VIKINGS-10 FACTS

Never  wore helmets with horns on.Excavations of viking sites uncovered tweezers,combs,razors,ear cleaners and thier bathed at least once a week.Viking woman could inherit property,request divorce,reclaim dowry payments thier parents give thier husbands.Used primitive ski,s and skied for fun.Used soap containing lye which bleached hair,beards for fashion and killed lice.Applied dark eyeliner to make eyes look whitier.Filed horizonal lines in thier teeth  and coloured the marks with red resin to look fiecier .Wore baggy trousers down to knee,fastened shut with small clasps.The viking woman loved bling- brooches,dragon-headed pin.Boiled fungus in human uraine which created a substance which smouldered so they could carry a spark to light fires when on the move.

Ancient American's genome mapped

Present-day Native Americans are descended from some of the continent's earliest settlers, a genetic study suggests.

Scientists sequenced the genome of a one-year-old boy who died in what is now Montana about 12,500 years ago.

Some researchers have raised questions about the origins of early Americans, with one theory even proposing a link to Ice Age Europeans.

But the Nature study places the origins of these ancient people in Asia.

The infant was a member of the Clovis people, a widespread, sophisticated Ice Age culture in North America. They appeared in America about 13,000 years ago and hunted mammoth, mastodon and bison.

The boy's remains, uncovered at the Anzick Site in Montana in 1968, were associated with distinctive Clovis stone tools. In fact, it is the only known skeleton directly linked to artefacts from this culture.

But the origins of the Clovis people, and who they are related to today, has been the subject of intense discussion.

Eske Willerslev, from the University of Copenhagen, and his colleagues were able to extract DNA from the bones of the Anzick boy and map his genome (the genetic information contained in the nucleus of his cells).

The researchers found that around 80% of today's Native Americans are related to the "clan" from which the boy came.READ MORE

Nazis 'researched use of mosquitoes for war' at Dachau

German scientists at Dachau concentration camp researched the possible use of malaria-infected mosquitoes as weapons during World War Two, a researcher has claimed.

Dr Klaus Reinhardt of Tuebingen University examined the archives of the Entomological Institute at Dachau.

He found that biologists had looked at which mosquitoes might best be able to survive outside their natural habitat.

He speculates that such insects could have been dropped over enemy territory.

Continue reading the main story

Nazi experiments

• According to medical historian Paul Weindling, almost 25,000 victims of Nazi scientific experiments have now been identified.
• Dr Weindling says there were different "phases" to the Nazis' experiments. The first was linked to eugenics and forced sterilisation.
• The second phase coincided with the start of the war. "Doctors began experimenting on patients in psychiatric hospitals," Prof Weindling writes. "Sporadic experiments were made in concentration camps like Sachsenhausen near Berlin, and anthropological observations at Dachau."
• The third phase began in 1942, when the SS and German military took greater control of the experiments. There was a surge in the numbers of experiments, with lethal diseases including malaria and louse-borne typhus administered to thousands of victims.
• During a fourth phase in 1944-45, explains Dr Weindling, "scientists knew the war was lost but they continued their experiments".

• Read one researcher's account of uncovering the Nazis' lost victims

Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS, set up the institute at Dachau in 1942.

Disease

The organisation's work was believed to have focused on insect-borne diseases such as typhus, which afflicted the camp inmates.

Dr Reinhardt, writing in the journal Endeavour, has found evidence that the unit's researchers investigated a particular type of mosquito which could live without food and water for four daysREAD MORE

Tuna hearts 'affected by oil spill'

Scientists say that tuna swimming in the Gulf of Mexico during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill may have experienced heart damage.

Lab research has demonstrated how crude oil chemicals can disrupt heart function in the fish.

The study, published in Science magazine, is part of the ongoing work to try to understand the impacts of the disaster.

The gulf is an important spawning ground for bluefin and yellowfin tuna.

Tracking studies have indicated that many of these fish would have been in the area during the 2010 disaster.

Scientists have long known that certain chemicals in crude oil – such as polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) – can be harmful to the hearts of embryonic and developing fish.

These molecules, which have distinct ring-like structures, cause a slowing of the heart, irregularities in rhythm and even cardiac arrest at high exposures.READ MORE

Cat parasite found in Arctic Beluga

The cat parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which can cause blindness in people, has been identified in Beluga in the western Arctic.

The discovery by University of British Columbia scientists has prompted a health advisory to Inuit people in the region who eat the whale's meat.

Researchers say it is an example of how the warming of the Arctic is allowing the freer movement of pathogens.

Icier conditions in the past acted as an obstruction to infectious agents.

“Ice is a significant ecological barrier and it influences the way in which pathogens can be transmitted in nature and your risk of exposure,” said molecular parasitologist Michael Grigg.

“What we’re finding with the changes ongoing in the Arctic is that we’re getting new pathogens emerging to cause diseases in the region that haven’t been there before,” he told BBC News.

The UBC Marine Mammal Research Unit scientist was speaking here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)READ MORE

BADGERS TO GET BIRTH CONTROL?

The newest idea from the government  is to give  badgers birth control injections and hopefully  an vaccine against tuberculosis,laughed at by the backbenches.As you known the government tried to murder -badger cull -but did not work as lower number than required dead-1,800-still too many.

BERMUDA TRIANGLE A MYTH?

America, s national oceanic and atmospheric administration scientists have ruled that the BERMUDA TRIANGLE is a myth,nothing to indicate casualties were nothing other than physical causes.despite 135 people have disappeared-aliens,bad weather,poor navigation given as reasons,BERMUDA TRIANGLE is region BEMUDA,MIAMI TO PUERTO RICO.