 Ice, ice baby: perfectly frozen mammoth
 A baby woolly mammoth, frozen in soil for 40,000 years in Siberia,
was so well preserved that traces of her mother’s milk were still in her
stomach. Lyuba, who was thought to be just one month old, was discovered
when nomadic reindeer dug her up. Scientists believe she died after
being sucked into a river bed. Mud was found in her trunk and throat,
suggesting she had suffocated.
The body is preserved enough to provide DNA samples, but the prospect
of cloning the creature is still a long way off. As the body was so well
preserved, researchers have already learnt more about mammoths from it
than any previous discoveries.
“We had no idea from preserved skeletons and preserved carcasses that
young mammoths had a discrete structure on the back of the head of brown
fat cells,” said Lead curator of the team studying the mammoth, Daniel
Fisher. Lyuba is being transported to Chicago to be exhibited in the
Field Museum, then will be exhibited in 10 cities across the world, with
the final stop on the tour being London’s Natural History Museum in
2014.
Sky news
School asks pupils to bring own toilet roll
 Irish parents struggling to buy schoolbooks and uniforms in the face
of a deep recession may now have to worry about sending their children
to school with a toilet roll as well as a packed lunch. Pupils at a
primary school in the southern county of Cork are being asked to bring
their own toilet paper to school to help save money, one of the starkest
examples yet of the death of Ireland’s “Celtic Tiger” economy.
“The letter was sent out just as a way of balancing books here in the
school and not intended as a demand,” said Catherine O’Neill, principal
at St John’s Girls National School. O’Neill said the request was made
because of cuts to government grants for books and computers. She added
that parents were responding well.
Reuters
Healthy baby born in Germany to woman in coma
 A 40-year-old woman who fell into a coma in the 13th week of her
pregnancy delivered a healthy baby 22 weeks later in a Bavarian
hospital. She suffered a heart attack and fell into a coma early in her
pregnancy. The University Clinic in Erlangen said it was the first time
that a woman in a persistent vegetative state was able to deliver a
healthy baby. The baby is now 1-1/2 years old.
Matthias Beckmann, a director at the hospital, said: “We wanted to
keep the spectacular case secret for as long as possible to demonstrate
that we’re not experimenting on people and that the child is still
healthy.”
The hospital had no comment and it was not clear whether the
mother remained in a coma or whether the baby had been delivered
naturally or by caesarean section.
- arbroath.blogspot.com
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