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šŸš€ Iran attacks Israel, mortality-predicting mouth swab test, shovel-shaped shark discovered

Plus: Canā€™t put down your phones? Here are the psychological barriers to reducing screen time

Iran has fired hundreds of missiles towards Israel, with several striking territories within Israel. It is the second attack by Iran this year, as it fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel in April.

Israeli army officials stated that the attacks seem to have ended and that there is currently no further threat from Iran. It still needs to be determined how much damage has been done. Dive deeper into this Must-Read.

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Iran launched approximately 180 missiles toward Israel, according to the Israeli military. This constituted a slightly larger attack than the barrage in April, which involved about 110 ballistic missiles and 30 cruise missiles fired toward Israel.

Footage broadcast on Israeli TV showed missiles flying over the Tel Aviv area shortly before 19:45 local time. Military officials have confirmed that there were some hits during the attack. A military spokesperson said Israel recorded ā€œa few hits in the center and other areas in the south of the country.ā€

Iranā€™s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) stated that its forces utilized Fattah-1 and Fattah-2 hypersonic missiles for the first time, claiming a 90% success rate in hitting their targets. IRGC sources in Tehran told state media that they had targeted three Israeli military bases in the attack.

Researchers in the United States have created a next-generation tool named CheekAge, which uses methylation patterns found in easily obtainable cheek cells.

In a groundbreaking discovery, the team has demonstrated that CheekAge can reliably estimate mortality risk, even when epigenetic data from different tissues are utilized for analysis.

Epigenetic markers are chemical changes to DNA that donā€™t alter the genetic code but can affect how genes work. Methylation is one such change, often linked to aging. Scientists use these patterns to create ā€œage clocksā€ that estimate biological age, revealing how fast someone is aging.

According to a recent study, twenty-three shark specimens were tested to confirm that a separate species in the family Sphyrnidaeā€”what we commonly know as the hammerhead sharkā€”exist.

Upon first glance, their cephalofoilā€”the typical head protrusion characteristic of a hammerhead sharkā€”resembles a shovel more so than a hammer, earning them the common name ā€œshovelbillā€ as the people of Belize call them.

The researchers found a ā€œrobust differenceā€œ in mitochondrial and nuclear genetic markers. In other words, they compared the DNA with that of a related species, S. tiburon, to assess whether they were genetically different enough. And in this case, they were.

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