Albert Einstein's brain now interactive app

  CARLA K. JOHNSONCHICAGO -- The brain that revolutionized physics now can be downloaded as an app for $9.99. But it won't help you win at Angry Birds.

While Albert Einstein's genius isn't included, an exclusive iPad application launched Tuesday promises to make detailed images of his brain more accessible to scientists than ever before. Teachers, students and anyone who's curious also can get a look.

A medical museum under development in Chicago obtained funding to scan and digitize nearly 350 fragile and priceless slides made from slices of Einstein's brain after his death in 1955. The application will allow researchers and novices to peer into the eccentric Nobel winner's brain as if they were looking through a microscope.

"I can't wait to find out what they'll discover," said Steve Landers, a consultant for the National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago who designed the app. "I'd like to think Einstein would have been excited."

After Einstein died, a pathologist named Thomas Harvey performed an autopsy, removing the great man's brain in hopes that future researchers could discover the secrets behind his genius.

Harvey gave samples to researchers and collaborated on a 1999 study published in the Lancet. That study showed a region of Einstein's brain - the parietal lobe - was 15 percent wider than normal. The parietal lobe is important to the understanding of math, language and spatial relationships.

The new iPad app may allow researchers to dig even deeper by looking for brain regions where the neurons are more densely connected than normal, said Dr. Phillip Epstein, a Chicago-area neuroscientist and consultant for the museum.

But because the tissue was preserved before modern imaging technology, it may be difficult for scientists to figure out exactly where in Einstein's brain each slide originated. Although the new app organizes the slides into general brain regions, it doesn't map them with precision to an anatomical model.

"They didn't have MRI. We don't have a three-dimensional model of the brain of Einstein, so we don't know where the samples were taken from," said researcher Jacopo Annese of the Brain Observatory at the University of California, San Diego. What's more, the 1-inch-by-3-inch Einstein slides on the app represent only a fraction of the entire brain, Annese said.

Annese has preserved and digitized another famous brain, that of Henry Molaison, who died in 2008 after living for decades with profound amnesia. Known as "H.M." in scientific studies, Molaison participated during his life in research that revealed new insights on learning and memory.

A searchable website with images of more than 2,400 slides of Molaison's entire brain will be available to the public in December, Annese said.

"There will be another Einstein and we'll do it like H.M.," Annese predicted. For now, he said, it's exciting that the Einstein brain tissue has been preserved digitally before the slides deteriorate or become damaged. The app will spark interest in the field of brain research, just because it's Einstein, he said.

"It's a beautiful collection to have opened up to the public," Annese said.

Some may question whether Einstein would have wanted images of his remains sold to non-scientists for $9.99.

"There's been a lot of debate over what Einstein's intentions were," museum board member Jim Paglia said. "We know he didn't want a circus made of his remains. But he understood the value to research and science to study his brain, and we think we've addressed that in a respectful manner."

Paglia said the app could "inspire a whole new generation of neuroscientists."

Proceeds from sales will go to the U.S. Department of Defense's National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Md., and to the Chicago satellite museum, which is set to open in 2015 with interactive exhibits and the museum's digital collections.

---
Online: Einstein's Brain App

---
Get Eyewitness News Delivered

Facebook | Twitter | Newsletters | Text Alerts

(Copyright ©2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) Get more Science & Technology »

science & technology

View the original article here

Maryland man says he ate heart and brain of murder victim

  KASEY JONESBALTIMORE -- A 21-year-old college student accused of killing a housemate told police he ate the victim's heart and part of his brain after he died.

Alexander Kinyua hid the head and hands of the dead man in his family's basement laundry room in a suburb of Baltimore, according to the Harford County Sheriff's Office. Kinyua, a student at Morgan State University, was charged earlier in May in another attack in which the victim was brutally beaten but survived.

Kinyua, a Kenya native, is charged with first-degree murder and other charges in the death of 37-year-old Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie. He was ordered held on no bail.

His public defender did not return a call seeking comment, and a voicemail left at Kinyua's home was not returned.

Sheriff's spokeswoman Monica Worrell said the chief medical examiner had not yet officially identified the body parts, but that authorities believe they are those of Kodie, who was reported missing May 25. His cellphone and wallet were left in the home and police were initially told he had gone for a run.

On Tuesday, Kinyua's father, Antony Kinyua, called detectives and reported that another son, Jarrod, found what he thought were human remains in the house where they all lived in Joppatowne.

Jarrod found two metal tins, which held a human head and two human hands. Police say Jarrod confronted his brother, who said the remains were animals.

According to charging documents, Jarrod and his father went to the basement, where Jarrod "observed that the items he observed were gone and Alex Kinyua was cleaning the container he observed them in."

Detectives obtained a search warrant and found the head and hands in the house. Police say Alexander Kinyua admitted to killing Kodie by cutting him up with a knife and eating his heart and part of his brain.

Authorities say Kinyua told detectives the rest of the body could be found in a trash container at the Town Baptist Church in Harford County where they discovered remains.

The attack comes in the same week as a man in Miami chewed away another man's face along a busy highway and wouldn't stop until an officer shot him to death. Witnesses say 31-year-old Rudy Eugene growled at the officer and continued to chew away. The victim, identified as 65-year-old Ronald Poppo, a homeless man who lived under the causeway, was in critical condition and will be permanently disfigured.

On May 19, Kinyua beat a man with a baseball bat on Morgan's campus, fracturing his skull and making him lose sight in one eye, according to Baltimore police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.

Kinyua was arrested May 20 and released on $220,000 bail.

Morgan officials say Kinyua studied electrical engineering and was also in the ROTC.

According to court records, the victim, Kodie, a native of Ghana, was convicted in November 2008 in Baltimore County of sex offense and assault in September 2007 and harassment, stalking and telephone misuse for making repeated calls in 2007 and 2008 to a woman. He was sentenced to at least a year and a half in jail.

---
GET THE LATEST NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL NEWS FROM ABCNEWS.COM

---
Get Eyewitness News Delivered

Facebook | Twitter | Newsletters | Text Alerts

(Copyright ©2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) Get more U.S. & World News »

u.s. & world news

View the original article here

Mets Hall of Famer diagnosed with brain tumors

  NEW YORK -- Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter said doctors discovered four "very small" brain tumors after he had an MRI on Friday in Florida.

The 57-year-old Carter said he expects to learn more about his diagnosis when he is examined again Thursday at Duke Medical Center.

"My wife, Sandy, and our children and family thank you for your thoughts and prayers," Carter said in a release issued Saturday by the New York Mets and baseball's Hall of Fame. "We ask that you please respect our privacy as we learn more about my medical condition."

The statement did not say whether the tumors are malignant or benign.

Friends and former teammates were stunned when they heard the news.

"The last time I saw him a couple months ago, he looked well.

He was Gary," said Mets first base coach Mookie Wilson, a teammate of Carter's in the 1980s. "He seemed himself. No indication anything was wrong.

"Whatever the situation may be, of course I wish him well. And I hope things turn out for the best."

Lee Mazzilli, another teammate on the 1986 Mets, was on his way to Yankee Stadium when his wife called him with the news about Carter. He said he plans to reach out to Carter and his family when the time is right.

"You hope that it's not what you think it is," said Mazzilli, who works in corporate sales and sponsorships for the Yankees. "It breaks your heart. But I think if anyone has an optimistic outlook, he has one."

Fox broadcaster Tim McCarver, a Mets aasoline and was instructed not to continue to Libya "because we had reason to believe it was intended for military purposes", a NATO official said.

"It's clear to NATO that Gadhafi's regime is diverting fuel to its war machine," said the official who could not be identified under standing rules.

The attack on the foreign journalists took place as their vehicle was caught in a traffic jam caused by miles-long lines of cars waiting for days for fuel, the journalists said.

Men from the fuel line smashed the bus door and approached the three reporters with a kitchen knife and two others brandished pistols.

They demanded to know where the reporters were from and accused them of filming the gas line. Attackers slashed the bus tires in an attempt to prevent the reporters from fleeing.

Several plainclothes security agents fired into the air around the bus to drive back the crowd. Another security man boarded the bus and pushed out the attackers. Police led the bus to a nearby station for the reporters' safety.

Also Saturday, rights group Amnesty International said hundreds of men have disappeared from Misrata, the rebels' main toehold in western Libya. The London-based group said Libyan forces seized the men in house raids, from mosques and from the front line where some of them were fighting.

The Amnesty staff, who are currently based in Misrata, cited the case of the el-Toumi family. They said during a house raid on March 18, government forces seized seven brothers, two cousins and an uncle, who are still missing.

The rights group said they interviewed one woman who said a soldier forced her to pull up her dress. She said he fondled her, but was then hushed by her family who did not want to bring attention to the case.

Libyan officials, meanwhile, have tried to portray the NATO attacks as hitting civilian and other non-military targets.

Libyan officials in Tripoli took reporters to a government building that was bombed earlier this week. The officials said the building's offices were used to follow up on corruption cases, but NATO officials had described it as a "command and control center" - the standard description of most targets.

The building appeared to have some civilian use. Strewn, charred papers shoved in an abandoned sack showed correspondence of officials trying to pursue small corruption cases.

One paper dated Oct. 29, 2005, summoned a seller of expired medicines to give a statement to authorities. A paper from July 7, 2010, urges education heads to prevent cheating in exams. Another from Oct. 9, 2010, lists the problems that delayed the building of 52 units for seven years and noted other overdue projects.

"In whose interests is it to fight people who fight corruption?" asked a government employee, Othman Baraka.

In Paris, France's Foreign Ministry said four Frenchmen held by Libyan rebel forces on suspicion of spying have been released and are now in Egypt.

The four worked for a private security company and were detained by Libya's rebel forces at a checkpoint on May 12 in Benghazi, the eastern Libya base for rebel forces. A rebel commander at the time accused them of spying. The fifth member of the group had died of wounds he suffered after being shot at the checkpoint.

---
Lekic reported from Brussels.

---
FOR MORE NEW YORK SPORTS CLICK HERE TO VISIT ESPN NEW YORK

(Copyright ©2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) Get more MLB »

new york mets, mlb

View the original article here