Latest news with #MatthewCollins
Daily Mail
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Phil Collins' footballer son Matthew, 20, shares rare Instagram snap with his father as he supports him at game
Phil Collins ' footballer son Matthew shared a rare Instagram snap with his father as he supported him at a game this weekend. The sporting star, 20, plays for Austrian side WSG Tirol and musician Phil, 74, was in the crowds on Sunday to see him play. Wearing his green and white football kit Matthew beamed next to his famous dad who wore a casual outfit. Matthew captioned his post: 'big wins today!' as he put his arm around Phil. Phil has five children with Matthew the youngest of them. His proud half sister, the actress Lily Collins, reshared the post and penned over the top: 'I love everything about this' along with a white heart emoji. The English footballer signed a contract with WSG Tirol in 2023. He played for Hannover's U19s earlier in his career but after the German club released him, he went on to impress on trial in Austria. Previously revealing his shock at the player's lineage, coach Manuel Ludwiger said: 'We Google the players we take on trial to find out about their past careers. 'It was only then that we found out Matthew is Phil Collins' son. 'We haven't signed him as a publicity stunt. It is purely down to his footballing ability.' Phil isn't Matthew's only superstar relative, however. His half sister Lily has made it big as an actress, most notably in the lead role in Emily in Paris. Several years ago, rock great Phil opened up on his son's passion for sport. 'Matt loves music, but loves his football even more,' he said. 'He is certain he'll turn professional. 'The other day he said, "Another five years and I'll be gone". 'He also looks at everything, Bundesliga, French league, everything.' Lily is back filming the next season of Emily In Paris just three months after welcoming daughter Tove with husband Charlie McDowell. In her post at the time Lily expressed her 'infinite gratitude' towards the surrogate who helped her become a mother. But after sharing an image of newborn Tove on Instagram, the actress was attacked online, with many accusing her of being part of a growing 'unethical' A-list trend. The backlash was so severe that US film producer Charlie released a statement asking people to spend 'less time spewing hateful words' as he said no one will know the true motivations behind why the couple chose to use a surrogate.
The Star
16-05-2025
- Science
- The Star
Shaggy surprise on medieval books
MEDIEVAL scribes filled volumes called bestiaries with illustrations and descriptions of fantastic creatures. The manuscripts containing representations of these animals also depended on a menagerie of beasts: the covers of these and other volumes were fashioned from the skins of calves, goats, sheep, deer, pigs and – in some macabre instances – humans. Most of these hides were shorn before they were turned into book bindings. But one set of medieval manuscripts from northeastern France has a peculiar finish: its weathered covers are covered in clumps of hair. A manuscript created during the 12th or 13th century in the scriptorium of Clairvaux Abbey in France, found to be bound in sealskin. 'These books are too rough and far too hairy to be calfskin,' said Matthew Collins, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Copenhagen and Cambridge University and an author of the new study. But identifying the source of the shaggy leather has proved difficult. While these furry tomes would seem at home in a Hogwarts library, they were originally made in the scriptorium of Clairvaux Abbey, a hub for an order of Catholic monks, the Cistercians. The abbey, founded in 1115 in the Champagne-Ardenne region of France, was home to one of the largest monastic libraries in medieval Europe. Some 1,450 volumes of the abbey's extensive corpus survive. Roughly half of these manuscripts remain in their fragile, original bindings. Many were bound during the 12th and 13th centuries in the Romanesque style, which placed the parchment between wooden boards fastened with thread and cord. At Clairvaux Abbey, these Romanesque books were often housed inside a secondary cover that was bristled with fur. Traditionally, this unshorn leather was thought to be made from boar or deer. However, the hair follicles on some of the manuscripts do not match the fur of either mammal. Collins and his colleagues examined the hairy covers of 16 manuscripts that were once housed at Clairvaux Abbey. The researchers rubbed the flesh side of the leather with erasers to carefully remove crumb-size samples. They then utilised a range of techniques to analyse protein sequences and bits of ancient DNA from the leather. Their findings, published on April 2 in the journal Royal Society Open Science, reveal that the books are bound not in the hides of local land mammals, but in sealskin. Several of the books were bound in harbour seal skin, and at least one came from a harp seal. Comparing them with contemporary DNA suggests an origin of the seals in Scandinavia and Scotland, or potentially as far away as Iceland or Greenland. These disparate areas were once connected by a complex medieval trading network. In the Middle Ages, Norse traders harvested walrus ivory and pelts from Greenland and sent them to mainland Europe. While Clairvaux and its monks were far inland from these coastal outposts, the abbey was near a well-trafficked trading route. According to Mary Wellesley, a fellow at the Institute of Historical Research in London who specialises in medieval manuscripts and was not involved in the new paper, its findings shed light on medieval society. 'The small details of manuscripts can tell you so much about the world that created them,' Wellesley said. 'It's a popular assumption that people didn't move around, but these monastic institutions are part of this amazing network of goods, books and ideas.' A microscopic view of the hair fibres on one of the book covers from a French abbey, found to be bound in sealskin. — Matthew Collins and Elodie Leveque/The New York Times Seals were a valuable commodity because of their meat, blubber and waterproof skin, which could be fashioned into boots and gloves. Some records even claim that sealskin was used to pay church taxes. Coastal communities in Scandinavia and Ireland used sealskin to bind books, but the practice was much rarer in mainland Europe. Cistercian monks, though, appear to have had a fondness for sealskin books. Examples of these fur-covered manuscripts have been found in other abbeys that descended from Clairvaux. These monks even used the material to bind their most important documents, such as historical information about St Bernard, a major Cistercian figure. According to Collins, the colour of seal fur may explain the monks' penchant for using the animals' skins. While the manuscripts' covers are now yellowish-grey or splotchy brown, they were once encased in the white fur of seal pups. This shade matched the monks' undyed vestments. 'In medieval Europe, you don't really have anything that's pure white,' Collins said. 'It must have been quite magical.' The seals themselves likely seemed akin to magical entities to the monks: in medieval bestiaries, seals were labelled 'sea calves' and resemble dogs with fish tails, rather than pudgy pinnipeds. — ©2025 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times
The National
17-04-2025
- Business
- The National
Why the UAE is the place to look for answers to extreme weather
If people harboured any lingering doubts about the threat climate change poses to the Middle East, two events this week should be more than enough to dispel them. In Iraq, an enormous sandstorm struck the country's southern and central regions leading to darkened cities shrouded in a dusty orange haze, as airports were forced to shut down and more than 1,800 people with respiratory problems were taken to hospital. Although sandstorms are a natural part of the region's environment, their frequency and intensity are rising, fuelled by global warming and increasing desertification. Across the Arabian Gulf, the focus was on a different kind of extreme weather. In Dubai, many residents were thinking about the day, one year ago, when 100mm of rain fell in 12 hours. This is the amount Dubai typically receives in a year and was the heaviest rainfall since records began in 1949. Scientists have suggested that downpours in the region have become 10 to 40 per cent heavier owing to climate change. While it is one country among many that will inevitably be impacted by climate change, the UAE – with its demonstrable history of working hard on crisis management – is a good place to look for solutions, too. As rainwater submerged cars and flooded roads for some hours, the authorities reacted nimbly by reviving strategies that proved their worth during the Covid-19 pandemic. Distance learning in Dubai and neighbouring Sharjah was swiftly introduced, government employees were told to work remotely and private sector companies were urged to let staff work from home. Since then, longer-term solutions have been taking shape. Two months after the floods, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, approved a Dh30 billion ($8.16 billion) project called Tasreef; this is aimed at increasing the capacity of the emirate's rainwater drainage system by 700 per cent. Infrastructure development has been accompanied by other long-term strategies that draw on the UAE's growing expertise in advanced technology. G42, an Abu Dhabi technology group, has worked with global chip maker Nvidia to build a prediction system that is said to increase forecasting times from seven to 14 days. Artificial intelligence is another vital part of adapting to a changing climate as AI can simulate flood events, test urban planning scenarios and process data for faster and more effective decisions. Such know-how will be essential in the future. 'Even if we reduce greenhouse-gas emissions today to zero, we would still be having the climate change we're having today,' Prof Matthew Collins of the UK's University of Exeter told The National last October. More extreme weather – be it flooding or sandstorms – is coming whether we like it or not. This will spur changes across many aspects of life, from urban planning and agriculture to transport and emergency response. Having learnt the lessons about responding to extreme weather events, the UAE is in a strong position to inform the global conversation as we move into a challenging future.
New York Times
08-04-2025
- Science
- New York Times
The Skin on Mysterious Medieval Books Concealed a Shaggy Surprise
Medieval scribes filled volumes called bestiaries with illustrations and descriptions of fantastic creatures. The manuscripts containing representations of these animals also depended on a menagerie of beasts: The covers of these and other volumes were fashioned from the skins of calves, goats, sheep, deer, pigs and, in some macabre instances, humans. Most of these hides were shorn before they were turned into book bindings. But one set of medieval manuscripts from northeastern France has a peculiar finish: Its weathered covers are covered in clumps of hair. 'These books are too rough and far too hairy to be calfskin,' said Matthew Collins, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Copenhagen and Cambridge University and an author of the new study. But identifying the source of the shaggy leather has proved difficult. While these furry tomes would seem at home in Hogwarts library, they were originally made in the scriptorium of Clairvaux Abbey, a hub for an order of Catholic monks, the Cistercians. The abbey, founded in 1115 in the Champagne-Ardenne region of France, was home to one of the largest monastic libraries in medieval Europe. Some 1,450 volumes of the abbey's extensive corpus survive. Roughly half of these manuscripts remain in their fragile, original bindings. Many were bound during the 12th and 13th centuries in the Romanesque style, which placed the parchment between wooden boards fastened with thread and cord. At Clairvaux Abbey, these Romanesque books were often housed inside a secondary cover that was bristled with fur. Traditionally, this unshorn leather was thought to be made from boars or deer. However, the hair follicles on some of the manuscripts do not match the fur of either mammal. Dr. Collins and his colleagues examined the hairy covers of 16 manuscripts that were once housed at Clairvaux Abbey. The researchers rubbed the flesh side of the leather with erasers to carefully remove crumb-size samples. They then utilized a range of techniques to analyze protein sequences and bits of ancient DNA from the leather. Their findings, published on Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, reveal that the books are bound not in the hides of local land mammals, but in sealskin. Several of the books were bound in harbor seal skin, and at least one came from a harp seal. Comparing them with contemporary DNA suggests an origin of the seals in Scandinavia and Scotland, or potentially as far away as Iceland or Greenland. These disparate areas were once connected by a complex medieval trading network. In the Middle Ages, Norse traders harvested walrus ivory and pelts from Greenland and sent them to mainland Europe. While Clairvaux and its monks were far inland from these coastal outposts, the abbey was near a well-trafficked trading route. According to Mary Wellesley, a fellow at the Institute of Historical Research in London who specializes in medieval manuscripts and was not involved in the new paper, its findings shed light on medieval society. 'The small details of manuscripts can tell you so much about the world that created them,' Dr. Wellesley said. 'It's a popular assumption that people didn't move around, but these monastic institutions are part of this amazing network of goods, books and ideas.' Seals were a valuable commodity because of their meat, blubber and waterproof skin, which could be fashioned into boots and gloves. Some records even claim that sealskin was used to pay church taxes. Coastal communities in Scandinavia and Ireland used sealskin to bind books, but the practice was much rarer in mainland Europe. Cistercian monks, though, appear to have had a fondness for sealskin books. Examples of these fur-covered manuscripts have been found in other abbeys that descended from Clairvaux. These monks even used the material to bind their most important documents, such as historical information about St. Bernard, a major Cistercian figure. According to Dr. Collins, the color of seal fur may explain the monks' penchant for using the animals' skins. While the manuscripts' covers are now yellowish-gray or splotchy brown, they were once encased in the white fur of seal pups. This shade matched the monks' undyed vestments. 'In medieval Europe, you don't really have anything that's pure white,' Dr. Collins said. 'It must have been quite magical.' The seals themselves likely seemed akin to magical entities to the monks: In medieval bestiaries, seals were labeled 'sea calves' and resemble dogs with fish tails, rather than pudgy pinnipeds.
