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A Scottish wildcat. Photo: Peter Trimming

Scottish wildcats, the U.K.’s only remaining species of wild feline, look a little bit like adorable grey tabbies, slightly on the large size, with a bushy striped tail. But the species lived in Scotland long before any domestic relatives—or humans—arrived. Nicknamed “the tiger of the highlands,” the felines were rumored for years to be man-killers. The Scottish Wildcats Association makes clear that these fierce felines are no cuddly kittens:

Although classically portrayed as a ferocious and terrifying beast to be feared and hated, wildcats simply enjoy their personal space, daily schedule and peace. A wildcat will only attack something it’s hunting, or something that it feel is hunting it. When threatened their classic strategy is to turn on an aggressor hissing, growling and spitting furiously; just like a domestic cat their hackles raise and the back arches but rather than turn side on to try and look big, they mock charge like a big cat; stamping forwards at you hissing and spitting. The idea is to give you just enough doubt to give them an opportunity to escape. If given no other choice and in fear of its life, perhaps cornered or defending kittens, the cat will attack with all its fury.

Yet only about 100 of the wildcats remain, and researchers point to the common house cat as the main culprit behind the species’ demise, the BBC reports. Wildcats and house cats, it turns out, are interbreeding, and scientists project the species could be obliterated by house cat genes within two years.   

Paul O’Donoghue, a researcher calling for the species’ conservation, compared the 63,000 domestic cat genes to those of the wildcats. He combed through 140 years worth of wildcat specimens kept in London and Edinburgh museums in order to find pristine genetic samples, then compared those two standards to samples attained from wildcats in the wild.

O’Donoghue concluded that extinction due to hybridization is almost guaranteed, perhaps within two years, for the wildcat unless conservationists undertake drastic action. For him, that means trapping the wildcats that still maintain pure genes, breeding them, and perhaps even placing them in the care of volunteers—so long, of course, as there are no frisky house cats about.

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King Richard III, the leader of England from 1483 to 1485, was the last English king killed in battle—struck by an arrow during a fight for the throne. His body was buried in a church, the Greyfriars in Leicester, but as centuries passed his burial grounds were lost. In September, word came from a team at the University of Leicester that they may have found the dead king’s body, buried beneath a parking lot.

Follow up work, including genetic testing, doubled-down on the assessment, an the question became what to do with the late king’s recently-exhumed remains. Some want him re-buried in Leicester, where he fell. His family wants his body brought to York, to be buried alongside his relatives. But wherever Richard III’s real skull goes, forensic artists working with the Richard III Society in Leicester are trying to make sure his visage is not lost again. They’ve created a bust of Richard III’s head, which will go on tour around England over the next few years.

The reconstructed face of Richard III. Photo: Leicester Arts & Museums

The forensic art team, says the Atlantic, tried to “ determine what the king’s face would have looked like in person (well, “in person”).”

From there, the team used stereolithography – yep, 3D printing — to convert that rendering into a physical model of the king’s face. They extrapolated details like hair color and clothing style from portraits painted during Richard’s time.

The results of this endeavor are fairly creepily Tussaudian: The twisted-spined king, in the form of a 3D-printed bust, looks essentially like a decapitated wax figure. But it’s a high-tech wax figure. The forensics-based model — which, yes, will now be going on a tour throughout England — offers a new perspective on an old story: It brings a new dimension, quite literally, to ancient history.

The first stop of that tour begins today, at the Leicester Guildhall.

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Heavy metal singer Chino Moreno. Photo: Focka

Looking to get that all-important college degree but care more about double-kicks and shredding than valence electrons or iambic pentameter? According to the Telegraph, Nottingham Trent University in England may have just what you’re after: a degree in Heavy Metal Music Performance.

The course will encourage students to explore how the actions of heavy metal figures have been censored throughout history, as well as to study how famous heavy metal bands came into being and the relationship of heavy metal to religion and philosophy.

The degree is a two-year focus that you’ll need to round out with another year of studies. In the end, you’ll be sent home with a nice artium baccalaureus. In England, says the Telegraph, the school is facing flak for offering what many are criticizing as a useless degree, one that sets students back professionally (on top of taking their tuition money.)

‘Education campaigners have criticised the course as something that could put students at a disadvantage with future employers.

Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: “The problem is I don’t think this will have credibility in the marketplace.

“I’m not against heavy metal at all, I just don’t think it will impress an employer to find a youngster has a degree in heavy metal. It could become a ‘disqualification.’”

A degree in Heavy Metal joins the fray of odd college degrees, such as packaging, comic book art or poultry science (which, if you think about it, are all actually quite useful). More than an interesting alternative educational avenue, Nottingham’s Heavy Metal degree touches on the ideological debate over what, exactly, college is for.

As a venue for securing employment, sure, maybe it’s not the most straightforward approach. Then again, according to Forbes, a whole host of college degrees, from film and art to philosophy and history, are pretty much pointless if your whole goal is to secure a high-paying wage. But as an intellectual pursuit, how is studying the history and cultural force of heavy metal music any different than studying, say, the societal impact of Renaissance era French poets?

For many, college is a time to expand your horizons, to think weird thoughts and to absorb knowledge you’d probably never encounter otherwise. Rock on, Nottingham, \m/.

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Workers examine remains at a mass grave in eastern Bosnia in 2004. Photo: Polargeo

It helps to have hard evidence when making a case against criminals. For those who committed crimes against humanity, that evidence often takes the form of mass graves. But locating hundreds or even thousands of buried bodies can be more difficult than it sounds. A team of researchers from the UK and Colombia hope to ease that search process by developing new means of sniffing out sites of atrocities.

In a poster abstract presented at the Meeting of the Americas in Mexico, the authors write:

Nowadays, there are thousands of missing people around the world that could have been tortured and killed and buried in clandestine graves. This is a huge problem for their families and governments that are responsible to warranty the human rights for everybody. These people need to be found and the related crime cases need to be resolved.

Currently, the science of detecting mass graves is hit or miss. Local governments and organizations try different methods of detecting clandestine burial sites, and some work better than others depending upon the circumstances. Developing a standard, refined technique for both locating the graves and determining factor such as the time of death, the researchers think, will expedite the process of convicting murderers for their crimes.

In the UK, researchers pursued this goal by burying pigs and then monitoring soil gases, fluids and other changes over time as the carcasses decomposed underground. Those results are already being applied throughout Europe. But bodies break down differently in different climates, and for this new project, researchers will bury pigs in eight different mass grave simulation sites throughout Colombia. Each of the site will represent a different climate, soil type and rainfall pattern. They plan to use grond penetrating radar, electrical resistivity, conductivity, magnetometry and other measures to characterize the grave sites over 18 months.

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Photo: sewitsforyou

Drop an S-bomb today in polite conversation, and heads will likely turn. But back in the ninth century, “shit” referred to excrement in a matter-of-fact, not a vulgar, way. In the new book Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing, author Melissa Mohr explores how our opinion of this and other curse words have shifted over the years. In an interview with NPR, she delves into the history of “shit”:

It only really started to become obscene, I would say, during the Renaissance. … It basically involves increasing privacy. In the Middle Ages … when that word wasn’t obscene, people lived very differently. The way their houses were set up, there wasn’t space to perform a lot of bodily functions in private. So they would defecate in public, they had privies with many seats, and it was thought to be a social activity. That you would all get together on the privy and talk while you did this. … As the actual act became more taboo because you could do it in private now … the direct word became taboo.

The word itself likely arose from one or all of the Old English terms scite (dung), scitte (diarrhea) or scitan (to defecate). Middle English introduced schitte (excrement), schyt (diarrhea) and shiten (to defecate). Similar terms for the same thing eventually found their way into other languages as well, such as Sheisse (german), schijt (Dutch), skit (Swedish), skitur (Icelandic) and skitt (Norwgian).

As the Online Etymology Dictionary details, “shit” as a term related to excrement dates to at least the 1580s, though people had already adopted the term in reference for an “obnoxious person” by at least 1508.

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