Aerospace firms boost payrolls; defense slips

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Southern Arizonas major aerospace employers are among the technology-based companies that staged a resurgence in 2013, as several firms serving commercial aviation markets boosted their payrolls.

Meanwhile, aerospace-oriented defense firms like Raytheon Missile Systems shed some jobs in 2013, while military employers like Davis-Monthan Air Force Base saw cuts mainly in civilian workers due to sequestration and Pentagon budget-cutting efforts.

Bombardier Aerospace, the areas biggest aviation employer, added more than 100 jobs last year as it opened three new maintenance lines for its Q400 and Q400 NextGen turboprops to support new long-term maintenance contracts with North American carriers.

Another local aerospace firm that made big strides in 2013 was B/E Aerospace, a maker of luxury interiors for the corporate and private jet markets. The company has nearly doubled its staff since 2011 as the global market for cabin interiors has begun recovering from the recession and its lingering aftermath.

Some smaller aerospace companies are growing as well.

Prized for its relatively high wages and high-value exports, the technology-driven aerospace sector is the focus of economic and workforce development in the region.

Aerospace is a mainstay of Pima Countys manufacturing sector, accounting for nearly half of the 23,200 manufacturing jobs in the county in 2013, according to the Arizona Department of Administration and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But overall, employment in aerospace products and parts manufacturing in Pima County fell from 11,200 jobs in January 2013 to 10,900 in January 2014, a drop of about 2.6 percent.

Aerospace and defense are a major focus for Tucsons economic-development group, Tucson Regional Economic Opportunites Inc. (TREO), along with solar energy, biosciences and logistics.

At a meeting of the Pima County Workforce Investment Board, TREOs David Welsh compared the aerospace and defense sector to the sun in a model solar system.

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Aerospace firms boost payrolls; defense slips

Meet Miriam – the woman who keeps Nick Clegg on his toes

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The piece provoked much mirth in political circles, with one writer noting: No wonder Cleggy looks so pasty and frayed. It is almost as if he lives in terror of Miriams fingertips clicking like castanets and summoning him to his housework.

She had stayed relatively quiet on the subject until last week, and will doubtless have been encouraged by the more positive reaction. Sites such as Mumsnet lit up with praise, The Guardian hailed her as the Michelle Obama of the Coalition, the woman with a sense of purpose bold enough to ignore the constraints of convention, while Telegraph commentator Dina Rickman declared: I had only one thought: could we replace Nick Clegg with her?

A nice idea, although it is doubtful that Miriam could take the pay cut. She earns a reported 500,000 a year four times as much as her husband with Dechert, an American-owned law firm that specialises in complex corporate and property cases. The salary discrepancy, matched by the perception of Miriams weighty intellect, has compounded the impression that she runs Casa Clegg, the familys home in Putney, south-west London, with a rod of iron.

The power dynamic, according to those who know the Cleggs, is rather more complicated. For all Miriams talk of equality, it is clear that her preferences tend to prevail. Only Spanish is spoken in the house, and despite the Deputy PMs declarations of agnosticism, the children are being raised in Miriams Roman Catholic faith. Shes number one in the kitchen, too, recently telling a Spanish magazine: Nick is forbidden from doing any cooking on health-and-safety grounds, but he does pretty much everything else. He compensates. He is an appalling cook.

Yet she supports, in a subtly effective fashion, his political career, embracing the Lib Dem agenda, illuminating its fringes, wearing sharp-but-non-threateningly-ethical outfits (being spotted emerging from the fabled royal corsetires, Rigby & Peller, was a rare slip), and dutifully insisting that she looks forward to the day the scent of her jamn y croquetas wafts into Downing Street.

The Cleggs met in the early Nineties in Bruges, where both were taking degrees at the College of Europe, a kind of Sandhurst for aspiring Eurocrats, and both were already passionate about the continents federal future. Soon they were equally passionate about each other. According to Miriam, her British suitor wooed her during Sevillian dancing sessions and over sizzling Spanish omelettes. Their romance, she once cryptically explained, was like taking a train that passes you in the night. This may have been because Clegg could barely understand a word she said. He nevertheless thought she was magnificent.

The magnificence first saw the light in May 1968, in Valladolid, a city somewhat tainted by its pro-Franco associations. Miriam grew up in the suburb of Olmedo, where her father, a teacher, was the conservative mayor. I am not a stranger to politics, she has said. I was delivering leaflets when I was eight years old. After university she went to Belgium, staying for several years to work for the EU. The Cleggs married in 2000.

The British remain faintly wary of exoticism, and Seora Clegg, with her raven tresses, and overtones of Carmen-like feistiness, has attracted some suspicion. During the last election, she gave a mangled explanation of why she wouldnt be on the campaign trail, implying it was because she couldnt afford to take the time off work. What she was trying to say was that she was different from other political wives because, well, she was different from all of us, and that rather than trying to make her husband look good on a stage, she preferred to knock him into shape beforehand.

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Forensic Science Institute growing

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EDMOND The W. Roger Webb Forensic Science Institute program on the campus of the University of Central Oklahoma began in 2009 with fewer than 100 students, said Dwight E. Adams, UCO Forensic Science Institute director.

Today the forensics program is growing with more than 500 in the program, he said. The credit for such rapid growth goes to the faculty, Adams added.

Adams joined faculty members at the Edmond Economic Development Authoritys 4oclock 4cast with an update of the forensics program.

We require more of our students than any other program in the country, Adams said. Students must combine their forensics degree with another degree on campus in order to specialize in a specific discipline of forensic science.

Digital media is a rapidly growing field of forensic science, said Mark R. McCoy, associate professor Forensic Science Institute and School of Criminal Justice.

We look for digital types of evidence in all types of crimes, McCoy said. All crime scenes contain digital evidence.

Be careful about throwing away items containing a hard drive, such as an old printer, he said. Somebody could pick it up, remove the hard drive and recover confidential documents, he said. There are ways to be able to delete that data.

We are constantly looking for things where people who may want to hide evidence may hide it, McCoy said.

Just because digital evidence has been altered does not mean it has been destroyed. An arson fire ravaged a building that contained a surveillance camera with a digital hard drive. The imagery was recovered regardless of the smoke, heat and water damage, McCoy said. The owner of the building was the arsonist.

Remember BTK? McCoy said.

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Forensic Science Institute growing

Anti-Aging Treatments | Anti-Aging Medicine | Alternative …

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The Nevada Center is a unique medical health and fitness clinic designed to measure, treat, and retard the aging process. Each individualized program begins with an in depth analysis of metabolic status, hormonal status, and age related bio-marker status. This is followed by the formulation of an individualized program of the necessary rejuvenation therapies. We leave nothing out! And we dont have a one-size-fits-all mentality. Our goal is to offer all the latest diagnostic and regenerative therapeutics to restore youthful function and appearance, maximize quality of life, and prevent the diseases and infirmities of aging.

As one renowned researcher in the aging process, Dr. Ward Dean, once said, Aging is the only disease that everyone gets. Sure we will all age and die one day, but how soon and to what extent that happens is determined by several known factors. Preventing aging is just like preventing any disease. By manipulating the factors that cause the aging process, aging can be delayed and even reversed. Dr. Shallenberger says, If thirty years of medicine has taught me one thing, it's that prevention is the only medicine that makes any real sense. No one wants to live forever, but most of us would like to live our "golden years" free from the disease and frailty that we so commonly see.

The advanced anti-aging program offered at The Nevada Center is for anyone who is willing to spend some time, money, and energy earlier in life in order to save & reap the rewards later. This is a lifetime program based on an individualized program of proper diet, exercise, hormonal replacement, and supplements.

Want to learn more? Call us at 775-884-3990

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Volunteers For Mars Colonization Wanted: Apply Today [VIDEO]

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Its goal is to create a permanent settlement on the red planet that could pave the way for future space colonies. Its a beta test for planetary colonization, and Mars One seeks to establish an environment that is a sustainable outpost designed to receive astronauts every two years.

According to Mars One, the company has developed a precise, realistic plan based entirely upon existing technologies. It is both economically and logistically feasible, in motion through the integration of existing suppliers and experts in space exploration.

If your dream is to be one of the first people to step foot on an alien world, Mars One may just enable it as it has set its requirements for astronauts.

The chief medical director of Mars One, Norbert Kraft, a former senior research associate for NASA, discussed the trials and tribulations that lie ahead for any of the brave astronauts chosen for the Mars mission.

In a statement, Kraft said: In my former work with NASA, we established strict criteria for the selection and training of astronauts on long-duration space flights. Gone are the days when bravery and the number of hours flying a supersonic jet were the top criteria. Now, we are more concerned with how well each astronaut works and lives with the others, in the long journey from Earth to Mars and for a lifetime of challenges ahead. Psychological stability, the ability to be at your best when things are at their worst, is what Mars One is looking for. If you are the kind of person [who] everyone chooses to have on their island, then we want you to apply too.

So what does it take to be a Mars colonist? For starters, each Mars One astronaut must be 18 or older with a [d]eep sense of purpose, willingness to build and maintain healthy relationships, the capacity for self-reflection, and ability to trust. All astronauts must have a strong grasp of the English language as that will be the official language of the Mars One mission. The organization is not looking for any particular individual, be it a doctor or an athlete, to apply. Instead, it is more focused on a persons character than on his or her abilities.

Mars One is seeking colonists who are creative, curious, resilient, resourceful, trusting, and have the ability to adapt. You can look over the application process here to determine whether you could be a Mars One colonist. Once you apply, there are four rounds of qualification. The first round is the application, which includes a resume, a letter expressing your reason for wanting to join Mars One, and a video response to several questions.

If chosen for the second phase, each volunteer must provide a clean bill of health from his or her doctor and will be subject to interview by the Mars One selection committee.

The third and fourth phases are by far the most important for any would-be astronaut. A national contest will be held, with 20 to 40 volunteers competing in challenges that will determine who advances to the final round.

In the last phase, the volunteers will be divided into national groups and will undergo training and other challenges that simulate what it is expected to be like on Mars. The ability to work together under the harshest of conditions will be crucial.

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Volunteers For Mars Colonization Wanted: Apply Today [VIDEO]

Mars Colonization Mission Will Happen Live on Reality TV …

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One of the primary obstacles to human colonization of Mars is the funding -- creating a habitable environment and sending humans across the gulf of space is a costly process, well beyond the exploration budgets of most nations. But Nobel Prize-winning physicist Gerard 't Hooft and Big Brother co-creator Paul Romer have a brilliant solution that will put colonists on Mars by 2023.

The key: Fund the whole shebang by turning the mission into reality TV.

The Dutch company Mars One is managing the project, and in its explanatory video below, talking heads call the project (a little euphemistically maybe) a "media event," comparing it to the moon landing. They also tout the fact that its apolitical and taxpayer-independent, a private space endeavor, paid for by eyeballs on screens.

Romer told The Daily Mail:

The entire world will be able to watch and help with decisions as the teams of settlers are selected, follow their extensive training and preparation for the mission and of course observe their settling on Mars once arrived. The emigrated astronauts will share their experiences with us as they build their new home, conduct experiments and explore Mars.

The part of that quote that sticks out is that an audience will be able to "help with decisions." Shifting the selection process from experts handpicking the best candidates to, perhaps, people texting in to vote for their favorite explorer is an ... interesting idea.

Four explorers would hit the surface of the Red Planet by 2023 -- where, the company promises, a habitation will already have been built -- with more trickling in over the next 10 years until 20 people are there. Construction rovers would be sent first to make sure housing is set up for the first wave, with more houses going up as needed.

Mars One has received letters of interest from aerospace companies potentially willing to donate hardware for the mission, and the presence of some real scientists rather than businessmen lends credence to the project, but colonizers on Mars in a little more than two decades is still a lofty goal, whether it's funded by NASA or by prime-time.

[via The Daily Mail]

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The Case for Colonizing Mars, by Robert Zubrin

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From Ad Astra July/August 1996

Among extraterrestrial bodies in our solar system, Mars is singular in that it possesses all the raw materials required to support not only life, but a new branch of human civilization. This uniqueness is illustrated most clearly if we contrast Mars with the Earth's Moon, the most frequently cited alternative location for extraterrestrial human colonization.

In contrast to the Moon, Mars is rich in carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen, all in biologically readily accessible forms such as carbon dioxide gas, nitrogen gas, and water ice and permafrost. Carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen are only present on the Moon in parts per million quantities, much like gold in seawater. Oxygen is abundant on the Moon, but only in tightly bound oxides such as silicon dioxide (SiO2), ferrous oxide (Fe2O3), magnesium oxide (MgO), and aluminum oxide (Al2O3), which require very high energy processes to reduce. Current knowledge indicates that if Mars were smooth and all its ice and permafrost melted into liquid water, the entire planet would be covered with an ocean over 100 meters deep. This contrasts strongly with the Moon, which is so dry that if concrete were found there, Lunar colonists would mine it to get the water out. Thus, if plants could be grown in greenhouses on the Moon (an unlikely proposition, as we've seen) most of their biomass material would have to be imported.

The Moon is also deficient in about half the metals of interest to industrial society (copper, for example), as well as many other elements of interest such as sulfur and phosphorus. Mars has every required element in abundance. Moreover, on Mars, as on Earth, hydrologic and volcanic processes have occurred that are likely to have consolidated various elements into local concentrations of high-grade mineral ore. Indeed, the geologic history of Mars has been compared to that of Africa, with very optimistic inferences as to its mineral wealth implied as a corollary. In contrast, the Moon has had virtually no history of water or volcanic action, with the result that it is basically composed of trash rocks with very little differentiation into ores that represent useful concentrations of anything interesting.

You can generate power on either the Moon or Mars with solar panels, and here the advantages of the Moon's clearer skies and closer proximity to the Sun than Mars roughly balances the disadvantage of large energy storage requirements created by the Moon's 28-day light-dark cycle. But if you wish to manufacture solar panels, so as to create a self-expanding power base, Mars holds an enormous advantage, as only Mars possesses the large supplies of carbon and hydrogen needed to produce the pure silicon required for producing photovoltaic panels and other electronics. In addition, Mars has the potential for wind-generated power while the Moon clearly does not. But both solar and wind offer relatively modest power potential tens or at most hundreds of kilowatts here or there. To create a vibrant civilization you need a richer power base, and this Mars has both in the short and medium term in the form of its geothermal power resources, which offer potential for large numbers of locally created electricity generating stations in the 10 MW (10,000 kilowatt) class. In the long-term, Mars will enjoy a power-rich economy based upon exploitation of its large domestic resources of deuterium fuel for fusion reactors. Deuterium is five times more common on Mars than it is on Earth, and tens of thousands of times more common on Mars than on the Moon.

But the biggest problem with the Moon, as with all other airless planetary bodies and proposed artificial free-space colonies, is that sunlight is not available in a form useful for growing crops. A single acre of plants on Earth requires four megawatts of sunlight power, a square kilometer needs 1,000 MW. The entire world put together does not produce enough electrical power to illuminate the farms of the state of Rhode Island, that agricultural giant. Growing crops with electrically generated light is just economically hopeless. But you can't use natural sunlight on the Moon or any other airless body in space unless you put walls on the greenhouse thick enough to shield out solar flares, a requirement that enormously increases the expense of creating cropland. Even if you did that, it wouldn't do you any good on the Moon, because plants won't grow in a light/dark cycle lasting 28 days.

But on Mars there is an atmosphere thick enough to protect crops grown on the surface from solar flare. Therefore, thin-walled inflatable plastic greenhouses protected by unpressurized UV-resistant hard-plastic shield domes can be used to rapidly create cropland on the surface. Even without the problems of solar flares and month-long diurnal cycle, such simple greenhouses would be impractical on the Moon as they would create unbearably high temperatures. On Mars, in contrast, the strong greenhouse effect created by such domes would be precisely what is necessary to produce a temperate climate inside. Such domes up to 50 meters in diameter are light enough to be transported from Earth initially, and later on they can be manufactured on Mars out of indigenous materials. Because all the resources to make plastics exist on Mars, networks of such 50- to 100-meter domes couldbe rapidly manufactured and deployed, opening up large areas of the surface to both shirtsleeve human habitation and agriculture. That's just the beginning, because it will eventually be possible for humans to substantially thicken Mars' atmosphere by forcing the regolith to outgas its contents through a deliberate program of artificially induced global warming. Once that has been accomplished, the habitation domes could be virtually any size, as they would not have to sustain a pressure differential between their interior and exterior. In fact, once that has been done, it will be possible to raise specially bred crops outside the domes.

The point to be made is that unlike colonists on any known extraterrestrial body, Martian colonists will be able to live on the surface, not in tunnels, and move about freely and grow crops in the light of day. Mars is a place where humans can live and multiply to large numbers, supporting themselves with products of every description made out of indigenous materials. Mars is thus a place where an actual civilization, not just a mining or scientific outpost, can be developed. And significantly for interplanetary commerce, Mars and Earth are the only two locations in the solar system where humans will be able to grow crops for export.

Mars is the best target for colonization in the solar system because it has by far the greatest potential for self-sufficiency. Nevertheless, even with optimistic extrapolation of robotic manufacturing techniques, Mars will not have the division of labor required to make it fully self-sufficient until its population numbers in the millions. Thus, for decades and perhaps longer, it will be necessary, and forever desirable, for Mars to be able to import specialized manufactured goods from Earth. These goods can be fairly limited in mass, as only small portions (by weight) of even very high-tech goods are actually complex. Nevertheless, these smaller sophisticated items will have to be paid for, and the high costs of Earth-launch and interplanetary transport will greatly increase their price. What can Mars possibly export back to Earth in return?

It is this question that has caused many to incorrectly deem Mars colonization intractable, or at least inferior in prospect to the Moon. For example, much has been made of the fact that the Moon has indigenous supplies of helium-3, an isotope not found on Earth and which could be of considerable value as a fuel for second generation thermonuclear fusion reactors. Mars has no known helium-3 resources. On the other hand, because of its complex geologic history, Mars may have concentrated mineral ores, with much greater concentrations of precious metal ores readily available than is currently the case on Earth because the terrestrial ores have been heavily scavenged by humans for the past 5,000 years. If concentrated supplies of metals of equal or greater value than silver (such as germanium, hafnium, lanthanum, cerium, rhenium, samarium, gallium, gadolinium, gold, palladium, iridium, rubidium, platinum, rhodium, europium, and a host of others) were available on Mars, they could potentially be transported back to Earth for a substantial profit. Reusable Mars-surface based single-stage-to-orbit vehicles would haul cargoes to Mars orbit for transportation to Earth via either cheap expendable chemical stages manufactured on Mars or reusable cycling solar or magnetic sail-powered interplanetary spacecraft. The existence of such Martian precious metal ores, however, is still hypothetical.

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The Case for Colonizing Mars, by Robert Zubrin

Hubble Telescope Image Reveals a Cross Section of the Cosmos

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An image of a galaxy cluster taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope gives a remarkable cross-section of the Universe, showing objects at different distances and stages in cosmic history. by Mike Wall, Senior Writer for Space.com 2014-04-22 16:15:51 UTC

A new photo from NASA's Hubble space telescope captures a variety of celestial objects both near and far, providing a glimpse of many different stages of cosmic history all at once.

The Hubble image, released April 17, is a 14-hour exposure that shows objects about 1 billion times fainter than the naked eye can make out, researchers said. Most of the galaxies visible in the photo lie less than 5 billion light-years away, but some objects are much more distant.

For example, the photo shows a quasar located 9 billion light-years from Earth, meaning it has taken about two-thirds of the universe's history for the object's light to reach Hubble. (The Big Bang that created the universe occurred 13.8 billion years ago.)

The most luminous objects in the universe, quasars are incredibly bright galactic cores powered by supermassive black holes that contain millions of times more mass than the sun.

The light from the distant quasar in the Hubble photo is being bent and amplified by a galaxy cluster that lies closer to Earth along the line of sight from this planet a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. This cluster, known as CLASS B1608+656, is visible as a small loop near the center of the image.

CLASS B1608+656 isn't the only lensing object in the new photo, which combines observations in visible and infrared light.

Two galaxies dubbed Fred and Ginger, but more formally known as ACS J160919+6532 and ACS J160910+6532, respectively are also warping spacetime enough to distort the light emitted by objects behind them, researchers said.

Both Fred and Ginger appear close to CLASS B1608+656 in the Hubble photo. But only Fred is actually close to the cluster, researchers said; Ginger is much nearer to Earth.

The Hubble image is new to the general public but not to scientists, who have studied it extensively over the years. It was spotted by Adam Kill during the 2012 Hubble's Hidden Treasures competition, which invited contestants to identify the most interesting and beautiful Hubble photos that a wide audience has yet to see.

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Hubble Telescope Image Reveals a Cross Section of the Cosmos

Ancona 23-04-14 PdCI – La crisi dell’Ucraina, la NATO e l’UE: pericoli di guerra e lotta x la Pace – Video

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Ancona 23-04-14 PdCI - La crisi dell #39;Ucraina, la NATO e l #39;UE: pericoli di guerra e lotta x la Pace
Ho creato questo video con l #39;Editor video di YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/editor)

By: ACUCUBUI Marche

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Ancona 23-04-14 PdCI - La crisi dell'Ucraina, la NATO e l'UE: pericoli di guerra e lotta x la Pace - Video

US troops in Poland: American soldiers arrive for NATO exercises in response to Russia threat – Video

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US troops in Poland: American soldiers arrive for NATO exercises in response to Russia threat
Over 100 American troops have arrived in Poland to participate in joint training exercises with their Polish NATO allies. US paratroopers will be undertaking exercises with a Polish airborne...

By: Ukraine News One

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US troops in Poland: American soldiers arrive for NATO exercises in response to Russia threat - Video