Earth's largest volcano found in Pacific Ocean

 

NASA Olympus Mons (pictured) is regarded as the largest volcano in the Solar System, but there is a new kid on the block.

• A megavolcano found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean is being reported as the largest single volcano on Earth.
• Tamu Massif, as the megavolcano is called, may be as voluminous as Olympus Mons on Mars, which is regarded as the Solar System’s largest known volcano.
• Tamu Massif, the inactive volcano, was previously thought to be a string of volcanoes rather than one enormous feature. 
• It is part of an underwater mountain range called the Shatsky Rise, which covers an area as large as California state in the US. 
• Found close to the east of the coast of Japan, Shatksy Rise formed some 145 million years ago as huge amounts of magma flowed onto the ocean floor at a point where three microplates of Earth’s crust meet.
• While Olympus Mons is much taller (>25km) than Tamu Massif (about 4km), its base is smaller. 
• Massive lava flows would have rapidly flowed along shallow slopes to create Tamu Massif, which has a 650km-wide base, nearly as big as New Mexico in the US. 
• Volcanoes created entirely due to such lava flow are called shield volcanoes because they resemble a warrior’s shield.
• The volcano’s structure is described in the journal Nature Geoscience by scientists from the US, the UK and Japan. 
• Tamu Massif is named after Texas A&M University, where the lead researcher William Sager is based.
• Although rocks from Tamu Massif had previously been identified as volcanic crystallised lava, its size made geologists believe it was the result of many volcanic eruptions that may have occurred over a period of many millions of years. 
• Now it seems that this may have been closer to a distinct but enormous flood of lava.
• To verify that hypothesis Sager’s team collected new samples and data aboard an ocean-going science research vessel called Marcus G. Langseth. 
• They drilled samples from the ocean floor, and poked Tamu Massif with seismic waves, measuring the response using seismometers. 
• They were able determine whether the rocks may have come from different eruptions. 
• From all the new data they acquired it seems that lava flow emerged from a single central magma vent.
• Time on such research vessels is expensive and this report is first of its kind looking at large underwater volcanoes. Much of Earth’s ocean floor remains to be thoroughly explored. 
• This makes Sager believe that there may be even bigger volcanoes out there.

Hepatitis B more prevalent than HIV in donor blood

Of every 1,000 blood samples, ID-NAT blood bank officials found 12 positive for HBV

• Of every 1,000 blood samples tested at the Individual Donor-Nucleic Acid Testing (ID-NAT) blood bank at Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital here, an average of 12 are found to be positive for Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) and two for HIV.
• Officials from the blood bank who are detecting an increased number of HBV cases by using the ID-NAT method, an advanced screening technology, said that the detection of HBV cases was more than that of HIV.
• This trend has been constant in the last two years.                                                          

‘Silent killer’

• Doctors said that HBV, known as a “silent killer”, is more infectious than HIV and is the cause for liver cirrhosis, liver failure and liver cancer.
• Hepatitis (liver inflammation) occurs when the liver, in reaction to harmful elements (commonly drugs, alcohol and viruses), swells and slowly loses its ability to function.
• Hepatitis B Virus is not spread by contaminated food.
• It is transmitted through contact with blood or other body fluids of an infected person.  

Symptoms

o   Parvesh Kumar Jain, head of the Department of Medical Gastroenterology in the State-run Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute (BMCRI), said that common symptoms include jaundice, diarrhoea, vomiting, abdominal pain and loss of appetite.

o   “While most recover from this short-term or acute condition, many cases progress to a chronic stage, wherein the liver is damaged. This can often end in serious life-threatening conditions such as internal bleeding and even liver cancer,” Dr. Jain said.

o   Bowring Hospital’s blood bank is the only facility in the State where samples from all the 34 government-run blood banks are tested using ID-NAT.

o   There are 178 blood banks in the State of which 66 are assisted by National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO).

o   Of the 66, 34 are run by the government and the others by NGOs.

Statistics

o   According to S. Manjunath, technical director of the laboratory, the detection of HBV was the highest in March when 134 cases of the total 9,000 samples tested were found to be positive.

o   In comparison, only two cases were found to be HIV positive.

o   Of the 12,000 samples in January, 54 tested positive for HBV and four for HIV. In February, of 8,500 samples, 58 were found to be HBV positive.

o   The number of HBV positive cases rose to 134 in March and came down to 95 in April and 91 in May when 8,000 and 8,500 samples were tested respectively. The cases reduced to 54 in June when 10,000 samples were tested, and again rose to 87 from 10,000 samples, according to Mr. Manjunath.

Recommendations

o   To tackle the disease effectively, a group of specialists has come out with six recommendations for the government, policy-makers, medical fraternity, pharmaceutical sector and other stakeholders.

o   The group, comprising S. Pruthvish, Professor and Head of Department of Community Medicine at M.S. Ramaiah Medical College and Hospital, and Ramakrishna Goud, Additional Professor, Department of Community Health, at St. John’s Medical College, among others, has recommended compulsory implementation of universal safety precautions in clinical practice to prevent spread of infections.

o   Implementation of an occupational policy with government mandate for the vulnerable sections (professionals in contact with blood and blood products), a mass movement for voluntary blood donation (serves the dual purpose of screening for hepatitis and availability of blood for emergencies), awareness and counselling for affected persons are the other recommendations.

What is Napalm?

o   There are allegations that a nerve agent was used in Syria recently.

o   According to US officials, it killed more than 1,400 people, including 400 children. But since then, in a more recent incident, a bomb dropped on a school caused many children to suffer from burns.

The substance used was widely reported as napalm. But was it? How can we know for sure? And what is napalm anyway?

o   Napalm has come to be associated with its use by the American and South Vietnamese forces during the Vietnam War, but its origins go further back.

o   In her book Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs, the distinguished classical scholar Adrienne Mayor recalls that the Persian army under Xerxes the Great used flaming arrows 2,500 years ago.

o  

o   Not long after that the Roman army used spears tipped by a mixture of burning pitch and sulphur as a weapon.

o   By 700 AD, the inhabitants of Constantinople had developed a fearsome substance that became known as Greek fire.

o   Crude oil had been discovered long before that, and it was widely used as a source of naphtha, an ingredient in flaming projectiles.

o   To their mixture, Byzantines added further refinements.

o   Today, the ingredients are a lost secret, but it looks as if they used naphtha, pine resin and other chemicals including sulphur, projecting it long distances by forcing it through a nozzle under pressure, the original flamethrower.

o   High-boiling chemicals like pine resin would enable the mixture to burn for longer and reach higher temperatures than one purely based on petrol-like molecules.

o   It would also cause the burning mixture to adhere to any surface – or person – unlucky enough to be in its way.

o   This was used twice successfully to fight off the Muslim navy besieging Constantinople.

o   Some people have called World War I “the Chemists’ War” for its use of substances like chlorine and mustard gas.

o   One of the less successful weapons was the gasoline flamethrower. The trouble with it was that it burned too fast.

o   During World War II, American scientists re-investigated this weapon, in a team led by Louis Fieser (who an older generation of chemists will associate with an organic chemistry textbook).

o    Just like the Byzantines, they found that adding a thickening agent to the fuel created something that burned longer and also tended to stick to surfaces.

o   Their thickening agent was a soap-like material based on aluminum naphthenate and aluminium palmitate.

o   The name napalm was derived from the first parts of the words naphthalene and palmitate.

o   When they mixed this with gasoline, they got a viscous sticky brown liquid which burned more slowly and produced higher temperatures, making it a very effective weapon for fire-bombing cities, for example. Since then this formula has been refined many times.

o   It was found that if you mixed polystyrene (the stuff used to make plastic model kits, or in “expanded” form as a packaging) with benzene and gasoline, the resulting product was less flammable and thus safer to handle.

o   Despite the fact it contained neither naphthalene nor palmitate, it became known as napalm B. Burning napalm would set peoples’ clothing on fire and produce 4th or 5th degree burns penetrating right through the skin.

o   It came into combat use in the Korean War and even though it has been used by many countries in different conflicts since then, it is imperishably associated with the Vietnam War.

o   There is a photo of a nine-year-old Vietnamese victim of a misdirected napalm attack running down a road. She is naked because she has ripped off her burning clothes. Thanks to surgery she survived and Phan Thi Kim Phuc now lives in Canada.

o   Napalm has not been outlawed as a weapon of war, but a United Nations convention forbids its use against civilian populations.

o   William Butler Yeats used the phrase “a terrible beauty is born” when writing about the Easter Rising of 1916. Napalm is not beautiful, it is obscene.

“FLAME”

                                                         “FLAME”

Iran reported substantial damage and huge data lost due to malicious software dubbed as Flame. It could be 3rd most powerful virus after Stuxnet and Duqu viruses. Largest number of infected  machines is in Iran, followed by the Israel/Palestine, then Sudan and Syria.

What is Flame?

Flame is a complex data stealing Virus that contains about 20 times as much  code as Stuxnet about and about 100 times as much code as a typical virus designed to steal financial information.

What is the potential of Flame?

Flame is capable of:

1. gathering data files
2. remotely change settings on computers
3. turn on PC microphones to record conversations
4. take screen shots
5. log instant messaging chats

Thus it can steal sophisticated data from computers by exploiting flaws in the Windows O/S.

What are Stuxnet and Duqu?

Stuxnet: A computer worm. Basically spies on and subverts industrial systems. It is notorious for attacking and damaging centrifuges of an Iranian uranium enrichment facility in 2010.

Duqu: Also a computer worm which is often related to the Stuxnet. It was named “Duqu” as it gives prefix "DQ" to the names of files it creates.

To understand the potential of FLAME more, lets see the 5 dimensions of FLAME:-

1. Complexity

2. Breadth

3. Network

4. Victims

5. Perpetrator

Complexity:

• One of the most complicated pieces of malicious software ever discovered.Nearly 20 times as much code than Stuxnet.
• Built with some 20 modules which even the researchers can’t fully understand.

Breadth:

• Most complete data-stealing tools found to date.
• Can record sounds, access Bluetooth communications, capture regular screenshot images and log Internet Messaging conversations.

Network:

• A network of over 80 servers across the world used by the FLAME creators to remotely access infected machines.
• Can change settings on PC
• Can quietly gather the stolen data
• Largest such Command and Control network identified to date.

Victims:

• Most number of infected infected systems found in Iran, followed by Israel and the Palestinian territories.
• Also found in Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
• Estimated 1,000-5,000 machines infected worldwide.

Perpetrator:

• Kaspersky Lab, which claimed credit for uncovering Flame, believes the virus may be the work of the same nation or nations that built the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran's nuclear program in 2010. But the Kaspersky researchers declined to say which nation or nations they believe are behind Flame.

Why the needle of suspicion points towards the same nation states that build Stuxnet?

• Actually, the creators of Stuxnet and Flame employed similar techniques to infect computers, which suggests that they were "parallel" projects backed by the same nation state.