Crawl spaced out

Joy – and mystery – as man feared lost overboard is found hiding on ship

FRANK URQUHART

THE family of a missing oil worker, found alive 42 hours after he was feared lost overboard from a North Sea diving support vessel, yesterday hailed his dramatic return from the dead as a “Christmas miracle”.
But last night, as Christopher McGonigle continued to recover in hospital from his bizarre two-day ordeal, hidden on board his ship with a broken leg, his bosses were still waiting to discover how he became stowed away in a roof void with a bottle of water and a bunch of bananas.
Grampian Police are also planning to talk to the man whose mysterious disappearance led to a two-day search, involving four helicopters and ten ships, and costing an estimated £500,000.
Mr McGonigle, 35, of Strabane, Northern Ireland, the operator of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), was presumed to have drowned when he vanished from the diving support vessel Pelican while the boat was 140 miles east of Aberdeen. He had last been seen at about 3am on Saturday.
Father John Doherty, the local priest, said: “His family spoke to him on the phone last night, but he wasn’t in a fit state to tell them what had happened. He was suffering from hypothermia and dehydration and a bit incoherent.”
A source at the company said the circumstances in which Mr McGonigle had been discovered were “bizarre to say the least”.

This article:New Scotsman

Last updated: 19-Dec-06 00:32 GMT

Racing certainty

Athlete fails gender test

AN INDIAN runner who won a silver medal in the women’s 800 metre’s at the Asian Games has failed a gender test and been stripped of the medal.
The Indian Olympic Association said yesterday it has been told by the Olympic Council of Asia that Shanti Sounderajan, 25, had been disqualified after failing the test in Doha, Qatar, after coming second.
An Indian athletics official said Sounderajan had almost certainly never had sex-change surgery.
Instead, the official said, the runner appeared to have “abnormal chromosomes”. The official also said that the test revealed more Y chromosomes than allowed.
Sounderajan was not immediately available for comment.

This article:New Scotsman

Last updated: 19-Dec-06 00:32 GMT

Horse laugh

Head-butt by horse restores man’s sight

RACHEL WILLIAMS IN
NEW YORK
A SECOND World War veteran who was blinded in his right eye when he was hit by shrapnel can see again after being head-butted by a pedigree racehorse.
Doctors tried in vain for 64 years to restore Don Karkos’s sight, until My Buddy Chimo stepped in.
Hours after the horse smacked the 82-year-old paddock security guard in exactly the same spot as the shrapnel gashed his forehead in combat in 1942, he realised his vision was returning.
Although his vision is still not perfect, Mr Karkos has been able to see about 15ft with his damaged eye since the incident at the Monticello Raceway racecourse in New York state two months ago.
“What happened is still a mystery to me,” he said. “But I do know I had got used to not seeing things and bumping into walls, and I don’t do that anymore.”

New Scotsman

Mind control

Robot controlled by power of brain waves
By Roger Highfield, Science EditorLast Updated: 2:42am GMT 18/12/2006 

Computer scientists have used the power of thought to control a humanoid robot. Wearing a special cap dotted with 32 scalp electrodes, an individual can “order” the robot to move about and pick up objects merely by generating brain waves that reflect the instructions. Rajesh Rao, of the University of Washington, demonstrated the robot at the Current Trends in BrainComputer Interfacing meeting in Whistler, British Columbia. For the demonstration, the robot was in a different room from its human master. The electrodes pick up signals using a technique called electroencephalography. The thought commands are limited to basic instructions. The robot can be told to move forward, choose one of two objects and bring it to one of two locations. The Washington team plans to extend the research to use more complex objects and equip the robot with skills such as avoiding obstacles.

Daily Telegraph