The good 'ol Aussies and other scientists have discovered this fascinating fact locked inside zircons.
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Scientists previously thought life first appeared on Earth 3.83 billion years ago. However, the newest findings suggest life started 270 million years earlier.

This would also mean the spark of life began only 440 million years after the Earth formed—about
​4.54 billion years ago.

Researchers have suggested the rapidity of life springing up on Earth means life in the rest of the universe could be abundant. How little we know. Despite all mankind's searching, astrologers have yet to find proof of life on other planets.

The scientists came to their conclusion after analysing more than 10,000 zircons - heavy, durable stones used as imitation diamonds - which had formed from molten rock in Western Australia.

These time capsules preserve materials from their environment as they form.

Out of the thousands of zircons they studied, 79 of them looked like they might contain graphic, which is made of pure carbon which life depends on.

'As an element, carbon occurs in a striking variety of forms. Coal, soot, and diamonds are all nearly pure forms of carbon. Carbon also occurs in a form, discovered only recently, known as fullerenes or buckyballs. Buckyball carbon holds the promise for opening a whole new field of chemistry.
Carbon occurs extensively in all living organisms as proteins, fats, carbohydrates (sugars and starches), and nucleic acids.' Source: Chemistry explained.

But only a single zircon in the study contained graphite, which turned out to be 4.1 billions years old.
'The study's co-author, a geochemist at the University of California (UCLA), told the Live Science website: "It was nerve-wracking to manipulate the sole tiny zircon fragment — about half the width of a hair on your head — containing the graphite inclusions.' Source: Express. 

Anyone for chemistry? Well—not me, and I suspect you have no interest either. However, we can now astound our friends with the amazing fact that life on Earth began 4.54 billion years ago.

I'd prefer to think about when MY life on Earth began—(this one. I'm not talking reincarnation). Born on the eighth of January 1942, I entered the world as a bonny baby. How about you?

Who makes up these rules? The planet supports all kinds of life—animals, birds, fish, insects and … man. Somehow, humans have given themselves the top position. And they're gunning for any other creature who gets in their way.
​
Despite the fact that only four USA Florida residents have been injured in bear attacks in the past two years, a huge proportion of the bear colony will be annihilated—320 in total.

I can understand people wanting to cull a huge rogue animal—well four of them to be exact. But not decimating so many. Here in the UK, recent badger culls have been largely unsuccessful in the hope of controlling TB in cattle. I think every animal, no matter how large or small, has a right to be here.

The Wildlife Commission's advice on encountering a black bear is to remain standing upright and speak to the bear in a calm, assertive voice while backing up slowly towards a secure area and leaving the bear a clear escape route. This must be founded on the fact that a bear won't harm a human if treated with respect.


​But now, Florida is holding its first bear hunt in more than two decades, despite opposition from animal rights campaigners and lack of public support.


The state's Wildlife Conservation Commission has issued 4,000 permits for licensed hunters to shoot a total of 320 black bears with the aim of stabilising the growing number.

More than 200 bears were on target on Saturday. The hunters included a 16-year-old boy who said he fulfilled a dream when he potted an 80kg bear.

I hope the count is accurate and up to the minute, because 4,000 hunters are out to shoot them down. There'll be a lot of disappointed men out there in them there hills. I hope someone bows the whistle to halt the game of 'hunter and hunted' when the tally is reached.
​
This is not the image I want to see for mankind. How does that make man kind?

After waking from an unconscious state on the way home, a student found a heartfelt note a stranger had left beside her.

Ellie was travelling by train from Surrey to London on Wednesday to teach a fitness class when she fell ill.
When the 27-year-old came around she noticed a note left for her by a man called Tom.

The note read: "Hi Eleanor. I hope by the time you read this you are feeling better. You had a seizure on the train and I took you off.

"You didn't hit your head but I may have hurt your leg as I walked on it before realising you were on the floor having a fit! sorry!

"I'm also sorry I can't stay with you now but here is a coffee to perk you up later and £10 to make sure you get a taxi home.

"Sorry I don't have anymore money so I hope you don't live far away. I've contacted people from your phone and medical help is on its way and you're with train staff.

"Wishing you all the best and a quick recovery. Love Tom."

The part-time acupuncture student said the action Tom took had "restored her faith in humanity". She is now trying to locate him.

Ellie told the Evening Standard: "I have no idea who this man was or if he was sitting next to me but I wanted to show how grateful I am to him.

"If Tom does come forward, first of all I would like to give him back his money and then thank him for what he did. He deserves a lot of praise.

"It was so nice of him, it's one thing helping people but doing additional things like what Tom did is something else." Source: The Huffington Post UK.

Nowadays, people live such busy lives. Everyone has deadlines to meet and places to be. It's understood that if you're travelling on a train you have to reach your goal.

Wikipedia says: Good Samaritan laws offer legal protection to people who give reasonable assistance to those who are, or who they believe to be, injured, ill, in peril, or otherwise incapacitated. The protection is intended to reduce bystanders' hesitation to assist, for fear of being sued or prosecuted for unintentional injury or wrongful death.

But what is a Good Samaritan? In the Bible, a man fell ill beside the road. Many men passed by without offering aid. Then, the man who had more to lose than the others stopped and did what he could to help.

​ Even now, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Hindus, Buddhists, African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, Asians, the poor, the homeless, the unattractive, gays, lesbians, the handicapped, the mentally ill, and countless other groups are still sometimes the victims of ridicule, hatred and discrimination.
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What would you do if faced with a similar situation in which Tom found himself? Would you continue riding the train to your destination, or would you stop to help?

 A UK radio station invited a regular listener into the studio for coffee when he admitted he was feeling lonely.

95-year-old 'Bill' from Southampton called BBC Radio Solent during a mid-morning show last week.

During the conversation, Bill revealed his wife had been taken into a nursing home after a bad fall.

The pair had been friends for 30 years before they wed last year. Bill said he was "missing her" and he visited her every day, BuzzFeed reported.

On hearing his story, the radio station team organised a taxi to pick Bill up and bring him to the studio. He became an honorary 'special guest' and even fielded calls from listeners. Source: The Independent.

What a great Good Samaritan story. The gesture benefited both parties, and spread the feel-good factor to their listeners too.

After all, a lonely person just wants a sympathetic listener.
​

 Opera says: 

A small gesture—an offhand invitation to lunch—is often a better antidote than showering someone with too much attention.

Offer to accompany someone to a medical appointment. One study found that doctors said they treat socially isolated people less well than patients with supportive families, and they've seen other health practitioners do the same.

(Our neighbour always takes my husband to his hospital appointments, and sits in to give him mental support.)

Remind your friend that doing things alone—going to a movie, eating out—is hard for a lot of people, especially the first time. You might take her to the coffee shop that gives you a sense of community when you're on your own and volunteer to help find a place in her neighborhood.

When I answered the loneliness quiz questions, I got a high score. However, by reaching out to people over the WWW, I feel as if I'm conected. Of course, nothing would beat a real cup of coffee with someone I respect.

Take your own loneliness quiz. 

Go out and spread the kindness, people. Be a friend to someone in need.

 Affluent men in England and Wales are outliving the average woman for the first time since official records began. The Office for National Statistics has stated that higher managerial and professional men can expect to live over 82.5 years longer than the 82.4 years of life expectancy for the average woman.

These latest ONS figures, for 2007-11, mask deep inequalities between social classes and geographical areas of the country.

The research pointed out while male solicitors, clergy, surveyors etc. have an average life expectancy of 82.5 years, men working in jobs such as street-sweepers, fishmongers, welders and window fitters will survive to only 76.6 years.

Even what we think of as super-fit male fitness instructors have a lower life expectancy than the average male journalist. Meanwhile, female florists live shorter lives than female care workers and several years less than a female estate agent.

According to the ONS, women have outlived men throughout recent times. Back in the early 1980s even women in the poorest group could expect to live longer than the most advantaged group of men.
However, since the 1970s, men have caught women up in terms of survival thanks to the sharp reduction in smoking and the decline in manual work.

The biggest gains in life expectancy are enjoyed by those earning the most. So, having money does count in the strongest possible way.

Health professionals warn that the epidemic of obesity and diabetes could throw into reverse improvements in lifespans. Source: The Guardian.

Here's a case where physical fitness shows no benefits. From the statistics, it would seem that sitting at a desk and working with your brain will give the fullest life possible.

I'm okay then, sitting here at my computer. It hardly matters that I have difficulty walking. I exercise my mind day after day, and go to bed each night tired, the way I would expect after a hard day of walking for miles.

Tomorrow, my husband will have lived for 77 years. He's fighting C, and although stress gets to him, he's enduring. Having a slender, elegant body, he's always worked at a sit-down job, and is a member or Mensa. Maybe his past employment has contributed to his survival.
​
Do the ONS statistics on life expectancy ring true to you?

 A team from Cornell University, New York, have spent the last seven years travelling the world and collecting blood samples from village dogs—free-ranging, feral, stray dogs that live near human settlements. These unleashed hounds represent the full genetic diversity of our canine companions.
​
Who doesn't love dogs? They are some of humanities oldest companions. But little is known about stray village dogs.

The team collected blood samples from 549 village dogs in 38 countries across 6 continents. All they did was offer food and the dogs appeared.

After analyzing more than 185,000 genetic markers in these individuals, the team concluded that dogs were first domesticated in Central Asia, somewhere near India or Nepal.

But this isn't a final answer. It's just the latest volley in a long-running debate about when, where, and why wild wolves first transformed into man's best friend.

The oldest dog fossils are at least 15,000 years old and come from Western Europe and Siberia.

'In 2013 alone, a whole-genome study of living wolves and dogs argued that domestication took place around 10,000 years ago during the Agricultural Revolution, when wolves that scavenged at humanity's scrapheap became more accustomed to life with us. Four months later, another whole-genome study argued that wolves were domesticated in East Asia around 32,000 years ago. Six months after that, yet another study—this one of mitochondrial DNA in both modern and fossil dogs—put the site of domestication in Europe and the time somewhere between 18,000 and 32,000 years ago. That's well before the Agricultural Revolution, and suggests that wolves may have accompanied European hunter-gatherers as either hunting partners or scavengers.'

The Cornell University team have spent years collecting samples from over 1,500 ancient dogs and wolves, and is now finally ready to analyze them all. Source: The Atlantic.
​
I like the idea of looking for clues among stray dogs. I'll await the final results with interest.

Did you guess the correct location?

 This story is too good to let go. I shared the earlier part on the 14th.

The UK woman who was sexually assaulted on a bus launched an online Facebook appeal to find the man who stepped up and faced her attacker.

The 30 year-old writer and filmmaker, was aboard a 207 bus in London when a man grabbed her. A fellow passenger defended her.

She wrote on a Facebook post: “To the man on the 207 bus towards Acton last night (the tall, dark, and dapper one with the beard)

“Thank you for saying something when that man grabbed me. Thank you for insisting that it was not acceptable."

“Most of all, thank you for asking him about the women in his life, his mother, his sister... You said, “She could be your sister. She is someone's sister”, and in doing so you made me a person. You made us a community.

“Please, let's all endeavour to 'say something', please share, and please help me find this awesome dude so I can buy him a pint!”

Now, she has tracked down a man who defended her and shared a photo of her beside the man who stood up for her on the bus.

“Last night, I got to meet and thank this Good Samaritan and all round awesome dude - Firat!” she wrote on Facebook.
She went on to thank all those who had shared her story, as well as the Metropolitan Police.

“Most of all, I am grateful the many who shared their own stories. In this way, the post went far beyond one person speaking out for another in the microcosm of a 207 bus towards Acton.

“It became an international and intersectional discussion. For that, Firat and I agreed, we are both very thankful."

She went on to urge others to “follow Firat’s lead” and stand up against sexual harassment. Source: Independent.

It is important to thank someone when they help you. The connection gives a sense of completion.

I don't remember ever being at risk of injury, although I feared the seedy side of the London streets when I first arrived in 1987 all alone. I'd heard of attacks on women on the underground. After living in my home country of Australia for all of my 45 years, I was not prepared for danger.

However, I never faced a threat.

I helped other women with their pushchairs up and down the steep underground stairs. They thanked me. I spoke to other women about trivial matters while waiting for a train. An open, friendly countenance does wonders for the way we are treated.

If anybody does something for me, my immediate response is to thank them. But why is this so important to us? I think it goes beyond the early lessons we are taught. It's a basic response, coming deep from the heart.
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Why do YOU need to thank a person who has helped you in some way?

 Do you like clowns? Their original purpose was to make light of troubles within a circus performance. Hence the song: Send in The Clowns.
Listen to the hauntingly beautiful version of the song by Barbra Streisand, (ad. free), on YouTube. https://youtu.be/ODqj9Mq39FM

But clowns have never amused me. Perhaps children can appreciate their ridiculous appearance.
​
That same childhood innocence has now caused a problem in the UK. Police are seeking a suspicious clown gang after they terrified young school children in Kent. Police patrols have been stepped up, especially after the two other attempted child abductions in the area where the perpetrators were dressed normally.

The men and women clowns in question were wearing black outfits with white clown masks.
​
Police want to find them urgently amid fears their interest is more sinister than just a Halloween prank. School heads have issued warnings to pupils and parents. Special assemblies have been held and children have been told to go straight home after school and not to loiter anywhere. Source: Express. 

 US researchers monitored 98 people from traditional societies in Africa and South America for 1,165 nights to find out their sleeping patterns. These people's lifestyles closely resemble ancient hunter gatherers and are rapidly disappearing.

The results showed they slept for an average of 6.5 hours per night.



​By comparison, the scientists said that most people in the US get about seven hours, according to a large sleep poll, published in the journal Current Biology.

Temperature played a greater role than light in shaping sleeping patterns. When it gets too cold, they wake up.

For the poll, researchers studied the Hadza of Tanzania, the San of Namibia and the Tsimane of Bolivia, fitting their volunteers with wristwatches that monitor sleep.

A professor said that all three groups had similar sleep duration and pretty much the same timing of sleep.
As well as discovering that the average sleep duration was six hours and 25 minutes, the researchers also found the participants very rarely took naps and did not wake up during the night. Insomnia was also extremely rare. Two of the groups did not even have a word for it.

While the hunter gatherers did not fall asleep until several hours after sunset, artificial light was keeping so called modern man awake for even longer due in part to artificial lights, to late night TV, and the ever-present glow of smart phones. Source: BBC. 

Our household consists of two people past their seventies. One sleeps well and the other suffers from insomnia. Our lifestyle is the same—no smart phones disturb us. I get tired at 10 pm, but will remain awake for another hour if a film holds my interest. My husband wakes and retires late—a never-ending cycle of stress seems to cause his insomnia.
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Of course, we're all different. How do you sleep?

 A scientific study shows a cup of coffee in the evening may be keeping you awake for more reasons than you realise.

Published in Science Translation Medicine, the results showed how caffeine was more than just a stimulant and actually slowed down the body's internal clock.

Cells were grown in a dish, and then exposed to caffeine to work out how it changed their ability to keep time.

They found the drug was also able to alter the chemical clocks ticking away in every cell of the human body.

A double espresso three hours before bedtime delayed the production of the sleep hormone melatonin by about 40 minutes, making it harder to nod off.

One of the doctors said it would be "complete speculation" to set a cut-off time for drinking caffeine in the evening but he personally never drank coffee after 17:00. Source: BBC. 

Black coffee affects my husband this way—he just can't drop off to sleep. On the other hand, I don't drink coffee, preferring tea in varied forms. And I never drink anything after 6 pm. Consequently, I sleep well.

And now to the revelation of a character trait judged on how a person drinks their coffee. A just-in-time-for-Halloween study revealed that people who like their coffee black are more likely to possess anti-social and psychopathic personality traits. ​

 The research, published in the journal Appetite, which comes from the University of Innsbruck in Austria, examined the taste preferences of about 1,000 people. Those who preferred more bitter foods like black coffee scored higher on a series personality questionnaires that assessed Machiavellianism, a term used in psychology to describe personalities that are dark, psychopathic, narcissistic and sadistic.


The study also notes that participants who reported a fondness for any bitter foods including radishes, and celery were also more likely to exhibit psychopathic traits.

But there's a bright side of drinking coffee without milk and sugar.

From the standpoint of physical health, consuming your morning coffee earns two thumbs up.
Coffee provides major proven benefits:
increased feelings of happiness,
decreased risk for some cancers,
improved brain function.

Straight black coffee-drinkers are reaping the benefits without consuming added calories and fat.
Source: Huffington Post. 

I like bitter foods. Tea leaves a bitter tang on the palette and I like that, as well as celery. But I'm no psychopath.

Do you drink your coffee black? Does coffee affect your sleep or reveal your personality?