It all started with a woman of 32 healthy years with an LDL (or "bad" cholesterol) of 14, a disconcerting read a normal LDL is about 100. It turns out that she has an inherited gene from his mother and father, a mutation of the double dose that confers the advantage. Pharmaceutical companies have now begun a race to develop a drug that mimics the effects of the mutation. Large trials will still be necessary until either drug comes to market, but for now the researchers have experimental drugs that push cholesterol to levels unprecedented, apparently with any serious side effects. The pharmaceutical companies are eager to begin production. "The race is to see who can make it," said the head of research at Amgen to The New York Times.
Forever Amber
A 23 million years an unknown species of lizard has been found in Chiapas, southern Mexico, so perfectly preserved in amber that each tiny digit 1.8 animal inches long is clearly visible. Discovered a few months ago, can now be seen in the Museum of amber in San Cristóbal de las Casas. It is far from being the oldest creature found in amber, embalmed mites 230 million years ago and found in the Italian Alps in 2012 currently maintain that distinction, but a specimen as complete as this one, with the soft tissue intact, is rare. Scientists believe that it is a member of the family of anOLE, common lizards with a friendly behavior: they eat cockroaches and are sometimes kept as pets, reports of popular science magazine.A shark with a slap in the face
Thresher sharks in the waters off the island of fisherman in the Philippines eat sardines by slapping them with their tails, stunning or killing them. Simon P. Oliver and his colleagues in the thresher shark research and conservation project photographed the fish since it launched a "bait ball" of sardines, pointing their heads down and broke its own tail, creating a column of bubbles. The sharks which then made a 180-degree turn, presumably to find and consume the results - dazed and easily edible sardines. The technique was successful only about a third of the time, but when it worked, it was always at a dinner of more than one of the fish. "The evidence is now clear," Dr. Oliver writes in an article published in PLoS One, published on Thursday. "Thresher sharks actually hunt with his tail."