Dracula fish

Scientists have discovered a highly unusual fish with fangs made of bone. Dubbed the "Dracula" fish, the creature is about 17mm (0.7 inches) long and has been found in only one Burmese stream.

The researchers, from London's Natural History Museum (NHM), believe the fish lost its teeth over evolutionary time, but later evolved the bone fangs. Writing in the Royal Society's journal Proceedings B, they say the males use the fangs to jostle each other - but do not appear to draw blood.

So what about fish with …garlic!

End in stem cell funding ban

US President Barack Obama has lifted restrictions on federal funding for research on new stem cell lines. Mr. Obama signed an executive order in a major reversal of US policy, pledging to "vigorously support" new research.

Ex-President George W Bush blocked the use of any government money to fund research on human embryonic stem cell lines created after 9 August 2001. Scientists say the research will lead to medical breakthroughs, but many religious groups are opposed to it.

Soyuz returning to Earth

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft is due to return to Earth within hours after successfully undocking from the International Space Station (ISS).

The Expedition 16 crew includes South Korea's first astronaut, 29-year-old Yi So-yeon, who spent about 11 days at the station conducting scientific tests. Also on board are Yuri Malenchenko from Russia and Peggy Whitson from the US. The landing capsule of the Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft is due to land in the Kazakh steppe at about 0830 GMT.

Yuri back in space! Well not the ...original Yuri but still a Yuri!!!

Moon roses

Scientists with the European Space Agency (Esa) say the day when flowers bloom on the Moon has come closer.

An Esa-linked team has shown that marigolds can grow in crushed rock very like the lunar surface, with no need for plant food. Some see growing plants on the Moon as a step towards human habitation.

But the concept is not an official aim of Esa, and one of the agency's senior officials has dismissed the idea as “science fiction”. The new research was presented at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) meeting in Vienna, the largest annual European gathering of scientists studying the Earth, its climate and its neighbours in space.

Bernard Foing, a senior scientist with the European Space Research and Technology Centre (Estec) in the Netherlands, believes growing plants on the Moon would be a useful as a tool to learn how life adapts to lunar conditions, and as a practical aid to establishing manned bases.

Imagine moon roses and moon …asparagus!

Sea level rises

Sea levels could rise by up to one-and-a-half meters by the end of this century, according to a new scientific analysis.

This is substantially more than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast in last year's landmark assessment of climate science. Sea level rise of this magnitude would have major impacts on low-lying countries such as Bangladesh.

The findings were presented at a major science conference in Vienna. The research group is not the first to suggest that the IPCC's forecast of an average rise in global sea levels of 28-43cm by 2100 is too conservative.

The IPCC was unable to include the contribution from "accelerated" melting of polar ice sheets as water temperatures warm because the processes involved were not yet understood.

Elephant 'had aquatic ancestor'

An ancient ancestor of the elephant from 37 million years ago lived in water and had a similar lifestyle to a hippo, a fossil study has suggested.

The animal was said to be similar to a tapir, a hoofed mammal which looks like a cross between a horse and a rhino. Experts from Oxford University and Stony Brook University, New York, analyzed chemical signatures preserved in fossil teeth. These indicated that the animal grazed on plants in rivers or swamps.

The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could shed light on the lifestyle and behavior of modern elephants. Dr Erik Seiffert, co-author of the study has said: "It has often been assumed that elephants have evolved from fully terrestrial ancestors and have always had this kind of a lifestyle.”Now we can really start to think about how their lifestyle and behavior might have been shaped by a very different kind of existence in the distant past.

"It could help us to understand more about the origins of the anatomy and ecology of living elephants."

A drug against damage from radiation

A drug which may protect the body against damage from radiation has been developed by US scientists.

It is hoped it could make radiotherapy safer for people with cancer and could also be used in the event of a "dirty bomb" or nuclear disaster. Known as CBLB502, and so far tested in animals, it switches on a biological mechanism that helps healthy cells survive blasts of radiation.

The findings published in Science are set to be tested in clinical trials. Radiation kills cells by causing damage which encourages cell suicide, or apoptosis. But healthy cells may be killed alongside tumour cells in the process which is why radiologists need to target the tumour as specifically as possible.

Six-way kidney transplant

US doctors have carried out what is believed to be the world's first simultaneous six-way kidney transplant.

Six recipients received organs from six donors in operations at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland. The procedure was made possible after an altruistic donor - neither a friend nor relative of any of the six patients - was found to match one of them.

Five patients had a willing donor whose kidney was incompatible with theirs, but it did match another in the group.

Medicine bring hope, at least there is something in this world that does so.

Swedes find Viking-era Arab coins

Swedish archaeologists have discovered a rare hoard of Viking-age silver Arab coins near Stockholm's Arlanda airport.

About 470 coins were found on 1 April at an early Iron Age burial site. They date from the 7th to 9th Century, when Viking traders travelled widely.

There has been no similar find in that part of Sweden since the 1880s.

Most of the coins were minted in Baghdad and Damascus, but some came from Persia and North Africa, said archaeologist Karin Beckman-Thoor.

Mars is covered in …table salt

I was ready to start joking now about it, but then I remembered how many books I have read in my youth with life on Mars – not to mention Bowie’s song – and I think it is so weird. After going on for so many years, over a century, that there is no life on Mars now we are coming out with oceans, table salt and who knows what else in the next few years.

Oddly most of these science fiction books were talking about a doomed civilization in its edges. But always a glorious civilization, an artistic civilization avoiding the mistakes we are doing on earth. Most likely in the end scientists will find some microbes or minor organisms but is always fascinating the aspect of life in another planet, especially when this planet is the red planet!

Giant sea creatures

Scientists who conducted the most comprehensive survey to date of New Zealand's Antarctic waters were surprised by the size of some specimens found, including jellyfish with 12-foot tentacles and 2-foot-wide starfish.

A 2,000-mile journey through the Ross Sea that ended Thursday has also potentially turned up several new species, including as many as eight new mollusks.

It's "exciting when you come across a new species," said Chris Jones, a fisheries scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "All the fish people go nuts about that -- but you have to take it with a grain of salt."

The miracle of the unexplored earth! How many more things are undiscovered on our little earth and the most depressing thing is that we are going to destroy them before we even find them with all the pollution, global warming, and nuclear waste!