We Are Awake

Scientists in  China  have created the first monkeys cloned by the same process that produced  Dolly the sheep  more than 20 years ago, a breakthrough that could boost medical research into human diseases.The two long-tailed  macaques  (Macaca fascicularis) named Hua Hua and Zhong Zhong were born at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai, and are the fruits of years of research into a cloning technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer."The barrier has been broken by this work," co-author Muming Poo, director of the Institute of Neuroscience of CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, told  AFP. Until now, the technique has been used to clone more than 20 different animal species, including dogs, pigs and cats, but primates have proven particularly difficult.The birth of the now six and eight-week-old macaque babies also raises ethical questions about how close scientists ha...

Doctors at Bai Jerbai Wadia Hospital in Parel,Mumbai,India extracted an LED bulb from the lung of a seven-month-old girl who had swallowed it while playing with a toy mobile phone. The bulb was two-centimetre in diametre. Ariba Khan, whose family is from Chiplun in Ratnagiri district, had to wait for a week before the doctors could perform a bronchoscopy to remove the object as physicians in Ratnagiri couldn’t diagnose why she had persistent cough and fever. Unaware of the incident, her parents took her to doctors in Ratnagiri to treat the cough and fever. “The parents initially thought that Ariba had swallowed a thread or a small part of a toy. They took her to a local physician who couldn’t diagnose the condition. Her condition deteriorated within a week,” said doctors from the hospital. After being advised by relatives, the family admitted the child to Wadia Hospital. Dr Divya Prabhat, head of ENT department at the hospital, said an X-Ray report revealed that there was a...

On November 10, Muslims laid their prayer mats on a road in the northern Parisian suburb of Clichy-la-Garenne. They were met with a banner held aloft by local politicians, led by right-wing Mayor Remi Muzeau, which read: “Stop illegal prayers in the streets.” For eight months, hundreds of Muslims have gathered in front of the town hall every Friday to worship. Now, French lawmakers have pledged to put an end to the public worship sessions, not only in the suburb, but elsewhere in the country. "They will not have prayers on the street, we will prevent street praying," Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told Questions Politics on Sunday. He did not refer to any specific law, although former Interior Minister Claude Guéant outlawed street prayers in Paris in 2011. The worshippers are aggrieved that a popular mosque in the suburb has been converted into a library since March, despite thousands congregating at the house of worship. They accuse authorities of not provi...

S ince mid-October, the astronomy community has been buzzing about what might be our Solar System’s first confirmed interstellar visitor. An automated telescope spotted an object that appeared as if it had been dropped on the Solar System from above, an angle that suggests it arrived from elsewhere. Now the astronomers have confirmed that the object is from outside our Solar System — the first interstellar asteroid that’s ever been observed. And it doesn’t look like any object we’ve ever seen in our cosmic neighbourhood before. Follow-up observations, detailed today in Nature, have found that the asteroid is dark and reddish, similar to the objects in the outer Solar System. It doesn’t have any gas or dust surrounding it like comets do, and it’s stretched long and skinny, looking a bit like an oddly shaped cigar.  It’s thought to be about a quarter-mile long, and about 10 times longer than it is wide. That makes it unlike any other asteroids seen in our Solar System, non...

QUEENSLANDERS have been warned of a sophisticated Central African phone scam which could cost them dearly. Queensland Police Senior Sergeant Steve Smith said people had started receiving calls two nights ago from a number based in Cameroon. The  Sunshine Coast Daily  reports that the ‘call-back scam’ involved an extremely short call at times of great inconvenience, giving little or no opportunity to answer the phone. When the receiver of the missed call dials back, they start to be stung with international premium call rates as the scammers have set up a toll number. Often originating in the countries with the highest toll rates, the fees are split between the scammers and the telephone company. The scam has drained prepaid credit users, while postpaid mobile phone owners have seen their next phone bills skyrocket after being stung by one of the scammers. The call-back scam circulated New Zealand in April this year, and was dubbed the ‘Wangiri scam’, meaning ...

A video showing a US military predator drone tracking down a UFO in Afghanistan has gone viral. The video shows that the unidentified object fires a powerful energy beam to destroy the drone. Conspiracy theorists claim that the video is leaked government footage. The viral video, which has been viewed more than 194,742 times, shows the predator drone over a mountain range chasing a UFO in the distance in the desert-like landscape. The mysterious object appears from the right side before disappearing around a corner. When the drone follows it, a quick beam of light appears to attack the drone in an attempt to destroy it. The video was uploaded on YouTube on October 22 by the username UFO Today. In the description, the YouTuber claims that he got the video from an anonymous source. "This video was sent to me by an anonymous source, claiming to work for the government. He/she said that this video was just the tip of the iceberg. There seems to be an increase of UFO'...

PLAGUE warnings were being issued for nine countries in south-east Africa this week, as authorities rushed to contain an outbreak of Black Death. It's the same virus that led to one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, killing an estimated 25 million people in Medieval Europe. The recent outbreak is believed to have started in Madagascar, an island nation off the African coast, and at least 1300 people have been infected. It's a serious bacterial infection transmitted by fleas, and can be easily treated with antibiotics, but  so far 124 have been reported dead . "Plague, though terrifying, is nothing new in Madagascar, where about 600 cases are reported annually," the World Health Organisation said on its website. However, WHO officials warned there is "something different" about this outbreak, and "health officials couldn't explain it". "Plague is a disease of poverty, because it thrives in places with poo...