Cask from the past: archaeologists discover 5,000-year-old beer recipe

Chinese villagers could have been raising a pint 5,000 years ago, according to new research.

Archaeologists studying vessels unearthed in the Shaanxi province of China say they’ve uncovered beer-making equipment dating from between 3400 and 2900 BC - an era known as the late Yangshao period - and figured out the recipe to boot.

The beer of yesteryear

 

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“China has an early tradition of fermentation and evidence of rice-based fermented beverage has been found from the 9000-year-old Jiahu site. However, to our knowledge, [the new discovery] is the first direct evidence of in situ beer making in China,” said Jiajing Wang of Stanford University, first author of the new research.

The team examined residues in the vessels to reveal that the brew was made from a wide range of plants, including broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum), Job’s tears (Coix lacryma-jobi) and barley.

The discovery marks the earliest known evidence of barley being used in China, suggesting that the crop arrived in the country around 1,000 years earlier than previously thought. =read more

Bones of Thomas Becket to return to Canterbury – via Hungary

A fragment of bone believed to come from the body of Thomas Becket is to return to England from Hungary for the first time in more than 800 years in a vivid symbol of reconciliation between Anglicans and Roman Catholics.

The relic, held in the Basilica of Esztergom, the country’s most important Catholic church, is to form the centrepiece of an elaborate week-long “pilgrimage” to London and Canterbury involving the Hungarian President János Áder, and top-level clerics from the two churches.

It will be reunited temporarily with a handful of other relics revered for their associations with the murdered archbishop as it travels from his birthplace on Cheapside in the City of London to the site of his murder in Canterbury Cathedral.-read more

Astigmatism

Introduction 

Astigmatism is a common and usually minor eye condition that causes blurred or distorted vision.

It occurs when the cornea or lens isn't a perfectly curved shape. Many people who wear glasses have some degree of astigmatism.

Astigmatism belongs to a group of related eye conditions known as refractive errors. Other common refractive errors include:

• short-sightedness (myopia)
• long-sightedness (hypermetropia)

If you have astigmatism, it's likely you'll also have one of these conditions.

Left untreated, astigmatism can cause headaches, eye strain and fatigue (tiredness), particularly after doing tasks that involve focusing on something for long periods, such as reading or using a computer.

What causes astigmatism?

Astigmatism is usually the result of an irregular-shaped cornea or lens. The cornea is the transparent layer of tissue at the front of the eye.

The cornea should be regularly curved like the surface of a football, but in cases of astigmatism it has an irregular curve, more like the shape of a rugby ball. This means that light rays entering the eye aren't focused properly, creating a blurred image.read more

traffic jam relief

this is an unusual or weird way to help you in a traffic jam.it is a device called hewee go active -jockstrap like item-149 pounds -a man can wee through a washable  and tear resistant plastic bag and even hols up to a pint .read more

Magic Mushrooms Could Help Fight Depression

Getting high on a psychedelic drug extracted from "magic mushrooms" could help those who struggle with incurable depression, new research suggests.

Half of patients in a small pilot study of 12 people had reduced symptoms three months after taking psilocybin capsules.

While the study authors warn that it is too early to make strong conclusions about the use of the drug, it did show that more research was needed.

Lead author Dr Robin Carhart-Harris from Imperial College London said: "This is the first time that psilocybin has been investigated as a potential treatment for major depression.

"Treatment-resistant depression is common, disabling and extremely difficult to treat.

"New treatments are urgently needed, and our study shows that psilocybin is a promising area of future research.

"The results are encouraging and we now need larger trials to understand whether the effects we saw in this study translate into read more

bowhead whale seen in British waters.

this was a sighting of a seven metre long bowhead whale in shallow waters -long rock beach ,near penzance ,cornwall.this is only the second recorded sighting in European water,grist in isle of scilly last year ,see wiki leak for info on bowhead whale-read more -wiki link

Carry On films coming back

The 'Carry On' franchise is being brought back to life by 'Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps' writers Board Comedy Tim Dawson and Susan Nickson.

The 'Carry On' franchise is being revived.

The famed bawdy big screen British comedy series, which originally ran from 1958 to 1978 with a brief comeback in 1992 and comprised of 31 films, is being brought back to life with two new titles 'Carry On Doctors' and 'Carry On Campus' and the first release scheduled for 2017.

'Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps' creator Susan Nickson and Tim Dawson, who worked on the sitcom from 2008 until 2009, are penning the scripts.

A source told The Sun newspaper: "This has been on the cards for some time. All being well with work on the script it will start shooting in October with a release pencilled in for 2017 - which will coincide with the 25th anniversary on the last film. There's a brilliant team behind this and they're determined to make it a success.read more

Lasers could 'cloak Earth from aliens'

We should shine lasers into space if we want to hide our presence from aliens, two US-based astronomers suggest.

The beams could compensate for the dip in light the Earth creates when it passes in front of the Sun, as viewed from far-off worlds, they contend.

A number of researchers have questioned the wisdom of advertising our existence to the galaxy.

They fear that if aliens did visit us they might not be very friendly, and could introduce disease.

The analogy is Europeans arriving in the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries. The contact wrought havoc in the health of indigenous populations.

David Kipping and Alex Teachey from Columbia University in New York say that if we are fearful of a similar outcome from an alien encounter then lasers offer a solution.

The team has calculated what would be required to cloak the Earth and published the concept in a paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.read more on bbc link=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35938886

Dinosaur find resolves T. rex mystery

A newly discovered species of Tyrannosaur - the group of meat-eating dinosaurs to which the infamous T. rex belongs - could hold the key to how these creatures grew so huge.

Scientists from the University of Edinburgh, along with US and Russian colleagues, discovered the fossilised remains of the animal in Uzbekistan.
They have named it Timurlengia.
A study of the 90-million-year-old beast suggested its ears and brain were crucial in Tyrannosaurs' dominance.
"We have a totally new species of dinosaur," explained lead researcher Dr Stephen Brusatte from the University of Edinburgh.
"It's one of the very closest cousins of T. rex, but a lot smaller - about the size of a horse.
"And it comes from the middle part of the Cretaceous period - a point where we have a huge gap in the fossil record."
This "frustrating" gap has made T. rex - which was found later in the period and was up to 13m head to tail - something of an evolutionary mystery. That is what this find has helped to resolve.read more on bbc link=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35806780

Harlow tick disease dog 'lucky to be alive'

A dog owner says her pet is "lucky to be alive" after contracting a deadly tick-borne disease that is expected to spread around the UK.

An outbreak of babesiosis has been identified for the first time in this country, and experts say it will be impossible to contain.
Two dogs in Essex have died and three others needed blood transfusions.
American Bulldog Ollie is thought to be the first dog in the UK to be diagnosed with the disease.
Owner Julie Newman, from Harlow, said she is "hugely relieved" her pet survived the illness following a transfusion.
Read live updates on this story
"It was really touch-and-go if he would make it.
"He was really lethargic, he normally has so much energy but he just lost it, he went really strange and we noticed he had blood in his urine," she said.=read more on bbc link=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-35831572

Giant web probes spider's sense of vibration

Inside a lab in Oregon, US, a two-metre spider web made of aluminium and rope is beginning to unlock how orb weavers pinpoint struggling prey.

When an unlucky insect lands in a web, it is vibrations that bring the spider scuttling from the centre of its trap.
How spiders interpret those signals is a mystery - so physicists have built this replica to figure it out.
They unveiled the design and their first results on Friday at a meeting of the American Physical Society (APS).
"We wove the web using two different kinds of rope, the same way as spiders use two different formulations of silk," said Ross Hatton from Oregon State University.
The radial strands that fan out from the centre are made of stiff, nylon parachute cable, while elastic bungee cords make up the "spiral strands".
The whole thing sits in an octagonal aluminium frame, with a speaker strapped to one corner to deliver some hefty vibrations.=READ MORE =BBC LINK=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35849341

(3,000-Year-Old Weapons Found In Arabia

An incredible cache of bronze weapons dating back almost 3,000 years has been unearthed in the Arabian Peninsula. Bows, arrows, daggers and axes were found scattered within the remains of what is believed to be an ancient religious building. Intriguingly, they are all small-scale models made from metal and are thought to be purely ornamental, perhaps intended an offering to a god of war. Experts believe the weapons, which date from 900 to 600 BC, were once displayed on shelves, furniture or hung on walls, before they fell off and were discovered alongside ritualistic objects. Two collections of items are of particular interest to archaeologists - small quivers entirely made of bronze, each containing six arrows and other metal weapons.=read more =http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c2a_1457717471

Wild mountain lion suspected of eating koala at Los Angeles zoo

When Killarney, a 14-year-old koala bear, went missing from her pen at Los Angeles zoo, staff were baffled.

Now investigations have thrown up a prime suspect in the mystery disappearance - a wild mountain lion roaming the city’s urban neighbourhoods and seeking to prey on the zoo’s inhabitants.

P-22 is probably the only mountain lion to ever eat koala. what a hipster foodie! https://t.co/iM9GtnPRIE

— dolly m (@loather) March 10, 2016

The six-year-old lion, dubbed P-22, has already gained celebrity status after emerging last year from Griffith Park - America’s biggest urban park - to enter the normally sleepy Los Feliz neighbourhood, causing panic and a media frenzy by taking refuge in the crawl space underneath a house before casually leaving again.

Officials have fitted a colar around his neck with a GPS device to track his movements.

Evidence that he absconded with the unfortunate Killarney is circumstantial rather than forensic - yet, zoo officials say, compelling.=read more =http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/12190540/Wild-mountain-lion-suspected-of-eating-koala-at-Los-Angeles-zoo.html

An exceptional fossil skull from South America and the origins of the archosauriform radiation

Birds, dinosaurs, crocodilians, pterosaurs and their close relatives form the highly diverse clade Archosauriformes. Archosauriforms have a deep evolutionary history, originating in the late Permian, prior to the end-Permian mass extinction, and radiating in the Triassic to dominate Mesozoic ecosystems. However, the origins of this clade and its extraordinarily successful body plan remain obscure. Here, we describe an exceptionally preserved fossil skull from the Lower Triassic of Brazil, representing a new species, Teyujagua paradoxa, transitional in morphology between archosauriforms and more primitive reptiles. This skull reveals for the first time the mosaic assembly of key features of the archosauriform skull, including the antorbital and mandibular fenestrae, serrated teeth, and closed lower temporal bar. Phylogenetic analysis recovers Teyujagua as the sister taxon to Archosauriformes, and is congruent with a two-phase model of early archosauriform evolution, in=read more =http://www.nature.com/articles/srep22817

Do Chimpanzees Believe In God? Mysterious Chimp Behavior Could Be A Form Of Sacred Ritual

Mysterious stone-throwing behavior of chimpanzees observed in the heart of West Africa may signify a form of sacred ritual, a new study has found.

The reason for this behavior is not yet clearly known, but at this point, researchers say that it may possibly have to do with cultural elements — belief in God, maybe.

Mysterious Chimpanzees

Chimpanzees are known to be ingenious such that it uses different tools to hunt down food or carry out a task that needs to be done. The choice of which tools to use depends mainly on the location where the species live.

Scientists have been studying chimpanzees for nearly 60 years now, mostly in long-term researches. Despite the seemingly vast studies about chimps, researchers cannot clearly say that studies in small number of sites can represent chimpanzee populations in other locations.read more =http://www.techtimes.com/articles/138740/20160305/do-chimpanzees-believe-in-god-mysterious-chimp-behavior-could-be-a-form-of-sacred-ritual.htm

Horror as overtaking car smashes into a great-grandmother's funeral cortege and kills the horse pulling her coffin

A grieving family was left devastated after a car smashed into a great-grandmother's horse-drawn funeral cortege and killed one of the animals.

Elizabeth Morris's coffin was being taken to the crematorium in Bridgend, South Wales, when a Renault Scenic attempted to overtake the cortege and careered into the side.

The 74-year-old's bereft family then watched in horror as the carriage driver Mark Evans, 58, was thrown from the vehicle. His Friesian stallion Will was also knocked to the ground in the smash and later had to be put down due to serious injuries.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3465705/Car-smashes-great-grandmother-s-funeral-cortege-kills-horse-pulling-coffin.html#ixzz41Tx3U9mA
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Man Refuses To Abandon Chimp, Even Though Everyone Else Has

For more than 30 years, Ponso the chimp has been living on a deserted island off the Ivory Coast. He has no source of food or water, and his companions all died years ago.
But thanks to one man, he's alive.
For several years, a villager named Germain, despite his limited income, has stopped by to drop off food for the lonely chimp. While the diet of bread and bananas isn't enough for the roughly 40-year-old chimp to thrive, it's kept him alive — and it's clear he shows his gratitude.READ MORE =https://www.thedodo.com/ponso-chimp-left-to-die-1563220792.html

With the release of Street Fighter V, it's time to look back at the comic books that have expanded the tales of our favorite warriors.

There's no better time to look back at Street Fighter comics than the present. The latest installment of the fighting franchise, Street Fighter V, has finally arrived and there's even a new comic book from UDON. And it's definitely not the first. You could say that the series has as expansive a history in the comics as it does on consoles.
In various forms, Street Fighter has been released across the last two decades in different levels of quality. Ever since the popularity of Street Fighter II, the inclusion of it into any kind of adaptation has been a no-brainer. Not only was it one of the most popular games of the 90's, but its world and characters are only half-defined and there's creative freedom in that. You have a huge cast of names who are identified by just their appearances, gestures, a handful of quotes, several paragraphs of backstory, and an ending cutscene. Considering the video games are constantly redefining themselves (ie. how the Street Fighter Alpha games feel so different from the Street Fighter III games), there are always new characters to incorporate and old characters to revisit. read more =http://www.denofgeek.us/books-comics/street-fighter/235222/the-strange-history-of-street-fighter-comics

Fungi from goats' guts could lead to better biofuels

The legendary abilities of goats and sheep to digest a wide range of inedible materials could help scientists produce cheaper biofuels.

Researchers say fungi from the stomachs of these animals produce flexible enzymes that can break down a wide variety of plant materials.
The scientists say that in tests, the fungi performed as well as the best engineered attempts from industry.
The study has been published in the journal, Science.

Fuel from food

Environmentalists have long criticised the current generation of biofuels that are produced from crops, such as maize, as they believe that using land for fuel instead of food drives up prices and impacts the poor.
Researchers have had some success making usable fuel from food and animal waste. But, so far, the ability to efficiently use the vast majority of cheap, waste organic material has eluded them.
The problem with turning wood chips and grasses into fuel is the matrix of complex molecules found in the cell walls of these tough materials.
Industrial attempts to break these down into the type of sugars that can be refined for fuel often require preheating or treatment with chemicals, which add to the complexity and the cost.read more =http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35612554

Last piece of Einstein’s theory of relativity in line for final ‘proof’

. The last piece of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity may be about to fall into place 100 years after he first revealed it to the world. Scientists searching for minute traces of gravitational waves, infinitesimally subtle distortions through space-time that Einstein predicted would ripple off giant black holes and dying stars millions of light years away, may be about to announce one of the biggest breakthroughs in modern physics. Whispers have been circulating for months that a hypersensitive detector spanning the breadth of the US has finally caught the elusive phenomenon. The team is expected to make a definitive announcement tomorrow (Thursday). If they have found the trail left by gravitational waves, it will be more than just a vindication of Einstein’s mathematical masterpiece. The discovery would allow stargazers to map out hidden galaxies on the other side of the universe by looking out for almost imperceptible disturbances in our own.=READ MORE =http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/last-piece-of-einsteins-theory-of-relativity-in-line-for-final-proof/news-story/30709ff6ddc509e487f8b305b75fe8ed