Scientists say they have solved the mystery of how a girl with half a brain has near perfect vision in one eye.

A 10-year-old girl born with half a brain, from Germany, has the power of both a right and left eye in the single organ in the only known case of its kind in the world.

Scans revealed the German girl’s brain rewired itself during development when she was still in her mother’s womb.

The girl’s underdeveloped brain was discovered when, aged three, she underwent an MRI scan after suffering seizures of brief involuntary twitching on her left side.

Apart from the seizures, which were successfully treated, and slight weakness on her left side, the girl has had a normal medical history, attending school and taking part in regular activities.

In other cases, where patients have half of the brain removed to treat severe epilepsy, for example, one field of vision is lost in both eyes, meaning they see only objects on the left or right side of their vision.

In the case of the German girl, her left and right field vision is almost perfect in one eye.

"The brain has amazing plasticity but we were quite astonished to see just how well the single hemisphere of the brain in this girl has adapted to compensate for the missing half", said Dr. Lars Muckli, lead researcher of the University’s Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging.

Scans on the girl showed that the retinal nerve fibres carrying visual information from the back of the eye which should have gone to the right hemisphere of the brain diverted to the left. The understanding of the powerful algorithms the brain uses to rewire itself could help advance artificial intelligence work.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard (version 10.6) is the seventh major release of Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop and server operating system. The new OS comes with a lot of great and amazing features. As with most upgrades of Mac OS, new wallpapers are available. Though i don’t own or have a Mac, one thing i love most about Apple is their designs. It’s simple, sleek and elegant.

A few months ago, i have shared to you a “Complete list of Windows 7 Beautiful Wallpapers”; Today I’ll be sharing to you another set of beautiful wallpapers, this time it’s from Apple Snow Leopard.

Here are the new wallpapers of Apple Snow Leopard.

Maybe you’re interested with the beautiful wallpapers of Windows 7

When I was reading a newspaper last week, I was fascinated by a fact on Ripley’s Believe It or Not that scientists are developing echolocation for humans. I was curious about it because I thought it is impossible to do (except of course of Ben Underwood) so I searched for it and I found out that a team of researchers from the University of Alcalá de Henares (UAH) has shown scientifically that human beings can develop echolocation,  the system of acoustic signals used by dolphins and bats to explore their surroundings. Producing certain kinds of tongue clicks helps people to identify objects around them without needing to see them, something which would be especially useful for the blind.

Juan Antonio Martínez, lead author of the study and a researcher at the Superior Polytechnic School of the UAH, told SINC that in certain circumstances, we humans could rival bats in our echolocation or biosonar capacity.

In their first published study, the researchers analyzed the properties of various sounds and identified what they believe is the most effective sound for human echolocation.

“The almost ideal sound is the ‘palate click,’ a click made by placing the tip of the tongue on the palate, just behind the teeth, and moving it quickly backwards, although it is often done downwards, which is wrong,” Martinez said.

Palate clicks “are very similar to the sounds made by dolphins, although on a different scale, as these animals have specially adapted organs and can produce 200 clicks per second, while we can only produce three or four,” he explained.

The study appears in the current issue of the journal Acta Acustica united with Acustica.

A method to teach humans how to emit, receive and interpret echolocation sounds is being developed. The first step is for a person to learn how to make and identify his or her own sounds, which are different for each individual. The next step is to learn how to use the sounds to distinguish between objects according to their geometrical properties.

No special physical skills are needed to develop echolocation, said Martinez, who noted that some blind people have taught themselves the ability through trial-and-error.

“Two hours per day for a couple of weeks are enough to distinguish whether you have an object in front of you, and within another two weeks you can tell the difference between trees and a pavement,” he said.

Martínez has told SINC that his team is now working to help deaf and blind people to use this method in the future, because echoes are not only perceived by their ear, but also through vibrations in the tongue and bones. “For these kinds of people in particular, and for all of us in general, this would be a new way of perceiving the world”.

The scientists recognise that they are still at the very early stages, but the possibilities that would be opened up with the development of echolocation in humans are enormous. This technique will be very practical not only for the blind, but also for professionals such as firemen (enabling them to find exit points through smoke), and rescue teams, or simply people lost in fog.

A better understanding of the mental mechanisms used in echolocation could also help to design new medical imaging technologies or scanners, which make use of the great penetration capacity of clicks. Martínez stresses that these sounds “are so penetrating that, even in environments as noisy as the metro, one can sense discontinuities in the platform or tunnels”.

I was very happy for this research because it is not only for the innovation of our future but also because it is being done for the benefit of other people especially those that are in need.