The Town Devoured By Rock

Struck by a meteor? The 3,000-odd inhabitants of Setenil de las Bodegas, a city in Spain’s beautiful Andalucia region, seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. When they enter their houses, they see rock face; when they stroll through their city, they walk on rocks. Has the city been hit by a meteor and if not what caused its unusual construction?Setenil de las Bodegas, about 18 km away from Ronda in the province of Cadiz, has wedged itself between the cliffs eroded by the Rio Trejo river. The old houses especially are built under the cliff overhang and the newer ones against the hillside.
The name Setenil developed from the the Latin septem nihil – “seven times no” – which refers back to the period of the Christian reconquest, when Catholic kings tried to win back territory from the Moors, who had come from Africa and ruled the Iberian peninsula since 711. In Setenil’s case, only the seventh reconquest attempt was successful, in 1485, making the city one of the last bastions of the Moors until they were driven out of western Europe in 1492.
Regarding the second part of the name, “de las Bodegas,” at least two different stories circulate. According to one, Sentenil proudly added “de las Bodegas” to its name in the 15th century, because of the many vineyards that had sprung up. Sadly, vine pests ended this tradition in the 1860s.
According to another story, since the early 16th century, “bodegas” referred to Sentenil’s big storerooms under the rock that kept all kinds of produce cool even in the hottest of summers. Regardless of which version is true, fact is that even today, Setenil is famous for delicacies like chorizo, cerdo, olive oil, honey, jam and excellent Andalucian wine.
Other than being built into the rock, Setenil is also one of the typical White Villages of Andalucia; villages that try to stay as cool as possible in this hottest region of Spain by whitewashing their houses every year, as white reflects sunlight best.When looking at images like this, with a whole village literally living in the shadow of a huge rock, one wonders: Why, isn’t it depressing, especially in the winter?
The reason people choose to live here is pragmatism, more or less. The natural caves at Setenil proved perfect living quarters, it is believed since pre-historic times. Instead of having to build a whole house and insulating it against heat in the summer and cold in the winter, many rock caves just needed a façade and voila, there was a house in tune with nature!
Also, one shouldn’t forget that Setenil de las Bodegas is a city that is many centuries old and thus has seen its fair share of fighting. And which enemy would go for the city with rock solid defenses, literally, when the next town over has no such protection? After all, that’s why it took the Catholic kings seven attempts before they won Setenil back from the Moors…
Overall, a very minimally invasive building style. Rock on, Setenil!

Weather Warning

When you walk out the door in the morning and see this in the sky......




....just go back inside, have another cup of coffee, and stay home. It's NOT going to be a good day.

Study shows infertile men can be good IVF candidates

Men suffering from from non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA), meaning they have undetectable levels of sperm in their semen, which is not caused by an obstruction in their reproductive system, have long been considered poor candidates for IVF (in vitro fertilisation). However new research published in the online journal of Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology has reported that NOA sufferers could be just as capable of producing viable embryos as other men.

Approximately one per cent of the male population and 10 per cent of men seeking fertility evaluation have testicular failure. Previous research conducted by Belgian scientists reported lower pregnancy rates than normal (approximately 20 per cent) when using sperm from NOA patients. It has also been thought that sperm isolated from NOA patients, while able to produce embryos, is less capable of producing live births and that the incidence of genetic mutations may be higher resulting in congenitial deffects. However, new research contradicts this and gives hope that men with NOA can be just as likely to father a child.

Nina Desai and her team at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation analysed 156 ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) cycles which used sperm taken from the testes of 44 men suffering from obstructive azoospermia (OA) and 17 men diagnosed with NOA. For their study they assessed embryonic development, implantation, pregnancy and live birth rates. They found on all counts that there were no significant differences between the groups.

Desai and her team analysed the ability for the pateranl sperm to iniate genomic activation, this is when the genome of the embryo divides and begins to arrange itself. They way to morphologically measure this is to observe the degree of cell to cell aderence as the embryo cells divide, if there is genomic activation it is thought that by the eight-cell stage there will be an increase in cell-cell adherence. The anaysis found no differences between the sperm groups suggesting that the genome activation is independent of sperm origin and type of azoospermia. They also noted that there were no cogenital abnormalities in the 115 healthy births.

Key to long life is having two mothers but no father!

Mice produced in the laboratory from two biological mothers and without a father have been found to live significantly longer than normal mice bred from a mother and a father. These findings indicate that genetic traits inherited from the father but not the mother may play an important role in ageing and longevity.

Researchers from Saga University and Tokyo University of Agriculture, Japan, took DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) from eggs of one day-old mice and genetically modified it so that it would behave like sperm. They then used it to fertilise eggs from adult mice, thereby producing offspring with two mothers, dubbed bi-maternal mice. Control mice were bred that were genetically identical to the bi-maternal mice except that they had been conceived conventionally using genetic material from a sperm and an egg.

Professor Tomohiro Kono, who led the study, explained the researchers' goals: 'We have known for some time that women tend to live longer than men in almost all countries worldwide, and that these sex-related differences in longevity also occur in many other mammalian species... The study may give an answer to the fundamental questions: that is, whether longevity in mammals is controlled by the [genes] of only one or both parents, and just maybe, why women are at an advantage over men with regard to the lifespan.'

Reporting in the journal Human Reproduction, the researchers compared the lifespans of 13 bi-maternal mice with those of 13 control mice. On average, the bi-maternal mice lived for 841.5 days - 186 days longer than the control mice, which averaged 655.5 days. The researchers also found that the bi-maternal mice were significantly smaller and lighter than the control mice. There were also signs that the bi-maternal mice had better immune systems than the control mice, as they had higher numbers of eosinophils (a type of white blood cell that play an important role in protecting mammals against parasites and infections) in their blood.

The researchers believe that the effects they observed may result from a genetic process called 'imprinting' whereby the activity of a gene depends on whether it is inherited from the mother or the father. They suggest that a gene called Rasgrf1, found on chromosome 9, may be responsible for the increased lifespan and smaller weight of the bi-maternal mice.

Rasgrf1 is an imprinted gene that is always turned on when it is inherited from the father and always turned off when it is inherited from the mother. The bi-maternal mice had two inactive Rasgrf1 genes as they were both inherited from female mice instead of having the usual one active Rasgrf1 gene inherited from a father and one inactive Rasgrf1 gene inherited from a mother. However, Professor Kono emphasised: 'it's not clear whether Rasgrf1 is definitively associated with mouse longevity, but it is one of the strong candidates... we cannot eliminate the possibility that other, unknown genes that rely on their paternal inheritance to function normally may be responsible.'

Professor Kay-Tee Khaw, an expert in ageing at Cambridge University, commented to the BBC: 'These are interesting findings but I think any sex differences in longevity - which in humans have changed over time and differ in different environments - may have more complex explanations than any single gene'.

Full Body Scans 2010

Organized Crime

Finally, the true story....

If you have heard this one before then it is still worth a second read !!!

Some time ago, President Clinton was hosting a state dinner when, at the last minute, his regular cook fell ill, and they had to get a replacement on short notice.

The fellow arrived and turned out to be a very grubby-looking man named Jon. The President voiced his concerns to his Chief of Staff but was told that this was the best they could do on such short notice.

Just before the meal, the President noticed the cook sticking his finger in the soup to taste it and again complained to the Chief of Staff, but he was told that this man was supposed to be a very good chef. The meal went okay, but the President was sure that the soup tasted a little funny. By the time dessert came, he was starting to have stomach cramps and nausea.

It was getting worse and worse until finally the President had to excuse himself from the dinner to look for the bathroom. Passingthrough the kitchen, he caught sight of the cook, Jon, scratching his rear end, which made him feel even worse.

By now, the President was desperately ill with violent cramps and was so disorientated that he couldn't remember which door led to the bathroom. He was on the verge of passing out from the pain when he finally found a door that opened. As he unzipped his trousers and ran in, he realized to his horror that he had stumbled into the office of Ms.Monica Lewinsky with his trousers around his knees.

As he was just about to pass out, she bent over him and heard the President whisper in a barely audible voice, 'Sack my cook.'

And that is how the whole misunderstanding occurred...