. (See "Virgin Birth Expected at Christmas—By Komodo Dragon.")
"It takes a lot out of [pythons] to reproduce, and she had everything she needed. I had fed her a really big meal, 40 pounds [18 kilograms] of chicken. She was living in an exhibit larger than the typical size. There were heat pads. Everything was optimal," he said.
No Evolutionary Novelty
Despite having only a mother, Thelma's offspring are all half-clones.
Three of them look like her, retaining her intricate reticulated pattern. The others display a "super tiger" pattern of bright yellow with black stripes.
While the six snakes are all healthy behind glass doors, Booth doubts their ability to survive in the wild as they're "highly inbred and often die early."
Overall, the discovery reveals that there's a lot left to be discovered about parthenogenesis.
"It's something we used to consider an evolutionary novelty," Booth said, "that's much more common than we thought."
The whackjobs are coming out...
http://connecticut.cbslocal.com/2014/10 ... -sent-him/
Naked Man Accused Of Raping Pit Bull In Neighbor’s Yard, Says ISIS Sent Him
WATERBURY, Conn. (CBS Connecticut) — A naked man is accused of raping a pit bull in his neighbor’s yard.
Alice Woodruff told WTNH-TV that she confronted her neighbor at gunpoint while he was performing sex acts on her rescue pit bull that is kept on an 800-pound tow chain in her backyard.
“I thought my dog had killed somebody because I saw a man underneath her,” Woodruff explained to WTNH. “I started to scream. I had a citronella candle and I threw it at him, screaming ‘get off my dog, you have to get out of here.’ He said, ‘No, today is the day we are going to spend the rest of our lives together.’”
Woodruff said the man appeared mentally ill as he was telling her that the terror group ISIS sent him.
“He pranced through the yard naked, yelling ‘this is our day and you have to prosper in it,’” Woodruff told WTNH. “’ISIS sent me,’ and I was thinking, ‘Did something like this just land in my backyard?’ I ran in, got my gun out of the bedroom and realized as usual the ammunition is in my car locked in my glove box. I showed him the clip went in, but I always kept the gun at my side while I was talking to him. He kept saying this is the plan, that we were going to die today in a massacre. He didn’t seem to care that I had the gun, and I kept it down. Then I gave him a warning and shot the gun to the right into the dirt.”
She was concerned that her neighbor was going to set off a bomb.
“He put his arms out and started walking toward me, telling me to kill him, but to know that as soon as I kill him that we were going to die,” Woodruff told WTNH. “Honestly, the whole time I thought there was a bomb or gun and he was going to take it out and do a massacre.”
The Waterbury Police Department is investigating the incident. Authorities plan to charge him with cruelty to an animal, sexual assault and breach of peace.
The man is currently hospitalized.
http://connecticut.cbslocal.com/2014/10 ... -sent-him/
Naked Man Accused Of Raping Pit Bull In Neighbor’s Yard, Says ISIS Sent Him
WATERBURY, Conn. (CBS Connecticut) — A naked man is accused of raping a pit bull in his neighbor’s yard.
Alice Woodruff told WTNH-TV that she confronted her neighbor at gunpoint while he was performing sex acts on her rescue pit bull that is kept on an 800-pound tow chain in her backyard.
“I thought my dog had killed somebody because I saw a man underneath her,” Woodruff explained to WTNH. “I started to scream. I had a citronella candle and I threw it at him, screaming ‘get off my dog, you have to get out of here.’ He said, ‘No, today is the day we are going to spend the rest of our lives together.’”
Woodruff said the man appeared mentally ill as he was telling her that the terror group ISIS sent him.
“He pranced through the yard naked, yelling ‘this is our day and you have to prosper in it,’” Woodruff told WTNH. “’ISIS sent me,’ and I was thinking, ‘Did something like this just land in my backyard?’ I ran in, got my gun out of the bedroom and realized as usual the ammunition is in my car locked in my glove box. I showed him the clip went in, but I always kept the gun at my side while I was talking to him. He kept saying this is the plan, that we were going to die today in a massacre. He didn’t seem to care that I had the gun, and I kept it down. Then I gave him a warning and shot the gun to the right into the dirt.”
She was concerned that her neighbor was going to set off a bomb.
“He put his arms out and started walking toward me, telling me to kill him, but to know that as soon as I kill him that we were going to die,” Woodruff told WTNH. “Honestly, the whole time I thought there was a bomb or gun and he was going to take it out and do a massacre.”
The Waterbury Police Department is investigating the incident. Authorities plan to charge him with cruelty to an animal, sexual assault and breach of peace.
The man is currently hospitalized.
Not really Wierd and Wacky news, but good news nonetheless!
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mus ... -infection
Mushroom extract might eradicate HPV infection
An over-the-counter supplement sold as an immune booster just might work. Active hexose correlated compound, or AHCC, apparently revs up the immune system to knock out human papillomavirus that can cause cervical cancer. While two vaccines can prevent infection by cancer-causing HPV subtypes (SN: 4/20/13, p. 20), the vaccines don’t eliminate HPV ensconced in the body.
In a pilot study of 10 women infected with HPV, three appear to have cleared the virus after taking the supplement daily for three months and remained clear of the virus one month after their last dose of AHCC, a shiitake mushroom extract, says pharmacologist Judith Smith of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Two other women saw declining virus levels and are continuing to take the compound for up to six months total. Five women who were early entrants in the test were assigned to take the pills for less than three months. They failed to knock out their infections. The pills had no side effects.
It can be hard to know whether HPV has been vanquished, so the researchers are scanning the women for immune proteins produced in response to the virus. “We’re optimistic that we truly have eradication,” says Smith, who presented the data October 28 in Houston at a meeting of the Society for Integrative Oncology.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mus ... -infection
Mushroom extract might eradicate HPV infection
An over-the-counter supplement sold as an immune booster just might work. Active hexose correlated compound, or AHCC, apparently revs up the immune system to knock out human papillomavirus that can cause cervical cancer. While two vaccines can prevent infection by cancer-causing HPV subtypes (SN: 4/20/13, p. 20), the vaccines don’t eliminate HPV ensconced in the body.
In a pilot study of 10 women infected with HPV, three appear to have cleared the virus after taking the supplement daily for three months and remained clear of the virus one month after their last dose of AHCC, a shiitake mushroom extract, says pharmacologist Judith Smith of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Two other women saw declining virus levels and are continuing to take the compound for up to six months total. Five women who were early entrants in the test were assigned to take the pills for less than three months. They failed to knock out their infections. The pills had no side effects.
It can be hard to know whether HPV has been vanquished, so the researchers are scanning the women for immune proteins produced in response to the virus. “We’re optimistic that we truly have eradication,” says Smith, who presented the data October 28 in Houston at a meeting of the Society for Integrative Oncology.
Not sure if this works here, but it has spiders, so there's that.
http://www.nytimes.com/video/science/10 ... 0002331748
http://www.nytimes.com/video/science/10 ... 0002331748
Well, THIS explains my new neighbor, Mr. Imhotep. http://www.iflscience.com/environment/researchers-decipher-ancient-egyptian-spellbook
I definitely thought this was from a parody news site... It's not.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man ... rt-n254186
:icon-cry: The smart mouse with the half-human brain
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... H1cnTHF88m
What would Stewart Little make of it? Mice have been created whose brains are half human. As a result, the animals are smarter than their siblings.
The idea is not to mimic fiction, but to advance our understanding of human brain diseases by studying them in whole mouse brains rather than in dishes.
The altered mice still have mouse neurons – the "thinking" cells that make up around half of all their brain cells. But practically all the glial cells in their brains, the ones that support the neurons, are human.
"It's still a mouse brain, not a human brain," says Steve Goldman of the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. "But all the non-neuronal cells are human."
Rapid takeover
Goldman's team extracted immature glial cells from donated human fetuses. They injected them into mouse pups where they developed into astrocytes, a star-shaped type of glial cell.
Within a year, the mouse glial cells had been completely usurped by the human interlopers. The 300,000 human cells each mouse received multiplied until they numbered 12 million, displacing the native cells.
"We could see the human cells taking over the whole space," says Goldman. "It seemed like the mouse counterparts were fleeing to the margins."
Astrocytes are vital for conscious thought, because they help to strengthen the connections between neurons, called synapses. Their tendrils (see image) are involved in coordinating the transmission of electrical signals across synapses.
Human astrocytes are 10 to 20 times the size of mouse astrocytes and carry 100 times as many tendrils. This means they can coordinate all the neural signals in an area far more adeptly than mouse astrocytes can. "It's like ramping up the power of your computer," says Goldman.
Intelligence leap
A battery of standard tests for mouse memory and cognition showed that the mice with human astrocytes are much smarter than their mousy peers.
In one test that measures ability to remember a sound associated with a mild electric shock, for example, the humanised mice froze for four times as long as other mice when they heard the sound, suggesting their memory was about four times better. "These were whopping effects," says Goldman. "We can say they were statistically and significantly smarter than control mice."
Goldman first reported last year that mice with human glial cells are smarter. But the human cells his team injected then were mature so they simply integrated into the mouse brain tissue and stayed put.
This time, he injected the precursors of these cells, glial progenitor cells, which were able to divide and multiply. That, he says, explains how they were able to take over the mouse brains so completely, stopping only when they reached the physical limits of the space.
Species cross
"It would be interesting to find out whether the human astrocytes function the same way in the mice as they do in humans," says Fred Gage, a stem cell researcher at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. "It would show whether the host modifies the fate of cells, or whether the cells retain the same features in mice as they do in humans," he says.
"That the cells work at all in a different species is amazing, and poses the question of which properties are being driven by the cell itself and which by the new environment," says Wolfgang Enard of Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich in Germany, who has shown that mice are better at learning if they have the human Foxp2 gene, which has been linked with human language development.
In a parallel experiment, Goldman injected immature human glial cells into mouse pups that were poor at making myelin, the protein that insulates nerves. Once inside the mouse brain, many of the human glial cells matured into oligodendrocytes, brain cells that specialise in making the insulating material, suggesting that the cells somehow detected and compensated for the defect.
This could be useful for treating diseases in which the myelin sheath is damaged, such as multiple sclerosis, says Goldman, and he has already applied for permission to treat MS patients with the glial progenitor cells, and hopes to start a trial in 12 to 15 months.
To explore further how the human astrocytes affect intelligence, memory and learning, Goldman is already grafting the cells into rats, which are more intelligent than mice. "We've done the first grafts, and are mapping distributions of the cells," he says.
Although this may sound like the work of science fiction – think Deep Blue Sea, where researchers searching for an Alzheimer's cure accidently create super-smart sharks, or Algernon, the lab mouse who has surgery to enhance his intelligence, or even the pigoons, Margaret Atwood's pigs with human stem cells – and human thoughts – Goldman is quick to dismiss any idea that the added cells somehow make the mice more human.
"This does not provide the animals with additional capabilities that could in any way be ascribed or perceived as specifically human," he says. "Rather, the human cells are simply improving the efficiency of the mouse's own neural networks. It's still a mouse."
However, the team decided not to try putting human cells into monkeys. "We briefly considered it but decided not to because of all the potential ethical issues," Goldman says.
Enard agrees that it could be difficult to decide which animals to put human brain cells into. "If you make animals more human-like, where do you stop?" he says.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... H1cnTHF88m
What would Stewart Little make of it? Mice have been created whose brains are half human. As a result, the animals are smarter than their siblings.
The idea is not to mimic fiction, but to advance our understanding of human brain diseases by studying them in whole mouse brains rather than in dishes.
The altered mice still have mouse neurons – the "thinking" cells that make up around half of all their brain cells. But practically all the glial cells in their brains, the ones that support the neurons, are human.
"It's still a mouse brain, not a human brain," says Steve Goldman of the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. "But all the non-neuronal cells are human."
Rapid takeover
Goldman's team extracted immature glial cells from donated human fetuses. They injected them into mouse pups where they developed into astrocytes, a star-shaped type of glial cell.
Within a year, the mouse glial cells had been completely usurped by the human interlopers. The 300,000 human cells each mouse received multiplied until they numbered 12 million, displacing the native cells.
"We could see the human cells taking over the whole space," says Goldman. "It seemed like the mouse counterparts were fleeing to the margins."
Astrocytes are vital for conscious thought, because they help to strengthen the connections between neurons, called synapses. Their tendrils (see image) are involved in coordinating the transmission of electrical signals across synapses.
Human astrocytes are 10 to 20 times the size of mouse astrocytes and carry 100 times as many tendrils. This means they can coordinate all the neural signals in an area far more adeptly than mouse astrocytes can. "It's like ramping up the power of your computer," says Goldman.
Intelligence leap
A battery of standard tests for mouse memory and cognition showed that the mice with human astrocytes are much smarter than their mousy peers.
In one test that measures ability to remember a sound associated with a mild electric shock, for example, the humanised mice froze for four times as long as other mice when they heard the sound, suggesting their memory was about four times better. "These were whopping effects," says Goldman. "We can say they were statistically and significantly smarter than control mice."
Goldman first reported last year that mice with human glial cells are smarter. But the human cells his team injected then were mature so they simply integrated into the mouse brain tissue and stayed put.
This time, he injected the precursors of these cells, glial progenitor cells, which were able to divide and multiply. That, he says, explains how they were able to take over the mouse brains so completely, stopping only when they reached the physical limits of the space.
Species cross
"It would be interesting to find out whether the human astrocytes function the same way in the mice as they do in humans," says Fred Gage, a stem cell researcher at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. "It would show whether the host modifies the fate of cells, or whether the cells retain the same features in mice as they do in humans," he says.
"That the cells work at all in a different species is amazing, and poses the question of which properties are being driven by the cell itself and which by the new environment," says Wolfgang Enard of Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich in Germany, who has shown that mice are better at learning if they have the human Foxp2 gene, which has been linked with human language development.
In a parallel experiment, Goldman injected immature human glial cells into mouse pups that were poor at making myelin, the protein that insulates nerves. Once inside the mouse brain, many of the human glial cells matured into oligodendrocytes, brain cells that specialise in making the insulating material, suggesting that the cells somehow detected and compensated for the defect.
This could be useful for treating diseases in which the myelin sheath is damaged, such as multiple sclerosis, says Goldman, and he has already applied for permission to treat MS patients with the glial progenitor cells, and hopes to start a trial in 12 to 15 months.
To explore further how the human astrocytes affect intelligence, memory and learning, Goldman is already grafting the cells into rats, which are more intelligent than mice. "We've done the first grafts, and are mapping distributions of the cells," he says.
Although this may sound like the work of science fiction – think Deep Blue Sea, where researchers searching for an Alzheimer's cure accidently create super-smart sharks, or Algernon, the lab mouse who has surgery to enhance his intelligence, or even the pigoons, Margaret Atwood's pigs with human stem cells – and human thoughts – Goldman is quick to dismiss any idea that the added cells somehow make the mice more human.
"This does not provide the animals with additional capabilities that could in any way be ascribed or perceived as specifically human," he says. "Rather, the human cells are simply improving the efficiency of the mouse's own neural networks. It's still a mouse."
However, the team decided not to try putting human cells into monkeys. "We briefly considered it but decided not to because of all the potential ethical issues," Goldman says.
Enard agrees that it could be difficult to decide which animals to put human brain cells into. "If you make animals more human-like, where do you stop?" he says.
Seals are raping penguins and scientists don't know why.
http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/201 ... ving-badly
This recent phenomenon has been observed among young Antarctic fur seals on Marion Island in the South Atlantic. They are targeting king penguins.
In a newly published research paper, a South African research team - Ryan Reisinger, William Haddah, Tristan Scott, Marthán Bester and Nico de Bruyn - documented three incidents of seals on the island sexually assaulting penguins.
There have been other recorded incidents over the last 30 years.
"In human terms, you would call it rape," said Reisinger.
"The penguins react as they would to a predator trying to kill them; they initially fight for their lives but the seals are much larger and stronger, so they easily overpower the penguins."
The birds are injured in these encounters. In one incident, a seal attempted to copulate with a penguin, then ate it.
The researchers are not sure what is driving this behaviour.
It was at first thought to be part of the seals' normal predatory behaviour towards the penguins becoming misdirected.
The highly unusual behaviour might be learnt, "but we don't know what the reward may be for learning this behaviour", said Reisinger.
Another theory is that competition for females has forced some younger males to turn to penguins.
"It's a little perplexing, shocking and, strangely, a bit embarrassing to see I guess, but there is definitely nothing funny about it," De Bruyn said.
http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/201 ... ving-badly
This recent phenomenon has been observed among young Antarctic fur seals on Marion Island in the South Atlantic. They are targeting king penguins.
In a newly published research paper, a South African research team - Ryan Reisinger, William Haddah, Tristan Scott, Marthán Bester and Nico de Bruyn - documented three incidents of seals on the island sexually assaulting penguins.
There have been other recorded incidents over the last 30 years.
"In human terms, you would call it rape," said Reisinger.
"The penguins react as they would to a predator trying to kill them; they initially fight for their lives but the seals are much larger and stronger, so they easily overpower the penguins."
The birds are injured in these encounters. In one incident, a seal attempted to copulate with a penguin, then ate it.
The researchers are not sure what is driving this behaviour.
It was at first thought to be part of the seals' normal predatory behaviour towards the penguins becoming misdirected.
The highly unusual behaviour might be learnt, "but we don't know what the reward may be for learning this behaviour", said Reisinger.
Another theory is that competition for females has forced some younger males to turn to penguins.
"It's a little perplexing, shocking and, strangely, a bit embarrassing to see I guess, but there is definitely nothing funny about it," De Bruyn said.
Not really news, but just tossing it here. I wonder how many of the vagina/rectum incidents were camgirls!
http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/what-d ... 1673859332
http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/what-d ... 1673859332
EXCERPT_FROM_ARTICLE said:
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