As someone who spent a great deal of my youth watching black and white images of Americans in amazingly puffy space suits bounce around the lunar surface, now watching Russian rockets taking our astronauts into space is a bit disheartening.
Of course, since the Obama administration’s mission for NASA is to pay highly trained scientists to drink coffee and play Spider Solitaire, I shouldn’t be surprised.Of course, NASA wasn’t always like this. Our space agency put men on the moon, landed probes on the planet Mars, and when confronted with space station Skylab falling to earth in a fiery ball, it made darn sure this 100-ton piece of metal fell on an entirely different country.
That’s why the news story made me feel proud of our space program again.Thirty-four years after NASA sent the twin Voyager spacecrafts toward interstellar space, they’re still working. Seriously, these three decades-old space probes with less computing power than a digital wristwatch are sending back data and pictures from the EDGE OF THE GALAXY.
Voyager recently beamed NASA information on radiation from interstellar space scientists are using to figure out the nature of the earliest stars in the universe. Amazing.
There might now be one less reason to kick the office vending machine — consumers will soon be able to pay for their snacks with a smartphone, as well as send real-time complaints about their Snickers stuck in a spiral.
Cantaloupe Systems, a Bay Area-based start-up that provides tech services for vending machine operators, has been working to deploy near field communication-enabled payment terminals at vending machines in San Francisco, Chicago and the mid-Atlantic region.
But not for hungry Apple iPhone users, since the NFC technology that is being installed only works with Google’s one-tap payments app for Android-based smartphones, called Google Wallet.Cantaloupe co-founder Anant Agrawal said that Google Wallet-equipped vending machines will feature prominent stickers so consumers know which machines work with the app, and that eventually operators and even Google could send coupons and rewards to users as they purchase snacks.
For vending operators in the U.S. — there have long been such technologies in places like Japan — one-tap mobile phone payment could be a much-needed boost. From 2008 to 2010, vending machine sales fell 18 percent to $19.25 billion, according to an industry report from Automatic Merchandiser.
This is attributed mainly to a high U.S. unemployment rate — fewer people working means fewer people in offices, and office purchases account for 80 percent of all vending machine spending. Consumers are apparently not buying snacks at theme parks and airports, either.
The French machine tool builder Huron Graffenstaden SAS is offering a “new generation” five-axis machines with a table inclined to 55°, rather than 45°, meaning that negative machining angles of up to -20° are possible. As such, the developer makes clear, the angle of the spindle axis in relation to the table ranges from 0 to 110° compared with 90° for the previous generation of five-axis machines.
This new range of machines is recommended for roughing and finishing operations in five simultaneous axes and on five faces, and meets all the technical and economic challenges facing engineering companies in the aeronautics, automotive, medical and energy sectors, according to Huron. It claimed the different approach reduces process times and cuts manufacturing costs. Performance levels in roughing, finishing and precision work make it possible to achieve the most ambitious targets for productivity, with respect to machining complex parts like injection molds, aeronautical components, or parts used in precision mechanics.
The architecture of the K3X 8 Five high-speed 5-axis milling center consists of a fixed gantry and bed and a 500-mm diameter table that rotates and tilts A- and can take up to 250 kg. As a result, it is capable of machining in five continuous axes on five faces. The machine’s “combination of dynamics and precision” results in very high quality surface finishes, Huron stated.
The standard spindle will achieve a speed of 24,000 rpm with a torque of 40 Nm for 25 kW.This milling center also offers great accessibility with good visibility of the work area. Heavy workpieces can be lowered from above the machine with ease thanks to the wide enclosure opening.
The two struggled after Ringo made threatening gestures with the gun, and the co-owner — whom police did not identify — managed to escape from the office unharmed and flee the building.
Around the same time, a worker in the building called police to report a burglary. When officers arrived, Ringo was located and the building was evacuated, Brock said.SWAT team negotiators first tried to talk to Ringo by phone, but the building’s phone lines were soon “compromised” by Ringo, Brock said.
Not long after that, authorities discovered that a Bergen County Police officer knew Ringo from frequent stops at the gas station prior to the incident, authorities said. The officer was brought to the scene to communicate with Ringo, but Ringo initially refused to reply to negotiators’ overtures.
After a “long time,” Ringo began to respond to the officer, who convinced Ringo to give up with no resistance, Brock said.Khalet Ringo, 63, of Hasbrouck Heights turned himself into SWAT team negotiators just after 1:30 p.m. Ringo had been holed up in a first floor office with a 9mm handgun, duct tape and a knife, authorities said. No shots were fired during the standoff, police said.
The incident began around 11 a.m. when Ringo, a longtime employee of an Exxon station on Route 17 north, walked into the building, at 13 Sunflower Ave., and the office of the station’s co-owner, said Chief Christopher J. Brock of the Paramus police. Ringo spoke briefly to the co-owner before producing the black semi-automatic pistol from his waistband, Brock said.
The new Machine Gun Kelly video really ought to come with some sort of “don’t try this at home” disclaimer. Then again, it’s for a song called ‘Wild Boy,’ so it’s fairly obvious this Cleveland rapper isn’t holding himself up as an exemplar of dignified behavior.
As the visuals open, Kelly is front-flipping off of a stage and into the waiting arms of fans, trusting them to catch his heavily tattooed body.The Bad Boy signee proceeds to rap about drinking and getting high, sometimes while waving a homemade torch he’s lit in a bonfire. Midway through the clip, the action jumps from what looks to be a warehouse party to MGK’s girlfriend’s parents’ dining room, where he and fellow rhymer Waka Flocka have been invited to dinner.
Kelly’s girl’s father is less than pleased that his daughter is associating with a couple of tatted-up miscreants, and when he asks Waka what he does for a living, the Atlanta MC smashes a bottle over his head.
After that, the duo plays with more fire, and MGK compares himself to Kurt Cobain. He also identifies with ‘Jackass’ stuntman Steve-O — the king of “don’t try this at home” — who he shouts out throughout the song.
Ongoing efforts to change that dynamic by better distributing the working groups’ tables across the park have been frustrated by the limited number of generators they have to share and the unwillingness of many of the less-active occupiers to clear space for them. Members of the sanitation group say that more than 30% of the occupiers refuse to move their tents at all to accommodate the big weekly cleaning each Thursday. While the so-called Community Watch has significantly expanded in recent days, the sense of disorder has so far persisted, and concern has grown among the organizers, who understand that the scene in the park is — for the millions watching from afar — a symbol of their broader cultural and political ambitions.
The watch, though, has only powers of persuasion and pressure to try and enforce the rules, and no way to remove people from a public park. The police, whom many occupiers see as the enemy and who work under a mayor who’s made no secret of his distaste for the occupiers, have little reason to help them maintain order, and rarely seem to have entered the park over the last week for anything short of an assault. When officers have gone in, a wave of people carrying drugs (or with other reasons to fear arrest) moves away from them while others circle tightly around, cameras out. Even when organizers have requested their intervention, police enter to a mixed chorus of “brutality” and “pig” calls side by side with chanted reminders that “you are the 99%.”
But while officers may be in a no-win situation, at the mercy of orders carried on shifting political winds and locked into conflict with a so-far almost entirely non-violent protest movement eager to frame the force as a symbol of the oppressive system they’re fighting, the NYPD seems to have crossed a line in recent days, as the park has taken on a darker tone with unsteady and unstable types suddenly seeming to emerge from the woodwork. Two different drunks I spoke with last week told me they’d been encouraged to “take it to Zuccotti” by officers who’d found them drinking in other parks, and members of the community affairs working group related several similar stories they’d heard while talking with intoxicated or aggressive new arrivals.
The NYPD’s press office declined to comment on the record about any such policy, but it seems like a logical tactic from a Bloomberg administration that has done its best to make things difficult for the occupation — a way of using its openness against it.
“He’s got a right to express himself, you’ve got a right to express yourself,” I heard three cops repeat in recent days, using nearly identical language, when asked to intervene with troublemakers inside the park, including a clearly disturbed man screaming and singing wildly at 3 a.m. for the second straight night.
Flight NH7871, carrying paying passengers and more than 40 journalists, is scheduled to take off at 12:20 p.m. from Tokyo’s Narita airport before touching down in Hong Kong about 4 1/2 hours later. The 264-seat aircraft will return tomorrow.
Tokyo-based All Nippon sold two business-class seats on the 787, known as the Dreamliner, for about $18,600 in a charity auction to help promote the introduction of the first aircraft largely built from carbon-fiber reinforced materials. The new lightweight technology will reduce fuel costs while also supporting changes designed to improve passenger comfort, including 30 percent bigger windows and higher cabin pressure.The adoption of a largely composite structure is a break- through,” said Nick Cunningham, an aerospace analyst at Agency Partners LLP in London. “It means you can fly between city- pairs that weren’t an economic proposition before, and it should offer benefits for passengers.”
Struggles with the new materials contributed to Boeing delaying the aircraft’s entry into service seven times since 2007. The Chicago-based planemaker was also held up by a greater reliance on subcontractors. The cabin of the 787 is 75 centimeters (30 inches) wider than a 767 and is fitted with bigger luggage compartments and energy-saving light-emitting diode lights, according to All Nippon. The plane also has windows as much as 47 centimeters high and 28 centimeters wide as the composite materials are able to support larger openings than traditional airframes.
“It was bright and very spacious,” ANA President Shinichiro Ito told reporters in Tokyo on Oct. 20, as he described his first flight on the plane. “I could also feel clearly it was a very quiet airliner.”
The composites also mean that the plane is able to support higher cabin-pressure levels than on traditional planes with weaker airframes. That means that the environment is similar to being at 6,000 feet high rather than at 8,000 feet, which passengers find more comfortable, according to ANA’s website.It means standing on top of hill rather than a mountain,” said Cunningham. “That should reduce effects like fatigue when flying.”
On Sept. 23, the U.S House of Representatives passed legislation that would greatly limit government’s ability to curb air pollution.The so called “Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation” would among other things derail two important sets of regulations crucial to protecting the health of Pennsylvanians: The Air Toxics Rule and the Air Transport Rule. These two rules were supported by such diverse groups as Exelon and PennFuture.
The bill would ostensibly require President Obama to set up a committee of Cabinet-level officials to evaluate the effect of a dozen-plus U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations on jobs, electricity, gasoline prices and competitiveness.A key opponent of the bill, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., stated: “Under the guise of asking for more information, the (bill) delays two of the most crucial clean air protections of the last decade. It is a blatant giveaway to polluters that will cost thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars in preventable health care needs.”
The Air Transport Rule would limit power-plant emissions of nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter in 28 states that pollute other states. (About one third of Pennsylvania’s air pollution comes from states west and south of us.) This rule, according to the EPA, would avert 13,000 to 34,000 premature deaths, 400,000 cases of asthma and 19,000 cases of acute bronchitis each year nationwide. This rule was recently finalized and scheduled to go into effect Jan. 1, 2012.
The Air Toxics Rule would limit the discharge of mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel and other air toxics from coal- and oil-fired power plants. According to the EPA, this rule will prevent up to 17,000 premature deaths per year. This rule is expected to be finalized in November and to go into effect Jan. 1, 2015.
On Monday afternoon, Lower Merion police reported to news media the following incidents from the past week:
Public drunkenness: Police said officers were stopped by security staff at Brownies 23 East in Ardmore at 1:45 a.m. Oct. 15 and were told there was a disturbance in the back. Police were told there had been a fight in the bar and the participants ejected. The participants continued to yell and scream outside, according to the report. Police said Kyle Gannon, 22, of the 700 block of Cullinbrook Avenue in Drexel Hill, punched someone in the face. The victim left the scene. Gannon was found to have a blood-alcohol content of .19 and was charged with public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. Police also said Joseph DiBiaggio, 22, of the 4000 block of Redden Road in Drexel Hill, threw a bottle at one of the Brownies security staff members. Police said DiBiaggio had a blood-alcohol content of .16 and was also charged with public drunkenness and disorderly conduct.
Burglary: Police said a silver MacBook, an iPhone and $20 and change were stolen from a home on the 100 block of Grays Lane in the Haverford section of Lower Merion Township between 10 p.m. Oct. 11 and 8 a.m. Oct. 12. The resident went to bed and woke up at 7:30 a.m. to discover the cell phone and laptop, valued at $1,600, missing. A purse was also missing a $20 bill and some change. Cabinets had also been gone through. Police said the burglar gained entry through an unlocked door.
Retail theft: A fur wrap was stolen from the Elizabeth Maar Boutique in Haverford Square at about 3 p.m. Oct. 16, police said. Police said a woman entered the store acting suspiciously, removing items from hangers and putting them back, according to an employee. The woman was standing near the checkout counter when a hanger fell and the woman ran, police said. Missing from the hanger was a fur wrap valued at $400. The woman was last seen getting into a tan Chevy Suburban that was headed southbound on Haverford Station Road. The investigation is continuing, police said.
Theft: Police said an 8-foot length of copper downspout was stolen from a residence on the unit block of Henley Road in Wynnewood sometime between Oct. 1 and Oct. 11, when it was discovered missing.
The report also may talk about how board members should report conflicts of interest. County commissions in those four counties appoint eight NTTA tollway board members — two each and a ninth member is appointed by the governor.Barr’s brother, Andrew Barr, stressed in an e-mail last week that he is “of counsel” with Locke Lord, meaning he isn’t a partner and doesn’t participate in the firm’s profits. “Nor can any single client somehow indirectly influence what I’m paid,” Andrew Barr said, noting that he is just one of about 660 attorneys with Locke Lord.
Kenneth Barr also has prior relationships with the Fort Worth lawyers hired to handle the right of way acquisitions for the Chisholm Trail Parkway, another NTTA project. Another board member, David Denison, has acknowledged having a financial stake in a firm with land in the parkway’s path.
Many critics, including elected leaders, say the agency ought to be subject to a periodic state audit known as a sunset review to ensure that the motoring public’s dollars and trust have not been compromised. During the next year, tollway authority officials estimate that their revenue will increase to $480 million and their debt to $9 billion.
“Too often, the public’s business becomes private business,” said state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth. “Sunset is a way for citizens to hold their agencies accountable.Other state lawmakers say such a review could flag issues leading to the constant turnover in upper management.I’m looking for an analysis of their governance that helps explain why they’ve had five CEOs in five years,” said state Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, who serves on the Sunset Advisory Commission. “That speaks to a government entity with an institutional problem.”