Women will be scanned to see if wearing high heels poses a health risk.

Ouch!: wearing high heels leads to foot injuries Photo: AP

Scientists will examine women who regularly wear stilettos and compare how different types of footwear influence the walks of those who repeatedly wear two inch plus heels.

And they will measure changes in wearers’ leg muscles using ultrasound and MRI scans.

British women spent £30million last year in corrective foot surgery, to fix the damage caused by heels.

Women exposed to hairspray during pregnancy put their unborn sons at risk of suffering from a birth defect, scientists have warned.

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent

Researchers found that women who come into contact with the hair product during early pregnancy more than double their chances of giving birth to a son with hypospadias, a genital deformity.

The defect normally affects around one in 250 boys in the UK, causing the urinary opening to be shifted beneath the penis.

Although it can be corrected by surgery before a boy’s first birthday, more severe cases can lead to urinary, sexual and fertility problems.

Tsuyoshi Takado, professor of the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Medicine displays an artificial bone
©AFP/File - Yoshikazu Tsuno

TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese hospitals are running a clinical trial on the world’s first custom-made bones which would fit neatly into patients’ skulls and eventually give way to real bones.

If successful, the Japanese method could open the way for doctors to create new bones within hours of an accident so long as the patient has electronic data on file.

The BBC’s famous Natural World series breaks new ground when it shows the world’s biggest fish – having a poo.
By Paul Eccleston

Marine scientists attached cameras to huge Whale sharks in a bid to find out more about their mysterious lifestyle.
But they got more than they bargained for when they captured a close-up of one of the sharks having a toilet moment.
It is believed to be the first time that the ocean giant’s natural motion has been captured on film.
Marine biologist Mark Meekan said: “It’s a very rare sight – one I’ve only witnessed twice in 10 years of whale shark observation and which, to the best of my knowledge, has never been shown on TV before.
For us, collecting the sample was extremely useful. The DNA in it is scientific gold because of what it reveals about feeding habits. But it’s as well not to get too close. Whale shark poo is long, gloopy, about as thick as my wrist and its smell is awful.
“Imagine covering yourself in crab paste then lying out in hot sun all day. You’d smell pretty awful, wouldn’t you? Well, whale shark poo is even worse than that!”
The sequence can be seen in Whale Shark part of BBC2’s 25th anniversary season of Natural World in which the biologists spend a year tagging and tracking the leviathans on their journeys across the oceans.
Although the whale shark is twice the size of the Great White shark – up to 40-feet long and weighing 30 tonnes – it is harmless and uses its gaping jaws only to filter out plankton and other small marine creatures.
In the film the whale sharks are first picked up in the Ningaloo Marine Park, off western Australia, where hundreds suddenly and inexplicably appear in waters highly enriched by coral spawning.
Scientists think they make epic journeys to take advantage of similar events which provide them with a rich and easy banquet of food.
Dr Meekan tagged six young males with a satellite tracker and a £15,000 computer picture and data recorder – no easy task as the shark’s mouth alone is more than six-feet wide and its massive swishing tail-fin can cause serious if unintended damage to a diver – that will gather crucial information about whale shark behaviour.
“This animal’s swimming towards you at about two knots. It’s like a bus coming past, and it’s like whacking something on the side of a bus as it goes past. It’s not a simple matter: the animal’s big, you can’t stop it, you get one shot at it,” he said.
The sharks are then followed by plane, boat and microlight as they cross the Indian Ocean and glide silently past exotic destinations such as Christmas Island – coinciding with the appearance of migrating red crabs and another feeding opportunity – and the Seychelles.
The film’s Producer/Director Emma Ross said: “These sharks are as big as a bus yet despite their bulk, they are hard to find and we know very little about them.
“Females and babies are rarely seen. We don’t know where they breed or travel. It’s thought that they travel great distances but where, and why? No-one knows.”
Mark Meekan said of his obsession with whale sharks: “You’ve got an animal that hasn’t changed basically since the age of the dinosaurs. You’re swimming with a dinosaur and at the same time it’s just an absolutely beautiful animal.
“Over the last 10 years the size of whale sharks has declined by about two metres. That’s a lot. And it’s alarming because it’s a classic symptom of overfishing. If my kids want to swim with whale sharks there are two questions that we have to answer.
“The first of those is: why are whale sharks coming to Ningaloo? The second one is what are they interacting with?”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/3460946/Whale-sharks-toilet-moment-caught-on-film.html

The world’s first blue roses have been unveiled following nearly two decades of scientific research.

By Danielle Demetriou in Tokyo

The Blue Rose was developed by Suntory Flowers Photo: SUNTORY

The blooms are genetically modified and have been implanted with a gene that simulates the synthesis of blue pigment in pansies.

The flowers, which were displayed at the International Flower Expo Tokyo, will go on sale commercially next Autumn.

Megumi Mitsunaga, a spokeswoman for IFEX, said: “This is the first time that these blue roses have been put on display in public.

Software that allows would-be thieves to make duplicate keys from single photographs has been developed by US scientists.

By Matthew Moore

House keys can be cloned from photos taken on normal mobile phones, and even from shots taken over distances of hundreds of feet.

The images are scanned by a digital imaging programme that copies the exact contours of a key to create working duplicates, no matter the angle or distance at which the photos were taken.