Odd News

[Denny]

Gene therapy could treat depression: US research

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Gene therapy could become a powerful new weapon in the fight against severe depression that does not respond to traditional drug treatments, US researchers said Wednesday.

Restoring a key gene that activates a specific protein in the tiny part of the brain known as the nucleus accumbens reversed depression-like behavior in mice, the researchers said in the latest issue of Science Translational Medicine.

[Denny]

Historian discovers truth about iconic SF film

An iconic silent film starring San Francisco made its debut on "60 Minutes."

"A Trip Down Market Street" has riveting black and white scenes of life in the city before the Big One in 1906. Back then, Market street was little more than a dusty road filled with horse drawn carriages, men in hats and women in Victorian gowns bustling about.

One for the archives, right? Not quite.

[Denny]

Weird Glow from Earth's Auroras Explained

The mystery behind the faint glow of light in Earth's upper atmosphere, known as the diffuse aurora, has been found, scientists say.

A special kind of radio wave is at work behind the scenes to put on the auroras that form the northern and southern lights, a new study finds.

These aurora-triggering waves are called chorus waves because their signals sound like a bird's dawn chorus when played through a loud speaker. Past studies have shown these waves can also cause Earth's auroras to pulse as well as glow diffusely.

The new study, detailed in the Oct. 21 issue of the journal Nature, shows that chorus waves are responsible for scattering electrons that are trapped in space and dumping them down into the atmosphere to create the diffuse aurora.

[Denny]

World's longest cat — Stewie — measures 4 feet

RENO, Nev. – The world's longest cat measures more than 4 feet, stealing the record from another Maine Coone. The Reno Gazette-Journal reported that 5-year-old Stewie was certified as the new Guinness World Record holder after measuring 48 1/2 inches from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail bone. That's a little more than 4 feet long.

[MTGuru]

Good news, everyone! We may have 60 extra days to live ... before we all die a horrible death!

2012 Mayan Calendar 'Doomsday' Date Might Be Wrong

[Denny]

Academic: Jane Austen had spell checker

LONDON — She's renowned for her precise, exquisite prose, but new research shows Jane Austen was a poor speller and erratic grammarian who got a big helping hand from her editor.

Oxford University English professor Kathryn Sutherland studied 1,100 handwritten pages of unpublished work from the author of incisive social comedies such as "Pride and Prejudice." She said Saturday that they contradicted the claim by Austen's brother Henry that "everything came finished from her pen."

[Denny]

10 terrifying Halloween gadgets

Halloween is about fun, candy and costumes — but it is also about crippling, blood-curdling fear. If you have forgotten about the true meaning of Halloween, the following gadgets should be scary enough, creepy enough and just plain weird enough to remind you.

[Denny]

Unsung Creator of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Alex Anderson Dies

Animation has had plenty of unknown geniuses - from the directors, artists and storymen of Walt Disney's early features to the sly hands behind the silent pornographic cartoon Buried Treasure - but few were more obscure, or more important, than Alexander Anderson, who died Friday at 90 in Carmel, Cal. Anderson created the characters Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Bullwinkle Moose and Dudley Do-Right, and the vaudeville-style format, for the 1959 animated program Rocky and His Friends and its 1961 spinoff The Bullwinkle Show, known collectively as Rocky and Bullwinkle.

[Denny]

Dying Star's Last Breath Frozen in Hubble Photo

A star's last gasp at the final stage of its life has been frozen for all time in a new photo by the Hubble Space Telescope.

In the photo, Hubble took a deep look at NGC 6210, a curious planetary nebula located about 6,500 light-years away, in the constellation of Hercules.

[Denny]

Neutron Stars Are Doomed if Vacuum Energy Goes Wild

A mind-bogglingly huge buildup of "vacuum energy," which would occur in just milliseconds, could lead the stellar remnants known as neutron stars to instantly collapse or explode, scientists now suggest.

What is often thought of as the empty vacuum of space is actually filled with ghostly energy and virtual particles wavering in and out of existence, a bizarre prediction of quantum theory that numerous experiments have proven true.

This "vacuum energy," as scientists call it, is usually thought of as extremely weak at best. But theoretical physicists in Brazil suggest that the immensely powerful gravitational fields of neutron stars could "awaken the vacuum," causing its energy to build up exponentially very quickly.

[Denny]

Science struggling to track destruction of nature

LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists are struggling to get a full picture of the variety of wildlife species around the globe as climate change, human exploitation and pollution threaten "mass extinctions," a series of studies published on Wednesday showed.

The 16 studies in a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in London said science had an incomplete record of species from animals to plants and microbes at a time when they may be dying out faster than ever before.

Such concerns have led the United Nations to declare 2010 its International Year of Biodiversity, and governments are trying to agree new 2020 conservation targets at a two-week conference in the Japanese city of Nagoya, which ends Friday.

"There are very strong indications that the current rate of species extinctions far exceeds anything in the fossil record," said a summarizing paper, titled "Biological diversity in a changing world."

[Denny]

Spectacular unknown species found in Amazon

NAGOYA, Japan (AFP) – Spectacular species previously unknown to the outside world are being discovered in the Amazon rainforest at a rate of one every three days, environment group WWF said in a report published Tuesday.

An anaconda as long as a limousine, a giant catfish that eats monkeys, a blue fanged spider and poisoned dart frogs are among the 1,220 animals and plants to have been found from 1999 to 2009, according to the study.

[Denny]

[Denny]

fer Larry!

Drivers told to keep an eye out for Tulalip turkeys

TULALIP — Turkeys in traffic are an occasional sight now that the game birds are running wild in the meadows and forests of the Tulalip Tribes reservation.

Groups of a dozen or more have wandered onto the road, and at least one turkey has been hit along Marine Drive. He won't be the last, tribal wildlife manager Mike Sevigny said.

In August, tribal staff members released about 170 wild turkeys into a meadow carved from the 8,000 acres of woods on the reservation. Turkeys aren't native to northwest Washington, but tribal officials believe the fowl will establish themselves and provide hunting opportunities for tribal members as soon as next fall.

[Denny]

Weekend of the living dead: Zombie convention in Seattle

Zombie culture isn't really all about blood.

It's also about bile, muscle tissue, chyme (that's partly digested food) and a list of other things you probably don't like to think about.

That's just the first thing a novice might learn at ZomBcon, a three-day convention for zombie lovers taking place in Seattle this weekend. ZomBcon is a first for Seattle, the brainchild of the same coordinators who plan Fremont's Red, White, and Dead Zombie Walk and several other zombie-related events.

The Seattle Center serves as home base for the convention, but events are happening at venues across the city. There's Prom Night of the Living Dead at Neumos on Capitol Hill, a mass zombie-style vow renewal at the EMP Sky Church and zombie meet-ups at bars and clubs all over the city.