Luton boss Rob Edwards knew the result was all that mattered as the Hatters went through to the third round of the Carabao Cup by beating League Two Gillingham at Kenilworth Road. The hosts led 2-0 at half-time thanks to goals from Jacob Brown and Alfie Doughty, before Jayden Clarke pulled one back early in the second period. Cauley Woodrow then put Town 3-1 in front before Tom Nichols scored late on, only for Luton to hang on. Edwards said: “We could only win by winning the game, the expectancy was obviously on us, it’s a little bit different to the last couple of games we’ve had, so I feel very pleased. “We had quite a lot of changes, tweaked the shape a little bit, and I liked a lot of what I saw. “It was a good start and I thought we built on it as well. “We controlled pretty much all of the first half, going 2-0 up was great, a brilliant goal from Alfie and we spoke at half-time about the next goal. “The next goal was really important and the game could really hinge on that. “They got it, they probably had five or 10 minutes then when we had to deal with it, but we still looked OK. “Cauley’s goal settled us down but then we controlled it again until the very last couple of minutes. “There’s probably a reason we lacked a bit of fluency tonight, but there were a lot of good things I saw.” Brown opened his Luton account after just two minutes with a low drive into the bottom corner, before Doughty hammered in a brilliant 25-yarder following a clever free-kick routine. After the break, Clarke raced away to pull one back, as Ashley Nadesan and Macauley Bonne missed great chances to level the scoring. Woodrow’s terrific volley restored Luton’s two-goal lead after 66 minutes, before Nichols’ header led to a nervy finale, Jonny Williams denied an equaliser by Tim Krul in stoppage time. Gills boss Neil Harris said: “I’m really proud of the group, that was a fantastic second half against a Premier League side and to put them under pressure shows the character and personality as at 2-0 down after 35 minutes, teams may have crumbled against this level of opposition, but we didn’t. “We regrouped at half-time and had a right go second half. “I’m disappointed with the first goal, the second goal is a worldie, Premier League standard from Alfie, and the third one is against the run of play, again Premier League standard. “To get back it at 2-1, 3-2, having pressure at the end, we just didn’t have that next goal in us. “We could have scored but they’re the margins that you need when you go against the top sides.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Andoni Iraola lauds David Brooks as Bournemouth make Carabao Cup progress Thomas Frank hails Ellery Balcombe after Brentford beat Newport on penalties Alex Neil delight as new signings help Stoke hammer Rotherham in Carabao Cup

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Scientists have found that one of the key pillars of theory around how life works – that it depends on carbon – may not be the case on other planets. Here on Earth, life depends on organic compounds which are composed of carbon, and often involve other elements such as sulphur, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and phosphorus. With organic compounds, life is partly sustained by chemical interactions called autocatalysis, which are self-sustaining. That means they produce molecules which then enable the reaction to happen again, and do not need any outside influence to keep going on. In the new study, scientists looked for autocatalysis in non-organic compounds. The theory is that if autocatalysis helps drive a process called abiogenesis – the origin process for life – then this origin process could also come from non-organic matter. Betül Kaçar, an astrobiologist, bacteriologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told news outlet Space.com: “It's important to explore these possibilities so that we have an idea of what all forms of life can look like, not just Earth life.” "One of the major reasons that origin-of-life researchers care about autocatalysis is because reproduction — a key feature of life — is an example of autocatalysis. “Life catalyses the formation of more life. One cell produces two cells, which can become four and so on. “As the number of cells multiply, the number and diversity of possible interactions multiplies accordingly.” The scientists searched in a huge trove of existing scientific documents for examples of autocatalysis, and found 270 different cycles of the reactions. Most of the 270 examples did not feature organic compounds, but rather elements which are rare in life forms such as mercury, or the radioactive metal thorium. “It was thought that these sorts of reactions are very rare,” Kaçar said in a statement. “We are showing that it's actually far from rare. You just need to look in the right place.” Now, it means scientists can test these cycles to get a better understanding of how autocatalysis can work. “The cycles presented here are an array of basic recipes that can be mixed and matched in ways that haven't been tried before on our planet,” said study author Zhen Peng, also an evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “They might lead to the discovery of completely new examples of complex chemistry that work in conditions where carbon- or even silicon-based cycles are too either combusted or frozen out.” The scientists published their findings in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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