UPI NewsTrack Health and Science News

Researchers say they found sunken island

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, March 21 (UPI) -- Researchers said they've found traces of the island of Bosch, which sank off the coast of the Netherlands in the 16th century.

The island was between Schiermonnikoog and Rottummeroog islands but was overwhelmed during the All Saints Flood in 1570 before it disappeared, Expatrica and the Netherlands news agency reported.

Researchers from the Stichting Verdronken Geschiedenis -- the Foundation for Sunken History -- said radar images of the sea bottom coincide with historical maps showing an island was situated near Schiermonnikoog.

A foundation representative said the images show disruptions about 10 feet below the sea floor, indicating an island used to be situated there.

Forum debating LSD, other hallucinogens

BASEL , Switzerland, March 21 (UPI) -- The first World Psychedelic Forum opened Friday in Switzerland to highlight renewed scientific and cultural interest in hallucinogenic drugs.

Fifty experts from around the world are participating in the three-day forum in Basel, Switzerland, to debate "the multi-dimensional psychedelic experience with its tremendous potential for expanding consciousness and for self-awareness," forum officials told Swisinfo.com.

"(There) are very few people who know what psychedelics are about and many people think that LSD, heroin and cocaine are just illegal drugs," forum project manager Lucius Werthmuller told Swissinfo. "We want to let people know that psychedelics like LSD are not toxic, they don't lead to addiction and they are really safe if they are used the right way on a stable personality."

Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann, 102, who discovered the mind-altering LSD -- or lysergic acid diethylamide -- will be honored during the seminar. Doctors originally thought it could be used in psychotherapy but it became popular in the 1960s drug culture.

Last December the Swiss medical authorities said they approved LSD-assisted psychotherapy trials on patients suffering from advanced-stage cancer and other terminal illnesses, the first therapeutic study of its kind on humans in 35 years.

Wireless may have ensured crane inspection

NEW YORK, March 21 (UPI) -- A U.S. company says technology exists that would have tipped New York officials to the fact that a crane that collapsed hadn't been inspected.

Josh Kanner says the company he helped found, Vela Systems, makes a software solution that takes inspection data entered into a tablet personal computer at a construction site and sends it instantly to a remote location, a company news release said.

Vela has software developed specifically for safety inspections that eliminates the need for transcribing written reports and is filed wirelessly into a server. Such a system, Kanner said in a written statement, keeps supervisors up to date on what their inspectors in the field are doing and where they are.

The technology is designed for the "occasionally connected" in that it either transmits by WiFi or stores the data until it is hooked up to a hard-wired Internet connection.

A New York building inspector was arrested this week for allegedly falsely stating that he had inspected the crane that toppled on to a building last Saturday, killing seven people. The inspection had been ordered in early March after a resident of the area called to say the top-heavy crane didn't appear to be correctly supported.

City officials have said it was unlikely that inspecting the doomed crane would have prevented its collapse.

Research hints of earlier upright walking

WASHINGTON, March 21 (UPI) -- The oldest relative to humans may have developed the ability for walking upright as early as 6 million years ago, U.S. researchers reported.

New and more detailed analysis of a fossil thigh bone found eight years ago in Kenya presented evidence that the Orrorin tugensis stood and walked on its hind limbs, The New York Times reported. The finding is the earliest known example of walking, said scientists from George Washington University in Washington and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

The French discoverers of the fossils had said suspected the species' movement could be transformed to an upright position but weren't sure, researchers in the latest study said.

George Washington University's Brian Richmond told the Times the size of the creature's hip joint, the shape and strength of the thigh bone and other characteristics provided "convincing evidence to confirm Orrorin's bipedal adaptations."

Richmond said the new research indicated Orrorin not only was a "basal member" of the human family but also had walking mechanics that virtually went unchanged until the rise of Homo, especially in Homo erectus less than 2 million years ago.

The findings were reported in the journal Science.