War on water
Dirty water kills more people each year than violence and war, according to a report by the UN Environment Programme. Clearing the Waters was published on Tuesday to mark world water day. It states that unsafe water leads to 1.7 million deaths worldwide each year 鈥� or about 3.1 per cent of all deaths.
Super-size Jesus
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Over the past 1000 years, Christ and his disciples have been enjoying an ever bigger Last Supper, an analysis of 52 paintings has shown. Portion size, plate size and bread size have grown respectively by 69, 66 and 23 per cent (International Journal of Obesity, ).
Windpipe dream
A 10-year-old boy has become the world鈥檚 first recipient of a complete windpipe transplant. Taken from a 30-year-old Italian woman, the trachea was stripped of all native cells and re-surfaced with stem cells from the boy鈥檚 own bone marrow just before the transplant. The operation, carried out at University College London, builds on a 2008 partial trachea transplant.
NASA, ESA, UKSA
From 1 April the UK will have its own space agency. The UKSA will take over responsibilities on space policy and budgets that were previously split between several government organisations.
鈥楳iaow-miaow鈥� test
Psychologists are to investigate the feelings of 50 students under the influence of the drug mephedrone, the legal high linked to a number of UK deaths. The research, at Liverpool John Moores University, UK, has been attacked as 鈥減retty unethical鈥� by the government鈥檚 chief drugs adviser. The researchers say the students would be taking mephedrone anyway, and previous studies have only asked people to recall the effects of the drug.