A person's blood type may influence their susceptibility to infection with rotavirus, a type of stomach bug, a new study suggests.

The results show that certain strains of rotavirus attach to cells by binding to "A antigen" - a marker on the surface of cells in people with blood types A and AB. The first step of infection is attachment to the cell.

People with these blood types have the "A antigen" not only on their blood cells, but also on the cells that line the gastrointestinal tract, which rotavirus attacks.

This means its possible that people with blood types A and AB are more susceptible to rotavirus infections, but it's too soon to draw firm conclusions, said study researcher B. V. Venkataram Prasad, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. For one thing, the virus strains that were found to attach to A antigen are not the most common strains of rotavirus. It's possible the most common strains preferentially infect people with blood type B, for example.

In addition, no one has looked at large populations to see whether those who are infected with rotavirus are more likely to have a certain blood type, Prasad said. Still, the new study could prompt this type of research, now that scientists are aware there might be a link, Prasad said.

New Zealand Building $4.1M Cathedral ... From Cardboard...Will be 82-feet high and seat 700

A cathedral made from cardboard. The idea may sound flimsy, but in the earthquake-devastated city of Christchurch, Anglican leaders believe it will deliver both a temporary solution and a statement about the city's recovery. Albeit a pricey one: The plans call for an 82-foot high cathedral constructed with 104 tubes of cardboard ... at a cost of up to $4.1 million. The structure, set to seat 700, will be a temporary replacement for the iconic stone ChristChurch Cathedral and will be used for 10 years while a permanent replacement is designed and built.

Construction will hopefully begin within about six weeks and be completed by the end of the year. The plan is to use traditional materials like concrete, steel, and wood to provide structural support, and the structure will be weatherproof and fire-resistant. Up to two dozen shipping containers inside will provide space for offices, a kitchen, and storage, and the roof will be made of an opaque polycarbonate material.

A recent Harvard study has a theory on why bees are dying around the country.

It links pesticides to the problem and what's called colony collapse disorder.

The study says the pesticide imidacloprid, from the class of neonicotinoid pesticides is an insect neurotoxin, and makes the bees leave the hive, or not find their way back.

Since 2006, commercial beekeepers have reported a 30 to 90-percent loss in bee colonies.

The San Luis Obispo County Department of Agriculture said the imidacloprid is widely used in the state and on the Central Coast.

Wade Johnston, of TheraBee is a bee-keeper who builds small apiaries on properties around San Luis Obispo County. He said he's focusing on raising healthier, stronger bees.

Scientists are close to making a discovery that Einstein thought impossible but will vindicate his theories

From a farm gate outside the village of Ruthe, near Hanover, a broad asphalt path stretches in a straight line for 600 metres. On one side, an orchard brims with apple trees which are starting to bud in the warm German spring. On the other, a metre-wide ditch, covered with corrugated stainless steel, runs parallel to the path. Follow it, and you reach a cluster of temporary cabins and tall aerials from which a second steel-covered trench, also 600m long, emerges at right angles to the first, marking out a giant metal L in the field.

It is an odd sight. With its steel-covered trenches, the place could be an experimental sewage farm or a design centre for drainage ditches. In fact, this is the site of one of Europe's most advanced astrophysical laboratories. Scientists here are hunting the universe's most elusive force: gravitational waves. These cosmic emanations are thought to be hurled across space when stars start throwing their weight around - for example when they collapse into black holes or when pairs of super-dense neutron stars start to spin closer and closer to each other. These processes put massive strains on the fabric of space-time, pushing and stretching it so that ripples of gravitational energy radiate across the universe.

Homing pigeons are well known for their extraordinary sense of direction, but how exactly do they navigate their way home using the Earth's magnetic field?

Most researchers believe that the homing ability of pigeons is based on the "compass and map" model, in which the birds rely on the sun like a "compass" and the Earth's magnetic fields as the "map" to navigate back to their nests.

In pigeons, this magnetic field "map" was believed to be read with the help of a certain type of white blood cells called macrophages.

New research published in Nature has debunked this established dogma, revealing that the macrophages thought to be the center of the magnetic sense in birds are in fact not responsive to magnetic fields.

In this study, a collaborative effort between the University of Western Australia (UWA) and the Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, the team characterized the iron-rich cells in the upper beak of pigeons using a technique called transmission electron microscopy (TEM), which passes a beam of high-energy electrons through tissue samples.

The United Arab Emirates has signed up local operator Etisalat with a view to getting the national ID card embedded into mobile phones.

The memorandum of understanding, signed by the Emirates Identity Authority and Etisalat, sets out a plan for both parties to examine the feasibility of implementing the existing ID Card as an NFC application installed on a mobile phone, meaning that forgetting one's handset wouldn't just be inconvenient, it would be illegal too.

The existing card, which arrived in 2004, uses an ISO7816 chip (same as a credit card) to store encrypted credentials including the holder's name, birthday, gender and photograph, and the 15-digit key to the Population Register which was set up at the same time. Also stored on the chip, but not printed on the card, are the holder's fingerprints.

New research by scientists at the University of Bristol has challenged one of the key beliefs in chemistry: that proteins are dependent on water to survive and function. The team's findings, published this month in Chemical Science, could eventually lead to the development of new industrial enzymes.

Proteins are large organic molecules that are vital to every living thing, allowing us to convert food into energy, supply oxygen to our blood and muscles, and drive our immune systems. Since proteins evolved in a water-rich environment, it is generally thought that they are dependent on water to survive and function.

Proteins consist of one or more polypeptides - chains of amino acids held together by peptide bonds. If a protein in water is heated to temperatures approaching the boiling point of water, these chains will lose their structure and the protein will denature (unfold).

The human brain's power could rival any machine. And now scientists are trying to build one using the world's most powerful computer.

It is intended to combine all the information so far uncovered about its mysterious workings - and replicate them on a screen, right down to the level of individual cells and molecules.

If it works it could be revolutionary for understanding devastating neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and even shedding light into how we think, and make decisions.

Leading the project is Professor Henry Markram based in Switzerland, who will be working with scientists from across Europe including the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute at Cambridge.

They hope to complete it within 12 years. He said: 'The complexity of the brain, with its billions of interconnected neurons, makes it hard for neuroscientists to truly understand how it works.

'Simulating it will make it much easier - allowing them to manipulate and measure any aspect of the brain.'

Housed at a facility in Dusseldorf in Germany, the 'brain' will feature thousands of three-dimensional images built around a semi-circular 'cockpit' so scientists can virtually 'fly' around different areas and watch how they communicate with each other.

It aims to integrate all the neuroscience research being carried out all over the world - an estimated 60,000 scientific papers every year - into one platform.

The project has received some funding from the EU and has been shortlisted for a 1 billion euro (£825million) EU grant which will be decided next month.

When complete it could be used to test new drugs, which could dramatically shorten the time required for licencing them than human trials, and pave the way for more intelligent robots and computers.

In a move that seems like it should have happened in the year 2000, a Japanese bank announced it will be installing about a dozen automated teller machines that can read customers' palms to identify them. Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank will be the country's first to introduce the system.

First, Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank (Japanese site) customers will register their biometric information at a branch, according to Gizmag's Darren Quick. Then they'll be able to go to one of the new ATMs and get cash simply by scanning a hand, typing in their birthdate and a four-digit PIN.

This being technophilic Japan we're talking about, I would have thought every bank there has body scanning ATMs by now. The thing is, the scanning technology is already out there but still requires every customer to use a card. Essentially the scanning has been an extra security measure.

Following the massive earthquake and tsunami more than a year ago in Japan, scanning started to be seen in a new light. Instead of being extra security, it could mean standard security for customers who need cash in an emergency but don't have their bank cards on them.

Kumzar: Home to 4,000 people and overlooking the strategic Straits of Hormuz that Iran has threatened to close, Kumzar village has a thousand year-old language of its own that no one else on earth understands. Nestled on the northernmost tip of Oman's Musandam peninsula and hidden by spectacular mountains that plunge into the Gulf's aquamarine waters, tiny Kumzar is a simple fishing village that is a haven for dolphins and teems with marine life.

But with the arrival of television and the Internet not many years ago, its people are very much aware of the growing speculation that their lives could be shaken by a war involving Iran, which lies just 50 kilometers away. These same outside influences are also threatening the survival of the ancient Kumzari language, a mix of Indo-European languages and Arabic, remarkable in that it is the only non-Semitic language spoken on the Arabian Peninsula in the past 1,400 years.

For centuries, Kumzaris have had front row seats to history. They have witnessed and even assisted invading armies of the world's great empires that have sought control of the Straits, a chokepoint crucial to global marine trade and through which most of the world's seaborne oil passes today. At first inspection, Kumzar seems entirely cut off from civilization. But looking more closely one can see signs of the march of modern time in the past 10 years or so-besides electricity, running water, a school and a hospital, a helipad, satellite television and Internet access.

These new-found luxuries are a welcome change for the village's resident teenagers, but according to experts, they are contributing to the extinction of their unwritten language. "The schooling in Kumzar is in Arabic, and they get a lot of influence from the (United Arab) Emirates and Oman ... so children don't speak Kumzari as well as their grandparents did," says Christina van der Wal, a researcher at Leiden University in the Netherlands who has lived in the village. The Kumzari word for oven is "forno", likely picked up from the Portuguese who ruled the region in the 16th and 17th centuries, says Van der Wal.