For almost 90 years Amelia Earhart’s disappearance has captivated the world.

The pioneering aviatrix was trying to become the first woman to fly around the globe when her plane vanished close to Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean in 1937.

No trace of her or her navigator Fred Noonan were ever found, triggering a wave of outlandish speculation that included a theory she died as a castaway on a remote island and was eaten by giant crabs.

Then, last year, scientific analysis shared with MailOnline revealed a series of hidden letters and numbers etched on an aluminium panel which washed up on Nikumaroro Island in the western Pacific close to where Earhart’s aircraft went missing.

It sparked huge excitement that investigators were close to solving one of the 20th century’s most enduring mysteries, but sadly those hopes have now been dashed — at least for the time being.

Meticulous analysis has all-but confirmed that the panel did not belong to Earhart’s Lockheed Electra but instead was part of a plane that crashed during World War Two at least six years later.

All is not lost, however.

That’s because experts have revealed a new image currently undergoing forensic analysis which they think shows an engine cover buried underwater close to Nikumaroro that could have come from Earhart’s plane.

Ric Gillespie is executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has led The Earhart Project for more than three decades.

He told MailOnline that a forensic imaging specialist was currently analysing an underwater picture taken during an expedition to Nikumaroro in 2009.  

‘There is an object in the photo that appears to be a Lockheed Electra engine cowling,’ Mr Gillespie said.

‘The similarity to an engine cowling and prop shaft was not noticed until years later and the exact location was not noted at the time, which meant attempts to re-locate the object were unsuccessful.’

If the forensic analysis reveals it is an engine cover from Earhart’s plane, it wouldn’t immediately reveal what happened to the famous aviator.

But it could help rule out certain theories and strengthen others, including TIGHAR’s long-held belief that Earhart and Noonan landed and eventually died on Nikumaroro.

The group had hoped that the aluminium panel would also bolster their hypothesis.

It had been thought that the object, which was discovered in 1991 and called 2-2-V-1, could have been the metal patch that was added to Earhart’s aircraft when repairs were made in Miami during her ill-fated round-the-world flight attempt. 

Scientists last year uncovered letters and numbers not visible to the human eye that experts said at the time could be related to a manufacturing code. 

The letters and numbers ‘D24’, ‘XRO’ and either ‘335’ or ‘385’ were found to have been etched on the aluminium panel.

This led to frantic attempts to trace the origins of the hidden text by investigators and amateur sleuths alike, only for the search to come to an anticlimactic conclusion. 

‘Our forensic imaging specialist Jeff Glickman is still working on his final report, but it is looking like 2-2-V-1 is from the upper wing surface of a WWII Douglas C-47,’ Mr Gillespie said.

‘Disappointing after all these years and so many promising similarities to the patch on Earhart’s Electra, but science is what it is. 

‘This, of course, has no bearing on all of the other evidence that puts Earhart on Nikumaroro.’ 

Experts established that the ‘D’, as well as the letters ‘AD’ on another part of the exterior surface, were the surviving remnants of labelling stamped on the panel when it was made.

They then discovered that the US company Alcoa, which has been manufacturing aluminium since 1888, used to stamp some of its sheets with ‘ALCLAD 24S-T’.

This is what the investigators think was printed on the panel, with only ‘D24’ still visible under forensic analysis. 

When Earhart’s Electra was built in early 1936, aluminum sheet used by Lockheed was stamped ‘ALC24ST’ – so missing the letters ‘LAD’ – but the patch was of course added a year later in May 1937.

This meant that Alcoa labelling would have had to have changed to ‘ALCLAD 24S-T’ by this time, which the investigators found to be unlikely because ‘ALC24ST’ was still being used right up until 1942.

There then appears to have been a transition to the new ‘ALCLAD’ labelling in 1943, leading experts to conclude that the panel washed up on Nikumaroro in all likelihood belonged to a World War Two plane and not Earhart’s Electra. 

In terms of the other text, the meaning of the handwritten letters ‘XRO’ remains elusive, while experts are also mystified by the numbers ‘335’ or ‘385’.

One theory is that they may not really be there at all and are actually what is called a pareidolic illusion.

This is a phenomenon where the human mind wants to make sense of what the eyes see, so creates a meaning which isn’t real.

Investigators think such an explanation is ‘unlikely’, however, because three numbers in a row would seem too much of a coincidence.

Unfortunately, this was not the only blow to finding out what happened to Earhart. 

Bone fragments discovered on Nikumaroro three years after she vanished – only to go missing before being unearthed again in a museum decades later – raised hopes that they may belong to the aviator.

World-renowned forensic anthropologist Erin Kimmerle used the fragments to reconstruct a skull that she believed belonged to a female, before sending the remains for DNA testing to determine if they matched any of Earthart’s relatives.

However, the University of South Florida scientist confirmed to MailOnline that this turned out not to be the case. 

Despite these latest setbacks, Mr Gillespie remains upbeat about the potential engine cowling discovery.

He also claims there is scientific evidence which ‘conclusively puts Earhart on Nikumaroro’.

This includes:  

• 57 radio distress calls heard over a period of five days that Mr Gillespie says could only have been sent from Earhart’s aircraft
• Five directional bearings taken on radio distress calls by Pan American Airways and the U.S. Coast Guard that cross at Nikumaroro
• A photograph showing the wreckage of Lockheed Electra landing gear on the reef at Nikumaroro taken on October 15, 1937

The mystery began in 1937 when Earhart and Noonan’s plane disappeared close to Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean.

Despite a rescue attempt lasting 17 days and scouring more than 250,000 square miles of ocean, the pair were never found. 

It is generally believed that their aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea, but some people have disputed that.

Theories range from her dying as a castaway after landing her plane on Nikumaroro, to being captured and held hostage by the Japanese, or even assuming a false identity and returning to the US.

The latter is based on an archival photograph showing Earhart and Noonan alive on a dock in the Marshall Islands, hundreds of miles from Howland.

With a definitive explanation remaining tantalisingly out of reach, the various wild and whacky theories will continue to rage on until more concrete evidence comes to light.

The aluminium panel and DNA test of bone fragments may have come up empty, but perhaps the forensic analysis of the image alleged to show an engine cowling from Earhart’s plane will be the key to unlocking the answers investigators crave.

Until then, the hunt continues.

A woman who was born without a uterus has shared how the UK’s first womb transplant has given her a ‘glimmer of hope’ that she can one day carry her own child.

Hannah Vaughan, who lives in Cheshire, found out that she had Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome when she was 16 — a condition that means she doesn’t have a womb so is unable to become pregnant.

The 24-year-old said the diagnosis left her feeling ‘quite isolated’ and ‘very different’.

However, surgeons in the UK yesterday revealed that they had performed the nation’s first womb transplant in a 34-year-old woman with MRKH.

The social care worker said she is ‘unbelievably happy’ that the groundbreaking procedure went well and that she would ‘not even think twice’ about undergoing the same op.

Miss Vaughan said that receiving her diagnosis of MRKH was ‘a nice feeling at that age because I was still becoming me and have always wanted to have children’.

Miss Vaughan said: ‘Even though I had lots of people around me, I still felt isolated.

‘At that age, I thought I could put it to the back of my mind a little bit because I’m not ready just yet, but at the same time — it still affected me every day and I had counselling at the time.’

The condition affects about one in every 5,000 women.

It means a woman has been born with an underdeveloped womb or without a womb, cervix and upper vagina. Their ovaries and external genitalia appear normal. 

The first sign of MRKH is usually that a girl does not start having periods. Sex may also be difficult because the vagina may be short. 

Until now, the only way sufferers could have a biological child was by taking eggs from their ovaries, fertilising them and implanting them in another woman. But this option isn’t available to all woman with MRKH.

But a 34-year-old with MRKH with this week revealed as the first person in the UK to receive a womb transplant, from her sister, at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, which is part of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. 

Miss Vaughan said news of the transplant was ‘amazing’ to hear as she was told about it early on in her diagnosis, but thought it was ‘unlikely’ to have happened by the time she was ready to start planning to have children.

‘When I found out I had MRKH, I was like that’s not going to be ready when I’m ready’, she said.

‘I’m just so unbelievably happy for that woman — bless her.

‘It just gives you that glimmer of hope that if that opportunity is there and I am able to do that safely and successfully, I would not even think twice about doing that.’

She added that she found solace in the fact that the receiver of the womb transplant also has MRKH and to see that the procedure ‘is going well for her’.

Miss Vaughan has researched the womb transplant procedure, but said she is aware of the potential risks, which include organ rejection, and said she would monitor the outcome of future womb transplants.

Before receiving her new womb, the unidentified recipient had two rounds of fertility stimulation to produce eggs, followed by intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) to create embryos.

In order to qualify for a womb transplant, Miss Vaughan said: ‘I believe I would need to have frozen my embryos (which I am in the process of doing) and there are lots of health tests in order to progress through the treatment.’

Miss Vaughan and her partner, Luke Seddon-Rimmer, whom she has been with for nearly three years, are in the process of starting their in vitro fertilisation (IVF) journey after initial tests found that she had a ‘quite low ovarian reserve’, which means that she has a lower number of eggs in the ovaries than expected for her age.

She said she would ‘love’ to have a child with Mr Seddon-Rimmer, whom she said reacted to her condition ‘very well’.

‘Having a child of my own and carrying my own child would be the most incredible thing in the whole world for me’, she said.

‘Unless you have MRKH or have an experience with something which may reduce your chances of having your own children, it is hard to understand what it is like.’

Pat Bennett, 68, once rode horses as an equestrian, jogged daily and worked in human resources, until a rare illness robbed her of her ability to speak in 2012.

But help is on the way thanks to four baby-aspirin-sized sensors implanted in her brain, part of a clinical trial at Stanford University.

The chips have helped Bennett communicate her thoughts directly from her mind to a computer monitor at a record-breaking 62 words per minute — over three times faster than the technology’s previous best.

Cognitive scientists and medical researchers outside Stanford are impressed as well.

One, Professor Philip Sabes at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies brain-machine interfaces and co-founded Elon Musk’s Neuralink, described the new study as a ‘big breakthrough.’

‘The performance in this paper is already at a level which many people who cannot speak would want, if the device were ready,’ Sabes told MIT Technology Review earlier this year, as the new Stanford research was still clearing peer review.  

‘People are going to want this,’ Sabes said.

The news comes just a few months after the FDA granted approval to Musk’s Neuralink, permitting the company to initiate human trials for its own competing brain-chip implant technology.

The Stanford results also follow efforts by the United Nations’ agency for science and culture (UNESCO) to develop proposals for how to regulate brain chip technology, which they worry could be abused for ‘neurosurveillance’ or even ‘forced re-education,’ threatening human rights worldwide.

For Bennett, however, this emerging research has been closer to miraculous than dystopian.

Since 2012, Bennett has struggled with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the same disease that took the life of Sandra Bullock’s partner Bryan Randall earlier this summer and famed physicist Stephen Hawking in 2018.  

Over the course of 26 sessions, each lasting about four hours, Bennett worked with an artificial-intelligence algorithm, helping to train the AI in how to identify which brain activity corresponds to 39 key phonemes, or sounds, used in spoken English.

Via the brain-sensor tech, which the Stanford researchers call an intracortical brain-computer interface (iBCI), Bennett would attempt to effectively communicate approximately 260 to 480 sentences per training session to the AI. 

The sentences were selected randomly from a large data set, SWITCHBOARD, sourced from a collection of telephone conversations collected by calculator-maker Texas Instruments for language research back in the 1990s.

The casual sentences included examples like, ‘I left right in the middle of it,’ and ‘It’s only been that way in the last five years.’

During sessions where the sentence options were held down to a 50-word vocabulary, Bennett and the Stanford team working with her were able to get the AI translator’s error rate down to 9.1 percent. 

When the vocabulary limit was expanded to 125,000 words, closer to the total number of English words in common use, the iCBI’s intended-speech AI had an uptick in its translation errors. The rate rose to 23.8 percent.  

While that error-rate leaves something to be desired, the researchers believed improvements could continue with more training and a wider interface, more implants in other words, interacting between the brain and the iBCI’s AI.

Already, the algorithm’s speed decoding thoughts to speech has bested all previous models three times over.  

The Stanford group’s iBCI was able to move at 62 words per minute, 3.4 times faster than the prior record-holder, and closer than ever to the natural rate of human conversation, 160 words per minute.

‘We’ve shown you can decode intended speech by recording activity from a very small area on the brain’s surface,’ according to Dr. Jaimie Henderson, the surgeon who performed the delicate installation of the iBCI electrodes onto the surface of Bennett’s brain.

Bennett, herself, personally testified to her own experience with the breakthrough results, writing via email that, ‘These initial results have proven the concept, and eventually technology will catch up to make it easily accessible to people who cannot speak.’ 

‘For those who are nonverbal, this means they can stay connected to the bigger world,’ Bennett wrote in an email supplied by Stanford, ‘perhaps continue to work, maintain friends and family relationships.’

Bennett had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a neurodegenerative disease, over a decade ago.

ALS attacks the neurons in the body’s central nervous system that control movement, but Bennett’s own experience with the ailment was a particularly rare variety of the disease.

‘When you think of ALS, you think of arm and leg impact,’ Bennett said. ‘But in a group of ALS patients, it begins with speech difficulties. I am unable to speak.’

Dr. Henderson and his co-authors published the results of their work with Bennett in Nature this Wednesday.

Scientists have mapped the Y chromosome for the first time in a breakthrough that could lead to treatments for male cancers and fertility issues.

The small, stumpy Y chromosome distinguishes men from women and has genes in areas that provide instructions for making proteins involved in sperm cell production and development.

Researchers have now mapped its entirety, revealing more than 62 million DNA base pairs – 30 million more than previously identified – and 41 new protein-coding genes that comprise the Y chromosome.

It was partially sequenced in 2003, but only 50 percent was uncovered.

While the scientists are still in the early stages of their discovery, they said the mapping could detect variants and link them to specific traits that can lead to personalized therapies for genetic diseases.

Previous research found that men can lose some or all of that genetic material as they age, but scientists have never fully understood why this happens and the effects it may have. 

The loss can increase the risk of cancer, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, and dwindling sperm counts that cause infertility.

Kateryna Makova from Penn State University and contributor to the study said: ‘The Y chromosome is by far the most difficult human chromosome to sequence and assemble.

‘Deciphering its complete sequence is a major scientific milestone. My group has been working on the Y chromosome for over 20 years, and I did not think it would be possible to obtain its complete sequence shortly.’ 

The X chromosome was fully sequenced in 2020 by researchers at NHGRI, which chose to sequence it first due to its link with a range of diseases, including hemophilia, chronic granulomatous disease and Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

There are 24 chromosomes, including Y and X, which leads to humans having 23 pairs, while other great apes have 24.

The Y chromosome was elusive due to its relatively complex structure. Unlike most other chromosomes, the Y comprises palindromes, or sequences that are the same forward and backward. 

The T2T Consortium, which ran the study funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI),  applied new DNA sequencing technologies, sequence assembly methods, and knowledge gained from generating the first gapless sequences for the other 23 human chromosomes to solve this mystery.

Adam Phillippy, a senior investigator at NHGRI and consortium leader, said: ‘The biggest surprise was how organized the repeats are.

‘We didn’t know what exactly made up the missing sequence. It could have been very chaotic, but instead, nearly half of the chromosome is made of alternating blocks of two specific repeating sequences known as satellite DNA. 

‘It makes a beautiful, quilt-like pattern.’ 

The 30 million new bases added to the Y chromosome reference will also be crucial for studying genome evolution. 

It will now be possible to study specific and unique Y chromosome sequence patterns, such as the structure of the two satellites and the location and copy numbers of the genes. 

In a second study by the University of Washington, researchers used the reference sequence to assemble Y chromosomes of 43 me with roots to Africa. 

The team found the participants shared a common ancestor from about 183,000 years ago, and the Y chromosomes were vastly different sizes, ranging from 45.2 million to 84.9 million base pairs in length.

Phillippy told Live Science that while developing treatments for diseases linked to the Y chromosome may not happen anytime soon, he is optimistic about the feat.

”This is like the blueprint we’re looking at, and if there are complete holes in it, you might not even know where to begin,’ he said. ‘But by having them filled in, we have the complete picture.’