In the name of science and the fight against cancer, researchers in Brazil ventured forth to find an answer, or perhaps answers, to a simple question: What causes penile cancer?

The cadre of urologists assembled 492 Brazilian men, including 118 penile cancer patients.  The survey would result in two startling revelations – first and foremost, that having sex with an animal is a risk factor for penile cancer, and to a slightly lesser extent, that 35% of rural Brazilians have had sex with an animal.

Though the zoophiliacs reported a wide range of animals and frequencies of encounter, the data showed only 32% (yikes!) of men without penile cancer reported sex with an animal, whereas 45% of the cancer patients had said the same thing. 

A total of 59 per cent of men who had sex with animals did so for one to five years, while 21 per cent continued the behaviour, also known as zoophilia, for more than five years.

The subjects reported a variety of frequencies for their sex acts, ranging from monthly to daily.

The researchers found no association between penile cancer and the number of animals the men used over time.

The species included mares, cows, pigs and chickens, among other animals.

Lead author was Stjnio de Cassio Zequi, a urologist in Sao Paulo, and he said his study is the first to link the practice to male genital cancers.

He told LiveScience that if a man has sex with an animal it could produce micro-traumas in the human penile tissue.

‘The genital mucus membranes of animals could have different characteristics from human genitalia, and the animals’ secretions are probably different from human fluids.

‘Perhaps animal tissues are less soft than ours, and non-human secretions would be toxic for us.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2059476/35-men-rural-Brazil-sex-animal-study-finds.html#ixzz1eguEMMEy

 

Arthur Berkowitz, 57, stood for the length of his US Airways flight in July after a fellow passenger occupied half of his seat. The non-stop flight from Anchorage to Philadelphia lasted seven hours.

He initially had an empty seat next to him on Flight 901, but a late passenger sat there and took more space than he paid for.

“His size required both armrests to be raised up and allowed for his body to cover half of my seat,” Berkowitz said.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/25/travel/passenger-of-size/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

 

A 49-year old British woman has found more than entertainment from the global hit Twilight series. She’s found the inspiration to lose 70 pounds in 6 months going down 14 dress sizes. As a reward she’s spoiled herself to a $3,000 tattoo in homage to the book and especially the films.

It covers her whole back and features life like images of the film’s actors. But Cathy Ward of Reading, England says she isn’t finished yet. She’s planning another 12 hours of work, costing about $3,000 more, and designs include Robert Pattinson tattooed on her stomach.

The supermarket worker admits her husband isn’t keen on the tattoo but she doesn’t care. “I don’t do them for him,” she explains, “I do them for me.”

And it’s doing well for her. Since starting with a small-ish tattoo of the three stars in 2008 she’s been featured in newspapers around the world. Some say she’s obsessed but this Twi-hard says it’s more than that.

Ward says she found the Twilight saga so compelling she started using the books as a way to reward herself instead of eating calorie rich foods. Once she started losing weight she started exercising and the weight continued to come off. Now her desire to put her favorite vampire on her stomach is keeping her motivated to get toned and healthy.

“…I could spend the money on eating and drinking but instead I’m spending it on something I’m really passionate about,” she says.

http://www.neatorama.com/2011/01/07/woman-gets-full-back-twilight-tattoo/

More than 150 cars were disabled and countless others damaged after a tanker truck spilled sticky goo along nearly 40 miles on the Pennsylvania Turnpike Tuesday night.

The tanker began leaking driveway sealant fluid near New Castle, Pa., and continued to spill as it drove eastbound for 39 miles until it exited the turnpike at a service plaza in Oakmont, Turnpike. The driver was not aware until getting off the turnpike that the tanker was leaking.

Laura Frick was driving from Cleveland to New Jersey for Thanksgiving when the tar decimated her tires.

Turnpike officials didn’t have estimates of how much damage had been caused. They said 150 or more cars were disabled, including some state police and turnpike maintenance vehicles that had to be towed away after getting stuck, reported The Associated Press.

The tractor-trailer, owned by Marino Transportation Services, was hauling between 4,000 and 5,000 gallons of sealant when it got onto the rainy turnpike at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday night, Todd Leiss, an officer at the Turnpike Operations Center, told Pennsylvania’s Beaver County Times. State police said it appears the seal broke on the truck’s valve, but didn’t provide any more information into the cause of the spill.

Maintenance crews used sand to collect the goop and pushed it the shoulder with snow plows, but all lanes remained open to traffic Tuesday night, according to the Beaver County Times.

Bob King, a firefighter from Illinois traveling through Pennsylvania whose red Dodge Durango turned black from tar on Tuesday, told The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, “I drove down the shoulder of the road, scared to death to stop because I didn’t want anyone running into me. Cars were sliding everywhere. I’m glad I have four-wheel drive.”

While state police fielded calls from hundreds of motorists, they did not receive any reports of wrecks, the Tribune-Review reported

http://www.11alive.com/news/article/214456/186/Sticky-goo-stops-Thanksgiving-travelers-in-their-tracks

 

Three children in Iowa have come down with a new type of flu virus previously linked to pigs, but this time the bug appears to have been spread by people.

The children, who live in rural Webster and Hamilton counties, did not become seriously ill, said Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, medical director for the Iowa Department of Public Health. But the detection of the virus known as swine-origin A/H3N2 in patients who hadn’t had contact with animals raises concerns about potentially greater spread of a new type of flu.

“We have pretty good evidence of person-to-person spread,” Quinlisk said. “None of the children or anyone around them had exposure to swine, turkeys or other sources.”

Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had previously detected seven cases of people with the new H3N2 virus that appears to have acquired a gene that may make it more transmissible from H1N1, the flu that sparked the so-called swine flu pandemic in 2009. Flu viruses often swap genetic parts. Officials say the new virus was probably formed when a pig became infected with the H3N2 virus and the H1N1 virus at the same time.  

The new bug has components of human, avian, H1N1 and swine flu viruses, all mixed together in what scientists call a recombinant virus.

The first new H3N2 case was identified in a child in Indiana in July, and has been followed by cases in Pennsylvania, Maine and, now, Iowa.

In the previous cases, however, the patients either had direct exposure with pigs, or exposure to a person who’d been around pigs. In the new cases, it appears that one of the children transmitted the flu to the other two, and none of them had any animal exposure, Quinlisk said. She declined to identify the children or their ages, saying only they were younger than 18. No further cases have been identified in the past week, she said.

The Iowa cases are nothing to panic about, health officials emphasized. The H3N2 flu causes symptoms similar to the regular seasonal flu, including fever, cough, fatigue, body aches and loss of appetite. 

“People need to be most concerned about the regular, everyday seasonal flu,” Quinlisk said.

But Iowa health officials are now testing samples of people with flu-like illness to detect further spread of the new bug. And CDC officials have asked states across the country to be vigilant in looking for it, said Dr. Joe Bresee, the agency’s influenza and epidemiology branch chief.

The current seasonal flu vaccine being offered by doctors and clinics was not developed to protect against the H3N2 virus. It contains some antigens similar to a flu virus that circulated in the 1990s, so some people who had the flu then or were vaccinated could have some immunity, but it’s not clear how much, Quinlisk said. The Iowa children apparently had not been vaccinated, she added.

With the new cases, CDC officials have confirmed 31 cases in the U.S. of the new swine-origin virus since 2005, including 10 with the H3N2 virus that carries the M gene from the 2009 H1N1 virus.

The best prevention for the new flu, as with any flu, is to wash hands frequently, cover coughs and sneezes and limit spread of germs by staying home when you’re sick, health officials said.

http://vitals.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/23/8977636-new-flu-virus-in-three-iowa-kids-raises-concern-about-wider-spread

When buying a soft drink in India, not all flavors are created equally. Some with sugar, all with carbonation, and a select few will be made with cow urine.

The Cow Protection Department of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is developing a soft drink using that very thing – cow urine. They say it will be tasty and full of flavor and expect it to be ready for humans by 2012.

Cow urine is thought to have many health properties in India and is said to treat problems with the liver and cancer. Prakash also says the drink will be cheap making it easy for the people of India to afford.

http://www.weirdasianews.com/2011/11/16/political-party-india-launching-line-cow-urine-soft-drinks/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

New photos have appeared in Google Maps showing unidentified titanic structures in the barren Gobi desert, raising questions about what China might be building in a region it uses for its military, space and nuclear programs.

They seem to be wide lines drawn with some white material. Or maybe the dust have been dug by machinery.

It’s located in Dunhuang, Jiuquan, Gansu, north of the Shule River, which crosses the Tibetan Plateau to the west into the Kumtag Desert. It covers an area approximately one mile long by more than 3,000 feet wide.

The tracks are perfectly executed, and they seem to be designed to be seen from orbit.

Perhaps it’s some kind of targeting or calibrating grid for Chinese spy satellites? Maybe it’s a QR code for aliens? Nobody really knows.

You can check it out yourself in Google Maps here.

The second structure seems to be some kind of giant targeting grid, also north of the Shule river.

If you zoom in, you can see vehicles destroyed. It’s west of what seems to be a fairly big electrical station or a radio station similar to HAARP, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program located near Gakona, Alaska, and funded by the US Air Force, the US Navy, the University of Alaska, and DARPA.

An airplane baggage screener faces dismissal for leaving a note in a passenger’s bag that said “Get Your Freak On, Girl” after discovering a vibrator.

The agency randomly selects checked baggage for screening on flights originating in the United States. Lawyer and writer Jill Filipovic tweeted a picture of the note Monday and later blogged about it on Feministe.

“This is what TSA will do when they inspect a bag you checked and find a, um, ‘personal item,’ ” she wrote. “Total violation of privacy, wildly inappropriate and clearly not OK, but I also just died laughing in my hotel room.”

The TSA identified and removed the employee from screening operations, the TSA said Wednesday on its blog. After completing an investigation, action was initiated to remove the individual from federal service.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/28/travel/tsa-officer-faces-dismissal/index.html?iref=obnetwork

 

Today’s date is believed by some to be a spiritual signal linked to 2012 Mayan prophecies of both doom and spiritual renewal.

The ancient Mayan long-count calendar ends on Dec. 21, 2012, and some people believe that this date will usher in a new spiritual era, or even doomsday. Nov. 11, 2011 most likely became linked with Dec. 21, 2012, when believers noticed that the U.S. Naval Observatory had set the exact time of the 2012 winter solstice for 11:11 Universal Time on Dec. 21, according to John Hoopes, a scholar of Maya history at the University of Kansas.

“It’s essentially based on the notion of synchronicities,” Hoopes told LiveScience. Synchronicities are meaningful coincidences, he said. And while everyone has a psychological tendency to find minding in random patterns the subcultures that believe in 2012 mythology tend to be those that dabble in psychedelics and cannabis, drugs that increase feelings of synchronicity.

“If it seems like the 2012 mythology was thought up by people on drugs, it’s because it was,” Hoopes said.

Indeed, the U.S. Naval Observatory now lists the official time of the 2012 winter solstice, when Earth’s tilt is angled as far away as possible from the sun, at 11:11 Universal Time on Dec. 21. This has not stopped 2012 believers from focusing on the 11:11 time.

In part, this is because 11:11 mythology has been floating around online for some time. The website 1111spiritguardians.com holds that noticing a clock when the time is 11:11 is a signal from “1,111 fun-loving Spirit Guardians, or Angels.” Other times, such as 12:12, 10:10 or 12:34 are messages, too, according to the site.

These numbers may seem special to people because they stick in our minds, Hoopes said. No one remembers looking at the clock when the numbers don’t make a pattern.

“People are more likely to remember 11:11 than they are, say, 4:29 or 6:53 or 3:17 or something like that,” Hoopes said.

Psychologists call the temptation to find patterns in random data pareidolia. This phenomenon is also responsible for visions of the Virgin Mary in toast or other objects.

New Age adherents have predicted everything from end-of-world scenarios to the ushering in of a new spiritual era.

“The buzz on the net and on Twitter and elsewhere is that 11/11/11 is the unofficial start of the 2012 metaphysical year,” Hoopes said.

Even moviemakers are cashing in on the action, with a horror/thriller movie titled “11-11-11” set for release on the date. The plot of the movie centers on a scary, mysterious force that will enter the Earthly realm at 11:11 on 11/11/11. 

Non-commercial predictions tend to be more positive than doom-centered, however. The number 11 is seen as a signal that all people are one, for example, and the date is more likely to be seen as an end to greed and disconnection than as an end to humanity. That puts 11/11/11 prophets in a different class than those such as Harold Camping, who predicted a Biblical doomsday in late October.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45248022/ns/technology_and_science-science/

 

Heavy D collapsed in his Beverly Hills home Tuesday morning and died a short time later at a Los Angeles hospital, according to police and the coroner. He was 44.

Heavy D, whose real name is Dwight Arrington Myers, was found conscious with difficulty breathing at his home after police were called there at 11:25 a.m., the Beverly Hills police said in a news release.

He was pronounced dead in the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Tuesday afternoon, according to Los Angeles County coroner’s operations chief Craig Harvey. The cause of death has not been determined, Harvey said.

His hip-hop recording career began in 1987 with his group Heavy D & the Boyz and on his first album he released the hit single “The Overweight Lover’s in the House.” Another one of his breakthrough hits came in 1991 with a remake of the O’Jays’ “Now That We Found Love.”

Heavy D’s rapping was featured on Janet Jackson’s 1990 hit “Alright.”

He rapped on Michael Jackson’s 1991 hit “Jam,” which he performed at last month’s Michael Jackson tribute show in Cardiff, Wales.

He also composed and performed the theme songs several television shows, including “In Living Color,” “MADtv” and “The Tracy Morgan Show.”

His last CD, “Love Opus,” was released this year.

Heavy D also pursued an acting career, which included mostly roles on TV shows and movies.

He played a courthouse guard in the Eddie Murphy film “Tower Heist,” released last weekend.

He used his Twitter account Monday night to express sadness about the death of boxer Joe Frazier:

“SMOKIN JOE FRAZIER..RIP.. truly one of the best heavyweight champs that ever lived.. GODS SPEED,MR FRAZIER!”

Heavy D’s last Twitter message, posted late Monday, was: “BE INSPIRED!”

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/08/showbiz/ent-heavy-d-dead/index.html?hpt=hp_c1