Most of us think that people suffering from total blindness are treated only with either drugs, surgery, or laser therapy. For the most part, that's true. However, desperate times call for unconventional measures so doctors in England used human teeth to snatch a blind man back from the darkness of visual loss. A remarkable story of recovery follows after the jump.

Do you remember the swarm of robots that attack Zion in the third Matrix movie? Remember how awesome they look in motion? Well, that sort of thing will probably become a reality as scientists have found the secret behind the aerial maneuvering of the starling flock.

The complete story about this can be found in the full article via the "read more" link below!

The problem with frescos is that once you tear down the wall, the painting is gone: this was once believed to be the fate of one of Leonardo da Vinci's frescos called the Battle of Anghiari. However, a recent discovery suggests that the wall where the fresco was painted on was preserved, hidden behind another wall.

The fresco once decorated the Hall of the Five Hundred of the Palazzo Vecchio, the town hall of Florence, Italy. Leonardo DA Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti both painted frescos in the Hall, but both paintings were left unfinished.

For half a century the paintings remained there until it was decided that the Hall was to be enlarged. The paintings were believed to be lost in the restructuring. Thirty years ago however, an Italian engineer noticed the words "Cerca, trova" ("Seek and you shall find") on a fresco by Giorgio Vasari in the Palazzo Vecchio. Vasari was the artist who was commissioned to redecorate the Hall of the Five Hundred way back when in the 1560s.

The discovery led the engineer, Maurizio Seracini, to believe that Leonardo da Vinci's work may not have been destroyed after all but preserved, hidden behind Vasari's own wall where he painted his fresco. They have discovered, using X-ray scans, that there is a cavity behind Vasari's wall, large enough to indicate that the space may be there only so it won't touch the second wall beyond it.

Using modern technology - lasers, 3D imaging, chemical analysis and thermal imaging - scientists and engineers hopes to discover if DA Vinci's wall, and in effect his fresco, still survives without destroying Vasari's. If DA Vinci's fresco proves to have been lost after all, and doesn't lie behind Vasari's, at least the scientific efforts in finding out would help improve techniques in finding other lost frescos. In fact, the techniques and methods they used are already being applied in medical and military fields.

And so mankind forges on ahead with playing God. Even with stem cell research yet to gain acceptance from various sectors of society, here comes yet another surefire controversial scientific conquest: artificial life. It has been approximated by experts that in three to ten years' time, "wet artificial life" would have been made possible.

But before you go raising that moral eyebrow, scientists are quick to point out that this would ultimately benefit man (who else) especially in finding potential solutions for all those problems hounding us, be it environmental (ie. containing greenhouse gases, getting rid of toxic waste) or conquering fatal diseases. However, it is to be expected that there will be major hurdles to overcome before the endeavor can prove to be a success:

• A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out, allow good ones, and the ability to multiply.
• A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell, enabling it to reproduce and mutate in response to environmental changes.
• A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as food and then changes it into energy.

Says Mark Bedau, Protolife of Venice, Italy's CEO, "We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways -- in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict." Synthetic lifeforms would have to be made from the basic DNA chemicals. "Creating protocells has the potential to shed new life on our place in the universe. This will remove one of the fundamental mysteries about creation in the universe and our role."

Things are still quite vague on the matter, and a lot of questions are only starting to form about it. But we are betting that this will spark another intriguing debate that could very well just outlast as all into the centuries and beyond.

The Tunguska Explosion of 1908 still remains a mystery until today. Basically, a massive explosion took place above the remote Russian forests of Tunguska, Siberia back in the said year that flattened a staggering 800 square miles of land.

Scientists would normally credit this to a meteor but the thing is, no fragments of such or even craters have been discovered yet. However, one study that began almost 10 years ago now infers that the missing crater can be found underneath Lake Cheko.

The said lake is 164-foot deep and is located five miles northwest of the epicenter of the explosion. University of Bologna (in Italy) physicist and co-author of the study Giuseppe Longo explained,

When we looked at the bottom of the lake, we measured seismic waves reflecting off of something. Nobody has found this before. We can only explain that and the shape of the lake as a low-velocity impact crater. Expeditions in the 1960s concluded the lake was not an impact crater, but their technologies were limited.

The team of Longo was able to extract fresh mud-like sediment on top of "chaotic deposits" after going to the bottom of Lake Cheko and taking 6-foot core samples. Despite this interesting development, Longo mentioned that their study is far from being over because the samples taken were still inconclusive.

The physicist mentioned that what they need to prove that Lake Cheko is indeed the missing crater is a similar core sample taken 10 meters or 33 feet into the bottom of the lake. If they are lucky, Longo is expecting to find the remains of the meteor which size is currently being speculated at 1,700 tons and more than 30 feet in diameter.

"This is important work because we can make better conclusions about how cosmic bodies impact the Earth, and what they're made of. And it could help us find ways to protect our planet from future impacts of this kind," Longo added. His team is planning to continue the investigation this coming summer.

One neuroscientist and two veterinarians collaborated recently to understand further the meaning behind a dog's tail wagging. We're not certain why they did that and for what great cause but dog lovers and owners will surely be interested about their findings.

According to the study, dogs wag their tail mostly towards the right side if they feel fundamentally good and positive about someone or something. On the other hand, the wagging is more to the left whenever they're sad or harboring negative feelings. The study was conducted by scientist Giorgio Vallortigara from University of Trieste and veterinarians Angelo Quaranta and Marcello Siniscalchi from University of Bari.

Furthermore, the study was conducted in Italy using 30 family pets of mixed breed that have been enrolled in an agility training program. The dogs were placed in cages equipped with cameras capable of measuring exact angles of their tail wags. Four stimuli were then introduced: their owner, an unfamiliar human, a cat, and an unfamiliar dominant dog.

The testing lasted for a total of 25 days and each day consisted of 10 sessions each. The study implies that muscles in the right side of the tail reflect positive emotions. On the other hand, muscles in the left side of their tails mean negative feelings.

Richard J. Davidson, Director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, believes that such findings can be used to further the study of asymmetry in the brain. Davidson is intrigued if dogs do show emotional asymmetry because the tails are placed in the mid-line of the dogs' bodies.

Italian paleontologists have found a spectacular fossil in the Tuscan countryside that may hold the key as to what kind of marine environment Italy had one and a half million years ago.

During the Pliocene epoch, most of what is now known as Italy was part of the Mediterranean sea. That explains why a lot of sea fossils have been found in the region. The fossil found is that of a 32-foot whale. The bones were almost fully intact with some interesting organisms found as bonus.

Along with the whale were some fish, mollusks and shark teeth. Biologists suggest that the whale may have been attacked by the shark and when it died, the smaller fish and other animals feasted on the remains for a long time.

"The variety of the sea organisms associated with the whale—shells, fish and others—is extraordinary. It enables us to make a thorough reconstruction of the environment," said Elisabeth Cioppi, head paleontologist of the research team.

While finding sea fossils inland is not unusual, in the area, "it does confirm that the Mediterranean is favorable to the development of these sea mammals," says Alessandro Garrasimo.

The remains of the whale will undergo several more tests before a comprehensive report is written and published in science journals worldwide.

Steve Carrell in "The 40-Year Old Virgin" was complaining because he was exactly that - a 40-year old virgin. But apparently, that's nothing compared to these bdelloid rotifers, who just happened to remain virginal for -- get this -- 40 million years.

Yep, never been touched, never been kissed. The bdelloid rotifers are actually microscopic aquatic animals that usually dwell in watery or occasionally wet habitats like ponds, rivers, soils, mosses and lichens. What's baffling scientists is the fact that they have managed to evolve into distinct species despite of the fact that there are absolutely no males in their group. Asexual, these animals are, indeed.

So how do they generate offsprings? Well, they are still able to produce eggs that are deemed to be genetic clones of their mothers. To better understand this phenomena, scientists took a close look at bdelloid rotifers from UK, Italy and elsewhere. Evolution for these creatures, as they found, were more adaptive than genetic.

According to Dr. Tim Barraclough of the Imperial College London's Division of Biology posits, "we found evidence that different populations of these creatures have diverged into distinct species, not just because they become isolated in different places, but because of the differing selection pressures in different environments."

What makes this finding highly significant is that it was previously believed that in order for speciation to happen, there ought to be sexual reproduction involved. Adds Dr. Barraclough, These are really amazing creatures, whose very existence calls into question scientific understanding, because it is generally thought that asexual creatures die out quickly, but these have been around for millions of years."

To learn more about this findings, you can catch the published study in today's edition, March 19, 2007, of PLoS Biology.

And this coming in just in time for the season of love. A dig at the northern city of Mantova in Italy have brought to surface the skeleton of what appears to be a couple hugging each other. Dig this. They've been measured to have been buried some 5,000 to 6, 000 years ago.

Wow. Now that surely gives "Til death do us part" a whole new different twist to it, eh? Says Elena Menotti, dig leader, "There has not been a double burial found in the Neolithic period, much less two people hugging -- and they really are hugging." The skeletons are believed to be that of a young man and woman's, whose age are suggested by their intact teeth.

They are now trying to determine the specific age of the couple at the time of death and for how long exactly have they been buried. "But I have never been so moved because this is the discovery of something special." Sniff. Sniff.

Now it can be told! Mona Lisa couldn't help her beguiling smile because she had just given birth to her second son when she sat for the painting, says a French art expert.

The conclusion was made based on Mona Lisa's dress which was covered in a thin, transparent gauze veil. "This type of gauze dress... was typical of the kind worn in early 16th century Italy by women who were pregnant or who had just given birth. This is something that had never been seen up to now because the painting was always judged to be dark and difficult to examine," said Bruno Mottin from French Museums' Centre for Research and Restoration.

Computer scientists from Canada's National Research Council (NRC) used special 3D technology to scan the painting on both sides to get a high resolution 3D image data that uncovered its secret. Based on this image, the centre also said that Leonardo daVinci made the painting to commemorate the birth of the second son of the lady Mona Lisa, around 1503.

She must have really been high on baby love to be able smile like that centuries before epidural was invented!