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In recent days, the US has deployed the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier to the region and reportedly drawn up plans to send 120,000 troops to the Middle East. Diplomatic staff have been ordered to leave Iraq, and the US military have raised the threat level in the region because of alleged intelligence about Iran-backed forces - contradicting a British general who had said there was "no increased threat". Dutch and German soldiers said they had suspended their military training programmes in the country. On Sunday, the Iraqi military said a rocket had been fired into Baghdad's heavily-fortified Green Zone, which houses government buildings and foreign embassies. It reportedly hit an abandoned building near to the US embassy. There were no casualties and it is not yet clear who was behind the attack. Separately, Saudi Arabia accused Tehran of a drone attack on a pipeline on Friday. It alleged that Houthi rebels in Yemen conducted the strike on Iran's orders. A state-aligned Saudi newspaper called for the US to launch attacks on the country. Iran denies the allegations. source:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48329852 Read the full article

In the short term, this could be very damaging for Huawei in the West. Smartphone shoppers would not want an Android phone that lacked access to Google's Play Store, its virtual assistant or security updates, assuming these are among the services that would be pulled. Longer term, though, this might give smartphone vendors in general a reason to seriously consider the need for a viable alternative to Google's operating system, particularly at a time the search giant is trying to push its own Pixel brand at their expense. As far as Huawei is concerned, it appears to have prepared for the eventuality of being cut off from American know-how. Its smartphones are already powered by its own proprietary processors, and earlier this year its consumer devices chief told German newspaper Die Welt that "we have prepared out own operating systems - that's our plan B". Even so, this move could knock its ambition to overtake Samsung and become the bestselling smartphone brand in 2020 seriously off course. source:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48330310 Read the full article

Everyone knows the ocean is full of plankton. How else would whales eat? What you may not know is how slippery and underhanded said plankton can be. Really, it deserves to get eaten by those whales. Because as it turns out, according to a 2017 study, about half of the microscopic plankton traditionally thought of as animal-like - that is, completely dependent on eating things to survive - have a dirty little secret: they also have the option of making their own food, but only after capturing an innocent green microbe and ... well, it's not nice. They may engulf and enslave them. Or they my simply eat them and steal their chloroplasts. The perpetrators are complex single-celled organisms that are fascinating to watch. Here is Dinophysis sucking the chloroplasts out of a hapless victim. And here is Strombidium, doing its best impression of a winged canopic jar or flying heart. There appear to be lots of orange-ish chloroplasts stuffed inside. It periodically inflates and deflates some sort of organelle (a contractile vacuole?), giving he impression of breathing. This Mesodinium is a bowling pin-shaped creature whose cilia appear to rotate. Here's Noctiluca scintillans, a protist that takes photosynthetic hostages but also lights up when disturbed, giving it the nickname "sea sparkle". This individual is lazily waving a flagellum, whose usual function is to stuff food inside and sweep waste out. The baggy body appears to be empty of involuntary house guests. Although completely unrelated to the topic of this post, add some serious joy to your day with this video of Nocitluca's bioluminescent capabilities. Upending previous assumptions that such plankton are oddballs, the 2017 analysis of oceanographic encounters with these organisms revealed that they are "ubiquitous and abundant". The catch-and-enslave type is found most often in the open ocean where food and victims are scarce. Better to ensure a steady supply of eggs than to fry the chicken straight away when you're not sure when you'll find your next bird. The strip-and-consume type is more abundant in the marine equivalent of a 24-hour KFC, such as coastal and upwelling zones with nutrient-rich waters. They need a conveyer belt of prey to keep them well stocked in chloroplasts and essential nutrients. The authors of this study heartily encouraged the creators of ocean models that do not take this rather significant new finding of unsuspected photosynthesis into account to, you know, fix them. Reference Leles, S. G., Aditee Mitra, Kevin J. Flynn, Diane K. Stoecker, Per Juel Hansen, Albert Calbet, George B. McManus et al. "Oceanic protists with different forms of acquired phototrophy display contrasting biogeographies and abundance." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 284, no. 1860 (2017): 20170664. source:https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/organ-stealing-and-slave-driving-rampant-among-plankton/ Read the full article

Moon Blobs The origin of Earth's Moon has long been a puzzle. Solving this conundrum has deep implications for the nature of planetary formation, Earth's geophysical and geochemical history, and for that elusive quality of we call habitability for small rocky worlds across the Universe. In essence; the question is how the rocky parts of the Moon and Earth got to be so similar in elemental composition. The most favored hypothesis is that an early version of the Earth was hit by another planet-scale object some 4.5 billion years ago. That 'Giant Impact' could have mixed up material from the two bodies, and as the Moon assembled from the detritus it would naturally share a composition with the larger Earth. But getting all aspects of this picture to fit with the observed properties of the Earth-Moon system is not so easy. That leaves room for other possibilities, such as the 'synestia' idea where both the Earth and Moon formed from the same spinning cloud of molten filth left from an even larger proto-planetary collision. Now another proposal has been made by Hosono et al. where there was indeed a collision involved, but the Earth at that time was already a molten world - an ocean of magma. Rather than a Giant Impact this might have been a Giant Splash, making it much easier for blobs of material from the early Earth to be flung into orbit to coalesce as the Moon, with its near identical composition. The challenge of decoding what's right under our noses is a sobering reminder of the complex questions involved in learning about planetary histories. Collapsars As I wrote in a recent piece here, the origin of certain heavy elements on Earth is getting a lot of astrophysical attention these days. Researchers are particularly focussed on the r-process elements, thought to be forged in environments of intense neutron flux. Since the gravitational-wave detection of neutron star collisions these 'kilonova' events have become a hot favorite (no pun intended) for producing much of the gold, platinum, and uranium in the Galaxy. But there are other options. A new study by Siegel, Barnes, and Metzger published in Nature suggests that an even rarer astrophysical event - the 'collapsar' - might actually fit the bill for dominating r-process element production. A collapsar is a rapidly spinning massive star that winds up collapsing and creating a supernova. As part of this process a disk of material forms, spinning and accreting on the central mass. That disk resembles the environment in neutron star mergers where lots of r-process elements are thought to be produced. In fact, as this research shows, a collapsar event might expel even more of these heavy elements. The upshot being that, despite their rarity, collapsars could produce more than 80% of the r-process elements in the Universe. Exactly which phenomenon will win out in the end remains to be seen. The heaviest elements play critical roles in the formation and geophysical history of planets, so understanding their origins has broad implications. Long Planets There's a dirty little not-so-secret secret about exoplanets: The vast majority of our discoveries to date have been strongly biased towards worlds on comparatively small, short-period orbits. The simple reason being that techniques like transit detection or radial-velocity measurement generally need to catch repeat orbits, or have very long data timelines in order to allow confidence in the reality of the planets that show up. But it is these longer-period planets - akin to worlds like Jupiter or Saturn in our own solar system - that are essential for testing our ideas of planet formation and for filling in the blanks on whether a system has the right stuff for supporting life on any of its worlds. Finding planets like these takes patience and forward planning. Now a study by Rickman et al. has yielded the fruits of 20 years of astronomical observation using Geneva University's EULER telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. Specifically, the team has revealed a haul of five newly-identified objects circling their stars with orbital periods of between 15 and 40 years. Three of these are hefty gas-giant worlds, two are likely brown-dwarf or sub-stellar objects weighing in at more than ten times the mass of Jupiter. Slowly we're beginning to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of all exoplanets, not just the most convenient ones. source:https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/moon-blobs-collapsars-and-long-planets/ Read the full article

The Swiss government urged voters to back the changes. It said gun enthusiasts would not notice the new rules, while adopting them would allow Switzerland to retain its Schengen membership. Officials said membership of the zone had been beneficial to the economy and to fighting crime. source:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48328867 Read the full article

With farming in crisis, unemployment on the rise and growing fears that India is heading for a recession, he economy is perhaps the biggest issue. Under Mr Modi, the world's sixth-largest economy has lost some of its momentum. Growth hovers around 7% and a leaked government report claims the unemployment rate is the highest it has been since the 1970s. A crop glut and declining commodity prices have led to stagnant farm incomes, leaving many farmers saddled with debt. Many also see this election as a battle for India's identity and the state of its minorities. A strident - and at times violent - Hindu nationalism has become mainstream in the past five years, with increased attacks against minorities, including the lynchings of dozens of Muslims accused of smuggling cows. And national security is in the spotlight after a suicide attack by a Pakistan-based militant group killed at least 40 paramilitary police in Indian-administered Kashmir in February. India then launched unprecedented air strikes in Pakistan, prompting Pakistan to respond in kind and bringing the two countries to the brink of war. source:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-48328259 Read the full article

In December, protesters started demonstrating against a government decision to triple the price of bread. The protests soon morphed into widespread anger against the president's 30-year rule, led by doctors. Five weeks into the protests, on 17 January, witnesses said state forces fired live ammunition at protesters and killed a doctor. He had been treating injured protesters in his home in Khartoum when police fired tear gas into the building. A witness told the BBC that the doctor had walked out with his hands in the air, told the police he was a doctor and was instantly shot. He is one of dozens of people killed during the anti-government protests. The protesters later staged a sit-in outside the military headquarters to demand the military force the president out. A military council assumed power of the country on 11 April, but demonstrators are insisting that it hands over to a civilian administration. source:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-48327197 Read the full article

Though this examine centered on girls, this is not the primary time a optimistic correlation between train and RA has been mentioned. Earlier this 12 months, a examine was revealed on the advantages of yoga for arthritis. The Arthritis Basis has additionally shared data from a number of research exhibiting that HIIT (high-intensity interval coaching) might be helpful for folks dwelling with RA. Nonetheless, Kindle Fisher, a licensed American Faculty of Sports activities Drugs well being and health specialist who's labored rehabbing sufferers by way of bodily remedy, therapeutic massage remedy, and private coaching, defined that not all exercises should be intense in case you have RA. "Many individuals who suffer from RA worry that exercise will cause more joint damage and pain. But exercise can help lubricate the joints and strengthen the muscles surrounding the affected joints. In a flare, gentle light exercise, such as walking, swimming, or cycling, would be the most beneficial," she advised Healthline. Fisher provides there are a number of advantages to train for folks dwelling with a power sickness or power ache situation. "Exercise can also boost your mood and mental health. This becomes important to anyone suffering from RA. It can become frustrating that some days are unbearable while others are tolerable. Increased blood flow promotes healing, so the more you move, the better you feel," she mentioned. "My body feels pretty good -- knock on wood -- most of the time, so I may not be the same as a lot of people with RA," Jess Z., a Pennsylvania resident, advised Healthline. "However I do really feel more healthy and stronger basically after I routinely work out. After I do really feel sluggish or have RA points, I haven't got the push or want to train. However I do not assume it makes my RA worse by understanding. I've by no means actually labored out and damage the subsequent day from it. "After I'm actively exercising, I do it for 30 minutes to an hour. I do marvel, although I really feel effective from understanding, whether it is doing a little minor injury to the joints/bones that I simply do not know, since I do nonetheless have RA," she mentioned. Read the full article