Large Structure in Space

The universe is more connected than you might think: In recent years, scientists have used new tools and techniques to map the “cosmic web,” which is made up of intertwined strands of gas structures known as filaments that link galaxies. Now, a team of researchers have identified a new “large-scale structure” in the universe that they call the “Cosmic Vine.”

The researchers hail from numerous universities and institutions across Denmark, Chile, the U.K., and the Netherlands. They published a preprint of their work to the arXiv server on November 8. According to the study, the Cosmic Vine was spotted after poring over data collected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), humanity’s most powerful tool for peering into the far reaches of space and time.  READ MORE...

A DNA Time Capsule

For the first time, researchers have been able to extract DNA fragments from an ancient clay brick, demonstrating how these building blocks from times long past could be used to catalog flora found in the environment at the time.


When this brick was made some 2,900 years ago in what is now northern Iraq, the process would have involved mixing mud from the banks of the Tigris river, with materials such as chaff, straw, or animal dung.


Small plant particles amid the animal waste and straw can remain protected inside the brick for millennia – as has now been demonstrated by the team from the University of Oxford in the UK and the National Museum of Denmark and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.


Having extracted a sample of the brick, the researchers used an analytical technique previously used on other forms of porous material, such as bone. This gave them the ability to sequence (or decode) the DNA in the plant matter, identifying 34 distinct taxonomic groups of plants.


"We were absolutely thrilled to discover that ancient DNA, effectively protected from contamination inside a mass of clay, can successfully be extracted from a 2,900-year-old brick," says biologist Sophie Lund Rasmussen from the University of Oxford.


The brick analyzed in this study was found in the palace of the Neo-Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II, located in the ancient city of Kalhu. Dating it to some time between 879 and 869 BCE – the years the palace was under construction – was made easier by an inscription in the clay that specifically mentioned the palace.


Plant families with the most abundant DNA in the brick included Brassicaceae (the cabbage and mustard family) and Ericaceae (heather), while genetic material from Betulaceae (birch), Lauraceae (laurels), Selineae (the family containing carrots and parsley), and Triticeae (cultivated grasses) was also present.


"The brick serves as a biodiversity time capsule of information regarding a single site and its surroundings," says Assyriologist Troels Arbøll, from the University of Copenhagen.


"In this case, it provides researchers with a unique access to the ancient Assyrians."  READ MORE...

Closing Air Space to Russian Airplanes

Feb 27 (Reuters) - Sweden, Finland and Denmark said they were preparing to close their airspace to Russian planes on Sunday, joining a string of European countries taking this measure after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The moves follow similar closures of airspace of Britain, Poland, Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Romania to Russia's aircraft. Baltic countries Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are also closing their airspace to Russian airliners, while Germany said it was preparing to do so. 

Iceland has also decided to shut its airspace to Russian air traffic, Icelandic Foreign Minister Thordis Kolbrun Gylfadottir tweeted on Sunday.

"It is now absolutely necessary to proceed with further touch measures to isolate Russia," Swedish EU Minister Hans Dahlgren told public service radio SR.

A European Union-wide ban for Russian flights could be part of a fresh package of sanctions on Moscow to be discussed later on Sunday by the bloc's foreign ministers, an EU official said separately. 

Dahlgren said such a ban would be the most efficient way to pressure Moscow.

Denmark would also support a cross-EU ban to Russian aircraft, Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said in a tweet.

Finnish Minister of Transport and Communications Timo Harakka said in a tweet late on Saturday that Finland, which shares a long land border with Russia, was preparing a similar closure.

Russia's likely countermeasure will heavily hurt Finland's state carrier Finnair .  READ MORE...

Not From Viking Civilization

The two Viksø helmets were found in pieces a bog in eastern Denmark in 1942. Archaeologists think they were deliberately deposited there as religious offerings. (Image credit: National Museum of Denmark)

Two spectacular bronze helmets decorated with bull-like, curved horns may have inspired the idea that more than 1,500 years later, Vikings wore bulls' horns on their helmets, although there is no evidence they ever did.

Rather, the two helmets were likely emblems of the growing power of leaders in Bronze Age Scandinavia.

In 1942, a worker cutting peat for fuel discovered the helmets — which sport "eyes" and "beaks" — in a bog near the town of Viksø (also spelled Veksø) in eastern Denmark, a few miles northwest of Copenhagen. The helmets' design suggested to some archaeologists that the artifacts originated in the Nordic Bronze Age (roughly from 1750 B.C. to 500 B.C.), but until now no firm date had been determined. The researchers of the new study used radiocarbon methods to date a plug of birch tar on one of the horn

"For many years in popular culture, people associate the Viksø helmets with the Vikings," said Helle Vandkilde, an archaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark. "But actually, it's nonsense. The horned theme is from the Bronze Age and is traceable back to the ancient Near East."

The new research by Vandkilde and her colleagues confirms that the helmets were deposited in the bog in about 900 B.C. — almost 3,000 years ago and many centuries before the Vikings or Norse dominated the region.

That dates the helmets to the late Nordic Bronze Age, a time when archaeologists think the regular trade of metals and other items had become common throughout Europe and foreign ideas were influencing Indigenous cultures, the researchers wrote in the journal Praehistorische Zeitschrift.                  TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS, CLICK HERE...

Denmark Rents Prisons From Kosovo

AFPImage,Denmark will be renting 300 cells at Gjilan prison in Kosovo


Kosovo has agreed to rent 300 prison cells to Denmark to ease overcrowding in the Scandinavian country's jails.


Denmark will pay an annual fee of €15m (£12.8m) for an initial period of five years, and will also help fund green energy in the country.


The rented cells are meant to house convicted criminals from non-EU countries due to be deported from Denmark after their sentences.  Danish laws would apply to any prisoners in the rented cells.  Kosovo has between 700 and 800 unused prison spaces.


The two governments signed a "political declaration" of intent on Monday which will run for an initial period of five years, a joint statement said.


EPAImage,The agreement signed on Monday runs initially for five years


The Balkan state unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008.


In total, Kosovo is due to receive a total of €210m over the next 10 years for renting the prison in Gjilan, some 50km (30 miles) from the capital, Pristina, from 2023. Danish ministers were due to visit the jail on Tuesday.


"[The agreement] will create space in our prisons and ease the pressure on our prison officers at the same time as it also sends a clear signal to third-country nationals sentenced to deportation: Your future does not lie in Denmark, and you must therefore not serve time here," Danish Justice Minister Nick Haekkerup said in a statement.  READ MORE...

Life Expectancy

New research this week puts the enormous loss of life caused by the covid-19 pandemic into greater context. The study of 29 countries across Europe and North and South America found that nearly all experienced a reduction in life expectancy last year, while some countries had the largest drops seen since World War II.

Life expectancy at birth is a commonly used metric of a country’s overall health. It estimates how long the average person born in a particular year (2020, for example) would be expected to survive, given current trends in mortality among different age groups. 

Over time, life expectancy has trended upward in many countries, thanks to more people living longer into their senior years. But when annual deaths increase significantly for whatever reason, especially when these deaths involve younger people, life expectancy can go down. 

In the U.S., for example, life expectancy had inched lower in recent years due largely to drug overdoses.

Researchers in the UK and Denmark tried to quantify the impact of the pandemic last year on the life expectancy of 29 countries, using mortality figures from 2015 to 2020. These countries included the U.S., Chile, and most of Europe. The results were published Monday in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

Overall, life expectancy dropped from 2019 to 2020 in 27 out of 29 countries, and 22 countries experienced a drop larger than half a year. 

Many countries saw a loss that effectively wiped out five years of progress, with women in 15 countries and men in 10 countries having a life expectancy lower than what was recorded in 2015.

Some, including the U.S., also experienced a year-to-year drop not seen since other great calamities like the end of the Soviet Union or World War II.  READ MORE...