Vehicle Accident in Greece

A speedboat and a tourist vessel have collided off the Greek island of Aegina, leaving at least three people dead and three others injured. Greece's coast guard is conducting a search-and-rescue operation after the collision involving a tourist boat which was transporting people from Aegina in the Saronic Gulf near Athens to a beach on the nearby deserted islet of Moni. There were believed to have been about 15 to 20 people onboard the tourist boat but it was unclear how many people were on the speedboat, the coast guard said. The agency said a number of people were rescued and it was focusing on finding survivors. Aegina's proximity to the Greek capital makes it a popular destination for Greeks and foreign tourists.

Take a look at the hovering F-35B through a high definition thermal imager

Aug 14 2016 - 

By David Cenciotti

A FLIR 380-HDc thermal imager has captured this cool footage of the F-35B during the display at the Farnborough International Air Show.

Last month we published a screenshot taken by an IR camera of a crime fighting helicopter that filmed an F-22 Raptor on the ground at RAF Fairford where the radar-evading 5th generation aircraft had deployed to take part in the Royal International Air Tattoo airshow.

The footage in this post shows the heat signature of another stealthy (and quite controversial) aircraft, the Lockheed Martin F-35B, the STOVL (Short Take Off Vertical Landing) of the Joint Strike Fighter.

Pretty cool, isn’t it?

The video was filmed by Star SAFIRE 380-HDc a compact, high performance, stabilized, HD imaging systems specifically engineered for helicopter.

According to FLIR, the manufacturer of the Star SAFIRE 380-HDc and a leader in such systems, the camera “provides an unmatched SWaP-C advantage for airborne applications that demand high performance ISR [Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance] in a light-weight, compact package. Specifically tailored to excel at long range performance under extreme rotary aircraft conditions.”

Needless to say, the IR signature of the F-35B during hovering is impressive.

The heat signature of a LO (Low Observability) aircraft is also what IRST (Infra Red Search and Track) sensors of a “legacy” unstealthy aircraft will seek during an aerial engagement against a stealth plane.

Image credit: screenshot from FLIR footage

Philippines: Five killed, 1000s evacuated as tornado and flooding strike Manila(video)

A concrete wall collapsed in Sta. Cruz, Manila on Saturday, leaving several residents dead and injured.The incident happened on Saturday morning along Doroteo Jose corner Oroquieta St., affecting more than 40 homes in the area.Johnny Yu, head of the Manila Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (MDRRMO), said two people died while 15 others were injured in the accident.Philippine Red Cross Chairman Sen. Richard Gordon told CNN Philippines that a 14-year-old girl was among the two declared dead. He added one person is still in a coma.The injured residents are being treated in nearby hospitals."Hopefully there will be no other victims anymore, but we're still doing our best and hoping for the best," said Gordon. Gordon believes heavy rains and weak foundation of the homes caused the collapse.

Houthi rebels destroy Saudi Army in Najran

Houtis rebels destroy Saudi M60 Patton main battle tank and High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) in Najran province.

Saudi Arabia says that seven Saudi soldiers were killed during clashes with Yemeni forces — backed by fighters of Ansarullah movement — close to the kingdom’s southwestern border region of Najran.

Houthi fighters routinely clash with Saudi border guards both along the frontier and inside the Saudi territory.

About 10,000 people have been killed since the conflict in Yemen began in late 2014. Yemenis say most of those dead have been civilians killed in Saudi air strikes.

Promiscuous’ enzymes can compensate for disabled genes

Bacteria devise metabolic work-around when important biochemical reactions are thwarted

BY 

LAUREL HAMERS 

12:03PM, AUGUST 12, 2016

PINCH HITTERS  When E. coli (shown here) loses genes that make important enzymes, other enzymes will find a new way to do the same job. 

NIAID/FLICKR (CC BY 2.0)

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WASHINGTON — When bacteria lose genes needed to make enzymes for important chemical reactions, defeat isn’t inevitable. Sometimes other enzymes will take on new roles to patch together a work-around chain of reactions that does the job, biologist Shelley Copley reported August 4 at the 2nd American Society for Microbiology Conference on Experimental Microbial Evolution.

Bacteria that can adapt in this way are more likely to survive when living conditions change, passing along these new tricks to their descendants. So studying these biochemical gymnastics is helping scientists to understand how evolution works on a molecular level.

Working with different strains of Escherichia coli bacteria, Copley and colleagues deleted genes responsible for making crucial enzymes. The team then watched the microbes replicate for many generations to see how they worked around those limitations.

Most enzymes are highly specialized: They only work well to speed up one type of reaction, the way a key fits only one lock. But some enzymes are more like master keys — they can boost multiple reactions, though they tend to specialize in one. These so-called “promiscuous” enzymes can switch away from their specialty if conditions change.

Copley’s team found that new enzymes would sub in to replace the missing ones. For instance,E. coli missing an enzyme needed to make vitamin B6 synthesized the vitamin using a different set of enzymes. But surprisingly, the promiscuous enzymes didn’t end up directly triggering the same reaction as the enzymes they replaced. Instead, the replacement enzymes cobbled together a different (often longer) work-around series of reactions that ultimately achieved the same function.

“We were rerouting metabolism,” said Copley, of the University of Colorado Boulder.

By modifying the bacteria’s genes and forcing the microbes to survive with a more limited chemical toolkit, Copley’s work gives a more detailed look at the biochemistry underlying evolution, says biologist Gavin Sherlock of Stanford University, who was not involved in the research.

Betul Kacar, a synthetic biologist at Harvard University, says promiscuity could also be a window into the past, giving hints about enzymes’ previous roles earlier in evolutionary history. The role that an enzyme jumps in to play in a pinch could have once been its main job. “Trying to understand how novel pathways arise, what kind of mechanistic underlying forces shape those trajectories, is quite essential,” she says.

Bacteria can piece together all sorts of alternative routes in response to missing enzymes, depending on specific environmental conditions, Copley said. The ones that are most successful are more efficient —they have fewer steps, or they yield more of the desired reaction product.

Έκρυβαν σε βαρέλια με λάδι 27.800 πλαστά κέρματα των 2 ευρώ!

Ελλάδα, 13 Αυγούστου 2016 | 14:00

Τα κέρματα είναι άψογα αντίγραφα των γνήσιων και για να διαπιστώσει κανείς την πλαστότητά τους, θα πρέπει να είναι ιδιαίτερα παρατηρητικός

Την προσοχή  και την...παρατηρητικότητα των πολιτών εφιστούν οι αστυνομικοίμετά τον εντοπισμό 27.800 πλαστών κερμάτων των δύο ευρώ. Μάλιστα, ο ένας επιτήδειος επιχείρησε να περάσει από τα Ελληνοτουρκικά σύνορα μέσα σετενεκέδες με λάδι... 

Όπως γράφει το newpost, τα κέρματα, είναι άψογα αντίγραφα των γνήσιων και για να διαπιστώσει κανείς την πλαστότητά τους, θα πρέπει να είναι ιδιαίτερα παρατηρητικός. Άνδρες της διεύθυνσης εγκληματολογικών ερευνών που έχουν στην διάθεσή τους προς έρευνα τα πλαστά κέρματα, επισημαίνουν πως «είναι πολύ εύκολο να σε παραπλανήσουν τα συγκεκριμένα κέρματα, εύκολα κάποιος θα μπορούσε να προμηθευτεί προϊόντα από περίπτερα και μίνι μάρκετ».

Οι αστυνομικοί εντόπισαν τις χιλιάδες των πλαστών κερμάτων μέσα σε φορτηγό το οποίο οδηγούσε ένας Τουρκογερμανός και μετέφερε λάδι από την Τουρκία στην χώρα μας.

Skydivers Transform Into 'Shooting Stars' During Perseid Meteor Shower

The annual Perseid meteor shower peaked this week, but four daredevils were not to be outdone by the spectacular sky show. As meteors streaked across the night sky, the men jumped out of an airplane wearing LED wingsuits, transforming themselves, in essence, into shooting stars.

The stunt, sponsored by energy drink maker Red Bull, was timed to pay tribute to the Perseids, which are also known as the "tears of St. Lawrence," the skydivers said in a statement.

What's more, the men — Joakim Sommer from Norway, Armando del Rey from Spain, and Marco Waltenspiel and Georg Lettner, both from Austria — did the jump in one of the best areas in the Northern Hemisphere for astronomical observations: over La Palma in the Canary Islands, located off the northwestern coast of Africa. [8 Craziest Skydives of All Time]

The Perseid meteor shower occurs every year when Earth passes through a stream of debris left behind from the Comet Swift-Tuttle. These cosmic objects streak across Earth's atmosphere, leaving ephemeral burning trails of light.

This year's show has been particularly dazzling, with some skywatchers reporting up to 200 meteors per hour on Thursday night and Friday morning (Aug. 11 and 12) when the Perseids peaked, according to NASA. The four additional "shooting stars" over the Canary Islands didn't burn up like most meteors. Instead, the four daredevils jumped from an altitude of 1.1 miles (1.8 kilometers) out of an airplane above the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, home of the world's biggest optic telescope, the Gran Telescopio.  

Moreover, the jumpers pulled off the 105-mph (170 km/h) freefall in total darkness, using only the light from their LED wingsuits and the stars around them to guide the way.

A long-exposure shot showing the wingsuit jumpers in their bright LED suits zooming across the night sky.

Credit: Daniel Lopez Red Bull Content Pool

"The experience has been amazing," Sommer said in a statement. "It literally felt like I was in a video game. I was in this black tunnel, and there was nothing else besides all those billions of stars in my face. It was a really unique visual, because you could really feel the speed, but you have no other surroundings. You are just in pitch black; it is like you are out there in the outer space. It's crazy. It was literally crazy."

Photographers captured the stunt for prosperity with videos and pictures. Several long-exposure photos show the wingsuit jumpers streaking across the dark sky with stars in the background.

The jump above La Palma, also known as "La Isla Bonita," happened from a T21 aircraft, courtesy of the Air Force, the Canarian Institute of Astrophysics and La Palma City Hall.

The jumpers also paid their respects to firefighters battling a massive blaze that hit La Palma this past month. It's likely that the fire was started by a German tourist who was burning used toilet paper in a national park,according to U.S. News & World Report.

Terror Attack in Thailand

Two bombs exploded in the seaside resort town in Thailand on Thursday, killing one and injuring more than 20 others, authorities said. One Thai woman was killed during the blasts at Hua Hin, about 125 miles south-west of Bangkok, local police chief Sittichai Srisopacharoenrat told NBC News. Another 23 people - including 11 foreigners - were injured in the dual blasts at Hua Hin, hospital officials told NBC News, adding that no Americans were among the dead or wounded. Among the foreigners were three Dutch nationals, according to the hospital officials. The bombs went off in bar and pub areas of the resort within a half hour of each other, Police Lieutenant Chaiyot Thisawong told NBC News. The bombs were improvised explosive devices (IEDs), he said, adding that cell phones had been used to detonate the bombs. The second bomb was hidden inside a plant pot, he added. That bomb exploded near a bar around 10:20 p.m. local time, killing the woman, local deputy police chief Samer Yousamran told Reuters. Police are investigating and as yet do not know the motive or the identity of the bombers, he said. The explosions happened ahead of a public holiday on Friday to mark the birthday of Queen Sirikit, according to Reuters. Hua Hin is a popular upscale Thai resort south of Bangkok and many people will have gone there for the holiday weekend.