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NEWS
Mar 8, 2009 19:03:16 GMT 4
Post by towhom on Mar 8, 2009 19:03:16 GMT 4
What Determines The Size Of Giant Dunes?ScienceDaily Mar. 8, 2009www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090304133400.htmPhysicists at the Laboratory of Physics and Mechanics of Heterogeneous Media (CNRS / Université Paris Diderot / ESPCI ParisTech / Université Pierre et Marie Curie) have shown, in collaboration with scientists from the US and Algeria, that the size of giant dunes is controlled by the depth of the atmospheric convective boundary layer. More specifically, the physicists have shown that such dunes grow through the accumulation of small superimposed dunes, and that their growth is limited by interaction with a part of the atmosphere called the inversion layer, which confines wind flow around the dunes. The dynamics of dunes are the result of the interaction between the wind, which by transporting sand grains remodels their shape, and the shape of the dune which, in return, controls atmospheric flow. Dunes can take the form of crescents, stars or parallel waves. The smallest dunes appear spontaneously in the form of waves on the sand's surface, with a distance between their crests of a few tens of meters. Physicists have previously shown that this basic size is controlled by the inertia of the grain, which itself depends on the size and density of the grain as well as the density of the fluid sand. This time, the aim of the researchers was to understand what determines the size of the biggest dunes. They first measured the distance between giant dunes in all the world's deserts by means of satellite images. This distance varies from an average of 300 meters for coastal deserts (along the coasts of Namibia or Peru, for example) to 3,500 meters in the interior of continents (in central China or in the two Great Ergs in Algeria). This difference in size is linked to the vertical structure of the atmosphere. The lowest layer is the convective boundary layer, which is directly in contact with the Earth's surface: at this level, warming of the ground by the Sun gives rise to thermal convection. Above this, a thin layer called the inversion layer (1) separates the convective layer from the stable part of the atmosphere, located at higher altitude. The researchers showed that giant dunes form by gradual accumulation of smaller wind-driven structures. This growth process would be unlimited but for the fact that the dunes end up interacting with the inversion layer. This is because the inversion layer confines wind flow around the dunes. As a result, the dunes stabilize at a size that corresponds to the altitude of the inversion layer (or the depth of the convective layer). To obtain this result the researchers used a novel method to estimate the height of the inversion layer. It turns out that the greater the variation in annual temperature, the greater is the height of the inversion layer. For instance, in an oceanic climate, where temperatures only vary by a few degrees between winter and summer, the inversion layer is on average located at an altitude of a few hundreds of meters. This is precisely the order of magnitude of the size of giant dunes in coastal deserts. Conversely, in a continental climate, where temperatures vary greatly over the year, the inversion layer is located several kilometers above the ground, which is the order of magnitude of continental giant dunes. By combining field measurements, remote sensing and aerodynamic calculations, the scientists have shown the existence of a proportionality relationship between the size of giant dunes and the mean depth of the convective layer, regardless of the shape of the dunes. This interdisciplinary work has made it possible to better understand the phenomena at work when sediments such as sand interact with a fluid (in this case, the atmosphere). (1) This is where fair-weather cumulus clouds form.Journal reference: Andreotti et al. Giant aeolian dune size determined by the average depth of the atmospheric boundary layer. Nature, 2009; 457 (7233): 1120 DOI: 10.1038/nature07787 Adapted from materials provided by CNRS (Délégation Paris Michel-Ange), via AlphaGalileo.
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NEWS
Mar 8, 2009 19:07:28 GMT 4
Post by towhom on Mar 8, 2009 19:07:28 GMT 4
New Zealand And New Caledonia Geographically Connected: Ocean's Journey Towards The Center Of The EarthScienceDaily Mar. 8, 2009www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090305091042.htmA Monash geoscientist and a team of international researchers have discovered the existence of an ocean floor was destroyed 50 to 20 million years ago, proving that New Caledonia and New Zealand are geographically connected. Using new computer modelling programs Wouter Schellart and the team reconstructed the prehistoric cataclysm that took place when a tectonic plate between Australia and New Zealand was subducted 1100 kilometres into the Earth's interior and at the same time formed a long chain of volcanic islands at the surface. Mr Schellart conducted the research, published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, in collaboration with Brian Kennett from ANU (Canberra) and Wim Spakman and Maisha Amaru from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "Until now many geologists have only looked at New Caledonia and New Zealand separately and didn't see a connection, Mr Schellart said. "In our new reconstruction, which looked at a much larger region including eastern Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and New Guinea, we saw a large number of similarities between New Caledonia and northern New Zealand in terms of geology, structure, volcanism and timing of geological events. "We then searched deep within the Earth for proof of a connection and found the evidence 1100 km below the Tasman Sea in the form of a subducted tectonic plate. "We combined reconstructions of the tectonic plates that cover the Earth's surface with seismic tomography [/li][li][/sup][/b][/color], a technique that allows one to look deep into the Earth's interior using seismic waves that travel through the Earth's interior to map different regions. "We are now able to say a tectonic plate about 70 km thick, some 2500 km long and 700 km wide was subducted into the Earth's interior. "The discovery means there was a geographical connection between New Caledonia and New Zealand between 50 and 20 million years ago by a long chain of volcanic islands. This could be important for the migration of certain plant and animal species at that time," Mr Schellart said. Mr Schellart said the new discovery diffuses the debate about whether the continents and micro-continents in the Southwest Pacific have been completely separated since 100 million years ago and helps to explain some of the mysteries surrounding evolution in the region. "As geologists present more data, and computer modelling programs become more hi-tech, it is likely we will learn more about our Earth's history and the processes of evolution." Adapted from materials provided by Monash University.[/li][li][/sup] I wonder what type of seismic tomography they used?[/b][/color]
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NEWS
Mar 8, 2009 22:33:21 GMT 4
Post by towhom on Mar 8, 2009 22:33:21 GMT 4
Protein helps immune cells to divide and conquerEurekAlert Public Release: 8-Mar-2009www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-03/uoc--phi030609.phpResearchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have identified a key protein that is required for immune cells called B lymphocytes to divide and replicate themselves. The rapid generation of large numbers of these immune cells is critical to the body's antibody defense mechanism. However, when B cells grow unchecked, it can lead to immune cell cancers such as multiple myeloma or, when they grow to attack the wrong targets, to autoimmune disease. By discovering the role of the CD98hc protein, scientists may find new therapy targets for such diseases. The study from the laboratory of Mark H. Ginsberg, MD., professor of medicine, will be published online March 8 in advance of print in Nature Immunology. It describes why CD98hc is essential in order for B lymphocytes to transition into antibody-secreting cells. It also describes how this relates to the protein's role in the signaling ability of integrins – a large family of adhesion molecules that transfer information between the inside and outside of a cell. According to first author Joseph Cantor, PhD, UC San Diego School of Medicine, scientists have known for nearly 25 years that CD98hc, common to all vertebrates, probably played a role in their adaptive immune system, but it wasn't known how this protein functioned. "This protein was used as a marker of activation because it was found in low levels on resting lymphocytes," said Cantor. "But when B or T lymphocytes were stimulated by antigens – for instance, to protect the body against bacteria – levels of CD98hc went up 20 fold." The scientists generated a mouse model lacking the CD98hc protein in B lymphocytes. When vaccinated, these mice were unable to mount a normal antibody response to the pathogen. Cantor says this was the first clue to the researchers of the protein's importance. "In purifying B lymphocytes without the CD98hc protein, we discovered that the lymphocytes couldn't divide rapidly," Cantor said, adding that this proved the protein was essential to expanding the number of immune cells, a necessary step in the immune response. While deletion of the protein didn't impair early B cell activation, it did inhibit later activation of elements along the signaling pathway that push the cell forward to divide. "Since B cells can't rapidly divide and replicate without CD98hc, perhaps by blocking this protein we could stop the unchecked growth of B lymphocyte cells that can result in cancer or block misdirected B cell attacks that can cause certain autoimmune diseases," said Ginsberg. The CD98hc protein functions in cells by helping to transmit integrin signals, as well as transporting amino acids – the building blocks of proteins – into the cell. But the scientists didn't know which, if either, of these functions was related to the protein's role in the rapid division of immune cells. By replacing normal CD98hc in B cells with a version that lacked one or the other of these two functions, they discovered that the integrin-binding domain of this protein is required, but the amino acid transport function is dispensable for B cell proliferation. "CD98hc interacts with certain integrin subunits to prompt signaling events that control cell migration, survival and proliferation. Our study shows that the rapid proliferation of B cells, necessary for the body to fight infection, is aided by the CD98hc protein's support of integrin signaling," Cantor said. Additional contributors to this paper include Cecille D. Brown and Robert C. Rickert of the Burnham Institute; Raphael Ruppert and Reinhard Fässler of the Max Planck Institutte, Germany; and Chloé C. Féral, Nice-Sophia Antipolis University, France. This work was supported by National Institutes of Health grants; Joseph Cantor is a post-doctoral fellow of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
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NEWS
Mar 8, 2009 22:39:07 GMT 4
Post by towhom on Mar 8, 2009 22:39:07 GMT 4
It's raining pentagonsEurekAlert Public Release: 8-Mar-2009www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-03/ucl-irp030509.phpThis week's Nature Materials (09 March 2009) reveals how an international team of scientists led by researchers at the London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN) at UCL have discovered a novel one dimensional ice chain structure built from pentagons that may prove to be a step toward the development of new materials which can be used to seed clouds and cause rain. Although the structure of regular ice is well known at the macroscale, its structures are much more mysterious and less well understood at the nanoscale - particularly when ice forms at an interface with matter as is the case in the higher atmosphere on particles of dust. "For the first time, we have shown that ice can build an extended one dimensional chain structure entirely from pentagons and not hexagons" says Dr Michaelides. "This discovery leads to fundamental new understanding about the nature of hydrogen bonding at interfaces (there is no a priori rule that hexagons should form) and suggests that when people are searching for new ice nucleating agents which can be used to seed clouds and cause rain, they do not necessarily need to focus on materials that have hexagonal surfaces - other types of surfaces may be good too." Ice structures are usually built out of simple hexagonal arrangements of water molecules and this hexagonal building block motif is easily observed in the structures of snowflakes. However, during their studies Dr Angelos Michaelides and co-workers from the Fritz Haber Institute, Berlin, and the University of Liverpool have discovered a natural nanoscale ice structure formed of pentagons. "It is important to understand the structure of ice on the nanoscale, and in particular up against solid surfaces because this is how ice crystals form," explains the paper's first author Dr Javier Carrasco. "We need to understand the structure of ice crystals in the upper atmosphere because they play an important role in the formation of clouds and precipitation." The formation of nanoscale ice crystals (i.e. nucleation) plays a key role in fields as diverse as atmospheric chemistry and biology. Ice nucleation on metal surfaces affords an opportunity to watch this process unfold at the molecular-scale on a well defined, plane interface. A common feature of structural models for such films of ice is that they are built from hexagonal arrangements of molecules. In order to address the challenge of characterising ice on the nanoscale, the team from the LCN joined up with a team of experimentalists from the University of Liverpool (lead by Professor Andrew Hodgson) to examine ice formation on a very well defined, atomically flat copper surface. The Liverpool group performed scanning tunneling microscopy experiments and the LCN and Berlin teams carried out ab initio calculations to predict what the microscopy results would be. Only through the combination of these two state-of-the-art approaches were they able to definitively show that the ice structures that form are made from pentagons.
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NEWS
Mar 9, 2009 0:52:02 GMT 4
Post by satchmo on Mar 9, 2009 0:52:02 GMT 4
Giant drill probes land time forgot 08 March 2009 By Kate Foster A FROZEN, pitch-black world buried under two miles of ice for millions of years could hold the answer to one of the greatest mysteries in the universe. Scientists have been given the go-ahead to drill through the Antarctic ice sheet and search a prehistoric lake trapped beneath for signs of life. If the British team find what they are looking for in 300ft-deep Lake Ellsworth it will be one of theADVERTISEMENTgreatest discoveries of modern times, providing further evidence that life can exist on distant worlds without a sun's light and heat. The scientists are led by Professor Martin Siegert, head of the School of GeoSciences at Edinburgh University, the principal investigator and an Antarctica expert. The team will use specially-designed drilling equipment to explore the lake in West Antarctica, which is thought to be the size of Windermere and have a bed covered in thick sediment. Experts believe it is a strong candidate for supporting microbial life. Siegert said: "It is a dark, cold place that has been sealed from the outside world, and it's likely to contain unique forms of life. "Microbiologists think deep-water subglacial lakes are unique extreme environments where unusual microbes might adapt and survive. These environments may be the closest analogues on Earth to (Jupiter's moon] Europa, which has a thick icy crust above a liquid ocean," he added. "We hope to discover more about how life can exist in extreme environments and how Antarctica has changed in the past, which might help us to understand more about other places on earth." The £6m project will begin in 2012 when the team break into the lake with a pair of probes designed to capture living organisms, or the chemical signs of life. It will be the first time any nation has explored the subglacial lakes of Antarctica, of which there are around 150. There have been concerns the project could pollute the area and ruin the lake. But the probes are especially designed to be sterile to prevent microbial contamination from the surface, by using hot water to melt the ice as the drill penetrates the ice sheet. The British team, which has been working on the project for a decade, has been in a race against a similar Russian project to penetrate Lake Vostok in east Antarctica. However the Russian project has run into difficulties. The subglacial lakes of Antarctica remain unfrozen due to geothermal heat rising from deep underground and the immense pressure of the ice pushing down on the water which acts as an insulating blanket. The water remains liquid at -1 to -2C. It is thought that lifeforms may have survived despite the total darkness by consuming organic detritus and other nutrients that accumulated in the sediment many millennia ago. The focus of the search for extraterrestrial life has been on Europa because liquid water is necessary for life and Europa is believed to have an ocean of water beneath a thick crust of ice. Nasa plans to send a fleet of spacecraft to Europa within the next decade to survey the moon. Although the surface of Europa is at -160C it is thought the water underneath is prevented from freezing by tectonic friction caused by the tug of gravitational forces between Jupiter and its dozens of moons. Mineral-rich hot water vents would be spewing nutrients into Europa's ocean, providing any life that is there with food and energy. news.scotsman.com/world/Giant-drill-probes-land-time.5050079.jpsatchmo
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NEWS
Mar 9, 2009 2:46:17 GMT 4
Post by nodstar on Mar 9, 2009 2:46:17 GMT 4
ANNOUNCEMENT from EAGLES DISOBEY[/size][/b] Hi Everyone .. Here's an update from Dan on how things are proceeding Peace Out Nodstar*
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NEWS
Mar 9, 2009 3:34:18 GMT 4
Post by nodstar on Mar 9, 2009 3:34:18 GMT 4
A call to the women of this forum ..[/size][/b]
As some of you know ..there is a forum where the negatives reside and roll around in their own filth, while co opting Dan's story, spreading slander, disinformation, and general dreck.
Marcia, Caspa, and myself are often the topic of the day.
These men, amuse and titillate themselves with base fantasies about us and actually post their wet dreams.
This is an overt form of sexual abuse and an outright display of masogyny.
Today an elderly member of that group posted a fantasy about my being the the victim of a gang rape by them.
After a great deal of thought I contacted the appropriate agencies in the US and here in Oz .
WHY did I do that ?
Well, normally I consider a response beneath my dignity. Women everywhere deserve the right to protest and file legitimate complaints about sexual abuse and violence, RAPE is the tool of male oppression in word and deed.
Today I struck a blow for internet violence, and a womans right to stand and be counted among those who will no longer tolerate this form of abuse.
If any of you can recommend any other appropriate agencies in the US and Canada where my complaint will be filed and dealt with, I would appreciate you PMing me with the address and phone number.
Peace Out
Nodstar*
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NEWS
Mar 9, 2009 4:21:21 GMT 4
Post by towhom on Mar 9, 2009 4:21:21 GMT 4
A call to the women of this forum .. [/size][/b] As some of you know ..there is a forum where the negatives reside and roll around in their own filth, while co opting Dan's story, spreading slander, disinformation, and general dreck. Marcia Caspa and myself are often the topic of the day. These men, amuse and titillate themselves with base fantasies about us and actually post their wet dreams. This is an overt form of sexual abuse and an outright display of masogyny. Today an elderly member of that group posted a fantasy about my being the the victim of a gang rape by them. After a great deal of thought I contacted the appropriate agencies in the US and here in Oz . WHY did I do that ? Well, normally I consider a response beneath my dignity. Women everywhere deserve the right to protest and file legitimate complaints about sexual abuse and violence, RAPE is the tool of male oppression in word and deed. Today I struck a blow for internet violence, and a womans right to stand and be counted among those who will no longer tolerate this form of abuse. If any of you can recommend any other appropriate agencies in the US and Canada where my complaint will be filed and dealt with, I would appreciate you PMing me with the address and phone number. Peace Out Nodstar* [/quote] Hi Nodstar,
I will contact my sibling "The Police Chief" who is on 3 National Comittees for contact information and send it to you. It may take a few days - The Chief is quite busy - but I will get back to you.
You are right - normally I ignore idiots and their sick perversions.
This is getting out of hand and will not be tolerated.
Peace to You Always
Sally Anne
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NEWS
Mar 9, 2009 5:27:55 GMT 4
Post by towhom on Mar 9, 2009 5:27:55 GMT 4
U.S. meetings industry fights back against criticsNewsDaily Posted 2009/03/08 at 1:48 pm EDTwww.newsdaily.com/stories/tre5271i4-us-financial-usa-meetings/ORLANDO, FL — The $175 billion U.S. corporate meetings industry is fighting back against a torrent of negative publicity and cancellations that has cost it billions of dollars, industry leaders said on Sunday. The U.S. Travel Association has launched a campaign to reverse setbacks to the industry caused in part by a perception that expensive meetings are decadent given the worst U.S. recession in decades. The campaign will focus on explaining the impact on employment in the hotel and leisure sector of decline in the industry and resisting any attempt by government to regulate where and when companies can hold meetings. Criticism by government officials and journalists of lavish meetings for top executives at top-dollar destinations has triggered a drastic overall reduction in demand for meetings. Insurance giant AIG ran into a storm of negative publicity in October when it flew top independent brokers and some of its executives to California for a lavish week-long retreat shortly after it received an $85 billion government bailout. Brokers had earned the trip based on their sales before the bailout. Since then, thousands of companies have canceled conferences doing particular damage to leading destinations such as Las Vegas and Orlando, Florida. Business in Orlando would be 25 percent down this year, said the Orange County/Orlando Convention and Visitors Bureau. "Corrosive rhetoric ... coming from some of our elected officials in Washington will continue to lead the ... meetings market to a point where we as hospitality CEOs will be forced to lay off hundreds of thousands of ... workers," said Jonathan Tisch, chairman and chief executive of New York-based Loews Hotels. Those jobs "are integral to the communities they live in," said Tisch, whose company operates 18 hotels in the United States and two in Canada. In one example, Tisch said, meeting business was down 40 percent so far in 2009 from the similar period in 2008 at his Loews Lake Las Vegas Resort, one of the premier meeting hotels in the country. Meetings represent 60 percent of the hotel's revenues and the hotel is expecting to conduct a second round of layoffs. U.S. President Barack Obama piled pressure on the sector when he said last month companies getting government bailout money "shouldn't be going off to Las Vegas or the Super Bowl" on taxpayer dollars, Tisch said. "After he made that comment, you saw a cascading effect with the cancellations of meetings," Tisch said. 'WORSE THAN 9/11'The industry employs 1 million people, and indirectly employs 2.4 million, according to USTA. The criticism has put particular pressure on venues viewed as decadent, said Bob Gilbert, chief executive of the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International, which represents the interests of hotels and other vendors to the travel industry. "Never before have we seen as much concern in the corporate world about the perception of the venue or location where the organization is holding a meeting," Gilbert said. Roger Dow, president of USTA, a coalition of eight meeting-and-convention industry organizations, said, "The situation is worse than 9/11." Some 52 percent of meeting planners at companies that have not received government bailout money have reduced meeting budgets for this year because of "bailout backlash", according to industry trade magazine Meetings & Conventions. One in five said they had canceled meetings, the report said. I take exception to parts of the "corrosive rhetoric" used in this industry's response to the outpouring of outrage not only from the "Hill of Beans" (who should have had more sense to add oversight and guidelines to the original bailout package and are now trying to place the blame elsewhere), President Obama (who inherited this mess) and the TAXPAYERS.
Let's be honest here, okay. The prices for many of these "conventions" are inflated and outrageous. You know it and I know it. I worked for a company - a very large company - that threw these types of "awards ceremonies". I was appalled then and I am appalled now. Why? Because I won awards that were based on a team effort - not just my work - everyone that worked with me and for me. I was reprimanded (yeah, yelled at) because I took their stupid money every time and distributed it to my "team". Without their efforts and hard work I was just another employee.
It's not the industry - it's the concept that the "privileged few" get the goods. That's part of the greed mindset that is pushed in our faces day in and day out. And to add salt to the wounds many of us feel right now, these corporations are still at it using funds "awarded via bailout" and fight disclosing their questionable accounting practices.
These same taxpayers, who are unemployed or having their salaries reduced, are not going on vacation to your "resorts" - aren't you concerned about that? One would think that would be the first priority on your list...not your overpriced, outlandish blahblahblahs for the corporate elite.
You may want to consider this - technology is in place right now that can replace this type of convention. Virtual tele-conferencing is the wave. With quantum encryption right around the corner (I say that because we're not supposed to know some already have a form of this in place right now), leaving the office will not be necessary.
You need to re-think and re-direct your energies to a more positive path that includes everyone.
Peace and Joy Always
Sally Anne
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NEWS
Mar 9, 2009 5:40:40 GMT 4
Post by vishvasattva on Mar 9, 2009 5:40:40 GMT 4
It's raining pentagonsEurekAlert Public Release: 8-Mar-2009www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-03/ucl-irp030509.phpThis week's Nature Materials (09 March 2009) reveals how an international team of scientists led by researchers at the London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN) at UCL have discovered a novel one dimensional ice chain structure built from pentagons that may prove to be a step toward the development of new materials which can be used to seed clouds and cause rain. Although the structure of regular ice is well known at the macroscale, its structures are much more mysterious and less well understood at the nanoscale - particularly when ice forms at an interface with matter as is the case in the higher atmosphere on particles of dust. "For the first time, we have shown that ice can build an extended one dimensional chain structure entirely from pentagons and not hexagons" says Dr Michaelides. "This discovery leads to fundamental new understanding about the nature of hydrogen bonding at interfaces (there is no a priori rule that hexagons should form) and suggests that when people are searching for new ice nucleating agents which can be used to seed clouds and cause rain, they do not necessarily need to focus on materials that have hexagonal surfaces - other types of surfaces may be good too." Ice structures are usually built out of simple hexagonal arrangements of water molecules and this hexagonal building block motif is easily observed in the structures of snowflakes. However, during their studies Dr Angelos Michaelides and co-workers from the Fritz Haber Institute, Berlin, and the University of Liverpool have discovered a natural nanoscale ice structure formed of pentagons. "It is important to understand the structure of ice on the nanoscale, and in particular up against solid surfaces because this is how ice crystals form," explains the paper's first author Dr Javier Carrasco. "We need to understand the structure of ice crystals in the upper atmosphere because they play an important role in the formation of clouds and precipitation." The formation of nanoscale ice crystals (i.e. nucleation) plays a key role in fields as diverse as atmospheric chemistry and biology. Ice nucleation on metal surfaces affords an opportunity to watch this process unfold at the molecular-scale on a well defined, plane interface. A common feature of structural models for such films of ice is that they are built from hexagonal arrangements of molecules. In order to address the challenge of characterising ice on the nanoscale, the team from the LCN joined up with a team of experimentalists from the University of Liverpool (lead by Professor Andrew Hodgson) to examine ice formation on a very well defined, atomically flat copper surface. The Liverpool group performed scanning tunneling microscopy experiments and the LCN and Berlin teams carried out ab initio calculations to predict what the microscopy results would be. Only through the combination of these two state-of-the-art approaches were they able to definitively show that the ice structures that form are made from pentagons. AHA! More validation for my theory that water tastes better from a hexagonal (6-sided) glass! It's the only shape of glass I drink water from.
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NEWS
Mar 9, 2009 5:59:50 GMT 4
Post by towhom on Mar 9, 2009 5:59:50 GMT 4
AHA! More validation for my theory that water tastes better from a hexagonal (6-sided) glass! It's the only shape of glass I drink water from. Hiya vishvasattva!
You know, I had some thoughts on why it was necessary to change from the hexagonal to the pentagonal shape. For some reason, this article is raising some bells with me.
The pentagon is a powerful shape, but the hexagon provides a more balanced power, which (to me) is better.
Any thoughts?
Peace and Joy Always
Sally Anne
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NEWS
Mar 9, 2009 6:08:26 GMT 4
Post by towhom on Mar 9, 2009 6:08:26 GMT 4
Well, oh omnipotent one... This is the year of our Lord, 2009 AD not 2009 BCVatican: The washing machine liberated womenThe Independent Sunday, 8 March 2009www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vatican-the-washing-machine-liberated-women-1640134.htmlAs International Women’s Day is celebrated, the Vatican had a novel message for the women of the world: give thanks for the washing machine. This humble domestic appliance had done more for the women’s liberation movement than the contraceptive pill or working outside the home, said the the official Vatican newspaper, Osservatore Romano. “In the 20th century, what contributed most to the emancipation of Western women?” questioned the article. “The debate is still open. Some say it was the pill, others the liberalisation of abortion, or being able to work outside the home. Others go even further: the washing machine.” The article is entitled, “The washing machine and the emancipation of women: put in the powder, close the lid and relax”, taking its name from the Washy Talky, the Electrolux bilingual-talking washing-machine launched in India seven years ago, which would remind the absent-minded housewife how to use the appliance. The Catholic Church was never likely to laud the pill for its transformative power on women’s lives. Since Pope Benedict became the leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics, he has published a religious document condemning contraception for “negating the intimate truth of conjugal love, with which the divine gift [of life] is communicated” and has urged pharmacists to refuse to dispense the morning-after pill. The Osservatore Romano held the pill responsible for polluting the environment and contributing to male infertility. Personally I think the "swing set" and cyclone fencing were the most liberating inventions for women who used the "acceptable birth control practices" and ended up with large families. Mom would send us outside in the yard to play so she could use her "liberating washing machine" to do at least 10 loads of laundry - 3 of which were diapers only.
Thank you for your thoughts. It did provide comic relief.
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Mar 9, 2009 11:23:09 GMT 4
Post by jack on Mar 9, 2009 11:23:09 GMT 4
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NEWS
Mar 9, 2009 14:02:10 GMT 4
Post by dan on Mar 9, 2009 14:02:10 GMT 4
A call to the women of this forum .. [/size][/b] As some of you know ..there is a forum where the negatives reside and roll around in their own filth, while co opting Dan's story, spreading slander, disinformation, and general dreck. Marcia, Caspa, and myself are often the topic of the day. These men, amuse and titillate themselves with base fantasies about us and actually post their wet dreams. This is an overt form of sexual abuse and an outright display of masogyny. Today an elderly member of that group posted a fantasy about my being the the victim of a gang rape by them. After a great deal of thought I contacted the appropriate agencies in the US and here in Oz . WHY did I do that ? Well, normally I consider a response beneath my dignity. Women everywhere deserve the right to protest and file legitimate complaints about sexual abuse and violence, RAPE is the tool of male oppression in word and deed. Today I struck a blow for internet violence, and a womans right to stand and be counted among those who will no longer tolerate this form of abuse. If any of you can recommend any other appropriate agencies in the US and Canada where my complaint will be filed and dealt with, I would appreciate you PMing me with the address and phone number. Peace Out Nodstar* [/quote] Noddy, we are calling you in the morning. We are here for you. The whole Eagles Team is now aware.
Dan
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NEWS
Mar 9, 2009 16:31:48 GMT 4
Post by fr33ksh0w2012 on Mar 9, 2009 16:31:48 GMT 4
This is a SAD thing to do Makes all men look EVIL and we are NOT THAT!!
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