32,000-year-old rhinoceros found frozen in ice in Siberia

Scientists have discovered a thousands-year-old rhinoceros frozen in the snow in Siberia, Russia, with its body still intact.It belongs to a species of rhinoceros that is now extinct.The rhino was 4 years old at the time of death and being frozen in the right condition will allow scientists to learn more about this species of rhino.

The results of a study in this regard were published in the journal Doklady Earth Sciences.The rhinoceros that came from the Siberian glaciers was frozen 32,000 years ago.

These rhinos of the genus Woolly Rhino lived in eastern Siberia more than 30,000 years ago and were one of the few large animals of their time.

Like modern rhinoceroses, the woolly rhino had two horns on its head, but they were much larger and sharper like blades.

After death, the rhinoceros was frozen in ice and was discovered by Russian scientists in August 2020 on a bank of the Tirekhtyakh River.The research did not say where the frozen rhinoceros was discovered, but the possibility of such frozen creatures being found in this region of Siberia is quite high.

When the animal was discovered, scientists collected samples of its fur and other parts, temporarily melting the ice.The right side of the rhino's body was well preserved in the snow, but its left side has been damaged and scientists believe that the meat in this area has been eaten by predators, while its intestines are missing.

World's First 3D-Printed Hotel

 The construction of the world's first 3D-printed hotel is underway in the desert of the American state of Texas. The hotel-building printer is 46 feet wide and weighs about 5 tons.

According to American media, 43 new units and 18 residential houses are being built with the help of 3D printing in this 40-acre hotel.

Experts say that 3D technology may replace other construction specialists including masons in the future.

The price of Mark Zuckerberg's new watch will shock you

 Meta's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, is one of the richest people in the world, with assets worth $198 billion. While his pictures often show him in simple gray T-shirts, suggesting he doesn't like to spend much, he has recently changed his personal style significantly, often wearing a shiny gold chain. 

The watch he bought is particularly stunning. Zuckerberg is now seen wearing a very rare watch called the De Bethune DB25 Starry Varius Aérolite. Only five of these watches are made each year, and its dial is crafted from a meteorite, designed to look like a galaxy, with 24-karat gold flakes on it. The strap is made from crocodile leather.

While the exact price of the watch is unknown, estimates suggest it costs at least $260,000.Interestingly, Zuckerberg used to dislike wearing watches.

The unique company in Japan where several cats work in the highest positions

 

While it’s not surprising to have a cat in an office, making them company employees is definitely surprising. Yes, in Japan, a company has hired several cats. Ten cats work for this company, most of which are full-time employees. The office has been designed to make it comfortable for the cats.

There are also 21 humans employed there who enjoy working alongside the cats. When the company moved to a four-story office in 2020, they didn’t forget about their important feline employees.

The second and third floors were renovated so the cats could live there easily. Twelve toilets and other amenities were installed for the cats, and the walls were painted with materials that wouldn’t be damaged by their claws. The cats have various positions like Chief Clerk, Auditor, and Chair Cat. A cat named Fetoba, who is 20 years old, holds the highest position, and even the humans work under her. Eight cats are always present in the office, while the other two live at an employee’s home. The staff admits that the cats sometimes interrupt their work, but they welcome it because it gives them a chance to take breaks.

They also mentioned that the cats help improve relationships among people, and in return, they take care of the cats' cleanliness and food.

World's second largest diamond found in Botswana

 A 1,094-carat diamond was discovered in a mine named Karowe in northeastern Botswana. This diamond is almost as large as the third-largest diamond in the world, which weighs 1,098 carats.

Previously, a 2,492-carat diamond was found in Botswana in August 2024, which was labeled the second-largest diamond in the world. The largest diamond, known as the Cullinan Diamond, was discovered in South Africa in 1905 and weighs 3,016 carats. The Cullinan Diamond is now owned by the British royal family.

Botswana is famous for its large diamonds, and the mine is owned by a company called Lucara Diamond Corporation. The company's CEO, William Lamb, mentioned that the discovery of this new diamond proves the mining process is effective.

The value of the newly discovered diamond has not yet been disclosed, but last year, a slightly smaller diamond found by the same company sold for $13 million after being polished.

The missing cat returned home after traveling over 900 miles.

A two-and-a-half-year-old cat named Rainy has accomplished an amazing feat. The cat’s owners, Susan and Benny, live in Salinas, California. A few months ago, they visited Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, where their cat went missing.

Rainy disappeared shortly after they arrived on June 4. Susan said, "My husband is my hero because he spent hours every day searching for the cat in the forest."

The couple tried to lure Rainy back with her favorite food and toys but had no luck. Eventually, they stopped the search and returned to California. Susan mentioned that they hoped Rainy would come back, but a month after she went missing, they adopted her sister. The couple had rescued both cats when they were 11 weeks old.

Sixty-one days after Rainy went missing, they received a notification about a cat that had their cat’s identification number. Rainy was found in Roseville, California, which is 190 miles from Salinas. An animal rescue organization had taken her in.

A woman discovered Rainy and reported that she was in poor condition. The woman handed Rainy over to the organization, which then used her microchip to locate her owners.

Overall, Rainy traveled more than 1,000 miles from Wyoming to Roseville and then back home. The couple said they didn’t believe the cat would return to California, but they are happy she is home.

A helmet that sends SOS on accident!

The brainchild of an India-born chef for top cyclists, a new 'life saver' bike helmet that connects with your phone and alerts emergency services in case of an accident is set to hit the markets soon.

The potentially life saving smartphone app, which can detect a crash and then alert the emergency services, has been designed for bike riders.

The clever application pairs through Bluetooth with a motion detector which is attached to the rider's helmet and senses the crash.

The invention has been created by Oklahoma-based software company ICEdot in the US.

The detector, named the ICEdot Crash Sensor, can even evaluate the severity of the crash depending on the force of the rider's fall, the Daily Mail reported.

Chris Zenthoefer, ICEdot's CEO, said: "The idea came from Biju Thomas, a prominent chef for a lot of top cyclists. He was on a solo ride and crashed and thought if the crash had been any worse, nobody would have know where he was located."

"We were then introduced and it became clear that the pairing of his idea with ICEdot existing technology were a perfect match," Zenthoefer said.

Following an accident the app will prompt the phone to sound an alarm and a countdown, which can be set to between 15 and 60 seconds, is initiated.

If the alarm is not deactivated the app will contact an SOS service and relay vital information.

Using GPS coordinates the device can reveal the user's location and the severity of their condition.

What's more, it can even pass on crucial medical details, for example if the user has diabetes or any allergies.

If the fall is not critical, the crash victim can simply cease the countdown on their phone and cancel the process.

The cost of the motion sensor device, the smartphone app and a one year membership to the ICEdot service is estimated to be about 120 pounds.

The device should be on the market in April next year, the daily said.

Twin prostitutes retire after having sex with 355,000 men

Two Dutch sisters are celebrating their retirement from prostitution with a tell-all book about their lives and the industry, revealing that they have entertained 355,000 men between them.

70-year-old identical twins Louise and Martine Fokkens shot to fame earlier this year as stars of a documentary charting their 50 year careers as prostitutes in Amsterdam.

Louise revealed that her bad arthritis meant that she had retired from prostitution two years ago.

Louise, who became a prostitute aged twenty after a brief spell making lampshades explained how she got in to the business.

"We didn't have enough money," the Daily Mail quoted her as saying on 'This Morning.'

"My husband's friends said it was the best way to make money so we decided to find out. I was 20/21 the first time.

"At first it was a problem for our mother and father but later we all lived normally with it," she said.

Mother-of-three, Martine still works as a prostitute two to three times a week.

"My family told me about my sister while I was in the hospital having my first baby.

"I didn't believe it but we talked about it and I loved her, that's life," Martine added.

Martine then started working at the brothel as a cleaner but two years later decided to join her sister as a prostitute after so many clients mistook her for her identical twin.

100 million'll die by 2030 if world fails to act on climate

More than 100 million people will die and global economic growth will be cut by 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030 if the world fails to tackle climate change, a report commissioned by 20 governments said on Wednesday.

As global average temperatures rise due to greenhouse gas emissions, the effects on the planet, such as melting ice caps, extreme weather, drought and rising sea levels, will threaten populations and livelihoods, said the report conducted by humanitarian organisation DARA.

It calculated that five million deaths occur each year from air pollution, hunger and disease as a result of climate change and carbon-intensive economies, and that toll would likely rise to six million a year by 2030 if current patterns of fossil fuel use continue.

More than 90 percent of those deaths will occur in developing countries, said the report that calculated the human and economic impact of climate change on 184 countries in 2010 and 2030. It was commissioned by the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a partnership of 20 developing countries threatened by climate change.

"A combined climate-carbon crisis is estimated to claim 100 million lives between now and the end of the next decade," the report said.

It said the effects of climate change had lowered global output by 1.6 percent of world GDP, or by about $1.2 trillion a year, and losses could double to 3.2 percent of global GDP by 2030 if global temperatures are allowed to rise, surpassing 10 percent before 2100.

It estimated the cost of moving the world to a low-carbon economy at about 0.5 percent of GDP this decade.

COUNTING THE COST
British economist Nicholas Stern told Reuters earlier this year investment equivalent to 2 percent of global GDP was needed to limit, prevent and adapt to climate change. His report on the economics of climate change in 2006 said an average global temperature rise of 2-3 degrees Celsius in the next 50 years could reduce global consumption per head by up to 20 percent.

Temperatures have already risen by about 0.8 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. Almost 200 nations agreed in 2010 to limit the global average temperature rise to below 2C (3.6 Fahrenheit) to avoid dangerous impacts from climate change.

But climate scientists have warned that the chance of limiting the rise to below 2C is getting smaller as global greenhouse gas emissions rise due to burning fossil fuels.

The world's poorest nations are the most vulnerable as they face increased risk of drought, water shortages, crop failure, poverty and disease. On average, they could see an 11 percent loss in GDP by 2030 due to climate change, DARA said.

"One degree Celsius rise in temperature is associated with 10 percent productivity loss in farming. For us, it means losing about 4 million metric tonnes of food grain, amounting to about $2.5 billion. That is about 2 percent of our GDP," Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said in response to the report.

"Adding up the damages to property and other losses, we are faced with a total loss of about 3-4 percent of GDP."

Even the biggest and most rapidly developing economies will not escape unscathed. The United States and China could see a 2.1 percent reduction in their respective GDPs by 2030, while India could experience a more than 5 percent loss.

Soon, your walk can be your new password

Scientists are advancing biometrics security systems a step further by developing 'biosoles' that can recognise you based upon your unique walk. 

Researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University's Biometrics Research and Identity Automation Lab are developing new ways to enable security based on body's movements, which, unlike retinal scans and fingerprints, can't be taken from an individual, the New York Daily News reported. 

The new discipline called "pedo-biometrics" uses a "BioSole" inserted into shoes to assess a wearer's gait, matching that distinctive pattern against an existing record to verify the person's identity. 

Biometrics have a decided advantage over passwords because they don't rely on users' ability to remember them, the system identifies users based on something they are, for example with a retina or fingerprint scan. 

Most authentication systems need "things you know", but more advanced systems need "things you are", explained NBC News. 

Fingerprints and retina scans fall into the latter category but can still be penetrated - by amputating the corresponding body part. 

The university is teaming up with Autonomous ID, a company based in Ottawa, Canada, to create passwords based on behavioural validation. 

Scientists are advancing biometrics security systems a step further by developing 'biosoles' that can recognise you based upon your unique walk. 

Researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University's Biometrics Research and Identity Automation Lab are developing new ways to enable security based on body's movements, which, unlike retinal scans and fingerprints, can't be taken from an individual, the New York Daily News reported. 

The new discipline called "pedo-biometrics" uses a "BioSole" inserted into shoes to assess a wearer's gait, matching that distinctive pattern against an existing record to verify the person's identity. 

Biometrics have a decided advantage over passwords because they don't rely on users' ability to remember them, the system identifies users based on something they are, for example with a retina or fingerprint scan. 

Most authentication systems need "things you know", but more advanced systems need "things you are", explained NBC News. 

Fingerprints and retina scans fall into the latter category but can still be penetrated - by amputating the corresponding body part. 

The university is teaming up with Autonomous ID, a company based in Ottawa, Canada, to create passwords based on behavioural validation. 

Gait analysis is already being used as a sophisticated laboratory technique by which modern electronics are used to incorporate information from a number of inputs to illustrate and analyze the dynamics of gait. It describes for the clinician (physician, surgeon, therapist) in quantitative and dynamic terms the movement of the body and its limbs and the changing relationships of one extremity to other extremities during motion (e.g.: walking, leg raising). It helps the clinician judge what are the forces resulting in a dysfunction in movement of a limb and what is the result of compensating for the dysfunction; to put it another way, what is cause and what is effect. 

Though China has developed Gait already as a toll for espionage and security purposes, much is not known about it due to high security and secretive practices in science and research by Chinese authorities.

Mumbai boy becomes youngest skydiver

Krish Shanghvi, the eight-year old from Mumbai recently became the youngest skydiver on the planet, when he jumped off a plane from an altitude of 10,000 feet in Mozzel Bay, South Africa.

The act involved a thrilling 45-second free fall at 200 kilometers per hour, before the parachute unfurled.

Shanghvi achieved the dive in tandem with trainer Mr. Henk Van Wky.

His elder brother, Parth, holds the record of becoming the youngest scuba diver in the world. Parth achieved the feat in February 2010 in Goa.

Speaking to mediapersons, Shanghvi's father, Mehul Upendra Shanghvi, said that Krish was inspired by Parth's achievements.

"Getting inspired by his brother's feat, young Krish, who was only six years then, wanted to break some record," he said.

"We thought of skydiving, but in India the minimum age for skydiving is 16. So, we contacted some skydiving centers in Slovenia, where there is no age restriction for skydiving. But Krish was too small to fit in the Harness then" he added.

The standard three student from SVKM International School in Vile Parle has been awarded a certificate by Unique World Records, and the family has also applied to Limca Book of Records to have his name included.

Previously, the youngest skydiver in the world was Romanian girl Valentina Mihanciu, who performed the feat at the age of nine.

The record of being the youngest skydiver in India was held by Kolkata's Anaina Malik who had achieved the feat at the age of 13, jumping in Mauritius.

Smiley Emoticons turn 30 years old

The highly famous ':-)' emoticon, that is used by web and text users all over the globe, has marked its 30th birthday, a computer scientist who created the iconic "smiley face" has said.

The computer symbol for "not serious" or now more generally "happiness," made up of a colon, dash and a right parenthesis, was born into existence at 11:44 a.m. on September 19, 1982, after it was posted on an online bulletin board by Carnegie Mellon computer scientist Scott Fahlman.

"If someone made a sarcastic remark, a few readers would fail to get the joke, and each of them would post a lengthy diatribe in response," the New York Daily News quoted Fahlman, as writing, in a post on Carnegie Mellon's website about the invention of the sideways smile.

"The problem caused some of us to suggest (only half seriously) that maybe it would be a good idea to explicitly mark posts that were not to be taken seriously," he added. 

"In the midst of that discussion it occurred to me that the character sequence :-) would be an elegant solution ... So I suggested that," he said.

Fahlman also suggested the reverse, what has come to be known as a sad face, by using the other parenthesis marker.

"This convention caught on quickly around Carnegie Mellon, and soon spread to other universities and research labs via the primitive computer networks of the day," he wrote. 

Still on staff at Carnegie Mellon, Fahlman is modest about his invention, which he says he's never profited from.

"I probably was not the first person ever to type these three letters in sequence, perhaps even with the meaning of 'I'm just kidding' and perhaps even online. But I do believe that my 1982 suggestion was the one that finally took hold, spread around the world, and spawned thousands of variations," Fahlman wrote.

‘Popinator’ shoots popcorn directly into your mouth

WASHINGTON: A voice-controlled popcorn shooter ‘Popinator’ that works on demand has been introduced by the readers of Mashable to it.

According to the Mashable reader, Popinator is an automated popcorn launcher that tosses popcorn at your mouth every time you say “pop.”

It says that the device is equipped with a microphone that recognizes the key word, decides your location and then launches a piece your way.

The sales representative for the company, the Popinator is just a prototupe right now and it is still in the planning stages. Source:http://www.geo.tv

UK royal couple win French injunction on Kate topless photos

PARIS: A French court on Tuesday banned a gossip magazine from further publishing topless photographs of the wife of Britain's Prince William, the former Kate Middleton, and ordered it to hand the pictures over to the royal couple.

The injunction granted to the Duke and the Duchess of Cambridge, as the couple are formally known, also prevents France's Closer magazine from selling the pictures to other media.

The court in Nanterre, near Paris, earlier opened a criminal investigation into charges that the photographer who took the shots and Closer breached the privacy of the prince and his wife.

"The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge welcome the judge's ruling," a spokeswoman for the royal couple said.

Closer will be fined 10,000 euros ($13,100) per day of delay in handing over the images, the court said in the civil ruling. The couple are also seeking damages from the weekly over its publication of the photographs in a five-page spread on Friday.

The pictures were taken while the couple were on holiday in a chateau in southern France and show the duchess slipping off her bikini top, relaxing on a sun lounger and at one point pulling down the back of her bikini bottoms.

Buckingham Palace has called the photo spread a "grotesque" invasion of the couple's privacy. The royal family want to make an example of Closer.

The pictures have rekindled memories in Britain of the media pursuit of William's mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 while being chased by paparazzi.

British newspapers, fighting for their reputation after a string of scandals, have agreed not to publish the images, as has the British edition of Closer, which is managed separately.

The Sun tabloid screamed: "Find Le Rat" on its front page on Tuesday and said the photographer would be found and face jail.

The court said police would investigate whether there were grounds for criminal charges against Closer and its publisher, Italy's Mondadori, and the photographer.

On Monday, the publisher of tabloid The Irish Daily Star suspended its editor after the newspaper broke ranks with Irish and British peers, publishing pages from Closer with the photographs in its Saturday edition.

Italian gossip magazine Chi, also published by Mondadori, printed a 26-page special edition dedicated to the pictures on Monday. (Reuters)

Woman takes command of ISS after crew members’ return

MOSCOW: A woman took command of the International Space Station for just the second time Monday, after three US and Russian colleagues left the orbiting space lab and landed safely in the Kazakh steppe.

The Soyuz TMA-04M capsule touched down with US astronaut Joe Acaba and the Russians Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin aboard after deploying a huge white parachute and making a pin-point descent with helicopters tracking its progress.

NASA television footage showed the men relaxing in lounge chairs and sipping warm drinks from thermoses with smiles on their faces as medical teams checked their pulses and chatted to them about their trip.

"All three crew members are safe and adjusting to gravity," the US space programme tweeted on the official NASA website.

The three leave behind another trio led by new commander Sunita Williams -- a US space veteran who has just set a record for the longest continuous stay by a woman in space.

Williams is now in charge of a crew also comprised of Japan's Aki Hoshide and the Russian Yury Malenchenko. They are set to be joined by a new expedition on October 17. (AFP)

Italian magazine plans 26-page special on topless Kate photos

MILAN: An Italian gossip magazine plans to publish on Monday a special edition dedicated to topless pictures of the wife of Britain's Prince William, its editor said, defying risks of legal action.

The royal couple has already begun action against the French magazine Closer after it published a dozen shots of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge - the former Kate Middleton - as she slipped off her bikini top while sunbathing at a French chateaux.

Both Chi and Closer are controlled by Italian publisher Mondadori, part of the media empire of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and chaired by his daughter Marina.

Chi Editor in Chief Alfonso Signorini said the special edition would include a 26-page reportage with topless pictures of the duchess, including some unpublished shots of her vacation with Prince William, second in line to the British throne.

"This reportage is worth a special edition. It shows in a very natural way the daily life of a young and famous couple very much in love," Signorini said in an emailed statement.

"The fact that we are dealing with the future British monarchs makes it certainly more interesting and in line with a modern conception of the monarchy," Signorini said.

Chi's front page, already widely published by Italian media, shows a large shot of Kate sitting topless, above the headline "Scandal at court: the Queen is Naked."

Prince William's office said there was no justification for further publication of the photos.

"We will not be commenting on potential legal action concerning the alleged intended publication of the photos in Italy save to say that all proportionate responses will be kept under review," his office said in a statement.

"Any such publication would serve no purpose other than to cause further, entirely unjustifiable upset to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who were enjoying time alone together in the privacy of a relative's home."

Closer's pictures, already wildly circulating on the Internet, were also picked up by several foreign publications.

Greek newspaper Eleftheros Typos had two photographs of the duchess, one showing her topless, on its front page.

The pictures have reignited the debate over the privacy and freedom of the press, especially in Britain where the media face possible new regulations after a series of publishing scandals.

No British paper has published the photographs, including the Sun tabloid, the only British title to run pictures of William's brother Harry naked in a Las Vegas hotel.

"Her picture will be probably available online until the end of the earth. But it's not the end of the world," commentator Maria Laura Rodota wrote in Italy's biggest daily Corriere della Sera. (Reuters)

Two 'hot Jupiters' found in star cluster: NASA

WASHINGTON: US scientists have for the first time found proof that planets can form and survive around sun-like stars within dense star clusters, NASA said Friday.

Astronomers have spotted two Jupiter-like orbs in the Beehive Cluster, a collection of around 1,000 stars that appear to be swarming around a common center.

"This has been a big puzzle for planet hunters," said Sam Quinn, a graduate student in astronomy at Georgia State University in Atlanta and the lead author of the paper describing the results.

"We know that most stars form in clustered environments like the Orion Nebula, so unless this dense environment inhibits planet formation, at least some sun-like stars in open clusters should have planets.

"Now, we finally know they are indeed there," he added in a statement.

Unlike Jupiter, these gas giants are boiling hot, because they are orbiting close to their parent stars.

The finding left astronomers puzzled as they theorize that gaseous planets can't form too close to a star because they would evaporate away.

The leading explanation so far is that the planets form further out and then migrate inwards toward the star.

Given the relatively young age of Beehive stars, the newly discovered planets could help scientists flesh out the theory.

If the stars are young, that means the planets must be as well, which "sets a constraint on how quickly giant planets migrate inward," said Russel White, the principal investigator on the NASA Origins of Solar Systems grant that funded the study.

"Knowing how quickly they migrate is the first step to figuring out how they migrate."

The team discovered the planets, Pr0201b and Pr0211b, by using the 1.5-meter (five-foot) Tillinghast telescope at an Arizona observatory to measure the slight gravitational wobble the orbiting planets induce upon their host stars.

Scientists had previously spotted two planets around massive stars, but had not yet found any around stars like the sun at the center of our solar system. (AFP)

Deaf gerbils hear again with human stem cells

LONDON: Scientists have restored hearing to deaf gerbils using human embryonic stem cells in an advance that could eventually help people with an intractable form of deafness caused by nerve damage.

The procedure needs further animal research to assess safety and long-term effectiveness but researchers said on Wednesday the experiment was an important proof of concept, marking a further advance in the growing field of regenerative medicine.

Marcelo Rivolta from Britain's University of Sheffield, who led the research, said the first patients could receive cell therapy for hearing loss in clinical trials in "a few years".

After treating 18 gerbils with complete deafness in one ear, his team reported in the journal Nature that stem cells produced an average 46 percent recovery in hearing function, as measured by electrical signals in the animals' brains.

"If this was a human patient, it would mean going from being so deaf as to be unable to hear a lorry or truck on the street to being able to maintain a conversation," Rivolta told reporters.

"What we have shown here is functional recovery using human stem cells, which is unique."

Gerbils were selected for the test because their hearing range is similar to that of humans, while mice - the usual choice for laboratory tests - hear at higher frequencies.

The animals were deafened using a drug to destroy their auditory nerves before receiving an injection of around 50,000 human embryonic stem cells, which had previously been treated with growth factors to coax them into becoming ear cells.

The response among the gerbils varied, depending on how well the new cells were integrated into the cochlea, the spiral-shaped cavity in the inner ear.

Deafness is caused primarily by loss of sensory hair cells in the ear and auditory nerves. Since these cells are created only in the womb, there is no way to repair them once they have been damaged, resulting in permanent hearing loss.

Cochlear implants offer a partial solution to loss of hair cells but there is no treatment for nerve loss, or auditory neuropathy, which accounts for 10-15 percent of cases of profound deafness.

Rivolta said stem-cell treatment would initially address nerve damage, although it could also be used in a wider range of patients if it was used in combination with implants.

Significant uncertainties remain.

In particular, the ability of embryonic stem cells to morph into any of the other cell types in the body means they can cause tumors - something that was not seen in the 10-week gerbil study but which Rivolta said needed longer study.

Another danger is that transplanted cells may be rejected by the recipient's immune system.

The research on deafness parallels more advanced work on the eye, where stem cells have already been shown to improve vision in small-scale human tests.

Doctors hope one day to use stem cells to treat a wide range of diseases such as Parkinson's, diabetes and cancer. But localized approaches in the eye or ear may be a promising first step, since fewer cells are involved.

Ralph Holme of the charity Action on Hearing Loss, which helped fund the Sheffield research, said the work was "tremendously encouraging" and gave hope of a fix to some types of hearing loss in the future.

"For the millions of people for whom hearing loss is eroding their quality of life, this can't come soon enough," he said. (Reuters)

Tallest ever dog revealed in Guinness Book of Records

LONDON: A Great Dane who towers 2.2 metres (7 feet 4 inches) on his hind legs is named the tallest dog ever recorded in the latest Guinness Book of World Records launched on Thursday.

The giant canine from Michigan in the United States eats an entire 14-kilogram (30-pound) bag of food every day and weighs in at 70.3 kilograms, the 57th edition of the global records book says.

Measuring 1.12 metres (44 inches) from paw to withers -- the point between the shoulder blades at which the official height of a four-legged mammal is judged -- he is officially the tallest dog ever recorded, the volume claims.

'Guinness World Records 2013' says the humongous hound breaks the record of Giant George, another Great Dane who is one inch shorter.

"The most common thing people ask is: 'Is that a dog or a horse?'" says the three-year-old's owner Denise.

"We had to get a van to be able to transport him, oh, and if he steps on your foot he leaves bruises!"

The book -- the latest edition of the world's best-selling copyrighted series -- also names Oklahoma Sam, a four-year-old American Mammoth Jackstock, as the tallest living donkey on the planet.

Measuring 1.55 metres (5 feet 1 inch) from hoof to withers, she dwarfs the average common donkey (80 centimetres, 2 feet 8 inches) and the average for her own larger breed (1.22 metres, 4 feet).

The four-year-old record-breaker lives in Watsonville, California, where she shares her one acre of land with a macaw, duck, goose and four cats.

The new book, which claims to reveal "the latest and greatest records in the universe", recognises the world's shortest woman as 18-year-old Joyti Amge from the central Indian city of Nagpur.

The book bestows the title of the world's oldest gymnast to 86-year-old Johanna Quaas, born on November 20, 1925 and a regular competitor in the amateur Landes-Seniorenspiele competition in Saxony, Germany.


AFP

Argentine morgue baby leaves hospital

BUENOS AIRES: Argentina's "miracle baby," born premature and declared dead in April and then found alive 12 hours later at the morgue, has been cleared to go home, the hospital said.

Luz Milagros Veron, 'Milagros' means "miracles" in Spanish, "is stable," with a tube for feeding and respiratory assistance "to help avoid fatigue," said the director of Resistencia's pediatric hospital, Juan Mario Jacobassi.

The five-month-old left the hospital in northeastern Argentina around noon, in the arms of her mother Analia Boutet.

She remains fragile, and her care will continue at home with the help of specialized equipment installed there.

Born on April 3, some three months before her due date, Luz Milagros weighed around 780 grams (1.7 pounds).

Doctors examined her and determined she was stillborn.

But 12 hours later, when the parents went to the morgue to see the body and say goodbye, they were shocked to hear a small whimper and see the baby making small movements.

"She was all covered up and full of something that looked like frost," Bouter told the local press at the time.

The parents had planned to name the baby Lucia Abigail, but changed it to Luz Milagros after the incident.