Attention at all passengers. You can now book your train tickets on Uber and get 10% back in Uber credits to spend on your next train journey.

So no excuses not to visit your in-laws this Christmas.

Trains now on Uber. Tees and sees apply check the Uber app.

I'm Scott Hirschberger with Scientific American as an American association for the advancement of science, mass media science and engineering fellow. And here's a short piece from the October

2020 issue of the magazine in a section called Advances Dispatches from the

Frontiers of Science, Technology, and Medicine. The article is titled Quick Hits and it's a rundown of some

stories from around the globe. From Mexico in now flooded caves

researchers discovered the oldest known ochre mines in the Americas.

Around 12,000 years ago, inhabitants of the Yucatan Peninsula extracted the red pigment, possibly for use as an antiseptic and sunscreen,

or for symbolic purposes such as body painting.

From Italy, a massive bloom of pink algae triggered by low snowfall and high spring and

summer temperatures could accelerate the melting of the Priscena Glacier by causing the ice to

absorb more sunlight. From Botswana, at least 350 elephants have dropped dead in

the Okavango Panhandle since March and live elephants have acted disoriented or seemed partially paralyzed.

With poaching and anthrax ruled out as potential causes, investigators suspect an unknown disease.

From Libya, a 7 million-year-old crocodile skull

suggests the prehistoric animals may have traveled from Africa

to the Americas.

Computerized tomography of the fossil, found in Libya, revealed a slight bump in the

middle of the snout, a feature of modern American crocodiles but not their African counterparts.

From Polynesia, through a genetic analysis of modern-day Polynesians and indigenous people from South America's Pacific coast, scientists concluded the two groups came into contact between AD-11-50 and 1230, where the transoceanic encounter

occurred remains unknown, but the team suspects eastern Polynesia.

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