Korean scientists claim to have cloned glowing dogs

South Korean scientists say they have engineered four beagles that glow red using cloning techniques that could help develop cures for human diseases.
All four dogs are named "Ruppy" - a combination of the words "ruby" and "puppy".They look like typical beagles by daylight, but they glow red under ultraviolet light, and the dogs' nails and abdomens, which have thin skins, look red even to the naked eye.

Seoul National University professor Lee Byeong-chun, head of the research team, called them the world's first transgenic dogs carrying fluorescent genes, an achievement that goes beyond just the glowing novelty.
"What's significant in this work is not the dogs expressing red colors but that we planted genes into them," Lee told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
His team identified the dogs as clones of a cell donor through DNA tests and earlier this month introduced the achievement in a paper on the Web site of the journal "Genesis."
Scientists in the U.S., Japan and in Europe previously have cloned fluorescent mice and pigs, but this would be the first time dogs with modified genes have been cloned successfully, Lee said.

He said his team took skin cells from a beagle, inserted fluorescent genes into them and put them into eggs before implanted them into the womb of a surrogate mother, a local mixed breed.
Six female beagles were born in December 2007 through a cloning with a gene that produces a red fluorescent protein that make them glow. Two died, but the four others survived.
The glowing dogs show that it is possible to successfully insert genes with a specific trait, which could lead to implanting other, non-fluorescent genes that could help treat specific diseases.

Lee said that his team has started to implant human disease-related genes in the course of dog cloning, saying that will help them find new treatments for genetic diseases such as Parkinson's. He refused to provide further details, saying the research was still under way.
A South Korean scientist who created glowing cats in 2007 based on a similar cloning technique said that Lee's puppies are genuine clones, saying he had seen them and had read about them in the journal.
"We can appraise this is a step forward" toward finding cures for human diseases, said veterinary professor Kong Il-keun at South Korea's Gyeongsang National University. "What is important now is on what specific diseases (Lee's team) will focus on."
Lee was a key aide to disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk, whose breakthroughs on stem cell research were found to have been made using faked data. Independent tests, however, later proved the team's dog cloning was genuine.

(Un)Natural jellyfish in the field of barley

In the field of barley, in the south-east England, there has emerged a large stylized image of jellyfish, started new doubts about whether it is a human hand, or some other natural force.

While experts try to figure out the origin and meaning of 250 meters long and 60 meters wide picture of Medusa in the barley, the property owners from Oxfordshire , Bill and Sally Spens. Appeared suddenly and from nowhere.Owners are trying to prevent curious visits and stop new crop destruction, as the current damage cost around £ 600.

Bill and Sally En Spens, property owners, said that phone calls are coming from all over the world.

"They say that are on our property established channels of positive energy and heat centers. They say that we are blessed, which is not bad to hear, especially now before the harvest," explains the Spens family members.

Many believe that this phenomenon in the fields are the result of natural phenomena, such as a lightning strike.

Other believe that this is a work of aliens, wondering what the message is. However, most believe that those are the Ornaments of the artist.

"There are a lot of design in local fields, but they are circular. This is not only different, but the biggest," said Simon Vestmor.

While the phenomenon, which is not exclusively British, does not cease to unemotional, chronicler recorded that the British intelligence services are trying to display images in the fields as usual joke.

So far the largest and most complex pattern, discovered in the south-west England, the diameter was 46 meters and was a coded image of the first 10 digits of number Pi.

Giant ice circles mystery solved

Strange circles have once again appeared in the frozen surface of Lake Baikal in Siberia, as spotted by astronauts aboard the International Space Station this April. News reports described the ice rings as a puzzling phenomenon.

But experts say they can explain the mystery, and it's not aliens — methane gas rising from the lake floor represents the likely culprit.

Methane emissions can create a rising mass of warm water that begins swirling in a circular pattern because of the Coriolis force, or the phenomenon caused by the Earth's rotation that also helps create cyclones.

"Once the water mass reaches the underside of the ice on the surface of the lake, the warm water melts the ice in a ring shape," said Marianne Moore, a marine ecologist at Wellesley College in Massachusetts who has spent much time studying Lake Baikal with Russian researchers. The lake is the largest (by volume) and deepest fresh water lake on Earth.

The latest ring patterns included a circle of thin ice with a diameter of 2.7 miles (4.4 km), although the circular patch was becoming a hole of open water. Astronauts spotted similar ice circles in both 1985 and 1994, and satellites have also made sightings over the past years. 

This phenomenon is nothing new to the Russian government, which has documented circle sightings on an official Ministry of Natural Resources Web site.

"Interestingly, the government is also warning people that abnormally high emissions of methane may occur in these areas in the summer and fall, posing risks for ships," Moore told LiveScience.

The Russian Ministry of Natural Resources points out that random emissions of natural gas have probably always occurred in Lake Baikal. And such emissions would have created ice rings every few years.

"But, because of the huge size, it is practically impossible to see a ring standing on the ice or even from a mountain," the Ministry Web site notes. The Russian government has ordered daily space monitoring of the Lake Baikal area in recent years, which prompted many of the satellite sightings.

Tectonic activity deep in the Earth may be the trigger for such methane gas release, according to the Russian government.

That could have major consequences for Lake Baikal's rich array of plants and animals, Moore cautioned — especially in combination with a warming climate. Both could lead to spring ice disappearing more rapidly from Lake Baikal, which can typically hold onto an ice cover through June.

"Unlike other lakes in the world, spring ice is essential for the reproduction of the lake's top predator (the Baikal seal) and the dominant plants (under-ice phytoplankton) at the bottom of the food web," Moore said. "Without spring ice, the food web of this lake will be disrupted substantially."