List of All Articles with Tag 't'

Across swathes of Southeast Asia, maturing palm oil trees, some as tall as a 12-storey building, are turning

By Kanishka Singh (Reuters) -Torrential downpours after a week of mostly steady rainfall that brought flash flooding to New York

Scientists are optimistic about the possibility of finding life on other planets. Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) found a possible sign of a gas that, on Earth, is produced by simple marine organisms. It was detected this month in the atmosphere of a planet named K2-18b, which is 120 light years away. The planet is in what astronomers call ''the Goldilocks zone' - the right distance away from its star for the surface temperature to be neither too hot nor too cold, but just right for there to be liquid water, which is essential to support life. The team expects to know in a year's time whether the hints are confirmed or have gone away. "We live in an infinite Universe, with infinite stars and planets. And it's been obvious to many of us that we can't be the only intelligent life out there," Prof Catherine Heymans, Scotland's Astronomer Royal told the BBC. "We now have the technology and the capability to answer the question of whether we are alone in the cosmos." Prof Nikku Madhusudhan of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University, who led the study, told the BBC that if the hints are confirmed "it would radically change the way we think about the search for life". "If we find signs of life on the very first planet we study, it will raise the possibility that life is common in the Universe." He predicted that within five years there will be "a major transformation" in our understanding of life in the Universe. If his team don't find life signs on K2-18b, they have 10 more Goldilocks planets on their list to study - and possibly many more after that. Even finding nothing would "provide important insights into the possibility of life on such planets", he said. Meanwhile there are other separate projects all looking for signs of life in the universe. Pretty exciting. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

By Ian Ransom HANGZHOU, China (Reuters) -North Korea's Ri Song Gum set a weightlifting world record at the Asian Games

South Africa’s transition away from the dirtiest fossil fuel has been marred by the botched approach to the

The Atari home video game system took the late1970s and early 1980s by storm, complete with faux wood paneling and a classic joystick with a big red button. Rival systems eventually surpassed the video-game pioneer but its iconic status, and fans, remained.

If some influencers on TikTok are to be believed, eating a handful of carrots a day will give you a tan. An account called isabelle.lux posted last week to claim that eating three carrots each day would make you orange. And the fad is spreading like wildfire. @isabelle.lux #stitch with @Isabelle ⚡️ Lux 🥕CARROT TAN 101 take Astaxanthin (i get mine on amazon) #carrottan #selftan #selftanroutine Tanning hack routine Carrot tan before and after results But like most things promoted by beauty grifters on the internet, all is not what it seems. Two dieticians wrote in The Conversation on 27 September that, no, you probably won't get that golden tan just from eating a couple of root vegetables. They are Lauren Ball, professor of community health and wellbeing at The University of Queensland, and Emily Burch, a dietitian, researcher and lecturer, Southern Cross University. Here’s what they had to say. What is Carotene? The reason carrots are orange is because they contain beta-carotene, a natural pigment. When you eat it, your gut breaks it down into vitamin A, which helps vision, reproduction, immunity and growth. If you eat too much beta-carotene, it stops breaking it down into vitamin A. Then your poo goes orange. (No, really.) The excess beta-carotene gets stored in the liver and fat tissue, write Ball and Burch, and is excreted through your poo, or removed via sweat glands in the outer layer of the skin. This is when your skin goes orange, or “tanned”. There’s even a medical name for the condition – carotenoderma – which sees the orange pigmentation concentrated in the palms of your hands, the soles of your feet and the smile lines near your nose. So how many carrots do you need? “A few days of high carrot intake will unlikely result in a change in skin colour,” Bell and Burch write. Moreover, “no high quality trials have been conducted to test the relationship between number of carrots eaten per day and skin colour changes or other outcomes”. One published case report found that for a person who ate around 3kg of carrots per week (about seven large carrots a day) found the colour of their skin started to change. Other experts have suggest you would need to eat at least ten carrots per day, for at least a few weeks, for colour changes to occur. The experts added: “Most people would find this carrot intake challenging.” Is that even good for you? And while they continue that myths around beta-carotene being toxic for humans don’t quite stack up, there is a potential danger. “There is, however, some evidence that taking high-dose beta-carotene supplements (20 mg per day or more) increases lung cancer risk in people who smoke cigarettes or used to smoke,” they wrote. “This may be due to changes to chemical signalling pathways.” The Cancer Council therefore recommends avoiding high doses of beta-carotene supplements (more than 20 mg per day). But the good news is that if you really want to go a strange orange hue, beta-carotene is also found in parsley, basil, chives, chilli powder and sun-dried tomatoes. So as far as real fruit and veg is concerned, you might as well crack on. Read the full article in The Conversation here. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

By Jonathan Allen and Brendan O'Brien NEW YORK (Reuters) -Torrential downpours after a week of mostly steady rainfall brought flash

(Reuters) -Cryptocurrency exchange Binance said on Wednesday it will sell its Russia business to newly-launched exchange CommEX, becoming the latest

Blue Carbon, a Dubai-based company, signed a memorandum of understanding with Zimbabwe to generate carbon credits from about

The Biden administration unveiled plans Friday to hold three auctions for offshore drilling rights over the next five

Sea of Stars ($34.99, available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox) is a love letter