Sometimes there is nothing.

RIP Louis Seize

Louis was officially arrested on 13 August and sent to the Temple, an ancient Paris fortress used as a prison. On 21 September, the National Convention declared France to be a republic and abolished the monarchy.

The Girondins were partial to keeping the deposed king under arrest, both as a hostage and a guarantee for the future. The more radical members – mainly the Commune and Parisian deputies who would soon be known as the Mountain – argued for Louis's immediate execution. The legal background of many of the deputies made it difficult for a great number of them to accept an execution without due process of some sort, and it was voted that the deposed monarch should be tried before the National Convention, the organ that housed the representatives of the sovereign people.

On the 11 December, among crowded and silent streets, the deposed king was brought from the Temple to stand before the Convention and hear his indictment, an accusation of High Treason and Crimes against the State. On the 26th, his counsel, Raymond de Sèze, delivered Louis's response to the charges, with the assistance of François Tronchet and Malesherbes.

On 15 January 1793, the Convention, composed of 721 deputies, voted out the verdict, which was a foregone conclusion – 693 voted guilty, and none voted for acquittal. The next day, a voting roll-call was carried out in order to decide upon the fate of the king, and the result was, for such a dramatic decision, uncomfortably close. 288 deputies voted against death and for some other alternative, mainly some means of imprisonment or exile. 72 deputies voted for the death penalty, but subject to a number of delaying conditions and reservations. 361 deputies voted for Louis's immediate death.

The next day, a motion to grant Louis reprieve from the death sentence was voted down; 310 deputies requested mercy, 380 voted for the execution of the death penalty. This decision would be final. On Monday, 21 January 1793, stripped of all titles and honorifics by the republican government, Citoyen Louis Capet was guillotined in front of a cheering crowd in what today is the Place de la Concorde. The executioner, Charles Henri Sanson, testified that the former King had bravely met his fate.

As Louis mounted the scaffold he appeared dignified and resigned. He attempted a speech in which he reasserted his innocence and pardoned those responsible for his death. He declared himself willing to die and prayed that the people of France would be spared a similar fate. He seemed about to say more when Antoine-Joseph Santerre, a general in the Garde Nationale, cut Louis off by ordering a drum roll. The former king was then quickly beheaded.

Accounts of Louis’s beheading indicate that the blade did not sever his neck entirely the first time. There are also accounts of a blood-curdling scream issuing from Louis after the blade fell but this is unlikely as the blade severed Louis’s spine. It is agreed however that, as Louis's blood dripped to the ground, many in the crowd ran forward to dip their handkerchiefs in it.

Man cuts off finger in court over debt

Fri Jan 16, 12:31 PM

LISBON (Reuters) - A Portuguese businessman said he cut off one of his fingers in court with a butcher's knife in an "act of despair" after a judge refused his offer to settle a 170,000 euro debt and said part of his farm must be sold.

"My intention was to tear up all the case papers and splatter them with blood so I could prevent the expropriation order for my land," Orico Silva was quoted as saying in local media after his drastic action in the court house.

Silva, who owns a 20 hectare (50 acre) farm in the central town of Figueira da Foz, was being sued by a company for holding onto a cash deposit on a land deal which had fallen through, the local newspaper said.

"I freaked out when the judge refused my offer to pay the debt and ordered the sale of part of my land. I told her I had a 1.2 million euro bank guarantee which would have allowed me to pay the debt," Silva said.

When he went to take the bank papers from his briefcase, he noticed the butcher's knife he had recently bought at a market and decided to cut off his index finger, using a court desk as a chopping board. He then cut the finger into three.

"I didn't feel anything, I could even have cut off all my fingers. It was an act of despair," he said.

(Reporting by Shrikesh Laxmidas; editing by Tim Pearce)

New Web site in Japan maps out smells

Tue Jan 13, 1:21 PM

By Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press

TOKYO-Japanese are taking their noses global with a Web site that describes different odors around the world and pinpoints where they can be found on a map.

Launched in December, the "Nioi-bu," or Smell Club, has registered more than 160 scents around the world, ranging from "steam coming out of a rice cooker" to "used socks in the summer," and pinpointed their locations on a Google map.

Nearly 200 members, called "smellists," have joined the Japanese-language only site, said Kayo Matsubara, spokeswoman of its operator, KAYAC Inc.

Users can either click on a balloon on the world map on the Web site, or use an index to find each scent if they're not yet on the map.

Some of what they report: "A toasty odor of cow dung" in Fujisawa City, just southwest of Tokyo. In Kamakura, eastern Japan, "cats with halitosis" were suspected to be roaming about.

"All that is missing on the web is a smelling function," Matsubara said. "That's our next challenge."

Not all reports are of stenches, with others including mouth-watering dishes, fresh laundry, greenery and scented soap. From Paris, there is a "scent of verbena soap near a monastery," and from Thailand's ancient capital Ayuthaya, a mix of "incense, grass, dirt and wild dogs."

Tue Jan 13, 12:08 AM

WASHINGTON, (AFP) - A longer ring finger than an index finger denotes a more successful financial trader, British researchers said in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Previous research found that the length ratio between the index finger and the ring finger, termed 2D:4D, is a measure of prenatal exposure to androgens (male hormones) that can affect the developing brain giving it increased confidence and reaction times.

University of Cambridge researcher and chief author of the study John Coates said androgens improve the concentration and reflexes needed in high-end financial trading.

In their study, researchers measured the fingers of 44 male traders in the City of London who were engaged in trading that involved rapid decision-making and quick physical reactions.

They then correlated finger length ratio to the traders' profits and losses during the preceding 20 months, concluding that a lower 2D:4D ratio predicted higher long-term profitability and longer careers in the business.

"The success and persistence of traders exposed to high levels of prenatal androgens suggests that financial markets may be influenced by traders' biological traits," the researchers said in the study.

Could we reduce love to a pill? Maybe, says expert

Wed Jan 7, 1:35 PM

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Could a pill or a squirt up your nose save your marriage? Maybe, according to a researcher who is studying the chemical basis of that most elusive of emotions -- love.

Larry Young says his ultimate quest is not a high-tech love potion but to shed light on serious conditions like autism, which affects the ability to form social attachments, by studying brain chemicals involved in emotional attachment.

"Biologists may soon be able to reduce certain mental states associated with love to a biochemical chain of events," Young, of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, wrote in the journal Nature.

His study of prairie voles has shown that a quick dose of the right hormone can drastically alter relationships.

The cute rodents are a good model for human relationships, Young said. Unlike many other animals, they form lifelong pairs and raise their young together.

But this behavior is easy to change, Young says.

"It's a chemical reaction. At least in voles we know that if you take a female and place her with a male and infuse her brain with oxytocin, she will quickly bond with that male," he said in a telephone interview.

Taking away her natural levels of oxytocin -- a hormone involved in labor, nursing and social bonding -- means she will reject a male as a mate no matter how many times she physically copulates with him.

"Experiments have shown that a nasal squirt of oxytocin enhances trust and tunes people into others' emotions," Young wrote in the Nature article.

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"Internet entrepreneurs are already marketing products such as Enhanced Liquid Trust, a cologne-like mixture of oxytocin and pheromones designed to boost the dating and relationship area of your life," he wrote.

Young sees a potential role in fixing damaged marriages.

"If we could maybe use a drug in combination with marital therapy, that may be desirable," he said.

Young is also convinced that love does not boil down to one single hormone. Other studies have shown that differences in a gene called major histocompatibility complex, which affects the immune system, may be involved in initial sexual attraction. For males, the hormone vasopressin appears to be more important.

But it is clearly biological. "I think love in humans evolved to draw us together," he said.

Which means feelings of love likely exist in other animals.

"Any mammal, when the mother has babies, they are bonded to those babies and would do anything to protect those babies. That is an ancient brain chemical that is ubiquitous, and stimulates the bond," he said.

Humans -- and perhaps prairie voles -- have evolved to use that mechanism to stimulate pair bonds, Young believes.

"Either way, recent advances in the biology of pair bonding mean it won't be long before an unscrupulous suitor could slip a pharmaceutical 'love potion' in our drink. And if they did, would we care? After all, love is insanity," he wrote.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by Julie Steenhuysen and David Storey)