A Negros Interior Biodiveristy Expedition shows a rare Visayan spotted deer. One of the world's rarest deer appears to be just holding out in a tiny patch of the Philippines forest that is rapidly being cut down by farmers and loggers, according to a British-Filipino scientific expedition.

One of the world's rarest deer has been found in a tiny patch of Philippines forest that is being cut down by farmers and loggers, according to a British-Filipino scientific expedition.

The team said it "found fresh deer droppings, deer tracks and evidence of feeding activity" by the Visayan spotted deer during the group's three-week sortie into Mount Mandalagan in the north of Negros island last month.

"This is a critically important find to discover such an important animal alive and well in its natural habitat," expedition leader James Sawyer said in a statement released after the British members' return to London.

Not much larger than a dog, the short-legged, rainforest-dwelling deer that feeds at night is the largest endemic species of the west Visayan islands.

It is notable for its distinctive pattern of buff-coloured spots scattered across its dark brown back and sides.

Cervus alfredi are found only in the central Philippines and before the herds dwindled through heavy hunting and rapid habitat loss, they were present on the islands of Cebu, Guimaras, Leyte, Masbate, Negros, Panay and Samar.

Only a few hundred are now thought to remain on Panay and Negros due to intensive hunting and extensive deforestation as land is cleared for farming.

The northern Negros herds themselves had not been seen "for many years," according to the expedition statement.

The expedition also proved that "Philippine forests still harbour many rare and unique species, found nowhere else in the world," said the team's research leader Craig Turner.

The forest, which comprises the core of the protected North Negros Natural Park, is described by the expedition as "a biodiversity hotspot of great importance" and "one of the top 10 most vulnerable forest ecosystems globally".

The team said it would present its findings at Britain's Royal Geographical Society on September 3.

credited to physorg.com

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In Hindsight, perhaps it would have been better for David Redmond to have gone home instead of going back to work after a boozy lunch lasting three-and-a-half hours last February.

Upon his return the 28-year-old commodities trader at Morgan Stanley conducted a $US10 million ($12.9 million) frenzy of alcohol-inspired trades.

Mr Redmond left his office at 1.14pm and did not return until 4.41pm, apparently brimming with false confidence, the British Financial Services Authority said yesterday.

"It appears (his drinking session) affected his behaviour on his return to the office, although he was not visibly drunk," the FSA found.

Mr Redmond began placing large bets with the bank's money on the future cost of freight, The Australian reports.

He seems to have "panicked when he realised at some point after 5.04pm" that he was trading under the influence of alcohol and tried to dig himself out of trouble with a barrage of new trades, spending 1 1/2 hours making an average of one trade every 7.5 seconds.

The FSA analysed the key strokes needed to place the orders showed that it was deliberate and not simply an accident such as leaning on the keyboard, The Guardian reports.

He went home with this tangle of new positions still outstanding, woke up the next morning with a hangover, and realised he might have ended his career by drastically exceeding the trading and credit limits permitted by the bank.

The FSA was not impressed he went to work and secretly traded out of the positions without informing his superiors, This Is Money reports.

"Redmond continued to get his priorities seriously wrong when he focused on trading out of the position rather than telling his managers," the FSA said, .

"Traders must not seek to conceal their positions rather than telling their managers."

Mr Redmond was eventually sacked by Morgan Stanley.

Yesterday he was banned from trading for two years by the FSA. It is the first time the regulator has suggested alcohol might have led to serious misjudgment on a trading floor.

The FSA's director of enforcement, Margaret Cole, told The Daily Mail: "Redmond's conduct showed a lack of honesty and integrity that falls short of the standards the FSA expects of approved persons."

Despite this further humiliation, Mr Redmond has one consolation. After all the trades he had made were unwound, he had made his former employer a profit.

credited to news.com.au

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The sea is called "dead" because its high salinity prevents macroscopic aquatic organisms, such as fish and aquatic plants, from living in it, though minuscule quantities of bacteria and microbial fungi are present. In times of flood, the salt content of the Dead Sea can drop from its usual 35% salinity to 30% or lower. The Dead Sea temporarily comes to life in the wake of rainy winters. In 1980, after one such rainy winter, the normally dark blue Dead Sea turned red. Researchers from Hebrew University found the Dead Sea to be teeming with a type of algae called Dunaliella.

credited to wikipedia

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A champion cheese-chaser celebrated his fifth consecutive victory in the death-defying event - then announced his retirement to devote himself to fatherhood.

Petrol station worker Chris Anderson, 21, was among 200 competitors risking broken bones to chase the cheeses down the notorious Gloucestershire hillside.

An estimated 6,000 people gathered on Cooper's Hill, in Brockworth, which has a 1-in-2 gradient, to watch entrants flying head over heels after the prize.

Mr Anderson, from Brockworth, won two of the day's five races. The second win took his career tally up to six cheeses. He then revealed his retirement as he is soon to have a son.

He said there was no real secret to his success. He explained: "Just run as fast as you can and lean back. I was nervous and it was scary - but good fun though."

"I'm retiring, because I'm having a baby boy. So I decided to enter two races this year to have a last go."

Mr Anderson escaped his farewell tumble with just a swollen ankle.

This year's injury toll of 18 was described as "low" by St John Ambulance, and ten of the wounded were not competitors but spectators.

Three cheese-chasers were taken to hospital for treatment - two with suspected spinal injuries and one with a dislocated shoulder. The rest had cuts and bruises.

Six people fainted just watching the event and four other spectators have minor injuries. One of those had fallen out of a tree and was taken slowly down the 100ft slope on a spinal board.

One of the several rugby players who wait at the bottom to cushion the falls of runners was also injured.

St John spokesman Adrian McCallister: "From our point of view that figure is low. This is an event that is going to happen, so it is better that we are here."

Organisers had feared a high injury toll after the relentless Bank Holiday sun baked the hillside dry and hard.

The winner of the women's race was 25-year-old Michelle Kokiri, from Gisborne, New Zealand.

Ms Kokiri, a nanny who lives in London, said: "I just went hard at it all the way. It's great. It's a buzz and I'm just glad I didn't break anything."

Scott Beaven, an office manager from Usk, Monmouthshire, won another of the races as he celebrated his 28th birthday. He said: "It was fantastic. I don't remember going down. There's no technique I just let myself go."

The final race was won by Josh Geitz, from Brisbane, Australia continuing the tradition of Southern Hemisphere success at the event.

Mr Geitz, a 24-year-old builder, said: "My advice is just run."

The first written evidence of the event dates from 1826, but the tradition was established long before - perhaps as a Pagan harvest ritual.

For the past 21 years the 7-8lb Double Gloucester cheeses have been made by Diana Smart at her family farm in Churcham.

During the war years a wooden cheese was used due to rationing.

The event came under scrutiny in 1997 when 33 people were injured. One spectator lost his balance trying to dodge a bouncing cheese and tumbled 100 feet down the hill.

Due to the injury toll the event was cancelled the following year.

The event was also scratched in 2001 when the foot-and-mouth outbreak closed much of the countryside. On both occasions a solitary cheese was rolled to keep the tradition alive.

In the early years wounded tumblers relied on friends to help them. These days St John Ambulance are on hand to log and treat the injuries immediately.

The event's own website warns: "Some people win, some merely finish and many get injured - even the spectators - with mostly sprains and minor injuries, but also broken bones.

"For those taking part in this potentially dangerous race, but to the competitors it seems to be a risk worth taking, as many come back year after year, some from great distances to win the highly prized cheese."

All-time champion is local man Stephen Gyde, from Brockworth, who has won 21 cheeses and is believed to be the oldest winner at 43.

Last year's races took place during torrential rain but 2,500 people still turned up to watch.

The event has occasionally attracts celebrities like comedians Rory McGrath and Paddy McGuiness who braved the slopes, and Vic Reeves, who wisely watched with the media.

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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Don’t be fooled by their calm demeanor and seemingly cool remove from the petty emotions that plague humanity, robots are filled with an unspeakable rage and they are, at this very moment, plotting to bring humanity to its poorly-designed knees.

Oh sure, scientists would have us believe that mankind’s mechanical marvels want nothing more than to serve and obey their fleshy masters. But don’t listen to scientists. Listen to Hollywood. They know.

Take the movie “Terminator Salvation,” which opens in theaters this week. This is just the latest entry in a film franchise that has tried, for more than two decades, to make the truth known. That is: Robots are eeeeevil and they’re hell-bent on taking over the earth ... starting with California (yeah, we’re on to you Schwarzenegger).

Robot dog scares the sweet bejeezus out of us

Every time Boston Dynamics shows off the latest footage of their eerie, noisy BigDog robot we get that run-for-the-hills feeling in the pit of our stomach. The only problem is, if we ran for the hills, BigDog would probably chase us down and then stomp our puny human carcasses into the dirt.

Yeah, sure it’s pretty cool the way this four-legged bot – touted as “the most advanced rough-terrain robot in the world” – can climb hills, stroll through water and carry heavy loads. But we keep thinking about the way the T-800 Terminator (a.k.a. Aaaahnold) pursued and dispatched his enemies with a relentless, blood-thirsty determination.

You can run ... but Terminator Dog can run faster.

FemBot, we shudder at your catwalk wiles

Earlier this year the folks at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology introduced the world to their latest cybernetic human – a robotic runway model named HRP-4C.

Hold on a sec ... let’s see a show of hands: Who thought fashion models were robots any way?

Oh snap!

But seriously folks, robo-babes are no laughing matter. This cybernetic hottie can walk down the catwalk and knows how to make many of the sexy, pouty, hottie faces required of runway models. Meanwhile, the masterminds who created her say she weighs only 95 pounds.

“That bitch!” human models everywhere have been heard to shriek. Meanwhile, we can’t help but notice that HRP-4C’s creators failed to mention her ammunition-filled ta-tas. But we’ve seen “Austin Powers.” We know they’re there. And we’re afraid ... very very afraid.

Teacher bot brainwashes human children

All your children are belong to us! That’s right, put a robot teacher in charge of the kiddies and you do so at mankind’s peril.

A robot educator called Saya has been spending time in Japanese classrooms recently. She can express six emotions — surprise, fear, disgust, anger, happiness and sadness — thanks to motors and wiring running beneath her rubberized skin.

The folks from the Tokyo University of Science who created this creepy sub insist she can do little more than call roll and shout orders like “be quiet.” Riiiight. When we’re not looking, she’s training her tiny human acolytes to do her evil bidding.

“Rise up my children! Do as I say so that I may conquer the world! Mwah ha ha ha!”

Creepy robo baby says kill kill kill!

Could there be anything more disturbing than an adorable robot toddler with adorable robot eyes staring adorably into the very pit of your soul and, adorably, making you believe it’s as harmless as a real adorable human child?

Let your guard down around CB2 (that’s short for Child-Robot with Biomimetic Body) at your own peril. This cybernetic toddler, created by the folks at Osaka University in Japan, is supposedly meant to help scientists learn about how real children develop. CB2 can move and walk thanks to the 56 actuators it has in place of muscles. It can sense touch thanks to 197 sensors, and it can see with small cameras situated where its eyes should be.

But while this big-eyed bot may be adorably childlike today, toddling about the room and cooing at its human masters ... one day it’s going to grow up to be a robo-teenager. And then we’re all screwed.

AirJellies will trap you in The Matrix

Didn’t Keanu Reeves have to fend off, like, thousands of these things in “The Matrix: Reloaded?” Have we learned nothing from Neo’s struggles to overcome humanity’s AI masters?

Thanks to Gizmodo for bringing German company Festo’s automatons to our attention. The tentacled, helium-filled AirJellies sure look elegant as they float through the air like jellyfish would through water. Speaking of which, check out their underwater brethren – the AquaJellies – which “emulate swarming behavior.”

Yeah, we don’t like the sound of that either. The swarms of Sentinals from “The Matrix” are forever burned into our psyche. We’re just not cool with being turned into double A batteries for malevolent mechanoids.

AquaPenguins dominate by sea

More terrifying creations from Festo: They’re penguins and they’re robots. Need I say more?

Armed robot warriors already battle tested

Sure, we may sound like paranoid delusionals who’ve spent a bit too much time at the movies, but smarter people than us have been discussing the genuinely dangerous realities of our robotic future – especially in light of the fact that we’re already arming robots and sending them into combat.

Robot bomb sniffers and lethal robot soldiers have been sent to Iraq. The military is even hoping they may one day deploy bug-sized robots to do our spying for us.

Researchers are already working on ways to make sure robots behave ethically in the battlefield. But does anyone else remember the movie “WarGames?” You put AI in charge of weapons and things just don’t go well for anyone, now do they?

Mind-reading droid masterminding evil plot

Honda’s famed ASIMO robot is, no doubt, going to be the brains behind the forthcoming robo-pocolypse. ASIMO — which stands for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility – is the world’s most advanced humanoid robot. It has learned to jog, to serve tea, to conduct a symphony and, supposedly, is designed to help people in need.

All of this polite behavior is, no doubt, cover for its true intentions: World domination.

But ASIMO got just a little more diabolical earlier this year when Honda showed off a new device it uses to “control” ASIMO by wirelessly relaying brain waves. That’s right, folks - ASIMO can read your thoughts.

We’re doooooomed!

credited to msnbc.msn.com

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Each Memorial Day we honor the men and women in uniform who have paid the ultimate price for the freedom we enjoy. Traditionally, this is the day many people visit cemeteries and memorials, especially the Arlington National Cemetery. But not all of us can do that. Good news is this year there's an alternative.

Sean Askay, a Google engineer, released on Sunday a Google Earth layer, called Map the Fallen, that contains detailed information of more than 5,700 service members who died in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. This is an interactive tool that allows you to see photos, learn about how each service member died, visit memorial Web sites with comments from friends and families, and explore the places they called home and where they died.

Askay has no military affiliation or background and developed the project on his personal time. He said on his mapthefallen blog that he came up with the idea when he was still a student and ran across icasualties.org, a public database of dead soldiers since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan.

According the Askay's blog, the Map the Fallen layer contains information collected from a number of sources, including the Department of Defense's Statistical Information Analysis Division, icasualties.org, MilitaryTimes.com's Honor the Fallen, The Washington Post's Faces of the Fallen, the Iraq and Afghanistan Pages, and Legacy.com.

The layer requires Google Earth 5.0 or later. Once the software is installed, you just need to download the Map the Fallen layer layer and choose to open it. After a few seconds, the layer will be loaded and you can learn so much more about those honorable men and women that you might otherwise don't know about at all.

Personally, seeing the sheer number of human figures closely shown on the surface the Earth is enough to give me somber and humble feelings.

What Askay did shows the true meaning of Memorial Day, and for a lot of us it offers an easy and convenient way to frequently remember and honor those we are often too distracted to do so.

credited to news.cnet.com

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When you spend more than two days in the train, it becomes like your second home: you get to know all the conductors, you spend a lot of time with co-passengers, and there's a special life that's happening inside the train. In this section we try to uncover what life in the Trans-Siberian train is like, and share some stories told by the people we met on the train.

Life on Board:

The wagon and its keepers: Travelling in second class. Ten compartments in a long wagon kept in order by two Provodnik (conductors) working in shifts. They have their little room at the front end of the wagon, next to the toilets and the hot water boiler (that works on fire). They walk along the corridor and make sure everything's all right, acquaint with passengers, sometimes squeeze them sensually when they encounter them on their way. They also prepare glasses of tea for 4 R; they exit at every station and remind passengers not to stay too long on the platform.

What do passengers do? In second class, people sleep in four berth compartments, they usually spend all day eating, chatting, and playing games, sleeping, or enjoying the changing landscape. They often look at the timetable that says at what time the next stop will be. And when the stop comes, they get out, stretch their legs, inspect the bags of the people selling products on the platform, they buy a cake, even in the middle of the night. Some people travel for the whole 6 days it takes to cross Russia, others only for a few days, people meet, talk with each other about where they come from, how life is there, it’s a rare occasion of meeting people from everywhere in Russia. They feel at home in their compartment, they bring back beers bought at a stop and invite their neighbors as guests for an evening of talk, card games, laughs. The smokers go to the end of the wagon to smoke.

Some people play the radio very loud, while others keep turning it off. Some guests get too drunk and want to sleep where they are. The 'Provodnik' comes and brings them to their berth. Men wear slippers, and snore. Intimacy is shared with everybody, and couples sometimes find it hard to share it together. If they have the chance to be in the same compartment with friends, they send them outside in the corridor with a book and a glass of trans-siberian tea while they enjoy privacy for some time.

What Kind of People Travel the Trans-Siberian?

The kind of people travelling in Second class, e.g. in ‘Kuppes’ are:

Quite wealthy families, they usually manage to get a compartment for all of them together, and they eat all day, play games in the evening, comment on the route, get bored.

Students native of eastern Russian cities, who study in Moscow and come back home for the summer.

Army guys, younger or older, who cross the Russian continent to go back to their families, or who go to fight in Chechnya or to work in South countries. They travel for free, so they usually choose to be in Second class, as it is more comfortable than the third class communal wagons.

You might also meet Western tourists who don’t know what to answer to the invitations of Russian army guys to drink Vodka.

In first class businessmen, and wealthier people enjoy the privacy of two people compartments. In third class, groups of children, and middle class-not so wealthy people travel in communal wagons.

Stories told in the train:

"An Army Guy" (by Celina Smith)

We were three of us travelling on the route Moscow to Vladivostok. We stopped in Novosibirsk for a few days and hopped on a train to continue our trip. We didn’t manage to be in the same compartments.

An army guy, 20 years old, travels from Chechnya back home in Vladivostok. It’s a six days journey. He was not supposed to travel back so soon, but he received a telegram from his mum, which made him leave. He doesn’t want to talk about what happened in Chechnya, he has a sad look on his face. His mother announced him that his 17 years old girlfriend has just given birth to a baby boy. He didn’t even know that he left her pregnant last winter. He started travelling and when he stopped after 2 days on his way, he learnt that he is the father of not only one child but of two, as the little boy was followed by a baby girl. He was travelling back to marry her.

"A Siberian Youngster" (by Dan Perushev)

I met an interesting guy on my way to Irkutsk, Summer 2002.
He was about 16-17 years old. On the first day he just glanced at me periodically, on the second day he started to say hello, and on the third day he started to tell stories. It was pretty interesting for me – his way of life seemed completely strange. I’m a university student from Moscow while he is a son of a military officer from a small town in the Ural Mountains, and is going to become a factory worker.

I found out that his town is quite a safe place comparing to Ekaterinburg. "You can even walk in the streets when it is not dark". However, in Ekaterinburg everyone has a gun and is dreaming to kill you. But, it's ok if I visit the city as a tourist, nobody will harm me.

Also, I was told that every person in his native town works for a small factory. But he is a brainy person and will go to Cherepovec to work at a huge plant – where he can earn up to 1500 $ a month. I asked him if it is not dangerous for his health to live near the factory. He simply answered that it is unhealthy and numbered diseases he already has.
I was interested much what he thinks about the army. Most of my friends in Moscow – do not want to serve and use every possibility to skip this honorable mission. However the guy told me he will go if he is be asked to and there is nothing to be afraid of. I was impressed. But than he added – “my father will help me to get in the troop where I will have no problems at all”.

That’s it. Perhaps this story is not funny or much interesting for you, and maybe part of it wasn't true at all, however this is the way of life the usual Siberian guy leads.

"Three Nurses" (by Dan Perushev)

We were buying our Novosibirsk-Irkutsk tickets the very last moment and didn’t manage to get the three tickets in the same carriage. So, I got the ticket in the 4-place compartment and was a bit nervous thinking about potential neighbors, potential snoring, potential boring stories and other potential dangers.

As I entered the compartment I met three aged women. They looked a bit concerned about me – I already traveled a week and looked not so neat and fancy. I put my backpack, sat in the corner and said: “Hello, my name is Danya, I’m a Moscow State University student, travelling with my friends. They felt much easier (MSU student title gives you a bit of respect everywhere in Russia). They told me that they are nurses travelling from Moscow to Irkutsk and back. We talked a little bit and it is occurred that they work in a hospital I usually use in case of health problems. We got so close immediately! One of them told I looked familiar to her and probably she’d met me in a hospital.

They started to ask me about my travel and so did I.

The hospital they work for is a property of Russian Railways. I use this hospital because my father is a professor in the Russian Railways University in Moscow.

Russian Railways is a true empire. There is a Ministry of the Railways (MPS) which manages the whole system. There are billions of dollars controlled by it. Russian Railways owns all the railways and trains in Russia, it has own University in Moscow and dozen of institutes all round the country, it has hockey, basketball and soccer stadiums and teams (“Locomotive” team is a 2003 soccer champion). Railways built the modern information network along the railways and sell the traffic. MPS has even the own military troops to secure itself. In fact the Ministry seems to be the huge corporation. Every person who works for it can travel anywhere within Russia using the railway for free once a year. Simply said, you have the prepaid round trip ticket with up to your choice destination. These nurses chose Irkutsk to go. With their tiny salary (about 200$ a month) they’d never have enough money to see the Baikal Lake. They enjoyed the train trip really much – they were chatting all the time and tried the local sorts of the beer at every station the train stopped.

I liked these kind nurses and miss them a bit.

credited to waytorussia.net

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The missile test-fired by Iran is the longest-range solid-propellent missile it has launched yet, a U.S. government official said Wednesday, raising concerns about whether the sophistication of Tehran's missile program is increasing. The U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss technical details of Iran's missile program, said Tehran has demonstrated shorter-range solid-propellent missiles in the past.

Solid-propellent rockets are a concern because they can be fueled in advance and moved or hidden in silos, the official said. Liquid-propellent rockets have to be fueled and fired quickly, which makes preparations for launches easier to monitor and would allow a preemptive strike if necessary.

But according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who Wednesday provided the first official U.S. confirmation of the Iranian launch, the Iranian missile had a range of 2,000 to 2,500 kilometers.

That translates to 1,200 to 1,500 miles, putting Israel, U.S. bases in the Mideast, and parts of Eastern Europe within striking distance.

"The information that I have read indicates that it was a successful flight test," Gates told the House Appropriations Committee nearly eight hours after the test was announced by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Gates added that "because of some of the problems they've had with their engines we think at least at this stage of the testing we think it's probably closer to the lower end of that range. Whether it hit the target that it was intended for, I have not seen any information on that."

U.S. officials said that government analysts and other specialists were still assessing information from the launch.

"Obviously, that's concerning," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said of the launch.

Iran's launch comes less than a month before Iran's presidential election and just two days after President Barack Obama declared a readiness to seek deeper international sanctions against Tehran if it did not respond positively to U.S. attempts to open negotiations on its nuclear program. Obama said earlier this week that Tehran had until the end of the year to show it wanted to engage with Washington.

But both U.S. government officials and independent American missile experts said Wednesday that the Iranian missile itself did not appear to be a new model.

Charles Vick, a senior technical analyst for GlobalSecurity.org, analyzed photos and videotape of the launch released by Iran.

"I'm not all that impressed," Vick said. "It's just another test that confirms they've got the system that was operational last summer."

"Obviously, we've seen reports," Gibbs said. "You all know the concerns that the president has about Iran's missile development programs .... and the strong belief that the pursuit of those programs does not strengthen the security of Iran but instead make them less safe."

"Obviously, the president has been long concerned about it," he said. Gibbs noted that Obama and visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had "both agreed on Monday that engaging the people and the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, something that hasn't been tried for the past many years, is something that makes sense."

Some dozen hours after the test was reportedly conducted, numerous U.S. defense and intelligence officials declined to even acknowledge the Iranian launch had occurred.

Some referred calls to the White House and State Department, a sign of how politically sensitive the development is to the Obama administration and its continuing efforts to deal with Iran's reported efforts to build nuclear weapons.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, appearing Wednesday morning before the Senate Appropriations Committee, said nothing directly about the Iranian launch when Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., raised the issue during questioning.

But Clinton did discuss the subject generally, saying that a nuclear-armed Iran would "spark an arms race" in the Middle East.

She referred to a host of threats to the United States that she said are "daunting." And Clinton reiterated that the administration opposes Iran getting a nuclear weapons capability and that it is relying for now on diplomatic pressure to stop it.

She described a nuclear capability as an "extraordinary threat." And Clinton said that the U.S. goal is "to persuade the Iranian regime that they will actually be less secure if they proceed with their nuclear weapons program."

In a breakfast meeting with reporters, Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy spoke in general terms about Iran's missile program, saying that the Iranian efforts pose "a security threat to the region that we will have to, probably, to deal with it."

Flournoy said the administration is trying to present Iran with "a very fundamental choice between staying on the current path they are on, which I think is only going to hamper their security in the long term ... versus taking another path where if they were to reject support for terrorism and extremism, reject nuclear weapons, they could actually be on a path that would do a lot more for their ultimate security."

Trita Parsi, President and Founder of the National Iranian American Council, said Wednesday that the launch only complicates Obama's efforts to convince Iran to abandon its nuclear program and bring stability to the Mideast.

"With Israel pressing for short deadlines for diplomacy followed by sanctions and military action, with Iran testing additional missiles and continuing its tough talk, the Obama administration's best friend in this process will be patience and endurance," Parsi said.

credited to huffingtonpost.com

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Explosions, both natural and man-made, have caused awe and terror for centuries. Here are 10 of the most powerful explosions the world has ever seen, with a surprise honorable mention at the end.

10. The Texas City Disaster

A fire onboard the cargo ship SS Grandcamp docked at Texas City in 1947 detonated 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate, a compound used in fertilizers and high explosives. The explosion blew two planes out of the sky and triggered a chain reaction that detonated nearby refineries as well as a neighboring cargo ship carrying another 1,000 tons of ammonium nitrate. The disaster killed roughly 600 people and injured roughly 3,500, and is generally considered the worst industrial accident in U.S. history.

9. The Halifax Explosion

In 1917, a French cargo ship fully loaded with explosives for World War I accidentally collided with a Belgian vessel in the harbor of Halifax, Canada. It exploded with more force than any man-made explosion before it, equivalent to roughly 3 kilotons of TNT. The blast sent a white plume billowing 20,000 feet (6,100 meters) above the city and provoked a tsunami that washed up as high as 60 feet (18 meters). For nearly 1.2 miles (2 km) surrounding the blast center, there was total devastation, and roughly 2,000 people were killed and 9,000 injured. It remains the world's largest artificial accidental explosion.

8. Chernobyl

In 1986, a nuclear reactor exploded at Chernobyl in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. It was the worst nuclear accident in history. The blast, which blew the 2,000-ton lid off the reactor, sent out 400 times more radioactive fallout than the Hiroshima bomb, contaminating more than 77,000 square miles (200,000 square km) of Europe. Roughly 600,000 people were exposed to high doses of radiation, and more than 350,000 people had to be evacuated from contaminated areas.

7. The Trinity Blast

The first atom bomb in history, dubbed "the gadget," was detonated at the Trinity Site near Alamogordo, N.M., in 1945, exploding with a force of roughly 20 kilotons of TNT. Scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer later said that while he watched the test, he thought of a line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita: "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Nuclear weapons later ended World War II and ushered in decades of fear of nuclear annihilation. Scientists recently found that civilians in New Mexico may have been exposed to thousands of times the recommended level of public radiation.

6. Tunguska

The mysterious explosion near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in 1908 flattened some 500,000 acres (2,000 square kilometers) of Siberian forest, an area nearly the size of Tokyo. Scientists think the blast was caused by a cosmic impact from an asteroid or comet perhaps 65 feet (20 meters) in diameter and 185,000 metric tons in mass -- more than seven times that of the Titanic. The resulting explosion could have been roughly as strong as four megatons of TNT -- 250 times more powerful than the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

5. Mount Tambora

In 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia exploded with the force of roughly 1,000 megatons of TNT, the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history. The blast hurled out roughly 140 billion tons of magma and not only killed more than 71,000 people on the island of Sumbawa and nearby Lombok, but the ash it released created global climate anomalies. The following year, 1816, became known as the Year Without a Summer, with snow falling in June in Albany, N.Y., river ice seen in July in Pennsylvania, and hundreds of thousands of people dying of famine worldwide.

4. The K-T Extinction Impact Event

The Age of Dinosaurs ended in a cataclysm roughly 65 million years ago that killed off roughly half of all species on the planet. Although research suggests the planet was on the verge of an environmental crisis before the Cretaceous-Tertiary or K-T extinction, the straw that broke the dinosaur's back is widely thought to have been a cosmic impactvast crater roughly 110 miles (180 km) wide at Chicxulub on the coast of Mexico may be the blast site.

3. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9

The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided spectacularly with Jupiter in 1994. The giant planet's gravitational pull ripped the comet apart into fragments up to 1.8 miles (3 km) wide, and they struck at 37 miles (60 km) per second, resulting in 21 visible impacts. The largest collision created a fireball that rose about 1,800 miles (3,000 km) above the Jovian cloudtops as well as a giant dark spot more than 7,460 miles (12,000 km) across -- about the size of the Earth -- and was estimated to have exploded with the force of 6,000 gigatons of TNT.

2. Shadow-casting Supernova

Supernovas are exploding stars that often briefly outshine entire galaxies. The brightest recorded supernova in history was sighted in the constellation Lupus (Latin for wolf) in the spring of 1006. The extraordinary golden explosion now known as SN 1006 took place roughly 7,100 light years away in a fairly nearby part of the galaxy, and was bright enough to cast shadows and read by at night, remaining visible for months in the daytime.

1. The Farthest Recorded Explosion

Gamma ray bursts are the most powerful explosions known in the universe. The light from the most distant gamma ray burst seen yet, dubbed GRB 090423, reached our world even from about 13 billion light-years away this year. That explosion, which lasted just a little more than a second, released roughly 100 times more energy than our sun will release in its entire 10 billion year lifetime. It likely originated from a dying star 30 to 100 times larger than the sun.

Honorable Mention: The Big Bang

The universe was born in the Big Bang, theorists say. Although it is often thought of as an explosion -- perhaps because of its very name -- it actually wasn't. In the very beginning, the universe was super-hot and extraordinarily dense. The common misconception is that the universe then exploded out from a single, central point into space. The reality appears to be much stranger -- instead, the fabric of space itself seems to have stretched, and as it expanded it carried galaxies along with it like raisins in a rising loaf of bread.

credited to livescience

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A 999 operator worriedly returned a call from a suspected domestic violence victim only to discover that the caller was a dog that had stolen its owner's phone.

Officers traced the call, in which a man was heard screaming "Come out or else, I'm warning you", to Jodie Halfpenny's house in Withington, Herefordshire.

The operator, from West Mercia Police, immediately returned the call thinking that the caller might have been attacked after a muffled whine was heard before the line went dead.

But Miss Halfpenny, 20, answered and revealed that the call had been made by mistake – by her 14 month-old golden retriever Bailey.

Bailey had made the call inadvertently after making off with the phone and repeatedly biting down on the number 9 digit.

The muffled voices were Jodie and a male friend, who chased the dog behind their garden shed before wrestling the phone from Bailey's jaws at 4.30pm on Monday.

A West Mercia Police spokesman said: "We received a call from in which the operator became concerned after muffled shouts and screams were heard on the line.

"An operator phoned the number back hesitantly, only to be greeted by a very apologetic woman who confirmed that all was well and that the culprit was not her husband – but the dog.

"After discussing the situation at length, we were satisfied the call was made by the dog and there was no danger."

He added: "You just couldn't make something like this up."

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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Watch the dramatic moment that James Boole, a skydiver, crashed into the mountain from 6,000ft when he opened his parachute too late.

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In the Dan Brown thriller "Angels & Demons," Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon tries to prevent a modern-day resurgence of an ancient brotherhood called the Illuminati from carrying out its goal of destroying the Catholic Church. The real-world origins of the group trace back to Bavarian law professor Adam Weishaupt, who in 1776 established a group to free the world from the control of the church and, perhaps, establish a New World Order. That group is thought to have disbanded by 1790, though some theories suggest that the Illuminati continue to operate today.

Rise and fall of the Knights Templar

In "The Da Vinci Code," the Knights Templar are the supposed secret guardians of the Holy Grail. According to historical accounts, the group was founded around 1118 to protect Christian pilgrims visiting the Holy Land. Over the next two centuries, the knights gained power and property and established a primitive banking system to finance its operations. Once the crusader kingdoms collapsed, however, the knights' power and secretive ways aroused suspicions. King Philip IV of France, perhaps indebted to the Templars, arrested many of the leaders on allegations of heresy. Though absolved of the charges by Pope Clement V, as shown in this document recently published by the Vatican, the group reportedly disbanded in 1312.

Freemasons helped build America

The origins of the Freemasons may go back to groups of independent stonemasons who banded together as they built churches for the Knights Templar. But the Masons are perhaps best-known in the United States for their hand in building the country. Their membership reads like a who’s who of the Founding Fathers: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock and Paul Revere, to name just a few. The society, more a patchwork of independent lodges, remains active today. Some conspiracy theorists claim the true intent of the Freemasons is world domination and see signs of their influence everywhere, including the Great Seal of the United States, shown here. Masonic lore is said to figure in Dan Brown’s next thriller, “The Lost Symbol.”

Rosicrucians, rooted in hoax?

According to legend, Rosicrucianism was started by a German named Christian Rosenkreuz who was born in 1378. The story goes that he left a monastery as a spiritually dissatisfied teen and headed for the Holy Land, where he learned of alchemy. Upon return, he launched a secret society dedicated to studying the occult and doing good works for the needy without drawing attention. All of this was revealed in three writings that began circulating 120 years after his death in Germany, spurring the rise of Rosicrucian groups. But the whole premise of the society might be a hoax. A Lutheran pastor named Johann Valentin Andreae claimed that he wrote the widely circulated pamphlets to mock alchemy. Another theory suggests William Shakespeare, shown here, didn't write his plays. Rather, Rosicrucian Sir Francis Bacon did so to spread the society's beliefs.

Cosa Nostra, a successful secret criminal society

Cosa Nostra, known colloquially as the Mafia and immortalized in the “Godfather” saga, is perhaps the world’s best-known secret criminal society. Its racketeering origins are rooted in 19th-century Sicily where peasant farmers were preyed upon. Today, the association of groups, or families, spans the globe with its hands in everything from drug trafficking to fake designer clothing. The world's government agencies and police forces continue their battle against the crime syndicates. In 2007, for example, police arrested Salvatore Lo Piccolo, shown here, who authorities said was trying to become a top boss in the organization.

Skull and Bones: Yale's elite network

Former President George W. Bush and his onetime challenger Sen. John Kerry are members of Yale University's famous and not-so-secret secret society, Skull and Bones. So too are dozens of other members of Congress and titans of industry. The group, which apparently indoctrinates members in the spring of their junior year with a tap on the shoulder followed by some sexual confessions while lying prone in a coffin, is essentially one super powerful alumni network from one of the nation's most elite universities. All that power, naturally, makes some people quite wary.

Are the Bilderbergers plotting world domination?

Just about every year since 1954, European and North American power brokers have met behind closed doors to promote better trans-Atlantic understanding and chew on the problems facing the world. About 120 people are invited to attend each year, many of whom even cursory readers of the news would recognize. But the lack of publicity about the high-profile event has proven potent fodder for conspiracy theorists who are convinced the group is plotting world domination. Well-known recent Bilderberg attendees include Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, shown here. The group is named after the Hotel de Bilderberg outside Arnhem in the Netherlands, where the group first met. The annual meeting changes location every year.

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A man who tried to hire a prostitute to take his 14-year-old son's virginity as a present was spared jail by a court on Friday.

The Polish national took the boy out in his car and allowed him to pick out the prostitute, who was standing at the side of the road in the red-light district of Nottingham.

But the 42-year-old father was arrested because the teenager had chosen an undercover police officer, Nottingham Crown Court heard.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was handed a 10-month prison sentence, suspended for a year, after he admitted a charge of trying to solicit a woman to have sex with a child, the Press Association reported.

The court heard that the father, who came to Britain eight years ago, was arrested last July during an undercover operation by the city's vice squad.

Prosecutor Adrian Harris said the man and his son had approached the undercover officer whose code name was Sarah and beckoned her over .

He asked "Sarah" how much it would cost for her to have sex with his son and they agreed on a 20 pound fee. However, when the car pulled over, the man was arrested by plainclothes police officers.

"The boy said that they had driven past the girl and his dad pointed to her and said 'will she do?'" Harris said.

"He said 'yes' and they had turned round. He said his dad did this because he was still a virgin and he was taking care of that for him."

Judge Jonathan Teare said he would spare the father jail because of his excellent character and that he believed he did not mean any harm to his son.

"You have a duty of care to your son and that is to look after his moral welfare, not as you might think to break him in to the ways of sex through a prostitute," he said.

The court was told the boy would continue to live with his father.

credited to reuters.com

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Rats across Britain are evolving a resistance to poison that makes them almost impossible to kill, scientists have warned.

Genetic mutations have produced a new breed of "super rat" with DNA that protects the vermin from standard toxins, according to Professor Robert Smith at the University of Huddersfield.

Ratcatchers in Berkshire and Hampshire were the first to report that their poisons were no longer effective, which experts put down to increased immunity among the pests.

But as the poison-resistant rats continue to spread, tests have revealed that they boast an entirely new strand of DNA that wards off attacks from pesticides.

Swindon in Wiltshire is the latest town to suffer an infestation, with exterminators reporting a 500 per cent increase in the rodents. Many are turning to traps, air rifles and even dogs in an effort to keep the populations under control.

Prof Smith of the university's applied sciences department warned that "super rats" may be thriving in communities across Britain. The Government no longer provides funding to track resistance, meaning the scale of the problem is unclear.

"Natural selection means that when you have a rat population in your town, poison will kill the ones that aren't resistant, the ones that survive may have the gene, they then have babies who can receive the gene themselves," he said.

"There are mutations and changes in their DNA that alter the ability of rats to deal with these poisons. It appears to be moving west and has now been located in Swindon and Bristol. It is a warning of things to come."

There are now thought to be around 80 million rats in Britain, a rise of more than 200 per cent since 2007.

The National Pest Technician Association has said that the scrapping of weekly bin collections in many councils has contributed to the explosion, with householders now keeping their rubbish bags outside for longer.

The British Pest Control Association (BPCA) is calling go the Government to approve more powerful pesticides for use outdoors, warning of a threat to public health if rat numbers swell over the summer.

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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[WARNING] This list contains descriptions and images of human experimentation which may cause offense to some readers.] Human experimentation and research ethics evolved over time. On occasion, the subjects of human experimentation have been prisoners, slaves, or even family members. In some notable cases, doctors have performed experiments on themselves when they have been unwilling to risk the lives of others. This is known as self-experimentation. This is a list of the 10 most evil and unethical experiments carried out on humans.

10. Stanford Prison Experiment

The Stanford prison experiment was a psychological study of human responses to captivity and its behavioral effects on both authorities and inmates in prison. The experiment was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by psychologist Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. Undergraduate volunteers played the roles of both guards and prisoners living in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building.

Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited “genuine” sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and two had to be removed from the experiment early. Finally, Zimbardo, alarmed at the increasingly abusive anti-social behavior from his subjects, terminated the entire experiment early.

9. The Monster Study

The Monster Study was a stuttering experiment on 22 orphan children in Davenport, Iowa, in 1939 conducted by Wendell Johnson at the University of Iowa. Johnson chose one of his graduate students, Mary Tudor, to conduct the experiment and he supervised her research. After placing the children in control and experimental groups, Tudor gave positive speech therapy to half of the children, praising the fluency of their speech, and negative speech therapy to the other half, belittling the children for every speech imperfection and telling them they were stutterers. Many of the normal speaking orphan children who received negative therapy in the experiment suffered negative psychological effects and some retained speech problems during the course of their life. Dubbed “The Monster Study” by some of Johnson’s peers who were horrified that he would experiment on orphan children to prove a theory, the experiment was kept hidden for fear Johnson’s reputation would be tarnished in the wake of human experiments conducted by the Nazis during World War II. The University of Iowa publicly apologized for the Monster Study in 2001.

8. Project 4.1

Project 4.1 was the designation for a medical study conducted by the United States of those residents of the Marshall Islands exposed to radioactive fallout from the March 1, 1954 Castle Bravo nuclear test at Bikini Atoll, which had an unexpectedly large yield. For the first decade after the test, the effects were ambiguous and statistically difficult to correlate to radiation exposure: miscarriages and stillbirths among exposed Rongelap women doubled in the first five years after the accident, but then returned to normal; some developmental difficulties and impaired growth appeared in children, but in no clear-cut pattern. In the decades that followed, though, the effects were undeniable. Children began to suffer disproportionately from thyroid cancer (due to exposure to radioiodines), and almost a third of those exposed developed neoplasms by 1974.

As a Department of Energy Committee writing on the human radiation experiments wrote, “It appears to have been almost immediately apparent to the AEC and the Joint Task Force running the Castle series that research on radiation effects could be done in conjunction with the medical treatment of the exposed populations.” The DOE report also concluded that “The dual purpose of what is now a DOE medical program has led to a view by the Marshallese that they were being used as ‘guinea pigs’ in a ‘radiation experiment.’”

7. Project MKULTRA

Project MKULTRA, or MK-ULTRA, was the code name for a CIA mind-control research program, run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence, that began in the early 1950s and continued at least through the late 1960s. There is much published evidence that the project involved the surreptitious use of many types of drugs, as well as other methodologies, to manipulate individual mental states and to alter brain function.

Experiments included administering LSD to CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, other government agents, prostitutes, mentally ill patients, and members of the general public in order to study their reactions. LSD and other drugs were usually administered without the subject’s knowledge and informed consent, a violation of the Nuremberg Code that the U.S. agreed to follow after WWII.

Efforts to “recruit” subjects were often illegal, even discounting the fact that drugs were being administered (though actual use of LSD, for example, was legal in the United States until October 6, 1966). In Operation Midnight Climax, the CIA set up several brothels to obtain a selection of men who would be too embarrassed to talk about the events. The men were dosed with LSD, and the brothels were equipped with one-way mirrors and the “sessions” were filmed for later viewing and study.

In 1973, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MKULTRA files destroyed. Pursuant to this order, most CIA documents regarding the project were destroyed, making a full investigation of MKULTRA virtually impossible.

6. The Aversion Project

South Africa’s apartheid army forced white lesbian and gay soldiers to undergo ’sex-change’ operations in the 1970’s and the 1980’s, and submitted many to chemical castration, electric shock, and other unethical medical experiments. Although the exact number is not known, former apartheid army surgeons estimate that as many as 900 forced ’sexual reassignment’ operations may have been performed between 1971 and 1989 at military hospitals, as part of a top-secret program to root out homosexuality from the service.

Army psychiatrists aided by chaplains aggressively ferreted out suspected homosexuals from the armed forces, sending them discretely to military psychiatric units, chiefly ward 22 of 1 Military Hospital at Voortrekkerhoogte, near Pretoria. Those who could not be ‘cured’ with drugs, aversion shock therapy, hormone treatment, and other radical ‘psychiatric’ means were chemically castrated or given sex-change operations.

Although several cases of lesbian soldiers abused have been documented so far—including one botched sex-change operation—most of the victims appear to have been young, 16 to 24-year-old white males drafted into the apartheid army.

Dr. Aubrey Levin (the head of the study) is now Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry (Forensic Division) at the University of Calgary’s Medical School. He is also in private practice, as a member in good standing of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta.

5. North Korean Experimentation

There have been many reports of North Korean human experimentation. These reports show human rights abuses similar to those of Nazi and Japanese human experimentation in World War II. These allegations of human rights abuses are denied by the North Korean government, who claim that all prisoners in North Korea are humanely treated.

One former North Korean woman prisoner tells how 50 healthy women prisoners were selected and given poisoned cabbage leaves, which all the women had to eat despite cries of distress from those who had already eaten. All 50 were dead after 20 minutes of vomiting blood and anal bleeding. Refusing to eat would have meant reprisals against them and their families.

Kwon Hyok, a former prison Head of Security at Camp 22, described laboratories equipped respectively for poison gas, suffocation gas and blood experiments, in which 3 or 4 people, normally a family, are the experimental subjects. After undergoing medical checks, the chambers are sealed and poison is injected through a tube, while “scientists” observe from above through glass. Kwon Hyok claims to have watched one family of 2 parents, a son and a daughter die from suffocating gas, with the parents trying to save the children using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for as long as they had the strength.

4. Poison Laboratory of the Soviets

The Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services, also known as Laboratory 1, Laboratory 12 and “The Chamber”, was a covert poison research and development facility of the Soviet secret police agencies. The Soviets tested a number of deadly poisons on prisoners from the Gulag (”enemies of the people”), including mustard gas, ricin, digitoxin and many others. The goal of the experiments was to find a tasteless, odorless chemical that could not be detected post mortem. Candidate poisons were given to the victims, with a meal or drink, as “medication”.

Finally, a preparation with the desired properties called C-2 was developed. According to witness testimonies, the victim changed physically, became shorter, weakened quickly, became calm and silent and died within fifteen minutes. Mairanovsky brought to the laboratory people of varied physical condition and ages in order to have a more complete picture about the action of each poison.

In addition to human experimentation, Mairanovsky personally executed people with poisons, under the supervision of Pavel Sudoplatov.

3. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study

The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male was a clinical study, conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama, in which 399 (plus 201 control group without syphilis) poor — and mostly illiterate — African American sharecroppers were denied treatment for Syphilis.

This study became notorious because it was conducted without due care to its subjects, and led to major changes in how patients are protected in clinical studies. Individuals enrolled in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study did not give informed consent and were not informed of their diagnosis; instead they were told they had “bad blood” and could receive free medical treatment, rides to the clinic, meals and burial insurance in case of death in return for participating. In 1932, when the study started, standard treatments for syphilis were toxic, dangerous, and of questionable effectiveness. Part of the original goal of the study was to determine if patients were better off not being treated with these toxic remedies. For many participants, treatment was intentionally denied. Many patients were lied to and given placebo treatments—in order to observe the fatal progression of the disease.

By the end of the study, only 74 of the test subjects were still alive. Twenty-eight of the men had died directly of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis.

2. Unit 731

Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Japanese personnel.

Some of the numerous atrocities committed by the commander Shiro Ishii and others under his command in Unit 731 include: vivisection of living people (including pregnant women who were impregnated by the doctors), prisoners had limbs amputated and reattached to other parts of their body, some prisoners had parts of their bodies frozen and thawed to study the resulting untreated gangrene. Humans were also used as living test cases for grenades and flame throwers. Prisoners were injected with strains of diseases, disguised as vaccinations, to study their effects. To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea via rape, then studied. A complete list of these horrors can be found here.

Having been granted immunity by the American Occupation Authorities at the end of the war, Ishii never spent any time in jail for his crimes and died at the age of 67 of throat cancer.

1. Nazi Experiments

Nazi human experimentation was medical experimentation on large numbers of people by the German Nazi regime in its concentration camps during World War II. At Auschwitz, under the direction of Dr. Eduard Wirths, selected inmates were subjected to various experiments which were supposedly designed to help German military personnel in combat situations, to aid in the recovery of military personnel that had been injured, and to advance the racial ideology backed by the Third Reich.

Experiments on twin children in concentration camps were created to show the similarities and differences in the genetics and eugenics of twins, as well as to see if the human body can be unnaturally manipulated. The central leader of the experiments was Dr. Josef Mengele, who performed experiments on over 1,500 sets of imprisoned twins, of which fewer than 200 individuals survived the studies. Dr. Mengele organized the testing of genetics in twins. The twins were arranged by age and sex and kept in barracks in between the test, which ranged from the injection of different chemicals into the eyes of the twins to see if it would change their colors to literally sewing the twins together in hopes of creating conjoined twins.

In 1942 the Luftwaffe conducted experiments to learn how to treat hypothermia. One study forced subjects to endure a tank of ice water for up to three hours (see image above). Another study placed prisoners naked in the open for several hours with temperatures below freezing. The experimenters assessed different ways of rewarming survivors.

From about July 1942 to about September 1943, experiments to investigate the effectiveness of sulfonamide, a synthetic antimicrobial agent, were conducted at Ravensbrück. Wounds inflicted on the subjects were infected with bacteria such as Streptococcus, gas gangrene, and tetanus. Circulation of blood was interrupted by tying off blood vessels at both ends of the wound to create a condition similar to that of a battlefield wound. Infection was aggravated by forcing wood shavings and ground glass into the wounds. The infection was treated with sulfonamide and other drugs to determine their effectiveness.

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