World Already Reaping Benefits From Ozone Treaty

The UN treaty to protect the ozone layer has prevented a likely surge in skin cancer in Australia, New Zealand and northern Europe, a study published on Tuesday said.

If the 1987 Montreal Protocol had never been signed, the ozone hole over Antarctica would have grown in size by 40 percent by 2013, it said.

Ultra-violet levels in Australia and New Zealand, which currently have the highest mortality rates from skin cancer, could have risen by between eight and 12 percent.

In northern Europe, depletion of the ozone layer over the Arctic could have boosted ultra-violet levels in Scandinavia and Britain by more than 14 percent, it said.

"Our research confirms the importance of the Montreal Protocol and shows that we have already had real benefits," said Martyn Chipperfield, a professor at Britain's University of Leeds who led the study.

"We knew that it would save us from large ozone loss 'in the future,' but in fact we are already past the point when things would have become noticeably worse."

The Protocol commits all UN members to scrapping a group of chlorine- and bromine-containing chemicals.

Used in aerosol sprays, solvents and refrigerants, these substances destroy ozone molecules in the stratosphere that filter out cancer-causing ultra-violet light.

The authors to the paper, published in the journal Nature Communications, built a 3-D computer model based on the latest data about the state of the stratosphere.

Concentrations of ozone-depleting gases are now about 10 percent below their peak of 1993, although it will take until around 2050 before the ozone hole over Antarctica shrinks to its 1980 state.

Translating rises in ultra-violet levels into increases in skin cancer is hard to quantify, but "changes as large as these would have had potentially serious consequences in the decades that followed," said the paper.

Previous research suggests every 5-percent rise in ultra-violet leads to increases of 15 and eight percent in the incidence of squamous and basal cell carcinoma respectively, the two commonest forms of skin cancer.

That calculation is based on the absence of additional measures to protect the public from damaging rays.

But the impact on melanoma, a rarer but deadlier type of skin cancer, has never been measured.

Read more at Discovery News

When Will We See an Actual Dino-Chicken?

Talk of a “chickenosaurus” lit up the science world last week when researchers announced they had modified the beak of a chicken embryo to resemble the snout of its dinosaur ancestors. But although some experts have lauded the feat, a beak is just one of many modifications needed to revert a chicken into a dinosaur.

Given these obstacles, how close are scientists to creating a dino-chicken?

“From a quantitative point of view, we’re 50 percent there,” said Jack Horner, a professor of paleontology at Montana State University and a curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies.

Horner has long supported the idea of modifying a chicken to look like a dinosaur, and unlike the researchers on the latest study, he actually wants to raise a live one. And why stop there? By understanding how and when to modify certain molecular mechanisms, countless changes could be within reach. As Horner pointed out, a glow-in-the-dark unicorn is not out of the question.

There are four major modifications needed to make a so-called chickenosaurus, Horner said. To turn a chicken into a dinosaurlike beast, scientists would have to give it teeth and a long tail, and revert its wings back into arms and hands.

The creature would also need a modified mouth — a feat accomplished by the researchers who did this latest study, he said.

“This dino-chicken project — we can liken it to the moon project,” Horner told Live Science. “We know we can do it; it’s just there are … some huge hurdles.”

Challenges ahead

One of those “huge hurdles” was cleared in the latest study, published May 12 in the journal Evolution, in which researchers turned chicken beaks into dino snouts. But even that seemingly small step involved seven years of work. First, the researchers studied beak development in the embryos of chickens and emus, and snout development in the embryos of turtles, alligators and lizards.

It’s likely that millions of years ago, birds and reptiles had similar developmental pathways that gave them snouts, but over time, molecular changes led to the development of beaks in birds, the researchers said.

It’s difficult for scientists to get embryos of present-day animals, such as crocodiles, to compare because they have to find farms that raise them. And then, the molecular work — determining exactly which developmental pathways are different, how they’re different and what controls them — can take “countless hours and hundreds of experiments for a few successful ones,” said the study’s lead researcher, Bhart-Anjan Bhullar, a paleontologist and developmental biologist currently at the University of Chicago and cross-appointed at Yale University, where he will be starting as full-time faculty. “It’s kind of the same as fossil finding.”

For their “fossil finding,” the researchers needed an extensive fossil record of birds and their ancestors to see what birds looked like at different stages of their evolution.

“You have to understand what you’re tracing before you try to trace it,” Bhullar told Live Science.

Bhullar; his doctoral advisor Arkhat Abzhanov, a developmental biologist at Harvard University; and their teammates focused on two genes that are active in facial development. Each gene codes a protein, but the proteins — which carry out the work of genes — showed different activities in modern-day chicken and reptile embryonic development, the researchers found. When the researchers blocked the activity of these two proteins in chickens, the birds developed structures that resembled snouts, not beaks.

Unexpected find

And then there’s the unexpected finding that revealed the complex task at hand: When the group transformed the beaks of chicken embryos into snouts, they also inadvertently changed the chicken’s palate, or roof of the mouth.

In contrast, the palates of the bird embryos were broad and flat, and connected “to the rest of the skull in a way that ancestral reptiles’ palatines did, but bird palatines do not,” Bhullar said.

In birds, “the palatine bone is really long and thin, and it’s not very connected with other bones of the skull,” Bhullar said.

In fact, birds can lift up their top jaw independently of their lower jaw — an ability not seen in most other vertebrates.

So, by changing the beak, the researchers also changed the palate. When the researchers went back to the fossil record, they found that the snout and palatine bone appeared to change together throughout evolution. For instance, an 85-million-year-old fossil of a birdlike creature that had teeth and a primitive beak also had a birdlike palate, they said.

However, in an even older fossil, the palatine was not transformed, and neither was the beak, Bhullar said.

“Part of that is verifying experimentally whether the molecular changes we see are actually able to change the anatomy in the ways we predicted,” Bhullar said. “In a way, that recapitulates the change we see in the fossil record.”

But his goal “is simply to understand, in as a deep a way as possible, the molecular mechanisms behind major evolutionary transitions,” he said. He’s not interested in making “a more nonavian, dinosaurlike bird.”

Will it work?

But Horner is interested in making a so-called chickenosaurus. His group is currently working on giving the chicken a long tail— arguably, the most complex part of making a dino-chicken, he said. For instance, they just screened genes in mice to determine what types of genetic pathways block tail development. This knowledge could help them figure out how to switch on tail growth, he said.

But it remains to be seen how chickens would react to tails, arms, fingers and teeth, Bhullar said.

But, on the other hand, chickens may be resilient creatures."Just because you changed one part doesn't mean that the animal will be able to use it or be able to use it correctly," he said. "You could perhaps give a chicken fingers, but if the fingers don't have the right muscles on them, or if the nervous system and the brain are not properly wired to deal with a hand that has separate digits, then you may have to do a considerable amount of additional engineering."

"People also sometimes underestimate plasticity of the body," Bhullar said. "It's amazing how much compensation goes on, and the nervous system, in particular, is very plastic."

Bhullar said that, if dinosaur-like features, such as a snout and teeth, were to be restored, he wonders "whether the brain wouldn't rewire itself in some way that would permit these animals to use these features."

Read more at Discovery News

Dark Side of Medieval Convent Life Revealed

British archaeologists excavating a church site in Oxford have brought to light the darker side of medieval convent life, revealing skeletons of nuns who died in disgrace after being accused of immoral behavior.

Discovered ahead of the construction of a new hotel, the burial ground stretches around what used to be Littlemore Priory, a nunnery founded in 1110 and dissolved in 1525.

Archaeologists led by Paul Murray, of John Moore Heritage Services, found 92 skeletons of women, men and children.

“Burials within the church are likely to represent wealthy or eminent individuals, nuns and prioresses,” Murray said in a statement.

“Those buried outside most likely represent the laity and a general desire to be buried as close to the religious heart of the church as possible,” he added.

Females made up the majority of the burials, at 35, with males accounting for 28; it was impossible to determine the gender of the remaining 29.

Among the burials, the archaeologists unearthed a female aged 45 or more who was likely one of the 20 women who held the position of prioress throughout the history of the priory.

She was interred at the exact center of the crossing in a well constructed stone coffin, with a head niche.

Some skeletons showed signs of debilitating ailments, such as two children who suffered from developmental dysplasia of the hip.

“This would have a resulted in reduced length of the leg and therefore a severe limp and perhaps needing the use of a crutch,” Murray said.

A single burial possibly had leprosy, while another skeleton showed signs of a blunt force trauma to the skull, likely the cause of death.

Other unusual burials included a stillborn baby in a well-made casket, and a woman buried in a face down position.

“This was perhaps a penitential act to atone for her sins,” Murray said.

The woman may have been one of the sinner nuns Cardinal Wolsey accused of immoral behavior when he closed down the nunnery.

Indeed, the last prioress, Katherine Wells (1507 and 1518) was deposed of the position as punishment for a number of misdeeds, such as giving birth to an illegitimate child fathered by a priest from Kent, and stealing things belonging to the monastery — pots, pens and candlesticks, etc. — to provide a dowry for her daughter.

According to accounts taken after bishop Atwater’s visitation in 1517 an 1518, another nun had an illegitimate child by a married man of Oxford.

Life at the nunnery could be severe, records show, with the prioress often putting the nuns into the stocks and beating them “with fists and feet.”

When in 1518, the bishop visited the nunnery again, the prioress complained that one of the nuns “played and romped” with boys in the cloister and refused to be corrected.

The story goes that when the nun was put in the stocks she was rescued by three other nuns who broke down the door, burnt the stocks and broke a window to escape to friends where they remained for two or three weeks.

Wells appears to have regained her position later in 1518 as no other prioresses are recorded after this date. It is likely she remained at the priory for a further seven years until its dissolution in 1525.

According to Murray, the bishop reports are certainly tainted to at least some degree and were used to justify Cardinal Wolsey’s desire to dissolve the nunnery and use its revenues to fund Cardinal’s College, now Christ Church, traditionally considered one of Oxford’s most aristocratic colleges.

“The complaints made about the nuns when they ‘played and romped’ with boys in the cloister and their refusal to be corrected, perhaps reveals something about the nuns caring nature and an element of free spirit,” he added.

Read more at Discovery News

Red Dwarf Stars Probably Not Friendly for Earth 2.0

Red dwarf stars — the stellar runts of the galaxy — probably aren’t so great for nurturing Earth-like worlds, say scientists running new simulations of the formation of planets around a variety of stars.

Astronomers have discovered a huge variety of alien worlds orbiting all types of stars, but one type of star, the M dwarf, has stuck out as one location where Earth-like exoplanets could be nurtured. Red dwarfs are plentiful in our galaxy and many nearby red dwarfs are known to play host to small and (likely) rocky exoplanets. Red dwarfs are long-lived and should there be a suitable rocky world orbiting within the star system’s habitable zone, surely there’s a good chance for life to evolve?

Unfortunately, there’s some limitations with this thinking. As the habitable zone around M dwarfs is extremely compact (these stars are smaller and therefore dimmer than our sun, for example), any potentially habitable world would need to orbit a red dwarf very closely. In these cases, the rocky world will likely become “tidally locked” with the star, forcing one hemisphere to endure an eternal day, while the other freezes in an eternal night — certainly not very “Earth-like” in the classical sense.

Also, many of these dwarfs are thought to be tumultuous little stars, erupting with powerful flares that could extinguish any form of biology (as we know it) before it can get a foothold. Already red dwarfs are looking a little unlikely as hosts for bona fide Earth-like worlds.

But as the vast majority of stars in our galaxy are red dwarfs, surely, just because there are so many, a few of these red dwarf star systems have formed with the right balance of planetary material and perfectly-located orbits that worlds similar to Earth have been able to coalesce?

According to new research from Tokyo Institute of Technology and Tsinghua University, not so much.

The researchers, Shigeru Ida (Tokyo Tech) and Feng Tian (Tsinghua), first defined what “Earth-like” means. For an alien world to meet this classification, it needs to be of the approximate mass and physical size as Earth. It also needs to have a similar water:land mass ratio. Exoplanets with too little water are considered “dune worlds” — with too little water for Earth-like biology to take hold — and those with too much water are known as “water worlds” — with chaotic climates and poor nutrient supply.

Ida and Tian found that, for an Earth-like exoplanet, with just the right water:land ratio to form around an M dwarf, there needs to be an extremely unlikely balance of planetary material very early in that world’s formative years.

As red dwarfs form pre-main sequence, they are extremely luminous, blasting out vast quantities of energy. They then quickly settle down into a more quiescent, cooler state. For any would-be Earth-like exoplanet forming in a habitable orbit, the early years of a red dwarf’s life are hard. Due to their close proximity, these worlds would be cooked, with extreme implications for their future habitability.

After running their simulation for 1000 stars 30 percent the mass of our sun (the approximate mass of M dwarf stars), 5,000 exoplanets with Earth-like masses formed. However, only 55 of those planets formed within the stars’ habitable zones and only 1 formed with the “perfect” Earth-like water:land ratio. 31 habitable zone planets turned into “dune worlds” and 23 turned into “water worlds.”

So far, things are looking bleak for red dwarfs hosting Earth-like planets, but the story changes as the stars become more massive.

Read more at Discovery News

One step closer to a single-molecule device

Under the direction of Latha Venkataraman, associate professor of applied physics at Columbia Engineering, researchers have designed a new technique to create a single-molecule diode, and, in doing so, they have developed molecular diodes that perform 50 times better than all prior designs. Venkataraman's group is the first to develop a single-molecule diode that may have real-world technological applications for nanoscale devices. Their paper, "Single-Molecule Diodes with High On-Off Ratios through Environmental Control," is published May 25 in Nature Nanotechnology.

"Our new approach created a single-molecule diode that has a high (>250) rectification and a high "on" current (~ 0.1 micro Amps)," says Venkataraman. "Constructing a device where the active elements are only a single molecule has long been a tantalizing dream in nanoscience. This goal, which has been the 'holy grail' of molecular electronics ever since its inception with Aviram and Ratner's 1974 seminal paper, represents the ultimate in functional miniaturization that can be achieved for an electronic device."

With electronic devices becoming smaller every day, the field of molecular electronics has become ever more critical in solving the problem of further miniaturization, and single molecules represent the limit of miniaturization. The idea of creating a single-molecule diode was suggested by Arieh Aviram and Mark Ratner who theorized in 1974 that a molecule could act as a rectifier, a one-way conductor of electric current. Researchers have since been exploring the charge-transport properties of molecules. They have shown that single-molecules attached to metal electrodes (single-molecule junctions) can be made to act as a variety of circuit elements, including resistors, switches, transistors, and, indeed, diodes. They have learned that it is possible to see quantum mechanical effects, such as interference, manifest in the conductance properties of molecular junctions.

Since a diode acts as an electricity valve, its structure needs to be asymmetric so that electricity flowing in one direction experiences a different environment than electricity flowing in the other direction. In order to develop a single-molecule diode, researchers have simply designed molecules that have asymmetric structures.

"While such asymmetric molecules do indeed display some diode-like properties, they are not effective," explains Brian Capozzi, a PhD student working with Venkataraman and lead author of the paper. "A well-designed diode should only allow current to flow in one direction -- the 'on' direction -- and it should allow a lot of current to flow in that direction. Asymmetric molecular designs have typically suffered from very low current flow in both 'on' and 'off' directions, and the ratio of current flow in the two has typically been low. Ideally, the ratio of 'on' current to 'off' current, the rectification ratio, should be very high."

In order to overcome the issues associated with asymmetric molecular design, Venkataraman and her colleagues -- Chemistry Assistant Professor Luis Campos' group at Columbia and Jeffrey Neaton's group at the Molecular Foundry at UC Berkeley -- focused on developing an asymmetry in the environment around the molecular junction. They created an environmental asymmetry through a rather simple method -- they surrounded the active molecule with an ionic solution and used gold metal electrodes of different sizes to contact the molecule.

Their results achieved rectification ratios as high as 250: 50 times higher than earlier designs. The "on" current flow in their devices can be more than 0.1 microamps, which, Venkataraman notes, is a lot of current to be passing through a single-molecule. And, because this new technique is so easily implemented, it can be applied to all nanoscale devices of all types, including those that are made with graphene electrodes.

Read more at Science Daily

Researchers find the 'key' to quantum network solution

Scientists at the University of York's Centre for Quantum Technology have made an important step in establishing scalable and secure high rate quantum networks.

Working with colleagues at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of Toronto, they have developed a protocol to achieve key-rates at metropolitan distances at three orders-of-magnitude higher than previously.

Standard protocols of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) exploit random sequences of quantum bits (qubits) to distribute secret keys in a completely secure fashion. Once these keys are shared by two remote parties, they can communicate confidentially by encrypting and decrypting binary messages. The security of the scheme relies on one of the most fundamental laws of quantum physics, the uncertainty principle.

Today's classical communications by email or phone are vulnerable to eavesdroppers but quantum communications based on single particle levels (photons) can easily detect eavesdroppers because they invariably disrupt or perturb a quantum signal. By making quantum measurements, two remote parties can estimate how much information an eavesdropper is stealing from the channel and can apply suitable protocols of privacy amplification to negate the effects of the information loss.

However, the problem with QKD protocols based on simple quantum systems, such as single-photon qubits, is their low key-rate, despite their effectiveness in working over long distances. This makes them unsuitable for adaptation for use in metropolitan networks.

The team, led by Dr Stefano Pirandola, of the Department of Computer Science at York, overcame this problem, both theoretically and experimentally, using continuous-variable quantum systems. These allow the parallel transmission of many qubits of information while retaining the quantum capability of detecting and defeating eavesdroppers. The research is published in Nature Photonics.

Dr Pirandola said: "You want a high rate and a fast connection particularly for systems that serve a metropolitan area. You have to transmit a lot of information in the fastest possible way; essentially you need a quantum equivalent of broadband.

Read more at Science Daily

Laser technique for low-cost self-assembly of nanostructures

Researchers from Swinburne University of Technology and the University of Science and Technology of China have developed a low-cost technique that holds promise for a range of scientific and technological applications.

They have combined laser printing and capillary force to build complex, self-assembling microstructures using a technique called laser printing capillary-assisted self-assembly (LPCS).

This type of self-assembly is seen in nature, such as in gecko feet and the salvinia leaf, and scientists have been trying to mimic these multi-functional structures for decades.

The researchers have found they can control capillary force -- the tendency of a liquid to rise in narrow tubes or be drawn into small openings -- by changing the surface structure of a material.

"Using laser printing techniques we can control the size, geometry, elasticity and distance between tiny pillars -- narrower than the width of a human hair -- to get the self-assembly that we want," lead author of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science , Swinburne's Dr Yanlei Hu, said.

Ultrafast laser printing produces an array of vertical nanorods of varying heights. After the laser process, the material is washed in a development solvent using a method similar to traditional darkroom film processing. The gravity-governed capillary force difference creates pillars of unequal physical properties along different axes.

"A possible application of these structures is in on-chip micro-object trap-release systems which are in demand in chemical analysis and biomedical devices," co-author Dr Ben Cumming said.

The researchers demonstrated the ability of the LPCS structures to selectively capture and release micro-particles.

Read more at Science Daily

'Beautiful Mind' Mathematician John Nash Killed in Car Crash

Nobel Prize-winning US mathematician John Nash, who inspired the film “A Beautiful Mind,” was killed with his wife in a New Jersey car crash.

Nash, 86, and his 82-year-old wife Alicia were riding in a taxi on Saturday when the accident took place, State Police Sergeant Gregory Williams told AFP.

“The taxi passengers were ejected,” Williams said, adding that they were both killed.

The Princeton University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) mathematician is best known for his contribution to game theory — the study of decision-making — which won him the Nobel economics prize in 1994.

His life story formed the basis of the Oscar-winning 2001 film “A Beautiful Mind” in which actor Russell Crowe played the genius, who struggled with mental illness.

“Stunned… my heart goes out to John & Alicia & family. An amazing partnership. Beautiful minds, beautiful hearts,” Crowe said on Twitter.

Ron Howard, who won the Oscar for best director for the film, tweeted that “it was an honor telling part of their story.”

Nash’s life took a sharp turn in early 1959 when he began suffering from “mental disturbances” that caused him to resign his faculty position at MIT.

The schizophrenic delusions would end up affecting not only his career but also his marriage to Alicia, whom he wed in 1957.

The couple divorced in the early 1960s, but remained in contact and remarried decades later in 2001. By the time Nash received his Nobel Prize, his delusions had decreased.

“I am still making the effort and it is conceivable that with the gap period of about 25 years of partially deluded thinking providing a sort of vacation, my situation may be atypical,” Nash said in an autobiographical description, written at the time of his Nobel Prize award in 1994.

“It did happen that when I had been long enough hospitalized that I would finally renounce my delusional hypothesis and revert to thinking of myself as a human of more conventional circumstances and return to mathematical research.”

Earlier this month, Nash and mathematician Louis Nirenberg received Norway’s prestigious Abel Prize for their contributions to the theory of nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) and its applications to geometric analysis.

Nash’s ‘achievements inspired generations’

“John’s remarkable achievements inspired generations of mathematicians, economists and scientists who were influenced by his brilliant, groundbreaking work in game theory,” Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber said in a statement Sunday.

Read more at Discovery News

Curiosity rover adjusts route up Martian mountain

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover climbed a hill Thursday to approach an alternative site for investigating a geological boundary, after a comparable site proved hard to reach.

The drive of about 72 feet (22 meters) up slopes as steep as 21 degrees brought Curiosity close to a target area where two distinctive types of bedrock meet. The rover science team wants to examine an outcrop that contains the contact between the pale rock unit the mission analyzed lower on Mount Sharp and a darker, bedded rock unit that the mission has not yet examined up close.

Two weeks ago, Curiosity was headed for a comparable geological contact farther south. Foiled by slippery slopes on the way there, the team rerouted the vehicle and chose a westward path.The mission's strategic planning keeps multiple route options open to deal with such situations.

"Mars can be very deceptive," said Chris Roumeliotis, Curiosity's lead rover driver at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "We knew that polygonal sand ripples have caused Curiosity a lot of drive slip in the past, but there appeared to be terrain with rockier, more consolidated characteristics directly adjacent to these ripples. So we drove around the sand ripples onto what we expected to be firmer terrain that would give Curiosity better traction. Unfortunately, this terrain turned out to be unconsolidated material too, which definitely surprised us and Curiosity."

In three out of four drives between May 7 and May 13, Curiosity experienced wheel slippage in excess of the limit set for the drive, and it stopped mid-drive for safety. The rover's onboard software determines the amount of slippage occurring by comparing the wheel-rotation tally to actual drive distance calculated from analysis of images taken during the drive.

The rover was heading generally southward from near the base of a feature called "Jocko Butte" toward a geological contact in the eastern part of the "Logan Pass" area.

Routes to this contact site would have required driving across steeper slopes than Curiosity has yet experienced on Mars, and the rover had already experienced some sideways slipping on one slope in this area.

"We decided to go back to Jocko Butte, and, in parallel, work with the scientists to identify alternate routes," Roumeliotis said.

The team spent a few days analyzing images from the rover and from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to choose the best route for short-term and long-term objectives.

Read more at Science Daily

Genies Blamed For School Sickness, Possessions

Last week in Saudi Arabia nearly 200 elementary and middle school students “refused to attend classes after nine students claimed that genies — or jinn, as they are better known in the Arabic world — had made them sick” according to ArabNews.com, which added that “the students had fainted and experienced spasms at the start of the second semester, prompting many parents to believe jinns were present at the school.”

Jinn are described in the Koran, the Muslim holy book, as creatures made by Allah of smokeless fire. Belief in jinn is widespread throughout the Arabic and Muslim world. Just as many Christians readily accept the literal reality of angels, many Muslims accept the existence of genies as self-evident. Both religions share the belief that spirits such as demons and jinn can take possession of humans. Jinn are believed, like ghosts, to haunt buildings, homes and other locations.

It will often begin with one or two people exhibiting symptoms and as others in the same location see the behavior they unconsciously begin experiencing the same or similar symptoms. Episodes are most common in closed social units such as schools and factories, and among females — likely because they tend to have stronger social bonds than males. The symptoms are not serious and go away on their own, often within hours or days.

This is not the first time that jinn have been blamed for unexplained fits in Saudi schools. In his book “Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar” Robert Lebling notes that in 2000:

“Newspapers in Saudi Arabia reported the haunting of the al-Fikriyah Institute of Education, a functioning girls’ school in the Red Sea port of Jeddah, in an incident with unusual psycho-social overtones. A number of teachers at the school were reportedly subjected to fits and epileptic-like seizures, supposedly as a result of a (jinn) haunting.”

Though many doctors attributed that incident — like the one last week — to mass hysteria, some, including a cleric tasked with investigating the matter, insisted that jinn did in fact inhabit the school and were responsible for the symptoms.

As with many folk beliefs, the reality of jinn is less important than whether people believe in them; if a group of students or teachers believe that jinn can make them faint and there is no other ready explanation, then jinn will be blamed.

Though the school fits were harmless and soon passed, sometimes these beliefs can be dangerous; earlier this month a Moroccan woman who was believed to be possessed by a jinn died during an exorcism. According to a news story:

“To cast out the evil spirit from her body, the Fqih (exorcist) loudly recited incantations and passages from the Koran, the holy book of Islam. With the help of four of his assistants, the Fqih hit her with a stick all over her body in order to ‘force the evil spirit’ to leave her.”

In 2012 a Pakistani man and his family was convicted of killing his young wife during an exorcism who he believed was possessed by a jinn.

Read more at Discovery News