LIONFISH ARE NOW INVADING THE MEDITERRANEAN-- OF CYPRUS IN

THE INVASIVE SPECIES COLONIZED THE SOUTHEAST SHORE OF CYPRUS IN JUST ONE YEAR

  

Maria Papinikola

Lionfish

A lionfish in the Mediterranean.

Lionfish have already unleashed their fury on ecosystems across the waters of the Atlantic and Caribbean here in the Western Hemisphere. Now, these beautiful, highly venomous predators are set to tear the Mediterranean apart.

In a paper published today in Marine Biodiversity Records researchers found that lionfish had colonized the shoreline of one Mediterranean island in just a single year.

"Until now, few sightings of the alien lionfish Pterois miles have been reported in the Mediterranean and it was questionable whether the species could invade this region like it has in the western Atlantic," Demetris Kletou, co-author of the paper said in a statement. "But we've found that lionfish have recently increased in abundance, and within a year have colonized almost the entire south eastern coast of Cyprus, assisted by sea surface warming."

Lionfish were originally found in the waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. They likely ended up in the Caribbean and Western Atlantic after being released from home aquariums. The invasion of the Mediterranean has different roots.

The expansion of the Suez canal has given lionfish even more access to the Mediterranean Sea, and warming water temperatures have provided the perfect environment for the invasive species.

A lionfish invasion is particularly worrying because they can eat their way through the food chain, devouring all kinds of fish and crustaceans, including commercially important species. They also reproduce at an alarming pace, with each female lionfish producing about 2 million eggs per year.

In North Carolina, lionfish are eating so much that some individuals areconsidered obese. In Florida, some have resorted to cannibalism because of the high numbers there. This year, Florida also started the Lionfish Challengeencouraging divers to kill as many lionfish as they possibly could. Maybe that tradition will spread to the Mediterranean as well.

VIDEO-30 άνθρωποι σκοτώθηκαν μετά την καύση ενός τουριστικού λεωφορείου στην Κίνα

At least 30 people were killed after a tour bus burst into flames in Hunan Province on Sunday morning, local authorities confirmed. The accident happened at about 10:20 a.m. when the bus carrying 56 people crashed into the guardrails on a highway in Yizhang County. The ensuing oil leak may have caused the fire, the county government said. Twenty-one people have been sent to hospitals, and rescuers are still searching the charred frame of the bus. The police has detained the driver.

VIDEO--Francis in Armenia: Visit to the Tzitzemakaberd Memorial Complex - 2016.06.25

Tornado in China

Death toll of the tornado and hailstorms in east China's Jiangsu Province has climbed to 98, local rescue headquarters said on Friday. About 800 people were injured, it said. Intense downpours, hailstorms and a tornado battered parts of Yancheng City close to the eastern coast of China at 2:30 pm on Thursday, destroying buildings, trees, vehicles and electricity poles. Search for the people through the debris has been completed, said Zhou Xiang, head of the Jiangsu provincial fire corps on Friday. Cleaning efforts are underway. More than 1,300 police officers have been called in to assist with the rescue efforts and providing help to the displaced residents. Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered all-out rescue efforts and the prioritization of life-saving measures. The city has activated its highest response system following the extreme weather. Tornados occasionally hit eastern and southern China during the summer, but rarely with the scale of damage like this one in Yancheng. A similar disaster hit the city in March 1966.

https://weather.com/news/weather/video/flash-flood-sweeps-through-china-mall?cm_ven=FB_WX_JK_62416_11

Extreme Weather in USA on June 24 2016 14 Dead in West Virginia Flooding, Homes Damaged

Virginia's governor has declared a state of emergency in Alleghany County and Covington after severe weather and flooding. Gov. Terry McAuliffe tweeted Thursday night that a state of emergency has been declared, allowing state agencies to bypass some time-consuming procedures to quickly help local governments. Residents of downtown Covington, as well as low-lying areas of the city, were evacuated Thursday night to established shelters, WDBJ reported. Evacuations were ordered as the Jackson River neared record levels. Roads were closed and several house fires were sparked by lightning as the storms pushed through the Commonwealth. According to the Roanoke Times, a handful of roads were closed by flooding in Covington and Alleghany County, and a few other roads were shut down in Botetourt County, the state Department of Transportation said. House fires were blamed on lightning in Read Mountain, Goode and Thaxton, the report added. No injuries were reported in those incidents.

Seven people were killed, including a toddler, after powerful storms swamped West Virginia on Thursday night, cutting power and plunging hundreds of thousands of people into darkness. The search for 4-year-old Edward McMillion ended in heartbreak after officials said Friday that they found his body. The boy had vanished in the rising waters in Ravenswood, Jackson County, which sits along the Ohio River on the Ohio border. Three other deaths occurred in Kanawha County, while a another death occurred in Ohio County in West Virginia's northern panhandle, the governor's office said. Authorities in Greenbrier County announced Friday afternoon that two males were also found dead - bringing the death toll up to seven. Officials did not immediately identify the victims, although local reports said one of those killed in Ohio County was an 8-year-old who had slipped into a creek and was carried away. He later died at a hospital, The Intelligencer reported. Meanwhile, an elderly man was killed in the floodwaters in Kanawha County, while a woman there was washed away in her vehicle in another incident, NBC affiliate WSAZ reported. In one dramatic scene in White Sulphur Springs in the state's south, where up to 10 inches of rain fell Thursday, the flood waters pushed a burning home down the Howard Creek. Forty-four counties, primarily in the southeastern part of the state, were under a state of emergency Thursday night because of flood waters, emergency officials said. Electric utilities reported that almost 500,000 customers were without power. "We surely need your prayers because there's a lot of people hurting right now," Jim Justice, owner of the luxury Greenbrier Resort, told The Weather Channel. Kanawha County was especially inundated, and dozens of water rescues were under way in and around Clendenin, where numerous roads were closed by racing flood waters, WSAZ said. "There's been a ton of areas that have been hit hard" by as much as 7 inches of rain, said Danielle Banks, a meteorologist for The Weather Channel. Mark Burgess, wife Lisa and parents-in-law Bill and Peggy Lucas were occupying the second floor of their home in Elkview when the waters started rising at around 1:30 am ET. Mark Burgess told NBC News on Friday morning there was about four feet of water, "but it has stopped going up now." He said it was the first time that residents have witnessed such flooding. "My mother-in-law has lived here for 80 years, and this never happened before," he said. "There is nothing you can do," he added. "We can call for help if it's too deep, but it's OK right now."

Why Do We Inherit Mitochondrial DNA Only From Our Mothers?

For a long time, biologists thought our DNA resided only in the control center of our cells, the nucleus.

Then, in 1963, a couple at Stockholm University discovered DNA outside the nucleus. Looking through an electron microscope, Margit and Sylvan Nass noticed DNA fibers in structures called mitochondria, the energy centers of our cells.

Our mitochondrial DNA accounts for a small portion of our total DNA. It contains just 37 of the 20,000 to 25,000 protein-coding genes in our body. But it is notably distinct from DNA in the nucleus. Unlike nuclear DNA, which comes from both parents, mitochondrial DNA comes only from the mother.

Nobody fully understands why or how fathers’ mitochondrial DNA gets wiped from cells. An international team of scientists recently studied mitochondria in the sperm of a roundworm called C. elegans to find answers.

Their results, published this week in the journal Science, show that paternal mitochondria in this type of roundworm have an internal self-destruct mechanism that gets activated when a sperm fuses with an egg. Delaying this mechanism, the scientists found, led to lower rates of embryo survival. Down the road, this information could help scientists better understand certain diseases and possibly improve in vitro fertilization techniques.

This work “comes closest to elucidating a key development process that has perplexed us for a long time,” said Justin St. John, a professor at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research in Australia, who was not involved in the research.

It’s well known that the transfer of mitochondrial DNA from mother to offspring, often called maternal inheritance, occurs in humans and most multicellular organisms. Maternal inheritance is what allows genetic testing services like 23andMe to trace our maternal ancestries. You inherited your mitochondrial DNA from your mother, who inherited hers from her mother and so forth.

Maternal inheritance also gave rise to the idea that there exists a “Mitochondrial Eve,” a woman from whom all living humans inherited their mitochondrial DNA.

Particle zoo in a quantum computer

Physicists in Innsbruck have realized the first quantum simulation of lattice gauge theories, building a bridge between high-energy theory and atomic physics. In the journal Nature, Rainer Blatt's and Peter Zoller's research teams describe how they simulated the creation of elementary particle pairs out of the vacuum by using a quantum computer.

Elementary particles are the fundamental buildings blocks of matter, and their properties are described by the Standard Model of particle physics. The discovery of the Higgs boson at the CERN in 2012 constitutes a further step towards the confirmation of the Standard Model. However, many aspects of this theory are still not understood because their complexity makes it hard to investigate them with classical computers. Quantum computers may provide a way to overcome this obstacle as they can simulate certain aspects of elementary particle physics in a well-controlled quantum system.

Physicists from the University of Innsbruck and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences have now done exactly that: In an international first, Rainer Blatt's and Peter Zoller's research teams have simulated lattice gauge theories in a quantum computer. They describe their work in the journal Nature.

Simulation of particle-antiparticle pairs using a quantum computer

Gauge theories describe the interaction between elementary particles, such as quarks and gluons, and they are the basis for our understanding of fundamental processes. "Dynamical processes, for example, the collision of elementary particles or the spontaneous creation of particle-antiparticle pairs, are extremely difficult to investigate," explains Christine Muschik, theoretical physicist at the IQOQI. "However, scientists quickly reach a limit when processing numerical calculations on classical computers. For this reason, it has been proposed to simulate these processes by using a programmable quantum system." In recent years, many interesting concepts have been proposed, but until now it was impossible to realize them. "We have now developed a new concept that allows us to simulate the spontaneous creation of electron-positron pairs out of the vacuum by using a quantum computer," says Muschik.

The quantum system consists of four electromagnetically trapped calcium ions that are controlled by laser pulses. "Each pair of ions represent a pair of a particle and an antiparticle," explains experimental physicist Esteban A. Martinez. "We use laser pulses to simulate the electromagnetic field in a vacuum. Then we are able to observe how particle pairs are created by quantum fluctuations from the energy of this field. By looking at the ion's fluorescence, we see whether particles and antiparticles were created. We are able to modify the parameters of the quantum system, which allows us to observe and study the dynamic process of pair creation."

Artifacts Discovered on Return Expedition to Antikythera Shipwreck

Artifacts Discovered on Return Expedition to Antikythera Shipwreck

Antikythera team members Nikolas Giannoulakis, Theotokis Theodoulou, and Brendan Foley inspect small finds from the Shipwreck while decompressing after a dive to 50 m (165 feet). (Photo by Brett Seymour, EUA/WHOI/ARGO)

JUNE 20, 2016An international research team has discovered spectacular artifacts during its ongoing excavation of the famous Antikythera Shipwreck (circa 65 B.C.) this month. The shipwreck is located off the Greek island of Antikythera in the Aegean Sea.

Led by archaeologists and technical experts from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the team recovered 60 artifacts including gold jewelry, luxury glassware, a bronze spear from a statue, elements of marble sculptures, resin/incense, ceramic decanters, and a unique artifact that may have been a defensive weapon to protect the massive ship against attacks from pirates. The team also confirmed the wreck of a second ancient cargo ship close by the Antikythera vessel.

"Our new technologies extend capabilities for marine science," said Brendan Foley, a marine archaeologist with WHOI. "Every new dive on the Antikythera Shipwreck delivers gifts from the ancient past. The wreck offers touchstones to the full range of the human experience: from religion, music, and art, to travel, trade, and even warfare."

The Antikythera Shipwreck, the largest ancient shipwreck ever discovered, was possibly a massive grain carrier. It was discovered and salvaged in 1900 by Greek sponge divers. In addition to dozens of marble statues and thousands of antiquities, their efforts produced the Antikythera Mechanism—an astounding artifact known as the world’s first computer. In 1976, Jacques-Yves Cousteau and the CALYPSO crew returned to the wreck and recovered nearly 300 more objects, including skeletal remains of the passengers and crew.

The current high-tech, collaborative project brings robots, technical diving, and new laboratory analyses to this remarkable shipwreck. After precisely mapping a 10,500-square-meter (2.6 acres) area of sea floor around the wrecks with an autonomous robot, the team’s divers descend to 52 meters (170 feet) using mixed-gas, closed-circuit rebreathers to exactly locate, document, and retrieve the artifacts. Among other inquiries, the isotopes of recovered lead objects are analyzed to determine their origin, and ancient DNA is extracted from ceramic jars to reveal the food, drink, and medicines consumed by the ancient seafarers. The team generates precise three-dimensional digital models of every artifact, allowing discoveries to be shared instantly and widely even if the objects remain on the sea floor.

"Reality Computing is bridging the physical and digital world, " said Autodesk Explorer-in-Residence Jonathan Knowles. "We see great potential in working with WHOI to capture, analyze, and share the wonders of Antikythera with the world. "

The project is supported by corporate partners Hublot, Autodesk, Cosmote, Costa Navarino Resort and private sponsors Swordspoint Foundation, Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, Jane and James Orr, the Domestic Property Committee of Kythera and Antikythera, the Municipality of Kythera, and private sponsors of WHOI.

The research team consists of archaeologists Dr. Theotokis Theodoulou and Dr. Dimitris Kourkoumelis (Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports); Research Specialist Dr. Brendan Foley (WHOI); archaeologist Alexander Tourtas; professional technical divers Edward O’Brien (WHOI), Philip Short, Alexandros Sotiriou, Nikolas Giannoulakis, and Gemma Smith; videographer Evan Kovacs; documentary director Michalis Tsimperopoulos; supported by Michalis Kelaidis, Dimitris Romio, and Dimitris Manoliades. The robotic survey was conducted by Prof. Stefan Williams, Dr. Oscar Pizarro, and Christian Lees from the Australian Centre for Field Robotics, University of Sydney. U.S. National Parks Service underwater photographer Brett Seymour and archaeologist Dr. David Conlin volunteer their time and expertise.

The Return to Antikythera project is supervised by the Director of the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities Dr. Aggeliki Simosi and is under the aegis of the President of the Hellenic Republic Prokopios Pavlopoulos.