>Utrasound: Jesus and cross found in womb. Woman: maybe a good sign.

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When an Ohio woman looked at an ultrasound she expected to see a developing fetus.

Instead, she saw what she believes to be an image of Jesus Christ, MyFox Cleveland reported on its Web site.

Monet Sledge, from Lorain, Ohio, got an ultrasound in preparation for her first baby and was shocked when she saw what appeared to be an image of Christ on the Cross, the Web site reported.

Click here to discuss this story.

She showed the image to her sister, a mother of four, to get her opinion. “I was expecting to see little body parts,” Sledge’s sister Tequoia Smith told MyFox Cleveland. “Like a face, arms and legs.”

But she too believes saw Jesus on the cross.

“As soon as I saw it I was like oh my gosh.”

“People say maybe my baby is gonna be blessed and maybe it is a good sign,” said mother-to-be Sledge. “I don’t know, I’ve done wrong in my life, maybe he’s forgiven me early.” – fox

I’m not so sure that having jesus on a cross in any woman’s uterus is a good thing, but that’s just me.

>Evacuation Ordered as Chilean Volcano Begins to Spew Ash

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The Chaitén volcano in southern Chile blasted ash and what appeared to be lava a dozen miles into the air on Tuesday, leading the government to order the immediate and complete evacuation of everyone living within a 30-mile radius of it.

Preceded by dozens of tremors, the volcano — until now considered inactive — began erupting last Friday. It covered about 60 square miles with more than 15 inches of ash, rendering the air unbreathable, contaminating water sources, killing livestock and destroying all small- and medium-scale agriculture in this rural and mostly impoverished area 800 miles south of the capital, Santiago.

An enormous gray mushroom cloud of ash that could be seen from 100 miles away has since loomed over this sliver of land next to Argentina, where continental Chile breaks up into archipelagos. East winds have spread ash toward Argentina. The thick layer of volcanic ash, coupled with rain, has made access to the sparsely populated border zone difficult.

President Michelle Bachelet visited the area on Monday, announcing subsidies and other aid for affected families. On Tuesday, she convened an emergency committee of government ministers, emergency agency representatives, the director of the police force and regional officials.

The committee resolved to order the total evacuation of Chaitén, to authorize the release of emergency funds and to appoint Defense Minister José Goñi to coordinate the response to the natural disaster. – nyt

>Boomerang In Zero Gravity (International Space Station) video | The Weird Post

> Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.theweirdpost.com posted with vodpod

>Families sue undertakers in body parts scandal

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Families who claim the corpses of more than 1,000 relatives were dismembered and sold in an illegal body-parts scandal sued funeral directors and others on Tuesday.

The class action suit represents hundreds of people who claim their relatives’ body parts were harvested for medical use without their consent.

It charges seven individuals, and the funeral homes and human tissue services with which they worked, with conspiracy, negligence and the intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The seven were indicted by a grand jury last September and accused of harvesting bones, skin and tendons in unsanitary conditions, and selling them to hospitals with the risk that they could infect patients who received them.

The defendants allegedly made $3.8 million from sale of body parts obtained in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey between February 2004 and September 2005 in an operation that was “ghoulish, greedy, dangerous and criminal,” the grand jury’s report said.

In all, the scheme took tissue from 1,007 bodies, including 244 from Philadelphia funeral homes.

The suit, filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common pleas, alleges that after removing parts from the corpses, the accused replaced harvested bone and tissue with foreign objects such as PVC piping “so that bodies would still appear normal for their pending visitations, funerals, or post-mortem proceedings.”

The defendants also falsified medical documents in order to take the body parts, including one claiming that the wife of a deceased man had given permission for his tissues to be harvested. The man, James Bonner, had never been married to the woman named in the document, the suit says.

“We must hold the responsible parties and their accomplices accountable,” Larry Cohan, an attorney representing the families, said in a statement. “These families have experienced terrible suffering — they deserve to know the truth and get on with their lives.”

Plaintiffs’ attorneys are also representing the families of “hundreds” of people who received body parts harvested in the operation.

Named in the suit are Michael Mastromarino, Christopher Aldorasi, Lee Cruceta, Kevin Vickers, Gerald Garzone, his brother Louis Garzone and James McCafferty.

Five of the accused face criminal charges at a trial scheduled to begin on September 2. – ya

>Civil War cannonball kills Virginia relic collector

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Like many boys in the South, Sam White got hooked on the Civil War early, digging up rusting bullets and military buttons in the battle-scarred earth of his hometown.

As an adult, he crisscrossed the Virginia countryside in search of wartime relics — weapons, battle flags, even artillery shells buried in the red clay. He sometimes put on diving gear to feel for treasures hidden in the black muck of river bottoms.

But in February, White’s hobby cost him his life: A cannonball he was restoring exploded, killing him in his driveway.

More than 140 years after Lee surrendered to Grant, the cannonball was still powerful enough to send a chunk of shrapnel through the front porch of a house a quarter-mile from White’s home in this leafy Richmond suburb.

White’s death shook the close-knit fraternity of relic collectors and raised concerns about the dangers of other Civil War munitions that lay buried beneath old battlefields. Explosives experts said the fatal blast defied extraordinary odds.

“You can’t drop these things on the ground and make them go off,” said retired Col. John F. Biemeck, formerly of the Army Ordnance Corps.

White, 53, was one of thousands of hobbyists who comb former battlegrounds for artifacts using metal detectors, pickaxes, shovels and trowels.

“There just aren’t many areas in the South in which battlefields aren’t located. They’re literally under your feet,” said Harry Ridgeway, a former relic hunter who has amassed a vast collection. “It’s just a huge thrill to pull even a mundane relic out of the ground.”

After growing up in Petersburg, White went to college, served on his local police force, then worked for 25 years as a deliveryman for UPS. He retired in 1998 and devoted most of his time to relic hunting.

He was an avid reader, a Civil War raconteur and an amateur historian who watched History Channel programs over and over, to the mild annoyance of his wife.

“I used to laugh at him and say, ‘Why do you watch this? You know how it turned out. It’s not going to be any different,'” Brenda White said.

She didn’t share her husband’s devotion, but she was understanding of his interest.

“True relic hunters who have this passion, they don’t live that way vicariously, like if you were a sports fanatic,” she said. “Finding a treasure is their touchdown, even if it’s two, three bullets.”

Union and Confederate troops lobbed an estimated 1.5 million artillery shells and cannonballs at each other from 1861 to 1865. As many as one in five were duds.

Some of the weapons remain buried in the ground or river bottoms. In late March, a 44-pound, 8-inch mortar shell was uncovered at Petersburg National Battlefield, the site of an epic 292-day battle. The shell was taken to the city landfill and detonated.

Black powder provided the destructive force for cannonballs and artillery shells. The combination of sulfur, potassium nitrate and finely ground charcoal requires a high temperature — 572 degrees Fahrenheit — and friction to ignite.

White estimated he had worked on about 1,600 shells for collectors and museums. On the day he died, he had 18 cannonballs lined up in his driveway to restore.

White’s efforts seldom raised safety concerns. His wife and son Travis sometimes stood in the driveway as he worked.

“Sam knew his stuff, no doubt about it,” said Jimmy Blankenship, historian-curator at the Petersburg battleground. “He did know Civil War ordnance.”

An investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms will not be complete until the end of May, but police who responded to the blast and examined shrapnel concluded that it came from a Civil War explosive.

Experts suspect White was killed while trying to disarm a 9-inch, 75-pound naval cannonball, a particularly potent explosive with a more complex fuse and many times the destructive power of those used by infantry artillery.

Biemeck and Peter George, co-author of a book on Civil War ordnance, believe White was using either a drill or a grinder attached to a drill to remove grit from the cannonball, causing a shower of sparks.

Because of the fuse design, it may have appeared as though the weapon’s powder had already been removed, leading even a veteran like White to conclude mistakenly that the ball was inert.

The weapon also had to be waterproof because it was designed to skip over the water at 600 mph to strike at the waterline of an enemy ship. The protection against moisture meant the ball could have remained potent longer than an infantry shell. – ya

>Cloud Rat Rediscovered after 112 Years

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The greater dwarf cloud rat was thought to live in the canopies of tall trees in the Philippines, but the last sighting of one was 112 years ago. Now it has been found again.

One of the rodents was found in Mt. Pulag National Park in the Philippines.

The fist-sized mammal has dense, soft, reddish-brown fur, a black mask around large dark eyes, small rounded ears, a broad and blunt snout, and a long tail covered with dark hair.

“This beautiful little animal was seen by biologists only once previously — by a British researcher in 1896 who was given several specimens by local people, so he knew almost nothing about the ecology of the species,” said Lawrence Heaney, curator of mammals at the Field Museum and leader of a team that rediscovered the rat. “Since then, the species has been a mystery, in part because there is virtually no forest left on Mt. Data, where it was first found.”

The dwarf cloud rat (Carpomys melanurus) is a smaller relative of giant clouds rats, spectacular animals found only on Luzon Island in the Philippines, but widespread and comparatively well known.

The dwarf cloud rat was captured by Danilo Balete of the Philippine National Museum, in a patch of mature mossy forest (also called cloud forest) high on Mt. Pulag, at about 7,700 feet (2,350 meters) above sea level. It was in the canopy of a large tree, on a large horizontal branch covered by a thick layer of moss, orchids and ferns, Balete said.

“We had suspected from its broad, hand-like hind feet that it lived up in big trees, but this is the first evidence to confirm that,” Balete said.

Since this is the first time the dwarf cloud rat has been seen in its natural habitat, the data collected from this specimen “will significantly augment our understanding of how these rodents evolved, what makes them tick, and how we can keep them around,” said William Stanley, collections manager of mammals at the Field Museum. “Also, finding this animal again gives us hope for the conservation of one of the most diverse and threatened mammal faunas of the world.”

The research team thinks that this species probably lives only high in the big canopy trees in mature mossy forests at high elevations.

“Now that we know where to look for them, it will be possible to learn more,” Heaney said. – livesci

>Where am I? Chemical compass helps bird brains

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A team of scientists believe they can provide the key to an enduring wildlife mystery: how do birds navigate?

Two main theories joust to explain the seemingly miraculous avian compass.

One, supported by research among homing pigeons four years ago, is that birds have tiny particles, called magnetite, in their upper beaks that respond to shifts in Earth’s magnetic field.

Another is that they get a navigational fix from a photochemical compass — a protein that is triggered by light through the bird’s eye and responds to magnetism.

Until now, this latter idea was confined to realm of speculation. No-one had come across a molecule able to respond so sensitively to Earth’s weak geomagnetic force.

But Oxford University researchers have for the first time created a compound that — in a lab but not in nature — confirms that a “chemical compass” of this kind can at least exist. The compound links two biological pigments called carotenoid and porphyrin with fullerene, a spherical carbon molecule.

A burst of light is first used to excite the compound, initiating a transfer of electrons within. This leads to the creation of “radical pairs” of electrons — odd-numbered electrons which team up to form couples, which briefly separate and then recombine.

Electrons have a property called spin. Initially, the spins point in opposite directions, but in this case, a magnetic field causes the spins to become aligned.

In the bird’s built-in compass, when the “radical pairs” recombine, their nicely-aligned spins trigger a biochemical reaction. This is what appears to give the bird information about the magnetic field.

“It’s a proof of concept,” said Peter Hore, who co-led the research with Christiane Timmel at the university’s Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory.

“We’ve demonstrated in principle that an animal could use a chemical reaction to detect not just the presence of the Earth’s magnetic field but also its direction.”

The results chime with the notion that in the bird’s eye is a magnetoreceptor which is triggered by shortwave frequencies, or blue light, that are present in sunlight, he said.

When birds fly at night, they get a navigational “fix” at sunset that may enable them to fly on autopilot until sunrise, Hore suggested.

He theorised that birds could have both types of navigational aid. Magnetite could be used as a “map sense”, enabling the bird to locate itself generally on the Earth’s surface, while a photochemical could provide the “compass sense” for faster and more detailed positioning.

The debate is far from over.

If the photochemical and magnetite ideas are making good headway, it is still unclear exactly how the bird’s brain is able to receive the navigational signals.

And some scientists say that optical cues such as the position of the Sun and the stars and light polarisation, as well as olfactory cues — odours in the atmosphere — could be important signposts.

Another puzzle is how salamanders, frogs and other non-avian animals with in-built compasses are able to orient themselves in relation to the magnetic field. – ya

>Scientist rediscovers rare plant unseen since 1985

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A scientist with the Missouri Botanical Garden has rediscovered and identified a rare parasitic plant that hasn’t been seen by botanists in more than 20 years.

A single specimen of the plant was found in Mexico in 1985, but the plant wasn’t seen again until St. Louis botanist George Yatskievych and a colleague found it in a pine oak forest in Mexico’s mountains.

The plant, which he is identifying and naming for the first time, is not a classic beauty. The odd, orange-brown, fleshy-stemmed plant — which will have the formal Latin name for the “little hermit of Mexico” — has a pine cone-shaped dense cluster of flowers and juicy celery-like stalks.

But to Yatskievych, it’s “weird and wonderful.”

“I’ve always been interested in plants that don’t conform to our preconceived notion of what a plant should be,” he said. “Beauty is in the beholder’s eye and this plant is wonderful in so many ways.

“You can’t call it ugly, but on the other hand, I recognize it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.”

Wayt Thomas, scientist at the New York Botanical Garden, was looking for other plants in Mexico when he encountered a single specimen of the plant in 1985.

He cut a piece of it, and kept a dried, pressed specimen at his institution. He sent queries and photos of it to fellow botanists, but no one recognized or claimed it, he said, not even the late Larry Heckard who was the leading North American expert on parasitic plants. It went unrecognized because parasitic plants, when dried, don’t maintain their color and structure well.

“It sat around for a long, long time,” Thomas said.

But by luck, he met an Austrian botanist who referred him to Yatskievych, who is writing text for the encyclopedic “Flora of North America,” on the very family of flowers he believed the Mexican plant was in. Plants in the family Orobanchaceae attach as parasites on the roots of host plants.

Photosynthesis, the process by which plants use sunlight and water to create energy in the form of sugar, is hard work, Yatskievych said, and these parasitic plants have developed a way to “steal their food” and hence survive in habitats that otherwise might be inhospitable.

When Yatskievych received Thomas’ specimen in 2005, his response was, “What the heck is this?” He traveled to Guerrero, Mexico, the following year to meet with the same guide who helped Thomas two decades earlier.

The original site of the plant, near an old camping spot in the mountains west of Acapulco, had been destroyed. But days of searching finally led them to a 60-foot tree that was host to the parasitic plant. Starting as a cancer on the side of the underground root, it grew into a fleshy stem that had pushed 18 inches through rocky soil so it could flower. Yatskievych said his reaction was one of “overriding relief.” He traveled to Mexico again in 2007 to gather information on the host tree and see the plant’s fruits.

In the hierarchy of plant classification, a “species” is a collection of individuals, and “genus” is a collection of species. A collection of “genera” is a “family.”

The “little hermit” is both a new species and a new genus because it is so unusual and distinct that it cannot be included in any of the existing genera in the plant family Orobanchaceae. No other populations have been found in the host tree’s zone which spans from central Mexico to Costa Rica.

That could change in time, when Yatskievych’s research is published in the next year.

Thomas said the find is significant because there’s no field guide for the world of plants. He said describing a new genus is quite rare.

The plant is at risk of extinction as roads, logging and conversion to pasture destroy its habitat, Yatskievych said. – yahoo

Looks like an alien spore.

>Sun’s Movement Through Milky Way Regularly Sends Comets Hurtling, Coinciding With Mass Life Extinctions

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The sun’s movement through the Milky Way regularly sends comets hurtling into the inner solar system — coinciding with mass life extinctions on earth, a new study claims. The study suggests  a link between comet bombardment and the movement through the galaxy.

Scientists at the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology built a computer model of our solar system’s movement and found that it “bounces” up and down through the plane of the galaxy. As we pass through the densest part of the plane, gravitational forces from the surrounding giant gas and dust clouds dislodge comets from their paths. The comets plunge into the solar system, some of them colliding with the earth.

The Cardiff team found that we pass through the galactic plane every 35 to 40 million years, increasing the chances of a comet collision tenfold. Evidence from craters on Earth also suggests we suffer more collisions approximately 36 million years. Professor William Napier, of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology, said: “It’s a beautiful match between what we see on the ground and what is expected from the galactic record.”

The periods of comet bombardment also coincide with mass extinctions, such as that of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Our present position in the galaxy suggests we are now very close to another such period.

While the “bounce” effect may have been bad news for dinosaurs, it may also have helped life to spread. The scientists suggest the impact may have thrown debris containing micro-organisms out into space and across the universe.

Centre director Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe said: “This is a seminal paper which places the comet-life interaction on a firm basis, and shows a mechanism by which life can be dispersed on a galactic scale.” – sd

>Nutcracker Man strangely preferred fruits

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An early human with a big mouth made for chomping strangely preferred to eat soft, squishy fruits, new dental analyses suggest.

The finding — the big guy’s teeth showed only light wear — might force scientists to downgrade everything they thought they knew about hominids’ diets. For starters, the findings could cause this hominid, Paranthropus boisei, to relinquish rights to its long-held moniker, the Nutcracker Man, in the eyes of anthropologists.

The Nutcracker Man lived from about 2.3 million years ago to 1.2 million years ago, before vanishing from the fossil record. He boasted a huge jaw with massive chewing muscles and flat, tough teeth whose crushing power could obliterate the roots and nuts of his home on the African savanna. – msnbc