How is Iraq doing? Just fine, thank you. See this post (at the link, scroll to the very bottom) -- that data is also new, having just been released today.
Crude oil imports from Canada at this site: a slight decrease from last month but not much, but the jump in Canadian crude oil imports is incredible over the past ten years. Too bad the Keystone XL was killed by President Obama.
Overall, OPEC had a huge jump in crude oil exported to the US: from 88 million bbls in March to over 105 million bbls in April -- a 20% jump in OPEC imports in just one month. I assume Iraq made up the largest percentage of that increase. Nigeria and Angola had a much large percentage increase, but overall numbers were much smaller than those of Iraq.
Non-OPEC US imports fell substantially, mostly due to markedly decreased imports from Mexico. On a percentage basis, Russia imports fell be a larger amount.
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Jellyfish
Spineless, Juli Berwald, c. 2017
The Ancestor's Tale, Richard Dawkins, c. 2004/2016
In the 1980's jellyfish were classified as part of a group known as Coelenterates -- "hole inside" -- due to their simple cuplike anatomy.
The Coelenterates included jellyfish, corals, sea anemones, and comb jellies.
But, more study revealed that comb jellies did not have stinging cells/poison-laden darts and thus did not belong to this group.
The group was divided into two groups. The Coelenterates no longer exist. The comb jellies have been split into their own phylum, Ctenophora ("comb-bearing"). Meanwhile, jellyfish, corals, and sea anemones are in the phylum Cnidaria, for their cnidae -- the stinging cells.
Dawkins puts the Ctenophores slightly older than Cnidaria.
More to follow. In progress.
From the book, starting on page 259:
I've come to believe that the stinging cell is the most sophisticated cell to have ever evolved in any animal. I've heard it said that the vertebrate eye is the most complicated organ, and critics of evolution point to the eye as something too sophisticated to result from the haphazard process of natural selection ....
An unexploded stinging cell is minute: between 2 and 250 microns long, in the range of the width of a human hair ...
The skin of the capsule is a remarkable material made up mainly of two proteins. One is called minicollagen ...
... the other is a protein that has only recently been identified, called cnidoin because it is found only in cnidarians. Cnidoin is even stretchier and stronger than collagen. When tugged, cnidoin can grow 70 percent in length without breaking ... thin sheets have unparalleled strength and spring. The sheets are also porous, allowing water, but not larger molecules, to pas through them...
... when the stinging cell is triggered, electrical changes in the cell signal the calcium ions to release their grip on the [cnidoin] polymers .. . water rushes inside to equalize the concentration, expanding the super-stretchy capsule skin by 30 percent .. the swelling jacks up the capsule with an unfathomable amount of pressure: 150 atmospheres. Air pressure pushing down you is one atmosphere; you inflate your car tires to just over two atmospheres. A stinging cell holds seventy-five times more pressure than a car tire...
... the pointed [and poisoned] dart hits its prey with a pressure of over a million pounds per square inch, similar to a bullet fired from a gun. A Ferrari can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in three seconds, an acceleration of 3 g, where g means g-force, or the acceleration due to gravity...
... the acceleration of the stinging cell is 5 million g. It's thought to be the fastest motion in the animal kingdom...
... while the stinging cell is unique to jellyfish, anemones, and corals, each of these groups has come up with an astonishing number of riffs on the theme .. about thirty different types.
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