M.J. Rose

As we have always known, an ancient brew is a powerful thing…

From Smithsonian.com,
This Nasty Medieval Remedy Kills MRSA
An ancient brew could lead to modern-day drugs to fight the superbug

By Erin Blakemore

“Why would scientists revive a thousand-year-old medical recipe for a foul-smelling concoction? They suspected it could have a very real benefit, and it turns out they were right. An Anglo-Saxon brew kills methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, scientists from the U.K. have announced.

When microbiologist Freya Harrison chatted with Christina Lee, an Anglo-Saxon scholar, she was intrigued by a nasty-sounding recipe in Bald’s Leechbook, a thousand-year-old compendium of medical advice and potions. Here’s the recipe, which was recommended to fight infected eyelash follicles (styes):

Take cropleek and garlic, of both equal quantities, pound them well together… take wine and bullocks gall, mix with the leek… let it stand nine days in the brass vessel…

Intrigued by the possibility that the recipe had anti-bacterial properties, Harrison set forth on a quest to recreate it as accurately as possible. She looked for heritage vegetable varieties, used historic wine and immersed brass into the mixture so she could use sterile glass bottles. And she sourced “bullocks gall,” or cow bile, using salts that are usually prescribed for people who have had gall bladder removal surgery…”

Read more.

If you’re into space, you’re going to be into this recent news — but it’s still a mystery as to whether this “life” is or is not presently living away its days on this moon or not. However, just the fact that it MIGHT BE is quite astonishing, don’t you think?

Moon geysers

From Motherboard,

We Have Strong Evidence Saturn’s Moon Enceladus Can Support Microbial Alien Life

by Becky Ferreira

“Scientists find potential evidence of methanogenesis, a biological process, on Saturn’s moon Enceladus—which means methane-breathing aliens could be chilling there.
The ocean interior of Saturn’s moon Enceladus may have the “temperatures and chemical energy sources necessary for habitable conditions,” according to new research published in Science on Thursday.

This major finding is the result of an extremely tight flyby of Enceladus conducted by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which has been in orbit around the ringed gas giant since 2004. The data sourced from this close encounter adds to Enceladus’ growing reputation as one of the solar system’s leading candidates in the search for alien life, and hospitable worlds beyond Earth.

“We feel pretty fortunate that we got this information about habitability,” said J. Hunter Waite, the principal investigator of the mass spectrometer (INMS) onboard Cassini and the lead author of the paper, in a phone interview with Motherboard. “It will continue to build an interesting case for going back [to Enceladus].”

On October 28, 2015, Cassini zoomed by Enceladus at an altitude of 30 miles above the surface of this tiny moon, which is only 314 miles in diameter, small enough to fit within the length of the United Kingdom. The orbiter passed through one of the billowing plumes of vapor that frequently erupt from this world’s icy surface, and sampled its chemical contents….”

For the rest, click here.

A 55,000 year old flute! Humans were playing music in the the time of the Neanderthals? Is it possible the Neanderthals also played music? We have so many questions….

From The Vintage News,

The Divje Babe Flute, found in 1995 is 43,000-years-old

“In the Divje Babe archaeological park in northwestern Slovenia, researcher Ivan Turk found a 43,000-year-old cave bear femur that had been reshaped as a flute.

Turk named the flute a “Neanderthal flute,” not because the Neanderthals made it, but because it came from the period when they existed, which was approximately 55,000 years ago.

The Divje Babe archaeological park is located near the town of Cerkno and is one of the oldest archaeological sites in Slovenia.The site is a cave that sits 750 ft above the Idrija River; it is 148 ft long and up to 49 ft wide. So far, researchers working on this very rich site have uncovered over 600 finds in over ten levels in the dig site.

This includes finding 20 hearths and the skeletal remains of cave bears. The scientists have been using the rocks to investigate further into climate changes in the Pleistocene epoch. The flute that was found is possibly from the end of the middle of the Pleistocene epoch and comes from a juvenile cave bear….”

For the rest, click here.