Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Saturday, 5 December 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 04 Dec 2015 04:43 AM PST
Blood vessels from the demineralized Brachylophosaurus canadensis bone.
American scientists have found blood vessel-like structures in a mid-sized duck-billed dinosaur that walked the earth 80 million years ago. The discovery offers further evidence that some soft tissue structures can survive millions of years.
The research was led by Dr Tim Cleland of the University of Texas at Austin. His team “demineralized a piece of leg bone from a Brachylophosaurus canadensis, a 30-foot-long hadrosaur,” which was found in Montana, US.
The group found proteins from the cellular components of the blood vessels. One of the proteins was identified as myosin, which is found within the walls of blood vessels.
The results were then double-checked against the bones from chickens and ostriches – living relatives of the dinosaurs.
In both tests peptide sequences matched those found in blood vessels. “Peptide sequencing of Brachylophosaurus canadensis blood vessel extracts is consistent with peptides comprising extant archosaurian blood vessels and is not consistent with a bacterial, cellular slime mold, or fungal origin,” said a paper published in the Journal of Proteome Research.
The study provides further evidence that molecular characterization of extinct species can be carried out.
“When all data are taken into consideration, the most parsimonious explanation is that these vessels, derived from demineralized dinosaur bone, are endogenous,” they said. “These data open the door for molecular characterization of biological components of other long-extinct organisms.”
Cleland said that this is the first research of its kind that analyzes blood vessels from an extinct organism.
“It provides us with an opportunity to understand what kinds of proteins and tissues can persist and how they change during fossilization,” he said.
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Posted: 04 Dec 2015 04:27 AM PST
Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) workers standing before the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant at Okuma town in Fukushima Prefecture, northern Japan.
Researchers detect higher levels of radiation from Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster off North America’s shores.
Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said on Thursday recent tests of Pacific Ocean water revealed that the Fukushima nuclear power plant continues contamination of the ocean with radioactive isotopes.
Buesseler said samples taken from several hundred miles off the shores of Oregon, Washington and California as well as Canada’s Vancouver island over the past few months tested positive for cesium-134.
Cesium-137 isotope was also detected at low levels in almost all seawater samples tested by Buesseler and his fellow researchers.
“Despite the fact that the levels of contamination off our shores remain well below government-established safety limits for human health or to marine life, the changing values underscore the need to more closely monitor contamination levels across the Pacific,” said Buesseler.
Last year, Buesseler said Fukushima radiation was detected in samples taken off the coast of northern California. In April, radiation was also identified off Canada’s shores.
The latest figures show that the spread of Fukushima radiation is not limited to certain locations, but can be found along a stretch of 1,000 miles offshore.
In March 2011, a massive tsunami triggered by a magnitude-9 quake filled the Fukushima nuclear cooling systems with water, sending some reactors into meltdown and sparking a decades-long cleanup effort by the Japanese government.
Shortly after the accident, radiation was released into the sea, food chain, and air, and now the Fukushima incident is the worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine.
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Posted: 04 Dec 2015 03:57 AM PST

The head of the Chamber of Deputies of the National Congress of Brazil, Eduardo Cunha, launched the formal impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on December 2. Cunha has thus met the requirement of the opposition that accused Rousseff of violations of tax legislation and manipulations of public funds during her election campaign in 2014.
To approve the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, Cunha needs to collect two-thirds of 342 votes of members of the parliament. Pravda.Ru asked an expert opinion from deputy director of the Institute of Latin American Studied at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Boris Martynov.
In his opinion, the impeachment procedure will not be finished. “Many of those who want Rousseff impeached want to build a political capital for themselves in light of the coming elections. The ruling elite understand that impeachment will plunge the whole political life of the country into anarchy, because it will affect not only the image of the president, but also of the vice-president, who is also involved in the scandal with oil company Petrobras,” said Boris Martynov.
The impeachment may also jeopardize the Olympic Games. “The Olympics do not let the boat rock. Dilma Rousseff needs to finish her term in the office before new elections are held,” the expert said.
Noteworthy, Eduardo Cunha appears in a corruption case himself. “Corruption is like cancer that destroys everything. There are many corrupt officials who struggle against corruption to cover up their criminal activities. This is a self-protection device – to blame someone else,” Boris Martynov told Pravda.Ru.
Corruption in Brazil is a historical, cultural and economic phenomenon. The struggle against corruption in Brazil takes a lot of time and effort. Many people understand this and do not follow such declarations, Boris Martynov believes.
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Posted: 04 Dec 2015 03:41 AM PST

The Russian Defense Ministry has released evidence which it says unmasks vast illegal oil trade by Islamic State and points to Turkey as the main destination for the smuggled petrol, implicating its leadership in aiding the terrorists.
The Russian Defense Ministry held a major briefing on new findings concerning IS funding in Moscow on Wednesday.
According to Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov, Russia is aware of three main oil smuggling routes to Turkey.
“Today, we are presenting only some of the facts that confirm that a whole team of bandits and Turkish elites stealing oil from their neighbors is operating in the region,” Antonov said, adding that this oil “in large quantities” enters the territory of Turkey via “live oil pipelines,” consisting of thousands of oil trucks.
The routes of alleged oil smuggling from Syria and Iraq to Turkey.
Antonov added that Turkey is the main buyer of smuggled oil coming from Iraq and Syria.
“According to our data, the top political leadership of the country – President Erdogan and his family – is involved in this criminal business.”
However, since the start of Russia’s anti-terrorist operation in Syria on September 30, the income of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) militants from illegal oil smuggling has been significantly reduced, the ministry said.
“The income of this terrorist organization was about $3 million per day. After two months of Russian airstrikes their income was about $1.5 million a day,” Lieutenant-General Sergey Rudskoy said.
At the briefing the ministry presented photos of oil trucks, videos of airstrikes on IS oil storage facilities and maps detailing the movement of smuggled oil. More evidence is to be published on the ministry’s website in the coming says, Rudskoy said.
The US-led coalition is not bombing IS oil trucks, Rudskoy said.
For the past two months, Russia’s airstrikes hit 32 oil complexes, 11 refineries, 23 oil pumping stations, Rudskoy said, adding that the Russian military had also destroyed 1,080 trucks carrying oil products.
“These [airstrikes] helped reduce the trade of the oil illegally extracted on the Syrian territory by almost 50 percent.”
Up to 2,000 fighters, 120 tons of ammunition and 250 vehicles have been delivered to Islamic State and Al-Nusra militants from Turkish territory, chief of National Centre for State Defense Control Lt.Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev said.
“According to reliable intelligence reports, the Turkish side has been taking such actions for a long time and on a regular basis. And most importantly, it is not planning to stop them.”
“One thing is clear. The role that Turkey is playing in this area is in many ways destructive and it’s affecting the European security, it’s affecting its neighbors. Ultimately it’s affecting its own society,” Uzi Arad, former head of research at Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency told RT.
Responding to the Russian allegations, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that nobody had a right to “slander” Turkey by accusing it of buying oil from Islamic State.
Speaking at a university in the Qatari capital, Doha, on Wednesday, Erdogan once again claimed that he would resign if such accusations were proven to be true and stressed that he did not want Turkey’s relations with Russia to deteriorate further.
Following Russian accusations, the US has again defended Turkey, denying any ties between Ankara and Islamic State.
“We flatly reject any notion that the Turks are somehow working with ISIL. Preposterous. And really very, kind of ridiculous,” Steve Warren, Pentagon spokesman, said.
He called Turkey “a great partner” to Washington in fighting against IS terrorists in Syrian and Iraq.
“They’re hosting our aircraft. They’re conducting strikes. They’re supporting the moderate Syrian opposition,” Warren explained.
Iraq will immediately file a protest in the UN Security Council if claims that Turkey is illegally purchasing oil from Islamic State terrorists are confirmed, the Iraqi Defense Ministry said.
“If the Iraqi government receives enough evidence and details, without any hesitation it will file a protest at the UN Security Council and all other relevant international bodies,” Naseer Nuri, ministry’s spokesman, told Sputnik.
According to Nuri, certain “general information about the smuggling of Iraqi oil by trucks to certain countries, including Turkey” is already available.
“This oil is used to fund Daesh (IS)”, he added.
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Posted: 04 Dec 2015 02:32 AM PST

The nation needs Donald Trump in the Oval Office if it hopes to return to the great country it once used to be, the presidential candidate said on Wednesday.
Speaking to radio host Alex Jones about the urgency of the 2016 election, the GOP frontrunner asserted he was “in this to win it,” and promised not to step down if he were to receive death threats two months out from the election.
“I am in this to win it, I am not in this to say, ‘Oh gee, I’ve done a really good job,’” Trump told Jones in an exclusive interview.
“A reporter called up – a very powerful reporter – and said ‘How does it feel?’ Cause they said what we’ve done has never been done before politically. You know I’ve been in the polls for five months, since it came out I’m number one,” Trump recalled.
“I said, ‘It’s only good if we win. If I don’t win, I’ve wasted a lot of time, that’s the way I view it.’ He said, ‘No, no, you haven’t.’ I said, ‘Believe me, if I don’t win – because we can’t do anything to make our country great if I don’t win. I’ll be watching television someplace, it’ll be – forget it.’”

Discussion featured at 29:52.
Trump also related to Jones how the upcoming election could be a turning point in fixing the monumental errors set in motion by the Obama administration.
“The key is make America great again,” Trump said. “We can make America great again, but if you have to suffer through four more or eight more years of what’s gone on in the past…”
“And it’s just… we’re being eaten away, it’s eating away at our country and we can make, in my opinion, we can make America greater than ever before, but we have to get going, it has to happen, we have to get going.”
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 13:48