Pope John Paul II, on fire, waves from beyond the grave

the Daily Mail: "This fiery figure is being hailed as Pope John Paul II making an appearance beyond the grave. The image, said by believers to show the Holy Father with his right hand raised in blessing, was spotted during a ceremony in Poland to mark the second anniversary of his death. Details appeared on the Vatican News Service, a TV station in Rome which specialises in religious news broadcasts. "


The Vatican offered no explanation as to why the former Pope might have chosen to appear wrapped in burning, hellish flames.

Scientists to create artificial life

Telegraph: "Scientists could create the first new form of artificial life within months after a landmark breakthrough in which they turned one bacterium into another.

In a development that has triggered unease and excitement in equal measure, scientists in the US took the whole genetic makeup - or genome - of a bacterial cell and transplanted it into a closely related species.

This then began to grow and multiply in the lab, turning into the first species in the process.

The team that carried out the first “species transplant” says it plans within months to do the same thing with a synthetic genome made from scratch in the laboratory."


File under "What could possibly go wrong?"

Tarantulas Produce Silk From Their Feet

ScienceDaily:: "Researchers have found for the first time that tarantulas can produce silk from their feet as well as their spinnerets, a discovery with profound implications for why spiders began to spin silk in the first place.

Adam Summers, a UC Irvine assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, was among the team of scientists who made the discovery using zebra tarantulas from Costa Rica. The team found that the tarantulas secrete silk from spigots on their legs, allowing them to better cling to surfaces. Until now, spiders were only known to spin silk from spinnerets located on their abdomen and to use the silk to form webs for protection and capturing prey rather than for locomotion."


Fascinating.. So did the spinnerets evolve as an independent set of limbs through some mutation, or were they legs that eventually specialized in early spiders? Spiders have 8 legs and 2 spinnerets, where their aquatic cousin the crab has 10 legs, the front two of which developed into claws.. Looking forward to more research on other species.

Yay Science!