What happened on February 14

14 february 2009

An American woman listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the world's longest fingernails has had them broken off in a car crash. Lee Redmond from Salt Lake City, Utah, had not cut her nails since 1979.  Their combined length was more than 28ft (8.5m), with the longest nail - on her right thumb - measuring 2ft 11in (89cm), Guinness said. Ms Redmond suffered serious injuries in the crash, but is expected to make a full recovery.

 

A local newspaper, the Deseret News, said she was a passenger in a sports utility vehicle (SUV) at the time of the accident. Her nails were "damaged beyond repair", according to the Guinness World Records website.

The organisation said she had been a "fantastic ambassador" for them, and that her nails had been "a fundamental part of her life and unique character".

 

source: BBC

Light 'could detect Parkinson's'

A light as bright as a million-watt bulb could help improve the treatment of Parkinson's disease. A Keele University team told a conference that the "super-microscope" could spot changes in brain cells caused by Parkinson's Keele's Dr Joanna Collingwood hopes the information will eventually be used to speed up diagnosis. She gave details of the study to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

'Early diagnosis'

Dr Collingwood said the team had been using a synchrotron at the Diamond Light Source (DLS) at Harwell, Oxfordshire. The device is a large doughnut-shaped particle accelerator, the size of five football pitches, which fires particles at just below the speed of light, focusing them into a beam less than a single cell in diameter. It allows researchers to to observe iron levels in individual brain cells, which are affected by Parkinson's.

Dr Collingwood told the AAAS conference in Chicago: "We have been able to investigate human tissue with such precision that metal ions, particularly iron levels, in and around individual cells can be mapped.

"The technique is pioneering in that it does not change the distribution or form of the metals in the tissue being studied." She said she hoped that the team's work could help doctors detect early signs of Parkinson's using MRI. "Early diagnosis is key because we know that by the time a typical individual presents with the symptoms of the disease, chemical changes have already caused significant cell death of vulnerable motor neurons," she added.