Spiro and The Fudge are back on the case! This time they have to solve a mystery involving a dead murderer who might have been killed by a vigilante. Will they be able to crack the grisly case? Or will Spiro be too busy full body tanning to find to the clues? Andrew proposes the merits of being swarmed by scorpions instead of spiders. Also, Armageddon is yelled about, the Department of Defense reveals they have two telescopes more powerful than the Hubble just lying around a warehouse somewhere and Game of Thrones has praise lavished upon it.

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How do you stop a dead man from becoming a vampire? Well, if you lived in Bulgaria during the Middle Ages the easy way to prevent it is to hammer an iron rod through the heart of every corpse before you lay them to their final rest.

Two such skeletons with such percautions taken were recovered near the Black Sea town of Sozopol last weekend.

And yet, the head of the Natural History Museum in Sofia doesn’t quite see why everyone is interested in the findings…

According to Dimitrov, over 100 corpses stabbed to prevent them from becoming vampires have been discovered across Bulgaria over the years.

“I do not know why an ordinary discovery like that [has] became so popular. Perhaps because of the mysteriousness of the word “vampire,” he said.

Also, the idea that corpses regularly got stabbed in the heart with an iron rod to prevent them from during into undead reavers. So yeah… between that and the word “vampire” I’d say that explains the interest.

[Fox News]

In an amazing scientific feat, a paralyzed rat was taught to walk again.

First, Courtine and colleagues injected the rats with a chemical cocktail that binds to dopamine, adrenaline and serotonin receptors on the spinal cord’s neurons. This replaced the neurotransmitters that would normally be released in healthy spinal pathways. A few minutes after priming the neurons, the team stimulated the rats’ spinal cords through electrodes implanted into the spinal canal. This sent electrical signals to the roused neurons. Then the rats needed to be trained to use their limbs again. Within a week of their injuries, the rats were on treadmills, forging new neural connections.

Although a human application for this solution is a long way away, clinical trials are on the horizon.

[Pop Sci]

In my country there is problem. And that problem is dead antelope.

Three major die-offs of the antelope population have occurred in the past three years due to mysterious causes. In fact, each death boom happened almost exactly one year apart from the previous one. Some suspect overuse of fertilizer, others believe they ate too much “wet” vegetation.

But reasonable minds agree: it’s probably a space disease brought down by the Soyuz capsule.

But some ecologists in Kazakhstan and Russia are instead blaming the fatalities on the April landing of a Soyuz capsule from the International Space Station. At least 120 dead saigas were found near the village of Sorsha, where the Soyuz landed last month. Others see a possible link to the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch site in central Kazakhstan. “It could be from chemical elements left from space rockets that fly over this place,” ecologist Musagali Duambekov, leader of the For a Green Planet political movement, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).

Throw the space disease down the well! So my country can be free!

[Scientific American]

Nothing kicks off a summer of fun like the first commercial space craft hitting the waves. Minutes ago, SpaceX’s Dragon Capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, ending a historic trip from GD space to the International Space Station.

Welcome home!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. In a week when the boundaries of humanity’s role in space may have been redefined forever we also got the possible beginning of a zombie outbreak when a naked man was shot dead eating the face of another poor soul. Meanwhile, Andrew alerts the boys to the existence of a flesh eating bacteria that has claimed the limbs of a young Georgia woman.

Also, Justin and Brian are told of a land where dinosaurs exist. After they were built by prison labor.

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A fun moment from yesterday’s press briefing about SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft docking with the International Space Station, marking the first time a commercial craft has done any such thing. Ever.

Anyhow, Musk was asked to explain some of the complications his team experienced while approaching the station. He took it upon himself to describe the issue in a format many laymen will understand… as Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers franchise.

Skip to 24:20 in the embed below or click here to get there on YouTube.

[YouTube]

A man who brought a small zebra and parrot with him into a bar called the Dog House was later arrested for drunk driving. Police found the two animals in the truck of his vehicle.

Reiter says the zebra and macaw parrot are pets and like riding in the truck. Reiter claims he sometimes takes the animals into the bar, but the owner says they’re not allowed inside.

The makeshift mobile menagerie owner confessed to the cop that he thought someone who took a picture with his animals ratted him out about the tipsy driving. Which reminded him that he should really buy a rat to show off as well.

[Fox News]

A new partnership could herald a historic moment for the cryptozoology community. Venerable Oxford University will partner with the Lausanne Museum of Zoology in utilizing the latest genetic techniques to investigate organic remains of crypto creatures.

Among the list of evidence to study? The Yeti.

Professor Bryan Sykes, a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, who will lead the project with Michel Sartori, Director of the Lausanne Museum of Zoology, said: “Theories as to their species identification vary from surviving collateral hominid species, such as Homo neanderthalensis or Homo floresiensis, to large primates like Gigantopithecus widely thought to be extinct, to as yet unstudied primate species or local subspecies of black and brown bears.

Sykes hopes that the Yeti evidence could lead to new breakthroughs in our understanding of Neanderthals and other early hominids.

[Phys.org]

An Iranian official is stating that a text confiscated by Turkish authorities legitimizes Islam as the only true religion and will sow seeds of discord amongst Christian communities the world over.

The “Barnabus Gospel” is now in Turkey after being confiscated in an anti-smuggling operation. Written on animal hide, the text allegedly delivers a theological body blow to those who believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God.

According to the Barnabas Gospel in Turkey’s hands, Basij Press says, Jesus was never crucified, He’s not the Son of God and He, Himself, predicts the coming of Muhammad. The book even predicts the coming of the last Islamic messiah, the report says.

“The discovery of the original Barnabas Bible will now undermine the Christian Church and its authority and will revolutionize the religion in the world,” the Basij report says. “The most significant fact, though, is that this Bible has predicted the coming of Prophet Mohammad and in itself has verified the religion of Islam, and this alone will unbalance the powers of the world and create instability in the Christian world.”

Turkey plans to put the text on display.

[WND]

In a very special episode of Weird Things, Andrew and Justin race to Cape Canaveral, Florida to see history in making as SpaceX attempts to launch their Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon capsule. After already driving six hours there and back only to have the launch scrubbed three days prior, can the boys handle another disappointment? Brian mans the controls from Austin as the WTP discusses all things SpaceX on the eve of their greatest achievement.

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Talk about holding a grudge.

A pair of 1,600 year old black magic curses have been found, one each for a senator and an animal doctor named Procello who really gets cursed out.

“Destroy, crush, kill, strangle Porcello and wife Maurilla. Their soul, heart, buttocks, liver …” part of it reads. The iconography on the tablet actually shows a mummified Porcello, his arms crossed (as is the deity) and his name written on both of his arms.

And not to be left out, Fistus the senator…

“Crush, kill Fistus the senator,” part of the curse reads, “May Fistus dilute, languish, sink and may all his limbs dissolve …”

The curses are written in Latin and are believed to be directed toward the Greek goddess Hekate. They were originally discovered in Italy in 2009.

[Fox News]

Take a loot at the cross in the middle of this video. Keep you eyes focused on it.

The faces that grace the covers of magazines and open films to multi-million dollar bonanzas suddenly turn into grossly deformed freaks. You will swear they slip in a few photoshops, but watch the video again without staring at the cross and you’ll realize just how thin the line between beauty and bizarre really is.

This won second place at the Best Illusion of the Year competition.

Read more here about why the illusion works.

[MB Thompson Research]

Single cell microbes in the most remote portions of the ocean floor dating back to days when dinosaurs roamed the Earth are indeed alive. But not by much.

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaarely alive. Which is a scientific term. Each “a” signifying how much closer to complete nonexistence it is.

Yet still, as Dr. Malcolm teaches us… life finds a way.

Røy and colleagues from Denmark and Germany surveyed red clays buried deep in the Pacific Ocean, along the equator and into the North Pacific Gyre current system. From the research R/V Knorr, they drilled core samples 92 feet into the ocean floor, dating to the time of the dinosaurs, and tested the cores with oxygen sensors. They found that organisms live in the deepest parts of these sediments and that they’re using oxygen for respiration — only incredibly slowly. The deeper the sediments, the less food and oxygen is present, and the less oxygen is used up, too. These organisms have not had access to a fresh food supply since their burial, 70 to 86 million years ago.

The finding could gives new insight into life on other planets. Now that we have an idea of just how durable life in on this particular rock we can have some hope that it could survive in a harsh environment elsewhere across the stars.

[Pop Sci]

German researchers have utilized the strategy behind PageRank, the revolutionary Google algorithm which finds relevant search results to determine critical cancerous biomarkers.

The results could facilitate earlier understanding of how aggressive the cancer is and lead to more accurate treatments.

Finding these biomarkers is often difficult and time consuming. Another problem is that markers found in different studies for the same types of cancer almost never overlap.

This problem has been circumvented using the Google strategy, which takes into account the content of a web page and also how these pages are connected via hyperlinks. With this strategy as the model, the authors made use of the fact that proteins in a cell are connected through a network of physical and regulatory interactions; the ‘protein Facebook’ so to speak.

This would equate really aggressive cancers with SEO experts.

Makes sense.

[Science Daily]

Thriller writer Andrew Mayne presents free audiobooks and short stories of mystery and adventure.

This episode features Payload, read by special guest Justin Robert Young.

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