What began as a full-blown roar last week (complete with a much-hyped news conference) about the discovery of a Bigfoot body that once roamed the backwoods of Georgia, has been reduced to a whimper, with a vague website annoucement.

On Tuesday, Searching for Bigfoot, Inc.’s website revealed the follow-up to Friday’s California news conference, essentially saying, it was all a hoax. The official word came from Steve Kulls, Executive Director of another Bigfoot-themed website, who said he had doubts about the story from the very beginning. Kulls simply said he was there for the thawing out of the so-called Bigfoot body on ice, and once it all melted, all that was left was a really big gorilla suit, complete with rubber feet.

The Searching for Bigfoot, Inc. report goes on to say that the two Georgia men who had made the body discovery claim-turned-hoax had admitted it was a costume on Sunday, then disappeared after promising to sign a document stating that fact. “The motives behind this fraud are still unknown at this time,” the website says, and “Searching for Bigfoot, Inc., is seeking justice for themselves and for all the people who were deceived by this deception.”

On the Georgia men’s own website there’s no admission of the hoax posted yet, and it still refers to them as the “best Bigfoot trackers in the world,” while continuing to sell a variety of Bigfoot “tracking items”, along with smaller merchandise like t-shirts and hats.

While not many Americans give the whole Bigfoot subject much attention, last week’s hype even gave pause to big-name media outlets such as Fox News and The New York Times, who both covered the story.

The bigger indication probably should have been the fact that several websites that describe themselves as true research outlets for the Bigfoot phenomenon, like Kulls, smelled a “hoax” from the get-go.

As for real proof of Bigfoot, creatures that have been talked about for many generations in America, the search goes on.

The 44-pounder found roaming the streets of Voorhees recently was thought to be many things.

First called Princess Chunk by rescuers, it was soon found out that “she” was a “he”, and he was no regular stray.

That’s when the story took a sad turn, and the cat’s former owner stepped in to announce how he came to end up on the streets.

His real name was Powder, and until Donna Oklatner lost her home to foreclosure, he lived there happily with her other fur children, Powder’s twin brother Puff, a dog named Cody, and a rabbit called Honey Bunny.

Oklatner told local media she could only care for one of the animals when she had to move, and the others were adopted out. The arrangement hit a snag when Powder’s new owner had to go out of town, and the hefty cat was returned to her. Still unable to keep him, Oklatner gave Powder to friends who promised to take him to the local animal shelter. Within days, his furry face was making headlines after the Camden County Animal Shelter took him in.

Powder’s former owner says he ate only Fancy Feast and dry food, no table scraps. She suspected he had a thyroid problem but could not afford to have him tested.

While a local newspaper reports Powder has been adopted, the Camden County Animal Shelter website says otherwise. The shelter says hundreds of people have applied to adopt the cat, who they say is just two pounds shy of the world record. The shelter also reports it is completely full and hopes those interested in Powder will consider another of the shelter’s 300 animals that need homes.

Powder’s story took him to national fame with appearances on NBC’s “Today Show”, “Live with Regis and Kelly,” and “Good Morning America.”

Animal shelters across the country report many pets are being turned in by owners who can no longer care for them in these tough economic times, many of whom, like Powder’s owner, have lost their homes to foreclosure.

Forget “miles per gallon”, and think instead “gallons per mile,” say management professors Richard Larrick and Jack Soll from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

The professors say posting a vehicle’s fuel efficiency in those terms would help consumers make better decisions about car purchases and environmental impact.

Larrick and Soll were inspired by debates they had while carpooling in a hybrid car. They ran a series of experiments showing that the current standard, miles per gallon or mpg, leads consumers to believe that fuel consumption is reduced at an even rate as efficiency improves. People presented with a series of car choices in which fuel efficiency was defined in miles per gallon were not able to easily identify the choice that would result in the greatest gains in fuel efficiency.

One example is that most people ranked an improvement from 34 to 50 mpg as saving more gas over 10,000 miles than an improvement from 18 to 28 mpg, even though the latter saves twice as much gas. (Going from 34 to 50 mpg saves 94 gallons; but from 18 to 28 mpg saves 198 gallons).

These mistaken impressions were corrected, however, when participants were presented with fuel efficiency expressed in gallons used per 100 miles rather than mpg. Viewed this way, 18 mpg becomes 5.5 gallons per 100 miles, and 28 mpg is 3.6 gallons per 100 miles — an $8 difference today.

“The reality that few people appreciate is that improving fuel efficiency from 10 to 20 mpg is actually a more significant savings than improving from 25 to 50 mpg for the same distance of driving,” Larrick said.

“For families and other owners of more than one type of vehicle, the greatest fuel savings often comes from improving the efficiency of the less efficient car,” Soll added. “When fuel efficiency is expressed as gallons per 100 miles, similar to what is done in other countries, it becomes clear which combination of cars will save a family the most gas. Â

The authors recommend that consumer publications and car manufacturers list efficiency in terms of gallons per 10,000 miles driven. “This measure makes it easy to see how much gas one might use in a given year of driving and how much gas, and money, can be saved by opting for a car with greater efficiency, Larrick said.

that’s why a consumer group is urging retailers to stop selling PVC shower curtains.

The Center for Health, Environment & Justice has just published “Volatile Vinyl: The New Shower Curtain’s Chemical Smell”, which claims more than 100 chemicals are released into the air when consumers open the packages containing the curtains. The CHEJ is also calling on the Consumer Product Safety Commission to recall the curtains from store shelves.

The CHEJ says it discovered the hazards in a study of shower curtains made with polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic. The curtains reportedly contain many harmful chemicals including volatile organic compounds (VOCs), phthalates and organotins. The study found that exposure to the chemicals creates health problems such as respiratory irritation, central nervous system, liver and kidney damage, nausea, headaches and loss of coordination.

The CHEJ purchased PVC shower curtains at Bed Bath & Beyond, Kmart, Sears, Target and Wal-Mart to be used as samples for the testing.

For more information: www.chej.org/showercurtainreport

The explosion was a gamma ray burst. Most gamma ray bursts occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. Their cores collapse to form black holes or neutron stars, releasing an intense burst of high-energy gamma rays and ejecting particle jets that rip through space at nearly the speed of light like turbocharged cosmic blowtorches. When the jets plow into surrounding interstellar clouds, they heat the gas, often generating bright afterglows. Gamma ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the universe since the big bang.

“This burst was a whopper,” said Swift principal investigator Neil Gehrels of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “It blows away every gamma ray burst we’ve seen so far.”

The burst was pinpointed in the constellation Boötes. Telescopes in space and on the ground quickly moved to observe the afterglow. The burst is named GRB 080319B, because it was the second gamma ray burst detected that day.

“No other known object or type of explosion could be seen by the naked eye at such an immense distance,” said Swift science team member Stephen Holland of Goddard. “If someone just happened to be looking at the right place at the right time, they saw the most distant object ever seen by human eyes without optical aid.”

Photo Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler, et al.

The list of medications includes: Fosamax, Didronel, Boniva, Aredia, Actonel, Skelid, Reclast and Zometa.

The FDA says although severe musculoskeletal pain is included in the prescribing information for all bisphosphonates, the association between bisphosphonates and severe musculoskeletal pain may be overlooked by healthcare professionals, delaying diagnosis, prolonging pain and/or impairment, and necessitating the use of analgesics.

The severe musculoskeletal pain may occur within days, months, or years after starting a bisphosphonate. Some patients have reported complete relief of symptoms after discontinuing the bisphosphonate, whereas others have reported slow or incomplete resolution. The risk factors for and incidence of severe musculoskeletal pain associated with bisphosphonates are unknown.

This severe musculoskeletal pain is in contrast to the acute phase response characterized by fever, chills, bone pain, myalgias, and arthralgias that sometimes accompanies initial administration of intravenous bisphosphonates and may occur with initial exposure to once-weekly or once-monthly doses of oral bisphosphonates. The symptoms related to the acute phase response tend to resolve within several days with continued drug use.

The FDA recommends that healthcare professionals should consider whether bisphosphonate use might be responsible for severe musculoskeletal pain in patients who present with these symptoms and consider temporary or permanent discontinuation of the drug.

Researchers say the process reprogrammed the cells of the mice into an embryonic-stem-cell-like state called “induced pluripotent stem” (IPS) cells, without the use of eggs. It’s claimed to be the first proof-of-principle of the therapeutic application in mice, while IPS cells have also recently been derived in humans.

The research was carried out in the laboratory of Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research  Member Rudolf Jaenisch. The IPS cells were derived using modifications of the approach originally discovered in 2006 by the Shinya Yamanaka laboratory at Kyoto University.

ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: (Image: Tom DiCesare) Mice received reprogrammed cells by tail injections. Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.

The scientists studied a therapeutic application of IPS cells with the sickle-cell anemia model mouse developed by the laboratory of Tim Townes of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Sickle-cell anemia is a disease of the blood marrow caused by a defect in a single gene. The mouse model had been designed to include relevant human genes involved in blood production, including the defective version of that gene.

To create the IPS cells, the scientists started with cells from the skin of the diseased mice. These cells were modified by a standard lab technique employing retroviruses customized to insert genes into the cell’s DNA. The inserted genes were Oct4, Sox2, Lif4 and c-Myc, known to act together as master regulators to keep cells in an embryonic-stem-cell-like state. IPS cells were selected based on their morphology and then verified to express gene markers specific to embryonic stem cells. To decrease or eliminate possible cancer in the treated mice, the c-Myc gene was removed by genetic manipulation from the IPS cells.

Next, the researchers followed a well-established protocol for differentiating embryonic stem cells into precursors of bone marrow adult stem cells, which can be transplanted into mice to generate normal blood cells. The scientists created such precursor cells from the IPS cells, replaced the defective blood-production gene in the precursor cells with a normal gene, and injected the resulting cells back into the diseased mice.

The blood of treated mice was tested with standard analyses employed for human patients. The analyses showed that the disease was corrected, with measurements of blood and kidney functions similar to those of normal mice.

While IPS cells offer tremendous promise for regenerative medicine, scientists caution that major challenges must be overcome before medical applications can be considered. First among these is to find a better delivery system, since retroviruses bring other changes to the genome that are far too random to let loose in humans.

The shuttle had been scheduled for blast-off on Thursday until a problem was detected in a fuel cutoff sensor system inside Atlantis and its external fuel tank. A Saturday afternoon meeting is to decide for certain if a Sunday launch will take place.

Getting the blame for the launch delay are two sensors that gave false readings on Thursday. A third sensor failed after the tank was drained of fuel. The fuel cutoff sensor system is one of several that protects the shuttle’s main engines by triggering their shut down if fuel runs unexpectedly low.

PHOTO CREDIT: NASA.gov - the space shuttle Atlantis on the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Once the mission is underway, Atlantis will be gone 11 days. Its destination will be the International Space Station to work with ground teams to install and activate the European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory. The new lab will expand the station’s scientific research capabilities.

Adenovirus serotype 14 (Ad14), as it’s called, causes severe and even fatal respiratory illness in people of all ages. The U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports it has sickened more than 360 people in Texas, Oregon, Washington and New York. More than 100 cases of the adenovirus were found in a breakout of respiratory illness among military trainees at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, that left one dead.

The CDC says Ad14 is a new strain of an old virus first isolated in 1955, and advises state and local health professionals to be on the alert for further outbreaks.

Photo Credit: CDC/Betty G. Partin

Adenoviruses come in 51 distinct types, causing everything from conjuctivitis and bronchitis to a range of gastrointestinal problems. Most infections run their course without need for medical treatment.

Doctors and scientists in a university study have found that cancer cells treated with carbon nanotubes can be destroyed by non-invasive radio waves that heat up the nanotubes while sparing untreated tissue. The fact that most cancer treatments destroy cancer cells as well as the body’s healthy cells, is one that medicine has been trying to overcome for quite some time.

While not yet being tested on humans, researchers show that the technique completely destroyed liver cancer tumors in rabbits. There were no side effects noted. However, some healthy liver tissue within 2-5 millimeters of the tumors sustained heat damage due to nanotube leakage from the tumor.

“These are promising, even exciting, preclinical results in this liver cancer model,” says senior author Steven Curley, M.D., professor at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center’s Department of Surgical Oncology. “Our next step is to look at ways to more precisely target the nanotubes so they attach to, and are taken up by, cancer cells while avoiding normal tissue.”

Targeting the nanotubes solely to cancer cells is the major challenge in advancing the therapy, Curley says. Research is under way to bind the nanotubes to antibodies, peptides or other agents that in turn target molecules expressed on cancer cells. To complicate matters, most such molecules also are expressed in normal tissue.

Curley estimates that a clinical trial is at least three to four years away.

The research at M. D. Anderson was done in collaboration with nanotechnology experts at Rice University and with Erie, Pennsylvania, entrepreneur John Kanzius of ThermMed LLC, who invented the experimental radiofrequency generator used in the experiments. Kanzius is a cancer survivor and former radio station owner whose insights into the potential of targeted radio waves inspired this line of research.

At Rice, the work was begun by Nobel laureate Richard Smalley, several months before his untimely death from cancer in October 2005. Smalley was the founder of Rice’s Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory and one of the world’s foremost experts on carbon nanotubes. He shared the Nobel Prize for the 1985 discovery of fullerenes, the family of carbon molecules that includes nanotubes. His research in 2005 was concentrated largely on the radiofrequency cancer research project.

“I’m humbled by the results of this research,” says Kanzius. “I realize it’s early in the race, but Dr. Curley and his team have moved on this carefully with utmost speed. I look forward to continuing to work with them and hopefully to watching the first person be treated with this procedure. The race isn’t over but it needs to be taken to the finish line.”

Radiofrequency energy fields penetrate deeply into tissue, so it would be possible to deliver heat anywhere in the body if targeted nanotubes or other nanoparticles can be delivered to cancerous cells, Curley says. Without such a target, radio waves will pass harmlessly through the body.

This research appeared online ahead of December publication in the journal Cancer.