Natalie Adler: The Woman Who Turns Blind 3 Days a Week

Open and shut case: Natalie Adler tries to cram as much as she can into her open eye days, which are marked in her diary months ahead

Melbourne: An Australian woman becomes blind for three days a week when her eyes clamp shut voluntarily for the period and she can't open them, a baffling medical condition according to experts.

Natalie Adler (21), who doctors believe may be the only person in the world with this condition, has been living with the extraordinary visual impairment for four years.

"My eyes are closed for three days and then open for three days," said Adler. "I go to bed and I can open my eyes, and then when I wake up the next day I can't," she explained adding, "Nobody knows why."

During 'closed eye days' her eyes are completely shut, except for a small slit in her left eye. On 'open eye days' they function normally, although the left eyelid sometimes droops. Adler tries to cram as much as she can into those good days, which are marked in her diary months ahead. "On my 18th birthday my eyes were closed but on my 21st they were open, so I had a party," she said.

The Pooch With Bionic Leg Worth Rs 8 Lakh in UK

LONDON: What do you call a dog whose one leg alone is worth over Rs 8 lakh? His owner Reg Walker — the man who spent this whopping sum on him — calls him Coal.

Coal is one of two animals in the world to be fitted with a unique bionic limb costing £10,000 (approx Rs 8,26,000), which was a result of groundbreaking research.

Last year, Coal had to have his left paw amputated after suffering from cancer. But when doctors told Walker that the eight-year-old American bulldog would have to be put down since his other limbs weren’t strong enough to carry his weight, he was determined to do all he could to save Coal.

Walker, a top security expert in the music industry, said: “When I found out about Coal I was gutted. He goes everywhere with me — he goes on tour, he's the only dog to have allowed into Live 8 and the only dog that has ever been backstage at the Royal Albert Hall.” The advanced prosthetic technique was used to help a victim of the 7/7 London bombings. Experts say it is the only implant in the world that allows skin and bone to grow into it. “It is the holy grail of research,” Vet Noel Fitzpatrick said to the Enfield Independent. “If you have an accident and your bone sticks out through your shin, skin will try to grow round it. People have been trying for this for years and years because with this we get an umbrella of skin attached to the metal.”

And while researchers are thrilled with this breakthrough, Coal and Walker are just happy to be together. “Now he has an absolutely normal quality of life, which he wouldn't have had before.”

The 90-Year-Old Who Has Cheated Death 14 Times!

The Lukiest man on Earth, Alec Alder survived four car crashes, three wartime bombings and even a plane crashing into his room.

LONDON: Alec Alder has survived car crashes, war-time bombing and has even walked away after a fighter jet smashed into the side of his house as he slept. Other escapes include a 15ft fall from a tree in 1926 and a close shave when he avoided being sent to Dunkirk in 1939 — where his whole squadron were killed. Now, the grandfather of six from Stroud says he must be the “luckiest fella alive” and is amazed he has made it to 90. The first of his near-death experie n c e s came as a 10-year-old, when he was hit by a car as he cycled down a narrow lane. Alder said, “I went around the corner and there was a car in front of me. I went straight into the car, up into the air and landed spread-eagle on the bonnet.” The driver turned out to be a doctor who was able to treat him at the scene and save his life.

Later, he managed to avoid getting wiped out in Dukirk during World Ward II. In 1942, he was taking part in military training exercises in Yorkshire, when he was run over by a tank. “It had gone over my foot when the engine stopped. If he had gone further, he would have killed me.”

Later that year, he survived a plane crash into his room. “It only missed my head by inches. The roof collapsed around me and the plane burst into flames and crashed into the garden,” he said.

Towards the end of the war, Alder was sent to Burma where he broke his leg playing football. He was sent to a hospital in India where a ward matron converted him to Christianity. He said, “She said, ‘You’re giving only five per cent of your time to God, but He wants a hundred per cent.’

ALEC’S 14 NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES
1926 Fell 15ft from a tree
1929 Collided head-on with a car and landed on the bonnet.
1939 Narrowly avoided death in Dunkirk as his company was changed due to his wedding
1940 Bombed as he guarded an airfield in Kent
1940 Bombed again
1942 A runaway tank’s engine stalled seconds before crushing him to death
1942 Almost hit by a plane that crashed into his room
1943 Avoided being destroyed after the engine on his ship cut out amidst German U-boats
1944 Threatened with being shot by a soldier in Burma
1944 Avoided being killed by the enemy in Burma after a fracture landed him in hospital
1945 Nearly sunk by a ferocious storm off Gibraltar
1947 Avoided being crushed in his car by a lorry
1977 Survived a head-on road collision because the other clipped the kerb.
1997 Nearly hit by doors that swung open on the lorry in front of him while driving

Cat Man: The Man Who Underwent Surgery to Look Like a Tiger

Dennis Avner works as a computer programmer

London: He has surgically pointed ears, sharpened teeth, implanted whiskers and tiger tattoos covering his entire body and face. Cat Man, whose real name is Dennis Avner (50), is an American computer programmer by day, and a feline by night. Dennis has devoted much of his life to transforming himself into a tiger and now likes to be known simply as Cat. Claiming he has the soul of a tiger, he even eats raw meat and climbs trees to feel more at one with his animal friends. Cat was in London to publicise the new Ripley's Believe It Or Not! museum. Cat has spent a fortune on changing his face and body into that of a cat, but doesn't regret it.

20 surgeries

He said, "My work began in 1985, when I had tattoo work on my face. Since then I have spent an uncalculated amount on my transformation to tiger, including around 20 operations on my face to recreate my upper lip, implant silicone in my cheeks and implants to enlarge my brow and forehead. "I also have several piercings that I can attach whiskers."

Double life

Cat lives a double life, being a human at work and a cat on weekends. He said, "During the day, I'm like any other man who works in an office. The only difference is I look like a cat. "My free time is when I behave like a tiger. I love climbing trees, but as I get older I'm finding that that's not an easy job." Having so far failed to find his perfect mate, Cat is still on the prowl for a woman to share his life with. He says, "I'm seeing a couple of women now. They understand that being a tiger is important to me, which is difficult for many women to cope with."

More Images of Cat Man Dennis Avner










Pictures of Cat Man-Dennis Avner

Wow!!! A Car that Runs Solely on Water.

TOKYO: Tired of petrol prices rising daily at the pump? A Japanese company has invented an electric-powered, and environmentally-friendly car that it says runs solely on water.

Genepax said that a litre of any kind of water – rain, river or sea – is all you will need to get the engine going for about an hour at a speed of 80 km.

“The car will continue to run as long as you have a bottle of water to top up from time to time,” Genepax CEO Kiyoshi Hirasawa said. “It does not require you to build up an infrastructure to recharge your batteries, which is usually the case for most electric cars,” he added.

Once the water is poured into the tank at the back of the car, a generator breaks it down and uses it to create electrical power.

The company said that a proprietary unit splits the water into hydrogen and oxygen using a chemical reaction, which provides fuel for a hydrogen fuel cell to run the car.

It also insists that the new process produces hydrogen from water for a longer time than the existing method.

Genepax informed that power is generated by its Water Energy System (WES) by supplying water and air to the fuel and air electrodes, the system being similar to that of a standard fuel cell.

Its fuel cell system – the company added – has an output of 300W. Genepax has mounted this system in the luggage room of a compact electric vehicle ‘Reva’, manufactured by Takeoka Mini Car Products Co Ltd.

Now, Genepax is planning to provide 1kw-class generation systems for use in electric vehicles and for residential applications.

While the current production cost is about $18,522 (Rs 8 lakh approx), it is estimated to be reduced to $5,000 and even lower if the company succeeds in mass production. ANI

The Man Who Survived Fall From 47-Storey Building

Left: Pic of Alcides Moreno Right: Pic of the building he fell from

Alcides Moreno and his brother were cleaning windows when cables connecting their cleaning platform to the roof failed; his brother died

NEW YORK: A window cleaner who survived falling 47 storeys from the roof of a New York skyscraper has made a 'miraculous' recovery – and is walking again.

Alcides Moreno, a 37-yearold Ecuadorian immigrant, plummeted almost 500 feet when cables connecting his cleaning platform to the roof failed.

His brother, 30-year-old Edgar, was killed, but Alcides survived, and after months of operations and physiotherapy, the only physical reminders of his ordeal are a limp and a long scar on his left leg.

The accident last December left Moreno a critical condition with a collapsed lung, damaged kidneys and bone fractures. During six weeks in hospital he underwent 16 operations and doctors pumped 24 units of blood into his body – about twice his entire blood volume.

On Christmas Day, he opened his mouth and spoke for the first time since the accident, and six months on, he is able to walk his dog.

His wife, Rosario Moreno, cried as she thanked the doctors and nurses who kept him alive.

“Thank God for the miracle that we had,” she said after the accident. “He keeps telling me that it just wasn't his time.” Moreno has now returned home, although he requires intensive physiotherapy three times a week. Dr Philip S Barie, chief of critical care at the New York Hospital which treated the window cleaner, said: “Above ten storeys, most of the time we never see the patients because they usually go to the morgue. “This is right up there with those anecdotes of people falling out of airplanes and surviving.”

The piglet with special boots - The World's only porker who is afraid of mud

THE PIG WHO HATES MUCK

Cinders the piglet has been given special boots after refusing to walk in mud

LONDON: Cinders the pristine piglet looks hot to trotter — in a set of specially designed green wellies. The posh porker has become a sty-le icon after she was reckoned to have mysophobia... a fear of muck.

Farmers Debbie and Andrew Keeble were baffled when the six-week-old saddleback refused to get her feet dirty.

Debbie, 40, said: “She just stood in a corner shaking while her brothers and sisters romped in the mud. But we noticed that if we moved her to a dry patch she was perfectly happy.”

Andrew, 42, added: “We scratched our heads for a while — then came up with the idea of having some boots custommade for her.” The wellies did the trick — and now little Cinders is having a ball. Debbie and Andrew, from Bedale, North Yorks, also run a sausage firm — but Cinders isn't facing the breakfast table just yet. She has been made the face of a campaign to highlight the plight of the UK's struggling pig farmers. Andrew said: “She's so special we decided to make her our mascot.” DAILY MIRROR HAMAZING A pig likes to put its dung in one place away from its bed They can squeal at 115 decibels — three more than supersonic Concorde.

Skyscraper made of one million toy construction pieces

‘What My Dad Gave Me’

NEW YORK: The latest skyscraper to go up in Manhattan is 20 metres tall, weighs seven tonnes and is constructed of about one million stainless steel toy construction set pieces.

The skyscraper — actually a sculpture by artist Chris Burden called “What My Dad Gave Me” — was to be unveiled at Rockefeller Center Tuesday.

Burden gained notoriety in 1971 as a performance artist when he had a friend shoot him in the arm with a rifle.

For the past decade, he has been working with replica Erector Set pieces. ‘What My Dad Gave Me’ is billed as his most complex work to date. The six-storey skyscraper will be on view through July 19. AP

How Death Comes! The Odds Are ...

Death may be the only certainty in life - but how it comes about is anything but certain. Papers released from secret UK government archives last week revealed that in 1980 government scientists were told to calculate the exact chances of a Briton being killed by a falling asteroid. The study was an attempt to persuade the public that nuclear power was safe, and that there were plenty of other things that were statistically more lethal than a neighbourhood reactor. After much consideration, the men in white coats calculated that one member of the public would be killed by an asteroid every 7,000 years. Here are some other causes of death - and just what the odds are of your meeting your Maker in that way...

SHARK ATTACK
300,000,000:1
ROUND 40 people are killed every year from shark attacks, with the numbers increasing as more people take holidays on coasts where sharks live.


DYING OF A SNAKE BITE
3,500,000:1
SNAKE bites kill an estimated 25,000 people a year. More people die from snakebite in India than in any other country in the world, with the total death toll estimated I to average 10 - 12,000 annually.


SCALDED BY HOT TAP WATER
5,000,000:1
CHILDREN under five are most at risk, with 126 accidents reported every year in Britain. In Japan, around 150 people die from hot water scalding every year.


DYING FROM A HEART ATTACK OR STROKE
2.5:1
THE leading cause of death in Britain, coronary heart disease and strokes account for over 200,000 deaths every I year. Someone has a heart attack every two minutes.


BEING KILLED IN A TRAIN CRASH
500,000:1
DESPITE a number of fatal crashes, public transport is still the safest way to travel. Buses are even safer than trains, with the odds of being killed 13 million to one..


DYING FROM CANCER
5:1
AROUND 130,000 people die from cancer every year, of whom 65,000 are ' aged under 75.The most common killers are lung, breast, colon and prostate cancer.


KILLED BY THE ESCAPE OF RADIATION FROM A NEARBY NUCLEAR POWER STATION
10,000,000:1
THE chances of an explosion at a nuclear reactor are increasing with the risk of terrorism and as conventional fuels run out.The Chernobyl nuclear disaster and its aftermath has killed an estimated 30,000 people.


FALLING COCONUT
250,000,000:1
COCONUTS apparently kill around 150 people every year. Falling from a height of 80 feet, they can build up an impact speed of 50 mph.


LEFT-HANDED PEOPLE KILLED USING A RIGHT-HANDED PRODUCT
4,400,000:1
MORE than 2,500 left-handed people are killed every year around the world from using equipment meant for righthanded people.The right-handed power saw is the most deadly item.

Next-Gen Computers Will Use Water!

BOSTON: Since a computer microprocessor is veined with electric circuitry, it might seem like a bad place to put water. But IBM researchers believe that sloshing water through hair-thin pipes inside chips will solve a vexing problem facing nextgeneration computers.

That problem is heat!

As chips get smaller and smaller, cramming more processing power into ever-tinier spaces, the heat thrown off by the miniature circuits becomes harder to manage. Cooling measures used now to avoid chip meltdowns, including “heat sinks” made from heat-absorbing materials, might not work on tinier scales.

In fact, in a microprocessor design IBM is exploring – in which chips are stacked vertically to save space and enhance performance, rather than arrayed next to each other – the heat-tovolume ratio exceeds that of a nuclear reactor.

To address that, IBM researchers say they could pipe water in between chips that are sandwiched together. The system will use pipes that are just 50 microns wide – 50 millionths of a metre. The tiny tubes will, of course, be sealed to prevent leaks and electrical shorts.

Even these micro amounts of water can handle prodigious cooling chores, because water is much more efficient than air at absorbing heat. That is why some high-end computers have long used water cooling. The new trick here is doing it at the miniature scale, inside chips.

“It’s never been applied this close to the heart of the matter,” said analyst Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group.

Yogendra Joshi, an engineering professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said aspects of IBM’s approach have already been shown by others, but the company deserves credit for pushing the idea towards commercialisation. However, IBM’s tiny pipes aren’t out of the lab yet. They’re at least five years from becoming available. AP

‘Natural Condom’ Can Prevent HIV: Experts

Sydney: Australian researchers said that they have developed a means of producing a “natural condom” which could prevent the spread of AIDS.

The Melbourne researchers said they believe men could reduce their risk of contracting the HIV virus, which causes the deadly disease AIDS, by applying the female hormone, oestrogen, to their penis once a week.

University of Melbourne researcher professor Roger Short said on Wednesday that use of an oestrogen cream could quadruple the thin layer of the protein keratin on the skin and thereby provide a natural defensive layer.

“You create what you could call a natural condom,” Short told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

“You create a biological membrane which the virus can’t get through.”

Short, a strong advocate of the circumcision of men as a protection against HIV, said he had not yet done tests to prove that the virus was defeated by the keratin cover.

But the researchers said the technique, which does not protect against other sexually transmitted dise a s e s or pregnancy, could provide a cheap and simple method of guarding against HIV around the world.

The research, detailed in the Public Library of Science medical journal PLoS ONE, is expected to be tested in clinical trials in Africa. AGENCIES