TopNews

Two pretzels discovered during a digging operation on the banks of the Danube in the German city of Regensburg seem to be more than 300 years old, said archeologists. The pretzels are not exactly similar to the doughy product available in the state's famous beer halls today.

The pretzel fragments were put in display at the Regensburg Historical Museum this week on Thursday, said Dorothee Ott, spokeswoman for the Bavarian Office for Historical Conservation.

According to Ott, the reason behind the survival of the pretzels and other baked goods for the centuries was severe burning. They were believed to have been discarded from a bakery that was once on the site, said archeologists.

Researchers in China have developed the world’s first liquid metal robot, which has the ability to change shape and power itself.

“The soft machine looks rather intelligent and [can] deform itself according to the space it voyages in, just like [the] Terminator does from the science-fiction film”, affirmed Jing Liu from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.

Liu said that the motor is made up of a gallium alloy called galinstan. Gallium has the melting point of 29.76 degrees Celsius. When gallium is combined with tin and indium having proportions of 68.5% gallium, 21.5% indium and 10% tin then the combination results into galinstan.

According to a report by King County health officials, use of e-cigarette among the county teens has witnessed an increase in the recent years. Adding to the report, the use of marijuana has remained about the same during the period, the health officials stated.

About 22% of high-school seniors have accepted that they used electronic cigarettes last year. The figure is up from only 3% in 2012. Over 14% of 10th-graders reported that they had consumed e-cigarettes in 2014, up from just 2% in 2012.

As per officials at Public Health - Seattle & King County, the figures are results of the biennial Healthy Youth Survey, which had included over 13,000 young people of the county. As per the reports, the rise is due to assumption that the device is safer than cigarettes.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), worker at a Louisiana primate research facility has likely been exposed to deadly bacterium stored in on-site laboratory.

It has been informed that previously this bacterium has sickened three monkeys. The Burkholderia pseudomallei, is a potentially deadly form of bacteria that is normally found in Southeast Asia and Northern Australia.

The bacterium is stored at a high-security laboratory at the Tulane National Primate Research Center near New Orleans. It is about half a mile from housing a veterinary clinic where many monkeys are kept.

In the wake of criticism the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently faced for inappropriate response to infections spread by contaminated medical scopes, the health agency said on Thursday that it will make it mandatory for manufacturers of certain reusable devices to provide data to prove they can be cleaned reliably.

The agency also revealed in an announcement about its plans to entrust a panel of experts with the responsibility to study the safety issues with duodenoscopes. The panel is likely to be convened in May. It must be noted that these are the devices responsible for the recent outbreaks of a drug-resistant superbug at two Los Angeles hospitals. These devices also caused similar outbreaks around the country in recent years.

According to a recent announcement of researchers, they noted several genetic markers that could be helpful in determining the risks of developing post-traumatic stress disorder among the United States soldiers.

After that, the researchers were trying to find that link. To do so, they took some blood samples from United States Marines and examined them. Blood samples were taken before and after deployment.

As per Michael S. Breen, a researcher from the University of Southampton and senior study author, after comparing US Marines who develop post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms to those who do not, difference in genes can be measured. Breen said that measurement of dynamic relationships could be helpful in knowing the pathology of PTSD.