text:
The genes that cause Romanesco, a kind of cauliflower, to grow in a fractal pattern have been identified. Researchers were subsequently able to manipulate one of those genes and get it to function inside another plant—thale cress—producing fractal blooms.
The language used to describe this is interesting in its own right—a vocabulary of memory, transience, perturbation, and abandoned flowering.
In the words of the researchers' abstract, "we found that curd self-similarity arises because the meristems fail to form flowers but keep the 'memory' of their transient passage in a floral state. Additional mutations affecting meristem growth can induce the production of conical structures reminiscent of the conspicuous fractal Romanesco shape. This study reveals how fractal-like forms may emerge from the combination of key, defined perturbations of floral developmental programs and growth dynamics."
It's the fact that this gene appears to function in other plants, though, that is blowing my mind. Give this technique another ten or twenty years, and the resulting experiments—and the subsequent landscapes—seem endless, from gardens of infinitely self-similar roses and orchids to forests populated by bubbling forms of fractal pines, roiling oaks, and ivies.
Until, of course, the gene inevitably escapes, going mobile, infecting insects and animals, producing confused anatomies in fractal landscapes, like minor creatures in a Jeff VanderMeer novel, before breaching the human genome, and oracular multicephalous children are born, their bodies transitioning through monstrosities of self-reminiscence and new limbs, mythological, infinitely incomplete, cursed with endless becoming.
In any case, read more over at ScienceNews, and check out the actual paper at Science.
Author Geoff ManaughPosted on July 9, 2021 Categories BLDGBLOGTags Anatomy, Biology, Bodies, Botany, Cauliflower, Fractal, Genes, Jeff VanderMeer, Landscape Futures, Life, Memory, Mythology, Perturbation, Reminiscence, Romanesco, Science, Science Fiction1 Comment on Fractalize Me
The Age of Horror
[Image: "Clouds, Sun and Sea" (1952) by Max Ernst, courtesy Phillips.]
There's an interesting space where early modern, mostly 19th-century earth sciences overlap with armchair conjectures about the origins of human civilization. It's a mix of pure pseudo-science, science-adjacent speculation, and something more like theology, as writers of the time tried to adjust new geological hypotheses and emerging biological evidence—Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, etc.—to fit with Biblical creation myths and cosmogonic legends borrowed from other cultures. Was there really a Flood? If humans are separate from the animal kingdom, how did we first arrive or appear on Earth?
It is not those particular questions that interest me—although, if I'm being honest, I will happily stay at the table for hours talking with you about the Black Sea deluge hypothesis or the history of Doggerland, two of the most interesting things I've ever read about, and whether or not they might have influenced early human legends of a Flood.
Instead, there are at least two things worth pointing out here. One is that these sorts of people never really went away, they just got jobs at the History Channel.
The other is that impossibly long celestial cycles, ancient astronomical records, the precession of the Earth's poles, and weird, racist ideas about the "fall of Man" all came together into a series of speculations that seem straight out of H.P. Lovecraft.
Take, for example, Sampson Arnold Mackey and his "Age of Horror."
[Image: Diagram from The Mythological Astronomy in Three Parts by Sampson Arnold Mackey.]
As Joscelyn Godwin writes in a book called The Theosophical Enlightenment, Mackey—a shoemaker, not an astronomer—was fascinated by "the inclination of the earth's axis and its changes over long spans of time. Astronomers have known at least since classical times that the Earth's axis rotates once in about 25,920 years, pointing successively at different stars, of which the current one is Polaris, the North Star. One result of this cycle is the 'precession of the equinoxes,' according to which the spring-point of the sun moves around the twelve signs of the zodiac, spending about 2160 years in each sign."
Of course, the assumption that these signs and stars might somehow influence life on Earth is the point at which astronomy morphs into astrology.
Godwin goes on to explain that—contrary to "most astronomers" of his time—Mackey assumed the Earth's precession was dramatic and irregular, to the extent that, as Mackey speculated, "the earth's axis describes not a circle but an alternately expanding and contracting spiral, each turn comprising one cycle of the precession of the equinoxes, and at the same time altering the angle of inclination by four degrees."
The upshot of this is that, at various points in the history of our planet, Mackey believed that the Earth's "inclination was much greater, to the point at which it lay in the same plane as the earth's orbit around the sun."
This sounds inconsequential, but it would have had huge seasonal and climatic effects. For example, Godwin explains, "At the maximum angle, each hemisphere would be pointed directly at the sun day and night during the summer, and pointed away for weeks on end during the winter. These extremes of light and dark, of heat and cold, would be virtually insupportable for life as we know it. In Mackey's words, it was an 'age of horror' for the planet."
The flipside of this, for Mackey, is that the Earth would have gone back and forth, over titanic gulfs of time, between two angular extremes. Specifically, his model required an opposite extreme of planetary rotation in which "there would be no seasons on earth, but a perpetual spring and a 'golden age.' Then the cycle would begin again."
None of this would have been recent: "Mackey dates the Age of Horror at 425,000 years in the past, the Golden Age about a million years ago, and its recurrence 150,000 years from now."
Nevertheless, Godwin writes, "It was essential to [Mackey's] system of mythography that the Age of Horror should have been witnessed and survived by a few human beings, its dreadful memory passing into the mythology of every land."
For Mackey, the implications of this wobble—this dramatic precession between a Golden Age and an Age of Horror, between the darkness of Hell and the sunlight of Paradise—would have been highly significant for the evolution of human civilization.
In other words, either we are coming out of an age of eternal winter and emerging slowly, every minute of the day, every year of the century, into a time of endless sunlight and terrestrial calm, or we are inevitably falling, tipping, losing our planetary balance as we pass into near-permanent night, a frozen Hell of ruined continents and dead seas buried beneath plates of ice.
[Image: The August 2017 total eclipse of the sun, via NASA.]
One of the weirder aspects of all this—something Godwin himself documents in another book, called Arktos—is that these sorts of ideas eventually informed, among other things, Nazi political ideology and even some of today's reactionary alt-right.
The idea that there was once a Hyperborean super-civilization, a lost Aryan race once at home in the Arctic north, lives on. It's what we might call the cult of the fallen Northener.
[Image: "Cairn in Snow" (1807) by Caspar David Friedrich.]
What actually interests me here, though, is the suggestion that planetary mega-cycles far too long for any individual human life to experience might be slowly influencing our myths, our cultures, our consciousness (such as it is).
My point is not to suggest that this is somehow true—to say that astrologers and precession-truthers are right—but simply to say that this is a fascinating idea and it has within it nearly limitless potential for new films, novels, and myths, stories where entirely different ways of thinking emerge on planets with extreme seasonal inclinations or unusual polar relationships to the stars.
[Image: From Pitch Black, via Supernova Condensate.]
Think of the only good scene in an otherwise bad movie, 2000's Pitch Black, where the survivors of a crash on a remote human planetary outpost discover an orrery—a model of the planet they're standing on—inside an abandoned building.
Playing with the model, the survivors realize that the world they've just crashed on is about to be eclipsed by a nearby super-planet, plunging them into a night that will last several months (or weeks or years—I saw the film 20 years ago and don't remember).
Just imagine the sorts of horrors this might inspire—an entire planet going dark perhaps for centuries, doomed by its passage through space.
[Image: Adolph Gottlieb, courtesy Hollis Taggart.]
In any case, the idea that the earliest human beings lived through something like this hundreds of thousands of years ago—an imminent night, a looming darkness, an Age of Horror that imprinted itself upon the human imagination with effects lasting to this day—would mean that what we think of as human psychology is just an angular epiphenomenon of planetary tilt. Call it orbital determinism.
(Very vaguely related: a planet without a sun.)
Author Geoff ManaughPosted on May 21, 2020 May 21, 2020 Categories BLDGBLOGTags Adolph Gottlieb, Arctic, Astronomy, Bad Anthropology, Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis, Caspar David Friedrich, Cosmogony, Doggerland, Earth, Earth Sciences, H. P. Lovecraft, Joscelyn Godwin, Max Ernst, Mythology, Nazis, Occult, Orbital Determinism, Orrery, Pitch Black, Precession of the Equinoxes, Prehistory, Pseudoscience, Racism, Sampson Arnold Mackey, Science Fiction, The Age of Horror, Theosophy4 Comments on The Age of Horror
Fables of the Permanent and Insatiable
[Image: An otherwise unrelated photo of fire-fighting foam, via Wikipedia.]
There are at least two classes of materials that have always interested me: synthetic materials designed to be so resistant and indestructible that they verge on a kind of supernatural longevity, and engineered biomaterials, such as enzymes or microbes, designed to consume exactly these sorts of super-resistant materials.
There was a strangely haunting line in a recent tweet by journalist Sharon Lerner, for example: "Turns out it's really hard to burn something that was designed to put out fires." Lerner is specifically referring to a plant in upstate New York that was contracted to burn fire-fighting foam, a kind of industrial Ouroboros or contradiction in terms. How do you burn that which was made to resist fire?
Unsurprisingly, the plant is allegedly now surrounded by unburnt remnants of this unsuccessful incineration process, as "extremely persistent chemicals" have been found in the soil, groundwater, and bodies of nearby living creatures.
These chemicals are not literally indestructible, of course, but I am nevertheless fascinated by the almost mythic status of such materials: inhuman things that, Sorcerer's Apprentice-like, cannot be turned off, controlled, or annihilated. In other words, we invent a hydrophobic industrial coating that resists water, only to find that, when it gets into streams and rivers and seas, it maintains this permanent separation from the water around it, never diluting, never breaking down, forming a kind of "extremely persistent" counter-ecology swirling around in the global deep.
Or we produce a new industrial adhesive so good at bonding that it cannot be separated from the things with which it has all but merged. In any other context, this would be pure metaphor, even folklore, a ghost story of possession and inseparable haunting. What if humans are actually too good at producing the permanent? What if we create something that cannot be killed or annihilated? It's the golem myth all over again, this time set in the dust-free labs of BASF and 3M.
Coatings, metals, adhesives, composites: strange materials emerge from human laboratories that exceed any realistic human timescale, perhaps threatening to outlast geology itself. As continents melt in the heat of an expanding sun ten billion years from now, these ancient, undead materials will simply float to the top, resistant even to magma and celestial apocalypse. We will have created the supernatural, the uncannily permanent.
[Image: "Plastic-munching bacteria," via PBS NewsHour.]
In any case, the flip-side of all this, then, is synthetic materials that have been designed to consume these very things. Every once in a while, for example, it's announced that a lab somewhere has devised a new form of plastic-eating enzyme or that someone has discovered certain worms that eat plastic. In other words, there is now in the world a creature or thing that can degrade the eerily immortal materials coming from someone else's lab down the hall. But what are the consequences of this, the metaphoric implications? What myths do we have of the omnivorous and insatiable?
It is not hard to imagine that classic sci-fi trope of something escaping from the lab and wreaking havoc in the outside world. At first, say, cars parked outside the laboratory where this stuff was developed begin showing structural wear; radio dials fall off; plastic handles on passenger seats break or even seem to be disintegrating. Then it appears inside houses, people accidentally taking it home with them in the pleats and folds of their cotton clothing, where this engineered microbe begins to feast on plastic housings for electrical connections, children's toys, and kitchen goods, all of which have begun to age before failing entirely.
Then supermarkets and drugstores, then airports and planes themselves. Boats and ferries. Internal medical implants, from joints to stents. This plastic-eating organism begins to shift genes and mutate, inadvertently unleashed onto a world that seems exactly built for it, with new food everywhere in sight. Forty years later, no plastic exists. A hundred years later, even the cellulose in plants is threatened. The world is being consumed entirely.
My point—such as it is—is that materials science seems to operate within two mythic extremes, pulled back and forth between two supernatural ideals: there is that which resists to the point of uncanny permanence, of eerie immortality, and there is that which consumes to the point of universal insatiability, of boundless hunger. Both of these suggest such interesting fables, creating such otherworldly things and objects in the process.
Author Geoff ManaughPosted on May 2, 2020 Categories BLDGBLOGTags Adhesives, Alloys, Chemistry, Composites, Enzymes, Fire-Fighting Foam, Folklore, Landscape Futures, Materials Science, Mythology, Ouroboros, Plastic, Pollution, Science Fiction, Sorcerer's Apprentice3 Comments on Fables of the Permanent and Insatiable
Auditory Hallucinations from Offworld Megafarms
Although I'm only slowly coming around to the music itself, it is hard not to be impressed by the level of narrative engineering that went into Luke Sanger's 2019 album Onyx Pyramid.
The music, Sanger writes, is a kind of fictional soundtrack for a landscape of offworld megafarms, where a human skeleton crew has been reporting "auditory hallucinations" amplified by the effects of an artificial atmosphere. Audio scifi.
The combination of a worldwide shift to GM crops and rising global temperatures led to a series of global disasters, destroying many natural resources and causing a permanent environmental imbalance. Earth's leaders make the choice to outsource all food production to off-world corporately owned farm planets, known as 'flatlands'.
These giant artificial orbs contain vast crop fields and are operated robotically. A handful of human 'farmers' are required to oversee operations and perform maintenance tasks. Although the environmental conditions are engineered to mimic 21st century Earth, there is no wildlife. Farmers have been reporting strange experiences of auditory hallucinations, nicknamed 'flatland frequencies', these are most likely a byproduct of the chemically engineered atmosphere combined with extreme isolation.
You can buy or stream the full album over at Bandcamp.
Author Geoff ManaughPosted on January 25, 2020 Categories BLDGBLOGTags Acoustics, Audio Science Fiction, Hallucinations, Luke Sanger, Music, Offworld Megafarms, Science Fiction, SoundLeave a comment on Auditory Hallucinations from Offworld Megafarms
A Spatial History of Sleep
[Image: Fish preserved in the eternal ocean of a closed jar at the American Museum of Natural History; old Instagram by Geoff Manaugh].
Although this is a classic example of something I am totally unqualified to talk about, a recent report over at ScienceNews caught my eye, about the spatial origins of REM sleep.
In a nutshell, the paper suggests that "sleep may have originated underwater 450 million years ago," which is apparently when "the cells that kick off REM sleep" first evolved in fish. "During REM or paradoxical sleep," we read, "the brain lights up with activity almost like it's awake. But the muscles are paralyzed (except for rapid twitching of the eyes) and the heart beats erratically."
Dreaming, it's as if ancient fish learned to pass into a different kind of ocean, a fully immersive neural environment coextensive with the one they physically swam within.
What's so interesting about this—at least for me—is the implication that REM sleep, and, thus, by extension, the very possibility of animals dreaming, was made possible by immersion in an all-encompassing spatial environment such as the sea. In other words, it took the vast black depths of the ocean to facilitate the kind of uninterrupted, meditative stillness in which REM sleep could best occur. Those ancestral cells then survived into our own mammalian brains, and, by dreaming, it's perhaps a bit like we retreat back into some lost experience of the oceanic.
[Image: "Sleeping Beauty" by Hans Zatzka].
In any case, the study's authors are probably rolling their eyes at this point, but so much comes to mind here—everything from H.P. Lovecraft's marine-horror stories and their alien call of the deep—such as "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"—to the speculative idea that there might be other spatial environments, comparable to the ocean, that, after long-enough exposure, could inspire unique neurological processes otherwise impossible in traditional environments.
I'm thinking of Jeremy Narby's strange book, Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge, about human culture amidst the impenetrable rain forests of the Americas, or even the long-running sci-fi trope of the human mind expanding in a psychedelic encounter with deep space.
In fact, this makes me wonder about the landscapes of other planets, and whether crushingly powerful gravitational regimes in alien superstorms or bizarre swirling ecosystems deep inside liquid rock might affect the neurological development of species that live there. What other kinds of sleep are environmentally possible? Does every planet come with a different kind of dreaming? Can the design or formation of new kinds of space catalyze new forms of sleep? Are there deeper or higher levels of the brain, so to speak, waiting to appear in radically different spatial environments?
We already have astrobiology, astrogeology, even astrolinguistics, but I wonder what it would look like to study sleep on other worlds. Exosomnology.
Author Geoff ManaughPosted on August 20, 2019 Categories BLDGBLOGTags Astrolinguistics, Brains, Cthulhu, Dreaming, Evolution, Exosomnology, Fish, H. P. Lovecraft, Hans Zatzka, Jeremy Narby, Landscape, Neurology, Oceans, Pisces, REM, Science Fiction, Seas, Sleep, The Shadow Over Innsmouth4 Comments on A Spatial History of Sleep
Supernester
[Image: Photo by Charles Ray, via the New York Times].
Apparently, dystopian near-future climate change fiction doesn't have enough wasps. When a colony survives one year to the next, due to a mild winter, its nest "can grow to be as big as a Volkswagen Beetle and can have 15,000 wasps."
In a regular year in the U.S. state of Alabama, for example, there are apparently only two or three such "super nests," but, according to an entomologist interviewed by the New York Times, in 2019 there could be as many as ninety.
First of all, it's weirdly fascinating to learn that there is an official tally of super nests at all, let alone that there might be as many as 90 of them in Alabama alone.
However, what's more striking, at least for me, is that the scenes depicted in this brief New York Times piece read more like something from a Cormac McCarthy novel. One man didn't enter his outdoor toolshed for two months only to discover that it now housed a sprawling super nest housing as many as 18,000 wasps; he and his son still scurry past it now and again as they grab tools, unsure of how exactly to eliminate the threat.
It's like Alien meets The Road: unwary climate refugees of the near-future hike through the forests of a superheated American South, unbeknownst to them approaching a super nest the size of a train yard, its buzzing mistaken for the hopeful drone of distant machinery.
Author Geoff ManaughPosted on June 30, 2019 August 14, 2019 Categories BLDGBLOGTags Alabama, Alien, Architecture, Climate Change, Climate Change Fiction, Cormac McCarthy, Entomology, Forests, Science Fiction, The Road, WaspsLeave a comment on Supernester
Gold Fault Laser
[Image: Drawing courtesy Geothermal Futures Lab].
In the general chaos of renovating a house here in Los Angeles, I missed this lecture and reception on Friday night, launching a semi-fictional "Geothermal Futures Lab" at SCI-Arc.
It involves installing a gold-plated laser somewhere deep in the San Andreas Fault to extract geothermal energy from the landscape. Think of it as a kind of gonzo version of the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth.
The press release, from architect Mark Foster Gage, is a great example of a solipsistic inventor's imagination at full blast—featuring "geothermal resonance technologies," nano-gold foil-wrapped laser components, an "experimental phenolic cured resin foam," and so on.
The functioning of the equipment would also rely, at least partially, on existing "metal deposits along the strike-slipping continental plates," bringing to mind both the naturally occurring nuclear reactors in Gabon and the giant Earth-battery cells circulating beneath the forests of central Canada: landscapes whose geochemistry lends them to these sorts of giant, speculative energy installations.
Or see Norway's extraordinary Hessdalen lights, a geologically electrified valley that seems ripe for a Mark Foster Gage-like architectural-energy proposal.
In all these cases, of course, what's also worth noting is that, as fantastic as this sort of facility might seem—whether it's a lab extracting electrical energy from the San Andreas Fault, as Foster Gage suggests, or one positioned above geochemical differentials in the Canadian soil—as soon as the power it supplies can be made available through the national grid, it would immediately pass from some sort of absolutely bonkers sci-fi vision of the near-future to, frankly, something utterly mundane. It would simply be where the power comes from, and people would shrug it off as a mere utility (if they think about it at all).
But what this also means is that we might already, right now, be missing out on seeing the truly otherworldly nature of our own power-generation facilities, which have all too easily disappeared into the infrastructural background of the modern world. Science fiction is already here, in other words, we just tend to refer to it as infrastructure. See, for example, Crescent Dunes or PS10. Or, for that matter, take a harder look at oil.
[Images: Drawings courtesy Geothermal Futures Lab].
In any case, here's a sample from the project text, obligatory typos and all:
The exhibited technology capitalizes on the unique tungsten-saturated substrate of the San Andres fault through the use of a visible-light Q-switched Nd:YAG lasers, tuned to extract sustainable magno-electrical energy from a +678 degree Kelvin supercritical water deposits located adjacent to a stable magma chamber 4.4km beneath the Earths surface. This supercritical water, that behaves both as liquid and gas, is vaporized through 3,780 Kelvin bursts which at peak power induce a supercritical matter state releasing energy in exponential excess of its matter equivalent. The presence of heterogeneous frequency fields in metal deposits along the strike-slipping continental plates supercharges the pockets of supercritical water with magnetic nuons which are forced upwards with velocity µ as a result of the pressure gradient along the vertical faults. Due to the variable decay rate of metals in the presence of such high trajectory nuons, the prototype laser resonance mechanism itself is encased in an experimental phenolic cured resin foam (Cas no. 000050-00-0 with a normal specific gravity of 120 kg/m3) which insulates the process from outside magnetic interference. For rapid nuon decay protection the foam resin is additionally coated with the same seven µm micrometer nano-gold foil used to encase existing NASA satellites. This thick film of gold nano-molecules particles gives the machine its striking gold aesthetic appearance.
A nuon-resistant radiant machine buried in the San Andreas Fault, extracting energy from the friction between tectonic plates? With lasers? Yes, please.
The exhibition itself is up until March 4; stop by SCI-Arc to see more or check out the project's website.
(Earlier on BLDGBLOG: San Andreas: Architecture for the Fault. Thanks to Wayne Chambliss and Eva Barbarossa for the heads up!)
Author Geoff ManaughPosted on January 29, 2018 Categories BLDGBLOG, San Andreas FaultTags California, Canada, Crescent Dunes, Cyclonopedia, Design, Earth, Electricity, Energy, Events, Gabon, Geochemistry, Geology, Geothermal, Giant Electrochemical Cells, Hessdalen Lights, Infrastructure, Landscape, Los Angeles, Mark Foster Gage, Norway, Oil, Oklo, San Andreas Fault, SCI-Arc, Science Fiction, Seismicity, Solar Power2 Comments on Gold Fault Laser
I've been remiss in posting about a graduate course I'll be co-teaching with the brilliant Nicholas de Monchaux up at UC Berkeley for the 2018-2019 academic year. The application period is currently open through December 2017.
Called "Drawing Science/Drawing Fiction: The Future of Californian Ecology," the year-long Master's course will be a combination of architectural design, experimental drawing methods, and narrative speculation, exploring what de Monchaux calls a "new relationship between architecture, media, ecology, and craft."
The idea is to look ahead, not just at the future of California, but at the future of what California represents: cutting-edge industrial design, the global cinematic imagination, unparalleled demographic integration, agricultural innovation, adaptive infrastructure, and, of course, the risks of climate change.
[Image: From David Maisel's "The Lake Project"; used with permission of the artist].
With the entire state of California at their disposal, students will be able to focus on everything from the U.S./Mexico border to the San Andreas Fault, from Silicon Valley and space tourism to the sci-fi productions of Hollywood. Agriculture, Artificial Intelligence, electric cars; species loss, wildfire, drought; policing, governance, human labor.
There are architectural scenarios to design and explore for all of these.
[Image: California's Ivanpah Solar Energy Generating System photographed by Ethan Miller for Getty Images, via The Atlantic].
In an interview with Boom California published in 2014, novelist Kim Stanley Robinson—who was also interviewed here on BLDGBLOG way back in 2007—commented on the science-fictional appeal of California. By the time he went to college, he remarked, the landscape of the state had fundamentally changed; it was being terraformed for human habitation by the forces of industry and suburban development.
California, he realized, was itself a design project.
[Images: From David Maisel's "The Lake Project"; used with permission of the artist].
Robinson explained to Boom that, in the blink of an eye, California became a "completely different landscape. At that same time I started reading science fiction (…) and it struck me that it was an accurate literature, that it was what my life felt like; so I thought science fiction was the literature of California. I still think California is a science fictional place. The desert has been terraformed. The whole water system is unnatural and artificial. This place shouldn't look like it looks, so it all comes together for me. I'm a science fiction person, and I'm a Californian."
Science fiction is the literature of California.
[Image: Early rendering for Michael Maltzan's Six Street Viaduct in Los Angeles].
Briefly, this theme was developed further by an essay by Michael Ziser published in the same issue of Boom. "Postwar science fiction is to a surprising degree a phenomenon of the western United States," Ziser wrote. It was also quite specifically Californian.
"As the producers of Golden Age sci-fi were lured to the region by the new economic opportunities available to writers in the pulp, television, and film industries of Southern California," Ziser continued, "they were also drawn into an imaginative relationship with California's physical novelty as a place sprung de novo from the plans of hydraulic engineers, road builders, and tract housing developers."
Many of the major themes of science fiction in this period—the experience of living in an arid Martian colony, the palpable sense of depending in a very direct way on large technological systems, unease with the scope and direction of the military and aeronautics industries, the navigation of new social rules around gender and race—can be read as barely veiled references to everyday life in California. For sci-fi writers, teasing out the implications of an era in which entire new civilizations could be conjured almost from nothing through astonishing feats of engineering and capital was a form of realism. They were writing an eyewitness account of what was the most radical landscape-scale engineering project in the history of the world.
This idea of an "imaginative relationship with California's physical novelty" is something we will be exploring in architectural form throughout the Studio One experience. In the process, we will approach California itself as a subject of design and compare the state to other regions currently experiencing their own de novo re-inventions, whether it's a thawing Arctic or China's ongoing building boom.
[Image: Floating caisson during the construction of the original Bay Bridge; photo by Clyde Sunderland, courtesy Library of Congress].
To develop and articulate their visions, students will be pushed to experiment with new forms of architectural representation, modeling, and drawing—or, as de Monchaux writes, "Our chief medium will be drawing, but we will engage and embrace a world of devices and tools—from scripting through mapping and virtual reality-that are changing, and expanding, the capacity of architecture to influence the world."
I will be up in the Bay Area multiple times for this throughout the academic year, although not on a full-time basis; if you're a fan of de Monchaux's work, of science fiction, of architecture, of design's potential for conjuring radical visions of landscape futures, then please consider applying. You have roughly two more months to do so.
[Image: Farming California, via Google Maps].
More information is available over at UC Berkeley.
Author Geoff ManaughPosted on October 9, 2017 October 9, 2017 Categories TeachingTags Agriculture, Architecture, Borders, California, David Maisel, Design, Drought, Ecology, Education, Futures, Geology, Hydrology, Kim Stanley Robinson, Michael Maltzan, Michael Ziser, Nicholas de Monchaux, San Andreas Fault, Science Fiction, Teaching, UC Berkeley3 Comments on Drawing Science/Drawing Fiction
Representing Utopia, or Advertisements of a World to Come
[Image: Test-crash from "California Freeways: Planning For Progress," courtesy Prelinger Archives].
For those of you here in Los Angeles, I'm thrilled to be hosting an event tomorrow evening at USC with "rogue librarian" Megan Prelinger, on the subject of representing utopia.
Megan is cofounder of the San Francisco-based Prelinger Library, an independent media archive specializing "in material that is not commonly found in other public libraries." Their collection has a strong focus on California history, science, and technology, from obscure technical publications to books on environmental politics, topics that can be tracked throughout Megan's own work as a researcher and writer.
She is also the author of Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race, 1957-1962 and Inside The Machine: Art and Invention in the Electronic Age. Both books reproduce beautifully designed promotional materials produced as part of an earlier era of science and technology; these include often-overlooked ephemera, such as corporate advertisements and business brochures, or what Alexis Madrigal has described as "the hyperbolic, whimsical world of the advertisements these early aerospace companies created to sell themselves."
New satellite systems, microchip designs, space program components, electronic home appliances, from televisions to microwaves, to name only a few: all were the subject of visionary business models premised on utopian narratives of the world to come.
Taken as a whole, the Prelinger Library's collection of these materials raises the interesting possibility that, in order to understand twentieth-century science fiction, we should not only read Octavia Butler, Arthur C. Clarke, or J. G. Ballard, but back-of-magazine ads for firms such as Frigidaire and General Electric. These are corporations, of course, applied futurism sought to create a new world—one in which their own products would be most useful.
[Image: From Another Science Fiction, via Wired].
At the event tomorrow night, we'll be discussing both of these books, to be sure, but we'll be doing so in the larger context of utopian representations of the state of California, treating California as a place of technical innovation, artificial control of the natural environment, and even perceived mastery over public health and the risk of disease transmission.
Megan will be showing a handful of short films about these themes, all taken from the Prelinger Archives, and we'll round out our roughly 45-minute Q&A with open questions from the audience.
The event will cap off 500 Years of Utopia, our long look at the legacy of Sir Thomas More's book, Utopia, timed for the 500th anniversary of its publication. The accompanying exhibition closes on February 28.
Things kick off at 5pm on Tuesday, February 7th; please RSVP.
Author Geoff ManaughPosted on February 6, 2017 February 8, 2017 Categories BLDGBLOGTags 500 Years of Utopia, Agriculture, Art, Arthur C. Clarke, Bay Area, California, Caltrans, Disease, Event, Floods, Freeways, Future, Health, History, J. G. Ballard, Los Angeles, Megan Prelinger, Octavia Butler, Prelinger Library, Rivers, Sanitation, Science Fiction, terraforming, Transportation, University of Southern California, USC, USC Libraries, Utopia, WaterLeave a comment on Representing Utopia, or Advertisements of a World to Come
Subterranean Singapore
[Image: A "Cavern Breathing Unit" from Subterranean Singapore by Finbarr Fallon, Bartlett School of Architecture, Unit 24].
Here is another project from my reviews the other week at the Bartlett School of Architecture; this one is called Subterranean Singapore, and it is by Finbarr Fallon, produced for Unit 24, which is taught by Penelope Haralambidou, Simon Kennedy, and Michael Tite.
[Image: "Concept Breathing Towers" from Subterranean Singapore by Finbarr Fallon, Bartlett School of Architecture, Unit 24].
Subterranean Singapore is presented as a speculative look at massive underground residential development in the city-state of Singapore over the next few decades.
[Images: Glimpses of a "high grade recreational space within an inflatable cave unit," from Subterranean Singapore by Finbarr Fallon, Bartlett School of Architecture, Unit 24].
The city has run out of room to expand into the sea, and is thus forced to look downward, into the depths of the continental shelf, excavating beneath the surface of the city and heading partially out below the seabed.
[Image: From Subterranean Singapore by Finbarr Fallon, Bartlett School of Architecture, Unit 24].
As Fallon describes it, the project explores "the city-state of Singapore's subterranean ambitions to suggest an imagined masterplan and spatial typology for deep-level underground living. While it may seem utopian to imagine that extensive deep living will become viable, the pressures of chronic land scarcity in Singapore may necessitate this outcome."
[Image: The "Subterranean Development Institute: Designing Your Underground Future," from Subterranean Singapore by Finbarr Fallon, Bartlett School of Architecture, Unit 24].
The construction process is kicked off with great imperial fanfare, involving a parade of excavation machines and robot carving arms marching their way forward through clouds of confetti. There is even a celebratory pamphlet.
[Images: From Subterranean Singapore by Finbarr Fallon, Bartlett School of Architecture, Unit 24].
The idea is not entirely science fiction, of course: Singapore is already excavating huge oil-storage facilities underground, and nearby Hong Kong is actively experimenting with the design and implementation of entire underground infrastructural zones.
For Fallon, however, such a proposal cannot be divorced from the question of who will be able to afford these spaces of underground luxury—complete with fish ponds, spas, and the soothing presence of exotic mechanical animals meant to bring an ironic touch of the natural world to those below.
[Image: A light-well looking down at Subterranean Singapore by Finbarr Fallon, Bartlett School of Architecture, Unit 24].
Let alone, of course, the question of human labor. Who, after all, will physically construct these things? Whose backs will be broken?
The accompanying film—in fact, the film is the core of the proposal—suggests that not everyone is pleased to see this triumphant underground utopia take root beneath Singapore, and hacker-saboteurs appear to take things into their own hands.
While the plot itself is not unusually complex, many of the images successfully wed the cinematic and the architectural, and were worth posting here.
With any luck, I'll post a few more student projects here in the days to come; for now, don't miss Matthew Turner's project for a "New London Law Court."
Author Geoff ManaughPosted on June 23, 2016 June 26, 2016 Categories BLDGBLOGTags Architecture, Bartlett School of Architecture, Caverns, Cities, Design, Finbarr Fallon, Infrastructure, Science Fiction, Singapore, Subterranean, Underground, Unit 243 Comments on Subterranean Singapore
"A City on Mars is Possible. That's What All This is About."
Last week's successful demonstration of a reusable rocket, launched by Elon Musk's firm SpaceX, "was a critical step along the way towards being able to establish a city on Mars," Musk later remarked. The proof-of-concept flight "dramatically improves my confidence that a city on Mars is possible," he added. "That's what all this is about."
Previously, of course, Musk had urged the Royal Aeronautical Society to view Mars as a place where "you can start a self-sustaining civilization and grow it into something really big." He later elaborated on these ideas in an interview with Aeon's Ross Anderson, discussing optimistic but still purely speculative plans for "a citylike colony that he expects to be up and running by 2040." In Musk's own words, "If we have linear improvement in technology, as opposed to logarithmic, then we should have a significant base on Mars, perhaps with thousands or tens of thousands of people," within this century.
(Image courtesy of SpaceX. Elsewhere: Off-world colonies of the Canadian Arctic and BLDGBLOG's earlier interview with novelist Kim Stanley Robinson).
Author Geoff ManaughPosted on December 28, 2015 February 15, 2016 Categories BLDGBLOGTags Cities, Elon Musk, Exploration, Mars, Offworld, Science Fiction, Space, Urbanism1 Comment on "A City on Mars is Possible. That's What All This is About."
Ole Bouman Redux
Marine Acoustic Zones
Without Walls: An Interview with Lebbeus Woods
The Dark Cities
Electromagnetic Test Town
#glacier #island #storm
Buy an Underground Kingdom
Do Black Swans Dream of Electric Sheep?
Every House Has Cracks


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DPDCNews
DuPage Dems Difference Maker – Nobuko Kudo
DPDCNews, DuPage Dems Difference Makers
July 1, 2019 January 22, 2020 Democratic Party of DuPage County
Nobuko has been involved in political activism since 2008 when Obama first ran for president. As part of the Chicago Lawyers for Obama, she drove to one of the reddest counties in Indiana and worked as an election monitor for the campaign and, in 2012, registered voters in Iowa for President Obama's reelection campaign. She visited a homeless shelter in Iowa and registered a number of people there including an African-American veteran who wanted to vote for Obama in 2008 but could not because he was not registered to vote then.
She has been a precinct committeeperson since 2013, first as an appointed PC for York 96 and later as an elected PC for York 57, and has been serving in the positing of Secretary for York Township Democratic Organization (YTDO) since 2014. During her tenure with YTDO, she has served on the Executive Committee, Township Election Campaign Committee, Event Planning Committee, Endorsement Committee and CD8 Summer Picnic Planning Committee, as well as DPDC Executive Committee. In 2018, she, along with a fellow PC, Ann Lobdell, organized, funded and executed the "136 Precinct Strategy Project, by which they reached out to Democratic voters in more than 50 orphan precincts who had never been reached out in the past and provided them with detailed primary election and candidate information tailored to each precinct to educate and inspire them to stay engaged in a democratic process. The result was nothing but positive.
She is the author of 4 resolutions on immigration, all of which were passed by YTDO and submitted to U.S Senators and Congressional Representatives representing York Township. The 4 resolutions are: in support of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and demanding Congress to pass the Dream Act of 2017 (S. 1615); demanding Congress to pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform; objecting to criminalization of asylum seekers and separation of children from their parents implemented by then Attorney General, Jeff Sessions; objecting to the use of coercion by the Department of Homeland Security against parents who were separated from their children and demanding resignation of Kirstjen Nielsen, then Secretary of Homeland Security.
She has also been active in election protection. She served as a member of the IL Ballot Integrity Project's Election Integrity Conference 2017 Planning Committee and authored a resolution on election integrity.
She is a strong supporter of universal healthcare based on her experience of working as a research assistant to one of the most prominent Health Law Professors in the nation while in law school, who authored "The International Human Right to Health", and her personal experience of surviving breast cancer with which she was diagnosed during the last semester in law school. The National Institute of Health, a Federal government agency, invests nearly $39.2 billion in medical research for Americans, making the United States one of the countries with the most advanced medical technology available, but it should not be reserved only for those who can afford to pay for the medical technology; it should be accessible for all regardless of their economic standing.
Professionally, she has been committed to giving back to communities since 2004. As an immigration attorney, she frequently volunteers at the Chicago Volunteer Legal Services (CVLS) Immigration Clinic and has taken cases from CVLS and the National Immigrant Justice Center on a pro bono basis by providing representation to a number of clients who otherwise have no access to legal services. She represented, among others, immigrant victims of domestic violence and helped them acquire legal status in the United States so that they can become financially and psychologically independent of their abusive U.S. citizen spouses. She assisted young immigrants with no legal status in the United States in obtaining DACA protection to minimize a possibility of deportation. She represented a young woman from an African country who was a victim of state-sponsored torture in obtaining asylum and fought for 7 years on behalf of a permanent resident of Pakistani descent in his application for naturalization until the Department of Homeland Security finally agreed to grant him U.S. citizenship.
At a personal level, she is an avid conservationist, focusing on the conservation of pollinator plants native to Illinois, bees, butterflies, birds and wildlife as well as supporting environmental protection organizations. Growing up with animal companions, she fostered and adopted neglected, difficult-to-adopt cats and rescued stray and injured dogs. She supports Cat Guardians, a no-kill shelter in Lombard, and has been a sponsor of a resident cat at the shelter. She hand-raised a Monarch caterpillar rescued in late October 2018 who became a magnificent Monarch and lived through January 2019.
She is the recipient of the Pro Bono Attorney of the Year awarded by one of the Big 100 firms in 2008 as well as the 2015 PC of the Year and the 2016 Community Service Award, both awarded by YTDO.
Upcoming Events This Week
DuPage Dems Difference Maker – Barbara Lonergan
DuPage Dems Difference Maker – Joan Knippen
Sixth Dems One Year Countdown Awards Luncheon

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Top Fuel racers Steve Torrence and Brittany Force launch at the start of Friday qualifying at the 2021 NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals.
Bristol Dragway, Lonesome Pine release 2022 schedules
Jeff Birchfield
Author facebook
Bristol Dragway released its 2022 schedule with the NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals returning to its traditional Father's Day weekend date.
Scheduled for June 17-19, the event headlines the 2022 drag racing calendar. The NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals returned in October 2021 after being canceled the previous year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mike Salinas rocketed down the track over 334 mph on his way to capturing a second straight Top Fuel crown at Bristol. Alexis DeJoria parlayed her No. 1 qualifying effort into her first Bristol Funny Car victory, while Angelle Sampey went nearly 200 mph on two wheels to win in Pro Stock Motorcycle.
The Pro Stock class returns in 2022, meaning all four NHRA Camping World pro series will be competing at the NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals for the first time. As tradition with NHRA events, all tickets are a pit pass where fans are able to interact and get autographs from the drivers.
In addition, Bristol Dragway will host big-money bracket races, the Street Car Takeover, the American Motorcycle Racing Association the Mike Bos Jr. Dragster Nationals and the NHRA Jr. Drag Racing Eastern Conference Finals. The local DER Racing Series and the popular Thunder Valley Street Fights are also on the agenda.
"The 2022 season promises to be an exciting one at historic Bristol Dragway," said Jerry Caldwell, president of Bristol Motor Speedway and Dragway. "The NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals returns to its traditional date on Father's Day weekend and in addition, we have a full slate of events on the calendar throughout the summer to continue Thunder Valley's legacy as one of the busiest quarter-miles in the nation. We hope you can come out and join us for some of the fun."
Bristol Dragway will also host some of the most lucrative bracket races in the country. The BTE World Footbrake Challenge XVI is scheduled for June 30-July 3 and the BTE Labor Day 250K will be held Sept. 1-4. The Rad Torque Fall Fling returns Sept. 20-24.
There are five weekends scheduled for the DER Bracket Series, while local folks can drive their own cars down the drag strip with the Thunder Valley Street Fights starting April 23.
More events are expected to be announced later.
LONESOME PINE RACEWAY
The 3/8-mile asphalt oval in Coeburn, Virginia is celebrating its 50th anniversary. It was recently announced the track is under new ownership with Walter Cooper and Lance Wimmer of Raceway Management Group and veteran racer Jeff Roark serving as promoter and general manager.
An open practice is scheduled for March 19 with the first races scheduled for April 2. Two races are scheduled in every month through September, other than July, when there are three races on the calendar.
There will be one Powder Puff race and one Enduro scheduled each month. According to track officials, more special events will be added.
WINTER INDOOR MOTOCROSS
The 30th annual FMF Winter Indoor Series is a little over halfway done with six motocross events scheduled in February to wrap up the season.
Kingsport rider Carson Eads racked up six wins and nine podium finishes through the first six events. He won three classes — Unlimited B, Schoolboy 2 and Collegeboy 14-24 — during New Year's Day races held at the WNC Ag Center in Fletcher, North Carolina.
Another Kingsport rider, Cash Taylor, got off to a strong start with four podium finishes over the first six races in the 85cc Beginner 9-15 class. He is the points leader in that class and also ranks second in the 85cc 12-15 standings.
Alex Colley from Norton, Virginia has two wins in 125cc Two-Stroke, and Anthony Fields from Bluff City won in the 450C class on Nov. 27.
Brandon Hughes from Roan Mountain leads the adult contingent, currently second in the 30+ points and third in the 35+ class. Adam Delph from Bristol ranks third in the 40+ standings.
The next Winter Indoor races are scheduled Feb. 4-5 at the Smoky Mountain Expo Center in White Pine.
Nhra Thunder Valley
Jeff Birchfield is a sports writer for the Johnson City Press with a lifelong passion for motorsports. The father of two attended ETSU and served in the Tennessee Army National Guard.
Follow Jeff Birchfield


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Sad Hysen winging his way back home
TOBIAS HYSEN has revealed that he is returning to his native Sweden after struggling to settle in England.
The winger spent a year with Sunderland, winning a Championship winners' medal along the way, but told Black Cats boss Roy Keane over the summer that he wanted to return to his homeland for family reasons.
Sunderland struck a deal to sell Hysen to IFK Gothenburg for an undisclosed fee before the end of the August transfer window and Hysen is now preparing to join up with his new team-mates.
Hysen said: "It's always sad to leave, but under the circumstances this is the best thing for me to do.
"I've made some good friends here. I'm leaving for non-football reasons. Neither me nor my girlfriend really settled in the area and, with a baby coming in January, we just wanted to be where our families are.
"I've enjoyed playing here – last season was great. From the New Year onwards there were so many highs.
"Winning promotion was amazing and I'm proud of my medal. People say that footballers don't have feelings for the clubs they play for because they move around so much.
"That's not the case with me, I will always have Sunderland in my heart and will support them – I will be cheering them on from Gothenburg."
Hysen, who was signed by Niall Quinn during his brief spell combining the roles of chairman and manager at the start of last season, joined Sunderland in a #1.7m deal from Djurgaarden and went on to make 27 appearances in all competitions for the Wearsiders, scoring four goals.
The 25-year-old is now looking forward to a fresh start with Gothenburg – the club he supported as a boy and who his father Glen played for before moving to Liverpool in the early 1990s.
Hysen could even pick up two winners' medals within weeks as Gothenburg are just three points behind the Swedish league leaders with six games to go, and they are also in a cup semi-final.
He said: "There are six league games left and a cup semi-final.
"Maybe I will get a couple of medals there, which would be a great start to my Gothenburg career!"
Meanwhile, this weekend is the first anniversary of Keane's first game as Sunderland manager.
Keane started his managerial career with a win, triumphing 2-1 over Derby County at Pride Park to set Sunderland's Championship bandwagon rolling.
Keane said: "I've got to say it feels longer than a year. It's been fantastic, I am enjoying it. I feel very lucky and I count my blessings that I'm manager of this club.
"I know there is a lot of hard work ahead, I'm under no illusions – I stated that when we got promoted.
"I'm grateful to be here, I'm grateful to the fans who have supported me and the team, I feel that I've had such good backing off Niall (Quinn) and the board.
"I have great vision of where I want the club to be in the next few years."
PoliticsDurham Miners' President: 'I'd rather be dead in a ditch' than invite new Tory MPs to the GalaAlan Mardghum said there was 'categorically no chance' that the four Tories who won seats in Durham constituencies would be welcome at the historic working class festival
OfstedNorth East secondary pupils 'not getting the education they need', Ofsted warns
Inspectors say secondary education in the North East needs to improve but have branded primary education 'excellent'


Wayfair WAYDAY 2019 Round Up!
If you haven't noticed, I LOVE to window shop almost as much as I love to actually shop. The only problem I have is that I am not a millionaire, so I really can't buy everything that catches my eye. Until maybe, TODAY! For the next day you can head to Wayfair and up 80% off and free shipping! I took some time today to … Continue reading Wayfair WAYDAY 2019 Round Up!
Just kidding, I'm sure she's great. I just haven't yet read her book, though I am sure I'd like it, and I haven't watched her show yet, though I'm sure it would spark even more OCD in me. However, I do know I like to keep a tidy home. When we first moved into a space as "adults" I quickly learned that I liked to … Continue reading Marie Kondo Who?


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Der Mehlsack (ursprünglich Weißer Turm bei St. Michael) ist ein um 1425 erbauter Wehrturm in Ravensburg. Der Name rührt von seinem weißen Verputz und der runden Form her.

Der Mehlsack befindet sich am süd-östlichen Rand am höchsten Punkt der Altstadt in Richtung der Veitsburg. Mit seiner Höhe von 51 Metern am St.-Christina-Hang oberhalb der Stadt ist er ein von weitem erkennbares Wahrzeichen der Stadt Ravensburg. Die Plattform des Turmes diente den Bürgern zur Kontrolle des Veitsburg-Geländes, das sich bis ins 17. Jahrhundert in der Hand der Landvögte, der politischen Gegner der freien Reichsstadt, befand. Damit erfüllte der Turm eine ähnliche Funktion wie der 1443 erbaute Sackturm in Warburg.

Literatur
 Markus Glonnegger (Hrsg.): Der Mehlsack. Oberschwäbische Verlagsanstalt und Förderkreis Mehlsack e. V., Ravensburg 1995 (47 Seiten).
 Historische Stadtrundgänge. Ravensburg mit Schmalegg und Weißenau. Stadt Ravensburg, Ravensburg 2006, ISBN 3-00-011575-7.

Weblinks

 Kurze Geschichte
 Turmbesteigung

Bauwerk in Ravensburg
Kulturdenkmal in Ravensburg
Aussichtsturm in Baden-Württemberg
Erbaut im 15. Jahrhundert
Wehrturm in Baden-Württemberg
Turm in Europa
Turm im Landkreis Ravensburg

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Joey Akan has revealed that he will not be publishing the concluding part of the Ubi Franklin and Iyanya story.
Recall the music journalist had published a three-part editorial about the feud between both men, editorials that revealed Ubi Franklin may have been abusive towards Emma Nyra and that he cheated Iyanya out of the company.
Ubi during his interview for the editorial, however, denied hitting Emma after Iyanya accused him of it adding that there is an NDA between him and Nyra which prevents him from speaking further about the issue.
Not long after this, Emma reached out to Joey causing the journalist to take to Twitter to inform everyone there was in fact no NDA.
However, there is a turn of events now as Joey has revealed he needs to keep everyone involved in the case safe reason he will not be publishing the 4th part of the story.
The post For the safety of all involved, I will not publish the last part – Joey Akan talks Ubi Franklin, Iyanya and Emma Nyra feud appeared first on INFORMATION NIGERIA.


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what butterfly looks like a monarch but is yellow
This is a strategy to avoid predation. This caterpillar looks a lot like the monarch caterpillar -- and that may not be an accident. While Viceroys don't contain the poisonous cardiac glycosides that Monarchs do, they do contain salicylic acid due to fact that the larvae feed on willows. The butterfly, or adult stage, is the only time when these two insects look so much alike. The monarch butterfly meaning is one of expansion and amplification. This English influence was brought to the new world. There is much to explore and learn here. For a look like this, focus the pigment on the outer corner of your eye, but split it between your upper eyelid area and your lower. Some swallowtails have blue and orange markings mixed in with their usual yellow and black colors with some having more blue pigment than yellow. Their striking black and yellow appearance look stunning against green foliage in summer gardens. It is also a darker color orange than monarchs. Like the monarch butterfly, the pipevine swallowtail also gets its poison from the plant on which it feeds. Taking a closer look though, it's not monarch caterpillars eating their dill at all! Identifying a Monarch Caterpillar, like identifying the adult butterfly, is also easy. The monarch is most likely "protected" by the bitter sap of the milkweed plant that it eats because some of the toxic compounds in the sap become incorporated into the insect's tissues. The pipevine plant toxin builds up in the caterpillars to make them poisonous as adults. Monarch caterpillars are small black, worm-like larvae with white and yellow bands and a pair of flexible black filaments on its thorax and next-to-last abdominal segment (Milne 758). It is black swallowtail caterpillars! On the other hand, the viceroy caterpillar is blotched with green, yellow, and tan. The butterfly is not protected by poisonous compounds and doesn't really resemble known mimicry models like the orange monarch or the black-and-blue pipeline swallowtail, but it has become the single most common butterfly in city and countryside. We wish we had all the answers. Monarch butterfly caterpillars are sometimes an unusual color, shade, or has unusual markings. The monarch pushes its way out, and grabs hold of the exoskeleton. You don't need to have a deep knowledge of butterfly species, but you should be aware of what a monarch butterfly looks like. Yes, I saw a Queen butterfly migrate in the fall so 2016 with its Monarch cousins that hatched and grew in Katy, Tx. Queen vs Monarch. The Viceroy Butterfly closely resembles the Monarch Butterfly, but is smaller, and has a black line that runs across the veins of its back wings, which the Monarch lacks. Monarch, Danaus plexippus Description: Look for these tiger-striped caterpillars on milkweed; the orange butterfly features a classic black-vein and white-dot pattern. It is small, but thick and rounded, tapered toward the abdomen, with a golden-edged black band on top of a blue band. Palamedes Swallowtail What they look like. Milkweed Impostor 2. Apr 22, 2013 - Viceroy Butterfly (looks a lot like a monarch) After 8-10 days, you'll see the monarch wing colors and patterns quite clearly. It also has leaves resembling Asclepias incarnata, but its flowing purple panicles have revealed it as a milkweed brother from another mother: Monarch caterpillars have a set of antennae-like tentacles at each end of their body. The queen butterfly has white spots on its hindwings, distinguishing it from the monarch. For the butterfly to look like a monarch, we colored in the larger areas with orange and the veins and outline with black. But if you take a closer look at four butterfly pictures below, you'll see how easy it is to tell monarch butterfly males from females. What causes it? Monarchs will be twice as happy when you plant this bright orange flower since it is both a source of nectar and a host plant for their caterpillars.Butterfly weed starts slow but the flowers are worth the wait. A BAD IDEA: You could also apply a professional grade pesticide like malathion, but it's likely that monarchs, other wildlife, and the environment could suffer injury (or worse) from using harsh chemicals.There's a reason butterfly gardeners use organic pest control…it won't kill the butterflies!. The pupa also resembles that of a monarch butterfly and may look like a pendant. Monarch caterpillars are striped with yellow, black, and white bands, and reach lengths of two inches (five centimeters) before metamorphosis. The butterfly's body is black with white markings. Male giant swallowtails have an average wingspan of up to 5.8" (15 cm). It often displays ornamented golden spots. Like all butterflies in the genus Papilio, the giant swallowtail has tails on its hind wings. Similarities between Butterflies and Moths include their scale-like hairs that cover their respective bodies and deliver their various recognizable patterns and colors along the wings that we see. Feb 24, 2018 - Explore Darla Demahy's board "Yellow Butterfly", followed by 106 people on Pinterest. Heather January 12, 2017 at 12:15 am - Reply I raised over 40 healthy Monarch butterflies in 2016 in Katy, Tx to help bring the Texas state insect off the extinction list since, they are already considered to be on the 2015 endangered list. The chrysalis can be green, light to dark brown, or even dull white. Sexual Dimorphism: No visible differences Color and Appearance: When the wings are open, the dorsal side shows an orange base with black patterns (quite much like the Monarch).Additionally, the viceroys have a black line across the secondary wings along with a single row of dots in white by the black marginal band. Having raised hundreds of thousands of Monarch butterflies, we have documented a few unusual caterpillars and have identified the cause of a few. For the caterpillar we alternated yellow and black to make it look like a monarch caterpillar. There's another butterfly out there that's disguised as a monarch. How Mimicry Works As you know, monarch caterpillars eat milkweed. This acid… Several plants go by the name "butterfly weed" but Asclepias tuberosa deserves the name like no other. It is important to note here, before we go… They follow the 4-stage life cycle of all butterflies and moths, going from egg, to larva (caterpillar), to pupa or chrysalis (cocoon), to adult butterfly. Viceroy butterflies look exactly like monarchs to the untrained observer. (Butterfly or moth? Then we cut them out. Most gardeners are familiar with and interested in the Monarch butterfly, which is a migratory species in decline due to habitat loss, pesticide use, ... Two-inch mature caterpillars are conspicuous with their yellow, white, and black stripes. This is when the monarch is ready to emerge from the chrysalis (eclose). To the untrained eye, most monarch butterflies look pretty similar. Look at the plant the caterpillar is eating. Monarchs are striped with yellow, black and white bands. When the wings of a queen butterfly are open, it's a bit easier to tell the two species apart. Dec 4, 2016 - orange butterfly [Looks like a Monarch Butterfly.] The meaning of a butterfly can vary slightly depending on the species. At first the monarch looks unbalanced, with a … Welcome to Monarch-Butterfly.com, the web site for fun facts about monarch butterflies—everything from what they look like, what they eat, where they live, to where to find cool coloring pages and temporary monarch butterfly tattoos, to how to rear your own butterflies in a butterfly garden. Melody, It depends on whom you would like to believe. The Anglo-Saxons used the word 'butterfloege' because their most common butterfly was the yellow brimstone butterfly. How to Tell if a Monarch is a Boy or Girl. Nearly all species have a long, coiled tongue known as a proboscis which allows them to suck nectar and pollen (among other food sources depending on species). Marcia Straub / Getty Images. The larval (or caterpillar) stage, of the monarch has yellow, black, and white rings around its body. Stage 4: Butterfly. Here are some ways to figure out which caterpillar is in your yard. Ecology: Each fall, Northeastern monarchs undertake an epic migration south, where the entire population winters in a relatively small patch of forest in south-central Mexico. A Monarch butterfly looks like it only has four legs because the two front legs are dwarfed and stay curled up close to the body. This July, a second milkweed impostor has been discovered in the swamp milkweed patch. This metamorphism is one of the great wonders of life. The monarch butterfly is one of the most recognizable and well studied butterflies on the planet. Anyway, here are some swallowtail butterflies which have prominent yellow and black colors in their wings. Though we can often determine a butterfly's sex by looking at the most obvious differences in its appearance - like the scent spots of the male monarch or wing pattern/color of tiger swallowtails - the best way to distinguish between males and females, particularly if you aren't intimately acquainted with each species, is actually by looking at the butterfly's genitalia. Monarch Butterfly Meaning. They have a set of antennae-like tentacles at each end of their body. Can you tell the difference?) Leave some spot areas on the outer part white too! Any clue what it might be? Viceroys "mimic" monarchs in appearance. Monika Maeckle July 8, 2014 at 11:13 pm - … In the colonies, people claimed that at night witches would turn into winged creatures and steal butter. During the caterpillar phase, however, the monarch … Wingspan: 3½–4½ inch. Adult Butterfly. See more ideas about yellow butterfly, butterfly, beautiful butterflies. Females have thicker wing veins than males. Butterfly identification. The bright yellow aphids found on milkweeds are destructive, non-native pests. Its orange wings are laced with black lines and bordered with white dots. Vinod Kumar/EyeEm/Getty Images As a member of the daisy family, cosmos flowers are appealing to Monarch butterflies because of their abundant flowers and rich nectar stores.Although a cosmos blossom looks like one flower, it is actually made up of many different tiny tubular flowers surrounded by a … It looks very much like a monarch caterpillar but when touched, on the face, two yellow antennae extended and retracted. 13. 1.
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michael@minardilaw.com
Cannabis Consultation
Weed's Biggest Wedding Announcement Just Happened And Cryptocurrency Is The Bride
Speaker – Florida Medical Cannabis Conference – February 22-24, 2019 | Orlando, Florida
When is it pot and when is it not? Marijuana changes are vexing authorities and retailers
In 1974, the first edition of monthly magazine High Times featured an article headlined "Marijuana: Wonder Drug." Forty-two years later, an article in cannabis publication Herb asked, "Is Cannabis The New Wonder Drug?"
High Times is forward-looking once again by announcing the first-ever initial public offering that can be funded by cryptocurrency in addition to fiat currency. The authoritative publication is using a handy law called Regulation A+ crowdfunding, designed to allow small companies like the media brand to crowdsource $50 million in a public offering from everyone including non-accredited, everyday investors. If you've got $11 or some Bitcoin, you're in.
The bold move may be a lasting one, as this veteran cannabis icon is reaching out to embrace the latest in technology and finance in a way that may reverberate across both industries. The decision to accept cryptocurrency was a strategic one intended to demonstrate inclusiveness. Adam Levin, Chief Executive Officer of High Times, said the brand is on an organizational mission to be "at the forefront of popular culture… not only as one of the first cannabis-related brands to go public on the Nasdaq but also as the first to allow Bitcoin and Ethereum as part of our public capital raise."
This new brand mission involves a whole lot of outreach as High Times sets itself to transform into a video and media powerhouse, diversified events host, and more driven merchandising company.
For nearly a half-century, the progressive magazine has ushered readers to and through a better understanding of cannabis, its culture, opportunities, restrictions, and evolution. High Times has attracted audiences eager to learn everything weed.
High Times is credited by a Florida lawyer for being the educational foundation to later help him convince a jury of his client's need for cannabis. "Growing up I read High Times and they exposed a lot of the hypocrisy of the government and the lies about cannabis," Michael Minardi explained to Vice about his historical court win for his client's permission to grow his own medicine.
Samir Husni, director of the Magazine Innovation Institute at the University of Mississippi, said of High Times, "They have top brand power. When you think marijuana, you think High Times." Adding, "If they can use it effectively, they will be a powerful company."
If High Times goes the direction of marketing its IPO directly to cryptocurrency holders, a powerful bridge can be built between two social outliers. High Times has the industry force cannabis and cryptocurrency can use in truly forming a relationship. Something the two arguably haven't had success doing to date.
The cannabis industry has had its share of celebrity-endorsed and unimaginatively named cannabis coins. Many of which fail to gain the critical mass to elicit sizable industry adoption. The industry's most illustrious, Paragon Coin (traded as PRG), while advancing cannabis-friendly working environments, is mired in a lawsuit and suffers from historically low coin value.
The potential for deep cross-industry collaboration hasn't yet been realized, and it shouldn't be that hard to bring these two disparate cultures together. In many ways, cannabis and cryptocurrency are a lot alike.
They're both misunderstood.
Popular investment speculators are standoffish to both cannabis and cryptocurrency. In part because of volatility, but because both markets wade in the secluded part of a gymnasium pool that's a little murky and hard to gauge the depth of.
They're both discriminated against.
Twitter tolerates them both. One is Instagram-famous. One of them can't assuredly publish an event notification on Evite without it suddenly disappearing, and one was just recently welcomed back to advertise on Facebook. One's never been able to advertise on Google's network and the other just got banned on June 1st, 2018.
They hang out at different tables in the school cafeteria.
While the cannabis clique swats nearest to the rear exit, the crypto crew sits within an ear's shout from the Wall Street jocks who've taken over the middle of the dining hall. Neither is cool enough to be invited to the mainstream banquet, but both are edging closer and closer.
Their unlikeliness makes them likely companions because both cannabis and blockchain have the strongest industry force fueling them: Passion.
Blockchain and cryptocurrency advocates are pushing for mainstream acceptance with the same fervor as cannabis advocates. One wants to be taken seriously by legacy institutions and investors, while the other wants the government to treat it with softer restrictions the same way it treats a killer elixir.
Most notably, both cannabis and cryptocurrency aim to make life just a little bit easier for those who chose to use them.
High Times is one of few household names in the cannabis industry and it's also uniquely positioning itself to become somewhat of a cannabis industry blockchain authority as well. It's one thing to study blockchain and cryptocurrency and an entirely different thing to work with them in terms of a project.
Given the company's recent $7 million acquisition of Green Rush Daily (GRD), a publication of 9.5 million monthly views, and another pickup of cannabis lifestyle magazine, Culture, High Times is looking to spread its reach. GRD "guides" section would be a great place to publish a "What you need to know about cannabis cryptocurrency" series.
With a facelift and the addition of a "crypto corner" to join the ranks of "legal corner" in the "features" subcategory, Culture Magazine might be just the right place to invite casual lifestyle readers a place to grow their blockchain and cryptocurrency knowledge under a familiar context.
If High Times gets a high grasp of this, lush fields of cross-pollinating interests can be forged together.
So, while it's a union that doesn't quite match up to Royal Family status, the marriage of High Times to cryptocurrency is very much America's established culture embracing the new. A global, powerhouse cannabis brand welcoming cryptocurrency with the potential to drive growth expansion and acceptance of both into everyday, mainstream conversation.
Indeed, a wedding worth watching.
Disclaimer: I have no financial interest or positions in the aforementioned companies. This information is for educational purposes and does not constitute financial and/or legal advice.
Original Source - FORBES
Recreational Marijuana Will Be on 2020 Ballot Despite Sleazy Move by Legislature, Activists Say
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The standards of quality musicianship are constantly rising.
From discriminating audiences to demanding conductors, you must always give your best performance.
Do you demand as much from your reed making tools? You will find the right one to fit your individual needs. Metric, height 17 cm.
The Tip of your choice.


Boston Harbor is still a busy port, and the Harbor Walk takes you around old wharfs now updated and mostly residential. Begin at the North Washington Street bridge in the North End and continue to the Seaport district in South Boston which is being revitalized. Many waterfront restaurants, hotels and parks - such as Christopher Columbus Park - host varied musical and arts festivals during the summer months.
The Daily Catch, Northern Ave.
The Barking Crab Restaurant, Sleeper St.
No Name Restaurant, Fish Pier St.
Anthony's Pier 4, Northern Avenue. CLOSED.


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Home>Paul D. Maley>Space Debris>Reporting a Possible Satellite Reentry
Reporting a Possible Satellite Reentrypmaley2017-07-08T16:00:46+00:00
A reentering spacecraft is similar to that of a meteor or small asteroid body with some notable differences. Many reports by local people, regardless of the country of origin, appear on YouTube or other public information source without basic critical pieces of information. While reentry of a spacecraft or piece of space debris can be quite startling and bright, it is possible that a piece or pieces of debris could survive this fiery process and be recovered.
The general public will likely not be able to tell the difference between a satellite reentry and that of a meteor. But the tell tale signs are there. A satellite will generally (but not always) be travelling from the north, or northwest, or west, or southwest or south in the opposing direction. The process will result in an initial slow appearance of a single bright object which will gradually break up into a number of fiery objects of varying brightnesses, some disappearing quickly with others surviving a lot longer.
News media may sometimes have advance knowledge and may publicize the possible reentry. The case of Cosmos 1220 on February 16, 2013 was one of those situations where this very large satellite was predicted to break up somewhere over the ocean. Instead its reentry was visible from a number of locations in Saudi Arabia. Within hours a number of separate videos from towns such as Mecca, Madina, Taif, Jiddah, and Hai'l. Some witnesses said it was moving from North to South.
In order to gather critical information that might aid in finding and recovering a piece of space debris, the following is needed from each observing location:
a. latitude and longitude of observer as derived from GPS or Google Earth
b. time (converted to GMT) of the observation; a description of how this time was obtained. For example, using a watch with a second hand, a clock on the wall, a calibrated time source.
c. direction of motion from beginning to end. It is important to know how the directions were obtained: using buildings as a reference, street layout, knowledge of the constellations, or guess work.
d. name(s) and email/phone of reporting observer(s)
e. description of what was seen including the presence of any sounds
e. video
f. astronomical experience (if any) of the reporting observer
g. degree of certainty or uncertainty in any of the information above
In most cases, it will not be possible to find any recoverable pieces. It is only in those exceptional cases where there are many reports along the entire reentry track as well as luck where one or more pieces may be found. Usually such debris is found within hours of its fall and only because someone was nearby and found it.
Space debris usually has a dozen or more fragments appearing along the trail, some appearing, then disappearing, others lasting along the entire flight path. The train of fragments may extend across the entire sky or vanish after 20 or 30 degrees. It depends on the location of the observer with respect to the reentry path. The amount of time spent in the sky could be from 20 seconds to 90 seconds, but this is just a guideline. Sonic booms are rarely heard.
For investigators with the skill, ability, resources and time to hunt for objects, the more reports with accurate details will enable the likelihood of recovery to occur. This is the same process that meteorite hunters might use to recover debris.
Fireballs that appear in the sky that are not space debris may come from any direction in the sky. Their speed is usually (but not always) faster than the slow moving train of space debris. They may break up into two or more noticeable fragments which travel in similar directions. The duration of such entries last anywhere from a second or two to perhaps 15 seconds. A smoke train may or may not be left in the sky and rarely a sonic boom might be heard.
Space debris crashing into the ground may sometimes do damage to buildings, vehicles and other structures. The impacts of a large object disintegrating into a number of smaller ones may pose more of a threat to an urban environment depending on the mass of each fragment and whether there is any potentially explosive or toxic material surviving. It is usually the large mass and velocity that would pose a threat to people or animals. But the rarity of such death or injury is such as to be miniscule based on the entire history of past reentries since the beginning of the space age in 1957.


Export Import Data Zenith International, is a premier company that exports and imports goods from countries including Spain, and host of other countries.
Zenith International, is a premier company that exports and imports goods from countries including Spain, and host of other countries.
Zenith International is a leading exporter of GRAIN FINISHED UPPER LEATHER FROM GOATSKINS (OTHER THAN LI, GRAIN FINISHED UPPER LEATHER FROM GOATSKINS (OTHER THAN LI, having HS Codes 41062009. The company has its head office at .


Taipei, Taiwan - November 13th, 2018- Thermaltake and Thermaltake Gaming Tt eSPORTS won the "27th Annual Taiwan Excellence Award of 2019" for 9 amazing products, marks Thermaltake's 8th consecutive victory in a row. These nine awarded products all reached the high specifications of the Taiwan Excellence award, including the degree of R&D, design, quality, and marketing. This year Thermaltake encountered fierce competition; competed against a total of 1,127 entries worldwide and faced a 140 member jury panel, and we are honored to earned the Taiwan Excellence Silver Award with Level 20 Tempered Glass Edition Full Tower Chassis, which was selected from top 30 entries out of 1,127 products.
The judges were impressed by the innovation, cutting-edge technology and unique design found in the Thermaltake products, including: Level 20 GT RGB Plus Edition Full-Tower Chassis, View 71 Tempered Glass RGB Edition Full Tower Chassis, Core P90 Tempered Glass Edition Mid-tower Chassis and Level 20 RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard TT Premium Edition. Tt eSPORTS won the award with the Iris Optical RGB Gaming Mouse, NEMESIS Switch Optical RGB Gaming Mouse, CRONOS Riing RGB 7.1 Gaming Headset and DRACONEM RGB Touch Edition Gaming Mouse Pad. Moreover, Thermaltake has 50 products won the Taiwan Excellence Awards thereby earned the Taiwan Excellence Achievement Awards of 2019.
It features a gaming oriented design with architectural aesthetics, the aluminum-made Level 20 utilizes an aerodynamic trio chamber structure to achieve ventilation and space management optimization. The three hinged swing-doors are made with premium-quality 4mm thick tempered glass windows that provide durability and superb viewing capability. The Level 20 is installed with latest USB 3.1 Type-C port to provide 10 GB/s of transmission speed. Furthermore, the three built in Riing Plus 14 RGB Fans, two Lumi Plus LED Strips and one Riing Plus Digital Controller can all be controlled with the TT RGB PLUS Software. Users can custom control fan speeds and lighting effects to create their own unique liquid cooling gaming system. Compatible with the latest PC hardware, AIO and DIY liquid cooling solutions, the commemorative Level 20 Tempered Glass Edition Full Tower Chassis delivers not just an unprecedented design but also innovative performance.
Level 20 GT RGB Plus Edition Full-Tower Chassis shares most of the same traits with the RGB Plus Edition, including four tempered glass windows with hinged door, smart lock designs, latest USB Type-C™, USB 3.0 I/O Port and offers high-end complete solution. However, it preinstalled with two Riing Plus 20 RGB and one Riing Plus 14 RGB fans, which can be controlled by TT RGB PLUS Software, allowing users to custom control fan speeds and lighting effects, and the chassis is able to be compatible with the latest PC hardware, AIO and DIY liquid cooling solutions.
The chassis utilizes swing-out side panels, and is enclosed in 4-side 5mm tempered glass (left, right, front & top) for users to demonstrate their DIY handiwork and enjoy the ultimate internal component visibility. It is preinstalled with three 140mm Riing RGB fans for outstanding ventilation, and its seven drive trays with modular drive racks deliver advanced storage capacity and liquid cooling expansion. With supports for the latest PC hardware, the View 71 Tempered Glass RGB Edition Full Tower Chassis is not only fascinating in appearance, and when it comes to performance, the only thing that will limit its capabilities is users imaginations.
Core P90 Tempered Glass Edition Mid-Tower Chassis boasts the case architecture split into three compartments for graphic card, PSU and other cooling components. The triangular prism shaped body and two 5mm thick tempered glass side panels turn the chassis into a hexagonal prism outlined creature. Along with its 3-way placement layouts (wall-mountable, horizontal laying and vertical standing), it delivers high installation flexibility for a revolutionary system display from every angle. The interior space for custom cooling loop is maximized thanks to its "3+2" HDD mounts inside the right-side panel and two 3.5"/2.5" HDD compatible brackets behind M/B tray. With supports for up to three 140mm fans, one 480mm radiator and for the latest PC hardware, AIO and DIY liquid cooling solutions, the Core P90 TG permits users upgraded aesthetics and limitless potential with how they want to configure their systems.
The Level 20 RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard TT Premium Edition has aluminum faceplate with unique floating keycap design and Cherry switch. It packed with features including: 5 pre-configured FPS1, FPS2, MMO, MOBA, RTS lighting zones, 100% anti-ghosting, on-the-fly macro system, built-in 4-pole audio and USB device. Moreover, the keyboard has dedicated volume/mute and multimedia controls which allow users to adjust as needed. For the look, it offers 13 lighting effects in keycap area and 14 side lighting effects. Also, it is exclusively compatible with all Thermaltake TT RGB Sync Power Supply and Liquid Cooling Solutions and any other product range sporting the TT RGB Sync logo, enabling enthusiasts to sync all RGB colors seamlessly to all Thermaltake compatible product lines for even greater color coordination. In addition, the Level 20 RGB comes with an exclusively designed smartphone/tablet app with voice controlled AI for access to light functions and can adjust macro setting and lighting effect with the app. The app also includes an exclusive patented designed Virtual Game Controller (VGC) mode for a truly unique and astounding mobile gaming experience.
A new high performance entry-level mouse equipped with customizable 16.8 million RGB color, 9 dynamic lighting effects and exclusive side aura illumination. The Iris Optical RGB also comes with a gaming grade sensor that supports up to 5000 DPI, 20-million-click gaming grade switches for maximum durability and new gen gaming software for macro, advanced performance, light and profiles settings. Light up the battlefield with the Iris Optical RGB and play with superior accuracy, tracking, and ergonomic comfort.
NEMESIS Switch Optical RGB Gaming Mouse features exclusive patented key switching system is now available to purchase worldwide. Enthusiasts can customize up to 12 switch keys to suit different playing styles, hand sizes, and for enhanced ergonomic comfort. The use of Japanese branded OMRON switches with a 50-million click lifespan provides durable, consistent, and accurate tactile feel with each click for maximum responsiveness; and the use of a high quality gaming grade PMW3360 optical sensor with up to 12000 DPI provides precision gaming to enthusiasts, whilst the utilization of 16.8million RGB colors lets users light up their battles. Users can also use the downloadable software to further customize macros, lighting effects, colors and button controls to suit their playing style to maximize their performance in-game.
Packed with latest tech features: an oversized 50mm state-of-the-art tilting neodymium driver, 16.8 million color RGB illumination with 8 different lighting effects, and the latest 7.1 premium virtual surround sound technology to offer the most immersive 3D sound experience to ensure you hear all sounds with pinpoint accuracy for that all-important competitive edge.
Equipped with 16.8 million RGB color illumination, 4 stunning lighting effects, coupled with a completely new left, right and bottom design construction, gives the mouse pad even greater color illumination than ever before. The surface for the mouse pad is specially optimized and creates play that is balanced for both speed and control. The highlight feature, a state-of-the-art biometric FIDO certified Touch ID System, which allows for easy login to PC systems, access to favorite web pages, and secure file and folder encryption. In addition, enthusiasts can further customize their desired lighting settings with both hardware and software controls for even greater color personalization.


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TN to sign MoU with UK's Kings College Hospital
The Tamil Nadu government will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Kings College Hospital, London, to set up its branch in the state.
In a statement issued here, the Tamil Nadu government said the MoU will be signed during Chief Minister K. Palaniswami's visit there.
Leading a team of ministers and officials, Palaniswami is leaving for the UK and the USA to meet businessmen there in order to attract investments to Tamil Nadu.
From the UK, Palaniswami will fly to the USA where he will meet Tamil entrepreneurs and officials of Ford Motor Company, Caterpillar Inc., Bloom Energy founded by K.R. Sridhar, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and others.
Palaniswami will leave India on September 1 and return on September 10 after a two-day halt in Dubai where he will address a meeting of entrepreneurs.IANS


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PROFESSOR, FACULTY OF AEROSPACE ENGINEERING AT THE DELFT UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY & AND IN THE MATERIALS DEPARTMENT, CATHOLIC LEUVEN UNIVERSITY
http://www.lr.tudelft.nl/
Adriaan Beukers is a full-time professor of Composite Materials and Structures at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at the Delft University of Technology, and a part-time professor for Engineering with Composites at the Materials Department of the Catholic Leuven University. He is also former director of research and development strategies at the Centre for Lightweight Structures. This Center was a collaboration between the University and the National Institute for Applied Research (TNO) privatized since 2005. Since 1977 he has worked on the design, analysis and 'materialization' of novel composite structures for the University and industry with clients including Airbus, Bombardier, Boeing and Extra. In 2003 he received and accepted the invitation to become Visiting Fellow of the Composites Centre of the Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. The Fellowship came with an invitation to do research on topics concerning sustainable composites as durable materials for lightweight structures. In 2006, his group received an award as 'The most Entrepreneurial Scientific University Group of the Netherlands from the National Board of Universities (VSNU/Science Alliance) for its great numbers of patented innovations (> 50) and utilizations (> 25 spin off companies) in the field of novel composite materials, lightweight structures and manufacturing processes. Adriaan's approach to materials and structures development highlights the importance of using minimum material and energy to achieve the optimum physical and mechanical properties possible in a structure. An active application of both function integration and segregation as a design philosophy led to unusual and successful composite designs ranging from ultra lightweight rescue bags, beer kegs, pressure vessels to aircraft fuselages. As an author of the book 'Lightness' (1998) and 'Flying Lightness' (2005), he advocates the study of nature's organic structures as an inspiration for the development of man-made polymeric materials, which can be shaped, reinforced and pre-tensioned.