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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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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A judge Monday rejected the defense that a teenage boy opened fire on his family because he was addicted to video games, convicting him of wounding his clergyman father and killing his mother after they fought over a game. Lawyers for Daniel Petric, 17, didn’t contest that the boy shot his parents in October 2007, but insisted his youth and video game addiction made him less responsible.

Common Pleas Judge James Burge disagreed and pointed to evidence the boy plotted the crime for weeks.

Petric was convicted of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder and other charges. He faces a maximum possible penalty of life in prison without parole. The judge didn’t set a sentencing date.

Prosecutors said Petric planned to kill his parents because he was angry that his father would not allow him to play the video game “Halo 3,” in which players shoot alien monsters that have taken over the Earth.

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A would-be thief received more than he bargained for Saturday when a Donalds homeowner gave him an arrest and a trip to the emergency room.

The Abbeville County Sheriff’s Office received a report of a stabbing about 4:30 a.m. Saturday, and when officers arrived at the scene, they found a man staggering in the driveway, bleeding profusely from a wound to his left shoulder, according to police reports.

The man — identified as Locketus Jarvarus Marshall, 23, of 204 Haigler St., Abbeville — passed out, and while Emergency Medical Services took him to Self Regional Medical Center, officers got written statements from the homeowner and a witness, only to arrest Marshall.

According to the homeowner, she had spent the evening in Anderson and returned to see the home completely dark. When she entered, she heard someone moving inside the home and called out, detective Michael Belcher said Monday.
“At that point, (Marshall) grabbed the victim and pushed her up against the kitchen sink. She tried to call 911, but she couldn’t see the numbers, so she called her father, who she had on speed dial,” Belcher said.

The homeowner then felt around in the sink, found a knife and struck Marshall with it in the left shoulder.

“Once she stabbed him, Mr. Marshall ran outside and called 911 to say he’d been stabbed,” Belcher said. “He made the comment he’d gotten a ride to a friend’s house because his car had caught on fire.”

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Two dogs mauled their 60-year-old owner to death Friday afternoon when he stepped into the backyard of his Rubidoux home to smoke, officials said.

Nationwide, all breeds of pit bulls were responsible for 110 human deaths from 1982 to 2006, according to statistics compiled by Animal People magazine from media reports.

Gerald Adelmund was declared dead at the cream-colored house in the 5700 block of Kenwood Place after deputies pulled him inside, said Riverside County sheriff’s Sgt. Dennis Gutierrez. The dogs were described as a 4-year-old, 107-pound male, part pit bull and part mastiff, and a 52-pound female pit bull, about 6.

Outside Adelmund’s front door lay a mat reading “Wipe Your Paws.”

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Alex Kurzem came to Australia in 1949 carrying just a small brown briefcase, but weighed down by some harrowing psychological and emotional baggage.

Tucked away in his briefcase were the secrets of his past – fragments of his life that he kept hidden for decades.

In 1997, after raising a family in Melbourne with his Australian bride, he finally revealed himself. He told how, at the age of five, he had been adopted by the SS and became a Nazi mascot.

His personal history, one of the most remarkable stories to emerge from World War II, was published recently in a book entitled The Mascot.

“They gave me a uniform, a little gun and little pistol,” Alex told the BBC.

“They gave me little jobs to do – to polish shoes, carry water or light a fire. But my main job was to entertain the soldiers. To make them feel a bit happier.”

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Lose a game of chess to a computer, and you could bruise your ego.

Lose an arm-wrestling match to a Japanese arcade machine, and you could break your arm.

Distributor Atlus Co. said Tuesday it will remove all 150 “Arm Spirit” arm wrestling machines from Japanese arcades after three players broke their arms grappling with the machine’s mechanized appendage.

“The machine isn’t that strong, much less so than a muscular man. Even women should be able to beat it,” said Atlus spokeswoman Ayano Sakiyama, calling the recall “a precaution.”

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CAPE York stockman David George has spent seven nights up a tree in a crocodile-infested swamp, bleeding and with little food – and lived to tell the tale.

The father-of-one and co-manager at Silver Plains cattle station yesterday told his remarkable tale of survival and rescue by chopper in rugged bushland near Coen, in the state’s remote far north.

“Every night I was stalked by two crocs who would sit at the bottom of the tree staring up at me,” Mr George recalled yesterday.

“All I could see was two sets of red eyes below me and all night I had to listen to a big bull croc bellowing a bit further out.

“I’d yell out at them, ‘I’m not falling out of this tree for you bastards’.”

Dazed and bleeding after a tumble from his horse earlier this month, the bushie had given the horse its head in the pre-dawn dark to get him home – only to find it had taken him more than a kilometre into the heart of a croc swamp.

“I had to get off the horse and fall on the long 8ft-high swamp grass to clear a path, when I fell straight into a crocodile nest,” he said.

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A major shareholder who has pressured Wendy’s International Inc. to increase stock value said Tuesday that he is considering a purchase of the third-largest North American hamburger chain.
Billionaire investor Nelson Peltz said his company, which owns fast-food chain Arby’s, would be a “natural, strategic buyer” for Wendy’s, according to a letter he sent to Wendy’s chairman, but that the company is blocking him.
Peltz, who runs the Trian Fund, also revealed in the filing that he and his allies have increased their stake to 9.8 per cent of company shares, from 8.4 per cent.
Peltz’ company Triarc Cos. controls Arby’s, which has more than 3,000 restaurants.
Peltz said in the letter to Wendy’s chairman James Pickett, that he believes Wendy’s would prefer to sell itself to anyone but Triarc.
“While Trian will support the transaction that is best for all Wendy’s shareholders, we believe that Triarc is a natural, strategic buyer for the company and should be encouraged to participate in the process,” he said in the letter, part of filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to show how many Wendy’s shares Peltz owns.

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One billion people will die of tobacco-related diseases this century unless governments in rich and poor countries alike get serious about preventing smoking, top World Health Organization (WHO) experts said on Monday.

You could have the best of both worlds if only you allowed smoking on the planes as they went down

“Tobacco is a defective product. It kills half of its customers,” Douglas Bettcher, head of the WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative, said at the start of an international conference in Bangkok to draw up a masterplan for the world to kick the habit.

“It kills 5.4 million people per year and half of those deaths are in developing countries. That’s like one jumbo jet going down every hour,” he said.

With smoking rates in many developing countries on the rise, particularly among teenagers, that annual death toll would rise to 8.3 million within the next 20 years, he added.

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