ΕΝΤΥΠΩΣΙΑΚΗ ΑΣΚΗΣΗ ΤΗΣ ΡΩΣΙΑΣ ΣΤΗΝ ΚΡΙΜΑΙΑ(VIDEO)

On Monday, Russian military forces began a massive six-day war games exercise codenamed Caucasus 2016 including servicemen from the country’s naval, airborne and aerospace units conducted in the South of Russia in and around Crimea.

The military exercise served the purpose of "planning, preparation and conducting combat operations," but many defense analysts interpreted the show of military force to be a direct message to Ukraine and its Western allies regarding Russia’s control over the Crimean peninsula. The exercise was conducted at the Opuk training range on the Black Sea Coast with drills involving warships, aircraft and tanks, with Moscow firing its S-300 and S-400 missile systems. 

"On such a scale and with the deployment of different force groupings, such drills are being held for the first time," said defense ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov highlighting the unprecedented nature of the massive show of Russian military force. "This training range is the biggest on the Crimean peninsula, which allows for such exercises to be held." 

The drills were overseen by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the head of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov as well as Crimean leader Sergei Aksyonov. 
"Strategic drills are essential to military training in Russia in 2016 with a focus on different troops working together. You should not twist this into anything – there’s no politics," explained Konvashenkov emphasizing that the drills should not be construed as a message to Russia’s neighbors despite the West’s rush to describe it as just that. 

The war games come one month after President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of sending a group of saboteurs into Crimea to engage in terror strikes against Russian personnel adding to Western suspicions that Moscow wants to make its control over the peninsula clear
Read more: https://sputniknews.com/russia/201609...

Moon’s pull can trigger big earthquakes

Geologic strain of tides during full and new moons could increase magnitude of tremors.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The seaside town of Pelluhue, Chile, in 2010 after a magnitude 8.8 earthquake and the resulting tsunami.

Big earthquakes, such as the ones that devastated Chile in 2010 and Japan in 2011, are more likely to occur during full and new moons — the two times each month when tidal stresses are highest.

Earth’s tides, which are caused by a gravitational tug-of-war involving the Moon and the Sun, put extra strain on geological faults. Seismologists have tried for decades to understand whether that stress could trigger quakes. They generally agree that the ocean’s twice-daily high tides can affect tiny, slow-motion tremors in certain places, including California’s San Andreas fault¹ and the Cascadia region² of the North American west coast.

Satoshi Ide, a seismologist at the University of Tokyo, and his colleagues investigated three separate earthquake records covering Japan, California and the entire globe. For the 15 days leading up to each quake, the scientists assigned a number representing the relative tidal stress on that day, with 15 representing the highest. They found that large quakes such as those that hit Chile and Tohoku-Oki occurred near the time of maximum tidal strain — or during new and full moons when the Sun, Moon and Earth align.But a new study, published on 12 September in Nature Geoscience³, looks at much larger patterns involving the twice-monthly tides that occur during full and new moons. It finds that the fraction of high magnitude earthquakes goes up globally as tidal stresses rise.

For more than 10,000 earthquakes of around magnitude 5.5, the researchers found, an earthquake that began during a time of high tidal stress was more likely to grow to magnitude 8 or above.

Breaking point

The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images

A lone pine tree that survived the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

“This is a very innovative way to address this long-debated issue,” says Honn Kao, a seismologist at the Geological Survey of Canada and Natural Resources Canada in Sidney. “It gives us some sense into the possible relationship between tidal stress and the occurrence of big earthquakes.” Perhaps the miniscule added strain of tides, he says, could be the final factor that nudges a geological fault into rupturing.

The current study will not be the final word on the matter, adds Kao. There are just too many factors that contribute to triggering an earthquake — such as how stress transfers within the ground to cause a geological fault to move — to untangle exactly what role tides might have.

But “the results are plausible”, says John Vidale, a seismologist at the University of Washington in Seattle who helped to debunk some of the more tenuous tide–earthquake claims⁴. “They’ve done a very careful job.”

The discovery does not affect how societies should prepare for possible earthquakes, says Ide. Even if slightly enhanced by the tides, the probability of a quake happening on any particular day in an earthquake-prone region remains very low. “It’s too small to take some actions,” he says.

Ide is now looking at an additional list of earthquakes that occur where plates with oceanic crust plunge beneath continental crust, to see if the pattern holds up there as well.

How a loud noise brought a data center to its knees

A data center's operations completely collapsed as a rare phenomenon cut off service for 10 hours.

Getty Images/iStockphoto

A Romanian bank experienced serious disruption to payment services and ATM withdrawals for roughly 10 hours due to fire extinguishers.

In a peculiar and rare phenomenon, the loud noise created by inert gas being released during a planned test of fire extinguisher systems not only forced the bank's main data center in Bucharest, Romania, offline, but also managed to destroy dozens of hard drives in the process, causing serious and irrevocable damage.

Last week, Daniel Llano, Head of ING Retail Banking admitted to customers that the "serious technical problems" were caused by Inergen flooding.

Inergen is a kind of fire extinguishing system which relies on gas rather than traditional foam or liquid. Suitable for enclosed spaces, Inergen, stored in cylinders as compressed gas, is dispersed through hoses and nozzles evenly across a small space to wipe out fires.

Usually, this kind of fire protection would be best suited for data centers -- especially as foam and liquid would damage valuable and delicate equipment -- but in this case, something went horribly wrong.

When the gas was released through the nozzles, the pressure was too high, which in turn created an incredibly loud noise when Inergen was released.

An ING spokeswoman told Motherboard that "the drill went as designed, but we had collateral damage."

A source also told the publication that the noise produced by the testing was louder than expected -- being about as high as the bank's equipment was able to monitor at over 130dB. Unfortunately, sound causes vibration, which transferred to the cases of hard drives stored in the data center and damaged internal components.

Motherboard was told that "putting a storage system next to a jet engine" was a fair comparison to make of the tests.

Servers and data storage were affected, as well as card transactions, ATM activity, internet banking, email and the bank's website. While services have been restored and customers can now withdraw money from ATMs and conduct card transactions, the company has been forced to rely on a backup data center.

"I activated emergency procedures and recovery plans provided for such situations," Llano said. "But because of the magnitude and complexity of breakdowns, unfortunately, the time required to restore activity by the back-up was longer than the tests we perform regularly."

The bank was forced to perform a restart of services and to take as many precautions as possible ING has also made an additional copy of the firm's databases. An investigation into the disaster has also begun in the hopes the scenario -- which has likely cost the bank a fortune in repairs -- will not happen again.

Η Τουρκία σταματά τις ανασκαφές του Αυστριακού Αρχαιολογικού Ινστιτούτου στην Έφεσο

Η ένταση που επικρατεί στις διπλωματικές σχέσεις Αυστρίας - Τουρκίας επηρεάζουν και την αρχαιολογία, καθώς ομάδα Αυστριακών αρχαιολόγων δήλωσε ότι πρέπει να σταματήσει τις ανασκαφικές εργασίες στην αρχαία Έφεσο.

Το τουρκικό πρακτορείο ειδήσεων Dogan αναφέρει ότι η Αυστριακή αρχαιολογική ομάδα έλαβε εντολή από το υπουργείο Εξωτερικών της Τουρκίας να σταματήσει τις ανασκαφικές εργασίες από το τέλος του Αυγούστου. Το ανασκαφικό έργο χρειαζόταν άλλους δύο μήνες για να ολοκληρωθεί.

Το Αυστριακό Αρχαιολογικό Ινστιτούτο (ÖAI) έχει μια μακρά παράδοση ανασκαφικών εργασιών στην Έφεσο, από το 1895. Στα μέσα Ιουλίου το ÖAI δήλωσε ότι η απόπειρα πραξικοπήματος στην Τουρκία δεν θα επηρεάσει τις αρχαιολογικές εργασίες στην Έφεσο, παρόλο που η διευθύντρια της ανασκαφής Sabine Ladstatter παραδεχόταν ότι η κατάσταση ήταν "τεταμένη".

Ο Reinhold Mitterlehner, αντικαγκελάριος και υπουργός Επιστημών της Αυστρίας δήλωσε σχετικά με τις παραπάνω εξελίξεις: «Λυπάμαι πολύ για αυτή την απόφαση γιατί αναμιγνύει την πολιτική με την επιστήμη, και δεν συνάδει με την εταιρική σχέση που έχουμε αναπτύξει όλα τα χρόνια στην Έφεσο. Με αυτή την απόφαση, η ελευθερία της επιστήμης συνεχίζει να μειώνεται».

Οι εντάσεις μεταξύ Βιέννης και Άγκυρας δημιουργήθηκαν όταν ο Christian Kern, καγκελάριος της Αυστρίας δήλωσε ότι πρέπει να ξεκινήσει μια νέα συζήτηση στην Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση προκειμένου να τερματιστούν οι ενταξιακές συνομιλίες με την Τουρκία. Τον Αύγουστο, η Τουρκία ανακάλεσε τον πρεσβευτή της από τη Βιέννη.

Ο Hans-Peter Doskozil, υπουργός Άμυνας της Αυστρίας σύγκρινε την παρούσα πολιτική κατάσταση της Τουρκίας με «δικτατορία», προσθέτοντας ότι «μια τέτοια πολιτική κατάσταση δεν έχει καμία θέση στην ΕΕ».

Πηγή: The Archaeology News Network

Διαβάστε περισσότερα Ανασκαφή: Η Τουρκία σταματά τις ανασκαφές του Αυστριακού Αρχαιολογικού Ινστιτούτου στην Έφεσο http://anaskafi.blogspot.com/2016/09/blog-post_7.html#ixzz4JezcunJb

Three people died in widespread flash floods from heavy rains which lashed Greece overnight

Three people died in widespread flash floods from heavy rains which lashed Greece overnight, the country's fire brigade said on Wednesday. The three victims, all elderly, died at separate locations in the Messinia province, in the southern Peloponnese peninsula hardest hit by extreme weather conditions. "I have never seen anything like it, said Panagiotis Nikas, mayor of the southern city of Kalamata. "About 140 millimetres of rain fell in an hour this morning ... Can you imagine that? It hasn't stopped raining since yesterday at lunchtime," he told Reuters. Seven communities in the wider region were cut off by floods, with extensive flood damage. The area is a vast plain where farming is the main activity. Extensive damage was also reported in Greece's northern city of Thessaloniki, where television images showed cars washed out to sea or piled up from torrential rain. The fire brigade reported it received more than 500 distress calls.

ΕΙΚΟΝΕΣ ΒΙΒΛΙΚΗΣ ΚΑΤΑΣΤΡΟΦΗΣ! Σε έκτακτη ανάγκη η Καλαμάτα - Τρεις νεκροί από τη θεομηνία


Εικόνες βιβλικής καταστροφής στη Στούπα Μεσσηνίας όπου οι καταρρακτώδες βροχές που πλήττουν ολόκληρη την Πελοπόννησο από εχθές το βράδυ...
πήραν και σήκωσαν αυτοκίνητα!


Οι παρακάτω εικόνες μιλάνε από μόνες τους καθώς οι κάτοικοι με το πρώτο φως της ημέρας, αντίκρισαν συγκλονιστικές εικόνες με τα αυτοκίνητα να επιπλέουν στη θάλασσα και τις καταστροφές να είναι τεράστιες!



Η θεομηνία που έπληξε για τα καλά το νομό, εκτός από τρομερές ζημιές σε οχήματα, δρόμους και σπίτια, κόστισε και την ζωή σε τρείς ηλικιωμένους ανθρώπους στις περιοχές Πήδημα, Θουρία και στην πόλη της Καλαμάτας.


Πιο συγκεκριμένα, ένας 80χρονος με κινητικά προβλήματα βρέθηκε νεκρός στο χωριό Θουρία, μια 63χρονη γυναίκα η οποία ήταν κατάκοιτη βρέθηκε νεκρή στο υπόγειο του σπιτιού της ενώ μια ακόμη ηλικιωμένη γυναίκα με κινητικά προβλήματα βρέθηκε νεκρής στο υπόγειο διαμέρισμα της στο κέντρο της Καλαμάτας.


Ο δήμαρχος Καλαμάτας Παναγιώτης Νίκας δήλωσε στην τηλεοπτική εκπομπή «Πρώτη Γραμμή» : «Ας ελπίσουμε το κακό να σταματήσει εδώ. Έχουμε ζητήσει η πόλη να κηρυχτεί σε κατάσταση έκτακτης ανάγκης».




Η Πυροσβεστική ενίσχυσε το πρωί τις δυνάμεις της στην περιοχή της Καλαμάτας με 20 αντλίες από Αθήνα, 12 από Τρίπολη και ένα ερπυστριοφόρο όχημα.

Στην πόλη της Καλαμάτας και σε πολλά χωριά, η στάθμη του νερού ανέβηκε και οι δρόμοι μετατράπηκαν σε χειμάρρους παρασέρνοντας ότι έβρισκαν μπροστά τους και πλημμύρισαν εκατοντάδες σπίτια, ενώ οι κλήσεις που δέχτηκε η Πυροσβεστική για παροχή βοήθειας, είναι αναρίθμητες.





Από την κακοκαιρία υπάρχει διακοπή κυκλοφορίας στο 232 χιλιόμετρο του αυτοκινητοδρόμου Αθηνών – Τριπόλεως – Καλαμάτας στο ύψος της Θουρίας και στο ρεύμα κυκλοφορίας προς Αθήνα, λόγω μεγάλης συσσώρευσης υδάτων.

Στην εθνική οδό Τρίπολης – Καλαμάτας, στο 78ο χιλιόμετρο στο ύψος του ΤΕΙ Πελοποννήσου στο Ασπρόχωμα Καλαμάτας, η κυκλοφορία διεξάγεται με μεγάλη δυσχέρεια λόγω συσσώρευσης υδάτων.



Επίσης, έχει διακοπεί η κυκλοφορία στην εθνική οδό Καλαμάτας – Αρεόπολης, από τη Στούπα έως τον “Αγιο Νικόλαο, λόγω κατολισθήσεων.

Τελευταίες πληροφορίες αναφέρουν ότι στην εστία των ΤΕΙ της πόλης είναι εγκλωβισμένοι περίπου 50 σπουδαστές (Άλλες πληροφορίες κάνουν λόγο για 80).

Ο Πρόεδρος του ΤΕΙ σε ανακοίνωση του δήλωσε ότι το νερό ξεπερνάει το ένα μέτρο και πως όλοι οι σπουδαστές είναι καλά στην υγεία τους.

Αναλυτικά η ανακοίνωση του: «Τα παιδιά είναι εντάξει, η στάθμη του νερού έχει κατέβει στο μισό από ότι ήταν το πρωί στις 6:30. Η Καλαμάτα θα κηρυχτεί σε κατάσταση εκτάκτου ανάγκης από ότι έχουν πει. Ήταν μια θεομηνία, ένα ακραίο φαινόμενο.

Εδώ υπάρχει ένας προαύλιος χώρος ο οποίος δέχεται πολλά νερά από τις πίσω περιοχές και παρότι ήταν απόλυτα συντηρημένα τα φρεάτια μας, ήταν τόσο πολύ έντονη η βροχή που κατάφερε και πλημμύρισε τον προαύλιο χώρο μέχρι και το ισόγειο του κτιρίου σε ύψος 1,20 μέτρα περίπου!



Μπήκαν τα νερά μέσα στο ισόγειο, τα παιδιά μένουν από τον πρώτο όροφο και πάνω έχουν βγει τώρα στα μπαλκόνια και μιλάμε και συζητάμε, είναι ψύχραιμα.

Οι κλίνες στην εστία είναι 80 και πρέπει να βρίσκονται τώρα μέσα καμιά 50 παιδιά. Η εξεταστική που είχαμε σήμερα αναβλήθηκε λόγω των γεγονότων και είναι όλοι ψύχραιμοι. Το χειριζόμαστε το θέμα όσο καλύτερα μπορούμε, έχει έρθει η πυροσβεστική με ένα αντλητικό όχημα και έχουμε και εμείς ένα δικό μας και τα νερά σιγά σιγά κατεβαίνουν».



Στην Καλαμάτα, τους Γαργαλιάνους, τα Φιλιατρά, τη Χώρα, την Στούπα, τη Θουρία, την Εύα, το Πήδημα, το Κεφαλόβρυσο, το Βασιλικό και το Ψάρι, υπάρχουν πολλά πλημμυρισμένα σπίτια και ζημιές σε αυτοκίνητα που έχουν παρασυρθεί από τα νερά, ενώ στη Στούπα της Μάνης, ενώ αυτοκίνητα έχουν παρασυρθεί μέσα στη θάλασσα.



Προβλήματα από την κακοκαιρία έχουν δημιουργηθεί και στον ποταμό Ευρώτα στην Λακωνία, όπου η στάθμη του ποταμού έχει ανέβει επικίνδυνα και υπάρχει διακοπή κυκλοφορίας στην εθνική οδό Τάραψας-Σκάλας στο 19ο χιλιόμετρο στο ύψος της γέφυρας του Ευρώτα, όπου τα νερά του ποταμού έχουν υπερβεί κατά πολύ τη γέφυρα του ποταμού.

Hordes of lionfish have been roaming the Atlantic for several decades now, and their voracious appetite—and lack of natural predators—has seriously upset the ecological balance of those waters.

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The lionfish, a.k.a. “Darwiin’s nightmare,” is upsetting the ecological balance in the Atlantic. (Image: Dennis Jacobsen/Shutterstock

Hordes of lionfish have been roaming the Atlantic for several decades now, and their voracious appetite—and lack of natural predators—has seriously upset the ecological balance of those waters. Now there’s a new foundation devoted to building robots to hunt them down—a Terminator for lionfish.

The prototypes under development are technically cousins to robotic vacuum cleaners, because iRobot CEO Colin Angle is one of the founders of Robots in the Service of the Environment (RISE). He and his wife, biochemist Erika Ebbel, were visiting friends in Bermuda, and the group went diving one day, along with a marine specimen collector named Chris Flook. It was Flook who regaled the group with stories of the invasive lionfish, and RISE was born.

Lionfish have been dubbed “Darwin’s nightmare” because of their tremendous adaptability. They are flexible in what they eat, they can thrive in many different environments (salt water or fresh, cold water or warm), and they reproduce like crazy, all year round, rather than having a particular breeding season. Plus they have venomous spikes, discouraging potential predators from eating them in turn.

That makes lionfish a particularly problematic invasive species. Originally from the Indo-Pacific region, the bright stripes and frilly fins of the lionfish made it a popular choice for exotic pet owners. Those same owners likely dumped adult lionfish into public waters in the mid-1980s, and the species reproduced like gangbusters, with devastating ecological results.

3D rendering of a prototype Harvester Lionfish Hunter to zap the fish with electricity. (Image: Ed Williams/Robo Nautica]

In the Bahamas, for instance, lionfish devoured parrotfish and other smaller species that consume plants, the better to keep algae growth in check. Without them, algae bloomed freely and choked the coral reef ecosystems.

“The only thing that we can do is try to eat them,” marine biologist Christie Wilcox—author of a new book called Venomous: How Earth’s Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry—told Gizmodo. Because they are venomous—as opposed to poisonous—they are perfectly edible. “Lionfish venom is largely proteins, which are easily denatured [when cooked],” said Wilcox, and you can even eat them uncooked, as in a ceviche. “As long as you don’t stab yourself along the way, you can theoretically swallow a spine freshly cut from a lionfish and be fine.” She’s sampled lionfish herself, in various preparations. “It’s a flaky, white, sort of sweet fish,” she said.

“The only thing that we can do is try to eat them.”

There’s definitely a growing market for lionfish: Whole Foods sells fillets in certain geographical areas, as do several sea-to-table restaurants in Florida and North Carolina, in particular. But lionfish have to be speared by hand; they lurk in coral reefs, avoiding dragging nets, and they don’t fall for the old bait-on-a-hook trick of pole fishing, either. Spearing them one by one is the only option-and that’s a tedious and time-consuming process.

That’s where RISE’s prototype robotic harvesters can help. The first model uses a pressure-powered spear gun to humanely hunt lionfish, which should start field tests this month. A second prototype is designed to zap the lionfish with electricity, thanks to a robotic arm rigged out with two metal electrodes. “When the probes get to either side of the fish, you basically zap it,” RISE executive director Joe Rizzo told PBS Newshour.

The two prototypes include video cameras, so that pilots can guide the robots through the water, but the ultimate goal is to build autonomous underwater robots to hunt lionfish.

ISIS vs Christ (RT Documentary)

In early 2015, a small Egyptian village was dealt a cruel blow. ISIS killed 20 men from Al-Ur because they were Christian. Now their families take comfort from their faith as they to come to terms with the loss. The whole community honours the dead as martyrs, Christian and Muslim neighbours alike mourn their deaths and condemn the killers. A few survived and are torn between survivor’s guilt and admiration for the courage shown by their fallen friends. However hard times may be for this village, the community finds solace and pride in how the martyrs’ faith remained strong to the very end.

UK: London's Burning! - Great Fire of 1666 commemorated on 350th anniversary

Hundreds of people gathered on the banks of the River Thames in London, Sunday, to watch a 120-metre long (393 foot) wooden sculpture of 17th century London burn in flames to mark the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London.

The sculpture of the city was set alight on the Thames between Waterloo bridge and Blackfriars bridge as part of the London's Burning festival, held from 30 August to 4 September, to commemorate the Great Fire of London. The event included a series of art installations, performances and tours.

The Great Fire of London began on September 2, 1666, and raged for four days. More than 13,000 buildings, including the old St Paul's Cathedral, were destroyed in the flames.