Amidst an emissions cheating scandal, Volkswagen aims to deliver fully-electric and hybrid models by 2020. With a new chief executive on board, the company is starting to try and regain trust and competence starting with unveiling their first fully electric car—which would supposedly run 480 KM on a 15-minute charge.
RECOVERING FROM A SCANDAL
Volkswagen isn’t a newbie when it comes to scandals. In the past year or so, the automobile company has been haunted by an emissions cheating scandal, and issues with system vulnerability that jeopardize the security of 100 million Volkswagen.
The company admitted that 11 million Volkswagen cars in the US and Europe were equipped with a “defeat device,” which puts the car on some sort of safe mode when it detects conditions consistent with a standard emission testing. This allows their cars to cheat such tests by improving performance and emitting pollutants below the standard limit, which then radically changes when the testing mode is no longer detected.
Former chief executive Martin Winterkorn. AFP.
As a result, Volkswagen emissions went 40 times over the limits in the US, substantially damaging the company’s reputation and credibility. Subsequently, then chief executive Martin Winterkorn resigned and was replaced by Matthias Mueller, formerly from Porsche.
“My most urgent task is to win back trust for the Volkswagen Group—by leaving no stone unturned,” Mueller said.
And now it seems they are trying to make amends for this breach of trust and environmental violation: they are unveiling their first fully electric car at this year’s Paris motor show.
DELIVERING ON PROMISES
It will be the size of the Golf while having the spacious interior of the Passat, but its most remarkable feature will be its charging time—it can take you 480 kilometers (300 miles) on a 15-minute charge, an impressive attribute for a production car.
Early this year, Volkswagen made a pledge to deliver an environment-friendly lineup in North America by 2020, which includes 20 different EV and plug-in hybrid models. In line with this pledge, their first all-electric car is set to launch sometime between late 2018 and early 2019.
The credibility of Volkswagen’s emissions labels has suffered significantly. AP.
Of course, the question remains: will they actually deliver as promised? With a new chief on the post, hopefully consumers can start trusting emissions level labels on their cars.
Typhoon Megi slammed into the coast of northeast Taiwan on Tuesday, injuring dozens and leaving almost a million homes without power. At least 38 people had been reported injured on Tuesday afternoon, just hours after the tropical storm made landfall, according to Taiwan's Central News Agency. Almost 1,000,000 homes were without power in the storm's wake, after some 38 inches (1000 millimeters) of rain fell in Yilan County. The typhoon is the third storm system to hit the island in two weeks, lashing Taiwan with winds up to 143 miles per hour (230 kilometers per hour). The typhoon made landfall at 1.30 p.m. (1.30 a.m. ET) on the island's less heavily populated east coast. "Winds and flooding rain continue to be a problem with this system," CNN meteorologist Michael Guy said. "Landslides are also a major concern with the typhoon."
The Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in Pingtang county, China.
STR/AFP/Getty Images
The largest radio telescope in the world officially opened on Sunday,according to China's official Xinhua News.
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, is named after its diameter, which, at 500 meters, is 195 meters wider than the second-largest telescope of its kind, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
Xinhua reports the telescope cost $180 million and 8,000 people were displaced from their homes to create the necessary 3-mile radius of radio silence around the facility. It will be used for "observation of pulsars as well as exploration of interstellar molecules and interstellar communication signals."
YouTube
Pulsars are imploded cores of stars slightly larger than the sun, which emit radiation that can be detected from Earth, if your telescope is sensitive enough. A researcher with China's National Astronomical Observation, Qian Lei, told Xinhua the new telescope is so sensitive, in a test it detected radio waves from a pulsar 1,351 light-years away.
Like radio telescopes in other parts of the world, FAST will study interstellar molecules related to how galaxies evolve. For example, this summer a team using data from the Very Large Array, a collection of radio antennas in the New Mexico desert, picked up what scientists describe as"faint radio emission from atomic hydrogen ... in a galaxy nearly 5 billion light-years from Earth." In the paper describing their findings, the team writes that the "next generation of radio telescopes," like FAST, will build on their findings about how gases behave in galaxies.
As for FAST's final use, studying interstellar communication signals, it could be more simply referred to as searching for intelligent extraterrestrial life. "In theory, if there is civilization in outer space, the radio signal it sends will be similar to the signal we can receive when a pulsar ... is approaching us," Qian told Chinese state media, according to the science news website Phys.org.
Such communication could go both ways. In 1974, the Arecibo radio telescope sent a signal deep into space with a graphic containing, among other things, images of "the Arecibo telescope, our solar system, DNA, a stick figure of a human, and some of the biochemicals of earthly life,"according to the SETI institute, a scientific organization devoted to the search for extraterrestrial life.
In an interview with the BBC, the deputy project manager for the new Chinese telescope, Peng Bo, said the project was exciting for Chinese scientists. "For many years, we have had to go outside of China to make observations — and now we have the largest telescope," he told the BBC.
China's investment in space exploration is not limited to earth-based telescopes. Although it is not one of the countries that helps run theInternational Space Station, China launches its own rockets carrying satellites. Earlier this month, China launched Tiangong-2, its second space lab, shortly before its first space lab fell back to earth.
Με το Μετάλλιο Εξόχου Πράξεως, την ανώτερη ηθική αμοιβή που απονέμεται σε στρατιωτικούς εν καιρώ ειρήνης, τιμήθηκαν σήμερα τα τρία στελέχη της Ζ’ Μοίρας Αμφιβίων Καταδρομών (Ζ’ΜΑΚ) από τον Υπουργό Εθνικής Αμύνης Πάνο Καμμένο για την άμεση και επιτυχή αντίδρασή του να επέμβουν και να σώσουν απεγκλωβίζοντας από τη θάλασσα τους δύο πιλότους του ελικοπτέρου AH-64DHA Longbow Apache που έπεσε στα αβαθή στην παραλία Βρασνών, στο πλαίσιο διεξαγωγής της μεγάλης διακλαδικής ασκήσεως «Σάρισσα 2016», που ολοκληρώθηκε χθες.
Πρόκειται για τους ΕΠΟΠ Λοχίες (Πεζικού) Γεώργιο Σαπρανίδη, Αθανάσιο Χριστοδουλάκο και Σταύρο Τζαβαριάν, όλοι τους στελέχη της Ζ’ΜΑΚ, οι οποίοι έλαβαν το Μετάλλιο Εξόχου Πράξεως, το συνοδευτικό Δίπλωμα και την πλακέτα του ΥΠΕΘΑ δια χειρός του Υπουργού Εθνικής Αμύνης στο γραφείο του ευθύς μετά το πέρας διεξαγωγής της ασκήσεως, παρουσία των Αρχηγών ΓΕΕΘΑ Ναυάρχου Ευάγγελου Αποστολάκη ΠΝ, ΓΕΣ Αντιστρατήγου Βασιλείου Τελλίδη. Παρόντες επίσης στην τελετή οι Υπαρχηγοί ΓΕΝ Υποναύαρχος Δημοσθένης Χέλμης ΠΝ και ΓΕΑ Υποπτέραρχος (Ι) Αντώνιος Αθανασίου ως εκπρόσωποι των απουσιαζόντων στο εξωτερικών Αρχηγών ΓΕΝ Αντιναυάρχου Γεωργίου Γιακουμάκη ΠΝ και ΓΕΑ Αντιπτεράρχου (Ι) Χρήστου Βαΐτση αντιστοίχως, καθώς και οι διοικητές των τιμηθέντων της προϊσταμένης Διακλαδικής Διοικήσεως Ειδικών Επιχειρήσεων του ΓΕΕΘΑ Ταξιάρχου Νικόλαου Φλάρη και της Ζ’ ΜΑΚ Αντισυνταγματάρχου (ΠΖ) Ιωάννη Καρποντίνη.
Ζητώντας τους ο ΥΕΘΑ να πληροφορηθεί από πρώτο χέρι πως έγινε η διάσωση οι τιμηθέντες του είπαν τα εξής: «Εμείς οι τρεις είμαστε όλοι βατραχάνθρωποι και έχουμε εκπαιδευτεί να λειτουργούμε και να ενεργούμε ομαδικά. Έτσι μόλις είδαμε τη συντριβή του ελικοπτέρου σπεύσαμε αμέσως με τη φουσκωτή λέμβο στην περιοχή μαζί με συναδέλφους μας από μία δεύτερη λέμβο. Αυτοί ασχολήθηκαν με τον πιλότο ο οποίος είχε απελευθερωθεί και ήταν ήδη στην επιφάνεια. Εμείς δεν ασχοληθήκαμε καθόλου με αυτόν. Αλλά οι δύο μας βουτήξαμε αμέσως, ο ένας άνοιξε την καλύπτρα του πιλότου ο οποίος ήταν ακόμα μέσα στο κόκπιτ, δεμένος και αναίσθητος. Αν δεν επεμβαίναμε αμέσως είναι σίγουρο ότι θα έχανε τη ζωή του. Ο ένας άνοιξε και κράταγε ανοικτή την καλύπτρα, ο δεύτερος απελευθέρωσε αμέσως του ιμάντες που τον συγκρατούσαν στη θέση του και τον τράβηξε έξω και οι δύο μαζί τον ανεβάσαμε στην επιφάνεια. Εκεί είδαμε ότι από το στόμα του έβγαζε αφρούς και ήταν αναίσθητος. Αμέσως ο τρίτος από μας που ήταν στην βάρκα άρχισε την εκτέλεση ΚΑΡΠΑ (= «τεχνική αναπνοή») ενώ εμείς οδηγούσαμε τη λέμβο έξω. Η εφαρμογή ΚΑΡΠΑ αμέσως μόλις βγήκε ο ταγματάρχης στην επιφάνεια του έσωσε τη ζωή γιατί δεν χάθηκε ούτε ένα δευτερόλεπτο. Να σημειωθεί ότι στην παραλία ήταν σε ετοιμότητα αμέσου επεμβάσεως αν απαιτείτο και Τρίτη λέμβος με συναδέλφους μας με μπουκάλες, αλλά ευτυχώς δεν χρειάστηκε να επέμβουν».
Εθνική Διακλαδική Άσκηση ΣΑΡΙΣΑ-2016: Η αντεπίθεση της «Κυανοχώρας»
Με υποθετικό σενάριο, σύμφωνα με το οποίο οι δυνάμεις της «Κοκκινοχώρας» προέβησαν σε επιθετικές ενέργειες, κατόρθωσαν να διασπάσουν τοποθεσία των συνόρων και να θέσουν υπό τον έλεγχό τους εθνικό έδαφος της «Κυανοχώρας», διεξήχθη η Εθνική Διακλαδική Άσκηση μεγάλης κλίμακας ΣΑΡΙΣΑ 2016 στον Κόλπο Ορφανού και στο Πεδίο Βολής και Ασκήσεων ΑΣΚΟΥ-ΠΡΟΦΗΤΗ από 19 έως 23 Σεπτεμβρίου. Για την αποκατάσταση του προ των εχθροπραξιών καθεστώτος αναλήφθηκαν επιθετικές επιχειρήσεις με την εμπλοκή της 1ης Στρατιάς, Σχηματισμών και Μονάδων του Γ΄Σώματος Στρατού, της ΙΙ Μηχανοκίνητης Μεραρχίας Πεζικού, της Ι Μεραρχίας Πεζικού, της Διακλαδικής Διοίκησης Ειδικών Δυνάμεων του ΓΕΕΘΑ και δυνάμεων του Πολεμικού Ναυτικού και της Πολεμικής Αεροπορίας. Σημειώνεται ότι για πρώτη φορά στην άσκηση ΣΑΡΙΣΑ έγινε πρόσκληση δυνάμεων των ΗΠΑ (173rd Airborne Brigade), οι οποίες κατά το υποθετικό σενάριο αποτελούν τη «Λευκή Χώρα» που συνδράμουν την «Κυανοχώρα» στην αντιμετώπιση της «Κοκκινοχώρας».
Στη Τελική Φάση της Άσκησης που πραγματοποιήθηκε χθες συμμετείχαν συνολικά 1.892 αξιωματικοί και οπλίτες ενώ από πλευράς ΕΣ ασκήθηκαν με πραγματικά πυρά στο Πεδίο Βολής και Ασκήσεων ΑΣΚΟΥ-ΠΡΟΦΗΤΗ:
Ένα Τακτικό Συγκρότημα Επιλαρχίας Μέσων Αρμάτων για την εκτέλεση επιθετικής ενέργειας
Δύο Α/Μ Λόχοι για την εκτέλεση αεροκίνητης ενέργειας
Ένας Λόχος Αλεξιπτωτιστών και προσωπικό υποστήριξης του 865 ΤΕΝΕΦ για εκτέλεση αεραποβατικής ενέργειας
Τέσσερις Α/Κ Πυροβολαρχίας Μέσου και Βαρέως Πυροβολικού και μία Α/Μ Πυροβολαρχία Πεδινού Πυροβολικού
Μία Διμοιρία Όλμων 4,2″, τρεις Oμάδες Όλμων 81mm, δύο Ομάδες ΑΤ TOW, Πυροβόλων Zu-23 και πολυβόλων όλων των διαμετρημάτων
Τακτικό Συγκρότημα Τάγματος Ελικοπτέρων, αποτελούμενο από Λόχο Επιθετικών Ελικοπτέρων Apache, Λόχο Μεταφορικών Ελικοπτέρων Chinook και Λόχο Ελικοπτέρων NH90 και UH-1H, συνολικού αριθμού 25 Ε/Π.
Δύο ειδικές ομάδες του Ειδικού Τμήματος Αλεξιπτωτιστών (ΕΟ/ΕΤΑ), δύο οχήματα ειδικών επιχειρήσεων Flyer και ένα αερόχημα Sperwer.
Aπό την Πολεμική Αεροπορία συμμετείχαν 22 μαχητικά αεροσκάφη διαφόρων Μοιρών, ένα C-130 για μεταφορά και ρίψη αλεξιπτωτιστών, ένα Ε/Π Super Puma με τμήμα της 31 ΜΕΕΔ ενώ από πλευράς Πολεμικού Ναυτικού συμμετείχε η φρεγάτα ΚΑΝΑΡΗΣ (F464) και το αρματαγωγό ΙΚΑΡΙΑ (L175). Eίχε προηγηθεί η εκτέλεση της πρώτης φάσης στον Κόλπο Ορφανού με την διεξαγωγή αμφίβιων και αεραποβατικών ενεργειών.
Αναλυτική περιγραφή της Άσκησης και των επεισοδίων που έλαβαν χώρα στο Πεδίο Βολής και Ασκήσεων ΑΣΚΟΥ-ΠΡΟΦΗΤΗ κατά τη χθεσινή Τελική Φάση στο ακόλουθο βίντεο διάρκειας δύο ωρών:
Σύμφωνα με το Διοικητή της 1ης Στρατιάς και Συντονιστή Αξιωματικό της Άσκησης, Αντιστράτηγο Ηλία Λεοντάρη, για τη διεξαγωγή της ΤΑΜΣ ΣΑΡΙΣΑ-2016 χρησιμοποιήθηκαν όλα τα μέσα επικοινωνιών, συμπεριλαμβανομένου του δορυφορικού φάσματος, μεταξύ των οποίων 650 ασύρματοι και 450 Η/Υ για την υποστήριξη των δικτύων, αναπτύχθηκαν 22 χιλιόμετρα τηλεφωνικό καλώδιο, χρησιμοποιήθηκαν 75 οχήματα Μηχανικού όλων των τύπων, πραγματοποιήθηκαν 440 ώρες της Αεροπορίας Στρατού, 150 ώρες πτήσης της Πολεμικής Αεροπορίας και αντίστοιχες ώρες πλεύσης του Πολεμικού Ναυτικού ενώ καταναλώθηκε μεγάλος όγκος πυρομαχικών.
Mετά το πέρας της άσκησης, ο Αρχηγός ΓΕΣ Αντιστράτηγος Βασίλειος Τελλίδης αναφέρθηκε στον «υψηλό βαθμό επικινδυνότητας» που έχουν τέτοιες ευρείας κλίμακας ασκήσεις με πραγματικά πυρά, αλλά και στο προχθεσινό ατύχημα με την πτώση του επιθετικού ελικοπτέρου, που –όπως είπε– ήταν «ένα ατύχημα το οποίο έγινε στην προσπάθεια των χειριστών να υλοποιήσουν την αποστολή τους με τον καλύτερο τρόπο, όπως ακριβώς θα κληθούν να πολεμήσουν». «Εγώ προσωπικά νομίζω, ότι όλοι μας είμαστε υπερήφανοι γι’ αυτούς, τους στηρίζουμε και είμαστε κοντά τους. Χάρη στην εκπαίδευση τους και στην άμεση επέμβαση και του προσωπικού των Ειδικών Δυνάμεων που ήταν εκεί αποφεύχθηκε και το χειρότερο. Μια παράκληση: Ας μη λησμονούμε όλοι μας, ας μη λησμονεί κανένας, ότι ο κίνδυνος και το ρίσκο είναι στενά συνυφασμένα με αυτό που υπηρετούμε», δήλωσε ο Α/ΓΕΣ.
Εντός των επόμενων ωρών θα αναρτηθεί εδώ σχετικό φωτογραφικό υλικό και από τις δύο φάσεις.
During a recent survey off the coast of Turkey, scientists hauled up one of the largest saltwater stingrays ever found. The fish's "wingspan" was reportedly 2.21 metres – if confirmed, that size would surpass the previous catch record by nearly a metre!
The 450-kilogram common stingray (Dasyatis pastinaca) was caught near Turkey's western Izmir province by Ege University Department of Aquaculture researcher Dr lker Aydin and his graduate students. The team had been conducting a survey of deep-sea fishes in the region, and netted the ray some 100 metres below the surface.
Once it was aboard the research vessel, a pipe was used to keep oxygenated water flowing over the ray's gills while the team conducted their workup, a process that involves various measurements and observations. After a few short minutes, the animal was about ready for release – but something caught Aydin's eye when he lifted the ray's tail to determine the sex: the animal was giving birth. "It was a big surprise for us," he told the Andelou Agency. This isn't the first time we've seen a ray give birth under strange circumstances. Sharks and rays are very sensitive to stress, and it's not uncommon for females to go into labour after being caught (either on a line, or by a predator).
"I think it is a very reasonable assumption that if the neonates are close to term, the female may choose to give birth in an attempt to give the offspring a chance of escaping," Thomas Farrugia, a PhD candidate at University of Alaska Fairbanks, who specialises in skates and rays, tells us. "It's a very surprising turn of events in most cases, and every time I have witnessed it, the offspring were pretty far along in their development."
This was the case for the researchers in Turkey, too. The eight pups born on the vessel were delivered without a visible yolk sac, which indicates that the babies were likely very close to term.
Farrugia adds that there is also another possibility: changes in the environment (going from water to air) could physically push the babies out. "In water, the female is supported by her natural buoyancy, but once she is brought on a boat, all her weight now rests on the underside, which may push the offspring out," he explains.
Even in a healthy, fully developed brood, only a fraction of ray pups actually make it to adulthood – but we can at least tell you that each of these babies swam away without any trouble. "If they are returned to the water quickly and without being handled too much, there is a good chance that they would survive the ordeal," says Farrugia.
This fish might be a record contender for its kind, but the biggest stingray ever caught (and released) was likely this freshwater stingray, which measured 7.9 feet (2.4 metres) across and 14 feet (4.3 metres) long, and weighed around 700 to 800 pounds (318 to 363 kilograms). Saltwater rays that don't belong to the stinging suborder (Myliobatoidei) can grow even bigger.
The En-Gedi scroll, a text that includes part of the Book of Leviticus in the Hebrew Bible that was ravaged by fire about 1,400 years ago, is now readable, thanks to a complex digital analysis called "virtual unwrapping."
Rather than physically unfurl the scroll, which would have destroyed the crumbling artifact, experts digitally scanned the document, and then virtually flattened the scanned results, allowing scholars to read its ancient text.
"We're reading a real scroll," lead study author Brent Seales, professor and chairman in the department of computer science at the University of Kentucky, said in a news conference yesterday (Sept. 20). "It hasn't been read for millennia. Many thought it was probably impossible to read." [Gallery of Dead Sea Scrolls: A Glimpse of the Past]
The charred scroll from En-Gedi (right) that experts digitally unfurled (left).
Credit: From Seales et al., Sci. Adv. 2:e1601247 (2016). Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).
Potential scroll fragments from En-Gedi that are severely burned.
Credit: Shai Halevi / Israel Antiquities Authority
Archaeologists found the scroll in 1970 in En-Gedi, where an ancient Jewish community thrived from about the late 700s B.C. until about A.D. 600, when a fire destroyed the site, the researchers said. Excavations of the synagogue's Holy Ark, a chest or cupboard that holds the Torah scrolls, revealed charred scrolls of parchment, or animal skin. But each scroll was "completely burned and crushed, had turned into chunks of charcoal that continued to disintegrate every time they were touched," the researchers wrote in the study.
The En-Gedi scroll is different than the original Dead Sea Scrolls, which a young shepherd discovered in caves near Qumran in the Judean Desert in 1947. However, Dead Sea Scroll has become an umbrella term for many ancient scrolls found in the area, and some researchers also call the En-Gedi artifact a Dead Sea Scroll.
The scorched En-Gedi scroll fragments sat in storage for more than 40 years until experts decided to give them another look, and try the newly developed "virtual unwrapping" method for the first time on the scroll.
Cyber scroll
The En-Gedi scroll in the micro-CT scanner.
Credit: Orit Rosengarten / Israel Antiquities Authority
The virtual journey began in Israel, where experts digitally scanned the rolled-up scroll with X-ray-based micro-computed tomography (micro-CT). At this point, they weren't sure whether the scroll had text within it, said study co-author Pnina Shor, curator and head of the Dead Sea Scrolls Projects at the Israel Antiquities Authority. So, they increased the spatial resolution of the scan, allowing them to capture whether or not each layer had detectable ink.
Their exhaustive attention to detail paid off: There was ink, and it likely contained metal, such as iron or lead, because it showed up on the micro-CT scan as a dense material, the researchers said.
However, the text was illegible. So Shor and her colleagues in Israel sent the digital scans to Seales in Kentucky so he and his team could try the new "virtual unwrapping" technique.
"It was certainly a shot in the dark," Shor said.
Virtual unwrapping
A merged text layer suggestion after the virtual unrolling.
Credit: Seth Parker / University of Kentucky
This new method marks the first time that experts have virtually unrolled and noninvasively studied aseverely damaged scroll with ink text, Seales said.
The unwrapping took time and involved three steps: segmentation, texturing and flattening, he said.
With segmentation, they identified each segment, or layer, within the digital scroll, which had five complete revolutions of parchment in the scroll. Then, they created a virtual geometric mesh for each layer made of tiny, digital triangles. They were able to manipulate this mesh, which helped them "texture" the document, or make the text more visible.
"This is where we see letters and words for the first time on the recreated page," the researchers wrote in the study.
Finally, they digitally flattened the scroll, and merged the different layers together into one, flat 2D image that could easily be read. [In Photos: Amazing Ruins of the Ancient World]
Book of Leviticus
The scroll holds the beginning of the Book of Leviticus, the third of the five books of Moses (known as the Pentateuch) that make up the Hebrew Bible, biblical scholars said. In fact, the En-Gedi scroll contains the earliest copy of a Pentateuchal book ever found in a Holy Ark, the researchers said.
The virtual unwrapping revealed two distinct columns of text that include, in total, 35 lines of Hebrew. Each line has 33 to 34 letters. However, there are only consonants, no vowels. This indicates that the text was written before the ninth century A.D., when Hebrew symbols for vowels were invented, said study co-author Emanuel Tov, a professor emeritus in the department of Bible at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Radiocarbon dating places the scroll in the third or fourth century A.D., but studies based on historical handwriting place it at either the first or second century A.D., the researchers said. Regardless, the data suggest that it was written within the first few centuries of the Common Era, they said.
These dates make the En-Gedi scroll slightly younger than the original Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written between about 200 B.C. and A.D. 70.
"Hence, the En-Gedi scroll provides an important extension to the evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls and offers a glimpse into the earliest stages of almost 800 years of near silence in the history of the biblical text," the researchers wrote in the study.
Moreover, the En-Gedi text is "completely identical" to the text and paragraph breaks found in medieval Hebrew Bibles, which are known as the Masoretic text, a text that is still used today. In antiquity until the first century B.C., there were an "endless number of textual forms" of the Masoretic text, earning them the name "proto-Masoretic," Tov said.
But the En-Gedi finding suggests that the standard Masoretic text coalesced relatively early, he said.
"This is quite amazing for us," Tov said. "That in 2,000 years, this text has not changed."
The study was published online today (Sept. 21) in the journal Science Advances.
Two airports in Costa Rica were temporally closed Monday after ashes spilled from the Turrialba volcano, local authorities said.
Operations at the Juan Santamaria International Airport, the country’s main air terminal, and the Tobias Bolanos airport, were suspended until conditions improve, according to the chief of the Civil Aviation Directorate Ennio Cubillo.
“The particles are not only in the airspace but also on the surfaces of taxing and takeoff," he told local media.
Authorities also considered whether to limit the general aviation activities at the Daniel Oduber International Airport located in the northwest of the Central American nation.
Eight flights were suspended at the Santamaria Airport, from which an estimated 6,238 passengers departed Monday, according to Civil Aviation Directorate figures.
The Turrialba volcano, located in central Costa Rica, erupted several times Monday throwing a column of ash 4,000 meters during the first eruption, followed by one about 1,000 meters high, according to the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica.
The first eruption spewed incandescent rock more than 500 meters high, along with gas and ash, that reached Central Valley communities, about 70 kilometers (45 miles) west of the volcano.
Επιθετικό ελικόπτερο AH-64DHA Apache της Αεροπορίας Στρατού πραγματοποίησε αναγκαστική προσθαλάσσωση σήμερα περί ώρα 08:50 στη θαλάσσια περιοχή του Κόλπου Ορφανού, κατά τη διάρκεια δραστηριοτήτων της Εθνικής Διακλαδικής Άσκησης «ΣΑΡΙΣΑ–2016» που βρίσκεται σε πλήρη εξέλιξη. Οι δύο χειριστές του ελικοπτέρου έχουν τις αισθήσεις τους και διακομίστηκαν στο 424 Γενικό Στρατιωτικό Νοσοκομείο Θεσσαλονίκης για περαιτέρω ιατρικό έλεγχο. Σύμφωνα με τις πρώτες πληροφορίες, το έμπειρο πλήρωμα του ελικοπτέρου προχώρησε σε αναγκαστική προσθαλάσσωση ελάχιστα μέτρα από την ακτή παρά το γεγονός ότι το ελικόπτερο παρουσίασε απώλεια ισχύος των κινητήρων σε χαμηλό ύψος και πάνω από θάλασσα.
