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A large group of a rarely sighted, mysterious species of whale has been seen off the coast of Antarctica.
Approximately 60 Arnoux’s beaked whales were seen and photographed frolicking on the surface in the Gerlache Strait.
Few sightings of this enigmatic species are made in the wild, and even less in waters near to shore.
The sighting, of the largest group ever recorded, is also the first time this species of whale has been seen socialising at the water surface.
Arnoux’s and Baird’s Beaked Whale ( which might be the same species) generally prefer the waters just off a continental shelf, but there have been occasional sightings in locations ranging from the North Pacific to the coast of Baja California to the Sea of Japan. These beaked whales – the beak is an extension of the males tooth – are some of the least understood animals in the world. A rough estimate puts their world wide population at 30,000 individuals. At 12m long you’d think they’d be hard to miss. They might purposely avoid large ships, but since there is little known about their behavior its hard to tell what they do or why they behave the way they do. One scientist described the group of beaked whales in this sighting – “The whales were very tactile with each other, slapping the water with their tails, surfacing rapidly.”
Scientists halt brain disease with new gene therapy
Scientists have managed to halt a rare and fatal brain disease with an experimental gene therapy technique using a deactivated version of the AIDS virus, a study published on Thursday showed.
The international team used a disabled form of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to deliver working genes to two boys with the brain disease X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD). Their success may help shape future treatment
Besides the major break through itself the irony is striking. Taking a often deadly virus and turning it around to effect healing.
Fox News owns the extremist images featured at Capitol Hill rally it promoted
In aggressively promoting Rep. Michele Bachmann’s November 5 anti-health care reform rally on Capitol Hill, Fox News has chosen to associate itself with the offensive and extremist rhetoric emanating from that event. This rhetoric includes the disturbing signs — such as one of a pile of Holocaust victims’ bodies captioned “National Socialist Health Care, Dachau, Germany – 1945″ — displayed at the event.
I’ve seen images of Dachau in history books and they’re very disturbing. More disturbing then some obviously ignorant people comparing health care reform to Nazi death camps. We do not have death camps in the U.S. but we do let thousands of our fellow Americans die for lack of health care, Study links 45,000 U.S. deaths to lack of insurance
Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year — one every 12 minutes — in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday.
“We’re losing more Americans every day because of inaction … than drunk driving and homicide combined,” Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said in an interview with Reuters.
Rep. Michele Bachmann(R-Minn) and her supporters seem to have things backwards.
