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Scientists got a huge surprise in 2009 when they found a well-preserved human brain inside a 2,600-year-old skull dug up at an archaeological site in Heslington, England. They simply couldn't fathom how a mass of soft tissue could be preserved for thousands of years.

But now they know the answer--and it's all about mud.

That's right. Researchers at the York Archaeological Trust have determined that the wet, clay-rich soil in which the skull was found provided a sealed, oxygen-free environment that protected the brain against bacterial decomposition.

(Story continues below image.)

Rachel Cubitt, of the York Archaeological Trust, uses an endoscope to examine the brain.

"I peered though the hole at the base of the skull to investigate and to my surprise saw a quantity of bright yellow spongy material," Rachel Cubitt, collection projects officer at the Trust and the person who gave the brain a cleaning, said in a written statement. "It was unlike anything I had seen before."

Whose brain was it anyway? The scientists think it belonged to a man between the ages of 26 and 45. The neck vertebrae suggests that the man sustained a hard blow to the neck before his head was severed--perhaps in a ritual sacrifice.

BEIJING, March 7 (Reuters) - A popular documentary on China's struggles with pollution was inaccessible on the country's video sharing websites on Saturday, sparking concern from Chinese Internet users that it had been censored within a week of its launch.
"Under the Dome," a film by journalist Chai Jing that explains air pollution in straightforward terms, spurred a national debate after its release last weekend and quickly garnered hundreds of millions of views on streaming video sites.
Its removal will likely be seen as underscoring the government's prime focus on maintaining social stability. The ruling Communist Party has previously described tackling pollution as a top priority and promised greater transparency on the subject.
Just on Thursday, at the opening of the annual session of parliament, Premier Li Keqiang called pollution a blight on people's lives and vowed to step up efforts to combat it.



Chen Jining, newly-appointed party chief of the Ministry of Environmental Protection attends a press conference on March 1, 2015 in Beijing. (ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)


In a sign of the sensitivity around the issue, no reporters from major foreign news outlets were called on to ask a question at a news conference held by the environment minister on Saturday. The issue of Chai's film being pulled from the Internet did not come up in the questions that were asked.
The film started becoming inaccessible on the country's biggest online video sharing websites late on Friday.
By Saturday morning, it was inaccessible on all the major video sites, as well as a number of smaller video sites, with users getting error messages when they tried to play it.
Neither internet regulator the Cyberspace Administration of China, nor the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television responded to requests for comment.
Youku Tudou Inc, Tencent Holdings Ltd, Sohu.com Inc and iQiyi, the online video service of Baidu Inc, which operate video streaming services, also did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did Chai, the filmmaker.



Smog on the banks of Songhua River on January 22, 2015 in Jilin, China. (ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)


The website of Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily, which had originally posted the video on its site, did not answer repeated calls requesting comment.
China operates one of the world's most sophisticated online censorship mechanisms, known as the Great Firewall. Censors keep a grip on what can be published online, particularly content seen as potentially undermining the Communist Party.
Chai was a well-known journalist on state-run television before making the film, which was released just as China's leaders prepared to hold the annual meeting of the National People's Congress (NPC) this week.
The disappearance of the video was met with anger from many Internet users.
"Some people have the power to completely smother Chai Jing's 'Under the Dome' on the Internet, but don't have the power to smother haze in this country," one Internet user said on the Twitter-like site, Weibo. 

Germany on Friday approved a new quota that will force some of Europe's largest companies to increase the number of women in their boardrooms to 30 percent by next year.

Women claim just 15.5 percent of boardroom seats on companies listed on the S&P 1500 -- an index of U.S. stocks -- fewer than the combined number of positions held by men named John, Robert, William or James, according to a report from Ernst & Young.

Germany fares slightly better, with women in 22 percent of boardroom seats.




"You have to be sparing with the word 'historic,'" Justice Minister Heiko Maas said of the decision, according to the New York Times. "But I think today we can apply it."

He called it the "greatest contribution to gender equality" since German women won the right to vote in 1918.

The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

The move marks the latest in a string of such quotas. In 2008, Norway became the first country to enact a quota of 40 percent, threatening to dissolve publicly traded companies who did not comply. France, Iceland and Spain soon followed. The Netherlands and Malaysia set non-binding targets of 30 percent. Australia, Britain and Sweden have threatened to enforce quotas if companies not voluntarily give more corporate supervisory seats to women.

Some say such quotas fail to empower women in management positions. None of Norway's 32 biggest companies has a woman as chief executive and just 5.8 percent of general managers at its public companies are women, according to the Wall Street Journal. Other critics say it does little to close the gender wage gap and empowers less experienced women who amount to little more than "window dressing" in a room full of seasoned businessmen.

"Board quotas may seem like a convenient shortcut to workplace equality, but they are not -- nor are they a long-term solution," Carrie Lukas, managing director of the nonprofit Independent Women's Forum, wrote in an op-ed published last December. "A distraction at best, they may undo women's historic gains by suggesting that we cannot succeed on our own."

Still, Germany is Europe's largest and most powerful economy, with companies such as BMW, Deutsche Bank, Siemens and Volkswagen. Some of the country's workplace policies could serve as models for other countries.

Wolfsburg-based Volkswagen, the world's second-largest automaker, has begun offering apprenticeships at its plant in Tennessee -- similar to the vocational training many German students receive -- in hopes of cultivating more highly skilled factory workers, of which there is a shortage in the U.S. Last August, Germany's labor ministry began work on potential legislation that would bar employers from emailing workers after hours.

Germany's workplace protections for women are particularly strong.

Women are guaranteed six weeks of maternity leave, and it's illegal to fire a female worker for becoming pregnant. It's also illegal to require a worker to perform tasks that could endanger her pregnancy, such as lifting and carrying heavy objects or handling toxic or radioactive material.

It probably helps that Germany is led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, the most powerful woman in the world.

The streets of Selma, Alabama, were packed on Saturday with thousands of people who traveled to the small town to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the historic march for voting rights.

Large crowds gathered around the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which marks the location where local activists, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were attacked by police on March 7, 1965. Officers used tear gas and billy cubs to subdue the marchers, and the day later came to be known as "Bloody Sunday."

President Barack Obama is expected to deliver remarks on Saturday, reflecting on the landmark civil rights march and its significance today.

The town will also host a series of events honoring the anniversary. Meanwhile, thousands of citizens, civil rights activists and politicians -- from as far as California -- have poured into the city to commemorate the anniversary.

By faulting the 21-year-old for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, defense lawyer Judy Clarke may have made it easier to soften her client's image, pin the majority of the blame on Tsarnaev's radicalized, overbearing big brother, and save her client from death row, experts told The Huffington Post.

"It makes sense that the defense came clean and said, 'Yes, it was him,'" said Northeastern University law professor Daniel Medwed. "I bet they scored some credibility points. Credibility with the jury is paramount."

In Clarke's opening statement, she essentially conceded that no one in the federal courtroom thought Tsarnaev was completely innocent of the charges in the 30-count indictment.

"For the next several weeks, we're going to come face to face with unbearable grief, pain and loss caused by senseless, horribly misguided acts carried out by two brothers," she said. "We do not and will not attempt to sidestep Dzhokhar's responsibility for his actions."

Assistant U.S. Attorney William Weinreb, in his opening statement, described witnesses and exhibits that would show Tsarnaev planned the April 15, 2013, attack, carried one of the bombs to the race and days later took part in the violent spree that included the fatal shooting of MIT Police Officer Sean Collier. His brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was also accused of the bombing, but died in a gunfight before police captured Dzhokhar.

After accepting some blame for her client, Clarke also tried heaping greater responsibility onto Tamerlan.

Tsarnaev was led astray by his older brother, who'd become obsessed with a violent strand of Islam, according to Clarke. "It was Tamerlan Tsarnaev who self-radicalized [and] it was Dzhokhar who followed," she said according to USA Today.

It was a shrewd decision by Clarke, according to Suffolk University associate professor of law Chris Dearborn.

"Why fight over things they shouldn't be fighting over," Dearborn said. "By getting that out front, it was an appropriate tactical choice by a very experienced and excellent defense team."

U.S. District Court Judge George O'Toole had issued a ruling that may hinder any benefits gained by the defense from its gambit. O'Toole said he would restrict the amount of testimony about Tamerlan's allegedly manipulative influence over Tsarnaev. If the jury reaches a guilty verdict, such testimony would be permitted during the sentencing phase.

The prosecution cast a starkly contrasting portrayal of Tsarnaev's personality and of his relationship with Tamerlan. Tsarnaev "believed that he was a soldier in a holy war against Americans," whose goal "was to maim and kill as many people as possible." He stood near children for several minutes at the marathon and deliberately placed one of the bombs near them, Weinreb said.

In Weinreb's words, the brothers were "partners" in planning and carrying out the attack.

Because Tsarnaev's not guilty plea still stands, the prosecution will invest weeks demonstrating that he allegedly committed crimes like using a weapon of mass destruction, conspiracy to bomb a place of public use resulting in death, and possession and use of a firearm during a crime resulting in death. Seventeen of the charges carry the death penalty.

From the beaches of Bali to the Champs-Élysées in Paris, the outback of Australia to the mountains of Tibet, best-selling author and acclaimed travel writer Pico Iyer has seen it all. He's spent a lifetime traveling the globe, landing his dream job reporting on world affairs for Time Magazine in 1982.

So where does someone who has seen every corner of the world say is the best place to visit?

Nowhere, it turns out.

In his latest book, The Art of Stillness, Iyer writes:

In an age of speed, I began to think nothing could be more exhilarating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still. You can go on vacation to Paris or Hawaii or New Orleans three months from now and you will have a tremendous time, I'm sure. But if you want to come back feeling new, alive, full of fresh hope, and in love with the world, I think the place to visit may be nowhere.

In the above "Super Soul Sunday" clip, Iyer explains why being present is far more beneficial than jet setting around the world.

"I often think we're most happy when we forget the time," Iyer says. "When we're completely absorbed in the conversation or a movie or a piece of music."

At the age of 29, Iyer gave up his glamorous life in Manhattan to move to Kyoto, Japan, in order to embrace a quieter life of contemplation. What we really crave, Iyer discovered, is intimacy and kindness.

"They found surveys that when somebody is standing in a street with a hand extended in need and people are walking past or stopping to talk to that person, the one factor that determines whether they'll stop and help the person or not is not income or background or race or any of that. It's just whether they have the time or not," he says. "If you don't have time, you don't have enough kindness in your life. You don't have the chance to open yourself up."

After crashing his vehicle during pre-season testing, Formula One driver Fernando Alonso is said to have woken up having no memory of the past 20 years of his life.

Quoting a report in the Spanish daily El Pais, The Telegraph writes that Alonso awoke from the crash believing that it was the year 1995.

"I'm Fernando, I drive go-karts and I want to be a Formula One driver," the 33-year-old two-time Formula One champion is quoted as telling doctors.

Alonso was taken to the hospital on Feb. 22 after crashing into a wall at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona. According to the BBC, the McLaren driver was briefly "unconscious when rescue crews reached him" and was in a "confused state" when he awoke.



Fernando Alonso of Spain and McLaren Honda receives medical assistance after crashing during day four of Formula One Winter Testing at Circuit de Catalunya on February 22, 2015 in Montmelo, Spain.

Alonso has since been released from the hospital.

Ron Dennis, the McLaren chairman, said last week that Alonso suffered retrograde amnesia post-crash, which is said to not be unusual in patients who have suffered from a severe concussion.

A few days after the accident, Alonso released a video on YouTube in which he assured fans that he was "completely fine." His accident, however, is causing him to miss the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

It remains unclear if doctors will clear Alonso to participate in the second race of the season in Malaysia, which will take place at the end of March. Both Alonso and McLaren have said that the driver intends to participate in the race.

"All we can say is that he is making good progress, and that we hope and expect he will soon be back to his brilliant best," said a McLaren spokesperson, per The Telegraph. "We understand the media's thirst for further information, but, as I say, the remaining unanswered questions will be answered by doctors, not by Formula One personnel."

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Authorities in Ukraine say the sole witness in the killing in Moscow of prominent Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov has received death threats since returning to her family home in Ukraine.

The General Prosecutor's office in Kiev said in a statement Friday that Anna Duritskaya, the 23-year old model who was walking with Nemtsov at the time of his killing, is being provided with protection. The statement offered no information on who might have issued the threats. Duritskaya was detained by Russian police for several days of questioning before she was permitted to leave the country.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the slaying of his top critic a "disgrace" to Russia, although scant progress has been made in the investigation into the shooting last Friday night.

In addition to packing extra pairs of underwear and all the sunscreen money can buy, the next time you're going on a trip make sure to pack "Lizard Bites & Street Riots," a new travel book that might just save your life.

Written by three experts (each with long careers in either health or security), the book is more travel savior than travel guide. "Lizard Bites" helps readers through a number of medical and security emergencies, offering thorough advice on key crises like when, say, you just drank foreign water or got bitten by a snake.



Even Dr. Robert Gates, former U.S. Secretary of Defense and former director of the CIA, calls the book a "great travel companion to help you sort out problems on the road and protect your security."

And with spring break just around the corner, the book really couldn't come at a better time. We've gathered some of the best, handiest points from the book and the types of situations they'll help solve.

If you're worried about bed bugs in your hotel...
Don't worry, the book will tell you if those itchy bumps are from bed bugs or fleas. Do the bites have a red center in the middle? Then they're definitely flea bites (whew!), but you still probably need to vacate that room.

If you're unsure of how to treat a nasty sunburn...
It's time to start chugging water! "Lizard Bites" will immediately instruct you to rehydrate with fluids and try taking "anti-inflammatory meds like ibuprofen, antioxidants, or antihistamines."

If you're pretty sure you touched poison ivy...
No worries! Sure, poison ivy will itch like hell, but as this awesome book will assure you that, "mild cases of poison ivy don't require any treatment." Grab a warm compress, take a bath and only reach for the antibiotics if your rash gets infected.