Coffee vs tea: which one is really better for your health?
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
‘It's always been some white dude': how Ethiopia became the world leader in uncovering the story of humankind
When Berhane Asfaw was in California beginning his graduate studies into the origins of humanity, he realised all the fossils he was examining had come, like himself, from Ethiopia. They had been shipped to the US to be researched and pieced together. Back then, in the early 1980s, the only Ethiopians working on archaeological digs in their own country were labourers, employed by foreigners. 'Because everything discovered in Ethiopia was exported, there was no chance for Ethiopians to study the items and develop expertise,' says Berhane, who returned home in the late 1980s as his country's first palaeoanthropologist – a scientist who studies human evolution. 'You can't train people if everything is taken to France, the US or Britain,' the 70-year-old says. With his American colleagues, Berhane clawed together funding to establish a laboratory at the National Museum of Ethiopia to clean fossils clogged with rock-hard bits of sediment, a painstaking process that can take years. The laboratory could also produce perfect replicas of specimens for foreign researchers to take home. 'Once we had the lab organised, there was no need to export fossils. We could do everything in-house,' says Berhane. Housed in an unremarkable grey office block in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, his lab is now home to the world's most extensive collection of the remains of modern humans' ancestors: about 1,600 fossils representing 13 of more than 20 confirmed species of early humans. They are stored in a series of bullet-proof safes. The oldest is of an ape-like creature called Ardipithecus kadabba that lived 6m years ago. The most recent, at 160,000-years-old, represents Homo sapiens, or modern humans, who evolved in east Africa before colonising the rest of the world. The discoveries led to Ethiopia being viewed as the cradle of mankind. 'The range is absolutely staggering. Ethiopia is the only place on Earth where you can find fossils stretching that far back to the present, without any gaps in the record,' says Berhane in his office. It is crammed with books, piles of papers and copies of hominin skulls; in one corner sits the huge, fossilised remains of a 400,000-year-old pair of buffalo horns. 'The history of all humanity is housed in this place,' he says. On the third floor of the building, a palaeontologist, Yared Assefa, lays several hominin fossils out on a conference table. They include 'Lucy', a 40% complete, 3.2m-year-old skeleton of a female hominin, whose discovery in Ethiopia's arid Afar region in 1974 was a global sensation. At the time, the Australopithecus afarensis skeleton represented the oldest human ancestor to be discovered by fossil hunters, and significantly advanced our understanding of humanity's evolutionary trajectory. Today, her 47 bones are neatly arranged in a series of wooden drawers. In the cavernous basement are kept the non-human fossils. The vast rows of filing cabinets contain everything from 3m-year-old chimpanzee teeth to fossilised frogs. The giant jaws and tusks of prehistoric elephants and hippos sit on low-slung trolleys. One of the earliest stone tools used by humans' ancestors lies in one drawer. It is 2.6m years old and was used for chopping. 'This is an amazing piece,' says a geologist, Gemechis Getaneh, holding it in his palm. 'All the technology we have today comes from this stone.' This vast collection has nurtured a generation of world-leading Ethiopian scholars. Their research has been crucial to shining a light on humanity's origins. Berhane, for example, is co-leader of the Middle Awash Project in the Afar region, which since the 1990s has discovered eight early humans, including one who lived 6m years ago. Sign up to Global Dispatch Get a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features and pictures, curated by our global development team after newsletter promotion In 2000, Zeresenay Alemseged, now a professor at the University of Chicago but who started out as a young geologist at the laboratory, unearthed 'Selam', the almost complete skeleton of a child who lived 3.3m years ago and the most complete remains of a human ancestor yet found. The early career of Yohannes Haile-Selassie, who heads the Institute for Human Origins at Arizona State University, also began here. While still a university student, Yohannes discovered two early hominins that pushed understanding of humanity's origins back beyond 5m years ago, challenging many assumptions about evolution. Yohannes lays out his fossil haul from a recent field trip on a table. He says the prominence of local scholars in the continent's paleoanthropological research is unique to Ethiopia. 'When you look at other African countries with rich fossil records – like Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa – you don't see the same level of participation, it's always some white dude,' says Yohannes. 'So Ethiopia takes the lead, and that is a great source of pride for us. The discoveries from the Middle Awash have literally rewritten the history of humanity.' Ethiopia's fossil riches stem from a geographic quirk. Its arid northern and southern regions were once full of rivers, lakes and forests – an environment of abundance, perfect for evolution. These areas sit in the Rift Valley, a great fissure where tectonic activity heaves layers of prehistoric sediment upwards. If they get lucky, fossil hunters can spot and collect specimens on the surface. If no one happens to be there when the fossils appear, they will weather away into dust. There are now more than 30 Ethiopian palaeoanthropologists at institutions around the world, says Yohannes. He is setting up an online master's course in the discipline and related subjects at five universities, in which Arizona State University professors will teach Ethiopian students. It is due to start next year. 'As palaeoanthropologists who live and work abroad, it is our personal responsibility to think about the next generation,' he says. 'We want to double, triple, the number of scholars.'
Daily Mirror
a day ago
- Daily Mirror
'I founded Omaze after dying in hospital and what I saw hasn't been explained'
Omaze founder Matt Pohlson once had a near-death experience that saw his brain and heart stop working for over four minutes. Here, he remembers what he saw before being resuscitated The man behind Omaze once had a terrifying near-death experience that saw him flatline for four-and-a-half minutes – before a stunned surgeon said 'something larger was at play' after the patient returned from what he claimed was the afterlife. Matt Pohlson is best known for fronting Omaze, a for-profit fundraising company that gives away luxurious mansions in places like Devon and Cornwall to people who spent as little as £10 on prize draw tickets. But none of this may have happened if the American CEO had died in 2018. He went to the hospital because of swelling in his stomach – an issue that began when he was a baby after being born with his tummy twisted in a knot. And all those years later, scar tissue from the surgery broke off, creating a bowel obstruction. This triggered what is known as takotsubo cardiomyopathy (also called broken heart syndrome) where the heart muscle becomes suddenly stunned or weakened. While in the hospital, the pain became excruciating and he went into cardiac arrest, and his mother fought to get into the room where her son was being treated. His mum, who heard the phrase 'code blue' being shouted in the room her son was in, was told she couldn't return to his bed because an immediate resuscitation was underway. However, Matt, speaking on the This Week in Startups podcast, said: 'My mom said, 'Look, I was there when he came into this world, if he is leaving this world right now, I'm going to be in that room.'' After being allowed in, she saw her son being shocked by defibrillator compressions, but he was still not responding. And although he was 'dead' for four-and-a-half minutes, Matt claimed he visited the afterlife, and he shared what he saw. Asked did he see the light at the end of the tunnel, he said: 'I didn't see the light but my experience was almost as if looking up at the surface of the ocean and it was very far away and you would see the light coming through and it felt like a universe of time away. 'And I felt the water was kind of this cosmic energy field that I was a part of, like I was myself, but I was connected to everything around me. And I could hear my mum saying, 'Matthew David Pohlson, you have to fight.'' The podcast host said this was comparable to the sense of self fading away as described by buddhists or in psychedelics. Agreeing, Matt continued: 'Definitely and that is what happened man, I remember the more kind of determined I was to get there, the more energy was on my side because all of my friends were praying and people were standing outside.' Matt was reportedly given just a 0% chance of survival and he said he received the 'greatest gift in the world' – which was to come back from the dead. He is now much more spiritual since his near-death experience and said that the biggest thing he learnt was to love more and care less. And he also revealed the extraordinary conversation he had with the 'world renowned surgeon' who he credited with saving his life after he made a full recovery. Matt, who studied in Harvard like his surgeon, said: 'He says to me, 'Look, I want you to understand something, when I finish my career, 30 years from now, and I'm talking about the most extraordinary case I have ever seen, this is it. We had you at 0% chance of survival for three days, even after we resuscitated you, so the fact we have you going home with your whole faculty – we have no medical explanation." The surgeon went on to say that Matt's mum, who grabbed medics by the cheeks to say that her son was now their son, and their brother, and to do anything they could to help him, inspired them to keep going, even when it looked like all hope was lost. Matt, who since his scare has raised £3million for the British Heart Foundation, continued: 'He is like, 'outside of that (his mother's influence), there were larger forces at play.' 'I was like 'how did you define those larger forces' and he said 'really it was love and it was optimism that brought you back'.'
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Daily Mail
Doctor warns about the huge mistake millions make in the car every day: 'Your brain slows down'
A doctor has shocked millions of drivers after revealing that a common setting in your car could be quietly sabotaging your brain function. Dr Clay Moss has racked up more than 6.9million views on a video after issuing a blunt warning about the recirculation button - a familiar feature most drivers flick on without a second thought. 'Did you know there's a single button in your car that could be causing more harm than good?' the American expert began in the eye-opening video. 'You guys remember this little guy right here that we always love putting on?' he said, pointing to the well-known recirculation symbol, which is typically found on the dashboard near the air conditioning controls. 'That little recirculation symbol stops outside air from getting in, which is great when you're trying to quickly cool off the air on a hot day, but it can have unintended consequences over time,' he explained. It's not just smog it's stopping, it's your the brain from functioning at its best, too. While many hit the button to block pollution or get cool air flowing fast, Dr Moss says keeping the car in recirculation mode for too long can quietly poison the air inside. 'You see, when you're breathing in a sealed car, carbon dioxide builds up pretty quickly. Thirty minutes of recirculation and you could easily exceed 12,000 PPM [parts per million] of CO2, where your brain literally starts to slow down.' View this post on Instagram A post shared by Clay Moss, MD (@drclaymoss) With two or three passengers, the issue gets worse: 'You could easily hit 2500–3000ppm of carbon dioxide. That's when you start to get drowsy, foggy and irritable.' And he's not just talking hypothetically. In a 2018 study on U.S. driving conditions, the levels of carbon dioxide recorded were alarming. It found that under recirculation mode, even single-occupant drives can reach up to 2,500ppm in longer or multi-occupant trips, well above cognitive risk thresholds. According to Dr Moss, that's where cognitive performance drops, reaction time slows, and you're more prone to drowsiness and brain fog. Before you panic, Dr Moss says there's an easy hack that takes just seconds and could make a massive difference to your alertness behind the wheel. 'Now, the fix is super easy,' he said. 'You just either crack the window, or switch to the fresh air mode and turn off the recirculation mode for just two minutes. It flushes the CO2 out and keeps your brain sharp.' 'Your car's climate settings aren't just about comfort, they mess with your cognition too,' he added. 'So breathe better, drive safe.' The clip has sparked major debate online, with many drivers admitting they had no idea something so minor could affect their brain so dramatically. 'I drive to work two hours each way every day… is this why I get so sleepy by the time I get to my destination?' one person commented. 'I've actually never used it to cool off, but I've used it when driving through stuff that I don't want getting in my car (like truck exhaust, dust, dirt, grass, etc),' said another. 'Is that why I suffer from road rage?' Another joked. Others pointed out they use it 'all the time to avoid city smog,' while some confessed that they've never switched it off. However, in a silver lining, more modern cars have an automatic recirculation mode that have timers to effectively shut-off by themselves to keep drivers safe.
