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"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Science

A Whale Of A Story

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March 11, 2007 — It’s a whale of a tale. Literally.

That’s what Randy Thornton, an experienced scuba diver from Draper, Utah, exclusively told ABC News.

Two weeks ago, Thornton and more than 12 friends spent a week diving off the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. They were swimming with and taking pictures of North Atlantic humpback whales that mate and give birth in the waters off the Caribbean island every year at about this time.

“It was a trip we had planned for a couple of years,” Thornton said. “We wanted to watch the mating and birthing habits of these magnificent creatures.”

Their adventure proceeded without incident until the last hour of the last day. Then it happened.

“The current was pushing the divers into the whale,” said Bridget Server, who videotaped the encounter. “They were basically right on top of the whale.”

In fact, a group of three divers including Thornton had drifted directly above a 40-ton mother whale and her eight-ton baby, which was sleeping on her back.

From his hospital bed, Thornton explained what happened next.

“They both came up under us. The calf got spooked, spooked the mother,” he said. “The mother flipped and threw the group every which way but loose.”

The force was so intense, a videotape recording of the accident shows the actual impact and snapping of Thornton’s femur, or thigh bone. You can hear a loud pop when his leg is broken.

“It was like getting hit by a train,” Thornton said. “You know, it was so hard, it felt like getting hit by car.”

Another diver, Janet Blackwelder, suffered broken ribs and was knocked unconscious.

For the full story click here. When you are dealing with creatures that are that large you have got to be extra careful. It doesn’t take much to get hurt.

That Is A Lot Of Calamari

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(New Zealand Ministry of Fisheries/AP Photo)

WELLINGTON, New Zealand Feb 22, 2007 (AP)— A fishing crew has caught a colossal squid that could weigh a half-ton and prove to be the biggest specimen ever landed, a fisheries official said Thursday.

The squid, weighing an estimated 990 lbs and about 39 feet long, took two hours to land in Antarctic waters, New Zealand Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton said.

Regrow Lost Limbs

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This article is pretty cool.

NEW YORK – Researchers are trying to find ways to regrow fingers — and someday, even limbs — with tricks that sound like magic spells from a
Harry Potter novel.There’s the guy who sliced off a fingertip but grew it back, after he treated the wound with an extract of pig bladder. And the scientists who grow extra arms on salamanders. And the laboratory mice with the eerie ability to heal themselves.

This summer, scientists are planning to see whether the powdered pig extract can help injured soldiers regrow parts of their fingers. And a large federally funded project is trying to unlock the secrets of how some animals regrow body parts so well, with hopes of applying the the lessons to humans.

Take a look at this:

Up to about age 2, people can consistently regrow fingertips, says Dr. Stephen Badylak, a regeneration expert at the University of Pittsburgh. But that’s rare in adults, he said.

Spievack, however, did have a major advantage — a brother, Alan, a former Harvard surgeon who’d founded a company called ACell Inc., that makes an extract of pig bladder for promoting healing and tissue regeneration.

It helps horses regrow ligaments, for example, and the federal government has given clearance to market it for use in people. Similar formulations have been used in many people to do things like treat ulcers and other wounds and help make cartilage.

The summer before Lee Spievack’s accident, Dr. Alan Spievack had used it on a neighbor who’d cut his fingertip off on a tablesaw. The man’s fingertip grew back over four to six weeks, Alan Spievack said.

Lee Spievack took his brother’s advice to forget about a skin graft and try the pig powder.

Soon a shipment of the stuff arrived and Lee Spievack started applying it every two days. Within four weeks his finger had regained its original length, he says, and in four months “it looked like my normal finger.”

Spievack said it’s a little hard, as if calloused, and there’s a slight scar on the end. The nail continues to grow at twice the speed of his other nails.

“All my fingers in this cold weather have cracked except that one,” he said.

All in all, he said, “I’m quite impressed.”

For the full story please click here.