Bampot

The first seeds are thought to have evolved around 372-359 million years ago in a period known as the Famennian (belonging to the Late Devonian). Fossil records indicate that almost all these seeds were surrounded by an additional protective structure known as the cupule and did not have wings. To date, only two groups of Famennian seeds have been reported to bear wings or wing-like structures, and one of these groups did not have cupules. These Famennian seeds all had four wings.

Wang et al. examined fossils of seed plants collected in Anhui province, China, which date to the Famennian period. The team identified a new group of seed plants named the Alasemenia genus. The seeds of these plants each had three wings but no cupules. The seeds formed on branches that did not have any leaves, which indicates the seeds may have performed photosynthesis (the process by which plants generate energy from sunlight). Mathematical modelling suggested that these three-winged seeds were better adapted to being dispersed by the wind than other seeds with one, two or four wings.

These findings suggest that during the Famennian the outer layer of some seeds that lacked cupules evolved wings to help the seeds disperse in the wind. It also indicates that seeds with four or three wings evolved first, followed by other groups of seed plants with fewer seed wings. Future studies may find more winged seeds and further our understanding of their evolutionary roles in the early history of seed plants.

Created by Tina Ross, this map details the kingdoms and states that existed in Europe at the beginning of the 11th century. While the Holy Roman Empire was the major power in Central Europe, other powerful states include the Caliphate of Cordoba and the Bulgarian Empire. Many smaller states also existed, including the kingdoms of Strathclyde and Naverre. The map also details the important cities and towns that existed in the year 1000.

Friday 13 October, 1307, is a date that echoes across history, spawning a deep-seated superstition about any Friday 13th. On that day, Philip IV, King of France, arrested hundreds of Knights Templar in France. Philip had been out to get the Templars since 1302. This had nothing to do with the global mythology that has since grown up around the Knights Templar, and it especially had nothing to do with the Holy Grail: it was simply that, as one of the richest organisations in Europe, the Templars had turned down a demand from Philip for a loan he needed to further his military adventures.

His campaign against the Templars extended to kidnapping Pope Boniface VIII in September 1303, and possibly poisoning his successor, Benedict XI in July 1304. In 1305 Philip finally got a Pope who would see things his way, when a Frenchman who had been a childhood friend became Pope Clement V. By 13 October 1307 Philip felt his position was strong enough for him to move against the Templars in France, arresting their members and seizing their treasury and assets.

Confessions of heresy and a wide range of other invented crimes forced out of the arrested French Templars gave Philip IV the ammunition he needed to try to persuade Pope Clement V that the Order should be suppressed worldwide. Clement V finally succumbed to the pressure, and issued an Edict to dissolve the Templars after the Council of Vienna in 1312. Templar properties and assets in countries previously sympathetic to them were seized, in many cases being transferred to the Knights Hospitaller of the Order of St John of Jerusalem. At the same time, many Knights Templar who had not already gone to ground were put on trial and executed. It had taken ten years for Philip to get even with the Templars, but get even he certainly had.

In Scotland, King Robert the Bruce, himself under excommunication from the Church after his murder of the Red Comyn, was less inclined than most European monarchs to rigorously enforce all aspects of the Papal Edict dissolving the Templars. As elsewhere, their Scottish lands and properties, such as Temple itself and the church at Tullich, were transferred to the Knights of St John, but there was little persecution of individual members of the Order in Scotland, and many Knights Templar were allowed simply to become Knights of St John.

Since they had first been established in Scotland by David I in 1153, the main Scottish base of the Knights Templar had been 15 miles south of Edinburgh at a place called Balantradoch. Here they had a monastery on the east bank of the River South Esk. In 1312 ownership of the monastery was transferred to the Knights Hospitaller of the Order of St John, and became part of the property they administered from their Scottish headquarters at Torphichen Preceptory near Linlithgow.

During the 1500s Balantradoch came to be known as Temple, reflecting its earlier history.

One of the most studied organisms on Earth has a nose for danger that scientists are just beginning to understand.

The mere whiff of dangerous bacteria is enough to put the immune system of a roundworm on high alert.

Like humans smelling 'off' food from the fridge, the olfactory neurons of the nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans, may serve as an early warning sign for bad food.

Instead of stopping the worm from eating the pathogen, however, the stink of harmful bacteria prepares the worm's gut for the worst.

Source:

Olfaction regulates peripheral mitophagy and mitochondrial function

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn0014

Highly reactive complex molecules finding some sort of stability was a necessary step towards life getting started on Earth. Scientists think they've just discovered how these first began to stay intact and spark the journey towards organisms.

We haven't been able to explain how the simple molecules that would've been floating around in the primordial waters of early Earth eventually latched on to each other long enough to form something as complex as RNA (ribonucleic acid).

So researchers in Germany created conditions to match ancient Earth in their laboratory. They focused on RNA-like units, synthetic chemical components capable of combining with each other in different combinations to create evolving strings of 'information', just like our own genetic material.

Source:

Template-based copying in chemically fuelled dynamic combinatorial libraries

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-024-01570-5

But a study by Saul Newman from University College London, which is now being peer reviewed, suggests much data on human centenarians is bogus.

“I tracked down 80% of the people in the world who were older than 110,” says Newman, who found almost none of them had a birth certificate. “It’s a statistical garbage pile.”

Alarm bells have been ringing for a while. In 2010, a Japanese government review discovered 230,000 of the country’s centenarians were missing – presumably dead. And Newman says data suggests that some 72% of Greek centenarians are dead or missing, but their relatives haven’t declared as much, possibly to keep collecting their pensions.

Newman believes this is why blue zones appear in poor, rural areas, places where there’s substandard record-keeping and pressure to commit pension fraud. In the UK, the relatively poor London borough of Tower Hamlets has the highest proportion of 105-year-olds in the country, despite having a lower-than-average life expectancy overall. And longevity is linked to wealth – the countries in the world with the highest average life expectancy are rich ones.

Deep down, in an ocean beneath its ice shell, Jupiter’s moon Europa might be temperate and nutrient-rich, an ideal environment for some form of life — what scientists would call “habitable.” NASA’s Europa Clipper mission aims to find out.

Europa Clipper’s elongated, looping orbit around Jupiter will minimize the spacecraft’s exposure to intense radiation while allowing it to dive in for close passes by Europa. Using a formidable array of instruments for each of the mission’s 49 flybys, scientists will be able to “see” how thick the moon’s icy shell is and gain a deeper understanding of the vast ocean beneath. They’ll inventory material on the surface that might have come up from below, search for the fingerprints of organic compounds that form life’s building blocks, and sample any gases ejected from the moon for evidence of habitability.

Frederick Valentich was an Australian pilot who disappeared while on a 125-nautical-mile (232 km) training flight in a Cessna 182L light aircraft, registered VH-DSJ, over Bass Strait.

On the evening of Saturday 21 October 1978, twenty-year-old Valentich informed Melbourne air traffic control that he was being accompanied by an aircraft about 1,000 feet (300 m) above him and that his engine had begun running roughly, before finally reporting: "It's not an aircraft."

Valentich radioed Melbourne Flight Service at 7:06 pm to report that an unidentified aircraft was following him at 4,500 feet (1,400 m). He was told there was no known traffic at that level. Valentich said he could see a large unknown aircraft which appeared to be illuminated by four bright landing lights. He was unable to confirm its type, but said it had passed about 1,000 feet (300 m) overhead and was moving at high speed. Valentich then reported that the aircraft was approaching him from the east and said the other pilot might be purposely toying with him. Valentich said the aircraft was "orbiting" above him and that it had a shiny metal surface and a green light on it. Valentich further reported that he was experiencing engine problems. Asked to identify the aircraft, Valentich radioed: "It's not an aircraft." His transmission was then interrupted by unidentified noise described as "metallic, scraping sounds" before all contact was lost.

Congress plans UFO hearings for November

• A hearing on UAPs last year garnered bipartisan support

• A whistleblower has named an alleged program to reverse-engineer UAPs

• Both the House and Senate plan to hold UAP hearings

Shellenberger said the whistleblower claims the program is currently being run and is designed to reverse-engineer UAPs.

“Whether or not you think there are extraterrestrial or nonhuman intelligence, even if you think that all of this is just some sort of advanced craft, the allegation here by a new whistleblower, verified by other sources in a position to know, is that the Defense Department has kept secret this information from Congress, which is a violation of the Constitution,”

When the Paris agreement on climate change was gavelled into being in December 2015, it briefly looked like that rarest of things: a political victory for climate activists and delegates from the poorest regions of the world that, due to colonisation by today’s wealthy nations, have contributed little to the climate crisis – but stand to suffer its worst ravages.

The world had finally agreed an upper limit for global warming. And in a move that stunned most experts, it had embraced the stretch target of 1.5°C, the boundary that small island states, acutely threatened by sea-level rise, had tirelessly pushed for years.

Or so, at least, it seemed. For soon, the ambitious Paris agreement limit turned out to be not much of a limit at all....

De facto, what they said was this: staying below a temperature limit is the same as first crossing it and then, a few decades hence, using methods of removing carbon from the atmosphere to dial temperatures back down again.

From some corners of the scientific literature came the assertion that this was nothing more than fantasy. A new study published in Nature has now confirmed this critique.

Named after the Irish monk Saint Donan, who is believed to have lived here in the sixth century, Kildonan lies at the south-eastern extremity of the Isle of Arran. Reached via a loop of minor road dropping to the shore, the village stands out for two reasons.

The first is that it is home to an excellent beach which offers stretches of sand, a relative rarity on Arran. The second is more immediately obvious as you approach it. The views south over the village to the Ayrshire coast and the islands of Pladda and Ailsa Craig are simply superb.

Kildonan also boasts a castle, standing out on the old raised beach behind and above the village. It was once, with Lochranza Castle and Brodick Castle, one of three fortresses guarding Arran's strategically important position in the approaches to the Clyde. Today's Kildonan Castle is only a shadow of its former self, but still reflects its origins as a 13th Century keep.

The castle was originally built by the Lords of the Isles, but by 1406 was in the ownership of Robert III, who in that year passed it on to his illegitimate son, John Stewart of Ardgowan. In 1544 it was acquired by the Hamilton family, the Earls of Arran.

How can it be that millions of Scots are struggling to pay essential bills?

It could be because economic growth as measured by GDP was never designed as a yardstick of a society’s success or otherwise. It only really measures financial flows (it’s the same in GDP terms whether you spend £10 billion to build affordable, quality social housing or on bagging yourself a gold-plated SUV with diamond-inlaid wheel trims, but one might just possibly be better than the other).

GDP growth is, however, constantly touted as a proxy for societal success – most often by those with money and power, because they seem to be profiting very nicely from the status quo, thanks very much.

In fact, growth-focused neoliberal economic policies are strongly linked to Scotland’s poor health, poverty and mortality indicators over the past 30 years, earning it the title of “the sick man of Europe”.

These indicators have worsened due to the ‘austerity agenda’ of reduced public spending, tax rises, and the privatisation of public services and/or the responsibility for care being transferred to individuals that has been UK government policy since 2010, and which continues to this day.