FEAST OR FAMINE

On 1 September 2016 there will be an annular solar eclipse. The moon will pass in front of the sun creating a ring of fire – a ring of sunlight visible from certain areas around the world. It is not a total eclispe because the sun is not completely blocked out – the circle, or ring, of light is visible without a telescope. This annular solar eclipse will be visible from areas around the southern Indian Ocean, especially from Africa. The best location to view the 1 September annular eclipse will be southern Africa – with the prime spot at about 10 hours drive south of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Viewers in Tanzania will see the moon cross paths with the sun at 9:08 in the morning, local time. The next annular solar eclipse will be February 2017, and the next total solar eclipse will be August 2017. http://www.space.com/33784-solar-eclipse-guide.html MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development c

Lucy is a 3.2 million year old skeleton – part skeleton – of a three-foot-tall woman. Paleoanthropologist Donald C Johanson unearthed the bones in 1974 in Ethiopia. Scientists dated her, named her species Australopithecus afarensis (meaning ‘southern ape from Afar – a region in Ethiopia), and called her Lucy. She is kept in the National Museum of Ethiopia. But the scientists didn’t know how she died. The mystery of Lucy’s death may now have an answer (International New York Times, 29 August 2016). Forty years after her discovery, scientists decided to scan every one of the bones that make up her part-skeleton. That was done in 2007 by scientists from the University of Texas (led by John Kappelman), where Lucy stayed for 10 days while she was on tour in the United Sates. After the bones were scanned, the scientists turned the scans into three-dimensional models. The study of the bones – and the likely cause of her death – was published on 28 August 2016 in Nature.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).