Bampot

The species most commonly seen in our homes, especially at this time of year, is the giant house spider. They are one of the largest species in the UK and one of the fastest, reaching speeds of up to half a metre per second. It is facts like that that can make them sound terrifying, but if you see one running across the room, they are not out to attack you.

The common misconception is that house spiders come into our homes to seek shelter and warmth from the lowering autumn temperatures outside.But in fact the spiders we see are only more noticeable at this time of year because it is mating season for them. The spiders we believe are intruding have actually always been there. They are just out in search of a mate. When the male finally finds a female, he will mate with her numerous times over the space of a few weeks until eventually dying and being eaten by the female. The females can live for several years.

Another misconception is that spiders are the pests. Yes, they are uninvited and in many cases unwanted, but they are only there because there is a good food supply. It could mean there is another pest in your home that you cannot see. The spiders are then coming into eat the other insects and in turn taking care of the real pests. House spiders act as a free of charge pest control and the size of the spiders depends on how much they have eaten. So seeing big ones just means they are doing their jobs right.

The 2023 Planetary Defense Strategy focuses on six goals in total across Federal Departments and Agencies for the decade ahead:

Goal 1: Enhance NEO detection, tracking, and characterization capabilities. Early detection and tracking of a potential NEO impact threat provides the greatest leverage to adequately respond in time to prevent loss of life and damage to critical infrastructure.

Goal 2: Improve NO modeling, prediction, and information integration. Departments and Agencies will coordinate the development of validated modeling tools and simulation capabilities that aid in characterizing and mitigating NO impact risks while integrating and streamlining data flows to support effective decision-making.

Goal 3: Develop technologies for NO reconnaissance, deflection, and disruption missions. NASA will continue to lead development of technologies that could potentially be used in fast-response NEO reconnaissance missions and timely missions to deflect or disrupt hazardous NEOS.

Goal 4: Increase international cooperation on NO preparedness. The potentially cataclysmic consequences of a NEO impact, independent of national borders and geopolitical dynamics, presents special opportunity for engagement with the international community to foster cooperation in joint research and response efforts.

Goal 5: Strengthen and routinely exercise NO impact emergency procedures and action protocols. The United States will strengthen and exercise procedures and protocols for assessment of NO threats, communication-including to the public and international community-regarding threats, and response and recovery activities.

Goal 6: Improve U.S. management of planetary defense through enhanced interagency collaboration. Actions under this goal will improve ongoing coordination and implementation on projects across Federal agency boundaries.

The dream of traversing the depths of space and planting the seed of human civilization on another planet has existed for generations. For long as we’ve known that most stars in the Universe are likely to have their own system of planets, there have been those who advocated that we explore them (and even settle on them). With the dawn of the Space Age, this idea was no longer just the stuff of science fiction and became a matter of scientific study. Unfortunately, the challenges of venturing beyond Earth and reaching another star system are myriad.

When it comes down to it, there are only two ways to send crewed missions to exoplanets. The first is to develop advanced propulsion systems that can achieve relativistic speeds (a fraction of the speed of light). The second involves building spacecraft that can sustain crews for generations – aka. a Generation Ship (or Worldship). On November 1st, 2024, Project Hyperion launched a design competition for crewed interstellar travel via generation ships that would rely on current and near-future technologies. The competition is open to the public and will award a total of $10,000 (USD) for innovative concepts.

Saber-toothed cats are iconic creatures often seen in museum dioramas, displays of fossil skeletons, and even the movie Ice Age. Now, for the first time one of these extinct predators has been spotted in the flesh. In a study published this week in Scientific Reports, researchers describe the frozen body of a saber-toothed kitten preserved for 37,000 years in the Siberian permafrost.

The carcass—containing the head, forelimbs, and front part of the animal—was discovered encased in a chunk of ice in 2020 near the Badyarikha River in northern Siberia, above the Arctic Circle. Radiocarbon dating revealed the cat—belonging to the species Homotherium latidens—lived in the late Pleistocene epoch 35,500 to 37,000 years ago.

Based on the emergence of its baby incisor teeth, researchers estimate the cub was about 3 weeks old when it died.

The search for clues after a U.S. Air Force F-16 Viper fighter brought down a still-unidentified object over Lake Huron in February 2023 did result in the recovery of debris it has been disclosed. However, it remains unclear whether or not the wreckage was from that shootdown. The new details continue to raise more questions about the downing of this and two other mystery objects that same month in American and Canadian skies, and why more information has not been made public.

Fun Facts about Teeth across the Animal Kingdom

Two competing theories about the evolutionary origins of teeth have been battling back and forth for decades, vacillating with the latest supporting discoveries in developmental biology or the fossil record. The “outside-in” hypothesis suggests that toothlike dermal scales with pulplike centers covered in hardened mineral—similar to denticles found today—gradually migrated across the body’s exterior surface over successive generations of fish before moving inward to take up residence in our ancestors’ jawbones. The “inside-out” hypothesis suggests that teeth originated internally before migrating forward in the oral cavity to become oral teeth.

An investigation of a fossilized sawtooth shark’s rostral denticles (the “teeth” on the fish’s sawlike bill) showed complex internal structures incredibly similar to those found in shark teeth. This discovery suggests that the developmental gap between dermal scales and teeth is smaller than originally thought, edging the outside-in hypothesis ahead of inside-out once more.

The Pentagon provided new details today about how its deployable, readily reconfigurable suite of sensors called GREMLIN works to help set the stage for figuring out what unidentified objects in our skies are and are not, if they appear at all.

In its annual report released on Thursday, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) shared a graphic that gives us our best look yet at what its GREMLIN system is. It was developed by Georgia Tech Research Institute specifically to help gather data about so-called unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs. That’s the DoD’s new parlance for what used to be called UFOs.

Last year the British spotter group UFO Identified documented 395 UK sightings - and you can see what UFO encounters have been reported where you live using our interactive map.

An international team of researchers has achieved an unprecedented milestone: the creation of mouse stem cells capable of generating a fully developed mouse using genetic tools from a unicellular organism, with which we share a common ancestor that predates animals.

In an experiment that sounds like science fiction, Dr. Alex de Mendoza of Queen Mary University of London collaborated with researchers from The University of Hong Kong to use a gene found in choanoflagellates, a single-celled organism related to animals, to create stem cells which they then used to give rise to a living, breathing mouse.

This paper has several aims: to determine if Yersinia pestis was the causative agent in the last Scottish plague outbreak in the mid-17th century; map the geographic spread of the epidemic and isolate potential contributing factors to its spread and severity; and examine funerary behaviours in the context of a serious plague epidemic in early modern Scotland. Results confirm the presence of Y. pestis in individuals associated with a mid-17th century plague pit in Aberdeen. This is the first time this pathogen has been identified in an archaeological sample from Scotland. 

Fear seems to have been so great in some areas that those dying of the plague might not be buried at all. An anecdote from Tillicoultry concerning a man that had died suddenly, the assumption being from the plague, recounts that “the people were afraid to touch the corpse or even enter the house. It was pulled down, and the small eminence, which this occasioned, was called Botchy Cairn” . Similarly, McKerral relays a story concerning the outbreak in Kintyre where green knolls on Kilkivan farm attest to the presence of houses that were left to decay and collapse on top of their occupants: plague victims.

While fear of burying plague victims may have led to their abandonment, there also apparently a fear of improper burial to the extent that a further apocryphal anecdote for Highlanders to “order their coffins while still alive” to ensure proper burial.

Finally, another story has it that a plague victim managed to convince friends to dig his grave, within which he lay until he died.

It is unclear if a general fear of the dead and contracting the Pest from plague victims can be used to characterise mid-17th century Scottish public opinion. Arguably, plague pits and mass burials in general were more a practical response to the logistical difficulties associated with disposing of the dead on a large scale.

Having the plague was not a one-way ticket to a plague pit and, indeed, there are many examples of plague victims receiving normative and caring burial treatment despite any potential risks to the bereaved.

We use two paleoecological records from the Bass Strait islands to identify the initiation of anthropogenic landscape transformation associated with ancestral Palawa/Pakana land use. People were living on the Tasmanian/Lutruwitan peninsula by ~41.6 ka using fire to penetrate and manipulate forests, an approach possibly used in the first migrations across the last glacial landscape of Sahul.

Climate would have modulated Aboriginal landscape burning during the late Pleistocene, with people burning wet forested/wooded landscapes with high-intensity fires to promote open landscapes , and burned already open dry vegetation types with low-intensity fires to maintain desired conditions. The former likely resulted in high vegetation turnover with the decline in fire-intolerant plants, while the latter favored fire-adapted plants with low turnover. It is possible that Aboriginal people were able to modify and use wet forest communities, including rainforests, much more in the past than presently thought , creating community composition and/or structure very different from today’s wet forest communities.

A University of South Florida professor found the first-ever physical evidence of hallucinogens in an Egyptian mug, validating written records and centuries-old myths of ancient Egyptian rituals and practices. Through advanced chemical analyses, Davide Tanasi examined one of the world's few remaining Egyptian Bes mugs.

Such mugs, including the one donated to the Tampa Museum of Art in 1984, are decorated with the head of Bes, an ancient Egyptian god or guardian demon worshiped for protection, fertility, medicinal healing and magical purification.

With a pulverized sample from scraping the inner walls of the vase, the team combined numerous analytical techniques for the first time to uncover what the mug last held.

The new tactic was successful and revealed the vase had a cocktail of psychedelic drugs, bodily fluids and alcohol—a combination that Tanasi believes was used in a magical ritual reenacting an Egyptian myth, likely for fertility. The concoction was flavored with honey, sesame seeds, pine nuts, licorice and grapes, which were commonly used to make the beverage look like blood.

"This research teaches us about magic rituals in the Greco-Roman period in Egypt," Van Oppen said. "Egyptologists believe that people visited the so-called Bes Chambers at Saqqara when they wished to confirm a successful pregnancy because pregnancies in the ancient world were fraught with dangers.

"So, this combination of ingredients may have been used in a dream-vision inducing magic ritual within the context of this dangerous period of childbirth."

Source:

Multianalytical investigation reveals psychotropic substances in a ptolemaic Egyptian vase

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-78721-8