CaaC (John)

@Mel81x @Harry @Devil-Dick Willie @Toinho Oye, cobbers, are you four related to the following?... Genetic Testing Reveals That The Earth’s Oldest Civilization Is The Aboriginal Australians Australia's Aborigines have a long and rich history that stretches back nearly 60,000 years. For thousands of years, Aboriginal Australians have lived throughout the continent. But new evidence reveals that their existence in the continent’s deserts dates back much further than previously believed. The Oldest Civilization In The World Aboriginal Australians became genetically isolated 58,000 years ago, tens of thousands of years before other ancestral groups, making them the world’s oldest civilization. They then settled in Australia around that time. But a September 2018 study has extended the group’s history in the interior deserts of Western Australia by 10,000 years. Indeed, the ancient group’s connection to the interior part of the continent goes back much further than once believed, with new estimates that the group had been in the desert region for at least 50,000 years— which blows away previous estimates. Researchers came to this conclusion while excavating nearly 25,000 stone artefacts from the desert rock shelter of Karnatukul. The objects spanned different uses and purposes as well as timelines. One particularly interesting discovery was that of an early microlith, a pointed tool with one sharp edge blunted. FULL REPORT

VAR incorrectly overruled decisions four times - Premier League referees boss Mike Riley Premier League referees chief Mike Riley says there were four instances of the "worst possible outcome" of the video assistant referee system in two weeks before the international break. Riley told a meeting of the 20 top-flight clubs that on those occasions VAR had overruled perfectly good decisions by the on-field officials. "We are far from perfect and we have to improve the way we do things," he said. Riley's assistant Neil Swarbrick gave the system a mark of seven out of 10. Riley added: "Part of the balance of understanding 'clear and obvious' [the terminology used to determine when an on-field error should be overturned] is that there will be times when we don't intervene and everyone thinks we should. "But that is a better place to be than intervening and everyone saying 'you shouldn't have done that'. "There are significant things we can do to improve, including better consistency in decision-making as VARs and the timings so we get minimum interference." The four incidents Riley was referring to are below. See if you agree that the VARs got them wrong: FULL REPORT

Manchester United can expect a payment of more than £850,000 from Juventus by the end of the season due to a condition as part of 34-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo's move to the Italian giants last summer. (Mirror)

Ever seen a zero-gravity pit-stop?

Different net... same Petr Cech

Nodosaur Dinosaur ‘Mummy’ Unveiled With Skin And Guts Intact "We don't just have a skeleton," said one of the nodosaur researchers involved. "We have a dinosaur as it would have been." The nodosaur is the crown jewel of a dino exhibit at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta, Canada. You can’t even see its bones, but scientists are hailing it as perhaps the best-preserved dinosaur specimen ever unearthed. That’s because those bones remain covered by intact skin and armour — 110 million years after the creature’s death. The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta, Canada recently unveiled a dinosaur so well-preserved that many have taken to calling it not a fossil, but an honest-to-goodness “dinosaur mummy.” With the creature’s skin, armour, and even some of its guts intact, researchers are astounded at its nearly unprecedented level of preservation. “We don’t just have a skeleton,” Caleb Brown, a researcher at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, told National Geographic. “We have a dinosaur as it would have been.” A National Geographic video about the nodosaur, the best-preserved fossil of its kind ever discovered. When this dinosaur — a member of a newly discovered species called nodosaur — was alive, it was an enormous four-legged herbivore protected by a spiky, plated armour and weighed in at approximately 3,000 pounds. Today, the mummified nodosaur is so intact that it still weighs 2,500 pounds. How the dinosaur mummy could remain so intact is something of a mystery, although as CNN says, researchers suggest that the nodosaur may have been swept away by a flooded river and carried out to sea, where it eventually sank to the ocean floor. As millions of years passed, minerals may have eventually taken the place of the dinosaur’s armour and skin. This might help explain why the creature was preserved in such a lifelike form. How “lifelike” are we talking? According to Science Alert, the preservation was so good that researchers were able to find out the dinosaur’s skin colour. By using mass spectrometry techniques, researchers detected pigments on the scales of the dinosaur. Apparently, the nodosaur’s colouring was a dark reddish-brown on the top of the body — and lighter on the underside. The dinosaur was about 18 feet long and apparently built like a tank. Scientists think the colouring was an early form of countershading — a camouflage technique that uses two tones to protect an animal from predators. Considering this dinosaur was a herbivore, its skin colour likely played a role in protecting it from the enormous carnivores of the time. “Strong predation on a massive, heavily-armoured dinosaur illustrates just how dangerous the dinosaur predators of the Cretaceous must have been,” said Brown. As if the preservation of skin, armour, and guts weren’t impressive enough, the dinosaur mummy is also unique in that it was preserved in three dimensions — meaning that the original shape of the animal was retained. “It will go down in science history as one of the most beautiful and best-preserved dinosaur specimens — the Mona Lisa of dinosaurs,” said Brown. The nodosaur has been described by some scientists as the “rhinoceros of its day.” Although the nodosaur dinosaur mummy was exceptionally well-preserved, getting it to its current display form was still difficult. The creature was, in fact, first discovered in 2011 when a heavy-machine operator accidentally found the specimen while digging through oil sands in Alberta. Since that lucky moment, it has taken researchers 7,000 hours over the course of six years to test the remains and prepare them for display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Now, visitors finally have the chance to gaze upon the closest thing to a real-life dinosaur that the world has likely ever seen. https://allthatsinteresting.com/nodosaur-dinosaur-mummy?fbclid=IwAR23G0BehOEsqa6ftT-phKVvaamG6gx1lH13gq3sQEfGllycuOzPLRVNqQg

American History Myths You Probably Believe One common American history myth many believe is that the iconic cowboy hat has always been wide-brimmed, high-crowned. Yet Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang donned bowler hats in the late 19th century.

Same here and the wife, listening and reading about them pumping their gums with all the promises they will do if elected yet I know that is all bull shit and as soon as they get into power the majority of the promises will be binned. Just got word in the post that our postal vote forms will be arriving next Wednesday then I will sit down with the wife and talk about who we think we should vote for, I have mentioned this in here before, I wish this Screaming Lord Such was alive today with his Monster Raving Looney Party and then I would have voted for him.

Celtic's Norway winger Mohamed Elyounoussi, 25, says the Scottish club's former midfielder Stuart Armstrong was pivotal to his loan move from Southampton. (The Scotsman)

Atletico Madrid have joined AC Milan in seeking to sign 31-year-old Serbia midfielder Nemanja Matic from Manchester United. (ESPN)

Brendan Rodgers: Leicester boss only focused on Foxes following Tottenham link Leicester boss Brendan Rodgers said he has never considered leaving the club following reports he was wanted by Tottenham to replace Mauricio Pochettino. Spurs appointed Jose Mourinho as Pochettino's successor on Wednesday. However, it had been claimed that Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy had first made an enquiry about Rodgers' availability. "There is nothing to talk about on it," the ex-Liverpool manager said. "The only thing I will say is I was very happy here at Leicester, I've literally just joined the club in February. "Everything has been great since we've been in. We have a project here that we want to develop over the next number of years." Rodgers has had an impressive impact on the Foxes since arriving from Celtic, with the club currently sat second in the Premier League. He added: "What happens in football now is that if you go through times when you're doing well and you work well, everyone wants to take you away from that. "I'm very happy in my professional life. I'm very happy in my life personally in Leicestershire, it's a great place to live and work and we have created a real unity here at the club. "In my time here that is what I'll aim to do. How long that will be you can never tell but I am very happy to be here." https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/50509943

German scientists find a 44-million-year-old caterpillar Scientists say it's the first time a fossil from a large butterfly species has been discovered preserved inside an ancient block of amber. They've described it as an "exceptional" find. German researchers discovered a 44-million-year-old caterpillar, according to a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports on Wednesday. The critter is the first caterpillar of its kind to be discovered in Baltic amber, according to researchers from the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Munich. The 5-millimetre (0.2-inch) larva has been given the name Eogeometer vadens under the family of Geometridae butterflies, which comprises around 23,000 different species. Scientists said the little caterpillar likely got trapped in a drop of tree resin, which ultimately hardened into amber and preserved the worm's unique structure over millions of years. "Caterpillar finds in amber are rarities in any instance, and this is the first-ever large butterfly fossil to be found in Baltic amber," study co-author Axel Hausmann said. "This may be due to the nocturnal activity of most caterpillars," he added, given that resin would likely be closer to liquid in direct sunlight or warmer daytime temperatures. Unlike most other butterfly species, Geometridae caterpillars only have two or three pairs of legs instead of the usual five pairs. This means they move forward with an unusual gait — by pushing their hind legs to their rear legs, then stretching out and repeating the action. The researchers said the fossil would provide an insight into evolutionary processes during the Eocene period (about 34-56 million years ago) when flowering plants butterfly species would have been interacting with were already well established. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/german-scientists-find-44-million-year-old-caterpillar/ar-BBX6z7a

Scientists may have discovered the fifth force of nature, laboratory announces It has long been recognised that there are four “fundamental forces” which govern nature. The substance of our universe is pulled together or pushed apart by these forces which are determined by the fact they do not appear to be reducible to more basic interactions between particles. They include the gravitational and electromagnetic forces, which produce significant long-range interactions whose effects can be seen directly in everyday life. And they also include forces known as the strong interactions and weak interactions, which produce forces at tiny, subatomic distances and govern nuclear physics. Over the years, there have been many unsubstantiated claims of the existence of a fifth fundamental force, and as the long hunt for dark matter continues to prove fruitless, efforts to find new forces at play to help fill in the gaps the standard model of particle physics can’t explain have increased. Dark matter is a theoretical substance hypothesised to account for around 85 per cent of all mass in the universe but has not yet been glimpsed. But now, scientists in Hungary’s Atomki Nuclear Research Institute, believe they may have found more solid evidence of a previously unknown fifth fundamental force of nature. Attila Krasznahorkay and his colleagues at Atomki first reported some surprising results in 2015 after studying the light emitted during the radioactive decay of beryllium-8, an unstable isotope. Since beryllium-8’s discovery in the 1930s after the construction of the first particle accelerator in Cambridge, the existence of this unstable atom, and the unique way it decays has been the focus of numerous studies related to stellar nucleosynthesis – how nuclear fusion in stars forms elements. In 2015, they found, when firing protons at the isotope lithium-7, which creates beryllium-8, the subsequent decay of the particles did not produce exactly the expected light emissions, and that a specific tiny “bump” occurs, which means for an unexplained reason, the electrons and positrons, which burst apart as the atom decays, we're frequently pushing away from each other at exactly 140 degrees. Various retests at the same lab confirmed the results, and a year later, the same experiment was repeated, with the same results in America. It is thought that the moment the atom decays, excess energy among its constituent parts briefly creates a new unknown particle, which then almost immediately decays into a recognisable positron and electron pair. But we are not all about to be turned inside out or flattened into a different dimension. The unknown particle, described as a “protophobic X boson”, is thought would carry a force that acts over macroscopic distances not much greater than that of an atomic nucleus. A “boson” is a particle which can carry forces. The particle has been named X17, as its mass is calculated to be 17 megaelectronvolts. But Dr Krasznahorkay now believes they have measured the same results in stable helium atoms, however, instead of the electrons and positrons in the helium atoms separating at 140 degrees, the angle was closer to 115 degrees. “This feature is similar to the anomaly observed in 8Be, and seems to be in agreement with the X17 boson decay scenario,” the team writes in arXiv, where the research has been published but has not yet been peer-reviewed. If the particle’s existence is confirmed, it means physicists will have to finally reassess the interactions of the existing four fundamental forces of particle physics and make space for a fifth. “We are expecting more, independent experimental results to come for the X17 particle in the coming years,” the research team concludes in its paper. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/scientists-may-have-discovered-fifth-force-of-nature-laboratory-announces/ar-BBX3xk9?li=BBoPWjQ

Liverpool plan Anfield Road End expansion to reach about 60,000 capacity. (BBC)

Women's football: Spain's top players' strike called off after negotiations reopen A strike by women footballers in Spain's top division has ended after securing an agreement to reopen negotiations over pay. All eight top-flight fixtures were postponed over the weekend. But now the Association of Women's players (AFE) has confirmed negotiations will resume and that the strike is off. "After the success of the strike, an agreement has been reached to work on the proposal," said the AFE. Spain's top players strike over pay Almost 200 players from 16 clubs voted to strike in October after more than a year of failed negotiations. They are demanding a professional agreement that regulates minimum working conditions, rights to minimum wages and measures for maternity. Players are demanding part-time salaries be worth a minimum of 12,000 euros ($13,297), which is 75% of the minimum size for full-time contracts. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/50467440

A third of tropical African plants face extinction A third of tropical African plants are on the path to extinction, according to a new assessment. Much of western Africa, Ethiopia, and parts of Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are the hardest-hit regions, standing to lose more than 40% of their richness of plants. Species at risk include trees, shrubs, herbs and woody vines. Threats include deforestation, population growth and climate change, the scientists said. "Biodiversity provides countless benefits to humans and losing diversity jeopardises our future," said lead researcher Dr Thomas Couvreur of the French National Institute for Sustainable Development. Loss of biodiversity will be particularly problematic in tropical Africa, "a region of incredible diversity but with major social and political challenges and expected rapid population growth over the next decades", he added. The findings of the study, published in Science Advances, are based on a revised method for assessing extinction risk. Plant extinction 'bad news for all species' Ethiopia 'breaks' tree-planting record Seeds of life- The plants suited to climate change. Official assessments of extinction are recorded in The Red List of Threatened Species, published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature - IUCN. So far, almost nine in 10 mammals and two-thirds of birds have been assessed, but less than 8% of vascular plants (flowering plants and most other plants, excluding mosses and algae). The researchers used a similar, but more speedy, method to assess the likely extinction risk of more than 20,000 plant species. They found that 33% of the species are potentially threatened with extinction, and another third of species are likely rare, potentially becoming threatened in the near future. This is mainly due to human activities such as deforestation, land-use changes, population growth, economic development, and climate change, they said. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50477684

Astronomers Detect Violent Cosmic Explosion Which Is Brightest Source of High-energy Light in the Universe An international team of astronomers have identified the brightest known source of high-energy light in the universe—a violent cosmic explosion which took place in a galaxy seven billion light-years away. The light was produced by a so-called gamma-ray burst (GRB)—the most powerful explosions in the cosmos which occur as a result of cataclysmic events. These can include the collapse of massive stars as supernovae or the merging of neutron stars or black holes. GRBs produce an initial rapid flash of gamma rays—the most high-energy form of light with the shortest wavelength—which usually lasts for a few seconds or minutes. FULL REPORT

The Women's Super League salary cap may be raised if it is stopping clubs from attracting world-class talent, says the Football Association's Kelly Simmons. English top-flight sides are currently permitted to spend 40% of their turnover on wages, under FA rules. The USA's NWSL has upped its salary cap by nearly 20% to $650,000 (£504,000), plus $300,000 (£233,000) of "allocation money" for a star in excess of the cap. FULL REPORT

Archaeologists found ancient babies wearing skulls like helmets Archaeologists in Ecuador have uncovered the remains of babies buried over 2,000 years ago. It would be an interesting find no matter the context, but these infants are leaving researchers scratching their heads for a very specific reason: The children were buried in “helmets” made from the skulls of other, older children. The discovery is the subject of a new paper published in Latin American Antiquity. The team studying the site, led by Dr Sara Juengst, was left struggling to explain the symbolism behind the apparently rare custom, as it’s the first time archaeologists have found anything like it. A total of 11 bodies were discovered at the ancient gravesite. Most of the remains were “normal,” but two infants buried there were laid to rest wearing the “cranial vaults” of others, specifically other older children. The researchers believe that these skull “helmets” were added at the time of burial, but they have no idea why. The archaeologists can only guess what the reason behind this bizarre custom may have been. As LiveScience notes, the authors of the research have offered some interesting theories. One possible explanation is that the bone helmets were applied to protect the souls of the infants, who never had a chance to live their own lives. It’s worth noting that scientists have also been unable to determine the causes of death. It’s unclear how the infants died, and the researchers are equally unsure of the cause of death of the children whose skulls were used as helmets. Rituals and burial customs vary dramatically from one culture to the next, and when you’re looking back 2,100 years, some of the traditions carried out after a person’s death can seem incredibly bizarre to us. Whatever belief system led to this strange circumstance is unclear, but the archaeologists are continuing to explore possibilities. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/archaeologists-found-ancient-babies-wearing-skulls-like-helmets/ar-BBWZpvu