Friday, October 30, 2009 LONDON: Sharks abandon their young pups as soon as they're born. But far from being cold-hearted mothers, scientists have shown for the first time that they provide their pups with super-sized livers to live off while they learn to hunt.Researchers from Bangor University made the finding after trawling through shark data records from KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa spanning over 30 years. 'We found this really just by chance. We plotted liver mass against body mass and there was a massive peak in the really young sharks. There was an obvious pattern of the liver being used up,' says Nigel Hussey, who led the research. The huge livers, which make up around 20 per cent of the pups' body mass, are packed with fats and probably keep them going in the first months of their lives, say the researchers. Once the sharks are fully grown and get better at hunting, the livers make up just six per cent of their body mass.Until now, researchers hadn't looked in detail at how shark mothers invest in their young.
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...
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