Most Strange Hotels of the World

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Unblievable and Extreme Babies

Frog-like Baby
On 2006, this bizarre-looking baby was born in Charikot, the headquarters of Dolakha district, attracting a huge number of onlookers to witness the astonishing sight.

The neck-less baby with its head almost totally sunk into the upper part of the body and with extraordinarily large eyeballs literally popping out of the eye-sockets, was born to Nir Bahadur Karki and Suntali Karki at the Gaurishnkar Hospital in Charikot. The Karki couple is a permanent resident of Dolakha's Bhirkot VDC.

The bizarre baby, however, died after half an hour of its birth, Suntali, the mother, informed. It was taken to the hospital after its death. The news about such a baby being brought to the hospital spread like wildfire and there were hundreds gathered at the hospital to have a look. The police had to be deployed to control the crowd.

The baby weighed 2kg at birth and was born after the normal nine-month gestation period. Suntali, already a mother of two normal daughters, was not suffering from any illness during the pregnancy. Nir Bahadur, the father, says he does not feel any remorse for the newly-born baby's death. "I am happy that nothing happened to my wife," he said.

NOTE: Our readers, Becca and Andrew, report us that "the baby has a condition called anencephaly, a neural tube defect (like the cyclops baby), with no proper brain formation. The baby would have died a few days later. That's why women are advised to take folate in early pregnancy." --Thank you!
World's Smallest Baby: 21 weeks and six days
On October 24th 2006, Amillia Taylor was born at 21 weeks and six days. No baby born at less than 23 weeks gestation had ever survived, but 10 ounce Amillia was able to pull through (and even was trying to breath and cry on her own at birth). Hospitals had initially hoped to release her yesterday, but decided to keep the now healthy baby a few extra days for observation.

Her mother doesn't mind the wait, she's just proud and happy that Amillia is healthy: "Even though she's only four pounds (1.8 kilos) now, she's plump to me."
Cyclop Baby
On 2006, this baby was born with a only one eye in India. Medical staff who helped deliver the child believe that the child's condition was caused by an experimental anti-cancer drug. Another cause written in the report by the hospital was that it could also be the result of a chromosomal disorder. The child was diagnosed with a rare chromosomal disorder, known as cyclopia. She was born with a single eye in the center of her forehead, no nose and her brain fused into a single hemisphere. With such severe deformities, it was a miracle that the girl survived even a few minutes after delivery. The baby died days later
This 2-month-old baby named Liu Junjie from Anhui Province, China, was born with a third arm on 2006. Doctors successfully removed the extremely rare and well-developed third arm, but the baby required long-term physical therapy to gain function in his remaining hand, which has no palm and flexes in either direction. "We're hoping to exchange information with doctors who've dealt with similar cases anywhere in the world," said Chen, head of the orthopedics department at Shanghai Children's Medical Center. "This is so rare that we have virtually no information to go on."
World's Smallest Baby: 21 weeks and six days
On October 24th 2006, Amillia Taylor was born at 21 weeks and six days. No baby born at less than 23 weeks gestation had ever survived, but 10 ounce Amillia was able to pull through (and even was trying to breath and cry on her own at birth). Hospitals had initially hoped to release her yesterday, but decided to keep the now healthy baby a few extra days for observation.

Her mother doesn't mind the wait, she's just proud and happy that Amillia is healthy: "Even though she's only four pounds (1.8 kilos) now, she's plump to me."
44 pound Baby

This baby born in Iran six months ago, currently weighs an enormous 20 kilos (44 pounds)! The parents say the baby was born a normal weight close to 8 pounds when he was born, but he keeps eating every hour. The Iranian doctors do not know what this eating disorder is or where it came from.
Born with 17 pounds

A Siberian woman who gave birth on 2007 to her 12th child was stunned to find that little Nadia weighed in at a massive 17.1 lb (7.75kg). "We were all simply in shock," said Nadia's mother, Tatyana Barabanova, 43. "What did the father say? He couldn't say a thing - he just stood there blinking." "I ate everything, we don't have the money for special foods so I just ate potatoes, noodles and tomatoes," she told the reporter, adding that all her previous babies had weighed more than 5 kg.

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10 Wonderful Microscopic Images from the Natural World

The Wellcome Trust awarded prizes for the top scientific images of the year and these 10 winners from the Wellcome Image Awards. These aren't your run-of-the-mill x-rays or pictures of bacteria in a petri dish; they are detailed, incredible images that would make any photographer proud. They stand on their own aesthetically while also standing for their importance in science.

10. Mouse Embryo Kidney
Whoever expected to call a mouse kidney beautiful turns out to be right! In the image above, the green is the embryonic connective tissue while the red is the embryonic ductwork developing. The 3D-image was taken with something called optical projection tomography (OPT), so no Nikons for these scientists!

9. Crochet of hooks at the base of a caterpillar's proleg
Caterpillars can be creepy crawlies at the best of times, but one thing most people don't know is that they have prolegs. These are short, stubby little protuberances from the bottom of their tummies, and each one has a series of hooks, like velcro hooks, that are used to grip and help them travel vertically. As per Wellcome's specifications, the "brilliant colours seen in this image were created using a technique called differential interference contrast illumination."

8. Cavefish embryo
This eerie-looking image is of a cavefish embryo, a fish that is found in dark caves and is generally white in color. The green stain is an antibody that detects specific neuronal processes (e.g. nerve systems) as well as the larger number of taste buds around the mouth and its body - the green dots.

7. Ergot fungus growing on wheat
Ergot is a fungus that grows on wheat and is highly, highly toxic. The light pink is the ergot while the blue is the wheat. Back in the Middle Aages, ergot poisoning was often the reason for supposed "bewitchment", and monks in the order of St. Anthony became famous for treating the illness that then became known as St. Anthony's fire. The symptoms are brutal: spasms, hallucinations, psychosis, intense itching and gangrene.

6. Honeybee
For some, this will be a nightmare image, but the close-up of the honey bee is spectacular in its detail. Each pair of legs has three segments and also a different "tool" than the others to help pick up and transport pollen. Honey bees are vital to plants, and the more science learns about them, the better off we will be.

5. Cell division and gene expression in plant cells
Here's a "confocal micrograph showing the expression of different fluorescent proteins in the stem of a thale cress seedling (Arabidopsis thaliana). Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced."

4. Peridontal bacteria
You have all heard of plaque, the nasty stuff that forms a film on your teeth, but I bet you never knew it looked like this! A photomicrograph of colonies of the bacteria that form, it was taken as they grew in an agar dish.

3. Moth scales
Did you know that butterflies and moths get their color from scales? They do, and these are the scales of the endangered Madagascan moon moth. Scanning electron micrographs are black and white and then colored. Here, the color is light green, which is the natural color of the moth.

2. Sunrise in the eye: zebrafish etina
This incredible image is unbelievably the retina of a 3-day-old zebrafish, looking straight on to it and taking in the whole eye. The scientists managed this by reflecting half the image so that it mimicked the symmetry in a fish.

1. Suckers on joint of foreleg of a male diving beetle.
A glorious photograph of an inglorious subject, the great diving beetle. It actually shows the row of suckers on the male beetle's front legs that females don't have. The suckers are used to grip on to the female when mating. Spike Walker used a technique called Rheinberg illumination to get these colors; it passes light through colored filters.

The actual subjects may not be as exciting as their images but all are of importance to science. The ability to take clearer and more detailed images has allowed science to really see what is going on in certain processes. From micrographs to scanning microscopes to 3D-imagery, science is light years ahead of where it was just 30 years ago.

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