Des «pigeons zombies» à Moscou seraient atteints de la salmonellose L’apparition de pigeons morts et mourants surnommés les «pigeons zombies»- en raison de leur comportement étrange-inquiète les habitants de Moscou. D’après le Wall Street Journal, c'est la semaine dernière que les Moscovites ont commencé à porter attention à ces «zombies» à plumes qui marchaient à reculons, en cercle, ou restaient sans bouger la tête au sol. «Avant, quand je marchais pour aller travailler, je voyais habituellement des pigeons qui volaient dans les alentours», explique un auditeur de Radio Free Europe du nom de Oumid. Mais depuis tout récemment, ils ne réagissent plus à rien. Plus inquiétant encore, le Service d’inspection vétérinaire et phytosanitaire fédéral de la Russie a d’abord cru que les oiseaux étaient infectés par la maladie de Newcastle, un virus contagieux pouvant infecter les humains. L’inspecteur en chef de la santé en Russie, Guennadi Onichtchenko, affirme que la population ne devrait pas s’inquiéter puisque les pigeons sont «sales» et «stupides».
Meiji Meth: the Deep History of Illicit Drugs “We're not going to need pseudoephedrine,” Walter White mutters through clenched teeth. “We're going to make phenylacetone in a tube furnace, then we're going to use reductive amination to yield methamphetamine.” Chemicals go in, and out come 99.1% pure crystals glittering with the brilliant azure of a New Mexico swimming pool. The invention of Breaking Bad’s blue meth has become the stuff of television legend, and has even inspired a spate of real world knock-offs. But few know the true origin stories of illicit drugs—for instance, the strange fact that methamphetamine was actually invented in 1890s Japan. Chemists have been fascinated by recreational drugs for a very long time. An early depiction of cannabis from Jean Vigier’s Historia das Plantas (1718), originally published in French in 1670. Historians have largely ignored Hooke’s adventures with cannabis, entertaining as they may be. Even LSD, however, has a more obscure prehistory.
Black Hole Analogue Discovered in South Atlantic Ocean Black holes are regions of spacetime in which gravity is strong enough to prevent anything escaping, even light. These strange objects were first discovered in the early 20th century as mathematical solutions to the equations of general relativity. (It was not until much later that astronomers began to gather observational evidence of their existence.) One of the curious features of general relativity is that the same mathematics crops up in various other situations. Black holes steer light in the same way by bending space-time. Today, George Haller at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich and Francisco Beron-Vera at the University of Miami in Florida have found another analogue of a black hole, this time in the world of turbulence. The vortices that can form in turbulent water are a familiar sight. “The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel… “
Girl Who Never Ages Could Unravel Secret to Eternal Youth <br/><a href=" US News</a> | <a href=" Business News</a> Copy Gabby Williams has the facial features and skin of a newborn, and she is just as dependent. The little girl from Billings, Mont., is 8 years old, but weighs only 11 pounds. For the past two years, a doctor who has been trying to find the genetic off-switch to stop the aging process has been studying Gabby, as well as two other people who have striking similarities. Why the 'Benjamin Button' children never age. A 29-year-old Florida man has the body of a 10-year-old, and a 31-year-old Brazilian woman is the size of a 2-year-old. Unraveling what these three people may have in common is the subject of a TLC television special, "40-Year-Old Child: A New Case," which airs Monday, Aug. 19, at 10 p.m. "In some people, something happens to them and the development process is retarded," said medical researcher Richard F. 16-year-old is the size of a toddler.
Lightning strikes: What causes lightning is a mystery. Could it be cosmic rays? Photo by Pascal Pochard-Casabianca/AFP/Getty Images Lightning is a natural electrical discharge—but scientists are still scratching their heads trying to figure out what triggers it. Renowned Russian physicist Alexandr Gurevich tells Katia Moskvitch about his theory, which really is out of this world What don't we know about lightning? What do we know about how lightning works? It is estimated that Earth gets struck by more than 100 lightning bolts every second. What are the main theories about what initiates this process? Your theory is that this other type of electric discharge is caused by cosmic rays. So what do you think happens when cosmic rays encounter a thunderstorm? You first introduced this idea two decades ago. How could you demonstrate this? So might there be something amplifying the impact of the cosmic rays? What other experiments are you conducting to prove the runaway breakdown theory? How do you observe these bright flashes?
Vie de couple: pour des relations courtes, les hommes préfèrent les femmes aux visages plus féminins, selon une étude Décortiquées et exposées, les lois de l'attraction n'ont plus beaucoup de secrets. Selon une récente étude publiée dans le British Journal of Psychology, les hommes préféreraient dans le cadre d'une relation à court terme, les femmes aux visages plus féminins. Ce constat très sérieux, élaboré par des chercheurs britanniques, a été mesuré grâce à l'impact de la perception dans la psychologie. Apparence Le procédé de l'étude est assez simple. Manifestement, les hommes choisissent en priorité les femmes aux traits les plus féminins pour des relations qui ne sont pas amenées à durer. Anthony Little, le directeur de l'étude, propose quelques explications au Huffington Post américain: "Nous supposons que les hommes se prononcent après avoir pesé le pour et le contre en matière de comportement et d'apparence et qu'ils vont au-delà du physique quand ils envisagent une relation sur le long-terme.
An Interview with the Woman Who Drilled a Hole in Her Head to Open Up Her Mind Amanda Feilding trepanning herself. There are plenty of ways to achieve a higher state of consciousness. Most of them involve ingesting some kind of psychoactive substance, or getting in a white tank filled with water, or sitting in front of a flashing light while listening to trance music. But as far as I know, only one requires you to drill a hole into your forehead. Trepanation, a procedure where a small hole is drilled into the skull and left to heal naturally, can reportedly produce a prolonged positive effect on the trepanned individual's mood and overall state of well-being. There's little hard scientific evidence that doing this has any tangible benefits, but people have been doing it for tens of thousands of years, so there has to be a reason they keep coming back to the tried and true method of inserting pieces of metal into the front of their skulls. Amanda in 2012. VICE: So Amanda, can you give me a short history of trepanation? What do you mean by "modern day"?
Symmetry in the universe: Physics says you shouldn’t exist Illustration by Alex Eben Meyer You’re almost unfathomably lucky to exist, in almost every conceivable way. Don’t take it the wrong way. You, me, and even the most calming manatee are nothing but impurities in an otherwise beautifully simple universe. We're lucky life began on Earth at all, of course, and that something as complex as humans evolved. It was improbable that your parents met each other and conceived you at just the right instant, and their parents and their parents and so on back to time immemorial. But even so, I have news for you: It's worse than you think. Your existence wasn’t just predicated on amorousness and luck of your ancestors, but on an almost absurdly finely tuned universe. Worse still, the laws of physics themselves seem to be working against us. My physicist colleagues and I like to pretend that the laws of physics are orderly and elegant. The long-overlooked 20th-century mathematician Emmy Noether proved the centrality of symmetry as a physical principle.
What Exactly Is Deja Vu? 'Black Jesus' murder: Leader of 6,000-strong cannibal rape cult hacked to death by villagers in Papua New Guinea jungle after killing yet again - Asia - World Preacher Stephen Tari, whose 6,000-strong sect called him “the true Christ” and refereed to themselves as “flower girls” or “disciples”, had been serving a lengthy jail term after being convicted of a brutal rape three years ago. The 40-year-old, who had previously been accused of raping, murdering and eating three girls in front of their traumatised mothers, was one of 48 prisoners to break-out of a remote jungle prison six months ago. The charismatic cult leader, who wore white robes and is said to have regularly drunk the blood of his “flower girls”, quickly returned to his home village of Gal after the escape, but could only manage six months before killing yet again. After he killed one woman and attempted to murder another, the inhabitants of the village, which is in Madang province, are said to have finally snapped, surrounding Tari and one of his henchmen and hacking the pair to death.
The Social Life of Genes: Shaping Your Molecular Composition A few years ago, Gene Robinson, of Urbana, Illinois, asked some associates in southern Mexico to help him kidnap some 1,000 newborns. For their victims they chose bees. Half were European honeybees, Apis mellifera ligustica, the sweet-tempered kind most beekeepers raise. The other half were ligustica’s genetically close cousins, Apis mellifera scutellata, the African strain better known as killer bees. Though the two subspecies are nearly indistinguishable, the latter defend territory far more aggressively. Kick a European honeybee hive and perhaps a hundred bees will attack you. Working carefully, Robinson’s conspirators—researchers at Mexico’s National Center for Research in Animal Physiology, in the high resort town of Ixtapan de la Sal—jiggled loose the lids from two African hives and two European hives, pulled free a few honeycomb racks, plucked off about 250 of the youngest bees from each hive, and painted marks on the bees’ tiny backs. Every biologist accepts this.
Meet the Wasp that Turns Spiders into Zombie Construction Workers In another post, we were talking about what happens to spiders and their webs when scientists give them a little bit of marijuana and other drugs. While researching that post, I learned that it's not just humans that alter spiders’ behavior with chemicals. There’s a wasp in Costa Rica that does the same thing, in a more gruesome and sinister way, as part of its journey to adulthood. The tropical wasp species Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga is a parasite, and it takes advantage of an unlikely host. The web of the orb weaver spider Plesiometa argyra is normally a place where bugs meet their untimely death and become spider snacks. Using an arsenal of toxins and mind-altering chemicals, though, H. argyraphaga is able to turn the spider into a slave and a meal, and its web into a safe haven. When the female wasp is ready to lay her egg, she seeks out a spider to help raise her child. The wasp gets around this problem by forcing the spider to build a web that suits its needs.
Kenyan lawyer looks to sue Israel over Jesus' death Former Kenyan Judiciary spokesman petitions ICJ, says 'selective and malicious prosecution violated Jesus' human rights through judicial misconduct, abuse of office, bias and prejudice' A Kenyan attorney plans to sue Israel and Italy over the execution of Jesus Christ, Britain's Daily Mail reported on Monday. Dola Indidis, a former spokesman of the Kenyan Judiciary, turned to the International Court of Justice after his attempt to file a similar suit at the High Court of Nairobi was thrown out in 2007, according to the report. Related stories: Indidis has petitioned the International Court of Justice to overturn the trial and conviction of Jesus Christ and his subsequent death sentence. "His selective and malicious prosecution violated his human rights through judicial misconduct, abuse of office, bias and prejudice," the lawyer told Kenyan paper The Nairobian. 'Some of those present spat in his face.' "This is the same case with Jesus.