The Death of Captain Scott - "I fear we have shipped up – a close shave."

It may be over 101 years since Captain Scott's death, but on this anniversary a letter written by the dying Captain Scott inside h

is final Antarctic camp in March 1912, went on display.

The letter is addressed to Admiral Sir Francis Bridgeman, who was Scott's former commanding officer in the Royal Navy. In the letter he expresses his anxiety for his wife and two-year-old son, asking Bridgeman to ensure they are looked after in his absence.

Scott poignantly writes that he is at the end of his adventure, writing: "I fear we have shipped up – a close shave."

The letter was bought by the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge for £78,816, with donated funds.

Scott wrote eight letters as he faced death. There is one still in private ownership, addressed to Edgar Speyer, after it was sold last year in auction for £165,000.

It is believed the explorer died on 29 March, after writing his final diary entry, where he wrote: "It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more. R. Scott. For God's sake look after our people."

Captain Scott's last letter to Admiral Sir Francis Bridgeman

My dear Sir Francis,

I fear we have shipped up – a close shave. I am writing a few letters which I hope will be delivered some day. I want to thank you for the friendship you gave me of late years, and to tell you how extraordinarily pleasant I found it to serve under you. I want to tell you I was not too old for this job. It was the younger men that went under first.

Finally, I want you to secure a competence for my widow and boy. I leave them very ill provided for, but feel the country ought not to neglect them. After all we are setting a good example to our countrymen, if not by getting into a tight place, by facing it like men when we were there. We could have come back through had we neglected the sick. Goodbye and goodbye to dear Lady Bridgeman.

Yours ever, R Scott

Excuse writing, it is minus 40, and has been for nigh a month.

Why does a mint make ice cream even colder?

All mints contain the chemical menthol, which binds to the TRP-M8 receptors in your skin which sense cold, the temperature doesn't change it's the menthol that causes false cold signals to be sent to your brain. This feeling is intensified because the ice cream also sends cold signals to your brain and this increases the number of cold receptors that are firing at once. This is similar to the reaction caused by chilli which is caused by the chemical capsaicin which binds to the TRP-V1 receptors for heat. 

Why can cold drinks give us a headache?

We may finally have an explanation of this phenomenon, that you may have referred to as "brain freeze"  which is a cold stimulus headache, officially know as sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia A team of researchers led by Havard Medical School asked 13 brave volunteers to sip ice water through a straw aimed at the roof of their mouth while an ultrasound captured the flow of blood to the brain. Their findings have shown that just before the headache hits blood rushes through the anterior cerebral artery in the brain (a front region of the brain). The evidence isn't conclusive but it's likely that the headache is in response to the extra pressure in that region of the brain, and this is our way of warming up the blood to keep our brain at the optimal temperature,