Scientists effort to discover the color of the Atlantic Ocean

A team of scientists from four countries have set out on a maritime journey to discover what colour the Atlantic Ocean is.

They want to find out the impact of misty clouds of aerosol particles hanging above the water on algae that are the foundation of the marine food chain.

Around a third of the carbon dioxide free into the atmosphere by human activities is engrossed by microscopic algae in the sea.

This process gives the waters a greenish shade as algae blooms close to the surface thrive.

But satellite images in recent years have shown large aerosol clouds forming above the oceans, chiefly in the southern part of the Atlantic.

They increase the amount of the sun's rays reproduced away from the sea, reducing the amount of algae and therefore decrease the water's greenish hue.

The project engages scientists from Brazil, Argentina, France and the US currently aboard the Melville, a research vessel belonging to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.

The teams hope to gain more accurate measurements of what is happening than those taken from satellites that may be indistinct by strong winds or waves.

Milton Kampel, the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in Brazil, said: "[The satellite] concentrations have not yet been long-established with field data. We need to see, for example, this is not an effect caused by breaking waves at sea."

They are also taking water samples to study the result on algae.
The Melville left Cape Town in late February and is scheduled to arrive in Valparaiso, Chile, next week.

US regret for Afghan deaths 'not enough' –Karzai

Afghan President Hamid Karzai told General David Petraeus, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, on Sunday his regret for a foreign air strike that killed nine children last week was "not enough".

At a meeting with his safety advisers at which Petraeus was present, Karzai said civilian wounded by foreign troops were "no longer acceptable" to the Afghan government or to the Afghan people, Karzai's palace said in a report.

Civilian wounded caused by NATO-led and Afghan forces hunting rebellious have again become a major source of friction between Karzai and his Western backers.

In the meeting, Petraeus apologized for the deaths of the nine children in eastern Kunar region last Tuesday, saying the killings were a "great error" and there would be no do again.

"In return, the president said the apology was not enough and harassed that civilian casualties caused during operations by alliance forces were the main cause of strained relations between the United States and Afghanistan," the palace said.

"The people of Afghanistan are fed up with such terrible incidents and apologies or censure is not going to heal their wounds," it quoted Karzai as saying.

Hours before Karzai's statement, hundreds of people chanting "Death to America" protested in the Afghan capital against the recent spate of civilian deaths, in a sign of the boiling anti-Western feeling among many normal Afghans.

International anxiety over civilian casualties has grown, and the fallout from the recent incidents is even threatening to basket peace and settlement efforts, with a slow drawdown of the 150,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan to begin in July.

Last Tuesday, two attack helicopters gunned down nine Afghan boys as they collected firewood in Kunar after a nearby foreign base had come under insurgent assault. The event, in a unstable area that has seen a recent spike in foreign military operations, encouraged rare public regret from Petraeus and his deputy.

President Barack Obama also expressed "deep regret" over the killings and the United Nations called for a review of air hits.

There have been at least four events of civilian casualties by foreign troops in the east in the past two weeks in which Afghan officials say more than 80 people died.

Demonstrators demo through the centre of Kabul, some carrying banners bearing pictures of blood-covered dead children they said were killed in air hits by foreign forces.

"We will never forgive the bloodshed by our innocent Afghans who were killed by NATO forces," said one activist Ahmad Baseer, a university student.

"The Kunar incident is not the first and it will not be the last time civilian wounded is caused by foreign troops."

Dozens of women were also among the activists, a rare incidence in a country where women are largely banned from public life. Using loudspeakers, some of the women chanted: "We don't want Americans, we don't want the Taliban, and we want peace."

Basketball star dies after winning shot in team's ideal season

The score was tied. The game was in overtime. The mood, emotional.

Number 35 came charging up to the net and hit a last-moment winning layup for his unbeatable Fennville High School Blackhawks to end the regular season Thursday night with a perfect 20 wins.

The other players lifted their star, 16-year-old Wes Leonard, on their shoulders. The loud crowd charged the court to hug him. It was the biggest moment in memory for the tiny Michigan town of Fennville.

And then it all turned to black.

Silence fell under the cruel glare of the florescent lights. Leonard lay still on the court, pale in his school colors. His family and coaches bounded him. He wasn't breathing, his friend Arista Sauceda recalled. His heart had stopped cold.

After attempts to revitalize the varsity player in the gym, an ambulance transported him to nearby Holland Hospital. Doctors effort on him for an hour and 20 minutes.

They could not save him. By 10:40 at night, when Leonard should have been out rejoicing with his classmates, he was dead.

An autopsy Friday resolute that Leonard died of cardiac arrest due to an enlarged heart, said a statement from Dr. David A. Start, the Ottawa County chief medical examiner.

As news of Leonard's death spread, a small group of people on the banks of Lake Michigan convulsed in shock. A moment of huge school pride was reduced to irrelevance, a moment of joy turned into the opposite.

Knife in man’s head has been removed after four years

A Chinese man has had a four-inch blade surgically removed from his head after four years of self-medication with anesthetic injections.

Mr Ni had been suffering from severe headaches for more than four years before seeking treatment for what he supposed was an aural disease. After taking X-rays of his head, doctors were shocked to find a four-inch blade stuck in his brain.

"We checked his mouth, but no injury or scar has been found. It is very odd as to how the blade got into his head," said Xu Wen, deputy director of the stomatology department of the People's Hospital in Yuxi city.

Mr Ni later recalled being attempted in the lower right jaw during a fight with a robber four years ago. After that, he had suffered regular headaches, difficulty swallowing food, a gruff voice and had occasionally spoke gibberish.

Previous hospital examinations had found no cause of the symptoms. "As time went on, I used injections to kill pain in head and ears. It has now been four years," Mr Ni said. The rusty blade luckily did not touch the brain artery nor facial nerves, keeping him narrowly alive.

Mr Ni is now getting better from the operation in hospital.

Orphanage fire kills 10 children in Estonia

A fire raced through an orphanage for disabled children in western Estonia on Sunday, killing 10 of them, a salvage service spokesman said. There were 37 children and nine adults inside the wooden building when the fire happened at 2:30 p.m. (1230GMT) in the coastal town of Haapsalu, said Viktor Saaremets, a spokesman for the Western Estonia Rescue Services Center.

"By the time salvage workers and firefighters arrived at the scene three or four minutes later the building was completely in flames," he said. Ten children were killed and one adult was hurt, Saaremets said. The others were abandoned to a nearby building and were not hurt, he said.

The cause of the fire was not right away clear. "Fire safety inspectors went there in January and found that the building met all the necessary criteria," Saaremets said.

Estonian newspaper Postimees showed pictures on its website of flames tearing into a one-story wooden building. Dead were carried out from a window, as thick smoke billowed from the roof.

The Estonian government met for an crisis meeting after the blaze and declared Monday a nationwide day of grief. Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves expressed his pity. "The tragic accident in the Haapsalu orphanage shocked the whole of Estonia today," Ilves said in a brief statement.

Local officials in Haapsalu told Estonian media that the number of victims was improbable to rise.

The Haapsalu orphanage was opened as a home for immobilized children in 1950, when Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union, according to its website. In 1996 it moved into the current building, which was funded by the Estonian government as well as Swedish, Finnish and US donors.

Shocking cyclone wreaks chaos in Australia

INNISFAIL, Australia (AFP) – A frightening top-strength cyclone slammed into Australia's populous northeast coast Thursday leaving a trail of obliteration, the worst storm to batter the region in a century.

Howling winds beat up by Severe Tropical Cyclone Yasi with speeds of up to 290 kilometres (181 miles) per hour ripped off roofs, felled trees and cut power lines as the tempest crossed the Queensland coast.

Yasi made landfall around midnight (1400 GMT), the Bureau of Meteorology said, after the cyclone was improved early in the day to a category five storm from category four. The storm made landfall near Mission Beach, which lies in the heart of a tourism and agriculture-rich area 180 kilometres south of Cairns, gateway to the Great Barrier Reef.

The bureau later downgraded the cyclone to a group three storm and said it would continue to weaken as it moved in a west-southwesterly direction but said it remained dangerous. "The very unhelpful core, with gusts up to 205 km/h, is continuing to move inland west of Cardwell towards the Georgetown area," it said.

"Critical winds with gusts in excess of 125 km/h are occurring between Innisfail and Townsville and extending inland to east of Georgetown." The stricken area's million inhabitants were earlier warned of an "extremely dangerous sea level rise" and "very destructive" winds supplementary Yasi's arrival, posing a severe threat to life.

State Premier Anna Bligh echoed the bleak note of caution, urging residents to steel themselves for what dawn and the passing of the storm might make known. "Without doubt we are set to meet scenes of devastation and heartbreak on an unprecedented scale," she said.

"It will take all of us and all of our strength to conquer this. The next 24 hours I think are going to be very, very tough ones for everybody." More than 10,000 seaside residents and tourists were protecting in 20 evacuation centres across the region -- some so crowded that people were turned away -- while tens of thousands more were staying with family and friends.

Locals further from the water were told to batten down and get ready a "safe room" such as a bathroom or a basement, with mattresses, pillows, a radio, food and water supplies to wait out the cyclone. About 4,000 soldiers were on standby to help residents when the storm passed, but until then, locals were on their own as it was too unsafe to deploy emergency personnel, officials said.

Yasi was determining up as the worst cyclone in Australian history, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said, adding the nation was with Queenslanders as they faced "many, many dreadful, frightening hours" of destruction.

"This is almost certainly the worst cyclone that our nation has ever seen," Gillard said. Bligh said grave fears were held for major power transmission lines in the region, never before tested at category five winds, caution that their failure would be a "catastrophic" issue for the entire state.

"We are planning for an aftermath that may see a catastrophic failure of necessary services," she said. The storm's size and power dwarfs Cyclone Tracy, which hit the northern Australian city of Darwin in 1974, killing 71 people and destruction more than 90 percent of its houses.

It comes after scores of Queensland towns were overwhelmed and more than 30 people killed by flooding in recent weeks that caused Australia's most luxurious natural disaster on record.

Orangutan DNA Enhances Survival Chances

Orangutans are far more genetically varied than thought, a finding that could help their survival, say scientists bringing their first full DNA analysis of the critically-endangered ape. The study, published Thursday in the science journal Nature, also reveals that the orangutan -- "the man of the forest" has hardly evolved over the last 15 million years, in sharp difference to Homo sapiens and his closest cousin, the chimpanzee.

Once widely dispersed across Southeast Asia, only two populations of the intelligent, tree-dwelling ape remain in the wild, both on islands in Indonesia. Some 40,000 to 50,000 individuals live in Borneo, while in Sumatra deforestation and hunting has abridged a once robust community to about 7,000 individuals, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

These two groups split genetically about 400,000 years ago, significantly later than once thought, and today comprise separate albeit closely related species, Pongo abelii (Sumatra) and Pongo pygmaeus (Borneo), the study showed. An international group of more than 30 scientists decoded the full genomic sequence of a female Sumatran orangutan, nicknamed Susie.

They then completed précis sequences of 10 more adults, five from each population. "We found that the average orangutan is more varied genetically speaking -- than the average human," said lead author Devin Locke, an evolutionary geneticist at Washington University in Missouri.

Human and orangutan genomes partly cover by about 97 percent, compared to 99 percent for humans and chimps, he said. But the big surprise was that the far smaller Sumatran population showed more difference in its DNA than its close cousin in Borneo.

While confusing, scientists said this could help boost the species' chances of survival. "Their genetic difference is good news because, in the long run, it enables them to maintain a healthy population" and will help shape conservation labors, said co-author Jeffrey Rogers, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine.

Ultimately, however, the fate of this great ape whose behavior and unenergetic expressions can be eerily human at times will depend on our stewardship of the environment, he said. "If the forest disappears, then the genetic variation won't matter -- home is absolutely essential," he said. "If things continue as they have for the next 30 years, we won't have orangutans in the wild."

The researchers were also struck by the unrelenting stability of the orangutan genome, which appears to have changed very little since branching off on a separate evolutionary path. This means the species is hereditarily closer to the common ancestor from which all the great apes are presumed to have originated, some 14 to 16 million years ago.

One likely clue to the lack of structural changes in the orangutan's DNA is the relative absence, compared to humans, of telltale bits of genetic code known as an "Alu". These short stretches of DNA make up about 10 percent of the human genome figuring about 5,000 and can pop up in unpredictable places to create new mutations, some of which persist.

"In the orangutan genome, we found only 250 new Alu copies over a 15-million year time span," Locke said. Orangutans are the only great apes to dwell first and foremost in trees. In the wild, they can live 35 to 45 years, and in captivity an additional 10 years. Females give birth, on average, every eight years, and the longest interbirth interval among mammals.

Earlier research has shown that the great apes are not only adept at making and using tools, but are capable of cultural learning, long thought to be an exclusively human trait.

Pentagon faces $78 billion expenditure cut

The Pentagon will have to cut expenditure by $78 billion over the next five years, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday, forcing the Army and the Marine Corps to get smaller the number of troops on active duty and finally imposing the first freeze on military spending since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The shock announcement from Gates was a reminder for the military establishment, which has benefited from a gusher of new money over the past decade that it will not remain excused from painful austerity measures.

In a news conference to proclaim what he described as efficiency measures, Gates said he hopes that "what had been a culture of endless money . . . will become a culture of savings and restraint" at the Defense Department. At a time of "extreme fiscal duress," he said, "every dollar spent on excess overhead or unneeded programs . . . is a dollar not obtainable to support our troops" or to deal with future threats.

"We must come to understand that not every defense program is necessary, not every defense dollar is sacred or well-spent, and more of everything is simply not sustainable," Gates said.

In response to questions, he highlighted that the $78-billion reduction over the next five years actually represents a "decline in the rate of growth," since the Pentagon budget will grow "in absolute dollars" every year. "The focus here is on a reduction in the rate of growth, as opposed to total cuts," he said.

Gates also harassed that, even after the reductions in troop strength, both the Army and the Marine Corps both will still be larger than they were when he became defense secretary four years ago. The Army will be bigger by about 40,000 soldiers, and the Marines will motionless have 7,000 to 12,000 more troops, he said.

Baby born in car all through snowstorm in New Brunswick

Moncton - One couple thought they had plenty of time to get to the hospital during Monday morning’s snowstorm, but things occured so quickly that they had to pull over on the side of the highway for their baby to be born.

Ashley Hicks, her mother, and Joseph Gautreau were compulsory to pull over on the Trans-Canada Highway, near the Casino New Brunswick and Magnetic Hill exit shortly before 8 am. They called for help but the baby arrived before emergency workers could get there.

“With my daughter she was six-and-a-half hours and they say it gets easier”, said her mother. “But then with my son it was 14-and-a-half hours, and then this one was, like, three minutes.” She said that she felt ill during the pregnancy so she had been eager for an easy labour, but didn't think it would be as easy as it was.

Gautreau had by then tied the umbilical cord with a lace from his shoe when the firefighters arrived.

“We just sort of helped out,” Jamie Richford, one of the firefighter. “We made sure the umbilical cord was set to be cut and we in fact let the husband, or boyfriend, cut the cord so he wasn’t besieged by all the people there.

An ambulance then arrived and took them to Moncton Hospital, which was less than 10 kilometres away.

Plagiarism line over 2016 Olympic logo

Organizers of the Rio Olympics are on the suspicious after similarities between the logo for the 2016 Games and a Colorado-based charity foundation were discovered.

The logo, which was released on New Year's Eve at a huge celebration at Copacabana beach, depicts figures acceptance in a circular motion. It was soon noticed that the design resembles the logo for The Telluride
Foundation, a Colorado charity chaired by Norman Schwarzkopf. 

Take away the legs and the red dancer from the Telluride logo and you have Rio's. It's unquestionably similar. But is it plagiarism?

The director of the Brazilian agency that created the logo says no. Fred Gelli admits that there are similarities between the two, but guaranteed that his design was original. "For some reason, we missed that one," he said.

I posed the plagiarism query to Dan Levy, a graphic designer who also hosts a popular sports podcast. He said it's common for the logos of small businesses to partly cover but that it's unforgivable for a major international sporting event to come up with such an unoriginal design. If the Brazilian press could discover the resemblance between Rio 2016 and Telluride, then surely a research and development team could have done the same.

"These logos are way too close for my liking," Levy wrote in an e-mail. "Even the color dispersal is nearly identical. Somebody got ripped off."

The Telluride Foundation, which has yet to comment on the matter, may not be able to protest too loudly though. It seems that the generous organization did some design-borrowing of its own when it made its logo.

Some have noticed its similarity to "The Dancer" by Henri Matisse.

If simulation is the sincerest form of flattery, Matisse would be satisfied.

My biggest problem with the Rio logo isn't the similarity to Telluride's or the similarity between Telluride's and Matisse, but that the logo itself is dead and boring. Organizers say the design is supposed to stand for "contagious energy, harmonious diversity, exuberant nature and Olympic spirit." I must be missing something.

Triplets Born after 11 Years Apart

Ever wonder what you were like when you were rising up? Two 11-year-old sisters in England will have just that possibility, thanks to the amazing birth of their newborn triplet who had been on ice since she was conceived more than a decade ago.

When Adrian and Lisa Shepherd decided to start a family in 1998, they underwent in vitro fertilization at the Midland Fertility Clinic because Lisa undergo from fertility issues that made traditional conception hard.

Doctors obtained 24 eggs from the mother, 14 of which were productively fertilized. Two of those embryos were then entrenched in Lisa, who gave birth to twins Megan and Bethany in 1999.

The other 12 embryos were placed in cryogenic storage space until the Walsall family in progress talking about having another child last year.

"We didn't know if it would work, and we decided that we would just have one go with one embryo and if it didn't work, we wouldn't try again," Lisa, 37, told the Daily Mail. "It was one last chance, and if it was meant to be, then it would occur."

The Shepherds returned to the clinic, where doctors implanted a third embryo in Lisa that had been conceive on the same day as Megan and Bethany.

"It seemed odd to think that we were using embryos that we had stored all those years ago, that were conceived at the same time as the girls," Lisa said. "We knew that if we had another baby it would in effect be the girls' triplet as they were all conceived at the same time."

Ryleigh was born last month at 7 pounds 10 ounces -- 11 years after her sisters. Experts told the paper it could be the longest age gap between siblings conceived during the same fertility treatment.

"When Ryleigh arrived, she looked like both the girls did when they were born 11 years before," Lisa said. "It was uncanny."

Stem Cell Therapy To Monkey

A once paralyzed monkey has become the first case in which a small monkey recovered from a spinal injury.

Japanese researchers said Wednesday they had used stem cells to restore incomplete mobility in a small monkey that had been paralyzed from the neck down by a spinal injury. "It is the world's first case in which a small-size monkey recovered from a spinal injury using stem cells," Professor Hideyuki Okano of Tokyo's Keio University told AFP.

Okano's research team, which earlier helped a mouse get well its mobility in a similar treatment, injected so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into a paralyzed marmoset, he said.

The team placed four types of genes into human skin cells to create the iPS cells, according to Kyodo News. The injection was given on the ninth day after the injury, considered the most effectual timing, and the monkey started to move its limbs again within two to three weeks, Okano said.

"After six weeks, the animal had recovered to the level where it was jumping around," he told AFP. "It was very close to the normal level."

Scientists say the use of human developing stem cells as a treatment for cancer and other diseases holds great promise, but the process has drawn fire from religious conservatives and others who be in opposition to it.

Embryonic stem cell research is contentious because human embryos are destroyed in order to obtain the cells capable of developing into almost every tissue of the body.

Queen Elizabeth turns to a great-grandmother

Queen Elizabeth, 84, became a great-grandmother for the first time when the wife of her grandson Peter Phillips gave life to a baby girl, Buckingham Palace said on Thursday.

Autumn Phillips, a Canadian, gave birth on Wednesday.

"The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh, The Princess Royal, Captain Mark Phillips and Autumn's family have been informed and are enchanted with the news. The baby's name will be confirmed in due course," the statement said.

Peter Phillips is the only son of the Princess Royal, Princess Anne, and her first husband Mark Phillips. He was the first grandchild of the Queen to marry in spite of constant media speculation about some of her other grandchildren Prince Harry, Prince William and Phillips's sister Zara.

The baby is 12th in line to the throne. Her birth also made Zara an aunt. The royal family said last week that Zara, a successful equestrian athlete, was to marry rugby player Mike Tindall.

Peter and Autumn Phillips, who courted controversy by selling the rights to their wedding to Hello! Magazine for a reported 500,000 pounds ($772,000), lived until recently in Hong Kong, where he worked for the Royal Bank of Scotland. He now works for the bank in London.

Oz court nods for teen to change sex

In a strange case, a 16-year-old autistic schoolboy has been allowed by a court in Australia to become a woman on the condition that he gets his sperm frozen in case he wants to have children in the future.

A female judge in a Family Court has given her nod to the schoolboy, who was given the pseudonym "O", to begin drug treatment to become a woman before puberty fully takes hold, 'The Daily Telegraph' in Sydney reported.

Justice Linda Dessau said that the boy, who suffers from mild Asperger's syndrome, was grown-up enough to know what he wanted. She said her decision was backed by his parents, six specialists and the boy's self-governing lawyer. After hearing that the boy comes from a loving family who "love and respect him", the judge said he's so frantic to become a girl that he had become suicidal and once took the extreme step of swallowing a lead solder at his school.

The court, however, said the boy would have his sperm collected and stored because of concerns the female hormones would affect his aptitude to have children. The judge has held the case in unprecedented confidentiality to protect the boy's identity. She has not only concealed his name but also those of his lawyers, his doctors, the hospital where he'll have treatment and the city in which the court sat.

It's not the first time that an Australian court has created controversy by allowing a minor to start hormone treatment to change sex. Six years ago, the Family court allowed 13-year-old girl "Alex" to begin hormone treatment to become a man. And, in another case, a 12-year-old girl was also allowed to take hormones to live life as a man.

Three Oscar nominees set to open Wednesday

Days after Oscar ballots were sent out, the final three awards nominees are set to open in theaters Wednesday "Another Year," "Biutiful" and "Blue Valentine."

"Another Year," written and directed by British filmmaker Mike Leigh, opens in six theaters in New York and Los Angeles. The film stars Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen and Lesley Manville.

"Blue Valentine" will be in four theaters in New York and Los Angeles. The drama, starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, made headlines for earning a commercially poisonous NC-17 rating for open sexual scenes, but the tag was reduced to a less-restrictive R rating on appeal.

"Biutiful" plays in one theater in New York and one in Los Angeles to meet the criteria for Oscar consideration. The Javier Bardem film officially opens in a limited run January 28.

After a long downturn in the indie market, business has been picking up, with fims such as "Black Swan" and "The Fighter" crossing over to the normal.

Belgian man finds £255,000 while refurbishing an old bank

A Belgian man refurbishing a house in Ghent found £255,000 in cash that had been left behind available from when the building had housed a bank almost 10 years ago.

Ferhat Kaya, 33, had bought the property, a former branch of the Dexia bank, at a cost of £153,000 to house his accounting firm and before accepting the keys turned down the estate agent's quote of £3,000 to take away an old safe.

Instead he called two close friends, the brothers Murat and Hurun Tufan to remove the metal vault. "When the vault was open it exposed bags of 20 and 50 euro bills," said Murat Tufan. "The receipts were still there, dated December 31, 2001. We started counting, and it came to some 300,000 euros."

After speaking to his Turkish father, Mr Kaya decided to call the police even though it would have been easy to keep the cash as it had been lost and left unwanted by the bank for almost a decade.

"My friends and I thought we would really make a statement with it: that even immigrants are people that say honesty is the best policy," he said.

Ulrike Pommée, a spokesman for Belgium's Dexia Bank, said that an investigation had been opened but suggested that no trace of money would ever be found.

Girl With 2 Hearts Amazes Doctors

Here is an incredible story about Hannah Clark. She is a 16-year-old year girl with a shy laugh and a love of animals and babies. She likes to go shopping with friends and dreams of a career working with children.

But Hannah Clark is not an ordinary teenager and her normal life today could not have been possible without a unique, life-changing heart surgery. In 1994 when she was eight-months-old, Hannah was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy — an inflammation of the heart muscle that impairs the heart’s ability to work properly.

Hannah’s heart was failing and she needed a transplant. But instead of taking her own heart out, doctors added a new donated heart to her own when she was just two-years-old. The so-called “piggyback” operation allowed the donor heart to do the work while Hannah’s heart rested. But Hannah was not in the clear yet. As with any organ transplant, Hannah’s body was likely to reject her new heart and she had to take powerful immune suppression drugs.

Those drugs allowed her body to accept the donor heart but also led to cancer and yet another medical battle for Hannah that lasted for years.  Nearly 11 years after receiving the extra heart, there was more bad news: The immuno-suppression drugs were no longer working. Hannah’s body was rejecting the donor heart.

In February 2006, her doctors tried something that had never been done before: They took out the donor heart. Doctors theorized that the donor heart had allowed Hannah’s heart to rest, recover and grow back stronger.  Now for the first time Hannah’s father, Paul Clark, describes the agonizing decision the family had to make at the time: “If she’d never had it done, she wouldn’t be here.

“In the very beginning it was a 50/50 chance she wasn’t going to make the operation. But in the next one it was even greater because it had never been done before. But we had to take that risk,” he told. The doctors were right. Three years later, Hannah has no need for any drugs and has been given a clean bill of health. The operation was a success.

“It means everything to me,” Hannah told after the pioneering operation. “I thought I’d still have problems when I had this operation done. I thought after the heart had been removed I thought I’d have to visit hospitals. But now I’m just free,” she said, smiling. Dr. Magdi Yacoub performed Hannah’s original transplant and came out of retirement to perform the second.

“The possibility of recovery of the heart is just like magic.” Dr. Yacoub said at a media conference. “We had a heart which was not contracting at all at the time. We put the new heart to be pumping next to it and take its work, now it is functioning normally.”

The findings have been published in the British medical journal, this seems like a true miracle.  I am curious how the old heart was able to still beat, because you think as a muscle that was not being used it would have went into atrophy.

'Singing Mouse' Made With Genetic Modification

Japanese scientists said Tuesday they had produced a mouse that tweets like a bird in a genetically engineered "evolution" which they hope will shed light on the origins of human language.

A team of researchers at the University of Osaka created the animal in their "Evolved Mouse Project," in which they use genetically modified mice that are prone to miscopying DNA and thus to mutations.

"Mutations are the driving force of evolution. We have cross-bred the genetically modified mice for generations to see what would happen," lead researcher Arikuni Uchimura said.

"We checked the newly born mice one by one... One day we found a mouse that was singing like a bird," he said, noting that the "singing mouse" was born by chance but that the trait will be passed on to future generations.

"I was surprised because I had been expecting mice that are different in physical shape," he said by telephone, adding that in fact the project had also produced "a mouse with short limbs and a tail like a dachshund."

The laboratory, directed by professor Takeshi Yagi at the Osaka University's Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences in western Japan, now has more than 100 "singing mice" for further research.

Considering that mutant mice tweet louder when put in different environments or when males are put together with females, Uchimura said their chirps "may be some sort of expressions of their emotions or bodily conditions."

"I know it's a long shot and people would say it's 'too absurd'... but I'm doing this with hopes of making a Mickey Mouse some day," he said.

Deadly earthquake hits Iran

At least seven people are dead and three villages destroyed in the quake that jerked a vast region in the south east. An earthquake in southeast Iran has killed at least five people and shattered homes, a regional governor has said.

The quake struck late on Monday in a mountainous region and was given a 6.3 magnitude by the US Geological Survey. Kerman province is said to be the worst affected area. "Seven people have been killed and hundreds have been injured. Hundreds of people are motionless trapped under the rubbles," Esmail Najjar, governor of Iran's Kerman province, the centre of the quake, told the semi-official Mehr news agency.

There were nine aftershocks following the earthquake, one that was given a 5 magnitude, according to IRNA, the official news agency. Mohammad Javad Kamyab, an employee of Kerman province governor's office, said that 30 villages lay in the affected area.

"These villages are not heavily populated ... We are not expecting a high death toll and so far 25 people have been injured," Kamyab said. Telephone lines were down while rescue teams have been dispatched, according to authorities.

Some reports said that the quake was felt in Sistan-Baluchestan province, including the towns of Zahedan, Bam, Khash and Iranshahr. However, there were no reports of damage in those locations.
In 2003, Bam was the scene of a devastating earthquake that killed more than 26,000 people.

End of Privacy: Facebook

Armed with your e-mail address, data miners can hit Facebook and match it up with your user ID. That key unlocks a treasure trove of personal information.

At bare minimum, your ID provides access to your name and profile photo, no matter what privacy settings you have. Those who stick with Facebook's recommended settings will reveal even more: their location, hometown, list of friends, lots of photos, and many of their "likes," such as activities and interests.

That's a goldmine for companies that are trying to target their products to you.

"Once you have an ID you can look up the person," said Axel Schultze, CEO of Xeesm, a social media marketing software developer. That gives you access to all the information publicly available in their profile, and from that, "you can build correlations between all sorts of other data."

The API returned a smattering of information about me, including my gender and geographic settings. A person -- or a machine -- can retrieve that data after starting with nothing more than my e-mail address.

"Combine this with an e-mail address and I can add you to a mailing list," Dindayal said. "Beyond that, some users within Facebook don't have their privacy settings set very high and even more information might be made available."

Facebook has technical safeguards in place intended to prevent data miners with massive lists of e-mail addresses from sucking in troves of public information about Facebook's users. But invaders keep slipping through the site's defenses.

Deleting information after the fact as Rapleaf did doesn't wipe it from the record books.
Rapportive did not respond to several requests for comment.

"The genie is out of the bottle," Dindayal said. "Once the information is out, it's impossible to know who has a copy of it."