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POPLARVILLE Pearl River Wildcats split with Holmes here Friday, taking a 3-2 victory in the first game of the MACJC non-division doubleheader before falling 10-3 in the nightcap. PRCC is now 5-2 overall, while HCC is 8-2. In the first game, both teams scored two runs each in the third and that stalemate remained intact until the bottom of the seventh when Matthew Magee of Petal High crushed a one-out triple to the center field wall and scored the game-ending run off a sacrifice by B.J. Smith of Sumrall High. Jared Bond of Denham Springs (La.) High picked up the win in his seventh-inning relief duty, giving up one hit while striking out three. Taylor Byrd of Petal High started and hurled six inning, giving up five hits, striking out four, walking three, and hitting a batter. Caleb Kellum got the loss after relieving in the sixth. He pitched one-and-two-thirds innings, giving up a hit and walking a batter; while Patrick Stewart started and went four frames, giving up three hits, striking out seven, and walking three. David Lee pitched the fifth, striking out a batter and walking two. Brandon Villarreal led the Bulldogs six-hit effort with a pair of singles, while Will Henry smached a two-run homer, and Jayson Keel, Zach Pickett, and Reggie OBriant all had singles. PRCC finished with four hits with Matthew Magee of Petal High hitting a triple, while Chase Lewallen of Sumrall High doubled. James Abraham, a Southeastern Louisiana transfer who prepped at St. Stanislaus in Bay St. Louis, and Grae Ormon of Clinton High both singled. The Bulldogs committed two errors, while the Wildcats played mistake-free defensively. In the second game, things were scoreless for the first three frames, while both squads scored solo runs in the next two innings to make it 2-2 after five. Holmes scored five in the sixth and three in the seventh, while Pearl River added the games last run in the bottom of the final inning. Starter Brandon Byars got the win in his six-and-one-thirds innings on the mound, giving up eight hits, striking out three, and walking two; while Channing Sanders relieved in the seventh, hitting one batter. Starter Blake Juneau (1-1) of Marksville (La.) High got the loss in his five-and-two-thirds innings on the mound, giving up seven hits, striking out seven, and walking one; Beau Underwood out of St. Patrick High in Biloxi relieved in the sixth, giving up two hits; Bond relieved in the sixth, Hunter Curtis of Petal High relieved in the seventh, walking three and hitting a batter; and Carlos Rios of Oak Grove High also relieved in the seventh, giving up a hit, and striking out one. Trennis Grant, Tyji Hawkins (four RBIs), and Villarreal all had two singles a piece; while Henry doubled, and Josh Crowder (one RBI), OBriant, and Pickett (two RBIs) all had base hits. Jordan Williams out of Christian County High in Hopkinsville, Ky., paced the Wildcats eight-hit attack with two singles (two RBIs); while B.J. Smith had a solo homer, and Abraham, Casey Comfort of Oak Grove High, Aaron Lee of Pearl River Central High, Magee, and Chase Toussaint of Poplarvillel High all had singles. Pearl River committed three errors in the game, while Holmes played mistake-free. The Wildcats return to action Saturday when they host Baton Rouge (La.) in a 1 p.m. doubleheader before traveling to MACJC non-division foe Mississippi Delta in Moorhead Tuesday for a 1 p.m. twin bill.
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text:
Sun City West, AZ
Starts from: 01 Feb 2016
Start Time 7:00 pm
Sun CIty West
With their Emmy Award winning PBS special now airing across the country, and Billboard chart topping albums, it's easy to see why The Texas Tenors are quickly becoming America's favorite new tenors. Since their whirlwind debut five years ago on NBC's America's Got Talent, The Texas Tenors have accumulated a long list of awards, accolades and excited fans.
The Texas Tenors proudly remain self produced and managed with a commitment to quality, family entertainment for all ages. Whether it be stage, television, recording or multi-media projects, these "three friends with a dream" never forget their roots.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Taylor Funeral Home is a full-service facility that has been serving families since 1909. We are here to help you in your time of need. We will walk beside you each step of the way. Whatever your needs are, we will be here to see your wishes carried out.
We also offer pre-need services so that you may choose what you would prefer when you need it.
We are here when you need us.
Taylor Funeral Home, Inc. has endeavored to provide the most up-to-date information for the families we serve. We trust that you will find the information listed on this website to be of value to you.


text:
Guest blog by Gerald T. Slevin, retired lawyer.
After 16 years of Catholic schools, followed by Harvard Law School, where he worked as a law student for Archibald Cox, the Watergate prosecutor, Gerald Slevin practiced law for over three decades at the Wall Street law firms of Sullivan & Cromwell and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft.
Barely twelve months ago, the Philadelphia Archdiocese's Cardinal Rigali emphatically, but artfully, denied he had any active priest with "admitted or established " allegations of child sexual abuse. This misleading statement was in the face of (1) the second devastating Philadelphia grand jury report on his watch describing a widespread priest pedophile conspiracy, and (2) the multiple criminal indictment of the former top priest personnel chief for the Archdiocese.
By Spring, Cardinal Rigali, under intense public scrutiny, reversed himself by suspending 21 priests on suspicion of abuse. Their fates still remain mainly unknown.
By Summer, the Cardinal's Child Abuse Review Board lay chairwoman was accusing him of materially misleading her about priests suspected of child abuse.
By Fall, the pope apparently declined to give Rigali more time in Philadelphia by accepting his resignation and replacing him with Archbishop Chaput. Archbishop Chaput promptly threw a private party for Philadelphia priests, where he led the cheers for the indicted priest personnel chief and several of the suspended priests present at the party.
By Winter, the chief's former boss, Cardinal Bevilacqua, was interrogated by prosecutors in a video deposition, only to die shortly thereafter. The deposition has yet to be made public by the court.
For most of the year, the Archdiocese and its apologists strongly denied any widespread priest child abuse conspiracy, as Archishop Chaput lobbied to deny victims legal remedies by opposing Pennsylvania state legislative relief, and blamed victims claims, rather than the Archdiocese's considerable legal defense expenses, for his decision to close numerous schools and churches.
Last week, an unexpected bombshell exploded as clear evidence emerged that a two decade old cover-up of priest child sexual abuse existed, going back at least to a 1994 shredding of potentially incriminating evidence. Cardinal Bevilacqua ordered the shredding, which was reportedly effected with the support of Bishops Cullen and Cistone.
To date, neither Cardinal Rigali, Archbishop Chaput, Bishop Cullen nor Bishop Cistone have personally publicly spoken about the shredding bombshell.
These fast moving events have at times been dizzying for hundreds of thousands of Philly Catholics that have tried to follow the horrible story in the daily media.
Fortunately, these events have been laid out clearly in a few comprehensive and comprehensible articles available here. They lay it all out and should be read by all concerned about protecting defenseless children and preventing future priest predation.
The early months' events with Cardinal Rigali are described well in Philadelphia Magazine by reporter Robert Huber in, "Catholics in Crisis: Sex and Deception in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia".
The charges against Cardinal Rigali by his Review Board Chairwoman, Ana Maria Catanzaro, are described well in the article, "The Fog of Scandal".
The description of the Archdiocese's secret abuse file archives and the operations of transferring accused priests to unsuspecting parishes are covered in detail by Rolling Stone writer, Sabrina Rubin Erdely's article that revealed a high-level conspiracy to cover-up decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests – "The Catholic Church's Secret Sex-Crime Files."
The recent revelation confirming the abuse file document shredding operation of Cardinal Bevilacqua and Bishops Cullen and Cistone and the implicit two decades of stonewalling that this indicates is described well in last week's Philadelphia Inquirer editorial: "Couldn't Shred the Truth."


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An outbreak of Legionnaires' disease that killed one person and sickened 22 near Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California last year may have been caused by an unexpected source.
A health official testified today that a cooling tower that provides mist to make Disneyland visitors comfortable in hot weather was probably what caused 22 cases in a Legionnaires' disease outbreak in 2017 near the park.
Dr. Matthew Zahn with the Orange County Health Care Agency testified to this point on Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2018, before an appeals board judge at the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
From the Associated Press:
Disneyland has denied it was the source, pointing to three infected people who had been in the city of Anaheim where Disneyland is located, but not at the park itself. One of them died.
Dr. Matthew Zahn of the Orange County Health Care Agency gave testimony Tuesday before an appeals board judge at the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is investigating the case.
Zahn said tests around the time of the outbreak showed high levels of Legionella bacteria in two Disneyland cooling towers, which are part of an air conditioning system that releases mist, the Los Angeles Times reported. He said contaminated droplets likely spread to people in the park and beyond.
Disneyland is appealing state fines, saying the outbreak's source was not scientifically determined.
Upon questioning, Zahn said he could not be 100 percent certain that Disneyland was the source without additional testing.
Legionnaire's disease is caused by bacteria that can grow in man-made water systems. People can develop pneumonia after breathing in contaminated vapor.


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Bombardier to Report Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2019 Financial Results on February 13, 2020
MONTRÉAL, Feb. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bombardier (TSX: BBD.B) will publish its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2019 on Thursday, February 13, 2020 and hold a live webcast/conference call to review the results starting at 8 a.m. Eastern Time (EDT).
Alain Bellemare, President and Chief Executive Officer; John Di Bert, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Patrick Ghoche, Vice President, Corporate Strategy and Investor Relations, will hold a conference call intended for investors and financial analysts to review the company's financial results.
|Thursday, February 13, 2020
|8:00 a.m., Eastern Time (ET)
A live webcast of the call and relevant financial charts will be available at www.bombardier.com
Stakeholders wishing to listen to the presentation and question and answer period by telephone may dial one of the following conference call numbers:
|In English:
|+1 514 394 9320 or
|+1 866 240 8954 (toll-free in North America)
|+800 6578 9868 (overseas calls)
|In French:
|+1 514 394 9316 or
|(with translation)
|+1 888 791 1368 (toll-free in North America)
|+800 6578 9868 (overseas calls)
The replay of this call will be available on Bombardier's website shortly after the end of the webcast.
|For Information
|Jessica McDonald
|Patrick Ghoche
|Advisor, Media Relations
|Vice President, Corporate Strategy
|and Public Affairs
|and Investor Relations
|Bombardier Inc.
|Bombardier Inc.
|+1 514 861 9481
|+1 514 861 5727


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Smolt is a project for gathering hardware information from users. It consists of a client side package installed on users computers and a server side that the client reports to. For Fedora installs the user is asked at 'firstboot' time if they wish to send their information to the server, if they accept information is sent then, and approximately every month thereafter. This information is stored in a database and scripts are run to generate general statistics over the dataset. In addition a wiki is run on the server side allowing users to provide feedback on specific hardware items.
- Smolt is largely unmaintained upstream. ( The last upstream commit was more than 10 months ago)
- Smolt's reporting scripts do not function under RHEL6.
- When smolt's cron job runs to summarize data in the db, the web server becomes unresponsive, leading to daily downtime. Switching db backends might fix this but with no upstream, there's no one to do the work.
- As updates to the libraries that smolt is built on occur we've had to work up patches to the code base. This becomes harder as the team's experience adapts to new technologies but smolt's code remains where it was.
- The information smolt gathers is somewhat limited.
- The data that smolt has does not satisfy the purpose it was originally written for. As adamw put it, as long as it's an opt-in, we can't use the data to generalize about our installed base.
- Smolt's design has some limitations that require basic architectural changes to address. The census project aims to create such a rewrite.
- admins have to spend time cleaning up the smolt wiki (since, by nature, it allows anonymous edits).
- Smolt's wiki means we end up maintaining two mediawiki instances for no real benefit except to keep smolts.org separate from fedoraproject.org
For all these reasons, Fedora Infrastructure will be retiring smolt
2012-09-11 - Start gathering requirements and decide timelines
2012-10-09 - Announce retirement plans.
2012-10 - Implement eol/dummy server/redirects
2012-11-21 - Switch smolt server to placeholder/eol
2013-11-01 - take down dummy/eol server?
This is a list of things we need to do before smolt can be retired:
firstboot should no longer call or use smolt. smolt should no longer be shipped on install or live media smolt package end of life and blocked in Fedora fpaste shouldn't call or mention smolt. Bug fixed: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=864587 We need to determine what kind of server/instance we should keep live for a few years for historical installs that still try and report to smolt.
- The existing smolt database should be made available for folks to datamine/reuse?
Should announce a date when the retirement will take place setup smolts.org and related pages to note the retirement and point users to census. Warn other distro's that have packages for the client or even install it by default.
- Make sure abrt isn't using or refering to smolt. Bug filed: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=865516
Possible interested parties
A replacement for smolt is being developed. See: https://fedorahosted.org/census/


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"Once real numbers have come out about renewable energy costs, people are having second thoughts," reported Maureen Masten, Deputy Secretary of Natural Resources and Senior Advisor on Energy to Governor Bob McDonnell, VA, while addressing his "all of the above energy" strategy to meet the state's energy needs.
The real costs of renewable energy are coming out—both in dollars and daily impacts. After years of hearing about "free" energy from the sun and wind, people are discovering that they've been lied to.
On Tuesday, August 14, the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission (PRC) approved a new renewable energy rate rider that will allow the Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM) to start recovering a portion of its recent development costs for building five solar facilities around the state, a pilot solar facility with battery storage, and wind resource procurements. The renewable rider could be on ratepayers' bills by the end of the month—"depending on when the commission publishes its final order," said PNM spokeswoman Susan Spooner.
The rate rider currently represents about a $1.34 increase for an average residence using 600 kilowatt hours of electricity per month—or a little more than $16 per year. This increase seems miniscule until you realize that this is only a small part of increases to come. PNM needs to recover $18.29 million in renewable expenditures in 2012 and the rate rider only addresses monies spent in the last four to five months. The remaining expense will be carried into 2013.
Like more than half of the states in the US, New Mexico has a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) that mandates public utilities have set percentages of their electricity from renewable sources. In New Mexico the mandate is 10 percent this year, 15 percent by 2015 and 20 percent by 2020. Most states—with the exception of California (which is 33 percent by 2020)—have similar benchmarks. To meet the mandates, PNM will need considerably more renewable energy with dramatically more expense—all of which ultimately gets passed on to the customer. PNM acknowledges that the rider will increase next year and predicts the total cost recovery for 2013 to be about $23 million. By 2020, based on the current numbers of approximately $20 million a year invested, resulting in a $24 a year increase, consumers' bills will go up about $200 a year just for the additional cost of inefficient renewable energy.
Had the PRC not approved the special rate rider, costs would be even higher. Typically rate increases are only approved at periodic rate case hearings, usually held every few years. The system of only allowing rate increases after a lengthy hearing, keeps the costs hidden from the consumer for longer but increases costs to the utility and, ultimately, the consumer, due to interest charges on the borrowed money. PNM believes the rider will allow for more "timely recovery of costs," resulting in a $2.7 million savings.
Environmental groups, who've been pushing for the renewable energy increases, opposed the special renewable rate rider and have threatened a potential appeal of the PRC's decision. It is hard to tout "free" energy when there is a special line on the utility bill that clearly points out the new charge for renewables.
So, renewable electricity is hardly free. It also isn't there when you need it—like in the predictable summer heat of California.
To meet their 33 percent renewable mandate, California's utility companies, like New Mexico, have been installing commercial renewable electricity facilities—with wind capable of providing about 6 percent, and solar 2 percent, of the state's electric demand. But in the summer heat, the wind doesn't blow much and the solar capacity drops by about 50 percent when the demand is the highest.
Despite increasing renewable capacity and an exodus of the population, California has been facing threats of rolling brown/blackouts due to potential shortages. TV and radio ads blanket the air waves begging consumers to limit electricity usage by setting their air conditioners at 78 degrees and using household appliances only after 6PM. "Flex Alerts" have been issued stating: "conservation remains critical." "Consumers are urged to reduce energy use," "California ISO balances high demand for electricity with tight power supplies" and "maintain grid reliability."
Even with expedited permitting, California cannot build renewable electricity generation fast enough. Environmentalists block construction due to species habitat, such as that of the desert tortoise or the kit fox. If they oppose renewable energy construction, you can imagine the vitriol they extend toward coal, natural gas, and nuclear. There is a big push to shut down nuclear power plants and new natural-gas plants, which are ideal for meeting the needs of "peak demand,"are fought by the very same groups that are pushing electric cars.
San Diego-based, nationally syndicated radio talk show host Roger Hedgecock observed: "Right at the moment in California, building new electricity generating power plants of any kind is politically taboo. Electricity itself is becoming politically taboo."
Texas has been faced with both increasing costs and fears of shortages. "Concerned about adequate electricity supplies," the Texas Public Utility Commission recently voted to allow electricity generators to charge up to 50 percent more for wholesale power. The increase is to encourage the building of new power plants in the state with the highest capacity in the country for wind electricity generation.
Apparently new electricity-generating power plants are politically taboo in Texas, too—at least within the environmental community. Instead of encouraging new power plants to be built, Ken Kramer, the Texas head of the Sierra Club, said, "A better idea would be to encourage more energy-saving programs"—perhaps like setting the thermostat to 78 degrees and not turning on appliances until after 6PM.
When will Americans revolt over being forced to use less while paying more?
We know that high energy prices are just the beginning of inflation that raises the cost of everything from food to clothing to manufactured goods. When the cost of manufacturing goes up, industry moves to countries with lower-priced energy, cheaper labor, and more reasonable regulations. Jobs go overseas and we import more. The trade deficit grows, and America is less competitive.
The higher electricity costs are 100 percent due to government regulation and legislation that are unreasonably crushing American businesses and ratepayers—much like the pressure England imposed on the American colonies that launched the American Revolution.
Paul Revere alerted the early settlers—"the Red Coats are coming, the Red Coats are coming"—which brought people into the town square where they joined forces and rallied together. Their cooperative effort was so effective that those early Americans made it so painful for the Red Coats that they abandoned their objective.
People who hear me speak often describe me as the Ann Coulter of energy. Due to the childhood nickname of "Bunny," my family refers to me as the Energizer Bunny. But today, I feel like the Paul Revere of energy: "Higher energy prices are coming. Energy shortages are coming."
What remains to be seen is how the citizens of America will respond. Will we gather in the figurative town square and join forces, making it too painful for the use-less, pay-more agenda to continue? Will we force state legislators to abandon the RPS? Will we rally together in opposition to the EPA's cost-increasing regulations? Will we turn out a president who is more concerned with lining his cronies' pockets than doing what is best for Americans?
Unless the publicly-inflicted pain forces the abandonment of the objective, "Higher energy prices are coming. Energy shortages are coming."


text:
1968 Chevy C10 Fleetside - The Space Race
Chris Cline's People Hauler
Related Video
Not like one's weird uncle Fred or their irritating aunt Alice, but everything in life is relative. Guys who ride motorcycles think people cruising hot rod roadsters are sheltered from the cold and folks who own Corvettes think classic pickups have a lot of room to carry passengers. Such was the case for the Corvette-owning Cline family of Fredericktown, Ohio. Chris and his wife Heidi decided they'd like to be able to bring their 8-year-old son along to the car shows instead of having to hire a babysitter. It was that, or else Chris would have to cruise the 'Vette solo and that's not how the Clines like to roll.
The Clines are a car-loving family. It started back in high school with Chris and his dad building a Nova drag car, and running it at the local strip. Years later when Chris' dad bought a 1932 Ford, and started attending the Goodguys shows with his friends, Chris thought it's be a lot of fun to join them with a 1967-1972 Chevy C10. The idea was the whole family could ride in it plus carry all the goodies that make camping out at car show really comfortable.
The Chevy that caught Chris' attention was a shortbed 1968 Fleetside offered online by Old Town Automobile in Huntingtown, Maryland. Chris got in touch with Old Town's Courtney Accipiter, and after several phone conversations with additional detail photos provided, Chris decided this particular truck was the one he wanted. Courtney handled shipping the C10 to Ohio and Chris said the truck arrived every bit as nice as it was promised to be.
Old Town acquired the truck from its builder Bill Amsley of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Bill is a third-generation restorer with a grandfather famous for producing Pebble Beach-winning Stanley Steamers among other veteran-era automobiles. Bill's dad Larry opened Amsley Autobody in 1968, with Bill joining the business in 1994. Using Glasurit products, Bill sprayed the 1968 in Porsche/VW Brocade Red, a color the VW/Porsche factory only offered in 1977. The single-cowl hood with a 350-inch V-8 underneath is from LMC Truck of Lenexa, Kansas.
To lighten the load of factory cast-iron heads and intake manifold, plus squeeze out more horses, the 350's top end received a full Edelbrock Performer treatment: high-performance aluminum heads, matched with an aluminum intake and Edelbrock AFB carburetor. Chris installed custom billet aluminum valve covers from Mr. Gasket and spent numerous weekends making sure the plumbing and wiring were cleanly routed. To handle exhaust-system functions Hooker headers dump into a pair of Flowmaster mufflers. A TH350 is used to transmit power to a Chevy 12-bolt rearend with 3.42:1 gears.
Inside the cab, simplicity continues to be the word, plus adding luxury was a concern. The split bench seat and interior appointments were covered in red Pleather a manmade substitute for natural glove leather that's sexier to the touch. Maintaining the feel of a 1960s-era truck meant keeping the headliner, dash, and door panels in steel, and painting to match the body color. A Custom Autosound head unit with shaft-mount controls adds to the interior's vintage feel. Stock gauges rest in front of a Billet Specialties steering wheel.
It only takes a few personal touches to bring out the clean lines of the Harry Bradley-designed 1967-1968 Chevy C10s. For outside rearview mirrors, fully shaved was the decision and installing a Lund fiberglass tonneau to cover the bed.
Beyond the fun of being able to keep his entire family together for the car shows, Chris enjoys the practical utility of owning a pickup. He really liked the idea that he was able to haul home a big-screen TV on the way home from a show and still have room for groceries.
1968 Chevrolet Fleetside
Chris Cline
Fredericktown, Ohio
Frame: stock
Rearend / Ratio: 12-bolt / 3.42:1
Rear suspension: trailing arm
Rear brakes: drum
Front suspension: IFS
Front brakes: disc
Steering: recirculating ball
Wheels: Billet Specialties
Front tires: Uniroyal 235/60/17
Rear tires: Uniroyal 275/60/17
Gas tank: in cab
Gauges: stock
Stereo: Custom Autosound
Steering Wheel: Billet Specialties
Steering column: tilt
Material / Color: vinyl Pleather with cloth / red and gray
Carpet: burgundy loop pile
Engine: 350
Heads: Edelbrock
Manifold: Edelbrock Performer
Ignition: HEI
Headers: Hooker
Exhaust / Mufflers: dual / Flowmaster
Transmission: TH350
Shifter: column tilt wheel
Hood: LMC Truck
Grille: stock
Paint type / Color: Glasruit / Brocade Red 1977 VW and Porsche
Headlights / taillights: stock
Outside mirrors: shaved
Bumpers: stock
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Today! The Pennsylvania Legal History Consortium is hosting Michael Grossberg, Indiana University. His topic is "The Politics of Childhood: Law and Child Protection in Modern America."
Later this semester, Pnina Lahav, Boston University, "A War to Make More Wars: The 1956 Preemptive War against Egypt Launched by Britain, France and Israel," April 19, 2012.
Last fall, the Consortium hosted Sam Erman, Harvard University, "Puerto Rican Reconstruction: Race, Self-Government, and Rhetoric, 1898-1917," Nov. 30, 2011.


text:
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|Heidi's Candy, Spunky XXX Girls, First Time Filmed, Alyssa Roxi, Ashlee & Serena, Kylies Secret, Kori Kitten, Lizzie HD, Leia Loves You, I Heart Eden, All Over Lexi, & Tera19.
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text:
Introduction: Pre-Intermediate Reading Comprehension Tests were designed for Pre-Intermediate Learners. Each test has a passage and questions with four answers.
Target: Improve reading skills and vocabulary
Instructions: Each test has a passage. After reading the passage, you'll answer the questions. Each question has four answers. Choose the best answer to the question then submit to save your answer.
Test Details
Test name: Pre-Intermediate Reading Comprehension Test 28
Level: Pre-Intermediate
Time to load: Depending on your internet connection speed. It may take few seconds to load. Please wait.


text:
Like Alaska's mighty Yukon, a broad river once flowed across Antarctica, following a gentle valley shaped by tectonic forces at a time before the continent became encased in ice. Understanding what happened when rivers of ice later filled the valley could solve certain climate and geologic puzzles about the southernmost continent.
The valley is Lambert Graben in East Antarctica, now home to the world's largest glacier. Trapped beneath the ice, the graben (which is German for ditch or trench) is a stunning, deep gorge. But before Antarctica's deep freeze 34 million years ago, the valley was relatively flat and filled by a lazy river, leaving a riddle for geologists to decode: How did Lambert Graben get so steep, and when was it carved?
The key to Lambert Graben's history was found in layers of sediments just offshore, in Prydz Bay. In a new study, Stuart Thomson, a geologist at the University of Arizona (UA) in Tucson, looked into the past by decoding sands deposited by the river, and the messy piles left behind by the glacier. The river sands are topped with a thick layer of coarser sediment that signals the onset of glacial erosion in the valley, the researchers found. The erosion rate more than doubled when the glaciers moved in, Thomson said.
"The only way that could happen is from glaciers," he said. "They started grinding and forming deep valleys."
Understanding when glaciers first wove their way across Antarctica will help scientists better model the ice sheet's response to Earth's climate shifts, the researchers said.
"There's a big effort to model how glaciers flow in Antarctica, and these models need a landscape over which glaciers can flow," Thomson told OurAmazingPlanet. "Once these models can predict past changes, they can more accurately predict what will happen with future climate changes."
The sediments also hold clues to the tectonic evolution of East Antarctica, and a mountain range buried beneath the vast, thick ice sheet. [Album: Stunning Photos of Antarctic Ice]
The findings are detailed in the March 2013 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience.
History of the ice
Lambert Graben formed during the breakup of Gondwana, an ancient supercontinent, a process that happened in stages. Antarctica, India and Africa tore apart in the Late Cretaceous (about 80 million years ago). The split created long, linear valleys oriented perpendicular to the continental coastlines. At the time, Earth's climate was warmer than it is today, and as Antarctica moved southward, settling into its home over the South Pole, the continent teemed with plants and animals.
Scientists can partially reconstruct this past environment with fossils and through radar that peers beneath the ice to map the shapes of the rock below. A 3D map of Antarctica today shows chasms carved by glaciers, rugged mountains and other remnants of its warmer existence.
But the surveys tell nothing about how the landscape looked before the ice carved out all those features. "People have speculated when the big fjords formed under the ice," Thomson said. "But no one knows for sure until you sample the rocks or the sediments."
Thomson and his colleagues analyzed sediments drilled from the ocean floor just offshore of Lambert Glacier, as well as from onshore moraines, the rock piles pushed up by glaciers. Tests on minerals in the sands and muds helped them figure out when and how fast the surface eroded.
Here's what the sediments say: From about 250 million to 34 million years ago, the region around Lambert Glacier was relatively flat, and drained by slow-moving rivers, Thomson said. About 34 million years ago, which coincides with a cooling of Earth's climate, big glaciers appeared, shaping the spectacular valley now hidden under thick ice.
"It seemed like it occurred very early on, 34 [million] to 24 million years ago," Thomson said. Erosion slowed dramatically as the ice sheet stabilized about 15 million years ago, he said.
Some 5,250 to 8,200 feet (1.6 to 2.5 kilometers) of rock have since disappeared, ground down by glaciers and carried away by the ice, according to the study.
"Glaciers can carve deep valleys quickly — and did so on Antarctica before it got so cold that the most of it got covered by 1 or 2 miles [1.6 to 3.2 km] of thick, stationary ice," Peter Reiners, a UA geologist and study co-author, said in a statement.
Clues to buried mountain range
Lambert Graben extends about 375 miles (600 km) inland, ending at one of Antarctica's most enigmatic features — an entombed mountain range called the Gamburtsev Mountains. Buried under the ice, the mountains rose during Gondwana's rifting. Geologic evidence suggests two pulses of upliftfrom rifting events about 250 million years ago and 100 million years ago pushed up the jagged peaks.
But Thomson and his colleagues did not find evidence in the sediments for a second uplift phase 100 million years ago. The river sands contain minerals from the Gamburtsev Mountains, and the tiny grains suggest the mountains got their height with one tectonic push.
"This underscores both the mountain range's remarkable age and the extraordinary degree of subglacial landscape preservation," writes Darrel Swift in an accompanying article in Nature Geoscience. Swift, a geologist at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, was not involved in the study.
Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or Google+. Original article onLiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.
- Images: The Majestic Transantarctic Mountains
- Video - Antarctica: Solving Geologic Mysteries
- Images: Scientists at the End of the Earth
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From leg extensions and standing squats to a full range of floor routines, the Quest Strength Band brings your own personal gym with you everywhere you go. Designed to add extra resistance to any training session, this strength band helps you tone and define your muscles. You'll love the extra comfort of its grippy handles and adjustable design.
- Adjusts from 30″ to 55″.
- Grippy comfort handles.
- Stretchy rubber construction.


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The final launch of NASA's OV-103, space shuttle Discovery. Affectionately known as the Mother of NASA's shuttle fleet, Discovery thundered off Kennedy Space Center's pad 39A on February 24, 2011 to make one final visit to the International Space Station. The orbiter, which flew both Return to Flight missions after the Challenger and Columbia disasters, flew 39 total missions during 395 total days in space, during which time Discovery logged more than 148 MILLION miles flown.
Coverage provided for Zero-G News and the ARES Institute.
Hi-Res images available for use upon request.
All images copyright www.MikeKillianPhotography.com, all rights reserved, unauthorized use is prohibited.


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Take a deep breath and check your heart-rate before you hit play gentlemen (and ladies), you're in for a ride. In general I don't necessarily promote nor disparage the MRA movement, but after watching this video I can better understand the contempt behind the groundswell. However, my point in posting this wasn't to trigger any MRA outrage (The Spearhead and A Voice for Men has that covered), rather it was prompted by Rational Reader Dan's comment in my 16 Years On post:
Rollo, you mention that men make a sacrifice of their desire for sexual variety and their sex life in general, when he marries.
But you are forgetting that for many men, marriage *is* the only or most feasible way to have a regular sex life. one-night-stands, flings, FWB's, casual relationships – these are not for every guy. Most men dont get the opportunity to be promiscuous. Most men are simply not built for the going out in the jungle and hunting…physically or mentally.
I dont want marriage. I dont even want a committed relationship at this stage But I feel compelled to consider commitment and marriage because of my sexual / intimate needs. I am sure many mediocre young men are in the same boat as me. But you havent considered them here. You're talking from the perspective of a man who is atleast relatively attractive and can sexually attract women with reasonable ease.
Forgive me Dan, I'm not trying to run you up the flagpole here. My assumption is that Dan hasn't read Appreciation or Women In Love in their entirety. There's much more to men's sacrifices than just a trade off between a regular piece of ass and the potential for more varied sexual experiences. The predictable, feminized reflexive response is to presume that men would fixate on how their sacrifices would impact their sexual strategies, but sexual opportunism is only a single sacrifice among many. The feminine imperative would like nothing better than to have both men and women presume that men's only concern is about the legs that might have been spread for them had they not opted for marriage, but there's a lot more to men's sacrifices.
As illustrated in this video, career, relationships, family, education, and the overarching threat of losing all of his investments in a no-fault divorce are all very real risks men tend not to consider and women would rather they not. A lot of men lament losing half (or more) of their financial assets, but what gets lost in that is the personal investments necessary to establish those assets. Those investments required a sacrifice of time, effort, emotion, determination, etc. and all whilst maintaining an intimate relationship with a woman who cannot appreciate in-full the totality of those sacrifices – because she never experienced them from a male perspective. Men's sacrifices are only appreciated through the filter of women's expectations and perceived benefit.
At 46 years old, I have no doubt that Charles Bruce had well over half a lifetime of personal investment into himself, his wife, their family and extended families. For most Men, and manosphere readers in particular, the initial response to Mr. Bruce's dilemma is one of (understandable) blind rage at the feminized system. As hard as it is, I'm going to ask that readers look past this anger and see the conditions, investments and sacrifices Bruce made that makes his story so tragic.
The female, not the male, determines all the conditions of the animal family. Where the female can derive no benefit from association with the male, no such association takes place.
In other words, hypergamy doesn't care about Relational Equity. It's one set of conditions to consider this in terms of how your girlfriend might've cheated on you in spite of all your best efforts to invest in your relationship and play by the "rules", but it's entirely another when you consider fallacy of Relational Equity in terms of a life long, expected, entitled, commitment. Charles Bruce is on the sharp end of women's inability to appreciate men's sacrifices.
If you've ever wonder why no male hormonal contraceptive has ever been developed or marketed since the sexual revolution, look no further than Briffault's Law. For all the bleating about equalism and gender equality of the past 60 years, women have effectively organized and fought like cornered animals to keep the power of controlling the family unit out of the hands of men.
I've read studies documenting men's most productive, creative, endeavors being attempted and/or achieved in the years before they married; innovations, academic degrees, scientific discoveries, great masterpieces of art. etc. Then, a precipitous drop off in what we are meant to assume is ambition and motivation occurs after marriage. Roissy has more than a few links to these articles, but my impression of these studies is less about the neutering effects of marriage (i.e. the responsibilities of settling down) and more about the lack of opportunity inherent in maintaining a committed monogamy and addressing the sacrifices a man must make to advance his interests. Missing opportunities to get laid with new and varied women pales in life-importance when you consider the sacrifices a man makes in having to turn down opportunities that would advance his (and possibly society's) better interest. Women are the Dream Killers because they cannot appreciate men's sacrifices.
This is an interesting quote from a man citing Briffaults Law:
"Men love women, but I truly believe that women are incapable of what we men call love. "Greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friends." How many women are willing to die for their husbands, friends, country, or comrades in arms? Damn few, if any.
Yet it is commonly expected of men (made compulsory under certain circumstances). How many men continue on in their marriages, supporting their family and their wife, while the wife is making their life a living hell? Far too many. How many men choose their wives over their parents and siblings? Most.
Women do not behave like this. Men take out large insurance policies so their wives and children will be well taken care of should they die. Even if the wife is making (nearly) as much money as the husband, she will not have insurance. She sees no reason to reduce her current ability to spend to take care of others after she is dead. She could care less what happens to the husband, and doesn't want the husband to be able to spend money on some young bimbo, after she dies. The life insurance gender statistics are well known, and widely available. None of this should be a shocking revelation. When my second wife died, her mandatory insurance (free) provided by her teacher's union covered her funeral expenses. It would have made life much easier if her insurance had paid the over $350,000 my life insurance would have paid.
When does the expectation of mutual benefit in marriage go seriously wrong in the west? It goes wrong as soon as the "I Dos" are said, or very shortly thereafter. Why is this so? Because you, the man have just entered into a contract with the state where you have promised that you will provide everything to your bride, and where the bride has promised nothing. By the way, the full weight of the law and public opinion will support her stripping you of every thing you have, including your children, and most of what you will ever make in the future, when (not if) she decides to dump you.
Hence, once you enter into the contract you have nothing left to offer her. Everything you have, or will have, is already hers.
Seem like a harsh statement? I thought so too, the first time I heard it, during an argument with my first wife towards the end of our marriage. She asked me the eternal female question, "What do you do for me?" (i.e. what benefit do I get from associating with you?) I responded, "I pay all your expenses. I feed, clothe, and house you. And, I am paying for your college tuition." She told me that all the money I earned was her money and that if she let me have any of it that was pure charity on her part, so I was doing nothing for her. I thought this was unduly harsh.
The divorce courts showed me that it was pretty much just a statement of fact. The wife has it all, and can make her part of the marriage contract, the portion where she is to provide you with companionship, comfort, loyalty, sex, etc., null and void at any time while keeping everything you have/had/will ever have. She has no need to associate with you further once you are married.
To be a married man entais a sacrifice of such utter powerlessness, on so many levels, that no woman will ever comprehend, much less appreciate.


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A forbidden romance about pain that binds us together…
Five years ago we lived in the same house. He was the ultimate bad boy.
And my foster brother.
Now he's back. Tougher, harder, meaner. All of it aimed at me, because I was the one who sent him away. It's payback time. He wants his pound of flesh, and I am helpless to say no.
"Better When it Hurts is an intense and heartbreakingly beautiful story. I couldn't read fast enough to see what would happen next with Blue and Lola. A definite 5 star read for sure!" ~ Jenika Snow, USA Today bestselling author
Listen to the Audiobook
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Excerpt from Better When It Hurts
I try not to scan the floor when I enter. There's already a buzz in the air, the hunger and desperation of a strip club on Saturday night. I'm ready to earn money, ready to move my body.
Ready to pretend Blue doesn't bother me.
He's nowhere in sight, and I breathe a sigh of relief. A group of men are still gathered near the railing. They'd tipped me pretty well while I was up there, so I figure I have a good shot at a lap dance. I saunter over, my breasts barely contained in the red bikini top, my skin coated in sweat and glitter and the thick smoke of this place.
"Nice set," says a low voice from behind me.
I turn to see Blue standing there, arms crossed so his muscles bulge, lids lowered in that intense way of his. Shit. "Thanks," I say, but the only thing I'm really thankful for is that my voice doesn't shake.
He's the head of security at the Grand, which should make me feel safe. Except we have a history. And he hates my guts. So there's no affection in his eyes when they scan me up and down. No kindness in his voice when he adds, "You look great."
The way he says it, it sounds like a threat. He makes me feel like the scared little girl I used to be when I knew him before. And him? He's like the big bad wolf, sizing me up before he swallows me whole.
I force myself to shrug at him, to toss my hair. "Thanks, sweetie."
He circles me, surrounding me. "But then, you always look great. That's what you like, isn't it? Having men panting after you? Leading us along by our dicks?"
My throat gets tight. I know that's what people think of me. They take one look at my lipstick and my short skirt and assume the worst. God, they're right. But it's worse to hear it from him. Worse because he once believed in me. "Do you expect me to apologize for earning a living?"
His lids lower. "Not for that."
I can't meet his eyes. I know exactly what he wants me to apologize for. And he'll never believe me. Even showing weakness in this game is enough to get me killed. "I don't apologize to anyone."
"Of course you don't," he says, his voice full of loathing. "But I don't want your words."
I can't help but whisper, "What do you want?"
That makes him smile. It's not a nice smile. "I think you know the answer to that."
He wants to hurt me, to use me. He wants to fuck me. I swallow hard. "That isn't for sale."
"I wasn't planning to pay you."
This should be easy. Tell him no. Make him believe it. I've done this for a thousand men before. Somehow he's different. Maybe because I don't really believe it myself.
I know he's watching me. I know he's hatching his plans. My heart speeds up every time I turn away from him, wondering if this is the time he'll pounce. One of these times, he's going to dig into me with his teeth and his claws. He's going to hurt me, and I'm not sure I'll survive it.
Not tonight, though. Not now.
I take a step away from him. "If you aren't going to pay for my time, I think I'll find someone who will."
His eyes darken. "Your call, gorgeous."
I hear the unspoken message beneath his words, steel under velvet. For now.


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Illustrator Chris Ware is in his own category
Artist Chris Ware with his eclectic collection of comic art and old items at his home in Oak Park.(Alex Garcia/ Chicago Tribune / September 25, 2012)
Christopher Borrelli
5:14 p.m. CDT, September 25, 2012 If you were building a Chris Ware, if you were constructing the most celebrated cartoonist of the past couple of decades, drawing up the plans for an Oak Park illustrator so routinely referred to as a genius that the accolade is more like fact than opinion, the first thing you would need is doubt. Preferably, self-doubt. But uncertainty, self-flagellation, humility-verging-on-delusion — any of these would work.
And though you would pour this malady straight into the foundation, you needn't worry about the sturdiness. Ware is thick with worry. He frets and cringes, wonders if he's being pretentious, worries that his worrying resembles false humility. But primarily, he doubts.
His wife, Marnie, told me he gets upset when people bring this up: "But many of us always feel 11, and no matter how much Chris accomplishes or how many people tell him he's a genius, a piece of him will probably always feel like that kid in the lunchroom who sits by himself, lonely."
When he was a child, Ware connected deeply with Charlie Brown, he said. He remembers connecting so deeply that he sent Charlie Brown a valentine. "'Peanuts' was the first comic strip with a truly empathetic cartoon character, and Charlie Brown was the first character who grabbed you by the heart. A comic strip is good for telling jokes and for looking down (on characters), but in Charles Schulz's work, you always felt through his characters. So I felt truly sorry for Charlie Brown, which is an amazing thing to produce using just four little pictures. I felt horrible for him. I gave the valentine to my mother and asked her to send it to Charlie Brown and she said OK then probably put it in the place where all the letters to Santa Claus went."
At 44, Ware, who made his name drawing such alternative classics as "Jimmy Corrigan" and "Quimby the Mouse" and the ongoing "Acme Novelty Library," is arguably now the leading practitioner of what he refers to as "the empathetic doodle." He also looks like what Charlie Brown might look like at 44. His head is bulbous yet cylindrical, his expression melancholic yet sweet. He mumbles, comes across as awkward, shy. When he was 13 and his love for comics veered into a deeper appreciation for the medium, he sent Schulz a letter, explaining he might want to be a cartoonist. But he got the address wrong and the letter was returned. It's the kind of story that, boiled down to four comic strip panels, would read like Charlie Brown.
No beginning, no ending, just a feeling.
Windows into life
The next thing you need if you're building a Chris Ware is ambition. Consider "Building Stories," his new book and first major work since "Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth," the 2000 graphic novel that won him scores of literary awards and led to Ware being invited to show his work at the 2002 Whitney Biennial in New York. (Dave Eggers writing in The New York Times, called "Jimmy Corrigan" "in terms of sheer aesthetic virtuosity ... arguably the greatest achievement of the form, ever.") That said, the first thing you want to do with "Building Stories" is not read it but gaze at it, run your hands across it. A couple of weeks ago at Ware's house, when a Tribune photographer asked if he could see the book, Ware left the room and returned with a box. It didn't resemble a book. It looked more like an old board game.
He handed it to the photographer. " What is this? " the photographer asked. "My book," Ware said, then added, deadpan: "Exactly the reaction I was hoping."
The photographer put the box on his lap, lifted off the lid and marveled. Ware turned his back. I asked if this was the first time he had seen someone look at it. Exactly why my back's turned, he said, cringing out a flat smile.
You'd understand too if your latest book wasn't a book at all but 14 individual books full of ennui, stacked inside a box — 14 books that tell the interlocking stories of the residents of a Chicago apartment building. (Needless to say, there will not be a Kindle version.) The top book in the stack is rectangular and wordless, the story of a woman who, more or less, exists — she pushes her child in the stroller, seasons pass, the child grows older, the woman lonelier. Another book (its gold spine, a nod to classic Golden Books) is narrated by the building itself, which, in one sequence, tallies up every pregnancy, water drip, suicide note, cat, television and spiritual crisis that's passed though it in 104 years. There's a copy of "The Daily Bee," the newspaper ("God Save the Queen") put out by the neighborhood hive. Another book shows cutaways of apartments and unfolds like a board game.
Novelist Zadie Smith, a friend of Ware, told me, "When I read it, I kept thinking how sophisticated and unusual the rhythms were, and how fragmented it felt but fluid at the same time. I also wondered if anyone was doing anything like this in prose. There's not a lot of guidance on what you should read next, and yet the emotional effect is extraordinary. As soon as I stopped worrying about the order of the stories and just read them, it was fine."
Ware told me there's no order to the books in the box, no correct way to read through them.
"I was hoping to get at how memory actually seems to work, which isn't always chronological. I also hoped to induce that brief vertigo in the reader when one gets so deeply lost in a recollection that present seems to all but disappear and the past almost seems more real." He said one inspiration was Canadian short story master Alice Munro, who "links together brief moments of detail and texture with quick, broad passages indicating time's passage." There are no acts, no chapters. Snow piles up on windowsills, a woman remembers the smell of her father's coat, a girl catches fireflies while the faces of parents glow by the lights of their iPhones. Throughout, the art is signature Ware, dense, formal, colorful — drawing as much on the clutter of old newspaper ads as on the shadow boxes of Joseph Cornell. Each panel feels like a window into a life.
When Ware gave a short preview of "Building Stories" last spring during a cartoonists conference at the University of Chicago, cartoonist Ivan Brunetti, one of Ware's friends, had to choke back tears. "My head, and I think everyone's heads, was spinning that day. There was a collective gasp." Canadian cartoonist Seth was more blunt: He cursed, buried his head in his hands.
On the phone the other day, Seth told me: "You know how some work gives an illusion of who the artist is? You imagine R. Crumb laughing as he draws? You never get the impression Chris laughs while working. It's all hard won. When we met, I remember thinking I had to try harder. A few years ago I got depressed by him, because he was so good every new project starts to feel like a nail in your coffin. Though at some point you recognize he's in his own category. You can't compete. Picasso's contemporaries likely felt this, too."
Work speaks for itself
Once the ambition is secure, the third step in building our Chris Ware is adding the background: Ware lives on a bucolic street in Oak Park that feels a lot like a page from a Chris Ware book. On the other hand, that early September morning when I visited his home I had been reading "Building Stories" for the second time and as you might with a writer, my brain felt under the influence of his rhythms and language. I noticed the bright green and yellow leaves outside his home, the utter stillness of the morning, how it was broken by a chatter of squirrels. There was a tempo to the street and the morning, yet nothing much seemed to be happening. I also noticed the numbers on his home and no soliciting sign on his front door had been created by him — the lettering had a familiar squareness, the same blockiness with which he signs his name.
"I had a messy signature as a child," he said, "and my grandmother said this suggested I had no regard for other people. She was right." And so, to this day, he has no scribble, only a meticulously lettered signature.
When you enter his home, which he shares with his wife and 7-year old daughter, the first thing you notice is it looks a lot like his work — a 1908 Edwardian dense with right angles, clean lines and good taste. There is no obvious TV or stereo or bags from Target. The only sound is the loud tick of a grandfather clock. Tidy stacks of art books are everywhere. Penny arcade-style mechanical toys that he built in college — a two-headed wind-up cat, a mini-book dispenser — rest on a shelf. His wife, who attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (and is now chairperson/ of the science department at Prosser Career Academy), has a pair of her own landscape paintings over the dining room table. Otherwise, every wall holds a piece of original comic art from the heyday of newspaper comics and on every mantle sits a building detail from Louis Sullivan, his favorite architect. Woods are sturdy brown oaks, leather chairs black. In the living room, lighted display cabinets hold vintage toys, wooden and tin ancillary merchandise from "Peanuts," George Herriman's "Krazy Kat," Frank King's "Gasoline Alley."
More at the link


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The apartment is located in the Lividus building, on the first floor, facing south.The apartment has: a hall with a large built-in wardrobe, a bathroom with a spacious shower cabin and a washing machine, a living room with a double sofa bed, a practical table with chairs, a fully equipped kitchenette, a comfortable double bed on the mezzanine, and a large balcony with balcony furniture. There is also a TV with free and wireless internet access.The price of the accommodation includes breakfast. We serve breakfast in our Sofa Bistro restaurant in the Albus building on the ground floor.
Elegantly classy furnished, clean apartments.Nice and helpful service.Two steps to the beach and promenade.
Beautifully situated, very close to the beach, the restaurant in the building serves good dishes. The perfect place to relax.
A wonderful place. Silence, peace, close to the sea. Great apartment with attention to every detail.
Great facility. Rooms clean, cozy, you want to rest there.Nice service. I RECOMMEND EVERYONE
city of Gdańsk, PLN 2.41 per person / day.
PLN 180 (one-time fee).
PLN 300 (in the form of card pre-authorization).
pets are allowed (additional fee applies).
Children of all ages are welcome.
from 4 p.m.
until 11:00
the organization of events and parties is prohibited.
smoking prohibited (failure to comply with the ban will result in a cash payment of PLN 1,000).


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One of the famous 16th century Stavronikita Festal set of icons, this icon depicts Holy Pentecost, fifty days after Christ's Resurrection, when He sent the Holy Spirit in the form of flames of fire upon the Disciples again gathered in the upper room in Jeru-salem. The center place is empty, signifying that Christ is always the leader and head of the Church. By anticipation, St. Paul is seen here set among the Disciples. Below is a figure of the kings of this world still in darkness, while the Disciples are illumined above. We receive this grace too, through the Apostles, at our chrismation.
The monk Theophanes the Cretan painted this set of icons on the iconostasis, or icon screen which separates the Bema, or sacred Altar, from the body of the Church, or Nave, where the Faithful stand for Divine Liturgy and other liturgical services. The set shows many of the most important events in the life of Jesus and the Church in its early and formative stage. This icon is the 14th in that set. Theophanes' icons are considered masterpieces of iconographic art, still adorn the church at Stavronikita Monastery on Mount Athos, and show marvelous Cretan post-Byzantine form.


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The potential offering, which could come as soon as this year according to the people, would be the biggest public event for a company that started out of a hot dog kiosk in New York's Madison Square Park in 2004.
While Shake Shack is expected to post earnings of around $20 million next year and the size of the IPO is likely to be small, underwriting one of the biggest burger names in the United States is a plum assignment for investment banks JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley.
Shake Shack's majority owner, Union Square Hospitality Group LLC, interviewed investment banks in recent weeks to appoint underwriters for the IPO, Reuters first reported last week.
Representatives for Shake Shack, Union Square Hospitality, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Shake Shack would likely be the most-followed IPO out of a string of casual dining chains that have gone public this year. They include El Pollo Loco Holdings Inc , Zoe's Kitchen Inc and Papa Murphy's Holdings Inc .
Shake Shack is present in many U.S. states including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Florida and Massachusetts. It has also expanded internationally in cities such as London, Istanbul, Moscow and Dubai.
The company does not franchise and says it has no plans to do so in the future. Shake Shack's chief executive is Randy Garutti, a Cornell University graduate who worked his way up at Union Square Hospitality from general manager at its restaurants to lead Shake Shack.
Union Square Hospitality was founded by restaurateur Danny Meyer in 1985. It also runs other popular New York eateries, including Blue Smoke, Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Cafe.
Private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners LP agreed to acquire a 39.5 percent stake Union Square Hospitality in 2012 for an undisclosed amount.


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How to Survive a Cultural Crisis
Public opinion appears to be changing about same-sex marriage, as are the nation's laws. Of course this change is just one in a larger constellation. America's views on family, love, sexuality generally, tolerance, God, and so much more seems to be pushing in directions that put Bible-believing Christians on the defensive.
It's easy to feel like we've become the new "moral outlaws," to use Al Mohler's phrase. Standing up for historic Christian principles will increasingly get you in trouble socially and maybe economically, perhaps one day also criminally. It's ironic that Christians are told not to impose their views on others, even as the threat of job loss or other penalties loom over Christians for not toeing the new party line.
In all this, Christians are tempted to become panicked or to speak as alarmists. But to the extent we do, to that same extent we show we've embraced an unbiblical and nominal Christianity.
Here, then, are seven principles for surviving the very real cultural shifts we're presently enduring.
1. Remember that churches exist to work for supernatural change.
The whole Christian faith is based on the idea that God takes people who are spiritually dead and gives them new life. Whenever we evangelize, we are evangelizing the cemetery.
There's never been a time or a culture when it was natural to repent of your sins. That culture doesn't exist, it hasn't existed, it never will exist. Christians, churches, and pastors especially must know deep in their bones that we've always been about a work that's supernatural.
From that standpoint, recent cultural changes have made our job zero percent harder.
2. Understand that persecution is normal.
In the last few months I've been preaching through John's Gospel, and a number of people have thanked me for bringing out the theme of persecution. But I'm not convinced my preaching has changed; I think people's ears have changed. Recent events in the public square have caused people to become concerned about what's ahead for Christians. But if you were to go back and listen to my old sermons—say, a series preached in the 1990s on 1 Peter—you'd discover that ordinary biblical exposition means raising the topic of persecution again and again.
Persecution is what Christians face in this fallen world. It's what Jesus promised us (e.g., John 16).
Now, it may be that in God's providence some Christians find themselves in settings where, even if they devote their lives to obeying Jesus, they won't encounter insult and persecution. But don't be fooled by the nice buildings in which so many churches meet. This Jesus we follow was executed as a state criminal.
One of my fellow pastors recently observed that, in the history of Christian persecution, it's often secondary issues—not the gospel—that elicit persecution. Persecutors don't say, "You believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ; I'm going to persecute you now."
Rather, some belief or practice we maintain as Christians contradicts what people want or threatens their way of seeing the world. And so they oppose us.
Again, to the extent we respond to changes in our culture either with panic or alarmism, to that same extent we contradict the Bible's teaching about ordinary Christian discipleship. It shows we've traded on the normalcy of nominalism.
Pastors especially should set the example in teaching their congregations not to play the victim. We should salt into our regular preaching and praying the normalcy of persecution. It's the leader's work to prepare churches for how we can follow Jesus, even if it means social criticism, or loss of privilege, or financial penalties, or criminal prosecution.
3. Eschew utopianism.
Christians should be a people of love and justice, and that means we should always strive to make our little corner of the globe a bit nicer than how we found it, whether that's a kindergarten classroom or a kingdom. But even as we work for the sake of love and justice, we must remember we're not going to transform this world into the kingdom of our Christ.
God hasn't commissioned us to make this world perfect; he's commissioned us chiefly to point to the One who will one day make it perfect, even as we spend our lives loving and doing good. If you're tempted to utopianism, please observe that Scripture doesn't allow it, and that the history of utopianism has a track record of distracting and deceiving even some of Christ's most zealous followers.
It's good to feel sadness over the growing approval given to sin in our day. But one of the reasons many Christians in America feel disillusionment over current cultural changes is that we've been somewhat utopian in our hopes. Again, to the extent you think and speak as an alarmist, to that same extent you demonstrate that utopian assumptions may have been motivating you all along.
4. Make use of our democratic stewardship.
I would be sad if anyone concluded from my comments that it doesn't matter what Christians do publicly or with the state. Paul tells us to submit to the state. But in our democratic context, part of submitting to the state means sharing in its authority. And if we have a share in its authority, we just might have, to some extent, a share in its tyranny. To neglect the democratic process, so long as it's in our hands, is to neglect a stewardship.
We cannot create Utopia, but that doesn't mean we cannot be good stewards of what we have, or that we cannot use the democratic processes to bless others. For the sake of love and justice, we should make use of our democratic stewardship.
5. Trust the Lord, not human circumstances.
There's never been a set of circumstances Christians cannot trust God through. Jesus beautifully trusted the Father through the cross "for the joy set before him" (Heb. 12:2). Nothing you and I will face will amount to what our King had to suffer.
We can trust him. He will prove trustworthy through everything we might have to endure. And as we trust him, we will bear a beautiful testimony of God's goodness and power, and we will bring him glory.
6. Remember that everything we have is God's grace.
We must remember anything we receive less than hell is dancing time for Christians. Right? Everything a Christian has is all of grace. We need to keep that perspective so that we aren't tempted to become too sour toward our employers, our friends, our family members, and our government when they oppose us.
How was Paul able to sing in prison? He knew that of which he'd been forgiven. He knew the glory that awaited him. He perceived and prized these greater realities.
7. Rest in the certainty of Christ's victory.
The gates of hell will not prevail against the church of Jesus Christ. We need not fear and tremble as if Satan has finally, after all these millennia, gained the upper hand in his opposition to God through the same-sex marriage lobby.
"Oh, we might finally lose it here!" No, not a chance.
People around the world now and throughout history have suffered far more than Christians in America presently do. And we don't assume Satan had the upper hand there, do we?
Each nation and age has a unique way to express its depravity, to attack God. But none will succeed any more than the crucifixion succeeded in defeating Jesus. Yes, he died. But three days later he got up from the dead.
Christ's kingdom is in no danger of failing. Again, Christians, churches, and especially pastors must know this deeply in our bones. D-Day has happened. Now it's cleanup time. Not one person God has elected to save will fail to be saved because the secular agenda is "winning" in our time and place. There shouldn't be anxiety or desperation in us.
We may not be able to out-argue others. They may not be persuaded by our books and articles. But we can love them with the supernatural love God has shown to us in Christ. And we can make his Word known today—with humility, with confidence, and with joy.
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Editor's note: This article originally appeared on The Gospel Coalition. Mark will be addressing this theme in his workshop at their 2015 National Conference, April 13 to 15, in Orlando, Florida.


text: Hi, I have a dedicated server, it currently has Apache 2 and PHP 4.2.x installed on it. I'm trying to install PHP 4.3.11 on it. I have compiled PHP 4.3.11 on the machine, but Apache is still using the old version. I think this is because I didn't specify --with-apxs2=/path/to/apxs. I didn't do it, because I don't know the path to apxs. I can't find it anywhere on the server. I still have an httpd.conf file and everything.... and a directory for modules.... but I can't for the life of me find the path to apxs so that PHP ./configure can create the libphp4.so file..... Don't know what to do now... Please help! Olli


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Journal EntriesThis recurring website feature highlights articles from The GASB Report, the GASB's monthly newsletter. The current article appeared in the April 2010 issue.
GASB Relaunches WebsiteIn April, the GASB relaunched its website, www.gasb.org. The comprehensive site redesign offers more intuitive organization and up-to-date navigation capabilities, which are intended to provide viewers with greater ease of use.
The site design centers on a series of nine tabs that run across the upper portion of the site, each with a drop-down menu.
In addition, information about recent GASB news and activities is available on the left side of the homepage with the GASB Store and links to other information located just beneath. The right side of the homepage offers links to key information areas including projects, due process, technical issues, information about the GASB, and the visitors' register.
If you have any comments you would like to share with the GASB regarding the redesigned site, we would be delighted to hear from you. Comments may be submitted via email and addressed to Kip Betz, GASB assistant project manager, at firstname.lastname@example.com.
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Hard copies of GASB publications, subscriptions, and electronically based products are available for purchase through the GASB Store. The User Guide Series, which provides a nontechnical introduction to the financial reports of state and local governments and school districts, is also available through the GASB Store.
The GASB Report is part of The GASB Subscription service, the most convenient and complete way to stay informed of GASB activities on a timely basis. For more information, click on The GASB Subscription.


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The widespread adoption of Eric Ries's work beyond Silicon Valley has been a godsend for innovators. The Lean Startup has crystallized many of the ideas fundamental to successful innovation and provided companies with additional ways to understand and make room for rapid iteration, agile development, and in-market testing of new ideas. At IDEO, we frequently refer to Ries's work to help clients understand approaches to innovation, and believe that we have identified a few helpful best practices that build on the approach defined in The Lean Startup.
Cut the fat, not the essence
In the pursuit of a minimum viable product (MVP), we've seen that it's important to evaluate early the critical components that will differentiate an offer from competition and make a product truly viable.
An MVP should be the easiest way to test your hypothesis, but that doesn't mean that building one is easy. A common mistake is refusing to tackle the tough technical problems that create revolutionary offerings. As Ries writes, some entrepreneurs hear "minimum viable" product as "smallest imaginable" product. This misunderstanding of Lean Startup tenets can have expensive consequences. Sometimes, entrepreneurs miss a key opportunity to establish market differentiation by interpreting the "minimum" component of an MVP to mean "nothing challenging." Worse, they sometimes create a product that's not competitive by rationalizing that they can get 'something like' the core idea by replacing a feature with something easier to implement.
One best practice we've identified is to always ask: Are certain challenging features critical to your value proposition? Would investment in these features lead to a revolutionary offering, or a valuable and differentiating capability? By addressing essential challenges before MVP launch, companies can gain years of advantage on their competition. Square faced these squarely and debuted a truly revolutionary MVP. They had to structure themselves as a "mega-merchant" to help simplify the sign-up experience for new customers. This drastically reduced the barriers to adoption faced by competitors like GoPayment, which had a virtually identical value proposition. Meanwhile, Square resisted adding more than the minimal features, keeping the user experience simple. I often tell clients not to shirk the tough problems — cut the fat, not the essence.
Prototype multiple MVPs in tandem
Even in the multi-week sprints to develop an MVP, a concept can develop a strong halo effect, anchoring a startup team in a single idea. Because of previous investments and sunk costs, the group may feel that the concept is better than it actually is when compared to other possible options. The prospect of pivoting down the line can encourage entrepreneurs to pursue a passion to build without evaluating their hypotheses up front. But successful ventures don't just dive into a single direction, confident that if they're wrong they can drastically change course. The reality is that a single concept is a collection of variables expressed as a whole. Some are core to the vision, while others are educated guesses.
Sketching or mocking up experiential prototypes and then testing them with consumers or potential partners, while also explicitly jotting down your operating and business assumptions and using them to discuss the business with industry experts, allows you both to pick a promising route to invest in the development sprint and to pivot with confidence. For example, by prototyping multiple consumer experiences and business models before investing in an initial MVP, GoGo was able to launch an airline WiFi and in-flight service experience that combined the best of multiple alternative services that might be offered in flight. One might think of this approach as testing multiple MVPs in parallel. Creating multiple options in tandem creates more confidence in the core variables, which in turn means that pivots may be less drastic or disruptive later on. This approach can be applied beyond product features to business models and operating approaches as well.
Traditional linear approach:
Standard sequential pivot approach:
Recommended approach:
This kind of work can be done with a very small team, and incurs drastically less development cost than a new product version. It can also help you gauge the tradeoff between higher investments in R&D and whether more difficult features are actually necessary to the minimum viable product. Furthermore, exploring many options in a rough way allows the team to test a variety of ideas simultaneously and by summarizing the resulting insights, the team can generate a common mental model to guide future designs.
Include a strategic business model hypothesis
The entrepreneurial crowd has recently expanded its passion for technology to embrace user experience design. Embracing smart business model design is coming more slowly. Nevertheless, a hypothesis for how your business can eventually become a profit-making entity is an essential component of any MVP. The New York Times paywall is one example of this principle in action. Like many newspapers in a time of rapid change, the NYT knew its old model was broken and decided to experiment with new models. First, they experimented with requiring payment for only some features (op-eds). When this failed, the NYT used what they'd learned to launch their current paywall model, which they continue to refine.
Entrepreneurs sometimes find it easy to underestimate the pull of commitments to a venture's 1.0 instantiation and imagine a bold product innovation pipeline that ultimately never reaches fruition. Thinking about the business model early means not making sacrifices later. Is your economic model at odds with some of your stakeholders? Has someone else already tried what you're doing? Like a product feature, the idea is not to perfect the economic model prior to building the MVP, but to have some idea that the economics you are proposing will set the venture up for eventual profitability and a low-friction scaling process.
Consider and retain the passion-igniting elements
No matter how lean and agile you're running, it's the personal, passion-igniting elements that differentiate a great venture from a merely good one. Instagram, for example, stayed true to existing types of film processes, which inspired the original developers and ultimately lent the product authenticity. The simplicity and elegance of Instagram interactions drew in professional photographers, and their authenticity appealed to amateur photographers. These passion-igniting elements were ultimately worth one billion dollars to Facebook. Going the extra mile to stay true to your company's (and your own) values has the added benefit of rallying customers and employees (a much overlooked aspect of any entrepreneurial venture). One company that illustrates this principle is Revolution Foods. Their mission is to arrange for healthy cafeteria foods for schoolchildren, and they recognize that the combination of low price and proper nutrition is key to their success. It's a focused challenge, but a difficult one, which helps rally governments, employees, parents, and customers alike.
Don't get too fixated on the present market landscape
What's your venture's unique point of view on how the market will evolve or be disrupted? The market is a moving target, and often the biggest opportunities require building for emerging changes in technology, behaviors, and values. Apple continues to provide examples of how bold technical innovations can create new norms. Take Siri, for instance. Voice plug-and-play options have existed for years; Siri was an acquisition that other software or hardware providers could have purchased. So why didn't they? Most likely, other companies simply found it too challenging to imagine the necessary new consumer behaviors taking hold. Now, hardware and software providers are hustling to see how voice input can provide improved interactions — and voice seems to be a go-to tool. Once again, a single company has altered the market landscape. How will your next MVP change the future?


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Tomorrow's spacecraft will be built using advanced materials with mind-boggling properties.
Listen to this story via streaming audio, a downloadable file, or get help.
Sept. 16, 2002: "What I'm really looking for," you say to the salesman, "is a car that goes at least 10,000 miles between fill-ups, repairs itself automatically, cruises at 500 mph, and weighs only a few hundred pounds."
As he stands there wide-eyed, you add, "Oh yeah, and I can only spend about a quarter of what these other cars cost."
A request like this is sure to get you laughed off the new-car lot. But in many ways, this dream car is a metaphor for the space vehicles we'll need to expand our exploration of the solar system in the decades to come. These new spacecraft will need to be faster, lighter, cheaper, more reliable, more durable, and more versatile, all at the same time.
Impossible? Before you answer, consider how a rancher from 200 years ago might have reacted if a man had asked to buy a horse that could run 100 mph for hours on end, carry his entire family and all their luggage, and sing his favorite songs to him all the while! Today we call them minivans.
Revolutions in technology -- like the Industrial Revolution that replaced horses with cars -- can make what seems impossible today commonplace tomorrow.
Such a revolution is happening right now. Three of the fastest-growing sciences of our day--biotech, nanotech, and information technology -- are converging to give scientists unprecedented control of matter on the molecular scale. Emerging from this intellectual gold-rush is a new class of materials with astounding properties that sound more at home in a science fiction novel than on the laboratory workbench.
Imagine, for example, a substance with 100 times the strength of steel, yet only 1/6 the weight; materials that instantly heal themselves when punctured; surfaces that can "feel" the forces pressing on them; wires and electronics as tiny as molecules; structural materials that also generate and store electricity; and liquids that can instantly switch to solid and back again at will. All of these materials exist today ... and more are on the way.
With such mind-boggling materials at hand, building the better spacecraft starts to look not so far fetched after all.
Weight Equals Money
The challenge of the next-generation spacecraft hinges on a few primary issues. First and foremost, of course, is cost.
"Even if all the technical obstacles were solved today, exploring our solar system still needs to be affordable to be practical," says Dr. Neville Marzwell, manager of Revolutionary Aerospace Technology for NASA's Next Decadal Planning Team.
Lowering the cost of space flight primarily means reducing weight. Each pound trimmed is a pound that won't need propulsion to escape from Earth's gravity. Lighter spaceships can have smaller, more efficient engines and less fuel. This, in turn, saves more weight, thus creating a beneficial spiral of weight savings and cost reduction.
Right: This fully-loaded Saturn V moon rocket weighed 6.2 million pounds. It was heavy and expensive to launch. [more]
The challenge is to trim weight while increasing safety, reliability, and functionality. Just leaving parts out won't do.
Scientists are exploring a range of new technologies that could help spacecraft slim down. For example, gossamer materials -- which are ultra-thin films--might be used for antennas or photovoltaic panels in place of the bulkier components used today, or even for vast solar sails that provide propulsion while massing only 4 to 6 grams per square meter.
Composite materials, like those used in carbon-fiber tennis rackets and golf clubs, have already done much to help bring weight down in aerospace designs without compromising strength. But a new form of carbon called a "carbon nanotube" holds the promise of a dramatic improvement over composites: The best composites have 3 or 4 times the strength of steel by weight--for nanotubes, it's 600 times!"This phenomenal strength comes from the molecular structure of nanotubes," explains Dennis Bushnell, a chief scientist at Langley Research Center (LaRC), NASA's Center of Excellence for Structures and Materials. They look a bit like chicken-wire rolled into a cylinder with carbon atoms sitting at each of the hexagons' corners.
Typically nanotubes are about 1.2 to 1.4 nanometers across (a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter), which is only about 10 times the radius of the carbon atoms themselves.
Above: The lattice of carbon atoms in a carbon nanotube is like a peg-board for hanging other kinds of atoms and molecules to give the nanotube special chemical, electrical or thermal properties. Copyright Prof. Vincent H. Crespi, Department of Physics Pennsylvania State University. [more]
Nanotubes were only discovered in 1991, but already the intense interest in the scientific community has advanced our ability to create and use nanotubes tremendously. Only 2 to 3 years ago, the longest nanotubes that had been made were about 1000 nanometers long (1 micron). Today, scientists are able to grow tubes as long as 200 million nanometers (20 cm). Bushnell notes that there are at least 56 labs around the world working to mass produce these tiny tubes.
"Great strides are being made, so making bulk materials using nanotubes will probably happen," Bushnell says. "What we don't know is how much of this 600 times the strength of steel by weight will be manifest in a bulk material. Still, nanotubes are our best bet."Right: The tensile strength of carbon nanotubes greatly exceeds that of other high-strength materials. Note that each increment on the vertical axis is a power of 10. [more]
Beyond merely being strong, nanotubes will likely be important for another part of the spacecraft weight-loss plan: materials that can serve more than just one function.
"We used to build structures that were just dumb, dead-weight holders for active parts, such as sensors, processors, and instruments," Marzwell explains. "Now we don't need that. The holder can be an integral, active part of the system."
Imagine that the body of a spacecraft could also store power, removing the need for heavy batteries. Or that surfaces could bend themselves, doing away with separate actuators. Or that circuitry could be embedded directly into the body of the spacecraft. When materials can be designed on the molecular scale such holistic structures become possible.
Spacecraft Skins
Humans can feel even the slightest pinprick anywhere on their bodies. It's an amazing bit of self-monitoring -- possible because your skin contains millions of microscopic nerve endings as well as nerves to carry those signals to your brain.
Likewise, materials that make up critical systems in a spaceship could be embedded with nanometer-scale sensors that constantly monitor the materials' condition. If some part is starting to fail -- that is, it "feels bad" -- these sensors could alert the central computer before tragedy strikes.
Molecular wires could carry the signals from all of these in-woven sensors to the central computer, avoiding the impractical bulk of millions and millions of today's wires. Again, nanotubes may be able to serve this role. Conveniently, nanotubes can act as either conductors or semi-conductors, depending on how they're made. Scientists have made molecular wires of other elongated molecules, some of which even naturally self-assemble into useful configurations.
Left: This piezoelectric material, developed at NASA's Langley Research Center (LaRC), can "feel" deformations such as bending or surface pressure, producing a small voltage in response that can act as a signal for a central computer. Image courtesy NASA's Morphing Project at LaRC.
Your skin is also able to heal itself. Believe it or not, some advanced materials can do the same thing. Self-healing materials made of long-chain molecules called ionomers react to a penetrating object such as a bullet by closing behind it. Spaceships could use such skins because space is full of tiny projectiles -- fast-moving bits of debris from comets and asteroids. Should one of these sand- to pebble-sized objects puncture the ship's armor, a layer of self-healing material would keep the cabin airtight.
Meteoroids aren't the only hazard; space is filled with radiation, too. Spaceships in low-Earth orbit are substantially protected by our planet's magnetic field, which forms a safe bubble about 50,000 km wide centered on Earth. Beyond that distance, however, solar flares and cosmic rays pose a threat to space travelers.
Right: A solar flare blasts energetic radiation into space. [more]
Scientists are still searching for a good solution. The trick is to provide adequate shielding without adding lots of extra weight to the spacecraft. Some lightweight radiation-shielding materials are currently being tested in an experiment called (MISSE) onboard the International Space Station. But these alone won't be enough.
The real bad guy is Galactic Cosmic Radiation (GCR) produced in distant supernova explosions. It consists, in part, of very heavy positive ions--such as iron nuclei -- zipping along at great speed. The combination of high mass and high speed makes these little atomic "cannon balls" very destructive. When they pierce through the cells in people's bodies, they can smash apart DNA, leading to illness and even cancer.
"It turns out that the worst materials you can use for shielding against GCR are metals," Bushnell notes. When a galactic comic ray hits a metallic atom, it can shatter the atom's nucleus -- a process akin to the fission that occurs in nuclear power plants. The secondary radiation produced by these collisions can be worse than the GCR that the metal was meant to shield.
Ironically, light elements like hydrogen and helium are the best defense against these GCR brutes, because collisions with them produce little secondary radiation. Some people have suggested surrounding the living quarters of the ship with a tank of liquid hydrogen. According to Bushnell, a layer of liquid hydrogen 50 to 100 cm thick would provide adequate shielding. But the tank and the cryogenic system is likely to be heavy and awkward.
Here again, nanotubes might be useful. A lattice of carbon nanotubes can store hydrogen at high densities, and without the need for extreme cold. So if our spacecraft of the future already uses nanotubes as an ultra-lightweight structural material, could those tubes also be loaded up with hydrogen to serve as radiation shielding? Scientists are looking into the possibility.
Left: When high-energy cosmic rays crash into astronauts' DNA, it can cause damage leading to cancers or other radiation-induced illnesses. Images courtesy NASA's Office of Biological and Physical Research.
Going one step further, layers of this structural material could be laced with atoms of other elements that are good at filtering out other forms of radiation: boron and lithium to handle the neutrons, and aluminum to sop up electrons, for example.
Camping Out in the Cosmos
Earth's surface is mostly safe from cosmic radiation, but other planets are not so lucky. Mars, for example, doesn't have a strong global magnetic field to deflect radiation particles, and its atmospheric blanket is 140 times thinner than Earth's. These two differences make the radiation dose on the Martian surface about one-third as intense as in unprotected open space. Future Mars explorers will need radiation shielding.
"We can't take most of the materials with us for a long-term shelter because of the weight consideration. So one thing we're working on is how to make radiation-shielding materials from the elements that we find there," says Sheila Thibeault, a scientist at LaRC who specializes in radiation shielding.
Right: Astronauts setting up camp on Mars will need protection from space radiation. Image credit:Frassanito and Associates, Inc.
One possible solution is "Mars bricks." Thibeault explains: "Astronauts could produce radiation-resistant bricks from materials available locally on Mars, and use them to build shelters." They might, for example, combine the sand-like "regolith" that covers the Martian surface with a polymer made on-site from carbon dioxide and water, both abundant on the red planet. Zapping this mixture with microwaves creates plastic-looking bricks that double as good radiation shielding.
"By using microwaves, we can make these bricks quickly using very little energy or equipment," she explains. "And the polymer we would use adds to the radiation-shielding properties of the regolith."
Mars shelters would need the reliability of self-sensing materials, the durability of self-healing materials, and the weight savings of multi-functional materials. In other words, a house on Mars and a good spacecraft need many of the same things. All of these are being considered by researchers, Thibeault says.
The Folks Back Home
Mind-boggling advanced materials will come in handy on Earth, too.
"NASA's research is certainly focused on aerospace vehicles," notes Anna McGowan, manager of NASA's Morphing Project (an advanced materials research effort at the Langley Research Center). "However, the basic science could be used in many other areas. There could be millions of spin-offs."
Left: Crafted from smart materials, tomorrow's airplanes could have self-bending wings that operate without flaps -- thus reducing drag and lowering fuel costs. [more]
But not yet. Most advanced materials lack the engineering refinement needed for a polished, robust product. They're not ready for primetime. Even so, say researchers, it's only a matter of time: Eventually that car salesman will stop laughing ... and start selling your space-age dream machine.
|Web Links
Buck Rogers, Watch Out! -- Science@NASA article: NASA researchers are studying insects and birds, and using "smart" materials with uncanny properties to develop new and mindboggling aircraft designs.
Samples of the Future -- Science@NASA article: The advanced space ships of tomorrow will be crafted from far-out materials with extraordinary resistance to the harsh environment of space. The Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE) aims to find out which materials work best.
Right: Backdropped by the rising Sun, MISSE juts into space outside the International Space Station. [more]
Digging in and taking cover -- Science@NASA article: Lunar and Martian dirt could provide radiation shielding for crews on future missions. See also "Making Mars Bricks."
Center for Nanotechnology (CNT) -- at NASA's Ames Research Center.
Needs of future missions -- listing of technologies needed for future space exploration and some possible solutions, from the CNT.
Nanotube Links: Nanotubes & Buckyballs (Nanotechnology Now); Carbon nanotubes (Penn State University); Johnson Space Center Nanotube Project (NASA).
Research in molecular electronics: a nano-scale transistor from IBM; a simple logic gate made from nanowires; a customizable nanotube for wires or structures from Purdue University.
Space Weather on Mars -- Science@NASA article: Future human explorers of Mars can leave their umbrellas back on Earth, but perhaps they shouldn't forget their Geiger counters! A NASA experiment en route to the Red Planet aims to find out.