Periodic fasting is good for the health and can help you lose weight, even if you gorge afterwards. It’s known that mice live longer on a severely restricted calorie diet and it protects them from diseases and stress as well. But do we have to live a life of starvation? Scientists now think we can get the same benefits from alternately fasting and feasting.
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U.S. artist Rowena Morrill says she was shocked to discover her paintings in Saddam Hussein’s private collection. Her sister first spotted them on the TV news, hanging on the wall of one of Saddam’s palaces, and immediately called Morrill. “I was utterly stunned,” she says. “?I’ve always known that once I sell a piece it could end up anywhere. Of course I never dreamed that it would end up in a place like that.”
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Scientists have a theory about why no one has picked up signals from alien civilizations?they may be sending each other secret messages buried in background noise. Walter Simmons and Sandip Pakvasa, of the University of Hawaii, say the one sending the message would divide it into two parts, so its photons are sent in opposite directions to mirrors far from the home planet. The mirrors would then redirect the signals to the intended receiver, who would recombine them to reconstruct the message. Then no one?not the receiver or a potential eavesdropper?could locate the sender’s home planet.
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Seema Kumar, of Discovery Channel Online, writes that scientists have discovered that the genetic make-up of dolphins is amazingly similar to humans. They’re closer to us than cows, horses or pigs, despite the fact that they live in the water.
“The extent of the genetic similarity came as a real surprise to us,” says David Busbee of Texas A&M University. He hopes his research will reveal how long ago humans and dolphins branched off the evolutionary tree. There’s been some speculation that dolphins and whales, who breathe air, may have returned to the water after evolving into land animals.
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