The end of the world...?

'It's not the end of the world.'

Have you ever heard this English expression? We say it to someone who is upset or disappointed, and it means, 'Don't worry. This situation is not as bad as you think it is'.

But today, perhaps this expression has a more literal meaning: an ancient calendar produced by the Mayan people stops on 21.12.12, which some people believe signals the end of the world. Others believe not that the world will end, but that great changes will happen.

Above: today's Google doodle.

This idea is sometimes called 'the 2012 phenomenon'. It was the subject of a movie, titled simply 2012; Google has today changed its logo to a picture of the Mayan calendar; and it has been written about in newspapers all over the world. In some countries, it was even reported that people were panic-buying essential items such as salt and torches.

So far, the world looks unchanged. But what would you do if today was the last day of your life? Why not leave us a comment? :)

Human Rights Day

Did you know that 10 December is Human Rights Day?

Click for photo source

On this day in 1948, the United Nations published a list of 30 rights which should apply to every human being, such as freedom of speech and movement. You can read the list of human rights in simple English by clicking here. Political conferences and cultural events are held all around the world on 10 December.

Although the list was written 64 years ago, there are still many places in the world where people do not have these rights.

Is it a good list? In Georgia, do people have all of the rights on the list? Do you think it's important to celebrate this event? Why (not)? Why not tell us your opinion below?

Idiom

Confusion Helps Us Learn

When we’re confused by something—say with a movie plot or calculus—we tend to feel uncomfortable, frustrated. But maybe we should embrace the confusion. Because a new study finds that confusion can lead to better learning.

Scientists set up a situation where they purposely confused subjects during a pretend learning session.

The subjects watched an animated tutor and student discuss possible flaws in a scientific study. The researchers had the animated tutor and student disagree with each other on specific flaws.  But to set up a really confusing situation for one group of subjects they also had the pretend tutor and student make incorrect or contradictory statements about the study. Then the subjects had to decide which of the two opinions had more scientific merit.

Subjects who were forced to deal with the incorrect and contradictory statements did significantly better on later tests where they had to spot flaws in studies, as opposed to those subjects who only faced the disagreements between the animated tutor and student. The study will be published in the journal Learning and Instruction.

Researchers note that confusion motivates us to work harder to understand, and so we gain a deeper and more comprehensive knowledge of a subject.

© 2012 ScientificAmerican.com

Idiom

Spider invasion spooks Indian village

Panicked villagers in a remote Indian state complained Monday of an invasion of giant venomous spiders that resemble tarantulas but are unknown to local specialists.

Indian media said that a dozen people had been bitten and treated in hospital, with two unconfirmed deaths reported.

"Initially we thought it was a prank, but later on we saw swarms of this peculiar kind of spider biting people," Ranjit Das, a community elder in the town of Sadiya in the northeastern state of Assam, told AFP by telephone.

Authorities have swung into action by fogging and spraying insecticides in the area, 600 kilometres (370 miles) east of Assam's main city of Guwahati, and a team of scientists have been dispatched to investigate.

"We visited the spot and found it akin to the tarantula, but we are still not sure what this particular species is," said L.R. Saikia, a scientist from the department of life science of Dibrugarh University in Assam.

"It appears to be an aggressive spider with its fangs more powerful than the normal variety of house spiders," he told AFP.

Specimens have been sent outside Assam for identification by arachnologists, he said.

An stunning Olympic moment

Derek Redmond and dad finish 400m

What made this moment at the 1992 Games special was it brought into focus not just one athlete's near-heroic desperation but a more universal theme: the nature of parenthood

Olympians could fill a pool with their tears, on a quadrennial basis. The nature of the competition ensures that however many dream of glory, most will only experience disappointment. At that moment, the bitter taste not just of a single defeat but of four years of wasted effort can simply be too much for some to handle. More than that, quite a few athletes can't even win without tears. But no Olympic emotional outburst is ever likely to dislodge Derek Redmond's in the minds not just of Britons but of anyone old enough to remember the 1992 Games. What made this moment special was that it brought into focus not just the near-heroic desperation of a single professional athlete but a much more universal theme: the nature of parenthood.

"I still get people coming up to me in the street because of what happened," said Redmond in February 1993, six months after the 1992 Olympics. "But as nice as it is to know that they care, I would like to put it all behind me and not be remembered just for that."

He never had a chance. Redmond travelled to two Olympics and both ended with injury-induced heartache, once in the most public circumstances. For all his ability as an athlete – and he was considered likely to win a medal in Barcelona – he will forever be remembered for tearfully completing his 400m semi-final using his father as a crutch. His body never gave him the opportunity to redefine the way the world perceived him: two years after the Barcelona Games, following an 11th operation on his achilles tendon, his athletics career was over. This was his last race of any significance.

Redmond had missed the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh with a hamstring injury, and withdrew from the 1988 Seoul Olympics minutes before his first heat having failed to recover from tendinitis, having had two painkilling injections that morning in an effort to make it on to the track. The following summer, still plagued by injuries, he came close to giving up sport altogether. What the world witnessed in 1992 was a man who had been continually brought low by injury simply refusing to submit yet again.

His body had given him some hope: in the first round Redmond had run his quickest 400m for four years. "I was feeling absolutely 100% before the race," he told me in 2006. "I'd had two really good rounds without even trying and the night before the semi-final I'd talked with my father and my coach and we'd decided I was going to push a bit harder and try to get a good lane for the final.

"On the day everything went smooth. I got a really good start, which was unusual for me. I think I was the first to react to the pistol. My normal tactics were to get round the first bend and then put the burners on for 30m, accelerate hard. But by the time I'd got upright I was almost round the bend, much further than usual, and I decided not to bother, to save my energy in case I had to fight for the line. About three strides later I felt a pop."

It was his hamstring. Redmond collapsed to the floor, clutching his leg. Most athletes would have been quietly carried off the track and towards medical attention, but as the Red Cross workers approached Redmond instead pushed himself back to his feet. "I got up quicker than I got out of my blocks," he said. "I said to myself: 'There's no way I'm going to be stretchered out of these Olympics.' I didn't know where I was. I really, really believed I could still qualify."

Bizarrely, the reason Redmond first started limping around the track was a belief that if he limped fast enough he might still overtake four people and qualify for the final. "Believe me, at the time I thought I was running," he said later. "It's only when I see the playback I realise I wasn't actually running very quick at all."

Meanwhile, Redmond's father Jim was fighting his way on to the track. "When I saw Derek hit the deck, I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me," he told the Guardian. "I'm very involved in his training so I knew just how fit he was. All I can remember after that is telling the coach, Tony Hadley [not the lead singer in Spandau Ballet], to look after my camera. The next thing I knew, I was on the track."

Jim told his son to stop, in case the injury might heal in time for him to compete in the relay. Derek refused. "Well then," Jim said, "we're going to finish this together." And finish it they did, slowly, and with the younger man's anguish becoming visibly greater with every pace.

Back in Northampton Redmond's mother, Jennie, was watching events unfold on television, weeping. She later told the press that the last time she had seen her son so unhappy was when he didn't get the bike he wanted for his sixth birthday. Redmond's 28-year-old sister Karen was nine months pregnant; as she watched her brother's world collapse she started to feel contractions.

Back in Barcelona, father and son batted away a succession of officials who tried and failed to convince them to clear the track. Jim, it turned out, was as much bouncer as buttress. "I'd never heard my dad using four-letter words," Derek said the following day. "I learned a few new ones."

"Even now, it's hard to say how or why I did it," said Jim. "It was a spontaneous reaction, as if I had seen him hit by a car. I certainly didn't run down to help him finish – if anything it was to stop him. I could accept the fact that my son was injured, but not that he was going to carry on in pain, causing himself even greater damage."

"After I crossed the line I was taken to the doctors and I was crying like a baby the whole time," Redmond told me. "I had no idea how the crowd had reacted until I saw the video – they were the last thing on my mind. It could have gone one of two ways: they'd either think 'what a complete prat' or 'good on him'. Luckily they chose the second one."

Not everyone. Though the Redmonds were pictured on the front page of the following day's newspaper, the Guardian's athletics correspondent at the time, John Rodda, who was covering his ninth and last Olympic Games for the paper, decided that the incident merited only a mention in the 18th and penultimate paragraph of his main report, calling it "a display of histrionics which the crowd saw as courage but must have bewildered many".

Most observers, though, were genuinely moved by what they witnessed. On his way from the stadium Redmond met Linford Christie, Britain's team captain. The pair were far from friendly, and their enmity had become public after Christie criticised the 4x400m relay team that won gold at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo. "These guys are not my sort of guys," he said. "I don't like their attitude." Christie added that the four – of whom Redmond was one – should have toned down their celebrations because they had "mucked up" their individual events. Redmond replied: "There's a saying going around among the athletes that Linford is the most balanced runner in Britain because he's got a chip on both shoulders. For once in his life he was upstaged in Tokyo and he didn't like it."

But that day, in the bowels of Barcelona's Estadi Olímpic, Christie approached his team-mate and the pair wordlessly embraced. "Tears started and we both broke down," said Redmond. "I know it sounds soppy but it was Mills and Boon sort of stuff. I've changed my views of him completely. It shows that this sport isn't just about coming here and making money."

Perhaps not, but as it happens Redmond's courage that day allowed him to enjoy a second career as a motivational speaker. That wasn't the only lasting effect of those injury-plagued years, however: in Barcelona the swimmer Sharron Davies, another British athlete who had endured a disappointing Games, sought out Redmond to express her sympathy. The pair married two years later (but divorced in 2000). More long-lasting, it transpired, are the chronic stomach ulcers induced by Redmond's use of painkilling medication. "I would never encourage anyone to do what I did," he said, "but I didn't need encouragement. I went out and did it myself."

At the 1992 Olympics the athletes had access to a rudimentary computerised messaging system. This allowed them to log on to one of the Olympic computers, which were distributed around the athletes' village, and send someone else a message that they would be able to pick up when they next logged on – a kind of electronic mail, if you will. It's never really caught on. Anyway, in the days after the race Redmond received scores of messages from his fellow competitors, including this from a Candian competitor he had never met:

"Long after the names of the medallists have faded from our minds, you will be remembered for having finished, for having tried so hard, for having a father to demonstrate the strength of his love for his son. I thank you, and I will always remember your race and I will always remember you – the purest, most courageous example of grit and determination I have seen."

It is as true today as it was 19 years ago.

• © 2012 Guardian

Idiom of the week

Idiom of the week

Mystery of horse taming 'solved' by gene study

Horses were domesticated 6,000 years ago on the grasslands of Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan, a genetic study shows.

Domestic horses then spread across Europe and Asia, breeding with wild mares along the way, research published in the journal PNAS suggests.

The work, by a Cambridge University team, brings together two competing theories on horse domestication.

The matter has been hotly contested by scientists.

Archaeological evidence suggests horses were tamed in the western part of the Eurasian Steppe (Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan).

Experts think they were used for riding, and as a source of meat and milk.

However, these archaeological clues- such as traces of horse milk found in ancient pots from the western Eurasian Steppe - are at odds with evidence from mitochondrial DNA.

These studies suggest domestication happened in many places across Europe and Asia.

The new study looked at nuclear DNA samples taken from 300 horses living in eight countries in Europe and Asia.

Genetic data was fed into computer models developed to look at different scenarios for domestication.

Dr Vera Warmuth from the Department of Zoology at Cambridge said: "It shows that horse domestication originated in the western part of the Steppes and that the spread of domestication involved lots of integration of wild horses."

The theory explains why evidence from mitochondrial DNA - which contains genes inherited solely from the mother - suggests horses were domesticated many times, in different places.

In fact, it appears that wild mares were used to re-stock herds of existing domesticated horses, perhaps because they did not breed easily in captivity.

This is the case with Przewalski's horse, which is the closest wild relative of modern horses.

BBC © 2012