Man arrested after spending hours on UK Parliament roof
London:A 23-year-old man who trespassed the roof of the UK’s historic Parliament building was today arrested by Scotland Yard on suspicion of criminal damage.
He was later detained and was taken to a central London police station. A Scotland Yard spokes-woman said officers were on the scene to deal with the incident and at this stage it was too early to know why the man had been on the roof. “At 9:15 pm officers were made aware of a man trespassing on the roof at the Palace of Westminster. London Fire Brigade and London Ambulance Service are in attendance,” she said.
The police kept trying to talk to him but there were only occasional muffled shouts from the roof. The 19th century Gothic Revival landmark, on the north bank of the River Thames, is home to the lower House of Commons and the upper House of Lords. (PTI)
Dog sniffs out thyroid cancer in US
Washington: US researchers have successfully used a dog to sniff out thyroid cancer in people who had not yet been diagnosed.
The trained scent dog accurately identified whether patients’ urine samples had thyroid cancer or were benign (noncan-cerous) 88.2 per cent of the time, researchers said.
“Current diagnostic procedures for thyroid cancer often yield uncertain results, leading to recurrent medical procedures and a large number of thyroid surgeries performed unnecessarily,” said the study’s senior investigator, Donald Bodenner, chief of endocrine oncology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in US.(PTI)
New generator turns pee into electricity
London: An inexpensive power generator that converts human urine into electricity is being tested in the UK. It is hoped that the pee-power technology will light cubicles in refugee camps, which are often dark and dangerous places particularly for women, researchers said.
A prototype urinal situated near the Student Union Bar at the University of the West of England, is the result of a partnership between researchers at UWE and Oxfam. Students and staff are being asked to use the urinal to donate pee to fuel microbial fuel cell (MFC) stacks that generate electricity to power indoor lighting. “The microbial fuel cells work by employing live microbes which feed on urine (fuel) for their own growth and maintenance,” said Iero-poulos, who led the research team.(AFP)
Mud may have preserved ‘oldest human brain’ for 2500 years
London: A human brain in the UK, believed to be the oldest ever discovered, may have been preserved for over 2,500 years by mud, archaeol-ogists say.
The brain was found inside a decapitated skull, with the jaw and two vertebrae still attached, at an Iron Age dig site near York, UK, in 2008.
A team of 34 experts have been working to study and conserve the brain since its discovery. By radiocarbon dating of a sample of jaw bone, researchers determined that this person probably lived in the 6th Century BC, which made the brain about 2,600 years old. By looking at the teeth and the shape of the skull it is likely this person was a man between 26 and 45 years old.(PTI)