Twins with different dads

A Texas woman is found to have a twins but of different dads. She gave birth to twins of different fathers nearly a year ago. Both of them have similar appetites. They like to play with their older brothers. They like to play with each other. How did it happen? Every month a woman's ovary releases one egg that can be fertilized by one sperm. But in this case, a pair of eggs emerged.Sperm, meanwhile, can remain alive and well and viable for up to five days in the reproductive tract. Thus a woman can have sex with different men within those five days and the sperm “just kind of hang out there waiting for the egg to be released,” Dr. Hilda Hutcherson, Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Columbia University.

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Missing human ancestor found

A discovery of a 47 million-year-old fossil primate that is said to be a human ancestor was announced and unveiled at a press conference in New York City. Known as "Ida," the nearly complete transitional fossil is 20 times older than most fossils that provide evidence for human evolution. It shows characteristics from the very primitive non-human evolutionary line (prosimians, such as lemurs), but is more related to the human evolutionary line (anthropoids, such as monkeys, apes and humans), said Norwegian paleontologist Jørn Hurum of the University of Oslo Natural History Museum. However, she is not really an anthropoid either, he said.

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Sleep and lose your weight

Do you need to lose weight? Then turn off the television an hour earlier and go to bed, for a new study has revealed that getting more sleep could help you shed the flab. An international team led by Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington has found that lack of sleep at night can affect a person's hormone levels which may trigger hunger and slow down metabolism and could thereby cause them to eat more, resulting in weight gain.

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Cocaine in the air in Madrid and Barcelona

A new study has found the air in Madrid and Barcelona is also laced with at least five drugs — most prominently cocaine. The Superior Council of Scientific Investigations, a government institute, said on its Web site Thursday that in addition to cocaine, they found trace amounts of amphetamines, opiates, cannabinoids and lysergic acid — a relative of LSD — in two air-quality control stations, one in each cities.

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Thermal-imaging cameras spot flu fevers

To screen passengers for swine flu and other contagious diseases, some airports use thermal imaging cameras to see whether travelers have fevers, without having to stick thermometers in their mouths. The devices are just like regular cameras, except that instead of recording light that objects reflect, these cameras are sensitive to heat. They can even work in the dark. Recordings from these cameras show up on video screens with hotter objects looking brighter. The systems are very sensitive, measuring temperatures down to a fraction of a degree Fahrenheit, said Andrew Sarangan, an associate professor in the University of Dayton's electro-optics program.

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Swine flu

Swine influenza is a respiratory disease of pigs first isolated in swine in 1930, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The illness is caused by four different type A influenza strains that can cause outbreaks in pigs, though subtypes H1N1 and H3N2 seem to be more common. The death rate among pigs is low, with most infections occurring in the late fall and winter. Symptoms of infected pigs include fever, depression, coughing (barking), sneezing, difficulty breathing, red or inflamed eyes, lack of appetite and discharge from the nose or eyes. Read more>>

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