“HORROR films are simply a disconcerting watch for the majority of us, but for Jane Barrett they are literally torturous. She writhes in agony whenever the actors on the screen feel pain. ‘When I see violence in films I have an extreme reaction,’ she says. “I simply have to close my eyes. I start to feel nauseous and have to breathe deeply.”‘

She is just one of many people who suffer from a range of disorders that give rise to ‘extreme empathy’. Some of these people, like Barrett, empathise so strongly with others that they experience the same physical feelings – whether it’s the tickle of a feather or the cut of a knife. Others, who suffer from a disorder known as echopraxia, just can’t help immediately imitating the actions of others, even in inappropriate situations.

Far from being mere curiosities, understanding these conditions could have many pay-offs for neuroscience, such as illuminating conditions like phantom pain. They may even help answer the age-old question of whether empathy really is linked to compassion.”

Read more at New Scientist (thanks, Tiram)

Academics from The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia found that mice lacking the p21 gene gain the ability to regenerate lost or damaged tissue. Unlike typical mammals, which heal wounds by forming a scar, these mice begin by forming a blastema, a structure associated with rapid cell growth. According to the Wistar researchers, the loss of p21 causes the cells of these mice to behave more like regenerating embryonic stem cells rather than adult mammalian cells. This means they act as if they creating rather thane mending the body.

Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide solid evidence to link tissue regeneration to the control of cell division. They turned off the gene in mice which had damaged ears and they regrew them. While they say it is early days, there is nothing theoretically different about applying the same process to humans. Professor Ellen Heber-Katz, the lead scientist, said: “Much like a newt that has lost a limb, these mice will replace missing or damaged tissue with healthy tissue that lacks any sign of scarring.”

Read more at The Telegraph

“An obese mother in the US is trying to put on weight in order to become the world’s fattest woman.

Donna Simpson, from New Jersey, weighs 273kg but told the Daily Mail newspaper she had her heart set on reaching her goal weight of 1000lb (450kg) in two years.

The 42-year-old already holds the title of the world’s fattest mother after giving birth to her daughter in 2007 when she weighed 241kg.

“I’d love to be 1000lb … it might be hard though, running after my daughter keeps my weight down,” Ms Simpson told the Daily Mail.

Ms Simpson, who needs a mobility scooter to go shopping, eats huge amounts of junk food each week and tries to move as little as possible so she doesn’t burn off as many calories.”

Read more at 9 News

I must get one of these for DB for Xmas. Anyone know where I can get one?

“Chicken sex doesn’t work like ours. No, not that sex — but the process by which an embryo becomes a recognizably male or female animal.

Unlike mammals, it’s not hormones that dictate a chicken’s sex. It’s a fundamental property of the cells themselves. But this only became apparent when biologists investigated several odd chickens that were half male and half female, as if a line were drawn down the center of their bodies.

“We assumed this was caused by one side of the body having some kind of sex chromosome anomaly,” said Michael Clinton, a University of Edinburgh developmental biologist and co-author of the study, described March 10 in Nature. “But when we looked at them closely, they were composed of entirely normal cells. We realized that birds don’t follow the mammalian model.”

In mammals, there are two types of sex-determining chromosomes, X and Y. Each cell in an embryo has a pair of chromosomes, either XX or XY, but the cells are otherwise identical. Then, early in development, in response to some environmental cue, a group of cells that will someday become ovaries or testes start to produce hormones that cause other cells to develop in male- or female-specific ways. It’s the hormones that matter: Exposed to lots of testosterone and deprived of estrogen, cells with female chromosomes will form masculine tissues, and vice versa.”

Read more at Wired (thanks, Tiram)

“Octopuses make for discerning TV viewers: it seems they prefer high-definition to traditional cathode ray images (CRT). What’s more, the first study using video to trick octopuses, finds that they may be the Jekyll and Hydes of the oceans: aggressive one day, shrinking violets the next.

“People have been trying for over a decade to get proper behavioural responses from octopuses and other cephalopods using videos,” says Roger Hanlon, an octopus researcher at the Marine Resources Center, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, who was not involved in the study. “But this is the first time anyone has managed it.”

Gloomy octopuses (Octopus tetricus) reacted to films shown on liquid crystal high definition television (HDTV) as if they were seeing the real thing, according to a new study by Renata Pronk at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and colleagues. “They lunge forwards to attack crabs and back off from other octopuses, much as they do in the wild,” says Hanlon.

Surprisingly, an octopus that was bold, aggressive and exploratory on one day was just as likely to be shy, submissive and stationary the next. “This suggests that the gloomy octopus does not have personality,” writes Pronk in the new study.”

Read more at New Scientist

“Materials such as paper, paint, and biological tissue are opaque because the light that passes through them is scattered in complicated and seemingly random ways. A new experiment conducted by researchers at the City of Paris Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution (ESPCI) has shown that it’s possible to focus light through opaque materials and detect objects hidden behind them, provided you know enough about the material.

The experiment is reported in the current issue of Physical Review Letters, and is the subject of Viewpoint in APS Physics by Elbert van Putten and Allard Mosk of the University of Twente.”

Read more at Science Daily

A 101-year-old woman in China has baffled doctors after growing a huge goat-like horn on her forehead.

Zhang Ruifang claims the growth first appeared only last year and has since expanded to be more than 6cm long. Now her family in Linlou, Henan province, are concerned about a second mark on the other side of her forehead.

“[At first] we didn’t pay too much attention to it,” said Mrs Zhang’s youngest son Zhang Guozheng. ”Now something is also growing on the right side of her forehead — it’s quite possible that it’s another horn.”

9 News