Big Brain Projects Highlight Drug Research Gaps

  

A laboratory assistant holds one hemisphere of a healthy brain in the Morphological unit of psychopathology in the Neuropsychiatry division of the Belle Idee University Hospital in Chene-Bourg near Geneva in this March 14, 2011 file photo. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/Files

  

An undated image of the human brain taken through scanning technology. REUTERS/Sage Center for the Study of the Mind, University of California, Santa Barbara/Handout/Files

 

A laser-etched lead crystal glass artwork by Katherine Dowson entitled Memory of a Brain Malformation is seen at an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London in this March 27, 2012 file photo. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/Files 

Analysis : Big Brain Projects Highlight Drug Research Gaps - Governments on both sides of the Atlantic are placing big new bets on the future of brain science, just as much of the pharmaceutical industry retreats from the field.

Brain disorders ranging from depression to Alzheimer's are extracting an ever greater social and economic cost across the globe. But while the United States and European Union are funding ambitious efforts in neuroscience, the private sector is often skeptical about the prospect of rapid breakthrough cures.

Many pharmaceutical companies harbor deep doubts about whether neuroscience is worth their investment dollars as a boom period for once highly profitable psychiatric medicines comes to an end and new drugs prove hard to find.

President Barack Obama unveiled a major initiative last week to map the individual cells and circuits that make up the human brain. That announcement followed a EU decision in January to award up to $1.3 billion to a Swiss-based project aiming to create a synthetic "computerized" brain.

The two programs - Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) and the Human Brain Project - have been compared with the Human Genome Project, the 13-year venture to map human DNA completed in 2003. In fact, they are even more ambitious, given their open-ended nature.

Yet it will be years, possibly decades, before the findings of these programs make any significant difference to the millions of people worldwide suffering from brain disorders - a challenge for both neuroscientists and industry.

Brain science may be on the cusp of a new era, but in the short term it is proving frustratingly hard to improve on the uneven effectiveness of existing drugs - such as the 25-year-old antidepressant Prozac - or to find new Alzheimer's treatments.

HELP OR HYPE?

At a festival of neuroscience on the banks of London's River Thames this week, 2,000 neuroscientists from all areas of the field tried to bring their work to life for the public.

Wearing blue badges saying "ask me about brains" enthusiasts from universities, charities and patient groups invited visitors to "knit a neuron" or stimulate their grey matter by interacting with a walking man-sized sponge brain.

In rooms set back from the fun, brain scientists presented data on the prefrontal cortex and decision making, and delivered lectures on neuropsychiatry in the 21st century.

Some were buoyed by the news that world leaders have finally begun to notice their field, and are stumping up serious cash, but there is also a fear the big brain projects may generate more hype than help.

"There's going to be a lot of hype about this, just as there was at the beginning of the Human Genome Project," said Stephen Rose, a professor of biology and neurobiology at the Open University and the University of London.

"(Obama's BRAIN plan) will no doubt advance neuroscience, but whether it will advance patient care is a different question," he said, confessing also to "considerable skepticism" about the European brain project. That, he said, would probably do more for computing than it would for brain science.

Moncef Slaoui, head of research at GlaxoSmithKline, knows the ups and downs or the neuroscience field.

His company is one of those that has cut back its research and development work in neuroscience areas such as pain and depression, although it is still investing in diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

Britain's biggest drugmaker also has a new vision for treating disease by developing "bioelectronics" to target the electrical signals transmitted by nerves.

"With the investments that are being made now in brain mapping, I am very confident that major breakthroughs will come - I just don't know when," Slaoui told Reuters.

DEPRESSED SALES

Although the Western world is still popping plenty of pills for mental illness, patent expiries and tumbling prices as cheap generics hit the market mean industry profits are eroding fast.

Worldwide sales of antidepressants, which peaked at $15 billion in 2003, are set to fall to $5.4 billion 2018, while antipsychotics are expected to tumble from a record $21 billion in 2011 to $9.8 billion, according to consensus analyst forecasts compiled by Thomson Reuters Pharma.

Yet there is still a big unmet need, with depression alone expected to be the largest cause of disability worldwide by 2030, according to the World Health Organization.

The economic consequences are also huge, with the World Economic Forum estimating in 2011 that the cumulative global impact of mental disorders in terms of lost economic output would amount to $16 trillion by 2030.

Finding new drugs to treat brain disorders is notoriously tough. Early tests on animals are of limited value, since mice cannot tell scientists what they are feeling, and placebo drugs - or sugar pills - tend to have a major impact in human studies, making it very hard to know if a particular drug is working.

David Nutt, a professor of psychopharmacology at Imperial College London, also says restrictive rules on the drugs researchers can use to explore the brain are hindering progress.

"Most of the studies we do in animals that tell us about the brain use drugs which we cannot use in humans," he told Reuters. "We need to have a toolbox for human use. We need to have them made available so that we can ask fundamental questions about human brains."

THINNING FIELD

Companies that have cut back neuroscience work in recent years include GSK, Merck, Novartis and AstraZeneca, with the latter taking a further step to downgrade the area last month.

But not everyone is quitting. Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson still have major investments in neuroscience, while Roche - best known for cancer treatments - has recently increased its investment on brain disorders.

"It's still early days but we believe there is a lot of potential in neuroscience," said Roche CEO Severin Schwan.

The Swiss drugmaker has a new treatment for schizophrenia in final-stage Phase III trials, results of which are due in the first half of 2014. If it works, Deutsche Bank analysts believe bitopertin could be a $4 billion-a-year seller.

Other analysts are skeptical, especially since the success rate for brain drugs in Phase III is poor, averaging around 50 percent against 50-80 percent for other disease areas.

The general pullback by industry has thinned out the field, which could be good for those companies remaining - although it may not last.

"The big brain initiatives in both the U.S. and Europe are long-term. Ultimately, I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up throwing up positive developments that prompt Big Pharma to re-enter the area," said Anders Gersel Pedersen, research head at Danish neuroscience specialist Lundbeck. ( Reuters )

READ MORE - Big Brain Projects Highlight Drug Research Gaps

Could Life Be Older Than Earth Itself?

Could Life Be Older Than Earth Itself? - Applying a maxim from computer science to biology raises the intriguing possibility that life existed before Earth did and may have originated outside our solar system, scientists say.

Moore's Law is the observation that computers increase exponentially in complexity, at a rate of about double the transistors per integrated circuit every two years. If you apply Moore's Law to just the last few years' rate of computational complexity and work backward, you'll get back to the 1960s, when the first microchip was, indeed, invented.

Now, two geneticists have applied Moore's Law to the rate at which life on Earth grows in complexity — and the results suggest organic life first came into existence long before Earth itself.

Staff Scientist Alexei Sharov of the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, and Theoretical Biologist Richard Gordon of the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Florida, took Moore's Law, replaced the transistors with nucleotides — the building blocks of DNA and RNA — and the circuits with genetic material, and did the math.

The results suggest life first appeared about 10 billion years ago, far older than the Earth's projected age of 4.5 billion years.

So even if it's mathematically possible for life to have existed before Earth did, is it physically possible? Again, Sharov and Gordon said yes, it is. As our solar system was forming, pre-existing bacterialike organisms, or even simple nucleotides from an older part of the galaxy, could have reached Earth by hitching an interstellar ride on comets, asteroids or other inorganic space debris — a theoretical process called panspermia.

The scientists’ calculations are not scientific proof that life predates Earth — there's no way of knowing for sure that organic complexity increased at a steady rate at any point in the universe's history. Call it a thought exercise or an essay, rather than a theory, Sharov said.

"There are lots of hypothetical elements to [our argument]… but to make a wider view, you need some hypothetical elements," Sharov told TechNewsDaily.

Sharov and Gordon's idea raises other intriguing possibilities. For one, "life before earth" debunks the long-held science-fiction trope of the scientifically advanced alien species. If genetic complexity progresses at a steady rate, then the social and scientific development of any other alien life form in the Milky Way galaxy would be roughly equivalent to those of humans.

Sharov and Gordon's study draws a theoretical and practical parallel between the origin of life and the relationship between life and knowledge. Human evolution doesn’t just occur in the genome; it occurs epigenetically, or within the mind, as technology, language and cultural memory all become more complex. "The functional complexity of organisms [is] encoded partially in the heritable genome and partially in the perishable mind," they explain in the paper.

By applying Moore's Law — a theory originally devised to explain technological development — to life, the geneticists aren’t simplifying evolution; they’re acknowledging its extraordinary complexity, they say.

Although some may be skeptical of Sharov and Gordon's findings, the scientists stand by their conclusions. "Contamination with bacterial spores from space appears the most plausible hypothesis that explains the early appearance of life on Earth," they argue in the paper, which is published online in the preprint journal Arxiv.

Sharov said that if he had to bet on it, he’d say "it's 99 percent true that life started before Earth — but we should leave 1 percent for some wild chance that we haven’t accounted for." ( LiveScience.com )

READ MORE - Could Life Be Older Than Earth Itself?

Longevity's secrets sought in DNA of 100-year-olds

Longevity's secrets sought in DNA of 100-year-olds - George Eberhardt turned 107 last month, and scientists would love to know how he and other older folks like him made it that far. So he's going to hand over some of his DNA. He's one of 100 centenarians taking part in a project announced Wednesday that will examine some of the oldest citizens with one of the newest scientific tools: whole-genome sequencing, the deciphering of a person's complete collection of DNA.

Scientists think DNA from very old healthy people could offer clues to how they lived so long. And that could one day lead to medicines to help the rest of us stay disease-free longer.

By the time you reach, say, 105, "it's very hard to get there without some genetic advantages," says Dr. Thomas Perls, a geriatrics expert at Boston University.

Perls is helping find centenarians for the Archon Genomics X Prize competition. The X Prize Foundation, best known for a spaceflight competition, is offering $10 million in prize money to researchers who decipher the complete DNA code from 100 people older than 100. The contest will be judged on accuracy, completeness and the speed and cost of sequencing.

The contest is a relaunch of an older competition with a new focus on centenarians, and it's the second sequencing project involving the elderly to be announced this month.

In this Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2011 photo, Marie Eberhardt helps her husband George Eberhardt, 107, of Chester, NJ. after they both got their annual flu shot in Mendham, N.J. George Eberhardt turned 107 in September 2011, and scientists would love to know how he and other older folks like him make it that far. So he's going to hand over some of his DNA. He is taking part in one of two projects announced in October 2011 that will examine some of the oldest citizens with one of the newest scientific tools: whole-genome sequencing, the deciphering of a person's complete collection of DNA. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)

Genome pioneer J. Craig Venter says the centenarian project is just a first step in revealing the genetic secrets of a long and healthy life.

"We need 10,000 genomes, not 100, to start to understand the link between genetics, disease and wellness," said Venter, who is co-chairing the X Prize contest.

The 107-year-old Eberhardt of Chester, N.J., played and taught tennis until he was 94. He said he's participating in the X Prize project because he's interested in science and technology. It's not clear his genes will reveal much. Nobody else in his extended family reached 100, and he thinks only a couple reached 90, he said in a telephone interview.

So why does he think he lived so long? He credits 70 years of marriage to his wife, Marie. She in turn cites his "intense interest in so many things" over a lifetime, from building radios as a child to pursuing a career in electronics research.

But scientists believe there's more to it, and they want to use genome sequencing to investigate. Dr. Richard Cawthon of the University of Utah, who is seeking longevity genes by other means, says it may turn up genetic features that protect against multiple diseases or that slow the process of aging in general.

Protective features of a centenarian's DNA can even overcome less-than-ideal lifestyles, says Dr. Nir Barzilai of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. His own study of how centenarians live found that "as a group, they haven't done the right things."

Many in the group he studied were obese or overweight. Many were smokers, and few exercised or followed a vegetarian diet. His oldest participant, who died this month just short of her 110th birthday, smoked for 95 years.

"She had genes that protected her against the environment," Barzilai said. One of her sisters died at 102, and one of her brothers is 105 and still manages a hedge fund.

Earlier this month, Scripps Health of San Diego announced a different genome project involving the elderly. The Scripps Wellderly Study will receive the complete genomes of 1,000 people age 80 and older from a sequencing company.

A complete genome reveals not only genes but also other DNA that's responsible for regulating genes. It's "the full monty," showing DNA elements that are key for illness and health, says Dr. Eric Topol, who heads the Wellderly Study.

Participants in that study have an average age of 87 and range up to 108, and they've never had diabetes, heart disease or cancer, or any neurological disease.

"Why are these people Teflon-coated?" Topol asked. "Why don't they get disease?"

The ability to turn out lots of complete genomes is "the new-new thing" in trying to find out, he said.

"There's been too much emphasis on disorders per se and not enough on the people who are exceptionally healthy," to learn from their genomes, Topol said. "Now we have the powerful tools to do that." ( Associated Press )

READ MORE - Longevity's secrets sought in DNA of 100-year-olds

Can you die from laughter ... ???

Can you die from laughter ... ??? - Be careful how hard you laugh at some of this summer’s blockbuster comedies. "Bridesmaids," "Horrible Bosses" or "The Hangover" sequel could just be the death of you.

“Years ago, I went to see 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' with a friend and I thought I was going to die laughing,” says Jim Dailakis, a 41-year-old comedian from Queens, N.Y. “We had this brutal karate instructor who looked just like this little golden head that Harrison Ford holds up at one point. I saw that head and started howling like a girl. And then I couldn’t catch my breath and had to think of something else so I wouldn’t pass out.”

Dailakis, who says he’s usually goaded into uncontrollable laughing fits by his buddies, says he’s actually blacked out laughing over the years.

“The first time it happened, I thought I was going to die,” he says. “I was on my knees laughing, and then suddenly I couldn’t breathe. It was scary and freaky but I couldn’t stop laughing. And then I began to weep uncontrollably and I thought that was so hilarious, I went into another manic fit of laughter. My friend was laughing so hard, he had to leave the room.”

Can you die from laughter ... ???

After that, Dailakis saw stars -- then passed out.

“The next thing I knew, I was lying down and looking up,” he says. “And I could still hear my friend laughing in the next room.”

According to Dr. Martin Samuels, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, blacking out while laughing may be related to over-breathing, and is probably not too dangerous.

“This is most likely benign and unlikely that it would lead to death,” he says.

But that doesn’t mean death doesn’t sometimes wear a smile. In the third century B.C., the Greek philosopher Chrysippus was said to have died laughing after getting his donkey drunk on wine. More recently, a Danish audiologist died laughing in 1989 while watching "A Fish Called Wanda." (It's also the subject of an old Monty Python sketch, in which a writer pens the "funniest joke in the world" -- and immediately dies.)

“Happy news is just as dangerous as sad news with regard to the risk of sudden death,” he says. “I have cases of people who died after hitting holes in one, after bowling perfect 300 games and upon hearing the words ‘Not Guilty.’ Death during sexual activity is also well known. Ecstasy, happiness and good news are definitely risky.”

Why would good news or happy circumstances put us at risk? It’s all about that old fight-or-flight response, he says.

“Extreme excitement, whether that be sadness or happiness activates the part of the brain that’s responsible for the flight or fight response to threats in the wild,” he says. “This releases a natural chemical -- adrenaline -- which in large animals can be toxic to various organs, in particular the heart.”

As a result, extremely strong emotional states -- whether positive or negative -- can be harmful to the heart, on rare occasions causing an abnormal rhythm which can be lethal.

Dailakis says his laughter blackouts used to bother him, but now that he knows what to expect, he’s not worried.

“Afterward, I feel exhausted but so alive,” he says. “I wouldn’t change it for the world. Why should I go to a doctor? It’s obviously a natural thing. It would be like telling the doctor, ‘I get turned on really easily. Can you stop that?’”

When's the last time you laughed so hard you couldn't catch your breath? What happened? Leave a comment telling us about it. ( msn.com )

READ MORE - Can you die from laughter ... ???

Egyptian Mummies Hold Clues of Ancient Air Pollution

Egyptian Mummies Hold Clues of Ancient Air Pollution - Ancient Egyptians may have been exposed to air pollution way back when, according to new evidence of particulates in the lungs of 15 mummies, including noblemen and priests.

Particulates, tiny microscopic particles that irritate the lungs, have been linked to a wide array of modern-day illnesses, including heart disease, lung ailments and cancer. The particulates are typically linked to post-industrial activities, such as fossil-fuel burning.

But after hearing of reports of such particulates being found in mummy tissue, Roger Montgomerie, a doctoral student at the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester, decided to take a closer look at mummified lung tissue. His work represents the first attempt to identify and study particulates in multiple Egyptian mummies.

The 15 mummified lungs he's examined so far all showed particulates and the levels of them are not much below what he'd expect in modern-day lungs.

"I would say it would be less than modern day, but not much less," Montgomerie told LiveScience. This is "quite bizarre if you think about it, considering we have the mass burning of fossil fuels and an awful lot of pollution that has been going on since the industrial revolution."

In the world of Egyptology, where well-preserved lung tissue is rare, and permission to examine it is rarer still, 15 is a significant sample, Montgomerie said.

All walks of life

These mummies come from a broad cross section of Egyptian life. Some were ordinary workers who lived in a remote outpost called the Dakhleh Oasis, while others were of the upper class — nobles and priests or priestesses.

"Everyone seems to have a degree of it," Montgomerie said of the particulates, "it doesn't seem to be confined to one social group."

The finding suggests the ancient Egyptians may have suffered from a wide range of negative health effects.

"It would definitely increase your chances of getting a lung infection and also probably increase your chances of something like pneumonia as well," Montgomerie said.

Lung disease has been detected before in Egyptian mummies. One notable case was documented in the 1970s by Eddie Tapp, also from the University of Manchester.

Tapp examined the lungs of a 3,800-year old-mummy named Nekht-ankh. Although this person lived to be nearly 60, his lungs were in bad shape and he may have had trouble breathing, Tapp found.

"The lung tissue appeared to be damaged and to contain a good deal of scarring," Tapp wrote in the book "The Manchester Mummy Project" (Manchester University Press, 1979). "Amongst the fibrous tissue were several aggregations of fine particles."

Ancient air pollution

The question now facing researchers is why were particulates so prevalent in Egyptian society?

While ancient Egypt was a preindustrial society, its people did engage in cooking, metal working and mining, all activities that can generate air pollution. In addition, the Egyptian climate, with its deserts and sandstorms, would have whipped up any grounded particulates into the air where they could easily be inhaled.

Now, Montgomerie has devised an experiment that he hopes will shed light on the origin of these tiny particles.

He is burning different sources of fuel used by the Egyptians and capturing the particulates they create. "What I can do is go back to the ancient soot, from the ancient lung tissue, and compare the two."

In addition, he is gathering sand from archaeological sites in Egypt and comparing them to sandy particulates found in the lungs. He said that sand from the desert is eroded and should be "nice and rounded" whereas sand from manufacturing or quarrying "should be fresh sand and should be sharp and angular."

He told LiveScience that it will be at least three months until he has results back from his experiment.

This research was presented at the 12th annual Current Research in Egyptology conference, held in March at Durham University in the United Kingdom. ( LiveScience.com )

READ MORE - Egyptian Mummies Hold Clues of Ancient Air Pollution

Miracle Baby Born Outside Of Womb

Miracle Baby Born Outside Of Womb - It's not everyday that a baby is born outside the uterus, much less survives.

In fact, doctors warned 27-year-old Nicky Soto that if she continued with the ectopic pregnancy she was risking her own life as well as the child's. But according to MSNBC, she decided to go forward.

Soto got the disturbing news about her ectopic pregnancy when she was 18 weeks along. She’d been referred to a specialist when her regular physician detected a problem. On ultrasound images it was clear that Soto was carrying a boy, but that the baby was not in the normal spot. What the specialist couldn’t tell was exactly where baby was growing. If the baby’s placenta was attached to a vital organ, that would be extremely dangerous.

“It was really scary,” Soto remembered tearfully. “Just because we didn’t know where the baby was and what he was attached to and what could happen.”

Azelan Cruz Perfecto came into the world Monday through Ceasarian section Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona.

Having decided to go forward with the pregnancy, Soto has been in the hospital since March as doctors closely monitored her progress. She also has a 7-year-old son, and was concerned as to what would happen to him if she didn't make it.

“Every day the concern was in my mind: Is everything going to go well like I’m telling myself it will?” Soto told TODAY. “It was concerning, but I took the risk. I just stayed in the hospital and I tried to stay as safe as I could.”

Doctors say they've never seen anything like it. ( huffingtonpost.com )

READ MORE - Miracle Baby Born Outside Of Womb

Weighing the evidence—is the chapel's code real or fake?

Weighing the evidence—is the chapel's code real or fake? - The Rosslyn Motet emanates from the crypt as you walk into the chapel. It's playing from a modest little boom box, but the acoustics of the underground chambers are so magnificent that you can hear it clearly from anywhere inside. The already solemn tones sound especially ghostly when the chapel is deserted and you can see your breath, even under the heat lamps.

In the five years since the Mitchells announced to the world that they had solved the Rosslyn code, they've received modest recognition in the media and respectable sales of a professional recording of the work. They shrewdly timed their announcement of the solution to the release of the movie adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, giving reporters and producers a ready-made news peg. Over time, however, their story has faded to a curiosity. Interest in whether it is real has waned.

Stuart and Tommy Mitchell say they don't much care if people believe them. On my last day in Roslin, I met Stuart and his friend Ian Robertson at the chapel. Robertson and his co-author Mark Oxbrow wrote by far the best modern book on Rosslyn Chapel, Rosslyn and the Grail. Mostly, Robertson and Oxbrow debunk the various rumors and legends that have attached themselves to the chapel, including the crazy ones about the Holy Grail and Jesus' head. But when it comes to the Rosslyn Motet, they're more circumspect. "One 'code' that may actually exist within Rosslyn," Robertson and Oxbrow write, "is the mysterious carved cubes that ornament some of the arches in the chapel."

Robertson and Stuart Mitchell became friends after Rosslyn and the Grail went to press, but Robertson remains ambivalent about his buddy's theory. When we met at the chapel, the first thing Robertson asked me was whether I thought the code was real. I said I didn't know, but that it at least seemed plausible.

That's the maddening thing about the Rosslyn code. When you're standing under the cubes, watched over by the 13-piece angelic band, it all seems so obvious that you wonder why it took 500 years for someone to unearth the music. But when you go back to assemble the evidence, you realize that the Rosslyn Motet sits on top of a mountain of shaky assumptions. Is the resemblance between the cubes and Chladni patterns a coincidence? Could any random set of notes start sounding human-made when you hear them hundreds of times? Was it really feasible for these melodies to be produced in the 15^th century.

Against these doubts, only the music stands as counter-evidence. The Rosslyn code's highest-profile critic is probably Warwick Edwards, a music professor at the University of Glasgow. Edwards, who attended the first public performance of the Rosslyn Motet in the chapel itself, judged that the final product didn't resemble any medieval music he'd ever heard. To that point, however, I don't believe you can judge the Mitchells' creation based on how medieval it sounds—this is more an issue of Stuart Mitchell's orchestration than it is with how the original melodies have been transcribed.

The code has several online doubters, the most prolific of which is the anonymous author of the blog "The BS Historian," who has written skeptically about the Mitchells nearly a dozen times in the past few years. The author's criticisms cover the gamut of the Mitchells' story, from the historical holes to the matching of Rosslyn's symbols to documented Chladni patterns. Others have parroted this skepticism. A commenter on the website of high-profile skeptic James Randi sums up a common reaction quite concisely: "I strongly suspect that this is yet another case of seeing what one wants to see, with heavy confirmation bias."

If the Mitchells' theory is indeed fabricated, it's still fascinating that they coaxed compelling, nonrandom-sounding melodies out of the Rosslyn Chapel's stone cubes. Whether any random series of notes can sound beautiful in the hands of an expert arranger is a tough question to answer, though one footnote to the Rosslyn story tilts me a bit towards the Mitchells' side.

On my first morning at the chapel, before I'd met Stuart, a tour guide named Roger told me he'd heard that many of the cubes had fallen from the ceiling over the years. A stonemason, Roger believed, had replaced them on the ceiling at random as part of a restoration a few decades prior. Uh oh, I thought—I've crossed the Atlantic to investigate a centuries-old song that's younger than I am.

As it turns out, the stonemason, an elderly man name Joe Lang, still lives a few miles from the chapel. Lang later told me the real story: Just a few of the cubes at the chapel's northern end had fallen—"no more than seven or eight" out of 213. But I didn't know this when I talked to Stuart over dinner that first night. "I absolutely hate the end of the music, because it's the only part that doesn't make any sense," he told me. If, in fact, the last few cubes are out of place, this might explain why.

After three days in Roslin, I still wasn't totally convinced by the Mitchells' story. In search of more evidence, I paid a visit to the Scottish National Library in Edinburgh. I wanted to see the manuscript on chivalry and warfare that William St. Clair, the chapel's founder, commissioned from Sir Gilbert Hay—the man Tommy and Stuart Mitchell believe might be responsible for Rosslyn Chapel's carvings. The Hay manuscript is well guarded. To see one of Scotland's most-treasured artifacts, you have to get two senior curators to sign off on the request; at that point, the manuscript must be delivered from a separate location.

Hay's 500-year-old words are penned in the elegant handwriting of a professional scribe, and are more or less impossible for a lay reader to decipher. In many places, the book has been idly vandalized. The Curroy family, later owners of the manuscript, took the liberty of doodling in the margins, practicing their signatures and drawing little hands with pointing fingers.

The very first page in the tome is a half-size sheet with some incomprehensible script on the front. When I turned it over, however, I saw something flabbergasting: a nine-note melody sketched out on a familiar five-line staff.

Was this incredible proof that Stuart and Tommy Mitchell had been right all along? I compared these nine notes to the score of the Rosslyn Motet, however, and I didn't turn up a match. I sent the image to Stuart, and he pointed out that there was a link—the notes in the manuscript pass through the same scale as most of the melodies he decoded. It's not a strong connection, but it's something.

Alas, Oxford University's Sally Mapstone—who wrote her dissertation on Hay's work—told me this was all wishful thinking. The manuscript in the Scottish National Library did not belong to Sir Gilbert Hay; it was copied about 40 years later for a St. Clair descendant. Mapstone identified the script above the music as 18^th-century. Unless another detective found himself on the same trail, it's probably just a tantalizing coincidence.

More than 500 years after the Rosslyn Chapel was built, codes continue to fascinate and confound us. Back in November, the New York Times ran a profile of Jim Sanborn, the artist responsible for one of the most famous unsolved codes of modern times. It is called "Kryptos," and it lives on a copper sculpture at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. The serpentine installation contains a long series of letters broken into four parts, with each section encrypted using a different method. The first three sections have been solved, but the fourth has proved to be so confounding that Sanborn felt compelled to give the Times a six-letter clue in the hope that it would hurry along the process. He's sick of dealing with it.

Kryptos consists of four different substitution codes, in which each letter represents one letter in the solution. One of the four remains unsolved.

When I got back from Scotland, I showed Sanborn some images of the cubes. He seemed to think they might be the work of a cryptographer. The trouble with the chapel's cipher, he said, was that the act of solving it doesn't prove it was a cipher in the first place. It's virtually impossible to crack the fourth part of Kryptos and get the wrong answer—the odds that the same code could produce two different coherent passages of text is functionally zero. (This hasn't prevented people from confronting Sanborn with outlandish solutions, sometimes on his lawn.) While Sanborn told me that Kryptos has meaning beyond the passages, he verified that—unlike the alleged Rosslyn Code—you don't need any information outside the letters themselves to crack it.

Since there are only 12 unique symbols, it's unlikely someone else will find a written message in the Rosslyn cubes. Anything is possible, but I think the book on the stone cubes is closed. Either the Rosslyn Motet is a 500-year-old musical message, or the cubes mean nothing.

But perhaps that's not the point. The chapel's designer, I'm sure, would be pleased to know that we're still engaged by his creation—pondering what it means and what he wanted us to see. By happy coincidence, I had just finished reading an exquisite little novel by the British author J. L. Carr, A Month in the Country. The narrator, a World War I veteran, is a restorer of medieval paintings that had been whitewashed over by a disapproving churchman. This line of work takes him to a tiny settlement in northern England, where he slowly chips away at a canvas. As he persists, the original artwork—a masterful depiction of the Judgment—comes into focus:

Here I was, face to face with a nameless painter reaching from the dark to show me what he could do, saying to me as clear as words, "If any part of me survives from time's corruption, let it be this. For this was the sort of man I was." ( slate.com )

READ MORE - Weighing the evidence—is the chapel's code real or fake?

Is this the skull of the Mona Lisa? Bones found at site of alleged model's burial

Is this the skull of the Mona Lisa? Bones found at site of alleged model's burial - The secret behind the famously enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa, the world's most famous painting, could soon be solved.

Archaeologists on a dig in Italy claim to have discovered the skull of the woman who posed for Leonardo's da Vinci's masterpiece.

The excavation team revealed over the weekend that it had found a crypt after a two-week search at an abandoned convent in Florence.

But the grave beneath St. Ursula convent, believed to be the final resting place of Lisa Gherardini Del Giocondo, has now yielded a female-sized skull.

Key discovery: An Italian archaeology team has uncovered a skull it believes to be that of the woman who posed for Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa

Enigmatic find: The human bones found at the excavation site in the Saint Ursula convent in Florence are thought to be those of Lisa Gherardini Del Giocondo

The merchant's wife is widely believed to have been the life model for da Vinci's best-known work.

Officials say the skull was found five feet under the convent's original floor along with other fragments of human ribs and vertebrae.

Now scientists will compare the DNA in the bones with the remains of the model's two children who were buried nearby in an attempt to authenticate the find.

If scientists can confirm the skull belongs to the model, forensic artists will then attempt to reconstruct her face to see how it compares to the 500-year-old version painted by da Vinci - and perhaps solve the riddle of the Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile in the process.

Archeologist Silvano Vinceti, who is in charge of the dig, explained: 'We don't know yet if the bones belong to one single skeleton or more than one.

'But this confirms our hypothesis that in St.Ursula convent there are still human bones and we cannot exclude that among them there are bones belonging to Lisa Gherardini.'

Resting place: The courtyard of the Saint Ursula convent in Florence, where archaeologists have been digging for the last two weeks

Cameras ready: Researchers dig into the underground tombs inside the convent while a crowd of media watches for discoveries

The initial discovery - made using ground penetrating radar and ancient maps and documents - came after a foot of modern concrete was removed and unearthed a layer of ancient, 90-centimeter wide bricks.

Professor Vinceti said of the first discovery: 'This is a very exciting development and the find is consistent with our records and our preliminary research.

'The crypt we have found is the one that was mentioned in church records from 1495 and was reached via a grate and then a staircase.

Muse: The enigmatic Mona Lisa has intrigued millions

'We also know from those records that in 1625 there was a second crypt and these are the ones we have found.'

Present on the dig is Natalia Gucciardini Strozzi, who is related to Lisa Gherardini and who is also a close friend of Prince Charles and former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

She said: 'It was so emotional being here - I didn't think I would get so emotional. I am certain that this is the final resting place of Lisa Gherardini.

Lisa Gheradini, who died in 1542, was the wife of a rich silk merchant named Francesco del Giocondo. In Italy the Mona Lisa is known as La Gioconda.

Most modern historians agree that the lady depicted in the Mona Lisa was Lisa del Giocondo, who became a nun after her husband's death. She died in the convent on July 15, 1542, aged 63.

The couple were married in 1495 when the bride was 16 and the groom 35 and it has been suggested that the da Vinci was commissioned the portrait to mark her pregnancy.

It is not the first time that Professor Vinceti has used such techniques in his work - last year similar methods were used to locate and identify the remains of Caravaggio, another Renaissance master.

Last year in a Dan Brown-style mystery professor Vincenti also claimed that a hidden message could be seen in the eyes of the Mona Lisa after examining them with a high powered magnifying glass.

The Mona Lisa is an oil on panel painting owned by the French government and the image is so widely recognised and caricatured that it is considered the most famous painting in the world.

Da Vinci started to paint it in 1503 or 1504 and finished it in 1519, shortly before his death, and after he had moved to France. ( dailymail.co.uk )

READ MORE - Is this the skull of the Mona Lisa? Bones found at site of alleged model's burial

The Best Power Foods

The Best Power Foods - If you're wondering why you're tired after a full night's sleep, or jittery even without a venti latte, the answer might be on your plate.

"Marginal nutritional deficiencies may make you feel 'under the weather,'" says Elizabeth Somer, RD, author of Eat Your Way to Happiness. And eating too much of the wrong things can have the same effect, she says. So if you haven't been functioning at 100 percent, try these foods to give your well-being a big boost.

Eat this to boost energy

Feel like every day is a slog? You may not be getting enough iron. Add in the fact that you lose the mineral when you menstruate, and you may feel groggy and fuzzy-headed even if you don't have a full-blown deficiency.

The remedy: Eat more red meats, fish, and poultry—the best animal-based sources of iron. (Liver contains one of the highest amounts, too, but steer clear if you're pregnant, since its high vitamin A content may be dangerous to a developing baby.) Don't eat meat? Go for soybeans, lentils, spinach, and fortified cereals. Iron isn't as easily absorbed by your body in those forms, but adding vitamin C will help, so enjoy a glass of OJ with those cornflakes.

If you tend to have heavy periods, you're probably losing more iron than the average woman, so be extra sure you're eating plenty of iron-rich foods, adds Carol Haggans, RD, scientific and health communications consultant with the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Eat this to feel calm

You know that caffeine can put you on edge. But here's another source of jitters: too many refined carbs—foods high in white flour (cookies, sugary cereals, white bread, etc.) and stripped of nutrients and fiber that normally keep your blood sugar stable.

"A big dose of refined carbs causes your blood sugar level to soar and an excessive amount of insulin to be secreted by the pancreas," says Alyse Levine, RD, nutrition advisor for Livestrong.com. You may be antsy as a result: think toe-tapping and/or an inability to focus. Then, the extra insulin will make your blood sugar plummet, Levine explains, leaving you feeling sluggish.

To help prevent those drastic spikes and drops in blood sugar, Levine says, your meals and snacks should be based around lean protein, healthy fats, and unrefined carbohydrates. That means loading up on brown rice, whole-grain bread and pasta, whole oats, and, of course, fruits, veggies, and legumes.

Eat this to get sharp

So you misplaced your car keys. Again. A lack of omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin B12—both brain-boosting nutrients—could be to blame.

"Omega-3s are loaded with DHA, a type of fatty acid that helps promote well-functioning synapses," says Dr. Joseph Quinn, associate professor of neurology at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.

Translation: It keeps neurons in your brain firing more effectively. A lack of B12, meanwhile, has been linked with confusion, numbness, and fatigue. Up to 15 percent of Americans could be low on B12, according to the NIH, in part because some people may have trouble absorbing the nutrient.

Get your brain back on track by chowing down on fatty, omega-3-rich fish like mackerel, trout, herring, tuna, and salmon. To get more B12, try fortified breakfast cereal (many have 100 percent of the recommended daily value), liver, cooked clams, yogurt, cheese, whole eggs, and ham, as well as fish like salmon and trout. If you're upping your intake of these foods and still feel disoriented, ask your doctor if you should consider having your B12 level tested, Haggans says.

Eat this to beat bloat

Yes, veggies and legumes are great for you. But certain ones—like beans, broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower—can produce lots of gas, leaving you with major bloat. (The jury's still out as to why, but their complex sugars may be difficult to digest.) Carbonated drinks can also increase bloat, both because they're bubbly and because their artificial sweeteners can be hard for your body to break down.

If your belly's feeling swollen, try halving the amount of bloat-boosting veggies you normally eat for a week to see if that helps. Don't cut them out completely, though, because they provide crucial nutrients, says Dr. Roshini Rajapaksa, Health's Medical Editor and a gastroenterologist and internist at the New York University Langone Medical Center/Tisch Hospital.

Ditch soda and seltzer, but keep drinking flat water, which helps relieve constipation—another cause of the big B. Taking probiotic supplements may help, too; talk to your doctor about which one might be right for you.

Eat this to curb cramps

It's normal to feel a little achy after a tough workout, but cramps could mean you're low on electrolytes like potassium or magnesium, Haggans says. Potassium, for example, works with sodium to keep muscle contractions in check, so if you sweat it out, you may also have to deal with some pain in your calves or feet.

Your food Rx: While bananas are the most famous source of potassium, you actually get twice as much of the mineral from a medium-size baked potato. Prunes and orange juice have lots of it, too. As for magnesium, go for almonds and most other nuts, greens like spinach, and bran flakes and other unrefined grains. Consuming calcium also helps; get it from low-fat milk, tofu, and dark, leafy greens like collards. Dehydration can cause cramps, too, so don't forget to keep chugging H2O. ( foxnews.com )

READ MORE - The Best Power Foods

Middle-Aged Are Unhappiest

Middle-Aged Are Unhappiest - People’s happiness over their lifetime follows a U-shaped curve, with the young and the old the happiest and those in middle age the most unhappy, according to a study cited by The (London) Daily Telegraph.

Young people are carefree and optimistic about their future and dissatisfaction does not begin to kick in until they are in their late 20s, the research indicates.

People over the age of 50 also rated highly on the happiness index, due to their acceptance and satisfaction with their lives.

"A U-shaped happiness curve does not necessarily imply that a 65-year-old prefers his own life to the life of a 25-year-old," said the 29-year-old researcher, Belgium-based economist Bert van Landeghem.

"Both the 25-year-old and 65-year-old might agree that it is nicer to be 25 than to be 65. But the 65-year-old might nevertheless be more satisfied, as he has learned to be satisfied with what he has."

The study found, however, that happiness dropped during middle-age, and the level of unhappiness experienced then could be “the equivalent to becoming unemployed or losing a family member.”

This unhappy period eased from the mid-forties onwards, when people became "more cheerful and optimistic, perhaps reaching a maximum in their late 70s or 80s."

Van Landeghem -- who will present his findings at Royal Holloway, the University of London later this week -- said his findings were not limited to people who lived in the West.

Separately, a survey of 341,000 people by the American National Academy of Sciences found that happiness levels began climbing in the late forties and peaked at age 85.

The study attributed the spike in happiness to good health care and people doing more activities they enjoyed while cutting down on things they disliked.

Middle-aged people, on the other hand, were often burdened by financial and time obligations such as looking after children and caring for their parents. ( foxnews.com )

READ MORE - Middle-Aged Are Unhappiest

Researchers Find More Health Benefits for Cocoa

Researchers Find More Health Benefits for Cocoa - In the United States, polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) affects nearly five million women, including myself. As the most common hormonal disorder, PCOS is characterized by menstrual abnormalities, infertility, insulin resistance, excess androgen, skin issues, and as the name suggests, polycystic ovaries.

So, what if someone told you that cocoa could help in treating the insulin resistance associated with PCOS? A new study conducted by Harvard researchers is saying just that.

"Their analysis of 21 studies with 2,575 participants shows that cocoa consumption is associated with decreased blood pressure, improved blood vessel health, and improvement in cholesterol levels, among other benefits" reports Bill Hendrick of WebMD. He went on to say, "also, resistance to the hormone insulin, which helps regulate blood sugar, favorably dropped among people who consumed flavonoid-rich cocoa, compared to people in comparison groups."

Insulin resistance is characterized by some of the body's cells not being able to respond to insulin. This is the first step of the body not being able to handle sugar well.

Traditionally, insulin resistance is managed in two ways: lifestyle changes and medication. The biggest lifestyle change my doctor recommended was significantly decreasing my consumption of carbohydrates with a high glycemic index. I never really ate these so it was not difficult. Examples of high glycemic index carbohydrate foods include white breads, unrefined sugars and unrefined potato and corn products. Medications, most commonly metformin, is often prescribed. I do not take medications. Metformin works to reduce blood insulin levels.

In a 2005 study conducted by the American Heart Association, cocoa was shown to reduce both insulin resistance and blood pressure in healthy study subjects. "The results suggest that, while balancing total calorie intake, flavanols from cocoa products may provide some cardiovascular benefit if included as part of a healthy diet for patients with EH", reports the American Heart Association.

The Harvard researchers are still in the preliminary stages and far more research needs to be done to determine just how effective cocoa is for insulin resistance and other health issues. The Harvard researchers also state that, "it remains unclear as to just why chocolate appears to have the effect that they found. It's also not known how much people would need to eat to get the benefits."

The cocoa used in studies is usually sugar-free, dark chocolate and not the milk chocolate candies found at most stores. This is important to note because the two are very different. To get more natural chocolate and cocoa, you would have to go to a natural foods store or talk to a doctor about where to find it. ( news.yahoo.com )

READ MORE - Researchers Find More Health Benefits for Cocoa

Giant crayfish found in Tennessee is new species

Giant crayfish found in Tennessee is new species - A new species of giant crayfish literally crawled out from under a rock in Tennessee, proving that large new species of animals can be found in highly populated and well-explored places, researchers said on Wednesday.

The new crayfish should not have been easily overlooked, as it is huge -- twice the size of other species, the team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Eastern Kentucky University said.

But the crustacean is also quite rare, they report in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.

"This isn't a crayfish that someone would have picked up and just said, 'Oh, it's another crayfish,' and put it back," said University of Illinois aquatic biologist Chris Taylor, one of the researchers.

"You would have recognized it as something really, really different and you would have saved it," Taylor added in a statement.

Taylor and Guenter Schuster of Eastern Kentucky University found their first specimen of the new species under one of the biggest rocks in the deepest part of a commonly explored Tennessee creek.

The new species, called Barbicambarus simmonsi, is about 5 inches (12 cm) long and has antennae covered with a sensitive fringe of tiny, hair-like bristles, called setae.

More than half of the 600 known species of crayfish in the world are found in North America, Taylor said.

"This thing had not been seen by scientific eyes until last year," he said.

We spend millions of dollars every year on federal grants to send biologists to the Amazon, to Southeast Asia -- all over the world looking for and studying the biodiversity of those regions," Schuster said. "But the irony is that there's very little money that is actually spent in our own country to do the same thing. And there are still lots of areas right here in the U.S. that need to be explored." (Reuters)

READ MORE - Giant crayfish found in Tennessee is new species

When Tsunami Warning System Works, And When It Doesn't

When Tsunami Warning System Works, And When It Doesn't – Dozens of people stood atop a string of dunes overlooking the Pacific Ocean here this morning (March 11), watching for larger-than-average waves spawned by the huge 8.9-magnitude earthquake that struck Japan earlier today.

The folks here at the city's Ocean Beach knew that high water would start rolling in around 8:08 a.m. local time (11:08 a.m. EST; 1608 GMT). And they had an idea that the waves would be at most 2 feet (0.6 meters) bigger than usual — something to look at, not flee from.

They knew all of this thanks to a sophisticated tsunami warning system, which began delivering information to researchers and authorities around the world just minutes after the quake hit. This system can help gawkers plan out their day, but it's designed to keep people safe.

While experts say current warning systems work well to detect tsunami risks, get information out and form emergency plans, sometimes the process just can't work quickly enough. Minutes matter when waves are about to hit shore — especially since predicting big quakes is so tough.

"Earthquakes don't come with a warning," Craig Fugate, chief of the United States' Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), told reporters today. "That's why being prepared is so critical."

Bobbing sentinels

Quake-triggered tsunamis can race across the Pacific at speeds of 600 mph (970 kph) or more, inflicting tremendous damage when they finally reach shore, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

To help detect and characterize these destructive waves, NOAA has deployed a phalanx of sentinel buoys. The first six Deep-Ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami (DART) buoys were put out in 2001, and 32 were in place throughout the Pacific by 2008. (NOAA has deployed 39 DART buoys worldwide.)

Each DART station consists of a floating buoy moored to a monitoring instrument on the ocean floor. This sensor measures temperature and pressure every 15 seconds, detecting tsunamis by the pressure changes they cause. The device converts pressure readings into estimates of sea-surface height, giving researchers an idea of how big the coming waves will be.

These monitoring devices relay their readings to the surface buoys, which beam the information to scientists in real time. Researchers combine this information with seismic information about the quake and data from tidal gauges along various coasts to gain an integrated, detailed picture of any incoming tsunami.

Spreading the word

Detecting and characterizing a tsunami are only half the battle. To help keep people out of harm's way, this information needs to be disseminated quickly and efficiently.

NOAA's two tsunami warning centers — one in Hawaii and one in Alaska — take point in this effort. The Hawaii branch — known as the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center — provides warnings to almost every country around the Pacific rim, and to most Pacific island nations, NOAA officials said.

International coordination is facilitated by the United Nations, via its Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.

The Alaska center takes the lead in sending messages and warnings throughout the mainland United States, and NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS) helps spreads the word. Coastal NWS offices, such as those in Seattle or San Francisco, activate their Emergency Alert Systems, sending warnings out via TV, radio and the Internet.

Local emergency management officials decide what to do from there. They can activate their own emergency communications systems and start evacuating low-lying areas, for example, if the threat is sufficiently grave.

Quake-prone Japan — which sits atop the boundary between the massive Pacific and North American tectonic plates — has its own earthquake monitoring and tsunami warning systems, and experts say they're quite good.

"Japan has the best seismic network in the world," said Dave Applegateof the U.S. Geological Survey. "The Japanese are very experienced in dealing with earthquakes."

The system works — to the extent that it can

Overall, the combined tsunami-warning infrastructure seemed to work pretty well today. Three minutes after the huge 8.9-magnitude quake hit, the Japanese Meteorological Agency issued a major tsunami warning, according to the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC).

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and the IOC sprang into action as well. Within nine minutes of the quake, warnings or watches had been issued for Hawaii and other Pacific islands, as well as Japan and Russia, IOC officials said.

"We tried to get the message out as soon as possible after the earthquake," said Laura Furgione, deputy assistant administrator for the NWS.

The Alaska-based tsunami warning center coordinated and issued warnings for the mainland United States and Canada, predicting when waves would hit and how big they would be when they came ashore.

The wave-watchers here in San Franciso took advantage of that information, peering at a mighty, restless ocean and snapping photos from the dune-tops.

Though the system often works quite well, it sometimes can't work fast enough. Near the quake's epicenter, the waves were huge, powerful and destructive. Warnings went out three minutes after the quake, but along parts of the Japanese coast, the waves arrived just 10 minutes later, according to media reports. ( LiveScience.com )

READ MORE - When Tsunami Warning System Works, And When It Doesn't