14-year-old arrested in Austria over alleged threat
Vienna: A 14-year-old suspect has been arrested in the Austrian city of St. Poelten for allegedly planning a strike either at the Westbahnhof train station in the national capital Vienna or along the railway tracks leading to it.
Authorities have thus far only confirmed that the teenager, an Austrian citizen of Turkish origin, has been in custody since Tuesday, though the Kronen Zeitung newspaper reported Wednesday that he had made concrete plans to carry out a suicide bombing attack and that he was already very close to being able to do so, Xinhua reported. The Kronen Zeitung report also alleged that the youth told the authorities he obtained the blueprint for the construction of the bomb on the internet, with an Austrian terrorism expert claiming that, if such an attack had been carried out, it would have resulted in numerous casualties. Michaela Schnell from the prosecution office in St. Poelten did not confirm the teenager’s plans to detonate a bomb as stated in the report due to the ongoing investigations, though she did say he wanted to join the jihadist movement.
It is as yet uncertain exactly where the suspect was arrested and whether he has links to a terrorist organisation, with further details from the St. Poelten prosecution authorities yet to come. (IANS)
Vatican’s Sistine Chapel gets brighter look, cooler feel
VATICAN CITY: The Sistine Chapel has a brighter, cooler new look. The Vatican on Wednesday unveiled a state-of-the art illumination and air conditioning system designed to better show off the chapel’s precious frescoes and protect them from the dirt, breath and heat of the nearly 6 million people who marvel at them every year.
The three-year, 3 million euro ($3.8 million) project was undertaken because the existing air conditioning system, installed 20 years ago when only 1.5 million people visited annually, was unable to maintain the humidity and temperature levels needed to keep the frescoes safe.
Vatican Museums director Antonio Paolucci said it was fitting that the Vatican was marking the 450th anniversary of Michelangelo’s death not with a series of academic conferences but “with something durable, not ephemeral: securing from a climactic point of view (Michelangelo) Buonarotti’s masterpiece and giving it the right lighting.”
The air conditioning system adjusts the air flow, humidity and temperature levels using 70 sensors mounted in the chapel walls and two closed-circuit TV cameras that count the number of people inside at any given time. It maintains the chapel at a nippy 20-25 degrees Celsius (68-77 Fahrenheit) and keeps dust particles and air flow within parameters set by the Vatican’s art experts. (IANS)
First human stomach tissue grown in lab
New York: US researchers generated functional, three-dimensional human stomach tissue to create miniature stomachs using pluripotent stem cells in a laboratory.
Human pluripotent stem cells can transform into any cell type in the body. “Until this study, no one had generated gastric cells from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs),” said Jim Wells, principal investigator and a scientist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
“In addition, we discovered how to promote formation of three-dimensional gastric tissue with complex architecture and cellular composition,” Wells added. “This first-time molecular generation of 3D human gastric organoids (hGOs) presents new opportunities for drug discovery, modelling early stages of stomach cancer and studying some of the underpinnings of obesity related diabetes,” Wells said. Differences between species in the embryonic development and architecture of the adult stomach make mouse models less than optimal for studying human stomach development and disease, Wells pointed out. (IANS)