Woman's 'Foot Orgasm' Is First Known Case

 

A 55-year-old woman in the Netherlands visited the doctor with an unusual complaint: She experienced unwanted orgasms that started in her foot, according to a new report of her case.
The orgasmic sensations — which occurred in her left foot — were sudden, not brought on by sexual desire or thoughts, and occurred about five to six times a day, the report said. The sensation traveled up her left leg to her vagina, and she said the experience felt exactly like an orgasm achieved during sex.
These orgasms were very embarrassing and worrying to the woman, said study author Dr. Marcel D. Waldinger, who treated the woman and is a neuropsychiatrist and professor in sexual psychopharmacology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

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"She felt terrible about it," Waldinger said.
Magnetic resonance images (MRI scans) of the woman's brain and her foot showed no abnormalities, although another test revealed some differences between the nerves of her left and right feet, Waldinger told LiveScience. Stimulating her left foot with an electric current induced a spontaneous orgasmin that foot, he said.
The woman was treated with an injection of anesthetic into one of her spinal nerves — the nerve that receives sensory information from the foot — and the orgasms stopped completely. The woman has not had any foot orgasms for eight months now, although she might need to return for another anesthetic injection if her symptoms return, Waldinger said.
The researchers believe the phenomenon was the result of a sort of mix-up in the brain.
About a year and half before the foot orgasms started, the woman spent three weeks in an intensive care unit — part of the time, in a coma — because of a sepsis infection. When she came out of the coma, she had tingling and burning sensations in her left foot, likely as a result of damage to tiny nerve fibers in the foot, Waldingersaid.

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Interestingly, the nerve that registers sensory information from the foot enters the spinal cord at the same level as the nerve that registers sensory information from the vagina, Waldingersaid. Because of nerve damage in her foot, the woman's brain did not receive sensory information from her foot, but it did receive sensory information from the vagina.
After a year and a half, the nerve in the foot regenerated. When that happened, the researchers believe "the brain could not anymore differentiate between the foot and the vagina. So that it decided that every stimulus coming from the foot was actually coming from the vagina," Waldinger said. "And that means an orgasmic feeling," in the foot, he said.
The researchers called the woman's disorder "foot orgasm syndrome," and it is the only known case of its kind. (A foot orgasm has previously been reported in a man with a foot amputation).
Waldinger thinks there may be other people who have the condition, but are too embarrassed to talk about it. Waldinger wanted to publish the case report in part to reduce the stigma surrounding such conditions.
"It's not psychological," Waldinger said. "It’s a neurological thing — we can explain it, we can treat it."
Waldinger is hoping to hear from more people who may have a similar condition, and has made a website for people to contact him
The study was published online June 19 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
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• 7 Facts Women (And Men) Should Know About the Vagina

Source: news.discovery

Major resources needed for Obama Africa trip

 

When President Obama makes his first extended trip to sub-
Saharan Africa this month, the federal agencies charged with keeping him safe won’t be taking any chances.

Hundreds of U.S. Secret Service agents will be dispatched to secure facilities in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. A Navy aircraft carrier or amphibious ship, with a fully staffed medical trauma center, will be stationed offshore in case of an emergency.



Military cargo planes will airlift in 56 support vehicles, including 14 limousines and three trucks loaded with sheets of bullet­proof glass to cover the windows of the hotels where the first family will stay. Fighter jets will fly in shifts, giving 24-hour coverage over the president’s airspace, so they can intervene quickly if an errant plane gets too close.

The elaborate security provisions — which will cost the government tens of millions of dollars — are outlined in a confidential internal planning document obtained by The Washington Post. While the preparations appear to be in line with similar travels in the past, the document offers an unusual glimpse into the colossal efforts to protect the U.S. commander in chief on trips abroad.

Any journey by the president, such as one scheduled next week for Northern Ireland and Germany, is an immense and costly logistical challenge. But the trip to Africa is complicated by a confluence of factors that could make it one of the most expensive of Obama’s tenure, according to people familiar with the planning.

The first family is making back-to-back stops from June 26 to July 3 in three countries where U.S. officials are providing nearly all the resources, rather than depending heavily on local police forces, military authorities or hospitals for assistance.

The president and first lady had also planned to take a Tanzanian safari as part of the trip, which would have required the president’s special counterassault team to carry sniper rifles with high-caliber rounds that could neutralize cheetahs, lions or other animals if they became a threat, according to the planning document.

But officials said Thursday that the safari had been canceled in favor of a trip to Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, where Nelson Mandela was held as a political prisoner.

When The Post first asked White House officials about the safari last week, they said no final decision had been made. A White House official said Thursday that the cancellation was not related to The Post’s inquiries.

“We do not have a limitless supply of assets to support presidential missions, and we prioritized a visit to Robben Island over a two-hour safari in Tanzania,” said spokesman Josh Earnest. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t do both.”

Internal administration documents circulated in April show that the Obama family was scheduled to go to both Robben Island and the safari park, according to a person familiar with the plans.

Former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also made trips to multiple African nations involving similarly laborious preparations. Bush went in 2003 and 2008, bringing his wife on both occasions. Bush’s two daughters went along on the first trip, which included a safari at a game preserve on the Botswana-South Africa border.
 

Source: washingtonpost

Seth Green on Becoming a Father: "A Lot of Pressure, No Plans"

 

Even though he's set to star in the upcoming Fox show Dads, Seth Green isn't personally in any rush to become a father himself. At the Critics Choice Awards on Monday, June 10, the funnyman and his wife of three years, model/actress Clare Grant, told Us Weekly that they're in no rush to start a family just yet.

"A lot of pressure, no plans," Green told Us of parenthood. "People have just gotten used to certain cultural cycles and they can't wait for the end of them."
 

Stars and their soul mates

Added Grant: "The day we got married, people started asking when the kids were coming."

Green, 39, and Grant, 33, said "I do" in May 2010 during a Northern California ceremony after meeting in a comic book store. "And now I won't let her go!" Green told Us at the time of falling for his now-wife.
 

Who got married when Seth and Clare got married?

The duo appeared onscreen together in a 2008 episode of Green's show Robot Chicken, which is set to debut a new season this fall. Grant is currently working on a pilot for a live animation/action hybrid comedy called Teen Unicorn for Adult Swim.

Though they're both busy, however, Green admitted that at the end of the day, the pair are still in their "honeymoon phase."
 

Unforgettable celeb wedding photos

"We still like each other," he said, adding that he and Grant occasionally read scripts together "sometimes to practice. She's good for it. It's fun!"


Source: usmagazine

Man Flies Across Sea to Cape Town Using Balloons

 

A South African man on Saturday successfully flew across the sea from Nelson Mandela's apartheid island prison using helium-filled giant party balloons.

The six-kilometer (3.7-mile) crossing, to raise funds for a children's hospital named after the country's former president, was the first stunt of its kind from the historical site.

Matt Silver-Vallance, 37, took around an hour to float across the Atlantic Ocean from Robben Island while harnessed to a mass of mufti-coloured balloons in grey, drizzly conditions with low visibility.
 

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Making his way wearing a wetsuit, he floated a few meters above the sea, with controls for flight including bags weighted with water and an air gun and make-shift spear to pop balloons.

"Wow, that was crazy," he said, saying he felt "unbelievable" after landing in a rubber duck around 300-400 meters (985-1,310 feet) from shore once the balloons were released.

"Don't try this at home," he quipped.

With no test run ahead of lift-off, a total of 160 balloons were inflated on the island early Saturday morning, with several popping ahead of departure.
 

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Silver-Vallance popped around 35 more balloons during the trip to manage his equilibrium. A hard ground landing was ruled out as too risky.

The daring mission aimed to raise 10 million rand ($1.1 million, 852,000 euros) for the Nelson Mandela Children's Hospital which will be built in Johannesburg.

"We're trying to raise as much money (as possible) for the Nelson Mandela Children's Hospital and we really see this project as a catalyst," Silver-Vallance said ahead of take-off.

The hospital will be part of Mandela's legacy and the balloon run was a "small thing" to try to remind people of everything the 94-year-old anti-apartheid icon had done, he said.

"The risks that I'm taking are tiny compared to the risks that he took," he said, adding he was not a dare-devil.

When asked what message he had for Mandela, an emotional Silver-Vallance said: "I think like most South Africans we all love him very much," he said.

He said he hoped the flight "could bring a smile to (Mandela's) face,"

Later, after the flight, Nelson Mandela was discharged from hospital after being admitted 10 days ago for a bout of pneumonia.

There have only been 12 previous such balloon flights in the world -- two of which were fatal -- according to Silver-Vallance, who now lives in Britain.

Source: news.discovery

Why NBA Stars Are Pedaling Bikes at Night

 

In a typical night, LeBron James scores an average of 26.9 points for the Miami Heat in 38 minutes of play. Then, he often hops on his bike and rides home.

James credits cycling, in part, for the conditioning his coach calls “world-class.”

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“I want to maximize everything I can and not waste an opportunity each and every day to compete and get better as a player,” James said in The Huffington Post. “I want to be the best. You’ve got to push the button sometimes.”

Teammate and fellow cyclist Dwayne Wade agrees.

“It gave my body a different type of conditioning challenge,” Wade told Men’s Journal.

But cycling goes beyond conditioning: James, Wade, teammate Mario Chalmers and James’s girlfriend, actress Gabrielle Union, have been joining Critical Mass rides in Miami. The popular last-Friday-of-the-month mass bike rides began in San Francisco in 1992 and spread to other cities.

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“Ever since my first ride, I’ve been hooked,” Wade told Men’s Journal. “It’s motivating to be around bikers who are dedicated and push themselves beyond the limit.”

Although the NBA stars aren’t seeking publicity — they showed up to the Critical Mass ride unannounced, although they have Tweeted about it and were caught on YouTube — bikers are hoping that the celebrity hoopsters will lend some of their sports cred to cycling.

James says he gets recognized while riding to and from practice. ”People try to stop me, but I’m in a zone,” he told the Huffington Post.

“I got lights on my bike. I’m serious. This isn’t a joke.”

Photo: Corbis

Source: news.discovery

 

Plastic Bags Fool Turtles Into Hunting Them

 

Plastic bags in the ocean can look just like a jellyfish or other gelatinous creature, fooling loggerhead turtles into hunting them.

This case of mistaken identity, documented in the latest issue of the journal PLoS ONE, reveals how our garbage can hurt marine wildlife. Even if a turtle doesn’t ingest the bag, the effort to explore and grab it wastes the turtle’s energy and time.
 

How Turtles Got Their Shells

Tomoko Narazaki and colleagues from the University of Tokyo outfitted the loggerhead turtles with 3D loggers and crittercams, which enabled the scientists to record all of the turtle action as the animals swam in open water.

Narazaki and his team discovered that the turtles rely on sight, rather than on sound or smell, to find and move toward gelatinous prey, such as jellyfish and other organisms. That’s bad news for the turtles, because a plastic bag looks just like a jellyfish when the bags are submerged in water.

That’s hard to imagine, but the bags tend to lose their shape and take on a more tubular form when submerged. As they float downward in the water, the plastic undulates, making the bag look just like a living, moving jellyfish. I’ve seen this before myself, and the resemblance is uncanny.

The discovery also suggests that loggerhead turtles may rely on jellyfish and similarly textured prey for food more than was previously theorized. Because these squishy organisms aren’t exactly jam packed with nutrients, they serve more as a snack for the turtles. But the turtles seem to go after them quite often during their swimming trips, and particularly during oceanic migrations.

Because of their Jello-like texture, such foods are easy for the turtles to digest, not bogging them down when they have to keep moving. At other times, the turtles tend to go after hard-shelled prey, such as mollusks.

Millions of Turtles Killed Due to Bycatch
Loggerhead turtles are endangered. It’s a shame to see them, and other turtles, having to deal with our trash seemingly every minute of their lives. Watch as this turtle has to swim through all kinds of discarded waste.

We can help by choosing reusable cloth or other natural material bags instead of plastic. Certain cities around the country, such as Berkeley, already have laws in place that help to limit plastic bag use.

Other litter eventually washes into open water areas, home to species already struggling due to human hunting, habitat loss and other human-caused problems.

Source: news.discovery

Dinosaur Lineage Traced to Africa

 

Ten million years after the world's largest mass extinction, a lineage of animals thought to have led to dinosaurs took hold in Tanzania and Zambia, according to new research.

The study, published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals how the end-Permian mass extinction 252.3 million years ago permitted a significant reorganization of terrestrial animals living in the southern part of the supercontinent Pangea.

Out of this chaos emerged the dino predecessors, which likely ushered in the Dinosaur Age.

There were losers, such as fat lizard-looking Dicynodon, which sported a short tail and a turtle's head. It completely bit the dust after the huge extinction event, which led to the disappearance of 90 percent of all life on the planet.
 

 Dinosaur Feathers Found in Amber

On the winners' side were silesaurs, which were plant-eaters very closely related to dinosaurs.

"In Tanzania, the main silesaur that we find is called Asilisaurus kongwe," co-author Kenneth Angielczyk told Discovery News. "Asilisaurus was about the size of a medium dog, like a golden retriever, and they tended to have long thin limbs."

Yet another fossil find was Nyasasaurus parringtoni, a Labrador retriever-sized animal with a 5-foot-long tail.
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"Nyasasaurus is either the oldest known dinosaur or the closest known relative of dinosaurs, but we can't completely rule out either option because the material is rather fragmentary," said Angielczyk, who is Associate Curator of Paleomammalogy at the Field Museum of Natural History.

Angielczyk and his colleagues unearthed these creatures over the course of seven fossil-hunting expeditions in Tanzania, Zambia and Antarctica. The researchers created two "snapshots" of four-legged animals about 5 million years before the mass extinction event and 10 million years after it.

The cause of the great die-off remains a mystery, with intense volcanic activity, a meteorite strike and extreme global warming all being possible candidates.
 

Source: news.discovery

Navy Dolphin Finds Rare 130-Year-Old Torpedo

A Navy dolphin training to look for mines off the coast of San Diego found a museum-worthy 19th-century torpedo on the seafloor, military officials said.

The brass-coated, retro wonder of technology was one of the first self-propelled torpedoes used by the U.S. Navy. Just 50 of these so-called Howell torpedoes were made and only one other example has been recovered; it sits in the Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport, Wash., outside of Seattle.
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The 130-year-old, 11-foot-long (3.3 meters) weapon was discovered back in March during a mine-hunting exercise that the Space and Naval warfare Systems Center Pacific (SSC Pacific) was conducting with bottlenose dolphins. [Top 10 Animal Recruits in War]

"Dolphins naturally possess the most sophisticated sonar known to man. They can detect mines and other potentially dangerous objects on the ocean floor that are acoustically difficult targets to detect," operations supervisor Braden Duryee, of the SSC Pacific Biosciences Division, said in a statement.

Dolphins use their natural sonar, called echolocation, to determine the size and shape of underwater objects by sending out a series of clicks that bounce off their targets and boomerang back to them. The marine mammals can be trained to report what they have found to human handlers using certain yes or no responses. Handlers can then investigate what the dolphins find by sending the animals to mark an object's location with a weighted buoy line.

In this case, one of the dolphins indicated to its handler that it had detected a minelike target. The recovery dive team initially thought the dolphin had found an old tail section off an aerial drop mine, according to a statement from SSC Pacific, but officials soon realized they were handling a much rarer artifact.

Source: news.discovery

Earliest Evidence of French Winemaking Discovered

An ancient limestone platform dating back to 425 B.C is the oldest wine press ever discovered on French soil.

The press is the first evidence of winemaking in what is now modern-day France, according to new research published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The evidence suggests inhabitants of the region of Etruria got the ancient residents of France hooked. (Etruria covered parts of modern-day Tuscany, Latium and Umbria in Italy.)
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"Now we know that the ancient Etruscans lured the Gauls into the Mediterranean wine culture by importing wine into southern France," study researcher Patrick McGovern, who directs the Bimolecular Archaeology Laboratory for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, said in a statement. "This built up a demand that could only be met by establishing a native industry." In Photos: Amazing Ruins of the Ancient World

The spread of wine

Humans first domesticated the Eurasian grapevine some 9,000 years ago in the Near East, perhaps in what is now Turkey or Iran. Gradually, the intoxicating beverage spread across the Mediterranean Sea, conveyed by Phoenicians and Greeks. By 800 B.C., the Phoenicians were trading wine with the Etruscans, storing it in large jars called amphoras.

Shipwrecks from around 600 B.C. are filled with these Etruscan amphoras, suggesting that residents of the area that is now Italy were by then exporting their own wine. In the coastal town of Lattara, near modern-day Lattes, France, a merchant storage complex full of these amphoras has been found, dating back to the town's heyday of 525 B.C. to 475 B.C.

McGovern and his colleagues analyzed three of these amphoras to find out if they really contained wine. They also analyzed an odd limestone discovery shaped like a rounded platform with a spout, thought to be a press of some sort. Whether the locals used the press to smash olives or grapes was unknown.

Analyzing amphoras

The researchers followed careful standards for the artifacts they analyzed: Amphoras had to be excavated undisturbed and sealed, with their bases intact and available for analysis. They also had to be unwashed and had to contain possible residue.

Source: news.discovery

19th-Century British Shipwreck Found Off Mexico

 

Mexican underwater archaeologists have discovered the wreck of the 19th-century British paddle-steamer HMS Forth, which sank off the Yucatan Peninsula 164 years ago.

According to a statement by the National Anthropology and History Institute , the remains of the 1,900-ton ship were found at a depth of 18 meters near the Alacranes Reef, a treacherous area where dozens of ships have met their end since the 16th century.

The vessel was sailing to Bermuda when it crashed against the notorious rocks and sank on Jan. 14, 1849.

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It belonged to the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, a British shipping company which in 1842 began carrying mail to Bermuda and the West Indies under a contract from the UK government. In 1927 the company took over the White Star Line, becoming the largest shipping group in the world.

“We sighted a large steamer on the rocks, apparently high and dry,” the HMS Dee, another Royal Mail Steam ship, reported in the British newspaper Illustrated London News on February 1849.

“As we neared her, we saw that her mizenmast was standing, her funnel over the port side, and apparently parting amid ships. We bore up for her, and found to our sorrow the Forth a total wreck,” they reported.

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Being able to reach a small island nearby, the ship’s crew was rescued a few days later, and transported to Havana.

“Not a soul was lost, and, barring a few bruises, no one sustained injury,” the Dee account stated.

Led by Helena Barba Meinecke, responsible of the Underwater Archaeology area of the Yucatan Peninsula, the INAH marine archaeologists explored the northern section of the reef. They discovered several metal items such as boilers, machinery, propellers, anchors and skegs from the HMS Forth.

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Meinecke believes other wrecks can be found scattered in the area, including the HMS Tweed, another Royal Mail Steam Packet Company ship that sank in 1847, and the Belgian vessel Charlote, which went down in 1853.

Indeed, historical research carried from 2010 to 2012 revealed references to at least 25 shipwrecks near the dangerous “Scorpions,” as the network of reefs, sand banks and small islands emerging from the bottom of the sea is known.

The archaeologists are planning other underwater expeditions to investigate the additional wrecks, INAH said.

Image: Underwater archaeologists explore the remains of the British ship HMS Forth. Credit: Helena Barba/INAH.

Source: news.discovery