Nice Architect Tower

THE HL23 tower, planned for a site on 23rd Street in Chelsea, is the kind of commission Neil Denari has being waiting for his entire working life. Mr. Denari, a Los Angeles architect who once ran the Southern California Institute of Architecture, has labored on the profession’s periphery for decades. But because of a recent demand for name-brand residential architecture in New York, he is finally getting a chance to test his ideas in the real world.

And Mr. Denari is not alone here. His building is part of an eruption of luxury residential towers already constructed or being designed by the profession’s most celebrated luminaries. In the last five years more than a dozen have been completed; maybe a dozen more are scheduled to break ground this year. They range from soaring, elaborately decorated towers by international celebrities like Jean Nouvel and Frank Gehry to smaller but equally ambitious architectural statements by lesser-known talents like Mr. Denari.

With the financial markets in an ominous roil, the realization of this boomlet is far from guaranteed. But even if only a few more are completed, the final effect of these buildings could be the greatest transformation in the city’s physical identity since the 1960s. Bold and formally elaborate - some would say showy - they reflect a mix of attitudes and styles that the city has never seen.

They also reveal an unmistakable shift in the appetites and aspirations of an elite group of New Yorkers for whom an apartment’s architectural pedigree has become a new form of status symbol. Rather than disappear behind the shielding bulwark of Park Avenue apartment houses or into anonymous loft buildings as previous generations of wealthy New Yorkers did, these residents want to live in structures that telegraph their wealth and uniqueness.
Decades from now these preening, sometimes beautiful, sometimes obtrusive towers could well be the last testament to this century’s first gilded age.

The possibility of terrorist acquisition of nuclear weapons has added a new layer of risk.

Even as the nonproliferation system has become more sophisticated, the challenges it confronts have become more complex. Over the last decade, the NPT has endured successive crises involving Iraqi and North Korean nuclear weapons programs. Iran now appears to be on the verge of a nuclear weapons capability. Non-NPT member states India, Pakistan, and Israel have advanced their nuclear weapons programs with relative impunity. The possibility of terrorist acquisition of nuclear weapons has added a new layer of risk.

In the face of these problems, it has become fashionable for many U.S. policymakers to dismiss arms control and nonproliferation as ineffective. Instead, they emphasize the role of pre-emptive military action and the pursuit of new nuclear-weapon capabilities to dissuade and destroy adversaries seeking weapons of mass destruction. Such an approach would forfeit essential nonproliferation tools and provide a false sense of security.

Second, all cases of nuclear proliferation must be addressed. The United States and other global powers can no longer ignore the possession of nuclear weapons by their allies and friends. Although India and Pakistan are not a direct threat to the United States, they do threaten one another, and so long as Israel possesses nuclear weapons, others in the region will likely seek them too. China has aided Pakistan’s nuclear program, and in turn, Pakistan has aided North Korea and Iran.

Finally, the United States and other nuclear-weapon states must reduce the role of nuclear weapons. To comply with their own NPT disarmament commitments, they must actually dismantle—not test and improve—their deadly stockpiles. In the long run, the continued possession and threat of use of nuclear weapons by a few undermines the security of all. Without more effective U.S. leadership in each of these areas, the struggle against proliferation will fall short and leave a more dangerous world for generations to come.

Bluetongue virus

Bluetongue virus is back. It has survived another winter in northern Europe, and now farmers are vaccinating livestock in a race against the biting midges that carry the virus.
The first cases of the disease, which affects ruminants, began to surface this month, with France so far reporting 260. Most are located along the front line of last year's outbreaks, suggesting that the epidemic is spreading into new territory despite France's compulsory vaccination policy.
In England, voluntary vaccination has been rolled out across the country from the south-east, where bluetongue arrived last year. The vaccination "front" has now reached Yorkshire in northern England, alarmingly close to the country's main sheep areas. The disease kills sheep but only makes cattle ill.
Sheep just outside the vaccinated zone are at high risk, being close to potential infection, but are unlikely to be vaccinated till autumn. Much depends on whether enough farmers south of the line have vaccinated their livestock to slow the spread of the virus. The number of cases to date in France, though, suggests that it may be hard to stop.

NASA's THEMIS mission say they have the answer.

Some particularly colourful, dancing auroras, appearing every few hours, coincide with sudden tremors in the magnetic fields around Earth. Although these substorms have been observed for decades, no one was sure exactly how they were created.

A fleet of satellites has pinpointed the sequence of events that lead to magnetic "substorms" near Earth. These are frequent occurrences that cause auroras and may unleash radiation that can damage satellites.

Now, researchers with NASA's THEMIS mission say they have the answer. The substorms begin far out in space, roughly a third of the way to the Moon, where magnetic fields from the Earth are thrown together and reconnect to sling charged particles back toward the planet, they say.
"This is a question that people have been after since the beginning of the Space Age," says THEMIS principal investigator Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California, Los Angeles. "The reason it has not been shown up to now is that we didn't have the right satellites at the right positions and the right times."

WHAT IS A COMPUTER NETWORK?

Network are groups of computers,printers and other devices that are connected together with cables or with wireless connection in a LAN or modems and telecommunication lines in a WAN,information travels over the cables,allowing usars to exchange documents and data with each other,print to the same printers and generaly share any hardware or software that is comeded to the network.For example,three people in a depardment can write a report to gether or work with the same spreadsheets or databases,Networks allow people to exchange email and transfer files from are computer to another,each computer,printer or other device that to the network is called a node,networks can have tens,thousands or even millions of rodes.

The'heart' of the network is the server.Most networks include one or more computers that are designated as file servers.A file server is a computer whose hard disk is accessible to other computers on the network.Its job is to 'serve' data and program piles to these other machines via cables or other network comections.When there is a dedicated file server,the other computers are usually called either modes or works stations.

The countdown to 2010 has begun

The main challenge will therefore be organizational rather than conceptual or scientific.In view of the lives to be saved and the economic benefits of reining in the disease, the total cost of around $3 billion a year is one of the world’s great bargains.

In a dramatic call to action in April, United Nations secretary general Ban Ki moon backed by the African Union, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the Gates Foundation, ExxonMobil, the World Bank, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, among other key international organizations and businesses set a timetable for comprehensive malaria control in Africa by the end of 2010. Secretary General Ban has thrown down the gauntlet there is no reason why a million or more children should die every year of a largely preventable and wholly treatable disease.

Solutions for Climate Change

Forego Fossil Fuels



The first challenge is eliminating the burning of coal, oil and, eventually, natural gas. This is perhaps the most daunting challenge as denizens of richer nations literally eat, wear, work, play and even sleep on the products made from such fossilized sunshine. And citizens of developing nations want and arguably deserve the same comforts, which are largely thanks to the energy stored in such fuels.
Oil is the lubricant of the global economy, hidden inside such ubiquitous items as plastic and corn, and fundamental to the transportation of both consumers and goods. Coal is the substrate, supplying roughly half of the electricity used in the U.S. and nearly that much worldwide—a percentage that is likely to grow, according to the International Energy Agency. There are no perfect solutions for reducing dependence on fossil fuels (for example, carbon neutral biofuels can drive up the price of food and lead to forest destruction, and while nuclear power does not emit greenhouse gases, it does produce radioactive waste), but every bit counts.
So try to employ alternatives when possible—plant-derived plastics, biodiesel, wind power—and to invest in the change, be it by divesting from oil stocks or investing in companies practicing carbon capture and storage.

FAA stop fuel tank explosions

The rule doesn't require that existing cargo planes be retrofitted because of the cost, Peters said.

ASHBURN, Virginia (AP) -- A device to prevent airplane fuel tanks from exploding must be installed on certain passenger jets and cargo planes, federal officials said Wednesday, 12 years after such an explosion destroyed TWA Flight 800, killing all 230 people aboard. The new safety requirement, announced by Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, applies to new passenger and cargo planes that have center wing fuel tanks like TWA 800, a Boeing 747, which exploded over the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island on July 17, 1996, after takeoff from New York's Kennedy Airport. The rule also requires airlines to retrofit 2,730 existing Airbus and Boeing passenger planes over the next nine years with center wing fuel tanks with the changes. The retrofit schedule is based on the normal aircraft maintenance schedule. Manufacturers have two years in which to comply with the rule, although Boeing is already making some new planes with the changes. "We believe this will save lives," said National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Mark Rosenker, who joined Peters at a press conference at the safety board's training facility here, where TWA Flight 800 has been partially reconstructed from pieces of the aircraft retrieved from the ocean. "This is the big one for us as it relates to important solutions for fuel tank safety." The change brings to a close a long and troubled chapter in federal aviation safety. The National Transportation Safety Board identified the cause of the explosion -- the ignition of oxygen in a partially empty fuel tank that had been sitting for hours in the sun before takeoff -- not long after the accident. But the FBI initially thought the explosion was the result of a bomb and it was unclear for a time which agency -- the FBI or the NTSB -- was in charge of the investigation. The Federal Aviation Administration proposed a rule to prevent future explosions in 2005, but the aviation industry balked, saying the cost was too high. The final rule requires aircraft manufacturers and passenger airlines to install devices that replace oxygen, which is highly explosive, with inert nitrogen in fuel tanks as they empty. "The airlines will, of course, comply with the rule," said Victoria Day, a spokeswoman for the Air Transport Association of America. Matt Ziemkiewicz of Rutherford, N.J, whose sister was a flight attendant aboard TWA Flight 800, said he was "disappointed this didn't happen sooner ... We knew this was a preventable accident before Flight 800." However, Ziemkiewicz, who has led victims' families in seeking safety changes, said he was satisfied the new rule is "reasonable and realistic." The cost of installing the new technology would range from $92,000 to $311,000 per aircraft, depending upon its size, Peters said. She said the cost could be as little as one-tenth of 1 percent of the cost of a new aircraft. FAA Acting Administrator Robert Sturgell estimated the cost to industry overall at about $1 billion. "I recognize that this is a challenging time for commercial aviation," Peters said. "But there is no doubt that another crash like TWA 800 would pose a far greater challenge."

Loan guarantees issued by DOE

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced three solicitations for a total of up to $30.5 billion in federal loan guarantees for projects that employ advanced energy technologies that avoid, reduce or sequester air pollutants or greenhouse gas emissions. The three solicitations are in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy and advanced transmission and distribution technologies; nuclear power facilities; and advanced nuclear facilities for the ‘front-end’ of the nuclear fuel cycle. This marks the second round of solicitations for DOE’s Loan Guarantee Program, which encourages the commercial use of new or significantly improved energy technologies, and is an important step in paving the way for clean energy projects.
In a Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 loan guarantee implementation plan sent to Congress in April, DOE outlined plans to issue its second round of solicitations concurrently no later than June 2008 for energy efficiency, renewable energy and advanced transmission and distribution projects (up to $10 billion); nuclear power facilities (up to $18.5 billion); and advanced nuclear facilities for the “front-end” of the nuclear fuel cycle (up to $2 billion). Later this summer, DOE intends to issue a solicitation for loan guarantee applications for advanced fossil energy projects (up to $8 billion). The authority to issue loan guarantees in the amounts specified in these solicitations was provided to DOE in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008 and is consistent with the Department’s FY 2009 Congressional Budget Request.
“Loan guarantees from the Department will enable project developers to bridge the financing gap between pilot and demonstration projects to full commercially viable projects that employ new or significantly improved energy technologies,” Jeffrey F. Kupfer, the Acting Deputy Secretary of Energy, said. “Projects supported by loan guarantees will help meet President Bush’s goal of diversifying our nation's energy mix with energy projects that will improve the environment while increasing energy efficiency.”
The Department issued a Request for Information on April 11, 2008 and held subsequent public meetings in Washington, D.C. and Palo Alto, California to receive input on the development of the solicitation for projects in the energy efficiency, renewable energy and advanced transmission and distribution areas.
The loan guarantee process is organized into four phases: application, project evaluation, conditional commitment, and final approval and closing of a Loan Guarantee Agreement. Selection criteria for the clean energy projects under these solicitations will focus on a project’s ability to avoid, reduce or sequester air pollutants or greenhouse gas emissions; the speed with which the technologies can be commercialized; the prospect of repayment of the guaranteed debt; and the potential for long-lasting success of these technologies in the marketplace.
Today’s round of solicitations builds off of the previous solicitation issued by DOE which supported energy efficiency, renewable energy and fossil energy projects. DOE is currently reviewing the applications received to date as a result of the first solicitation.
Loan guarantees issued by DOE will be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, and will facilitate the early commercial use of new or significantly improved technologies that will help fulfill President Bush’s goals of reducing our reliance on imported sources of energy by increasing energy efficiency, diversifying our nation’s energy mix, and improving the environment.

The National Diploma in Architectural Technology

The National Diploma in Architectural Technology will give you the skills to design and produce construction drawings for residential and commercial buildings. Learn to use the latest computer technology and develop manual drawing skills.

Develop the skills to design and produce construction drawings for residential and commercial buildings. Learn perspective drawing, freehand drawing, shading and rendering.

You will become aware of how architects approach design, and learn the tools and techniques to produce the drawings and specifications from which a building is constructed. This includes perspective drawing, freehand drawing, shading and rendering.
Throughout the diploma programme, you gain a thorough grounding in construction technology. Courses progress from the drawing of simple buildings using basic technology to the drawing and specification of complex buildings using advanced technology

France will build a second new-generation nuclear reactor

The fight against climate disruption is unfortunately serving as a commercial argument for promoting false remedies such as nuclear energy, the group's spokesman Arnaud Gossement said in a statement.

France — the country most reliant on nuclear power — has been constructing its first European Pressurized Reactor, or EPR, on the Normandy coast, and it is expected to go into service in 2012.
EPR reactors are meant eventually to replace the aging reactors around the world whose designs date from decades ago. The Normandy site is one of only two EPRs in the world currently under construction; the other is in Finland.
A decision about where to build a second French EPR will be made in 2009, Sarkozy said, adding that construction would start in 2011.
"The era of inexpensive oil is over," Sarkozy said. "Nuclear power is more than ever an industry of the future, and an essential form of energy."
"France will experience a new industrial revolution," Sarkozy said. He spoke while visiting metal workers at the Industeel plant in Le Creusot in the Burgundy region, which he said would produce most of the components needed for the reactor. Industeel is a subsidiary of steelmaker ArcelorMittal Group.
During Sarkozy's visit, Anne Lauvergeon, CEO of French nuclear company Areva, and Aditya Mittal, CFO of ArcelorMittal, signed a memorandum of understanding to increase production at Industeel for the nuclear market.
Already, 77 percent of France's electricity comes from nuclear power, Sarkozy said.
"We, the French, can become exporters of electricity, though we have no oil and no more natural gas," Sarkozy said. "This is a historic chance for development."
France's Green Party and environmental groups oppose the building of EPRs, saying they are dangerous and costly and do not address root causes of global warming and shrinking world resources.
France Nature Environment called it a "catastrophic sign" for France's presidency of the European Union, which began this week and runs through the end of this year. The group lamented that Sarkozy made the announcement the same day that EU environment ministers were meeting outside Paris.

RedOctane execs on a roll with "Guitar Hero"

DENVER (Billboard) - There were a lot of questions surrounding the "Guitar Hero" videogame when it first came out. Would gamers agree to pony up extra money for the special guitar-shaped controller needed to play it? Would the music industry agree to license master tracks? Would the addition of downloadable content be successful?
The answer to all those questions has turned out to be a resounding yes. "Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock" has sold more than 8 million copies, and the franchise has sold more than 20 million songs through its downloadable content store.
During the past month, publisher Activision -- which purchased the rights to the franchise by acquiring original publisher RedOctane -- rolled out a portable version of the game for the Nintendo DS called "Guitar Hero: On Tour," introduced a special edition dedicated to classic rock act Aerosmith and unveiled plans for its next installment, "Guitar Hero: World Tour," which for the first time adds drums and vocals to the mix in a bid to compete with rival "Rock Band." An added twist for the expected fourth-quarter release: The game's "music studio" feature enables users to compose and record tracks and share them online.
To be sure, the story of "Guitar Hero" seems to be just hitting its stride rather than slowing down. Billboard caught up with RedOctane founders and brothers Kai and Charles Huang -- president and VP of business development, respectively -- to hear their reflections on the past and what they've got planned for the future.
Q: Why a whole expansion of the game dedicated to Aerosmith rather than just featuring the band as a downloadable content special?
Kai Huang: Because we really wanted to showcase Aerosmith the band. Downloadable content will allow you to just get the music, but we've gone much, much further than that. We've actually brought them into the studio to do full-motion capture of them in performance, and we put all of that into the game. We had the band consult on the actual songs that they wanted, including about 20 of the songs that they had over their 30-year career. And then they provided input on songs that were from bands that they'd either toured with in the past or that have influenced them over the course of their career. So the game is a lot more than just about Aerosmith music, it really is about the history and the rise of Aerosmith.
Charles Huang: Even the venues have changed, so the venues are the actual places where they played. We actually have Nipmuc High School (in Massachusetts), where they did their first gig, (and) Max's Kansas City, and all of (those) are authentic through the history of Aerosmith, so it was a lot more than just making their music playable with "Guitar Hero III." That's why we had to put it on disc to get all of that into the game.

Solar Dyes Give a Guiding Light

A new way capturing the energy from the Sun could increase the power generated by solar panels tenfold, a team of American scientists has shown. The new technique involves coating glass with a specific mixture of transparent dyes which redirect light to photovoltaic cells in the frame. The technology, outlined in the journal Science, could be used to convert glass buildings into vast energy plants. The technology could be in production within three years, the team said. "It makes sense to coat the side of [very tall] buildings with these new panes," Professor Marc Baldo, one of the researchers on the team, told BBC News. "It's not far fetched at all."

New big laptops

video
Big laptops
Hiawatha Bray puts this large laptop to the test.
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Sprint's Instinct phone
Wi-Fi radio
Sony XEL-TV
Viewing video's future
DXG camcorder
A smarter GPS
The Apple store

Robo-frog has a way with the ladies

It's a new Robo-frog
"Robo-frog" has a way with the ladies. He has a speaker that broadcasts a realistic mating call and a shiny painted balloon that inflates and vibrates beneath his throat, perfectly mimicking the vocal sac of a real túngara frog.
Researchers at the University of Texas are using robo-frog to study different components of communication between the frogs. And the Texas team has found good evidence that the striped vocal sac is important for wooing females, even though they mate in the dark.
Túngara frogs live in the forests of northern Latin America. At night, males sing to attract females and their throats inflate. "The sacs evolved for males to shuttle air back and forth, so they don't have to suck in air each time they sing," says Michael Ryan of the University of Texas in Austin.
Since the female frogs can see very well in the dark, Ryan and his colleague Ryan Taylor thought the distinctive pattern on the males' vocal sac might have another purpose as well.
Sexy sac
In experiments, females will move towards a speaker playing a recorded male mating call. But to test whether the vocal sac also played a role, the researchers created robo-frog – a resin replica of a male túngara frog with an inflatable latex vocal sac.
The model is hooked up to an air pump driven by the wave on an oscilloscope, making the fake vocal sac to bulge in and out rhythmically.
To make the fake frog's vocal sac to vibrate realistically, Taylor synthesised a male mating call and fed it into the oscilloscope. His team gave 20 females a choice between an inflating robo-frog producing mating calls and a speaker on its own.
Sixteen of the 20 were more attracted to the combination of speaker and frog, moving towards it to investigate. When the model frog's oscilloscope was switched off, however, the females did not find it any more attractive than the speaker. This suggests that a vibrant vocal sac is crucial to finding a mate.
Taylor also tried making the vocal sac vibrate out of sync with the songs and he says this actually deters the females.
"We are particularly excited about the implications of this result," he says. The researchers think the frogs are showing something similar to the "McGurk effect", which shows that the shapes made by a person's lips are relevant to the sound they are perceived to produce.

Iran tested more missiles

Iran tested more missiles in the Gulf on Thursday, state media said, and the US reminded Tehran that it was ready to defend its allies.

Washington, which accuses Tehran of seeking nuclear arms, said after Iran test-fired nine missiles on Wednesday there should be no more such tests if Iran wanted the world's trust.
US leaders have not ruled out military options if diplomacy fails to assuage fears about Iran's nuclear programme, which Tehran says is only to produce electricity.
Israel, long assumed to have its own nuclear arsenal, has sworn to prevent Iran from emerging as a nuclear-armed power. Last month it staged an air force exercise that stoked speculation about a possible assault on Iranian nuclear sites.
Iran has vowed to strike back at Tel Aviv, as well as US interests and shipping, if it is attacked, asserting that missiles fired during wargames under way in the Gulf included ones that could hit Israel and US bases in the region.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on a visit to the former Soviet republic of Georgia that no one should be confused about Washington's commitment to protect its allies. "We are also sending a message to Iran that we will defend American interests and . . . the interests of our allies," she said after meeting Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Hydrogen to Replace Gasoline Cars

Like most articles on hydrogen-powered vehicles, this one fails to mention the other alternative that is being worked on and already in very limited production: liquid hydrogen-powered vehicles. Buses in Iceland and the BMW Hydrogen7 are examples of production vehicles already using liquid hydrogen and today's technology. Certainly, storing liquid hydrogen in large enough quantities to meet the needs of long range between fill-ups and the infrastructure to delivery liquid hydrogen is still in its nascent stages, but so was the gasoline-based infrastructure when the car was a recent invention.

The jury is still out on whether hydrogen will ultimately be our environmental savior, replacing the fossil fuels responsible for global warming and various nagging forms of pollution. Two main hurdles stand in the way of mass production and widespread consumer adoption of hydrogen “fuel cell” vehicles: the still high cost of producing fuel cells, and the lack of a hydrogen refueling network.
Reining in manufacturing costs of fuel cell vehicles is the first major issue the automakers are addressing. While several have fuel cell prototype vehicles on the road—Toyota and Honda are even leasing them to the public in Japan and California—they are spending upwards of $1 million to produce each one due to the advanced technology involved and low production runs. Toyota hopes to reduce its costs per fuel cell vehicle to around $50,000 by 2015, which would make such cars economically viable in the marketplace. On this side of the Pacific, General Motors plans to sell hydrogen-powered vehicles in the U.S. by 2010.
Another problem is the lack of hydrogen refueling stations. Major oil companies have been loathe to set up hydrogen tanks at existing gas stations for many reasons ranging from safety to cost to lack of demand. But obviously the oil companies are also trying to keep customers interested in their highly profitable bread-and-butter, gasoline. A more likely scenario is what is emerging in California, where some 38 independent hydrogen fuel stations are located around the state as part of a network created by the non-profit California Fuel Cell Partnership, a consortium of automakers, state and federal agencies and other parties interested in furthering hydrogen fuel cell technologies.
The benefits of ditching fossil fuels for hydrogen are many, or course. Burning fossil fuels like coal, natural gas and oil to heat and cool our buildings and run our vehicles takes a heavy toll on the environment, contributing significantly to both local problems like elevated particulate levels and global ones like a warming climate. The only by-product of running a hydrogen-powered fuel cell is oxygen and a trickle of water, neither of which will cause any harm to human health or the environment.
But right now 95 percent of the hydrogen available in the U.S. is either extracted from fossil fuels or made using electrolytic processes powered by fossil fuels, thus negating any real emissions savings or reduction in fossil fuel usage. Only if renewable energy sources—solar, wind and others—can be harnessed to provide the energy to process hydrogen fuel can the dream of a truly clean hydrogen fuel be realized.
Stanford University researchers in 2005 assessed the environmental effects of three different hydrogen sources: coal, natural gas, and water electrolysis powered by wind. They concluded that we’d lower greenhouse gas emissions more by driving gasoline/electric hybrid cars than by driving fuel cell cars run on hydrogen from coal. Hydrogen made using natural gas would fare a little bit better in terms of pollution output, while making it from wind power would a slam-dunk for the environment.

Find out a new octopuses

In an attempt to find out if octopuses are right- or left-handed, er, tentacled, scientists from the Sea Life Center in England, have provided 25 of the beasts with colorful Rubik's Cubes to play with in the center's aquariums across Europe. Many animals in nature are known to favor one appendage, but researchers are unsure whether that holds true for the eight-armed octopus. (They could turn out to be "octidextrous"—equally good with all tentacles.) Biologists, who worry about the stress that these creatures are prone to in captivity, want to determine if octopuses have a preferred side for receiving food, as this may make their lives just a little bit easier. For the study, visitors and caregivers will record which limb (labeled as R1, R2, L6, L7, etcetera) the octopus uses to pick up the cube when it's dropped into their tank, along with other objects like jam jars and Lego bricks. Researchers said it's unlikely that any of these cephalopods will solv the Rubik's Cube. Let's hope the challenge doesn't add to their stress level.

You Drive Your Car All The Way Home

New York City has been topped out, according to the building's Architect of Record, Steven Kratchman, AIA.

200 11th Avenue is often referred to as the sky garage building, because it's designed with a car elevator that travels vertically to all of the residential units. Each luxury aparent will be sold with an attached garage, similar to a suburban home, but stacked vertically, Mr. Kratchman said. The upper façade will be made of stainless steel panels. The four base stories are to be clad in terra cotta.
Located in the former warehouse district of West Chelsea in Manhattan, 200 11th Avenue will offer expansive views of the Hudson River.
Architect and Urban Designer Steven Kratchman, AIA, is the founder and CEO of the firm Steven Kratchman Architect, PC. Before establishing his own firm, Mr. Kratchman served as lead architect on the now world renowned Chelsea Piers complex in Manhattan.
The Kratchman firm was recently contracted by Surround Art to create their architectural master plan for a clean, green Silver LEED industrial campus at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
We are honored to be the Architect of Record of 200 11th Avenue, working with the esteemed Design Architect Annabelle Selldorf on this elegantly designed project," Mr. Kratchman said. Construction is expected to be completed in February, 2009.
Credits for 200 11th Avenue: The Design Architect is the firm Selldorf Architects of New York City, Annabelle Selldorf, Founder. The Architect of Record is the firm Steven Kratchman Architect, P.C., of New York City, Steven Kratchman, Founder and CEO. The owner is Gaia House LLC, which is a partnership between Urban Muse LLC and YoungWoo and Associates.
The Kratchman and Selldorf firms were previously paired as Architect of Record and Design Architect, respectively, on a six-story vertical addition to an existing three-story former warehouse in the lower Manhattan meatpacking district at 415 West 13th Street.
Steven Kratchman Architect, P.C., was founded in 1999 by Steven Kratchman, AIA, architect and urban designer, who previously served as Senior Designer for the team that transformed an abandoned New York City urban harbor area into the now world-renowned Chelsea Piers.
His firm has grown from two architects to a professional staff of 15, who work on retail, commercial and residential projects, multi-family residential, single-family residential, historic and landmark properties, private clubs and sports facilities, educational institutions, new from-the-ground-up buildings and restaurants

New soaring steel cost car prices:Nissan CEO

Soaring steel costs will force consumers worldwide to pay higher prices for automobiles in the coming years.

Surging raw material costs are eating into automakers' profits, even as rocketing fuel prices weigh on their sales, particularly those of large trucks and sports utility vehicles in the United States.
Higher material prices are the "single most important challenge facing the industry," Ghosn said at the group's shareholder meeting in Yokohama.
"All car manufacturers will increase prices. It's a question of time. How can you not increase prices if the price of raw materials goes up 100 percent?"
Nissan has already announced price rises in the United States and Europe.
"Japan is not going to be the exception," said Ghosn, who also heads Nissan's French partner Renault.
Baosteel, China's largest steel maker, this week agreed to nearly double the price it pays mining group Rio Tinto for high-grade iron ore.
Ghosn said steelmakers were preparing to pass on the increased cost to automakers.
"It's a question of time before this comes and hits us," said Ghosn. "We have no choice but to increase prices."
Automakers will have to raise their prices by about two or three percent in 2008 if they want to offset the rising cost of raw materials, he said.
The price of iron ore, a vital material to make steel, has soared in recent years due to growing demand, particularly in fast-growing China and India.
Nissan, Japan's number three automaker by sales, faces "severe headwinds" from higher material and energy costs, the weakness of the US and Japanese economies and a stronger yen, which is bad for overseas earnings, Ghosn said.
For the current fiscal year to next March, Nissan has previously predicted a 29.5 drop in net profit and a 30.5 percent decline in operating profit due to sluggish sales in maturing markets, a stronger yen and high material costs.
"I don't think that there is any car manufacturer, except some very specific cases, which thinks that 2008 is going to be better than 2007," Ghosn said.
In the US, if the market remains as weak as it has been in May and June then "the picture's going to be very bleak," he said.
"Frankly, nobody has a clue about what is the trend for oil (prices) for the next six months. We have to be prepared for the worst."
With Japan's population greying and shrinking, and a credit crunch undermining US sales, Japanese automakers are relying increasingly on emerging economies such as Brazil, Russia, India and China to expand their sales.
"The hottest market for us today is Russia," followed by certain markets in the Middle East, said Ghosn.
"We intend to take full advantage of growth in emerging markets," he said.
Ghosn said Nissan aims to become the industry leader in electric vehicles, which he said would see a boom in popularity due to growing concerns about high oil prices and global warming.
"Very quickly the market is going to shift to zero emissions. What you've seen for the hybrid is nothing compared to the shift to zero emissions. Our priority is to bring an electric car as fast as possible to the market."
Electric cars have so far failed to break into the mainstream because of limited battery life that makes them impractical for most purposes.
Nissan and its partner NEC Corp. said last month they would invest 115 million dollars to mass produce next-generation lithium-ion batteries for electric, hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles.

The primarily produces the hybrid in Japan but also in the United States and China

Toyota, poised to overtake General Motors this year as the world's top automaker, was a pioneer of hybrids, which deliver power by switching between a regular engine and an electric motor.

Toyota Motor Corp. said Tuesday it will expand its production of hybrids to Australia and Thailand, seeking new markets for the hot-selling cars at a time of soaring fuel prices.
The Japanese auto giant said it aimed to churn out 9,000 Camry Hybrids a year in Thailand, a key hub for Asian operations, and another 10,000 in Australia, which is seeking to revive its ailing auto industry.
Toyota announced the start of hybrid production in Melbourne as Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd visited the automaker's headquarters in central Japan.
Toyota, which will use an existing factory for the production starting in 2010, will benefit from subsidies of 35 million Australian dollars (37 million US dollars) from Canberra to be used in research and development.
Rudd said increased popularity of the hybrid would help Australia cut back on emissions blamed for global warming.
"This hybrid will use one-third less petrol than a standard car, one-third less emissions and therefore for an average family ... savings of up to 1,000 dollars a year," Rudd told reporters.
"Australia must do whatever we can to assist Australian motorists who are faced with the challenge of rising fuel prices and also... in our overall efforts to bring down greenhouse gas emissions," he said.
Rudd has called for a transformation of Australia's auto industry, which has shed more than 11,000 jobs since 1996, by launching a 500-million-Australian-dollar fund to assist the development of green cars.

It primarily produces the hybrid in Japan but also in the United States and China.
The Altona plant in Melbourne employs 4,500 workers, which will go up slightly with production of the hybrids, Toyota chief executive Katsuaki Watanabe said.
"Due to Australia's high interest in global warming and environmental issues, we are confident that the Camry Hybrid will be welcomed there," Watanabe said next to Rudd.
"Toyota's hybrid system, which controls emissions and contributes to cutting down on petrol consumption, is our core technology," he said.
The company later announced that it would also produce Camry Hybrids at the Gateway plant some 110 kilometres (70 miles) from Bangkok.
Toyota's hybrid output jumped 25 percent to 430,000 units in 2007. The company aims for annual production to jump to one million units in the early 2010s.
Australians buy one million cars a year and only 5,000 are hybrids, Rudd said.
Australian Industry Minister Kim Carr, who was travelling with Rudd, hoped that the benefits of Toyota's investment would spill over to other sectors.
"We want to see a rapid transformation of the Australian automotive industry because... it affects so many other industries -- steel, plastics, electronics and even aerospace," Carr said.
Rudd is paying his first visit to Japan since taking office last year.
He later headed to Tokyo where he visited a large supermarket and offered free samples of Australian beef on toothpicks to customers.
Aussie beef has gained sales in Japan due to concerns over US beef following a mad-cow disease scare.
Rudd's trip is aimed in part at easing concerns in Japan that the Mandarin-speaking former diplomat favours Beijing. He visited China as part of his first major international visit but not longstanding ally Japan.

French automaker Renault cut its sales

The world economy is forecast to slow this year.

Renault had previously been expecting growth in sales of 10 percent over 2008, but it reduced this forecast to 5.0-10.0 percent on Wednesday, citing the uncertain economic environment.
There was "a stronger probability of it (the growth figure) being in the lower end of the range," said Renault sales director Patrick Blain.
He pointed to sluggish sales in Europe, Iran and South Korea and said high prices for oil and other raw materials were having an impact on the company.
The world economy is forecast to slow this year, with some countries going into recession, as the impact of the US sub-prime crisis and financial market turmoil take their toll.
Blain also conceded that some targets given by the company as part of a "Contract 2009" strategic plan presented by chief executive Carlos Ghosn in February 2006 might have to be revised.
The plan set an objective of increasing sales by 800,000 worldwide from the level of 2005.
"It's becoming harder and harder. The probability of reaching this target has fallen very sharply since the start of the year," he said.
Renault said it sold 1.325 million vehicles worldwide in the January to June period, when its global market share crept up 0.2 points to 3.8 percent.
Renault added that "conditions were now in place" for continued growth in the second half.
But it cautioned: "The scope of future growth will depend in large part on developments in an uncertain economic and financial climate and their impact on key markets, notably in Europe and France."
Shares in Renault gained 0.06 percent to 49.85 euros in early afternoon trade on the Paris stock exchange, underperforming the market as whole.

High-Tech Concept Cars

New Model High-Tech Concept Cars


Fifty years ago, General Motors called its high-tech concept cars "Dream Cars." Most of them, like a turbine-powered car that looked like a jet airplane, remained just that—a dream. Today's high-tech dream cars are rooted in much more practical concerns, especially fuel efficiency and weight savings, which were not on the pop-culture radar in the 1950s. Today's concept cars are much closer to making dreams like fuel cells, which generate electricity from hydrogen and emit only water vapor, come true.

New rocket technology news

It is a new rocket technology news

An agreement to collaborate on development of an advanced rocket technology that could cut in half the time required to reach Mars, opening the solar system to human exploration in the next decade, has been signed by NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, and MSE Technology Applications Inc., Butte, MT.
The technology could reduce astronauts' total exposure to space radiation and lessen time spent in weightlessness, perhaps minimizing bone and muscle mass loss and circulatory changes.
Called the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR), the technology has been under development at Johnson's Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory. The laboratory director is Franklin Chang-Diaz, a NASA astronaut who holds a doctorate in applied plasma physics and fusion technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.
Chang-Diaz, who began working on the plasma rocket in 1979, said, "A precursor to fusion rockets, the VASIMR provides a power-rich, fast-propulsion architecture."
Plasma, sometimes called the fourth state of matter, is an ionized (or electrically charged) gas made up of atoms stripped of some of their electrons. Stars are made of plasma. It is gas heated to extreme temperatures, millions of degrees. No known material could withstand these temperatures. Fortunately, plasma is a good electrical conductor.
This property allows it to be held, guided and accelerated by properly designed magnetic fields.
The VASIMR engine consists of three linked magnetic cells. The forward cell handles the main injection of propellant gas and its ionization. The central cell acts as an amplifier to further heat the plasma. The aft cell is a magnetic nozzle, which converts the energy of the fluid into directed flow.
Neutral gas, typically hydrogen, is injected at the forward cell and ionized. The resulting plasma is electromagnetically energized in the central cell by ion cyclotron resonance heating. In this process radio waves give their energy to the plasma, heating it in a manner similar to the way a microwave oven works.
After heating, the plasma is magnetically exhausted at the aft cell to provide modulated thrust. The aft cell is a magnetic nozzle, which converts the energy of the plasma into velocity of the jet exhaust, while protecting any nearby structure and ensuring efficient plasma detachment from the magnetic field.
A key to the technology is the capability to vary, or modulate, the plasma exhaust to maintain optimal propulsive efficiency. This feature is like an automobile's transmission which best uses the power of the engine, either for speed when driving on a level highway, or for torque over hilly terrain.
On a mission to Mars, such a rocket would continuously accelerate through the first half of its voyage, then reverse its attitude and slow down during the second half. The flight could take slightly over three months. A conventional chemical mission would take seven to eight months and involve long periods of unpowered drift en route.
There are also potential applications for the technology in the commercial sector. A variable-exhaust plasma rocket would provide an important operational flexibility in the positioning of satellites in Earth orbit.
Several new technologies are being developed for the concept, Chang-Diaz said. They include magnets that are super-conducting at space temperatures, compact power generation equipment, and compact and robust radio-frequency systems for plasma generation and heating.
Coordinated by Johnson's Office of Technology Transfer and Commercialization, the Space Act Agreement calls for a joint collaborative effort to develop advanced propulsion technologies, with no money exchanged between the two parties. Such agreements are part of NASA's continuing effort to transfer benefits of public research and development to the private sector.

New architectural Desing

It is a new architectural Desing

The hub, a mixing chamber and circulation space for both people and incoming air, is clad inside
and out with bright-green composite panels manufactured in Germany. The panels splay and peel open haphazardly, distorting the hub’s egglike form and providing areas for air entry and exit through the gaps between the panels and into the exterior ductwork. Originally, this part of the building was to be clad in copper panels, but the matte-plastic skin actually harmonizes better with the rest of the building’s palette of industrial materials.

In today’s era of sick-building syndrome and fears of SARS outbreaks and bioterrorist attacks, most architects and engineers strive to obscure a building’s mechanical systems, or at least place the necessary equipment out of harm’s way. But architect Sheppard Robson and the engineers of Arup have done just the opposite at the Fitzrovia Building, the latter’s newly designed, 125,000-square-foot headquarters in London, which boldly displays the innards of its HVAC system. In so doing, the design team has created an alluring new relationship between architecture, engineering, and urban space—one that negotiates the complex role of air-handling technologies in an age of environmental and security concerns.
Over the past 50 years, Arup has expanded its operations to include numerous buildings in and around the Fitzroy Street area of London, just north and west of the heart of Bloomsbury. The collection of buildings, dubbed the “Fitzrovia Estate,” was a sprawling aggregation of structures with few physical connections. In March 2001, Arup, Sheppard Robson, and real estate management firm London Merchant Securities announced plans to use architecture, small-scale urban planning, and sustainable engineering to turn the collection of buildings into a campus for Arup. “The project will establish a coherent campus that will reflect both externally and internally what Arup stands for. It will provide an exciting and inspirational workplace to support and encourage the firm’s philosophy of creativity and innovation,” said Arup officials at the project’s onset. The Fitzrovia Building is the first step in this plan.
Turning HVAC inside out Sheppard Robson and Arup used the distribution of air and light as a leitmotif in bringing together two seven-story, 1960s-era office blocks that constitute the new building. It now reads as a unified ensemble, laced together with pronounced ductwork, a dramatic double-glazed curtain wall, and a standout component: a lozenge-shaped element, called “the hub,” which forms the locus of a unique air-delivery system for the complex.
In the existing buildings, low floor-to-ceiling heights precluded the use of underfloor air distribution for heating and cooling, an energy-saving strategy that Arup pioneered years ago. Instead, the engineers mounted air-handling ducts on the exterior of the building, in a clearly visible space within the cavity of a double-glazed curtain wall. Solar-shading louvers are also installed between the glazed faces of this curtain wall to reduce heat gain within the complex. The windows facing Fitzroy Street are operable to encourage natural ventilation, whereas those that look out on the warmer, south-facing Howland Street are fixed, and the HVAC ducts in this area more protected in the plenum space between the double glazing. A computerized building management system (BMS) controls the entire operation, maintaining comfortable indoor temperatures while also balancing energy consumption. Though the double glazing, louvered shading devices, and BMS are common features in Europe’s energy-conscious architecture, this project’s brazen display of its HVAC equipment makes it exceptional

New family car

It is a nice and new family car.Family styling is given a unique twist as supermini MPV targets Renault Modus.



The French firm is keen to tempt buyers away from rivals such as the Renault Modus and Ford’s forthcoming B-Max with its new car, which is the third to wear the Picasso badge. It shares such family features as a wraparound windscreen, but as an all-new design, it will also be distinct from the rest of the C3 line-up. A boldly styled front with tapered lights is complemented by a range of sporty features. There’s a deep front bumper, chunky alloys, front foglights and a double grille. Flared wheelarches and SUV-style roof rails complete the look.
At the back, high-mounted lights frame a split tailgate with an independently opening glass section for versatile boot access. The curved A-pillars are similar to those on the larger C4 Picasso.
According to Citroen, at 1.63 metres tall and 1.73 metres wide, the C3 will provide an incredible amount of cabin space. And the panoramic glass sunroof – which is the largest in the class – increases the airy feel. In addition to the essential practical features, Citroen has also focused on passenger comfort. So the seating position is high, and legroom is maximised – in the back, the bench adjusts by more than 150mm. It can also be folded flat to provide 500 litres of storage.
The body will be underpinned by a platform which also forms the basis of the Peugeot 207 and next-generation C3.
Engine choices comprise 1.4-litre VTi 95 and 1.6 VTi 120 petrols, as well as the existing 1.6-litre HDi 90 and HDi 110 diesels, as offered with the 207. Specifications for UK cars have yet to be finalised, but a production-ready version of the C3 Picasso will debut at the Paris Motor Show in October, alongside the rest of the model range. Prices are set to start at around the £9,500 mark when it goes on sale next year.

New PocketDish

New Pocket Dish Is A Good Portable Video Device

As computers get better and better at providing entertainment it should make sense that computer based technology is producing devices that are more and more convenient for taking entertainment with us wherever we go. While there are a variety of computer based devices like laptop computers and portable DVD players, only one type of computer device does a really good job of combining all of the best parts of a home entertainment system into a package that's compact and easy to afford. This is the portable media device.
[ Read More... ]

New technology Satellite TV

It is a new technology Satellite TV



There has been considerable debate about whether or not cable TV is up to the task of offering budding TV technologies like HDTV. After all, when satellite TV came about back in the nineteen nineties it pretty much blew cable TV providers out of the water where the number of channels of standard def TV where concerned. Since then, the cable TV companies have made considerable headway in trying to make it so that their technology is competitive with what the satellite TV companies can provide. Most of this headway has been in the form of costly upgrades to the cable systems so that they can carry more channels. These costs have been passed on to consumers in the form of higher rates which have driven more former cable TV subscribers to satellite TV providers.
[ Read More... ]

New Genetic recombination

It is a new Genetic news

The groups of Lars Steinmetz at EMBL and Wolfgang Huber at EMBL-EBI have produced the most detailed map to date of recombination events in the yeast genome.

In the current issue of Nature, researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) in Hinxton, UK, present the most precise map of genetic recombination yet. The study sheds light on fundamental questions about genetic shuffling and has implications for the tracking of disease genes and their inheritance. In order to generate germ cells, sexually reproducing organisms undergo a complex series of cell divisions (meiosis) that includes the shuffling of genetic material inherited from the two parents. Equivalent chromosomes from mother and father pair up and exchange sections of DNA in a process called crossover. In a different type of recombination, called non-crossover, a small piece of DNA is copied from one chromosome onto the other without reciprocal exchange leading to gene conversion. Non-crossovers are minute events with a subtler effect than the exchange of larger fragments, but both types of recombination can increase genetic diversity and explain why organisms of the same species differ in many ways. Both types of recombination can also act to separate the transmission of neighbouring genes, which are normally inherited together.

Professional Studies in Architectural Technology

New! Bachelor's of Professional Studies in Architectural Technology & Law Office Administration.

Robert Morris College is now offering a Bachelor of Professional Studies degree with concentrations in Architectural Technology and Law Office Administration. The new program is specifically designed for students currently in the College's Interior Space Planning and Design or Computer Assisted Design/Drafting programs, or individuals with associate degrees in interior design, construction, facilities management, drafting, electronics, manufacturing, technology, architecture, HVAC, industrial manufacturing technology, automated management technology, building property management or engineering majors."Students focus on their selected concentration during theirjunior and senior years," explained Mablene Krueger, provost. "They becomepart of a cohort during this time and take most of their classes together.Working as a team provides experience that is essential to developingmanagement skills. We've designed the program so that students will be ableto step into positions with levels of responsibility once they graduate."The first classes begin in the December 2007 quarter inChicago. All new transfers and returning juniors or seniors starting theArchitectural Technology concentration in December or February 2008 areeligible for a $2000 scholarship per quarter. For additional information,contact the Robert Morris College Admissions office, 800-RMC-5960.

New 3G iphone

According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, the Apple iPhone is forecast to take 35 percent share of the mobile touchscreen phone market in the United States by the end of 2008.
Bonny Joy, Analyst at Strategy Analytics, said, “We estimate the Apple iPhone will account for 6.3 million of the 18.1 million touchscreen phones sold in the United States during January to December 2008, for an impressive 35 percent marketshare. We expect the release of the heavily-subsidized 3G iPhone 2.0 on July 11th to catalyze a healthy spurt in touchscreen volumes during the second half of the year.”

Neil Mawston, Director of Strategy Analytics, added, “Apple is in a strong position today but its rivals are not standing still. Samsung and LG already offer numerous, popular touchscreen models such as the Instinct and Voyager, while Blackberry and Nokia are scheduled to launch their own portfolios in the coming months with the Thunder and Tube. Clearly, the competition is rising fast and hanging on to that 35 percent marketshare will be a major challenge for Apple in 2009.”

Iran’s adversaries is unlikely.

The commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards has said that Iran would consider any military action against its nuclear facilities as the beginning of a war. However, the general also has said he thinks a strike by Iran’s adversaries is unlikely.

Iran indicated Saturday that it has no plans to meet a key Western demand that it stop enriching uranium, a day after Tehran sent the European Union a response to an international offer of incentives for halting enrichment.

“It was not something that made us jump up and down for joy,” said one European official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was confidential. “We are in a holding mode until we get a chance to look at it more closely.”A spokeswoman for U.S. President George W Bush, who is en route to a G-8 summit in Japan, said: “We’re going out to consult with our allies about what Iran’s response means.”“We’ll just have to see how this is received by others before we make a formal response,” White House press secretary Dana Perino told reporters traveling with Bush on Saturday.A positive response could open the way to renewed negotiations that might help cool recent sharp exchanges between officials on both sides. In recent weeks the U.S. and Iran have traded threats and warnings over possible American or Israeli military action.But an Iranian government spokesman insisted that Tehran would not change the central part of its controversial program. Uranium enrichment can produce either fuel for a nuclear reactor or the material for a warhead. Iran insists its enrichment work is intended to produce fuel for nuclear reactors that would generate electricity.“Iran’s stand regarding its peaceful nuclear program has not changed,” Gholam Hossein Elham told reporters.Elham also said Iran was ready to negotiate on its program “within the framework of the international rules and regulations.”He did not elaborate, but Iranian state media reported Friday that EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, have agreed to hold the latest in a series of talks in the second half of July.Iran’s ambassador to Belgium presented the response to the package to Solana in Brussels, Iranian state media reported Friday. European officials said they were studying the Iranian response and were consulting among themselves and with the United States, Russia and China on what to do next.Acting on behalf of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany, Solana offered the modified package of economic incentives to Iran during his June visit to the country. The offer is meant to persuade Iran to halt enrichment, which the six world powers fear Iran could use to produce weapons.Iran has repeatedly insisted it will not give up enrichment, but it had said the incentives package had some “common ground” with Tehran’s own proposals for a resolution to the standoff.Separately, EU nations also approved new sanctions against Iran in June, imposing additional financial and travel restrictions on a list of Iranian companies and experts, including the country’s largest bank.The six nations—the U.S., China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany—first offered a package of economic, technological and political incentives to Tehran nearly two years ago on condition that it suspend enrichment.The standoff has led to increasingly tense exchanges about the possibility of a military strike by Israel or the U.S. An Israeli military exercise last month was seen as a warning to Iran.

Nuclear news

With the recent submissions of several combined construction and operating license (COL) applications in the United States and several submissions expected, the nuclear industry is continuing to move toward a renaissance. Don't miss your opportunity, become a part of it by reserving your ad space today!

Nuclear News continues to cover the latest developments in the nuclear field -- a large part of which concerns nuclear energy -- in particular, the 104 operating nuclear power plants in the United States, and more than 330 operating in the rest of the world. In addition, regular departments include: power, operations, security, isotopes and radiation, waste management, people, and more.

Solar Light of Africa.

Itis a nice solar And science technology.

The iNet News Team™ helped to install solar systems in Ugandan schools and clinics for lighting and computers.

The Church has been the cornerstone of Uganda's social and economic life, especially in the hard and difficult times of Idi Amin. Now, peace and stability have come to the land with the leadership of President Yoweri Museveni. However, the Church faces many challenges to keep up with the leadership role. These challenges can not be solved if activities are limited to daylight. It is necessary to extend the day. And that is Solar Electricity.

new model architectur

In developing their design for the new Spertus Insitute of Jewish Studies in Chicago, architects Krueck & Sexton realized that the facade would be the public face of a very unique institution. Their solution for a triangulated, all-glass facade expressed both the diversity and oneness of the organization. Its transparency serves not only as metaphor, but practical purposes as well, bringing light into the deep, narrow lot opposite Grant Park on Michigan Avenue. Though the architects anticipated an uphill battle with the city’s landmarks commission to endorse such a modernist assembly along this historic stretch of street wall, the project was met with overwhelming support

“We had composed it,” explains Mark Sexton, “now we had to figure out how to build it.” To make that happen as efficiently as possible, keeping within the facade’s tight $2.7 million budget, Krueck & Sexton partnered with the former ASI (it has since been acquired by Enclose Corp.) for what they call an engineer-fabricate-install process. While Krueck & Sexton continued throughout the job designing every piece of the wall, the California-based ASI was responsible for all the connections and edges. “The budget had to be met, and we had to be happy with the wall,” says Sexton. “One couldn’t happen without the other.” In the end, the composition remained intact.
The breakthrough for the Spertus facade came in the form of a Y-shaped mullion, the curved face of which accommodates the complex geometry of the faceted wall by allowing attached brackets to rotate freely along the horizontal plane. To achieve the vertical changes in plane, almost a third of the 227 aluminum mullions, which are lined up parallel to each other along the jagged floor-slab edges, were either sloped outwards towards the street, or back away from it – no small feat considering the upper part of the curtain wall features heavier mullions with complex curves that cantilever five feet past the property line. “One of the more amazing technical aspects of this job,” recalls Mark Dannettel, ASI’s Executive Designer, “was that we found someone who would actually bend these extrusions.” On the lower levels, 7¼-inch- deep mullions span the full 14-foot floor height ; stronger, 8½-inch deep mullions span the 21- foot-tall upper levels. The extrusions were shipped to Southern Stretch Forming and Fabrication in Denton, Texas, where they were bent according to full-size drawings, then tempered in a special oven to achieve the required strength.
Given the extra-tall floor heights, Spertus’ facade is a rare contemporary example of a semi-unitized curtain wall. (By contrast, the flowing glass enclosure of Frank Gehry’s recent IAC Headquarters in New York employs a fully-unitized glazing system). An aluminum frame with built-in stainless steel hooks surrounds each piece of glass. Serrated brackets, which extend several inches past the face of the Y-mullion, feature an additional saw-tooth saddle to accept the hooks – allowing the assembly to mesh together as the glass slides into position, but locking only after all the glass

New architectural Desing

It is a nice desing
Structural engineer Ron Klemencic had extra reasons for gratitude during the 2005 Thanksgiving season. After hitting his head against the wall on and off for more than three years, he finally received stamps of approval for the first two performance-based seismic design (PSD) high-rises in earthquake-prone San Francisco. PSD can cost less, improve design, and ease construction.
Word about the 38- and 43-story Infinity towers, designed by Arquitectonica, based in Miami, Florida, with local firm Heller Manus, came the last week of November. News about the Chicago-based Solomon Cordwell Buenz–designed 64-story One Rincon Hill followed in early December. “I was elated both times,” says Klemencic, president of Magnusson Klemencic Associates (MKA), of Seattle, who was the structural consultant on both projects. “It was two years of blood, sweat, and tears on [the Infinity] before we even initiated Rincon Hill.” That review took a year, twice the norm for San Francisco towers.

The city’s approval marked the beginning of the end of a logjam in big California cities for PSD of buildings taller than 240 feet. “People are going to be doing this left-handed at 100 miles per hour in five years thanks to Ron,” predicts one prominent San Francisco architect.
The approach is a way to meet the intent of the code’s prescriptive provisions by using a single framing system instead of a costlier and “clunkier” dual system to resist lateral loads. But some cities are cautious in allowing PSD because it requires extreme engineering.
The two developments are located within blocks of each other in the city’s South of Market neighborhood, not far from the Bay Bridge approach. But the 590-foot-tall Rincon Hill tower has the higher profile of the two cutting-edge projects, and not just because it is taller and sits on a hill. The nod from the city unlocked the door not simply to PSD in California but to the tallest “performance” skyscraper in the U.S. One Rincon Hill is also the tallest high-rise to contain buckling-restrained braces (BRBs) and the first to use them as outriggers. The slender tower is the first residential building in the country to have a liquid tuned mass damper to reduce sway to acceptable comfort levels, says the engineer.

Gmail Security

Gmail Security With Remote Logout


If you use Google's Gmail and like to access your account from several locations -- work, office, your smartphone, Internet cafes, etc. -- you can now remotely check the status of that account from all your log-in locations. Google announced a new remote signout and monitoring feature designed to enhance security for those who use several computers or connected devices in the course of a day. [More...]

Microsoft Access' Soft Underbelly

Microsoft Access' Soft Underbelly

Microsoft issued a warning Monday about targeted attacks attempting to exploit a bug in the ActiveX control for the Snapshot Viewer in its Access database management application. The ActiveX control for the Snapshot Viewer for Microsoft Access enables users to view a snapshot of an Access report without having the standard or run-time versions of Microsoft Office Access, Microsoft said. The vulnerability only affects ActiveX control for the Snapshot Viewer in Microsoft Office Access 2000, Microsoft Office Access 2002 and Microsoft Office Access 2003. [More...]