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Lloyd knew his mother-in-law would be dining with them that evening. He also knew that she would savor the crispy-fried neck of the bird. So when it came time for the kill, Lloyd positioned his ax precisely on the chopping block. Estimating just the right tolerances, he executed a skillful blow, leaving a generous neck bone for Mom.

The chicken staggered around, as freshly headless chickens will do. But then a strange thing happened: the determined bird just shook off the traumatic event and never looked back! Miracle Mike, as he has come to be known, simply returned to his job of being a chicken. He pecked for food and preened his feathers just like the rest of his barnyard buddies. Other than missing his head, he appeared as perky as any other chicken in the coop, and Lloyd didn’t have the heart to tell him any differently. He let Mike be for the night...

Utrecht police say a 21-year-old Dutch man is recovering after a "mooning" that went horribly wrong.

A police statement says the man and two others had run down a street in Utrecht with their pants pulled down in the back "for a joke."

It says that at one point the 21-year-old "pushed his behind against the window of a restaurant" that broke and resulted in "deep wounds to his derriere."

The statement released Tuesday says police detained the three men after the incident Sunday morning. But the café owner decided not to press charges after the men agreed to pay for the broken window.

The injured man was treated for his injuries at a nearby hospital.

New Zealand scientists claim to have developed a "flatulence inoculation" aimed at cutting down on the massive amount of methane produced by its sheep and cows.

Such animals are believed to be responsible for more than half of the country's greenhouse gases, causing huge environmental problems.

"Our agricultural research organisation just last week was able to map the genome... that causes methane in ruminant animals and we believe we can vaccinate against flatulent emissions”, Mr Goff said.

Scientists in New Zealand have been working around-the-clock to reduce emissions from agriculture, such as changing the way fertilisers are used on pasture land, Mr Goff added.

Sheep, cattle, goats and deer produce large quantities of gas through belching and flatulence, as their multiple stomachs digest grass...

A boy can reportedly only communicate by 'chirping' – after living his life in a virtual aviary.

According to reports from Russia, the 7-year-old “bird boy” has spent his life in a flat filled with bird cages with a mum who treated him like one of her pets.

Pravda said the boy's 31-year-old mum did not talk him and treated him like a bird, forcing him to learn avian language.

Social worker Galina Volskaya said shocked authorities discovered the boy in a two-bedroom apartment with bird mess littering the floor.

Volskaya said: “When you start talking to him, he chirps."

Pets at risk of self-harm are increasingly being prescribed anti-depressants because they cannot discuss problems in their lives with others, a leading veterinarian says.

Zoo and wildlife medicine specialist with the UK’s Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, Romain Pizzi, told the Telegraph that more pets were being prescribed Prozac.

Tropical birds such as parrots seemed to have been the most affected by depression, Mr Pizzi told the newspaper.

But Mr Pizzi said anti-depressants were only used in the most extreme of cases. “Firstly, we will change the environment of the animal and make sure it has more stimulation and toys,” Mr Pizzi told the newspaper.

"When we have ruled out underlying medical problems, we try to break the cycle by using Prozac… (which) is given to the parrots in liquid form...

It must be one of the most stomach-churning medical treatments ever devised.

Ethel McEwan, an 83-year-old was near death after contracting Clostridium Difficile. But she was saved after receiving a "faecal transplant" from her daughter, Winnifred.

The treatment involves liquidising a sample of faeces from a close relative of the patient, and feeding the liquid down a tube into the stomach. The treatment restores the bacteria to levels at which they help the recovery process.

Now the stereotype of the "dumb blonde" is so firmly ingrained in the male psyche that men subconsciously become more stupid than they really are when they see one, according to scientists.

Without realising it, they mimic what they believe – often incorrectly – to be the lesser intelligence of a blonde woman in order to get along with her, a study suggests.

The research by French scientists was based on tests carried out at Paris Nanterre University where men were shown pictures of women with different coloured hair, then made to take a general knowledge test.

Those who had been shown pictures of blonde women scored lower marks than those who had been shown pictures of brunettes and redheads.

People who have had a heart transplants claim to have obtained some of their donors memories. People often show signs of personality change similar to the person who gave them the organ.

In TRANSPLANTING MEMORIES, prominent medical experts attempt to explain why some organ recipients adopt these memories and emotions, also known as "cellular memories". While a handful of scientists are skeptical dismissing this strange phenomena as post-surgery stress or reaction to anti-organ rejection drugs - they are also countered by a growing number of experts who believe cellular memories are indeed transplanted with organs.

Studies have shown that exercise has a positive effect on mothers-to-be, and no detrimental impact on their developing offspring. A new study further extends the knowledge of research in this area and has found that not only do women benefit from exercise in pregnancy, but their fetuses do too.

A key component of the research involved magnetocardiography (MCG), the magnetic correlate of an electrocardiogram (ECG). MCG is a safe, non-invasive method to record the magnetic field surrounding the electrical currents generated by the fetal heart and nervous system. In addition to measures of heart rate and variability, the MCG allows for the study of the cardiac waveforms to measure of cardiac time intervals.

Here’s what they found...

Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but endurance exercise seems to make it younger. According to a study older people who did endurance exercise training for about a year ended up with metabolically much younger hearts. The researchers also showed that by one metabolic measure, women benefited more than men from the training.

"We know that the heart deteriorates as people get older, and that's largely because they don't stay as active as they used to," said one of the authors. "Past research has suggested that exercise can reverse some effects of aging, and we wanted to see what effect it would have specifically on the heart."

Research shows that exercise can cause structural changes in the heart, but the benefits vary depending on the type of training a person is engaged in.

Endurance athletes show an increase in the size of both their left and right ventricles after 90 days of team training, while athletes who only did strength training had excessive growth in their left ventricles, but no change in their right ventricle size.

And while the ability of the left ventricle to fully relax between beats, or diastolic function was enhanced in the endurance athletes, it worsened in the strength trainers...

THREE MYTHS AND ONE TRUTH ABOUT RUNNING AND HEALTH

Every person who takes up running has, at one time or another, been confronted by a helpful critic who is more than happy to reel off the reasons running will ruin your life. It will cripple you in your later years; you might drop dead in the middle of a marathon; and on and on.

Here is a look at four questionable claims about running and health, including results from a new study looking at running, longevity, and disability...

Adults who are regularly active, whether through exercise or work, are less likely to develop cancer, a study suggests.

The study, which followed nearly 80,000 Japanese adults for up to a decade, found that regularly active men and women had lower risks of developing any type of cancer. When the researchers looked at specific types of cancer, they found that exercise was linked to lower risks of colon, liver, pancreatic and stomach cancers.

They also found that the protective effect was strongest among normal-weight men and women - supporting the theory that physical activity helps lower cancer risk at least partly through better weight control...

In overweight or obese women, physical activity, even at light or moderate intensities, lowers the risk of cancer of the lining of the uterus (endometrial cancer), according to findings from recent research.

466 women were identified who developed endometrial cancer between 1992 and 2003 among approximately 43,000 older "postmenopausal" women.

All measures of physical activity and "avoidance of sedentary behavior" were strongly associated with reduced risk of endometrial cancer in women who were overweight or obese.
Questionnaire responses showed that physically active women engaged primarily in low- to moderate-intensity activities, such as walking, biking, aerobics or dancing, equivalent to about 2 hours of moderately paced walking per week...

Regular aerobic exercise can not only stave off the decline in brain function that often comes with age, it can also help turn back the clock on brain aging, based on critical review of published studies.

Age-related deterioration in the all-important white and gray matter in the brain makes a number of high-level "executive function" tasks - such as planning, scheduling, working memory and multi-tasking - much more difficult.

Yet a substantial body of research shows that these are the very processes that are most responsive to physical exercise.

In people with or those without signs of dementia or Alzheimer's disease, regular moderate physical activity, enough to make a person breathless, has been shown to boost not only the speed and sharpness of thought but also the actual volume of brain tissue and the way in which the brain functions...

Exercise therapy after surgery for a slipped disc may help people get over their pain and disability more quickly, a research review suggests.

People who suffer persistent pain from a slipped disc in the lower, or lumbar, spine are often treated with surgery, but the value of post-surgery exercise therapy has been questioned.

Some surgeons believe that many patients do not need rehabilitation at all - with one concern being that exercise soon after surgery may actually cause re-injury.

But in the new review, which covered 14 previous clinical trials, researchers found that in general, patients who received exercise therapy got over their pain and physical limitations sooner. And there was no evidence that rehab raised the risk of repeat surgery...

Regular exercise may relieve constipation in people who suffer from irritable bowel syndrome, according to a study.

Irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS, is a common disorder affecting up to 30% of the population by some estimates. Symptoms may include chronic abdominal pain, bloating, diarrhea, and constipation.

Studies involving healthy adults have shown that regular exercise can relieve constipation and feelings of bloating. Therefore, it seems "intuitively appealing" to encourage IBS sufferers to exercise regularly to find relief from these symptoms, the study team noted.
To check out the notion researchers recruited 56 adults (mostly women) with doctor-diagnosed IBS for a study lasting 12 weeks.

After 12 weeks, the exercise group chalked up significantly more weekly exercise than the control group and they reported significantly greater declines in symptoms of constipation.
The fact that this brief, pragmatic exercise intervention led to a significant increase in the amount of exercise IBS patients engaged in is encouraging, especially considering that people with IBS may avoid participating in exercise because of their abdominal symptoms...

When it comes to exercise and physical activity, people who are severely obese often feel defeated and think – “why bother”. But a new study shows why they should bother.

Even a little bit of exercise - as little as 1 hour a week - can boost their quality of life and ability to complete everyday tasks like getting dressed, tying shoes and simply moving around.

"This study speaks to the importance of people who are overweight, even severely overweight, paying attention to the fact that increasing their activity even a little bit can make their day to day life better," one of the researchers told Reuters Health.

The study examined the relationship between current activity levels and quality of life in roughly 1,200 severely obese men and women entering a weight loss program. On average, these individuals were 100 pounds overweight...

Vigorous physical activity can help even people genetically prone to obesity keep the weight off.

A study among a group of Amish people found those who had an obesity-related gene called FTO but were very physically active weighed about the same as others who did not carry the gene.

"When we looked at the Amish who were the most active, there is suddenly no effect of that gene," said one of the researchers.

The findings, which suggest physical activity can overcome a genetic predisposition for obesity, may help inform the debate over whether changes in diet or physical activity will make the biggest difference in fighting obesity.

Children who regularly exercise and limit their time in front of the TV and computer are much less likely to be overweight than their peers.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that children devote no more than two hours per day to watching TV and playing video games.

Experts also encourage children to exercise regularly; some groups, including the AAP, recommend that boys move enough to take 13,000 steps each day, while girls should strive for 11,000. Another common recommendation is for children and teenagers to get at least one hour of moderate exercise on most, if not all, days of the week...