Sisters with Werewolf Syndrome

Meet the incredible Sangli sisters, three siblings whose lives have been blighted by one of the rarest conditions in the world - werewolf sydrome.

Savita, 23, Monisha, 18, and 16-year-old Savitri are just like any other young women except their bodies have been covered from head to foot in thick hair.

Werewolf syndrome - or hypertricosis universalis - affects just one in a BILLION people but in an incredible quirk of fate all THREE sisters have the condition.

Hyperthrichosis is a genetic mutation where cells, that normally switch off hair growth in unusual areas, like the eyelids and forehead, are left switched on.

It means the girls have had abnormal hair growth on their bodies and even their faces, affecting their eyebrows, nose and giving them appearance of having a beard.

Every day is a battle for the siblings who are now just beginning to bring the condition under control using a special hair removal cream.

Compared to these pictures taken just last year the sisters, from southern India, have changed remarkably, and two of the sisters have managed to remove much of the hair growth from their faces.

The sisters use hair remover cream every day, but to little avail

But every day is still a constant battle and not using the cream will see the hair quickly return, with the youngest sister Savitri still virtually covered.

The girl's mother Anita Sambhaji Raut has six daughters in total with only three having werewolf syndrome.

The condition was passed down by the girl's father who Anita was forced to marry aged 12 not knowing he had the condition as she had never seen him till their wedding day.

Anita and her daughters are now desperate to fund laser surgery that will help to finally remove the curse of excess hair and allow the girls to lead normal lives.

In their small village near Pune, central India, the girls have little prospects for marriage and the eldest Savita sometimes gets sent home from work when her hair begins to show.

Laser surgery would cost 350,000 Indian rupees or £4,500 per girl but the family are not wealthy enough to be able to afford it.

Now documentary filmmaker Sneh Gupta is planning make a film of the girls in a bid to help their dream of becoming almost hair free - with the eventual aim finding marriage.

The sisters are keen to marry - but want to achieve their dream of becoming hair-free, first

Mum Anita, 40, said her husband - who died in 2007 and whose portrait hangs in the family home - also suffered from werewolf syndrome. Anita was being looked after by her uncle and auntie as her parents had passed away and they told her if she didn't marry this man they would kill her off. She said: "It was only on the day of my marriage that I discovered what he was, (he) was hairy on his face, ears and body, that's when I found out." I was very young, I didn't know what kind of boy he was, he scared the hell out of me when he arrived at the altar. He's the groom, I am the bride, I had no idea what all that meant." I was only 12 when they forced me into marriage, and if you don't agree to marriage as a girl they will kill you off."

I asked my mother-in-law why my daughters were born like this and she told me because their father is like this, at the time (as a baby) my daughter had little hairs all over her face." When I used to take her (Savita) out as a child, they used to shout here comes the beast, the witch, that's what they said." They keep her at work now for 10 to 15 days, and then after that they ask her to leave as soon as the hair starts showing through, that's what they do." I tell people this is the type of girl she is, hair grows on her face, she has to apply medicine, we must be honest with everybody." In the village society a woman does not have much prospects if she is not married and mum Anita explained she was still trying to get her daughters a man. She said: " If a good proposal comes in, I'll get her married. If nothing comes in she'll have to work and survive. As long as I am living I have to keep trying." Eldest daughter Savita, who now using a cream to try and combat her hair growth, said: "When I used to go to school the boys and the girls would shout, 'hairy face', 'horrible looking', 'don't sit next to her', that's how they behaved. "Marriage is not an option for us, it's not likely to happen, who is going to marry us when hair keeps growing on our faces."

Mutant Spider Fears AS White Cobwebs Are Found At Nuclear Waster Pool

Scientists are on the case after a mysterious white cobweb was discovered on nuclear waste at a US facility.

There are fears the webbing, found on a sample of uranium last month, may have been spun by a‘mutant’ spider, The Sun reported.

According to the Daily Mail, the discovery echoes the plot of Spider Man – where Peter Parker becomes a superhero after being bitten by a spider at a nuclear waste facility.

It added: “Experts say that any creature inside in the pools of water – which are intended to protect workers – would have been exposed to the nuclear fuel.

“This raises the prospect of a creature having morphed into a new species of ‘extremophile’ after being exposed to uranium.”

Workers at the facility where the mysterious webbing was found

The webs were discovered at the Savannah River Site, a 300-square-mile nuclear reservation owned by the US Department of Energy.

Experts from the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina are running tests on the “string-like growth”.

A spokesman said: “We observed it, it was unusual, it appears to be biological in nature but we don’t know for sure.

“It doesn’t seem to be doing any harm.” The full results are due in March.

A report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, said: “The growth, which resembles a spider web, has yet to be characterised, but may be biological in nature.”

The discovery echoes the plot of Spider Man - where Peter Parker becomes a superhero after being bitten by a spider at a nuclear waste facility

Mars "Avalanche" Captured By NASA's HiRISE Camera

It's avalanche season...on Mars, and this latest out-of-this-world photograph reveals 'snow' landslides on the Red Planet.


As the snap shows, Martian skiers might have some problems negotiating the steep slopes photographed by NASA's HiRISE camera.


The camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbitercaptured the avalanche taking place on a cliff in the Mars polar region.


As this photograph shows, clouds of 'snow' are clearly visible as a large avalanche thunders down the mountainside.


The HiRISE high resolution camera took the amazing photograph at 85 degrees north on the planet. The team say the occurrence of avalanches is revealed by the accompanying clouds of fine material that continue to settle out of the air.


The avalanches are a result of carbon-dioxide frost that clings to the slopes in the darkness of winter, which then loosens up and falls when hit by sunlight.

These events happen mostly in the middle of spring, roughly equivalent to April to early May on Earth. And it seems this is a regular spring process at Mars’ north pole that may be expected every year.

Body Hair (submitted by Marisol Pantigoso)

We have just as much hair all over our bodies as chimpanzees or monkeys or any other furry primate. Most of it is just very short and light. It's called "vellus hair" or "peach fuzz". I think it's bizarre that most of our thick hair is on the tops of our heads. Imagine if dogs looked like that! On second thought, maybe it's better if you don't imagine that.
Research shows that we humans lost all our body hair through evolution about a million years before somebody finally figured out how to purchase clothes at one of the first primitive Walmarts.
One theory says that we lost our all body hair in an attempt to avoid parasites like ticks, fleas, and lice, and that we've only kept the hair on our heads because other people think it's pretty. As proof, consider that you haven't seen many bald pregnant women.
There is a very special kind of louse that only lives in human clothing. DNA tests indicate that it evolved from a louse that only lives in human hair, and that this happened about 42,000 to 72,000 years ago. So, that's probably roughly when clothes first went on sale. There are no special lice that live in any form of footwear, so DNA testing cannot solve the troubling mystery of exactly at what point in the past Hello Kitty themed socks were invented

First Picture of Alien Planet.....Isnt? (Submitted by Agustin Solano)

Brian Handwerk

for National Geographic News

Published January 30, 2012

In 2008, astronomers spotted the first exoplanet in visual light orbiting a distant star. But now, a new study suggests that Fomalhaut b may simply be a swirl of space dust.

The Hubble Space Telescope first spotted a possible planet circling the star Fomalhaut about 25 light-years away in the Southern Fish constellation, Piscis Australis.

The star is surrounded by a debris ring that stretches some 21.5 billion miles across and bears an uncanny visual resemblance to the Eye of Sauron, from the Lord of the Rings films.

The cloud's distinctive cat's-eye shape, astronomers say, is evidence that at least one small planet is orbiting Fomalhaut.

Though it can't be seen, researchers suspected the planet is there because of its gravitational calling card: The oval shape and sharp inner edge of Fomalhaut's halo are signs that a planet is "sweeping" through the dust and gas.

(Related: "First Pictures of Alien Planet System Revealed.")

Now, new data from the Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that Fomalhaut b may be a dust cloud resulting from a collision between comets or asteroids, according to study leader Markus Janson, an astrophysicist at Princeton University.

That could explain why the potential object's light appears very blue in visible light but is nearly invisible in infrared—which would be true of an object with little mass, such as a dust cloud.

Collision-Theory Dustup

Paul Kalas, one of Fomalhaut b's original discoverers, said his team originally considered the same collision theory.

But Kalas, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, believes such collisions are rather rare—and the odds of observing one even more unlikely.

"It's not excluded, but the bottom line is that scientists don't favor arguments that depend on fortunate observations," Kalas said. "You'd have to be quite lucky to observe such a collision between objects."

Janson, leader of the new study, doesn't think such cosmic smashups are all that uncommon in that galactic neighborhood.

"These kinds of collisions must happen quite frequently in this system, because they are the cause of the massive ring of dust that we see," said Janson, whose study will be published in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

(Also see "Picture: New ALMA Telescope Peers Into Galaxy Smashup.")

Planet ... Or Not?

Likewise, if a planet existed at that location it would be young and hot, and thus glow with light visible to the infrared eye of the Spitzer Space Telescope, Janson noted.

"It should emit much more light at near-infrared wavelengths than it does at visible wavelengths," he said. "And that's the opposite of what's been observed."

But co-discoverer Kalas countered that the infrared observations simply aren't sensitive enough to detect a planet that's less than the mass of Jupiter.

Kalas believes that Fomalhaut b is such a planet, and that its brightness in visible light is boosted by a ring system of icy particles, as with Saturn in our own solar system.

"If you look at Saturn, it has held onto a ring system for 4.5 billion years," Kalas said.

"That means a collection of dust surrounding a planet can be long-lived, whereas a dust cloud produced by two coments colliding has an extremely short lifetime, and you would be lucky to observe it. That's why planetary rings are more plausible."

But Princeton's Janson finds the ring hypothesis less convincing. For instance, the Hubble data show more variations in brightness than you'd expect from a ring that circles the planet, he said.

Exciting Time for New Planets

Whatever Fomalhaut b's true identity, it's an exciting time to study exoplanets—planets outside our solar system, which currently number more than 700, and counting, Kalas noted.

(Related: "Fifty New Planets Found—Largest Haul Yet.")

"Our understanding of these exoplanets is constantly evolving," he said.

"There are many surprises—and fewer hard answers."

A Fish The Size Of A Bus Caught (submitted by Stefano Cassino)

Fishermen tie ropes around the carcass of a whale shark in a harbor in Karachi, Pakistan, on Feb. 7, 2012. The 40-foot whale shark was said to have been found dead in the Arabian Sea.

Fishermen in the Pakistani port of Karachi got more than they bargained for Tuesday as they reeled in one of the biggest fish in the sea: a whale shark.

The Express Tribune, a Pakistani newspaper, reported that the 40-foot fish was first spotted ten days ago in seas about 150 km (93 miles) from the city. Mehmood Khan, the owner of a local fishery, said the shark was unconscious at that time and other reports said that it was found dead Tuesday.

A large crowd gathered as a succession of cranes were brought in to lift the shark on to the pier. After several hours and a number of failed attempts, the leviathan was finally brought ashore and promptly sold for 1.7m Rupees ($18,750).

The whale shark was added to the World Conservation Union's list of threatened species in 2008.