Weird science history - Scientists who died as a result of their research

When you see some of the marvels of the modern world, you must be wondering about where these came from. But have you thought about all the people who did all the work that caused these marvels, these inventions, etc. Consider the more hazardous stuff that people have had to endure when you consider the nature of the more dangerous stuff that we now use under a lot of safeguards - such as radioactive stuff, poisons, acids, the invention of flying or of submarines. Now, we have a lot of warnings and safety when these are in use, but earlier people did not even know about the dangers, or discovered the dangers when it was too late. It was the path-breaking efforts of these people who actually showed us this stuff. 

This article has a list of scientists who did a lot of work in areas that are now classified as dangerous but which are also very critical for us now (for example, radioactive substances are used not only in the power generation industry, but also in medicine for diagnosis, and for destructive purposes in the form of nuclear bombs). 

1. Carl Scheele (1742-1786) - Died due to heavy metal toxicity caused due to his experiments
2. Elizabeth Fleischman Ascheim (1859-1905) - Heavy exposure to X-rays as part of experimentation, died due to radioactive poisoning
3. Alexander Bogdanov (1873-1928) - Lots of experiments in terms of blood transfusions, but his last one was infected and died as a result
4. Marie Curie (1867-1934) - One of the most famous scientists of her time, and a heavy exposure to radiation caused leukemia
5. Haroutune (Harry) K. Daghlian Jr. (1921-1945) - Died as a result of the action he took during an experiment to prevent a danger, died due to massive amounts of radiation
6. Malcolm Casadaban (1949-2009) - Died due to a bacterium that he got exposed to in his lab
7. Richard Din (1987-2012) - Died due to exposure to a bacterium that he was working on

Out of these deaths, the last 2 happened in modern times when people knew about the dangers due to what they were working on, and yet any accident or slip can cause such accidents.

Online auctions to clone dogs

Cloning has always been a controversial subject, and the concept of human cloing has always raised the hackles of a large number of people, including politicians. As a result, most countries have shied away from approving of human cloning; further, the news that a South Korean scientist had faked his results in the area of cloning led to a further backlash against the subject. On the other hand, cloning of animals has not provoked the same kind of reaction. Cloning of pets specially, the animals who are almost part of a family has started becoming an acceptable field (or at least does not provoke politicians and conservative campaigners to take up arms against this).
A company now plans to take this up on a commercial basis, offering to do cloning of dogs, and offering this facility at an auction. It is also doing a partnership with the discredited South Korean researcher, Hwang Woo Suk:

A California company is planning a string of online auctions next month to clone five dogs, with the bidding to start at $100,000. Scientists consider dogs among the most difficult animals to clone because they have an unusual reproductive biology, more so than humans.
"I know the association with Dr Hwang is going to be controversial," Lou Hawthorne, the chief executive of BioArts, said. "One of the contradictions of Dr Hwang is that he made mistakes on his human stem-cell research, and he's the first to admit that."
But he said Hwang's dog-cloning work had been independently verified. "Our main concern is simply he's the best when it comes to dog cloning," Hawthorne said, "and for that reason it behooves us to work with him."

People get so attached to pets that those having money are willing to spend heavily to try and obtain a clone of their dogs; however, this whole business of cloning involves ethical issues and needs to be relooked.

Man with wings soars above the Alps

Man has always dreamed of flying through the air, akin to how birds fly. He did this first through hot air balloons, then through using small aircraft, and now this event. This is a man flying through the air, with wings on his back, and using the speed of a rocket engine to achieve upto 186 mph. Some other features:

# Yves Rossy is the world's first man to fly with jet fuel-powered wings
# He demonstrated his flight talent in Bex, Switzerland
# His jet turbines enabled him to achieve a speed of 186 mph
# He uses only his body to change position in the air

See a link for this video.

Following in the footsteps of parents

A teen tried to do exactly that, but it led to some rather painful lessons. The boy wanted to copy his dad's tradition of trying to run around the garden when the Super Bowl game is in halftime, barefoot. One minor point, this was in Buffalo (Minneapolis), 17 below zero. So this hero went outside, took off his shoes and socks and ran around the garden barefeet for 5 minutes. At the end of 5 minutes, he came inside, and his feet start burning and blistering. Doctors pronounced it as a case of frostbite which would take a few weeks to get fully cured.
Now he believes that he has learnt a lesson, and will not try such stunts again.
Read the original story here.

Giant banana to float over Texas

Of all the things to happen ! In an expression of artistic commentary on Texas politics, a Canadian artist has a plan to put a giant banana (actually a helium blimp in the shape of a banana) into the sky over Texas.
The plan is to have a $1 million blimp, and a monster blimp at that, 1,000 feet big floating in the atmosophere at a height of over 100,000 feet. This will actually be a test of engineering devices, and if it manages to take off, will remain in the atmospehere for around 1 month.
Read the complete story at Wired.

China heralds year of the fluorescent green pig

China has a tradition of naming each year after an animal. The year 2007 is supposed to be named as the Year of the Pig. In a twist (or maybe in a foretaste of what scientists will be able to do), Chinese scientists injected genetic material from a jellyfish into a pregnant sow to produce transgenic pigs. What this means is that there are 3 pigs on the face of the earth which look different under ultraviolet light. The mouth, trotters and tongue of the pigs are green under ultraviolet light. Read this story at CNN.