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So can most college freshmen on Saturday night.

Scientists recently used treadmill exercise, drugs, and electrical stimulation to train paralyzed rats to walk once again, demonstrating a way to possibly treat spinal injuries in humans, which at present are basically untreatable.

In a spinal injury, the neural circuits connecting the brain to the muscles that control walking become damaged or severed, leaving an individual paralyzed. In able-bodied people, these “walking circuits” spring into action when they receive a signal from the brain, but if the spinal cord is damaged, the message from the brain never arrives. When contact with the brain is lost, the circuits shut down [The Guardian]. In the study, published in Nature Neuroscience, researchers manipulated these circuits and produced movement that was “almost indistinguishable” from normal walking. See for yourself in the embedded video.

Scientists already knew that if an electrical current is applied to a nerve just below the injury, the muscle will contract, meaning that messages from neurons in the brain aren’t necessarily required to move a muscle. But the act of walking isn’t the result of a single stimulation; it relies on a sequence of precise contractions to move a person (or rat) forward. The researchers mimicked this sequence using a combination of drugs, electrical stimulation and training on a treadmill. The rats, despite having no connection between their brains and their legs, were able to carry their own weight at walking, and even running pace, on a treadmill, with virtually no differences between their gait and the running style of a healthy rat [BBC News]. Well, except for the fact that they are running on their hind legs.

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TYLER, TX -

Went for the heart

Murder

Didn't see it coming.

charges are now filed in the death of John Tyler teacher, Todd Henry. 16-year-old Byron Truvia is accused of stabbing Mr. Henry Wednesday morning inside a special education classroom. Henry was taken to a local hospital, but died from his wounds. He’s been charged with murder.

Officials say the investigation into this stabbing death is ongoing, and there are still plenty of questions. Authorities say Byron Truvia has been inside the Juvenile Attention Center since Wednesday afternoon.

“He could be certified…as an adult to stand trial as an adult…since he’s over 15 years old and this is a serious felony charge,” said Nelson Downing, with Smith County Juvenile Services. Sources tell us, Truvia used a kitchen knife to stab special education teacher, Todd Henry, in the chest, piercing his heart.

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A gecko with leopard-like spots on its body and a fanged frog that eats birds are

Got Fingers?

among 163 new species discovered last year in the Mekong River region of Southeast Asia, an environmental group said Friday.

WWF International said that scientists in 2008 discovered 100 plants, 28 fish, 18 reptiles, 14 amphibians, two mammals and one bird species in the region. That works out to be about three species a week and is in addition to the 1,000 new species catalogued there from 1997 to 2007, the group said.

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Kids are more abundant than gas these days. By the law of supply and demand, gas is more valuable.

Mom of the year please?

According to Melbourne police a 37-year-old woman was arrested on a child-neglect charge Friday afternoon after a tow truck driver told police the mother offered to sell her child in exchange for gas money.

Pappalardo faces a charge of child neglect in connection with the report. Police are continuing their investigation.

Sgt. Michael Casey of Melbourne police said officers learned of a 9-1-1 call about 3 p.m. from a tow truck driver who said a woman had tried to sell him her 6-year-old boy in exchange for gas money at a gas station near U.S. 1 and Lake Washington Road.

The driver refused, Melbourne police said, and then followed the mother who was in a white sedan with her child and another woman as he called police.

“He rolled up his window and followed her. They drove all across north Melbourne,” Casey said.

The white sedan was pulled over in Suntree by police. Pappalardo was questioned and arrested. Her 6-year-old boy sat on the trunk of the car and cried as his mother was led away.

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That display is obviously wrong. McNair was lying down on the couch when she shot him. God who cares!

Is it too early for zombie Swayze?

Kings Island, an amusement park in Cincinnati, decided to include dead celebrities in their Halloween display, and one of those displays parodied deceased former NFL quarterback Steve McNair(notes).

A skeleton representing McNair, wearing a No. 9 jersey while sitting on a couch, is holding a Titans helmet with the top blown off, while a woman in red lingerie lays across his lap. There’s a gun on the ground, near her body. On July 4th of this year, a woman named Sahel Kazemi killed McNair and herself in a murder-suicide.

Ha?

Word of the McNair display got out, and as you might have guessed, people did not react favorably. A spokesperson for Kings Island told Clay Travis of FanHouse that there would be no McNair display when the park opens its “Halloween Haunt” on Friday, after initially denying that it ever existed.

This article from WLWT in Cincinnati references the McNair display, as well as others of Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ted Kennedy and Ed McMahon. You can see pictures of some of the displays here, including McNair.

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The scene where Little John is drowning from Robin Hood: Men in Tights suddenly springs to mind. Come on, this river is only 200 yards wide. Ha.

A man who regularly fishes along the Ohio River quickly became lost early Thursday morning when he was blinded by thick fog.

The fish here are great eatin'

Just after midnight, the fisherman called 911 for help to get back to shore. He was about a mile from the Schmidt Boat Ramp in the East End when he became disoriented and lost his way in the fog.

The man sent flares from his boat into the air, hoping rescue crews would see them.

Police didn’t see the flares, but a man living on a house boat in Dayton, Kentucky did. He came to the deck of his boat and told the fisherman where he was.

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Enjoy Life In Prison.

ORLANDO, Fla. — A woman held at gunpoint in January said she feared the worst when two men appeared at her door. “I thought he was either going to rape me, shoot me or kill me in front of my family’s home,” said Christina Wang. The accused men, Timothy Thomas, 23, and Patrick Maxwell, 17, robbed and raped other women. the attack on Wang was the first in a series of violent home invasions that included two rapes in the Metrowest area that detectives said were conducted by Thomas and Maxwell. Thomas is accused of raping two women in front of their male roommates.

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What really surprises me is that the police didn’t steal the Wii during the raid.
With guns drawn and flashlights cutting through darkened rooms, Polk County undercover drug investigators stormed the home of convicted drug dealer Michael Difalco near Lakeland in March.

As investigators searched the home for drugs, some drug task force members found other ways to occupy their time. Within 20 minutes of entering Difalco’s house, some of the investigators found a Wii video bowling game and began bowling frame after frame.

While some detectives hauled out evidence such as flat screen televisions and shotguns, others threw strikes, gutter balls and worked on picking up spares.

A Polk County sheriff’s detective cataloging evidence repeatedly put down her work and picked up a Wii remote to bowl. When she hit two strikes in a row, she raised her arms above her head, jumping and kicking.

While a female detective lifted a nearby couch looking for evidence, another sheriff’s detective focused on pin action.

But detectives with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, the Auburndale, Lakeland and Winter Haven police departments did not know that a wireless security camera connected to a computer inside Difalco’s home was recording their activity.

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You think if she don’t want to marry you that gang raping her and then setting her on fire will change her mind?

A 25-year-old mother of two was allegedly gangraped before being burnt alive for having spurned a man who wanted to marry her, police said on Tuesday.

The victim was raped by four men, including three brothers distantly related to her, at her Adarsh Gharkul building residence in Antop Hill locality of central Mumbai on Monday and then set ablaze. She succumbed to burn injuries at a city hospital early on Tuesday morning during treatment.

The accused, identified as Rajesh Devendra (30), Kumar Devendra (28), Nitya Devendra (25)– (all three are brothers) –and their friend Shankar Mudaliyar (35) have been arrested.

Though the police said the exact motive behind the cruel act was being investigated, a relative alleged she was killed as the family had rejected Nitya Devendra’s proposal to marry her a few years ago.

“Nitya wanted to marry her, but we rejected the proposal for some reasons,” said Krishna Reddy, a relative of the deceased.

Police said the victim was alone when the desperadoes forced their way into her house. “According to the victim’s dying declaration, the four raped her one by one. When she told them that she will lodge a police complaint, they set her on fire after pouring kerosene,” said senior inspector D N Deokar of Antop Hill police station.

The victim’s husband Raju Devendra, who works as a sweeper in civic body office in suburban Chembur, and her two children — a three-year-old daughter and an infant son — were not present in the house when the incident occurred, Deokar said.

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Get a look at the girlfriend? no wonder the cows looked pretty to him.
If animals could talk, a few cows in Burlington County might ask state legislators to hurry up and outlaw bestiality.

During a bizarre hearing there yesterday, a Superior Court judge dismissed animal-cruelty charges against a Moorestown police officer accused of sticking his penis into the mouths of five calves in rural Southampton in 2006, claiming a grand jury couldn’t infer whether the cows had been “tormented” or “puzzled” by the situation or even irritated that they’d been duped out of a meal.

“If the cow had the cognitive ability to form thought and speak, would it say, ‘Where’s the milk? I’m not getting any milk,’ ” Judge James J. Morley asked.

Children, Morley said, seemed “comforted” when given pacifiers, but there’s no way to know what bovine minds thought of Robert Melia Jr. substituting his member for a cow’s teat.

“They [children] enjoy the act of suckling,” the judge said. “Cows may be of a different disposition.”

Burlington County Assistant County Prosecutor Kevin Morgan was certainly irritated by the ruling, claiming the grand jury didn’t see the videos of the alleged incident, including one in which one hungry calf allegedly head-butts Melia in the stomach.

“I think any reasonable juror could infer that a man’s penis in the mouth of a calf is torment,” Morgan argued. “It’s a crime against nature.”

Although a bill was introduced in 2005 to ban bestiality, New Jersey still has no explicit ban on the sexual penetration of animals, which is why the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office charged Melia with animal cruelty.
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