200-year-old mummified Bhikkhu found

In the Songinokhairkhan province of Mongolia police nabbed a man trying to sell a mummified bhikkhu in the black market and the mummy is now being guarded at the National Centre of Forensic Expertise at 5 Ulanbaator.

Authorities believe that the man might have stolen the mummy from another part of the country - a cave in the Kobdsk region - and then hid it in his home.

Scientists are currently conducting forensic examinations on the 200-year-old mummy that was found wrapped in cattle skins. They are trying to determine how the body was so well-preserved, although they do suspect that the nation’s cold weather could have played a part.

This mummified bhikkhu found almost perfectly preserved in a lotus position was also the cause for a controversy after a well-known Buddhism expert claimed he isn’t actually dead but in a deep meditative trance.

The identity of the bhikkhu has not yet been established, but he is speculated to be the teacher of Lama Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov, who was also found mummified. Itigilov, who was from neighbouring Buryatia in the then Soviet Union, apparently told his disciples in 1927 that he was going to die, and that they should exhume his body in 30 years. When he was dug up as per his instructions, legend has it that Itigilov’s body was found intact and perfectly preserved. Fearing interference by the Soviet authorities, the followers buried him once more. He remained that way until 2002, when he was dug up again and still found well preserved.

His body was then placed in a Buddhist temple to be worshiped by his followers.

Over the last 50 years, there are believed to have been at least 40 cases such cases in India, involving Tibetan monks.

Drones as hotel waiters

What is a drone doing in a restaurant in Singapore? Instead of being deployed in a war zone this restaurant has come up with a very innovative solution to cope with the shortage of manpower affecting the whole island city by using them as flying robot waiters!

The Infinium Robotics’ drones are all set to be introduced at the local restaurant-bar chain by the end of this year.

Shortage of manpower has become an issue all over Singapore, ever since the government introduced curbs on cheap and foreign labour to slow down immigration. The restaurant industry has long depended on foreign labour, because young Singaporeans tend to look down on service jobs.

Several well-known restaurants and food stalls have actually shut down in recent months due to manpower shortage and high rent costs.

To cope with the situation, a few restaurateurs have been experimenting with new ways - right from robots who can wok-fry rice and noodles, to iPad menus and bullet train delivery systems. But this is the first time a restaurant will have drones serving diners.

The unusual waiters will navigate using infrared sensors placed around the restaurant, whizzing above the heads of diners on paths chartered by a computer program. They are expected to be sturdy and reliable, and of course, they will never fall sick a few hours before their shift.

The drones can carry up to 2kg of food and drink, which adds up to about two pints of beer, a pizza, and two glasses of wine.

A few safety and liability issues are anticipated - a malfunctioning drone might just crash into a customer’s face - but Infinium Robotics CEO Junyang Woon said that their machines use onboard cameras and sensors to ensure that they do not collide with people.

He also explained that the technology frees up capacity, “so staff are able to interact more with customers and enhance their dining experience.” Spokespeople for Timbre Group, the restaurant chain buying the drone waiters,admit that there are limits to technology.

Managing Director Edward Chia said that he plans to use 40 drones and redirect human staff to do higher-skilled jobs such as making cocktails and preparing food.

He still plans to have human waiters, though. The drones will fetch food from the kitchen to a serving station, while a real person will place the dish before the customer. “We still want to have that human touch,” he said

Frozen solid in winter, comes alive in spring

This Alaskan Wood Frog is virtually dead to the world during the Winter. It may be for days, even weeks during its period of hibernation over 60 percent of the frog’s body freezes, it stops breathing and the heart stops beating. Its physical processes like metabolic activity and waste production come to a halt.

Its amazing how this tiny Alaskan Wood Frog can survive being almost completely frozen during winter, only to miraculously come back to life as soon as spring arrives!

Don Larson, a Ph.D. student at Fairbanks, Alaska in his research paper says wood frogs can survive long winters where temperatures range between -9C to -18C. In fact, it can go through 10 to 15 freeze/thaw cycles over the course of a single season.

According to researchers the reason for this is the high concentration of cryoprotectants in the wood frog’s tissues.

These are solutes - including glucose and urea - that lower the freezing temperature of the frog’s cells, helping them survive. In most animals, exposure to subzero temperatures for a long time could cause cellular shrinkage. During this process, water is pulled from the body’s cells to form ice, eventually sucking them dry and killing the cell. But with wood frogs, cryoprotectants help the cells resist shrinkage.

“The solutes tend to depress the freezing point,” said Jon Costanzo of the Department of Zoology at Miami University in Ohio. “It limits the amount of ice that actually forms in the body at any part.” Costanzo has been researching wood frogs for the past 25 years - he wanted to understand how the frog could function on a physiological and chemical level.

Thanks to the incredible wood frogs, medical researchers have discovered ways that living organs and tissues can be frozen and unfrozen without damaging them, which have had serious implications in areas like organ transplants. “There’s an obvious parallel between what these frogs are doing to preserve all of their tissues simultaneously and our need to be able to cryopreserve human organs for tissue-matching purposes,” Costanzo said.

“If you could freeze human organs even for a short period of time, that would be a major breakthrough because then these organs could be shipped around the world, which would greatly [improve] the donor-matching process.”