Woman bites lover's penis off in car crash

A boss and his secretary who were having an affair saw their romantic tryst interrupted in a wince-inducing manner - after a car crash led her to accidentally bite his penis off.

According to reports in China Press and Sin Chew Daily, the 30-year-old woman was performing oral sex on her boss in a car in a Singapore park, when the car was struck by a reversing van.

The impact caused her to bite the man's penis off.

Just in case this wasn't already bad enough for those involved, the incident was observed by a private detective who had been sent by the woman's husband to catch them out.

He described how, shortly after parking, the car started to 'shake violently' - but then was hit by the van. He said that the woman screamed loudly, with her mouth covered in blood.

Helpfully, the investigator called an ambulance to take the man to hospital. His lover followed him there, with part of his penis.

The investigator said he's never seen an incident like it before.

From: Perez Hilton

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Tree Grows in a man's Lung

A five-centimeter fir tree has been found in the lung of a man who complained he had a strong pain in his chest and was coughing blood.

The 28-year-old patient, Artyom Sidorkin, came to a hospital in the city of Izhevsk in Central Russia last week, Komsomolskaya Pravda daily reports.

Doctors x-rayed his chest and found a tumor in one of the lungs. Suspecting cancer, they made a decision to perform biopsy, but when they cut the tissue, they were amazed to see green needles in the cut.

“I blinked three times, and thought I was seeing things. Then I called the assistant to have a look,” says Vladimir Kamashev, doctor at the Udmurtian Cancer Center.

The five-centimeter branch was removed from the patient’s body.

“They told me my coughing blood was not caused by any disease,” Sidorkin says.

“It was the needles poking the capillaries. It really hurt a lot. But I never felt like I had an alien object inside of me.”

It is obvious that a five-centimeter branch is too large to be inhaled or swallowed, doctors say. They suggest that the patient might have inhaled a small bud, which then started to grow inside his body.

Meanwhile, the piece of lung with the little fir tree has been preserved for further study.

From: www.mosnews.com

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Fatty Foods May Boost Memory

A hormone released during the digestion of certain fats triggers long-term memory formation in rats, a new study says.
Researchers found that administering a compound produced in the small intestine called oleoylethanolamide (OEA) to rats improved memory retention during two different tasks.

When cell receptors activated by OEA were blocked, the animals' performance decreased.

Though the study involved rats, OEA's effects should be similar in other animals, including humans, said study team member Daniele Piomelli, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine.

Follow the Fat

The team suspects OEA's memory-enhancing activity likely evolved to help animals remember where and when they ate a fatty meal, so they could return to that spot later.

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Texas judge allows collection of dead son's sperm

A judge has granted a mother's request to have someone harvest sperm from her dead son's body, so she can have the option of carrying out his wish to have children. Nikolas Colton Evans, 21, died Sunday at a Brackenridge hospital after being punched and falling outside an Austin bar March 27.

His mother, Marissa Evans, told the Austin American-Statesman newspaper that he wanted to have three sons someday and had even picked out their names: Hunter, Tod and Van.

"I want him to live on. I want to keep a piece of him," she told the newspaper.

Travis County Probate Judge Guy Herman ruled Monday in an emergency hearing requested by the mother, because of the urgency of collecting the sperm intact.

Court documents said the sperm had to be collected within 24 hours of Nikolas Evans being removed from life support unless the body was cooled to no more than 39.2 degrees.

Herman ordered the county medical examiner's office to continue storing the body at the proper temperature until the sperm could be collected.

Other organs and tissues were already going to be harvested from Evans' body, the judge noted, and there would be no other remedy for the mother if time expired.

Evans and her attorneys were trying on Tuesday to find a urologist or other medical professional willing to collect the sperm for a possible surrogate pregnancy in the future.

University of Texas law professor John Robertson, who specializes in bioethics, said state law gives parents control over a child's body for organ and tissue donations but its use for sperm "is very unclear."

"There are no strong precedents in favor of a parent being able to request post-mortem sperm retrieval," he said.

No arrests have been made in the assault on Nikolas Evans. Investigators said Evans hit his head on the ground after he was punched during an argument with a group of men.

From: Perez Hilton

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Fish Can Count

When it comes to counting, fish do swimmingly, according to a new study that describes the first published evidence of such behavior.

Captive mosquitofish—a North and Central American freshwater fish named for its taste for mosquito larvae—successfully counted geometric shapes in recent laboratory experiments.
Ten of the naturally social fish were first trained inside their tank to associate a door permitting them to move into different compartments and join their larger group with a certain number of shapes.

The same fish were then tested several times in an otherwise empty, unfamiliar tank to see whether they would choose to swim through the door marked with the right number of shapes.

The results showed that the fish chose the correct door more often than by chance alone, said study lead author Christian Agrillo, a psychologist at the University of Padova in Italy.

To make sure the fish weren't using non-numerical cues—for instance, estimating how much space objects take up—the Agrillo and colleagues placed sets of shapes that varied in size, brightness, and distance.

The sets were randomly selected so that only the number of shapes stayed the same.

"Only [these] kinds of studies may permit us to definitively understand whether an animal is counting, or, in contrast, using other quantitative mechanisms," Agrillo said in an email.

Although mosquitofish now join humans, monkeys, and other animals known to count, the ability in fish is probably a "last resort" strategy that has evolutionary underpinnings, Agrillo said.

(Related: "Monkeys Can Subtract, Study Finds.")

That's because non-numerical cues probably come more easily to fish as they make rapid-fire decisions.

Being able to count may require more brainpower than simply judging numbers based on size. But counting might sometimes be necessary as the fish seek safety in numbers to shield themselves from predators, Agrillo said.

by: Christine Dell'Amore
From: http://news.nationalgeographic.com

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New Vaginal Gel Stops AIDS Virus

Cosmetic Ingredient GML Protects Monkeys From AIDS Virus

A new kind of vaginal gel prevents sexual transmission of the AIDS virus in monkey studies.

The anti-HIV ingredient in the gel is glycerol monolaurate or GML. It's already FDA approved as an ingredient in cosmetics and medicines.

"The results are very encouraging. They point to a novel avenue to prevent sexual transmission of HIV," study researcher Ashley T. Haase, MD, head of the microbiology department at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, said at a telephone news conference.

The surprise finding that GML can block HIV comes from basic research showing that the AIDS virus gains a foothold in the vagina by taking advantage of the body's immune system. Immune responses to the virus draw T cells — the white blood cells HIV loves to infect — to the site of infection. Without T-cell recruitment, HIV loses its grip.

That's where GML comes in. The antimicrobial agent affects immune responses and breaks the chain of events that let HIV spread through the body.

"We thought if we could modulate the immune response at the portal of HIV entry, we could block sexual transmission," Haase said. "[Colleague] Patrick Schlievert's work with GML showed that it had many properties that might block HIV expansion and systematic spread."

Haase, Schlievert, and colleagues gave five rhesus macaque monkeys daily GML treatments before putting 200 infectious doses of deadly SIV — the monkey version of HIV — into their vaginas. Another four animals got a gel without GML.

The four animals not given GML got AIDS. Those treated with GML showed no sign of infection during the short-term study, although one of the five animals showed signs of infection several months later. But just as HIV drugs with different modes of action are more effective when mixed into a drug "cocktail," Haase says GML could be mixed with different kinds of anti-HIV agents.

"GML could be part of a combined strategy with another vaginal microbicide, such as PRO 2000, with a different mechanism of action," he suggests.
Ingredients of GML Anti-HIV Gel in Common Use

GML is found in breast milk, Schlievert says, and it is used in many cosmetics and in medicines taken orally or used on the skin. And recent studies show that GML kills many different kinds of germs — including vaginal yeast infections and several different sexually transmitted diseases, said Schlievert, professor of microbiology at the University of Minnesota.

"GML is presently being considered as an additive to tampons because of its ability to interfere with bacterial growth, including the bacteria that cause toxic shock syndrome," Schlievert said at the news conference.

For vaginal use in the monkey studies — and with an eye toward future human use — GML was mixed with KY Warming Liquid, an over-the-counter product widely used as a personal lubricant.

"What was done was to combine two FDA-approved medical devices to create another approved device," Schlievert said.

However, Schlievert said GML has not yet been tested for long-term human use.

And there's a lot more work to do with monkeys before GML gel is ready for human tests. That will have to be done before human studies of GML gel for HIV prevention.

Haase, Schlievert, and colleagues report their findings in the March 4 online edition of the journal Nature.

From: Perez Hilton

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Tongue bite girlfriend faces jail

A woman who bit off her boyfriend's tongue during a drunken birthday kiss has been told she faces jail.

Tracy Davies, 40, bit off a third of Mark Coghill's tongue after telling him "you never give me smoochy kisses any more".

Each had drunk a bottle of vodka before the attack at his flat in Jesmond, Newcastle, in October.

Davies was convicted of grievous bodily harm but cleared of the same charge with intent at Newcastle Crown Court.

The jury heard that the couple were celebrating Mr Coghill's birthday when Davies grew upset because she was not pregnant.

As Mr Coghill, 45, moved to comfort her, she asked him to kiss her, the court heard.
They kissed and she bit down hard on his tongue, causing him to scream, and he tapped her on the head, hoping she would let go.

He said: "Then when she did stop, she opened her mouth and looked at me in such a way that I have never seen anyone do before."

Mr Coghill said he could see part of his tongue inside her mouth.

He said: "She let out a satisfaction sound, like if you have a cup of tea when you haven't had one for a few days.

"A 'mmmm' sound."

She then spat it on the floor, he said.

Taste buds

Davies later called paramedics, who alerted police, and when arrested she told officers: "You're joking."

Mr Coghill was treated at Newcastle General Hospital, but surgeons decided the risk of infection was too high to consider reattaching the torn tongue.

The former customer service adviser was no longer fit to work, struggled to speak and had lost many of his taste buds, the court heard.

Judge John Evans adjourned the case for three weeks to allow for pre-sentence reports.

He granted Davies bail, but warned she would be jailed.

From: http://news.bbc.co.uk

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