The Kremlin just launched what it claims is the 'quietest submarine in the world'

(Admiralty Shipyards) The Krasnodar Russia has taken another major step towards modernizing its navy.

The Russian defense company Admiralty Shipyards launched its second diesel-electric Varshavyanka-class submarine this week.

Called Krasnodar, the company claims that the vessel will be "the quietest submarine in the world," Zachary Keck reports for The National Interest. 

Krasnodar is part of a plan to update Russia's submarine fleet. According to Russia Today, the submarine is the "second Varshavyanka submarine out of six planned for the Black Sea Fleet by the end of 2016." 

The Varshavyanka-class is an update to Russia's current Kilo-class submarine. Although Varshavyanka-class submarines can not dive as deep or stay submerged underwater as long as nuclear submarines, they are nearly impossible to detect acoustically.

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(Anton Egorov) 

Primarily, the Varshavyanka-class submarines will be used for anti-shipping and anti-submarine warfare in shallower water. According to Naval Technology, the submarines can cruise for a range of 400 miles, can patrol for 45 days, and carry surface-to-air missiles and torpedoes.

The mixture of weaponry onboard the submarines allow the vessels to hypothetically strike both a mixture of land, sea, and underwater targets.  

The first Varshavyanka-class submarine was launched in November 2013. Dubbed the Novorossiysk, the submarine is also based in the Black Sea. 

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(OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP/Getty Images) The Russian Novorossiysk submarine, which is the first Varshavyanka-class submarine. 

In addition to the Varshavyanka-class, Russia plans on adding an additional 14 to 18 diesel-electric submarines similar to Lada-class subs over the next 15 years. 

Russia also plans to replace its Delta III and Delta IV-class subs with Borei II submarines in the coming years. The Oscar II-class sub will be replaced with the entirely new Yasen submarine class after 2020. 

The Syrian military is on the verge of collapse

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/syrian-military-verge-collapse-164238939.html

(George Ourfalian/Reuters) Forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad hold their weapons as they walk in Aleppo's historic citadel October 1, 2014. The Syrian Army is facing its most serious challenges since the start of the Syrian Civil War. 

Fatigued, over-stretched, and losing the support of its base constituency, the Syrian Army is conceivably nearing the point of collapse. Major rebel offenseshave taken control of the strategic cities of Idlib and Jisr al-Shegour in the north. Meanwhile, a second rebel offensive in the south has been steadily working its way towards Damascus, the capital. 

These steady rebel gains have demoralized the Syrian military, created fissures within the regime of president Bashar al-Assad, and force Damascus to accept greater foreign assistance in propping an ailing government, according to an April 30th New York Times report. 

Here's why the regime may be nearing its most serious crisis yet.

A plunge in Syrian Army manpower

The Syrian Army has suffered extreme causality and desertion rates during the civil war. During the 4 years of the conflict so far, the military has lost approximately half of its personnel. 

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(Institute for the Study of War) "Four years ago, Syria’s army had 250,000 soldiers; now, because of casualties and desertions, it has 125,000 regulars, alongside 125,000 pro-government militia members, including Iranian-trained Iraqis, Pakistanis and Afghan Hazaras," the Times reports. 

This increased reliance on foreign fighters has elevated the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shi'ite militia group Hezbollah to a key position, often to the chagrin of the Syrian military. According to the Times, Hezbollah "now leads or even directs the fight in many places," at the expense of Syrian commanders. 

When irregular volunteers and foreign fighters are taken into account, the regime has not seen a collapse in overall firepower. But an increasing reliance on irregular forces and foreigners further limits the regime's actual reach and credibility.

Furthermore, clashes have erupted between the Syrian military and the Iranian-backed National Defense Forces in the crucial regime-held city of Homs. 

A multitude of smaller fighting forces also makes it more difficult for Assad to coordinate the military into a single overarching force, or mobilize specifically in the regime's defense.

Declining support for the government

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(Abed Kontar/Reuters) Men inspect a site hit by what activists said were barrel bombs thrown by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad in Kansafra village in the Jabal al-Zawiya in Idlib province January 27, 2015. Throughout the civil war, Assad has counted on the support of religious minorities for his rule. Much of the regime's top leadership is comprised of Alawites, a Shia offshoot. Generally Assad could also count on a de facto truce with Kurds, Christians, and Druze as well.

But after years of grinding warfare the minority communities are increasingly unwilling to send their sons off to military service within the Syrian Army. A growing number of communities that once supported the regime are keeping their children home in order to create local defense forces that are disconnected from regime command and control structures, the Times reports.  

Draft-dodging and desertions are also on the rise. In response, Assad has bannedmilitary-aged males from leaving the country and has pressed discharged soldiers into multiple rounds of duty. This has fueled discontent with the regime and further eroded support among Assad's base.  

Government infighting 

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(Ammar Abdallah/Reuters) A damaged picture of Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad is seen on a wall in Idlib city, after rebel fighters took control of the area on March 28, 2015. The text on the poster reads in Arabic "With Bashar." The stresses of the civil war have taken a toll on the inner workings of the Assad regime. Assad's political security chief was reportedly beaten to death after an argument with the head of Syria's Military Intelligence over the role of foreign fighters. After the incident, Assad was forced to replace both officials.

This infighting is escalating only weeks after Assad allegedly gave a direct order for the arrest of his cousin on charges of plotting against the regime. 

The regime is almost broke

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(Ali Jarekji/Reuters) A woman shows U.S. dollars and Syrian pounds in Amman, Jordan on December 12, 2011 The years of fighting and the collapse of the Syrian economy has almost bankrupted the government. According to the Times, Syria started the civil war with approximately $30 billion in foreign exchange reserves. After four years, the regime is down to approximately $1 billion. 

This erosion in foreign capital and the collapse of the war economy has collapsed the value of the Syrian pound. The Assad regime has carried out raids throughout Damascus in a desperate effort to find foreign currency. 

Meanwhile, the weakening of the pound has led to further discontent within the Syrian Army, according to the Times, as soldiers continued to be paid the same salaries but with a currency that's becoming more and more worthless.

Security is failing in Damascus

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(Mohammed Abdullah/Reuters) Smoke and flames are seen as men run from a site damaged from what activists claim was a car explosion in a market near Damascus on June 28, 2014. All of the previous factors taken together has led to a collapse of regime authority and law and order within the Syrian capital. The Times reports that checkpoints in the center of the city are understaffed, while the Syrian police are rarely seen on the streets to enforce even the most basic of laws. 

Meanwhile, entire neighborhoods have become de facto controlled by Hezbollah as the regime becomes increasingly stretched. 

The rebels have consolidated

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(Khalil Ashawi/REUTERS) A rebel fighter carries his weapon as he stands on a tank ahead of what the rebels said was an offensive to take control of the northwestern town of Jisr al-Shughour and the surrounding areas, which are controlled by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad April 20, 2015. The ongoing rebel campaign in the north of Syria focused around Idlib province marks a significant turning point in the war. A mixture of al Qaeda-affiliated groups, Islamists, and moderate rebels have come together to take Idlib and Jisr al-Shegour, the first major gains the rebels have experienced against the regime in 2 years.

This concentration of fighters has swung the momentum in the rebels' favor, threatening the heartland of Assad support along the Mediterranean coast. It's also created conditions for a wider offensive throughout the north of the country in a single consolidated campaign. 

Unique fish fossils identified

Kenyaichthys. Credit: M. Altner, LMU

A team of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich has identified the first fossil specimens of a major group of killifishes that is widely distributed in freshwater habitats today. The 6-million-year-old material sheds new light on the evolution of the bony fishes.

Killifish are true survivors. These colorful little fish are perfectly adapted to the demands of their ephemeral habitats. They spend their short lives in temporary freshwater pools that form during the rainy season, and owe their long-term survival to the fact that their eggs are resistant to desiccation. Although they are a species-rich group, and are widely distributed in the tropics and subtropics, their fossil record is sparse. But now LMU palaeontologists Professor Bettina Reichenbacher and Melanie Altner have identified the first fossil representatives of one of the two extant suborders of killifish. "The specimens are exceptionally well preserved, date from about 6 million years ago, and were discovered in Kenya by French palaeoanthropologists," says Reichenbacher. "Our studies have now shown that they are members of a previously unknown genus that is now extinct, which we have named Kenyaichthys – the fish from Kenya."

A cache that includes 77 complete specimens

The fossils originate from a site located in the Tugen Hills, which lie in the Eastern arm of the East African Rift Valley. During the Late Miocene – about six million years ago – the site formed part of a lake, and the newly described specimens, each 2 to 4 cm long, were preserved in the sediment beds that accumulated on the lake bottom. "The sample comprises a total of 169 individuals, and 77 of these are complete," says Altner. The anatomical details discernible in the impressions left in the sediments enabled the two researchers to conclusively identify all of these individuals as killifishes. "Analysis of the structures of the tailfin, the pelvic fins and the bones in the skull, in particular, yielded crucial information that convinced us that this material constituted the first fossils attributable to the killifish Suborder Aplocheiloidei. This group also encompasses modern African killifishes, such as Pachypanchax from Madagascar, the striped panchaxes of Southeast Asia and the rivulids of South America," Altner explains.

In addition to the fossil aplocheiloids, only a few other freshwater forms were found at the site. Reichenbacher and Altner assume that the prevailing environmental conditions were too extreme for less specialized species. During the Late Miocene, the climate got drier and extensive areas of savannah developed. "We believe that, like modern killifish species, Kenyaichthys was well equipped to survive long periods of drought, and could cope better with such conditions than other species of fish," says Reichenbacher.

A unique combination of traits

Since many killifish species are short-lived they are used to study aging processes. But the group is also of interest to evolutionary biologists because they offer useful models for the study of speciation – and in this context some of the characters displayed by Kenyaichthys are especially intriguing: "Our fossils exhibit morphological traits that are found in extant African species of killifish. But they also possess one specific trait that is typical for contemporary rivulids from South America. This combination is very unusual, and may indicate that Kenyaichthys is closely related to forms that are now restricted to South America. Alternatively, this particular character may have been lost in the lineage that gave rise to modern African aprocheiloids," Altner explains.

Furthermore, many features of the new fossils – including elements of the tailfin and the dorsal fins, and the relative sizes of the different body parts – vary markedly from one individual to the next. As the closest surviving relatives of Kenyaichthys do not display such a wide range of variability, the fossil material from the Tugen Hills appears to document a particularly fascinating evolutionary process – the diversification of a so-called species flock. The term 'species flock' refers to a group of closely related species that have evolved from a single progenitor species in an isolated population and developed distinct specializations that enable them to coexist. Darwin's finches, which occupy different ecological niches on the Galapagos, are perhaps the best known example of a species flock. "So, this is an exciting find in many respects, which provides wholly new insights into the evolutionary history of the killifishes and their relatives," says Reichenbacher.

How earthquake safety measures could have saved thousands of lives in Nepal

Poorly built houses were destroyed in the
Credit: Domenico/flickr, CC BY-SA

Earthquake engineers often say earthquakes don't kill people, collapsing buildings do. The tragic loss of life that followed the huge earthquake in Nepal on April 25 occurred despite the fact that the country is among the world's leaders in community-based efforts to reduce disaster risk. But poverty, corruption, and poor governance have all led to a failure to enforce building codes – as has a shortage of skilled engineers, planners and architects.

Sadly the country was on its way to deploying knowledge and skills to tackle its long-term vulnerability just as the ground shook.

So why aren't more buildings designed to withstand shaking – even extreme shaking.

To keep buildings standing, it is essential to have adequate building and planning codes, as well as proper training and certification for professionals such as engineers, architects, and planners. But having certification and codes on paper does not ensure implementation or compliance. Nepal does, after all, have some of these things. Laws and regulations must also be monitored and enforced. That is not easy in a country such as Nepal, which has isolated villages, a history of conflict and many governance difficulties.

Vast vulnerability

Financial as well as social resources are needed to set up earthquake resistant buildings. Governments at all levels need to be functioning and competent in order to engage with processes such as urban planning and earthquake-resistant construction. Citizens must trust and have the opportunity to work with their governments, including the law enforcement and judicial sectors.

It's not just about buildings. Many non-structural measures are needed to ensure survivability in earthquakes. Appliances such as televisions, microwaves, hot water boilers, and refrigerators (which do not always exist in Nepalese homes) must be securely fastened to the floors and the walls. Otherwise, they move and topple, killing as readily as building collapse. Even in affluent earthquake-prone locations such as New Zealand and California, we see shockingly low rates of households enacting these basic measures.

But Nepal is not New Zealand or California. It has been wracked by conflict and troubled by unstable governments, not to mention the governance issues caused by being sandwiched between China and India. It has long had high poverty and low formal education rates.

Despite recent improvements, Nepal still lags behind other countries when it comes to human development and it is still seen as highly corrupt. It also scores badly on child health and gender equality measurements.

When families struggle daily for enough food to keep their children healthy, they are not likely to spend time thinking about making their home earthquake resistant.

And when children are malnourished and stunted, they perform worse in school. That leads to long-term education inadequacies that prevent them from developing into adults with the skills to lobby for adequate and enforced building codes. What's more, when women lack the same opportunities as men, half the population is excluded from demanding and enacting good governance.

All these factors contribute to the country's vulnerability. All these factors have led to housing and infrastructure prone to collapse in an earthquake.

Rebuilding a nation

None of these things can be solved overnight. Tackling vulnerability is a long-term process, yet earthquakes strike and bring down buildings in seconds and minutes.

As the earthquake struck, Nepalese people were working hard to overcome these vulnerability conditions. My friends and colleagues from the country have taught me plenty about retrofitting buildings and constructing earthquake-resistant homes.

They travelled to communities with small shake tables, which are used to simulate earthquakes by shaking model houses or building components, showing the difference between an earthquake-resistant house and a non-earthquake resistant house. They made many schools safe. They taught school children and their parents about earthquake-safe behaviour.

These efforts saved hundreds of lives, if not more, during the recent tremors. With a few more decades, a mere instant in geological time, they could have made Nepal comparatively safe from earthquake disasters despite earthquakes. In that time, so many more buildings would have been retrofitted, we might have had adequate building code enforcement, and most importantly, an earthquake-educated and vulnerability-educated generation would have started to take power.

Nepal must now continue these efforts in order to avoid similar future devastation. We can be optimistic. Education is happening – for boys and girls. Women are increasingly being given equal opportunities as men. This means the Nepalese people are taking charge of their own health, their own environment, and their own sustainability. That is vulnerability reduction over the long-term.

USA: National Guard out in full force in Baltimore

Inhospitable climate fosters gold ore formation

The richest gold ore in Witwatersrand is found in thin layers rich in carbon,
plating fibres of ancient microbial life forms.
(Photo: James St. John / Wikimedia Commons)

The Witwatersrand Basin in South Africa holds the world's largest gold deposits across a 200-km long swathe. Individual ore deposits are spread out in thin layers over areas up to 10 by 10 km and contain more gold than any other gold deposit in the world. Some 40% of the precious metal that has been found up to the present day comes from this area, and hundreds of tons of gold deposits still lie beneath the earth. The manner in which these giant deposits formed is still debated among geologists. Christoph Heinrich, Professor of Mineral Resources at ETH and the University of Zurich, recently published a new explanation in the journal Nature Geoscience, trying to reconcile the contradictions of two previously published theories.

The prevailing 'placer gold' theory states that the gold at Witwatersrand was transported and concentrated through mechanical means as metallic particles in river sediment. Such a process has led to the gold-rich river gravels that gave rise to the Californian gold rush. Here, nuggets of placer gold have accumulated locally in river gravels in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, where primary gold-quarz veins provide a nearby source of the nuggets.

But no sufficiently large source exists in the immediate sub-surface of the Witwatersrand Basin. This is one of the main arguments of proponents of the 'hydrothermal hypothesis', according to which gold, chemically dissolved in hot fluid, passed into the sediment layers half a billion years after their deposition. For this theory to work, a 10 km thick blanket of later sediments would be required in order to create the required pressure and temperature. However, the hydrothermal theory is contradicted by geological evidence that the gold concentration must have taken place during the formation of host sediments on the Earth's surface.

Rainwater rich in hydrogen sulphide

Heinrich believes the concentration of gold took place at the Earth's surface, indeed by flowing river water, but in chemically dissolved form. With such a process, the gold could be easily 'collected' from a much larger catchment area of weathered, slightly gold-bearing rocks. The resource geologist examined the possibility of this middle way, by calculating the chemical solubility of the precious metal in surface water under the prevailing atmospheric and climatic conditions.

Experimental data shows that the chemical transport of gold was indeed possible in the early stages of Earth evolution. The prerequisite was that the rainwater had to be at least occasionally very rich in hydrogen sulphide. Hydrogen sulphide binds itself in the weathered soil with widely distributed traces of gold to form aqueous gold sulphide complexes, which significantly increases the solubility of the gold. However, hydrogen sulphide in the atmosphere and sulphurous gold complexes in river water are stable only in the absence of free oxygen. "Quite inhospitable environmental conditions must have dominated, which was possible only three billion years ago during the Archean eon," says Heinrich. "It required an oxygen-free atmosphere that was temporarily very rich in hydrogen sulphide -- the smell of rotten eggs." In today's atmosphere, oxygen oxidises all hydrogen sulphide, thus destroying gold's sulphur complex in a short time, which is why gold is practically insoluble in today's river water.

Volcanoes and bacteria as important factors

In order to increase the sulphur concentration of rainwater sufficiently in the Archean eon, basaltic volcanism of gigantic proportions was required at the same time. Indeed, in other regions of South Africa there is evidence of giant basaltic eruptions overlapping with the period of the gold concentration.

A third factor required for the formation of gold deposits at Witwatersrand is a suitable location for concentrated precipitation of the gold. The richest deposits of gold ore in the basin are found in carbon-rich layers, often just millimetres to centimeters thick, but which stretch for many kilometres. These thin layers contain such high gold concentrations that mining tunnels scarcely a metre high some three kilometres below the Earth's surface are still worthwhile.

Hard and dangerous labour: The mines
provide no place to stand.
(Photo: Courtesy Prof. C. Heinrich)

The carbon probably stems from the growth of bacteria on the bottom of shallow lakes and it's here that the dissolved gold precipitated chemically, according to Heinrich's interpretation.

The nature of these life forms is not well known. "It's possible that these primitive organisms actively adsorbed the gold," Heinrich speculates. "But a simple chemical reduction of sulphur-complexed gold in water to elementary metal on an organic material is sufficient for a chemical 'gilding' of the bottom of the shallow lakes."

The gold deposits in the Witwatersrand, which are unique worldwide, could have thus been formed only during a certain period of the Earth's history: after the development of the first continental life forms in shallow lakes at least 3 billion years ago, but before the first emergence of free oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere approximately 2.5 billion years ago.

Hit by Avalanche in Everest Basecamp 25.04.2015

Harrowing videos of Mount Everest climbers running from an avalanche and watching as the injured were airlifted off the mountain began to emerge today from the aftermath of Nepal's 7.8 magnitude earthquake. 

The climbers described chaos as the avalanche headed for the base camps where many of Nepal's mountain climbing tourists, Sherpas, and guides were beginning their ascent of the mountain.  

Footage captured by a German climber shows the terrifying moments after the earthquake hit when a wall of snow and ice came barreling down the mountain.

Search for avalanche survivors on Everest begins

Δημοσιεύτηκε στις 26 Απρ 2015

After the devastating Nepal earthquake touched off an avalanche, 17 climbers have been found dead at the Everest base camp. Pictures from Everest’s south side base camp show flattened tents and blocks of rock scattered around a site deep in snow. Carsten Lillelund Pedersen, Danish climber, was on Mount Everest when the avalanche hit. He filmed these pictures as a rescue effort got under way.Al Jazeera's Ali Mustafa explains.