25 terms you should know to understand the gun control debate – The Southern

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riends who own guns, and nearly three-quarters have fired a gun. The prevalence of gun violence and gun ownership has made gun controlamong the most hotly (and frequently)contested issues in the United States.

Advocates for gun control want tighter restrictions on the sale, possession, and use of firearms, while advocates of gun rights see ownership as an essential right protected by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The debate heats up each time a mass shootingdefined as a shooting involving the death or injury of four or more peopleoccurs, which now happens, on average, every day in the United States. Six of the 10 deadliest U.S. shootings have happened in the past decade.

Reform advocates point to evidence showingfewer people die from gun violence in states with strong gun laws. Case in point: Alaska has the highest gun death rate and some of the weakest gun laws, while Hawaii has the lowest gun death rate and some of the strongest gun laws.Advocates for reform have steadily gathered momentum:Some young survivors of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting, for example,have proposed a blueprint for comprehensive gun control. Everytown for Gun Safety, founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has spent millions of dollars to promote gun control through ballot initiatives and state elections and has challenged the clout of the National Rifle Association (NRA) at the federal level. From 2017 to 2019there was a rise in the amount of Americans who support stricter gun laws.

Meanwhile, well-organized and well-funded groupssuch as the NRA, along with more hardline groups such as Gun Owners of America, fight hard in WashingtonD.C.for lawmakers support. Gun advocates argue that more guns, not less, will help to prevent or stop shootingsand that stricter gun-control laws will only keep guns out of the hands of honest people.

As gun violence spread to protests and the presidential election looms, the debate over guns in the United States only amplifies. Here are 25 terms critical to understanding and participating in the conversation about the issue.

You may also like: How Americans feel about 30 major issues

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25 terms you should know to understand the gun control debate - The Southern

Repealing the Second Amendment is not easy | News, Sports, Jobs – Alpena News

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Dont let the politicians or the NRA scare you about taking your guns away. The Second Amendment to the Constitution would have to be repealed. Heres how the process works:

A proposed amendment to the Constitution must first be passed by Congress with two-thirds majorities in both the House and the Senate.

Then three-fourths of the states must ratify the amendment. Thats done either through getting the state legislatures to approve of it or by ratifying conventions. Three-fourths is a high bar if as few as 13 states refuse to approve the change, the amendment stalls. Considering how many states are considered gun-friendly, its unlikely that the amendment would survive.

The other option for repealing the Second Amendment is more radical: Calling for a constitutional convention under Article V of the Constitution (AKA an Article V convention). If two-thirds of the state legislatures call for a new convention, they could convene delegations and start drafting new amendments. Its understandably a controversial idea, but arguably could be a way to repeal the Second Amendment.

LARRY L. DUBEY,

Alpena

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Repealing the Second Amendment is not easy | News, Sports, Jobs - Alpena News

Hartmann: A Smart Idea on Guns (That Nobody Will Try) – Riverfront Times

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With the trauma of gun violence ravaging St. Louis, theres one topic that seems to have escaped everyones attention in the race for simplistic solutions.

Guns.

Missouri being Missouri, the local shouting match is dominated by Republican demands for law-and-order somewhere Tricky Dick is flashing that creepy grin and cracking down on bad guys.

Meanwhile, that national consensus after George Floyds murder about the need for reforms in policing has been reduced to a few protesters signs carried in the gunsights of the Vigiloskeys.

But its really beyond the point for the moment whether St. Louis gun-violence epidemic might be diminished by reform efforts that at least have a pulse in other states. Addressing the causes rather than the symptoms of gun violence is at least temporarily taboo. None of that is open for discussion under Missouri Governor Mike Parson.

And lets be clear: Talking about gun control would be deadly politics for Democrats right now, and Im not suggesting they do so. If ever a messaging war was lost in the political arena, its the one for common-sense gun control. Hopefully that will change someday, but not in the next nine weeks.

That doesnt change our reality: There are too many guns among us. A great many of those are military-grade weapons that shouldnt be in the hands of civilians, and by the way, pose a much greater daily threat to the health of police officers than any Black Lives Matter protest ever did.

Every time another baby is murdered in the city of St. Louis or so many other souls are victimized by carnage its not unreasonable to wonder aloud a simple question: What if there werent so many guns?

In a nation of roughly 329 million people, there are roughly 400 million firearms, based upon recent estimates that place gun ownership at 120,500 guns per 100,000 people babies included in America. That translates to 12.21 deaths per 100,000 people babies included in our nation.

One need not expect America to emulate an outlier such as Japan, which has 600 firearms and .04 firearm deaths, respectively, per 100,000 inhabitants. Were not going there. But as of 2017, the U.S. had more than six times the rate of gun-related deaths than Canada (2 per 100,000) and nearly four times as many firearms in circulation (Canadas rate was 34,700 per 100,000). Thats worth pondering.

We have too many guns. Thats especially true in urban areas which suffer disproportionately from poverty, neglect and discrimination in education, health care, policing and all manner of indices. That produces disproportionate crime, which in turn produces disproportionate possession of firearms used disproportionately for illegal activities.

This isnt rocket science. Even if St. Louis challenges relative to guns and crime were remotely similar to small cities and towns in rural Missouri and they most certainly are not there would be no rational basis for assuming a one-size-fits-all policy to these matters makes a whit of sense.

We should have gun control in St. Louis.

So, Im going to talk about guns.

It might come as a surprise for you to know it, but Im both a gun owner and supporter of the Second Amendment. For those who havent read it lately, heres what it says: A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Heres what it doesnt say: We, the Founding Fathers, hereby proclaim that the Second Amendment is sacrosanct and unlike any other Amendment, shall not be subject to ANY future law that might clarify it.

It also doesnt read, Out of concern that the government will someday be coming for our guns, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

It also doesnt read, The right of the people to possess military arsenals equal to that of the government shall not be infringed.It also doesnt read, The right of the people to possess military-grade equipment capable of killing hundreds of people within a minute shall not be infringed.

The Second Amendment does not provide for the unlimited and unrelated possession of all armaments, no more than the First Amendment protects as free speech threatening to assassinate people or incitement to riot. Reasonable gun-control measures do not destroy the Second Amendment any more than outlawing ritual sacrifices destroys First Amendment religious freedom.

In todays political environment, however, can anything be done about the fact that there are too many guns, especially lethal ones, in cities like St. Louis? Even with the National Rifle Association distracted with trying to reconcile Reptile-in-Chief Wayne LaPierres $275,000 Zegna budget and all those luxury trips to yachts off the Bahamas and those African safaris (well, at least they involved killing), theres not much hope here.

But people should not give up on doing something about the proliferation and the dire consequences of too many guns especially the military-style ones in our midst. The noise of an election dominated by Trumpian red-meat noise will subside long before the gun epidemic does.

In that regard, I was speaking about this to former Judge Mike Wolff, a good friend and one of the brightest and most respected legal minds ever to grace St. Louis. Wolff, who served as chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court, legal counsel to the late Governor Mel Carnahan and dean of the St. Louis University Law School, shares my concern about guns.

The difference between us is that he has the bona fides to get people to listen. Wolff wants to see Missouris state constitution amended with provisions that would enable the cities of St. Louis and Kansas City (and neighboring St. Louis and Jackson counties) to be allowed at local discretion to require a gun safety certificate and registration for each firearm possessed.

Wolff would hardly restrict the ability of most citizens to possess their guns. The exceptions would be people who have a criminal felony record or a judgment involving domestic violence, or a record that is known to law enforcement of violent acts associated with mental illness. Wolff would also require online certification for those from outside St. Louis and Kansas City who would like to bring firearms to those cities.

Wolff also proposes that the city and county establish a joint Office of Gun Safety to issue permits and background checks. This sort of cooperation is hardly unprecedented in criminal justice activity: The REGIS data system, the Major Case Squad and combined 911 services each provides a prototype.

Any of those ideas would be subject to voter approvals in the respective jurisdictions. And while none of the ideas is likely to get enacted anytime soon, theyre worth considering even while getting drowned out by the most depressing election campaign of our lifetimes.

Unrealistic? You bet.

But tell that to the family of the next baby who gets shot in St. Louis.

Ray Hartmann founded the Riverfront Times in 1977. Contact him at rhartmann@sbcglobal.net or catch him on Donnybrook at 7 p.m. on Thursdays on the Nine Network and St. Louis In the Know With Ray Hartmann from 9 to 11 p.m. Monday thru Friday on KTRS (550 AM).

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Hartmann: A Smart Idea on Guns (That Nobody Will Try) - Riverfront Times

Up-Island Schools Approve Reopening Plan, With Amendments – The Vineyard Gazette – Martha’s Vineyard News

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The up-Island school committee voted Tuesday to approve the public school re-opening plan currently on the table, with two district-specific amendments. The vote marks a turning point in a protracted, Islandwide reopening debate, as the up-Island district formally breaks with the others to format its own plan.

Also Tuesday the committee voted to hire a full-time nurse for the Chilmark School.

Under a reopening plan approved by the all-Island school committee at a meeting last Thursday, students in grades K-4 will be phased back into the classroom four days a week, beginning early this fall. Student 5-8 will return to the classroom only once per week, starting in late October. Under the plan, Chilmark and West Tisbury students in grade 5 would also return four times a week.

The plan won the backing of the Edgartown and Tisbury school committees and will be voted on by the Oak Bluffs school committee this Thursday. But the proposal was met with hesitation from members of the up-Island committee, who put off voting until their next meeting.

At that meeting Tuesday, up-Island committee member Robert Lionette proposed three amendments to the re-opening plan that he said fit the specific needs of the up-Island community.

Two passed, although not without debate, while a third amendment failed.

The first and most substantial amendment will bring students in grades 6-8 back into classrooms on a twice-weekly basis in West Tisbury (Chilmark has no middle school). Committee chairman Alex Salop voiced support for the amendment, saying the West Tisbury School has ample space to safely accommodate the additional students in its middle school wing.

But school principal Donna Lowell-Bettencourt pushed back.

Amendment aside, under the most recent reopening plan, the West Tisbury will likely not have enough teachers to staff the many small pods of six to eight students who would be returning one day a week, Ms. Lowell-Bettencourt told the committee. When I break those classes into other sections to create smaller classes for the space, I run out of teaching staff, she said.

Depending on final enrollment, Ms. Lowell-Bettencourt said she expects to work with the health and wellness committee to adopt a cohort model for upper-grade students. The amendment would only increase the number of students in the building at one time, she said.

Schools superintendent Dr. Matthew DAndrea echoed the concern, suggesting the amendment would go against the health and wellness committees recommendations.

This plan has gone through many layers of vetting, he said, exhorting the committee not to break with the other Island schools. I caution this committee not to stray from that recommendation and make a unilateral decision.

Mr. DAndrea was joined by committee member Kate DeVane, who opposed the amendment, as well as by parents and community members who voiced a litany of concerns about the proposal.

But in the end the committee passed the amendment 3-2, with Ms. DeVane and committee member Skipper Manter voting nay.

Mr. Lionettes second amendment calls for weekly dashboard tracking caseloads in each school district to be sent to public health officials to track infection rates. Mr. Lionette recommended the superintendent use the Massachusetts education commissioners dashboard.

Mr. DAndrea agreed to the measure, but Chilmark board of health member Matt Poole cautioned against tracking cases on the district level rather than assessing cases on the Islandwide level.

The amendment passed 4-1. Ms. DeVane was once again the lone dissenter.

Mr. Lionettes third amendment proposed a weekly up-Island committee meeting to reassess the schools re-opening with available virus information, but the motion failed, receiving support only from Mr. Lionette and Mr. Manter.

Closing out the discussion, the committee voted to approve the amended reopening plan, passing the motion unanimously.

Whatever we do is going to be contingent upon the approval of the people who run our schools, said Mr. Salop in conclusion. The plan here is simply to put together a plan thats in the best interest of our kids.

In other related business, the committee voted on a proposal long on the floor to hire a full-time nurse at the Chilmark School.

The proposal, raised in multiple school committee and Chilmark selectmens meetings over the past month, has stalled as committee members worried about where the money would come from to pay for the position.

Avoiding further controversy, Mr. Lionette moved to approve hiring a nurse, with revenue sources to be approved at a later date. The motion passed unanimously.

We will figure it out, Mr. Lionette promised.

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Up-Island Schools Approve Reopening Plan, With Amendments - The Vineyard Gazette - Martha's Vineyard News

Knife Rights: Amicus Brief Filed in Hawaii Butterfly Knife Second Amendment Case – AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

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Knife Rights: Amicus Brief Filed in Hawaii Butterfly Knife Second Amendment Case

U.S.A. -(AmmoLand.com)- While the COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted almost all legislative efforts this year, Knife Rights continues its efforts to serve our knife community and Rewrite Knife Law in America.

Knife Rights Foundation today announced the filing of an important Amicus Curiae (Friend of the Court) brief in a Second Amendment lawsuit currently before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The case, captioned Teter v. Connors, challenges the State of Hawaii's outright ban on butterfly knives. You can view or download the brief at http://bit.ly/teter-kr-brief.

Previously, the district court ruled in favor of the State on its motion for summary judgment, finding that Hawaii's butterfly knife ban does not severely burden the Second Amendment and that it survives intermediate scrutiny because it further[ed] the State's important interest to promote public safety by reducing access to butterfly knives, which leads to gang related crime. If that sounds like a regurgitation of the baseless arguments used to enact switchblade bans in the 1950's, that's because it is.

Balisong knives are legal to possess and carry in at least 43 states (16 because of Knife Rights' efforts repealing switchblade and butterfly knife bans since 2010), and Hawaii is one of only three states that specifically ban these knives. The district court's flawed analysis failed to consider that Hawaii had no ban on these commonly available knives until 1999, and data does not show that the ban was tailored to an actual problem, let alone that it meaningfully reduces crime.

The Knife Rights coalition brief clearly shows that under the U.S. Supreme Court's precedents, including the District of Columbia v. Heller decision, the knives are not both dangerous and unusual, are commonly possessed for lawful purposes, and are protected under the Second Amendment. That's why, Knife Rights and the other amici argue, the State's prohibition must fail.

Butterfly knives, like all knives, are arms protected by the Second Amendment. It is time states like Hawaii stop banning knives in common use based on a fictional threat derived from 1980's action movies, explained the brief's author, attorney John W. Dillon of Dillon Law Group APC.

Hawaii's ban on butterfly knives is both irrational, as are all such knife bans, and unconstitutional under the Second Amendment, said Knife Rights' Chairman, Doug Ritter. Knife Rights is proud to be able to support this appeal of an absurd ruling by the district court and appreciate the collaboration and support from our good friends at San Diego County Gun Owners and Firearms Policy Coalition.

The ability to defend yourself is important to our members and we are proud to fight for Second Amendment rights in all forms, commented Michael Schwartz, San Diego County Gun Owners PAC's executive director.

FPC is delighted to join our friends at SDCGO and Knife Rights in filing this brief to defend Second Amendment rights, said FPC Director of Research, Joseph Greenlee. Butterfly knives are important self-defense tools and certainly among the arms that the people have a right to keep and bear.

Click here to read the Amicus Curie brief.

Click here to read the 2013 law review article, Knives and the Second Amendment, authored by noted Second Amendment scholars Dave Kopel, Clayton Cramer and Joe Olson. This article provides the scholarly foundation for many of the positions in the original case and this brief.

About Knife Rights Foundation

The 501(c)(3) Knife Rights Foundation (www.KnifeRights.org) is dedicated to defense of knife owners' civil rights. The Foundation also works to educate knife owners, public officials and the general public about knife and edged tool related laws and regulations.

About San Diego County Gun Owners Political Action Committee

Founded in 2015, the San Diego County Gun Owners (www.sandiegocountygunowners.com) is a registered political action committee (FPPC ID #1379388) and advocacy organization focused on organizing the gun industry and community and protecting the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment right to bear arms.

About Firearms Policy Coalition

Firearms Policy Coalition (www.firearmspolicy.org) is a 501(c)4 grassroots nonprofit organization. FPCs mission is to protect and defend constitutional rightsespecially the right to keep and bear armsadvance individual liberty, and restore freedom through FPC Law, FPC Research, FPC Policy, FPC Grassroots, and other programs.

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Knife Rights: Amicus Brief Filed in Hawaii Butterfly Knife Second Amendment Case - AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR | Opinion | newsandtribune.com – Evening News and Tribune

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Libraries offer more than books

As schools reopen, we want to remind parents and residents how the school and public libraries are community resources with more than physical books and digital resources. Friendly librarians are ready to assist you.

Whether in-person, hybrid, remote learning, or homeschooling, children need time to read stories for pleasure. Reading literacy is fundamental to success in school, work, and life. Books build empathy by giving children a mirror to see themselves and a window into the lives of others. Be assured that physical books and learning materials are safely circulated through time quarantines and/or disinfecting processes at school and public libraries. Many school and public libraries offer hold-and-pickup or curbside service, and many resumed full library services.

All Hoosiers have free access to digital resources through the INSPIRE, Indianas virtual library, at inspire.in.gov, with special access to teachingbooks.net. Most school libraries and public libraries offer a range of eBooks and audiobooks and librarians to teach you how to use on your personal or school-provided device. Dont have internet? Visit your local public library branch where Wi-Fi is likely available even in the parking lot. Need a tutorial? Librarians are available in person, online, and by telephone.

September is Library Card Sign-up Month. A library card provides access to millions of print and digital resources. Check with your childs school. Or visit http://www.ilfonline.org/page/wi-fi-map to find the public library branch nearest you.

Leslie Sutherlin, Aurora, Ind., Indiana Library Federation President

Why vote for Trump or even Biden? To answer those who would say I cant believe you would vote for Trump or I cant believe you would vote for Biden, well, folks, listen.

Im not just voting for him or him, either. Im voting for the Second Amendment. Im voting for the next supreme court justice. Im voting for the electoral college, and the Constitutional Republic we live in. Im voting for the Police, and law and order. Im voting for the military, and the veterans who fought for and died for America. Im voting for the Flag that is always missing from the Democratic background. Im voting for the right to speak my opinion and not be censored. (Does the media and Facebook come to mind)? Im voting for secure borders. Im voting for the people who will get rid of illegal aliens breaking the law, Im voting for the people who will get rid of the terrorists, racists, Antifa, looters, and murderers on our streets. Im voting for the right to praise my God without fear. Im voting for every unborn soul some people want to murder. Im voting for freedom and the American Dream. Im voting for good and against evil.

Im not just voting for one person, Im voting for the future of my Country America! What and who are you voting for? And why? Ill wait to hear from you.

John Lallemand, Dade City, Fla. (formerly of New Albany)

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR | Opinion | newsandtribune.com - Evening News and Tribune

Protesters Want Burlington Police To Fire Three Officers. The Acting Chief Says He Can’t – Vermont Public Radio

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Burlington's Acting Police Chief Jon Murad says he can't fulfill protestors' demands to fire three officers.

Its been more than a week since protesters in Burlington began a vigil in Battery Park across from the city's police headquarters, along with nightly protests. The protesters are calling for the firing of Joseph Corrow, Jason Bellevance and Cory Campbell, who were involved in the use-of-force cases last year. Protesters say theyll continue daily actions until the officers are dismissed.

More from VPR: In Multi-Day Protest, Activists Demand Burlington Police Fire Three Officers

Meanwhile, Burlington police arrested a man on Monday who'd been standing near the protests over several days holding an assault rifle. And protesters allege that another man shot a protest organizer with a BB gun on Monday.

Protesters have also blocked city traffic at times and police alleged that a rock was thrown into an officer on Monday.

VPRs Henry Epp spoke with Acting Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad. Their interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Henry Epp: So, first of all, protesters are demanding the firing of three officers who've been involved in use-of-force cases. Do you plan to fire those three officers?

Jon Murad: So those three incidents occurred in 2018 and 2019, two of them in September of 2018. Two of them are currently under litigation, and I can't really discuss them. The third was looked at by the attorney general and was ultimately resolved by the attorney general, and then through an internal process compatible with our progressive discipline, as according to the contract.

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All three of these incidents were looked at first by prosecutors and determined not to be criminal acts. They were then independently, externally investigated. They were then subject to our progressive disciplinary process, which included input from our civilian police commission. They were then looked at by our human resources director and our city attorney.

And that progressive discipline process was followed through. Each of those instances had results. Those results were rendered. And that is a process. And a process is one that really can't be revisited.

So if I'm hearing you right, it sounds like the process has been followed, so they cannot be fired at this point?

That is correct.

OK. So given that protesters say they aren't leaving until these officers are fired, and you say they can't be fired because the process has been followed, what's the resolution here?

So, you know, we really want to work with these protesters. Many of the things that they're asking for, aside from the firing of the officers, are things that we are doing that we are willing to do, that we want to work with our community to improve.

They include body cameras, which we already have. They include questions about releasing the body camera footage, which we are working on, both at the city and with our police commission. They include questions about due process, about the ideas of improving the ways in which we communicate with the community.

And all of these are things that are already underway in the city. They include defunding the police, which our city council has taken steps on in limiting our headcount to 74 officers through attrition. So to have the protesters come and ask for these things, we're in a position of saying, You know, we do want to work on these things.

We're already working on these things with parts of our community, with our civilian oversight through the police commission, with our city council, with the mayor's office. We also respect the idea of people expressing their First Amendment freedoms.

More from VPR: Burlington, Bennington Officials Respond To Demand For Policing Reform

Well, I want to bring up another issue that I mentioned in the introduction, which is that your office apprehended a man this week named Jordan Atwood, who was near the protests holding an assault rifle. Can you explain that situation? What exactly was the conduct he was arrested for? Because Vermont is an open carry state.

That's correct. It is an open carry state. And our Second Amendment is a freedom, just like our First Amendment.

We had a number of calls and we had already been aware of an individual, starting on Saturday, who was in the vicinity of the park, who was apparently armed with what appeared to be an AR-15-style weapon. We observed that individual interact with some of the people in the park in ways that did not seem to be intimidating or antagonistic, although calls indicated that people were intimidated and concerned. And therefore, we had no initially reason to stop him, to attempt to compel an identification from him, much less to do anything with regard to enforcement.

And that really is where I think other departments would have let it stop. We did not. And we went a step further in order to work through investigatory means of determining his identity. And upon determining that, we realized that he was someone who had previously existing conditions from a previous charge. And some of those conditions included a condition not to possess firearms. And that allowed us to begin a process of applying for warrant, if necessary. But ultimately, they found him out in public again with those weapons again, take him into custody and seize those items.

OK. Well, in a broader perspective, we've seen clashes between racial justice protesters and counter-protesters around the country, including deaths in Kenosha, Wisconsin and in Portland, Oregon. Here in Burlington, we have this instance of a man bringing an assault rifle near a protest, as I mentioned.

There's also allegations of BB guns being shot at protesters and rocks thrown at police. So what is your department doing right now to try to protect public safety as these tensions arise and to bring down the overall temperature here?

So let me say that throwing rocks at police is utterly unacceptable. And I condemn the fact that that occurred. That understandably was something that greatly upset my officers, who are our officers, your officers, the officers of Burlington, and they're out there responding to calls.

In this instance, it was a call for a fight that allegedly involved a firearm. And they were attempting to get to that call when they were intentionally blocked by protesters, interlocking their arms and preventing marked cruisers with their lights on from proceeding down the street.

And officers got out and attempted to discuss with the protesters the fact that they were trying to respond to this kind of call for help, that they were doing so in a way that didn't have anything to do with the protest. And in fact, the protesters were, by blocking this road, committing an unlawful act. And it didn't really get anywhere. And they had to go on foot and proceed. And while they were proceeding on foot, somebody threw a rock.

That call to which they were responding was, in fact, a call that may have involved protesters and residents in the vicinity of Battery Park coming into conflict. We do know that there was a BB gun at that. We do not know whether or not it struck anyone. We have not had any complainants. If someone comes forward, we are happy to look into that, and we will then allow our processes, the court processes, to take over and ascertain, you know, what happened in that incident.

But to the broader question, I mean, we have these incidents here. What is the broader answer to bringing down some of the tensions that you're outlining here with some hints of violence in Burlington?

So I think, you know, working together is ultimately the way that we're going to move forward from this and through this. I know that the mayor and city council members are working on this. I know that there are a lot of parties involved in talking to the people who are in the park.

The people in the park do not have leaders according to themselves. And I've sat with them for long periods of time. I sat with them for well over an hour and a half a few nights ago, talking with them after they witnessed an arrest and came to the police headquarters in order to discuss that arrest. And I thought that that was actually a pretty productive conversation, for an hour and a half, in our parking lot, talking with them, not screaming over them, a back and forth where they expressed, you know, opinions and ideas, where I talked about some of the things that our department is doing and the ways in which we work.

That kind of together-communication is the way that we move forward through this. And that's really where it does have to go in order for us to have a resolution that brings our community back to a place where everyone can enjoy our shared spaces, where everyone can transit freely and where everyone feels safe.

Have questions, comments or tips? Send us a message or get in touch with reporter Henry Epp @TheHenryEpp.

We've closed our comments. Read about ways to get in touch here.

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Protesters Want Burlington Police To Fire Three Officers. The Acting Chief Says He Can't - Vermont Public Radio

Making Space: The Female Frontier spotlights the women who shaped space exploration – CNET

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The history of space exploration is full of iconic images -- Alan Shepard launching into orbit, Neil Armstrong walking on the moon -- but for many years, women were missing from the picture.

CNET's new podcast series,Making Space: The FemaleFrontier, will tell these stories launching on Sept. 9, you'll be able to hear their stories over six weeks, with a new episode every Wednesday.

From the early days of the space race to the greatest scientific breakthroughs of our generation, women have always played a vital role in the history of space discovery. Sometimes front and center, more often than not invisible, these women helped build our understanding of space from the ground up.

Over six episodes, we're spotlighting the women that shaped space discovery. The women that fought to carve out a place at NASA, the scientists who were overlooked by the establishment all the way up to the trailblazers leading the charge in the next age of discovery -- we hear from six iconic women who represent six important eras in space discovery.

You can catch the series on Apple podcasts or search for Making Space: The Female Frontier wherever you listen.

JoAnn Morgan (sitting in the third row of consoles, at the center) was the only woman in the firing room for the Apollo 11 launch. She tells her story in Episode 1 of Making Space: The Female Frontier.

On July 16, 1969, when Apollo 11 launched from the Kennedy Space Center, JoAnn Morgan was the only woman watching from the launch control room. In Episode 1 of Making Space, Morgan tells us her story -- from her early days as one of the few women at NASA to the thrill of the moon landing and her continued push to get women involved in space exploration.

Episode 1 available Wednesday, Sept. 9.

In the early '60s, as NASA's Mercury astronauts launched into space, 13 women underwent a secret astronaut testing program to see if they had the right stuff to compete with the men. Wally Funk, one of the few surviving members of the "Mercury 13" tells us the story of those grueling tests and why she'll never never give up on her quest to go to space, all these years later.

Episode 2 available Wednesday, Sept. 16.

Wally Funk puts on a gas mask during testing at the Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The tests were designed to exactly replicate the testing done by the Mercury 7 astronauts to evaluate whether women were fit for space travel.

From the lab to your inbox. Get the latest science stories from CNET every week.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell was just 24 years old when she made one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century, spotting a small "squiggle" on a telescope reading that signified the first pulsar ever discovered. Bell Burnell reflects on a lifetime of work and the Nobel Prize that was ultimately awarded to her supervisor for the discovery.

Episode 3available Wednesday, Sept. 23.

Kathy Sullivan was in NASA's first co-ed class of astronauts and was the first US woman to complete a spacewalk. But in 2020, she achieved a totally new feat -- becoming the first woman to dive to the deepest part of the ocean. Sullivan tells the story of seeing the world from both extremes and why space isn't all that different to the ocean's abyss.

Episode 4available Wednesday, Sept. 30.

In 2020, former astronaut Kathy Sullivan became the first woman to dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

In July 2020, NASA launched its newest Mars rover, complete with a stowaway: a super-lightweight helicopter that is set to fly on Mars. MiMi Aung, the project lead for the Ingenuity Helicopter, tells us the story of how the project came to be, and how you design a helicopter to fly on another world.

Episode 5available Wednesday, Oct. 7.

As the first female launch director for NASA, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson is on a mission to get the first woman and the next man back on the moon. She tells us what it takes to launch a rocket -- from the years of preparation to the final exhilarating seconds -- and why humanity is venturing further than it ever has before.

Episode 6available Wednesday, Oct. 14.

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Making Space: The Female Frontier spotlights the women who shaped space exploration - CNET

10 Interesting Behind-The-Scenes Facts From The Netflix Space Drama Away – Forbes

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The Hilary Swank-helmed drama 'Away' premieres globally on Netflix September 4.

Did you ever have dreams of becoming an astronaut? Well, Netflix NFLX has a new drama premiering globally September 4 that will allow you to vicariously join an international mission to Mars. The 10-episode series Away will keep you hooked from start to finish. Its an emotional and exciting ride!

Hilary Swank shines as Commander Emma Green, an American astronaut leading an international crew on a first-of-its kind mission. Josh Charles plays her husband Matt, who stays home to take care of their teenage daughter, Alexis (Talitha Bateman). Rounding out the international crew are Ato Essandoh as Kwesi, Mark Ivanir as Misha, Vivian Wu as Lu and Ray Panthaki as Ram. From different corners of the globe, the team must work together under extreme stress to save themselves and the mission at hand.

As fascinating as the plots main storyline, a three-year first-of-its-kind mission to Mars, are some behind-the-scenes facts, as well as things that happen to the human body during space travel.

L-R: Vivian Wu, MarkIvanir, Hilary Swank, Ray Panthaki and Ato Essandoh.

1.Like other hit Netflix series, such as last years Unbelievable, the new 10-episode drama Away was inspired by an article. In this case, the Swank-helmed series about an international three-year mission to Mars was loosely based on a magazine article of the same name written by journalist Chris Jones for Esquire. Jones then joined the shows production team as a member of the writing staff.

2.One question many fans will be apt to ask is how they filmed the no-gravity scenes. There is gravity in the lower living quarters of the spaceship but not in the upper areas, nor outside the spacecraft. The answer is in whats called wire work. Mark Ivanir, who plays Russian astronaut Misha Popov, had a bit of an advantage here or, as he says, a secret weapon. When he initially arrived for the casts astronaut training bootcamp, his background as a circus performer gave him a leg up. He admits that by the second day, as the rest of the cast was adjusting to the wires, he was doing backflips.

3.As if the physicality of the wire work wasnt enough, it also led to one of the most challenging aspects of filming for Swank, which was how to talk in space. She says that one of the most trying parts of these scenes for the cast was learning to slow body movements down while not altering the speed of their words. Swank described that when your body is moving slowly, the inclination is to also slow your words down in a way similar to speaking in slow motion. This is not how astronauts speak in space and she compared it to tapping your head with one hand while simultaneously rubbing your stomach with the other.

4.The food in space has improved over the years and can now actually be considered cuisine. Over the course of a three-year mission to Mars, the astronauts would require an incredible 24,000 pounds of food. Its been reported that famous chef Rachael Ray prepared Swedish meatballs, Thai chicken and vegetable curry for the crew of space shuttle Discovery in December 2006. The shows production designer, David Sandefur, said he took the volume of food storage into account when designing the ship and he used moveable racks that could be reconfigured depending on the need for space. Sandefur and his team also completed extensive research of recent and upcoming designs of command modules from the Orion mission to Space X to ensure every detail was just right when designing the shows spaceship.

5.The Obamas played a role in Away, whether they knew it or not. When thinking about the relationship dynamic between Emma and Matt, the writers drew inspiration from a very famous couple. Showrunner Jessica Goldberg says the powerful relationship between President Obama and Michelle Obama was top of mind in the writers room.

6.Space travel does some very odd things to the human body. For instance, in one scene a character is extremely concerned when a large chunk of his foot falls off. This is a brutal reality that real-life astronauts really do have to be concerned about. After just one month of being in orbit, astronauts begin shedding large quantities of skin from their soles, mainly consisting of the calluses that have built-up over time. One astronaut was reported to have called Mission Control when a sizable wedge of his heel floated away.

7.Another interesting fact about the human body and space travel is that some astronauts actually grow taller in space. According to NASA, astronauts have been known to grow up to two inches taller in space due to the lack of gravity compressing the vertebrae.

8. Designing the space suits for the show was a very detail-oriented job. Costume Designer Kimberly Adams says that one of the most time-consuming elements for the costume department and the production design team was designing the astronaut patches because in the world of NASA, the mission patches are a huge deal and are extremely intricate in design. Each crew that goes up on various missions has a say in the design of their patches. Adams, who previously designed spacesuits when working on Stranger Things, as well as the Brendan Fraser and Alicia Silverstone 1999 movie Blast From the Past, adds that shes never created suits like the ones worn in Away. With these, the challenge was coming up with the practicality of what could be real in a near-future reality.

9.Real-life astronauts also came into play for the show. Former NASA astronaut and consultant Mike Massimino has a cameo playing himself in the series. He appears in the first episode in a scene where hes being interviewed about the mission. And, astronaut Peggy Whitson provided loose inspiration for Swanks character. Whitson commanded nine missions to space and when Swank called her to discuss her experiences, Swank learned Whitson is from the same town as her parents. Swank also admits that at five-years-old, long before she had dreams of becoming an actor, she had dreams of becoming an astronaut.

10. Two members of the cast knew as much as their characters. Charles plays Matt, who is much more than the husband of an astronaut and stay-at-home-dad. Hes also a NASA engineer and a composer and musician. Charles plays guitar in real life but he learned to also play the piano for the role. He had no prior experience but learned enough to make a scene work in the first episode. He initially aimed to learn to play well enough to fake it but he actually ended up playing the piano in the scene. Essandoh, who plays the missions botanist Dr. Kwesi Weisberg-Abban, also did double-duty in Away. Hes not only a brilliant actor but also has a bachelors degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University.

Hilary Swank stars as Commander Emma Green in the Netflix drama 'Away'.

Rounding out the cast are Adam Irigoyen, Monique Gabriela Curnen, Fiona Fu and Felicia Patti. The series was created by Andrew Hinderaker, who also executive produces alongside Goldberg and Swank, Jason Katims, Matt Reeves, Edward Zwick, Adam Kassan and Jeni Mulein.

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10 Interesting Behind-The-Scenes Facts From The Netflix Space Drama Away - Forbes

The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Is Funding Some Out of This World Ideas – Interesting Engineering

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We have talked extensively about how technology and science fiction parallel each other, with these impressive fictional engineering feats making them into our reality. The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program is the coolest program that you have never heard of. The collaborative group funds ideas that sound like something directly out of your favorite film. For the uninitiated, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program is a visionary and far-reaching aerospace program with the ambitious but straightforward aim of finding projects that could change almost every possible aspect of space travel.

Though it is a bit of a grim outlook, the late English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author Stephen Hawking famously said that humanity must find a new planet to live on within 1,000 years or perish. In short, becoming an interplanetary species is crucial to our survival. "Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next 1,000 or 10,000 years," Stephen Hawking told listeners at the 2016 Oxford University Union.

"By that time we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race." For this to be possible, humans need to answer two questions, where would we go and how would we get there?

Due to current technological constraints, our answers to these questions have been limited. However, do not lose hope. Public and private institutions worldwide, most famously Elon Musk's SpaceX, are racing to solve this problem. Even more so, individuals in all fields are taking things into their own hands, working hard on projects that could very literally change the course of humanity.

As previously mentioned, the NIAC program nurtures visionary ideas that could transform future NASA missions and the course of space travel. They look to fund ideas that often seem grandiose and overly ambitious, solutions that could provide radically better or entirely new aerospace concepts. Partnering with entrepreneurs and innovators, the program looks for these innovations in diverse and non-traditional sources. As the NIAC team has described, "They study innovative, technically credible, advanced concepts that could one day change the possible in aerospace." The NIAC Program funds these ideas helping innovators refine concepts, properly define, and inevitably bring them to fruition, depending on their feasibility.

Here, we will look at some of the most out-of-this-world ideas that have been awarded Phase I and Phase II funding. If you have an idea that the NIAC could be interested in, be sure to apply and submit your ideas here.

Source: NASA

As we have previously discussed, Venus is a viable candidate for a future human habitat. Of course, you would want to avoid the surface of the planet at any cost. However, higher up in the atmosphere, things are relatively pleasant; some could even argue better than Mars. But, to get to the neighboring planet, we need to understand its environment. A team at the State University of New York at Buffalo has proposed BREEZE. Standing for Bio-inspired Ray for Extreme Environments and Zonal Exploration, these inflatable structures could be the key to understanding the Venus atmosphere.

The proposed inflatable solar-powered structures take their inspiration directly from biology. Hovering at approximately 50 km/h above the surface of Venus, these inflatable structures could be used to collect mountains of atmospheric data, track weather patterns, atmospheric constituents, and active volcanic investigations. BREEZE would include a host of technologies that could make this possible, including a mass spectrometer, nephelometer, visible and near-infrared high-resolution cameras, magnetometer, an anemometer, and sensors for measuring atmospheric pressure, temperature, and density.

You have probably come across "shapeshifting" robots in a few of your science fiction shows. Those shapeshifting robots are changing to avoid human detection. The shapeshifters proposed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have been created to adapt and explore the harsh multi-terrain environments of planets and moons in our solar systems. The Shapeshifter NASA project proposes robots that are able to travel in an environment and atmosphere. Using a very minimal design, these robots are composed of smaller robot units combining and forming to fit an environment's needs, just like a Transformer. Robots can be aerial or amphibious. These Shapeshifters would be perfect for the exploration of Titan and other habitable bodies on our planet.

The Dual-Use Exoplanet Telescope, or DUET, could help us better understand planetary systems outside of our solar system. This new telescope design has the unique ability to detect exoplanets both indirectly (with radial velocity and astrometry techniques as well as directly with advanced spectroscopy). Even more impressive, DUET has an annulus gossamer membrane holographic primary objective that has four times the collection area and twice the diameterof the largest planned ground telescopes. Unlike competing exoplanet finders, DUET does not require a coronagraph or starshade.

Ice is far more abundant in our solar system than you may think. Mining for water on places like the Moon could drastically expand our potential for space exploration, with people going as far as to say the ice is the oil of space. Some of the more obvious water uses are that it could be recycled and used for drinking water and bathing on future habitats. Nonetheless, there is another reason. In our lunar example, water could be used to make rocket propellant. As you know, the main components of water are hydrogen and oxygen. These two materials are the two most prominent materials used to power rockets. Being able to make rocket propellant out of the water on the Moon could drastically cut down on the cost of some of our more ambitious missions in space.

That is the motivation behind the Colorado School of Mines Thermal Mining NASA project. The project involves applying heat to ice using redirected sunlight via conducting rods or heaters placed in boreholes. This method of mining would then capture the vapor in a dome-like tent and refreeze it in cold traps for processing.

Yes, if you were not already aware, there are flying spiders out there. The spiders use the process of ballooning, or what is sometimes known as kiting, to fly. Certain species of spiders are able to spin a few threads, creating a sail that then catches winds and transports them to different locations. West Virginia University researchers have proposed a similar concept that would allow NASA to study planetary atmospheres.

The concept is simple; thousands of micro spider probes would be deployed at once, each with a total mass of 50 mg. Each of the pods will have a small payload pod hanging under a 200 m long string loop, which provides both atmospheric drag and electrostatic lift. The pods will contain energy storage and conversion devices, an actuator for replenishing and regulating the static electric charge on the string loop, an integrated microprocessor, radio, and sensors. If done right, these microprobes would offer large spatial-scale atmospheric sensing capabilities.

As SpaceX has recently demonstrated, our space suits are in need of an upgrade, especially if we are planning to make it to another planet. This NIAC project proposes just that. Created by a team at Texas A&M Engineering, the SmartSuit is like nothing we have seen before. It is a spacesuit built for extravehicular activity (EVA) operations on Mars and other planetary environments.

The SmartSuit can not only increase human performance but also features stretchable self-healing skin. This smart outer membrane can provide visual feedback to the wearer, identifying potential damage, threats, or issues with the suit. Whats more, this EVA spacesuit is designed to be extremely comfortable.

Which project is your favorite? Which project do you think will have the biggest impact?

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The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Is Funding Some Out of This World Ideas - Interesting Engineering

Here are 9 great Netflix short documentaries to watch for inspiration – Yahoo! Voices

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Zion

Zion Clarke of "Zion" Netlfix

It's been a year of some pretty spectacular documentaries from HBO's revealing sports and mental health documentary "The Weight of Gold," to Netflix'sinspiring Paralympics Games doc"Rising Phoenix," to the heartfelt "A Secret Love."

But, as I've written about before, I've developed something that I call "quarantine brain." It's kind of like being on a heavy dose of cold medicine while also taking an hourly shot of espresso; mentally dull with some spikes of anxiety.

There's a simple explanation for this, and Corinne Purtill put it quite succinctly for the New York Times: "Stress, like a pandemic, puts our brains into 'fight or flight' mode, disrupting attention, memory, breathing and sleep."

There are times, especially at the end of a workday, where my attention span is just shot. Earlier this year, I used this as an opportunity to explore all the great sketch comedy options that were available to stream, but recently I've expanded my media diet to include short, upbeat documentaries. Netflix has a ton of options that are under an hour long, with an expanse of topics space travel, sumo wrestling, and speedcubing. Here are some of my favorites that I've discovered.

"John Was Trying to Contact Aliens" 16 mins.

In this documentary short, which debuted on Netflix in August, director Matthew Killip tells the story of John Shepherd, a man who spent 30 years and tens of thousands of dollars trying to contact aliens. From a cottage in remote northern Michigan which was increasingly filled with computers, machines, satellites and wires Shepherd would broadcast music millions of miles into space (he decided aliens would probably respond to Afrobeat, jazz, reggae records as a kind of universal language).

After spending much of his life with his head in the stars, Shepherd's attention is brought back to Earth after making a different kind of connection in his own community.

Story continues

"The Search for Life in Space" 32 mins.

Continuing with the space theme, dive into "The Search for Life in Space," a 2016 film that tackles some of the universe's biggest questions like "Where did we come from?" and "Are we alone?" in just over a half hour. Using cutting-edge imagery from some of the world's most powerful telescopes, astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor at Cornell University and Director of the Carl Sagan Institute, takes viewers from the surface of Mars, to extreme landscapes on Earth like the Hawaiian lava fields and thermal vents deep beneath the sea. In these environments, we encounter astrobiologists looking for clues about how life takes hold.

"Birders" 37 mins.

"Birders" has a tighter focus than "The Search for Life in Space," but it subtly tackles another big theme: migration across the US-Mexico border. In this 2019 film, directed by Otilia Portillo Padua, we observe birdwatchers on both sides of the border, and learn about how migrant birds travel back and forth across that border annually. I'm a big fan of documentaries that have a hyperfocus on enthusiast groups (there are a couple more of those on this list!), and "Birders" does a beautiful job showcasing the human connection that birdwatching fosters among an international community that obsessively counts, memorizes the calls of, and photographs migrant birds.

"America Wild: National Parks Adventure" 45 mins.

This film, which was originally released in 2016 in celebration of the 100-year anniversary of the formation of the national parks system, takes viewers into some of America's wildest natural playgrounds.

The cinematography is awe-inspiring from sprawling shots of Yellowstone and Yosemite to more intimate views of off-the-beaten path trails. Narrated by Robert Redford, "America Wild" follows world-class mountaineer Conrad Anker, adventure photographer Max Lowe and artist Rachel Pohl as they hike, climb and explore all across the country. It's a nice vicarious experience while many of us are homebound.

"Zion" 12 mins.

This is the shortest documentary on this list, but it probably packs the biggest emotional punch. Director Floyd Russ profiles Zion Clark, a high schooler who has found his purpose through competitive wrestling, after being born without legs and spending years in foster care. There's a tinge of sadness to "Zion," but in the hands of Russ who has a distinct, highly-stylized visual approach to filming Clark the story ultimately proves to be nuanced and inspirational.

"El lmite infinito" 47 mins.

Soon after Jean Maggi was born, he contracted polio and was paralyzed from the waist down, but he made a decision to live his life following a simple motto: "If you can't go fast, slow down, but don't stop." This Argentinian short documentary highlights his advancement of adaptive sports from developing a five-wheel chair to play basketball with more mobility to climbing the Himalayas.

"Little Miss Sumo" 18 mins.

Continue your binge of short documentaries featuring athletes that subvert societal expectations with "Little Miss Sumo." I love this film, which centers on Hiyori Kon, a 20-year-old sumo wrestler.

Sumo wrestling is a sport that is grounded in approximately 1,500 years of tradition tradition that allows men to compete into their late 30s, while women are unable to compete after they turn 21 based on an unfounded claim that women wrestlers reach peak physical capacity at the age of 20. This is something that Hiyori wants to change.

As I wrote for Salon following the film's debut in 2019, "'Little Miss Sumo' is astonishingly successful for an 18-minute film; through thoughtful interviews, beautiful training clips, and this idea of a countdown clock steadily ticking down without intervention, this is likely the last time Hiyori will be allowed to compete director Matt Kay strikes a masterful balance between contemplation and pressure."

"Lorena Light-Footed Woman" 28 mins.

This is another really thoughtful documentary short about women excelling in sports in ways that defy cultural norms. "Lorena Light-Footed Woman" follows Lorena Ramirez, a Mexican ultrarunner who lives in an indigenous community in the Tarahumara mountain range in Chihuahua, Mexico. She runs in traditional skirt and sandals; there is this absolutely breathtaking shot where cinematographer Hatuey Viveros scans across the feet of competitors lined up at the starting line of a race. You've got a pair of neutral Nike, a bright pair of Adidas, Ramirez's sandals, and then a pair of New Balance sneakers.

We enter Ramirez's story as she is just starting to gain attention globally. She is in her early 20s, has won a few ultramarathons and is beginning to receive invitations to travel internationally to Japan, Spain and Argentina to run. It's an interesting push-pull between honoring cultural tradition (and the sometimes limiting gender roles inherent to that) and personal advancement.

"The Speed Cubers" 40 mins.

"Speed Cubers" is a sweet and smart documentary about the lives of speedcubing champions,Max Park and Feliks Zemdegs. Both of the young competitors can solve a traditional Rubik's Cube in about four seconds.

As Salon's Hanh Nguyen wrote: "In the film, it's fascinating to witness solve after blurry solve because no matter how many times we see it, it's hard to follow what's going on in Feliks' or Max's heads, much less their fingers. We can only imagine the mental nimbleness required to assess the patterns in seconds and translate that into dexterity born of muscle memory; this is not the work of an Average Joe's brain."

Throughout the documentary, we also gain a deeper understanding of Max's life and what drew him to speedcubing; he was diagnosed with autism as a child and his mother would solve Rubik's Cubes with him as a bonding activity. He immediately fell in love

"While his speedcubing skills improved, his social skills were lagging behind," Nguyen wrote. "And the competitions offered unforeseen lessons in life experience: how to act in public, how to make friends, and most importantly, how to deal with failure."

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Here are 9 great Netflix short documentaries to watch for inspiration - Yahoo! Voices

WATCH | What happens to time when you travel at the speed of light? – Health24

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55 minutes ago Compiled by Gabi Zietsman

Want to leave the planet? It's safe to say that millions would like to do just that at this point in time.

But there are a few technical details that need to be figured out before space travel becomes more mainstream including cracking the code of near-light speed travel.

NASArecently released a fun video, explaining some of the mechanics of travelling at this velocity, which is 90% of the speed of light. (Light travels at more than a billion kilometres per hour.)

READ | Germs from space could cause havoc in human bodies

Perception of time

One of the biggest adjustments would be your perception of time. While it might take you three years to reach the planet of your choice, on Earth, time would have moved a bit faster. To get to the edge of our solar system would take nine months, while on Earth, a year-and-a-half would pass.

Beyond our solar system, the next closest star system is Proxima Centauri, and it would take more than two years to get there at 90% of the speed of light.

Time dilation

This time differentiation is called time dilation. This is a fact of space travel that forms part of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

According to MIT Technology Review, if you left your twin behind on Earth, they would age more quickly than you.

However, the age difference would depend on the speed of the spaceship, including when it accelerates and when it slows down. Time dilation is also dependent on gravity and how close the "clock" is to a gravitational force like that of a planet.

READ MORE | NASAs new space toilet makes it easier for women astronauts to go to the bathroom

Fast particles

Space also isn't exactly empty. You would, for example, need some sort of shield from free-running particles that could damage you and your spacecraft, as they can also travel at around the speed of light.

NASAexplains that there are three ways that this acceleration can happen: through electromagnetic fields, magnetic explosions and wave-particle interactions. These mostly involve the collision of energies and magnetic fields.

Unfortunately, humanity is still a long way from having the kind of technology that allows us to reach these speeds.

For now, you can but daydream with NASA, while watching the video below:

READ | Clots in space: How an astronaut's blocked vein brought medical insight

Image credit: Pixabay

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WATCH | What happens to time when you travel at the speed of light? - Health24

There’s a Theory Beyond Relativity That Would Allow You to Fly Through a Wormhole – ScienceAlert

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Wormholes are a popular feature in science fiction, the means through which spacecraft can achieve faster-than-light (FTL) travel and instantaneously move from one point in spacetime to another.

And while the General Theory of Relativity forbids the existence of "traversable wormholes", recent research has shown that they are actually possible within the domain of quantum physics.

The only downsides are that they would actually take longer to traverse than normal space and/or likely be microscopic.

In a new study performed by a pair of Ivy League scientists, the existence of physics beyond the Standard Model could mean that there are wormholes out there that are not only large enough to be traversable, but entirely safe for human travelers looking to get from point A to point B.

The study, titled "Humanly traversable wormholes," was conducted by Juan Maldacena (the Carl P. Feinberg Professor of theoretical physics from the Institute of Advanced Study) and Alexey Milekhin, a graduate of astrophysics student at Princeton University. The pair have written extensively on the subject of wormholes in the past and how they could be a means for traveling safely through space.

The theory regarding wormholes emerged in the early 20th century in response to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. The first to postulate their existence was Karl Schwarzschild, a German physicist and astronomer whose solutions to Einstein's field equation (the Schwarzschild metric) resulted in the first theoretical basis for the existence of black holes.

A consequence of the Schwarzschild metric was what he referred to as "eternal black holes," which were essentially connections between different points in spacetime. However, these Schwarzschild wormholes (aka. EinsteinRosen bridges) were not stable as they would collapse too quickly for anything to cross from one end to the other.

As Maldacena and Milekhin explained to Universe Today via email, traversable wormholes require special circumstances in order to exist. This includes the existence of negative energy, which is not permissible in classic physics but is possible within the realm of quantum physics.

A good example of this, they claim, is the Casimir Effect, where quantum fields produce negative energy while propagating along a closed circle:

"However, this effect is typically small because it is quantum. In our previous paper ["Traversable wormholes in four dimensions"] we realized that this effect can become considerable for black holes with large magnetic charge. The new idea was to use special properties of charged massless fermions (particles like the electron but with zero mass). For a magnetically charged black hole these travel along the magnetic field lines (In a way similar to how the charged particles of the solar wind create the auroras near the polar regions of the Earth)."

The fact that these particles can travel in a circle by entering one spot and emerging where they started in ambient flat space, implies that the "vacuum energy" is modified and can be negative.

The presence of this negative energy can support the existence of a stable wormhole, a bridge between points in spacetime that won't collapse before something has a chance to traverse it.

Such wormholes are possible based on matter that is part of the Standard Model of particle physics. The only problem is, these wormholes would have to be microscopic in size and would only exist over very small distances.

For human travel, the wormholes would have to be large, which requires that physics beyond the Standard Model be employed.

For Maldacena and Milekhin, this is where the Randall-Sundrum II model (aka. 5-dimensional warped geometry theory) comes into play. Named after theoretical physicists Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum, this model describes the Universe in terms of five-dimensions and was originally proposed to solve a hierarchy problem in particle physics.

"The Randall-Sundrom II model was based on the realization that this five-dimensional spacetime could also be describing physics at lower energies than the ones we usually explore, but that it would have escaped detection because it couples with our matter only through gravity. In fact, its physics is similar to adding many strongly interacting massless fields to the known physics. And for this reason it can give rise to the required negative energy."

From the outside, Maldacena and Milekhin concluded that these wormholes would resemble intermediately-sized, charged black holes that would generate similarly-powerful tidal forces that spacecraft would need to be wary of. To do that, they claim, a potential traveler would need a very large boost factor as they pass through the center of the wormhole.

Assuming that can be done, the question remains of whether or not these wormholes could act as a shortcut between two points in spacetime? As noted, previous research by Daniel Jafferis of Harvard University (which also considered the work of Einstein and Nathan Rosen) showed that while possible, stable wormholes would actually take longer to traverse than normal space.

According to Maldacena and Milekhin's work, however, their wormholes would take almost no time to traverse from the perspective of the traveler. From the perspective of an outsider, the travel time would be much longer, which is consistent with General Relativity where people traveling close to the speed of light will experience time dilation (i.e. time slows down). As Maldacena and Milekhin put it:

"]F]or astronauts going through the wormhole it would take only 1 second of their time to travel 10,000 light-year distance (approximately 5000 billion miles or 1/10 of Milky Way size). An observer who does not go through the wormhole and stays outside sees them taking more than 10,000 years. And all this with no use of fuel, since the gravity accelerates and decelerates the spaceship."

Artist illustration of a spacecraft passing through a wormhole to a distant galaxy. (NASA)

Another bonus is that traversing these wormholes could be done without the use of fuel since the gravitational force of the wormhole itself would accelerate and decelerates the spaceship. In a space exploration scenario, a pilot would need to navigate the tidal forces of the wormhole to position their spacecraft just right, and then let nature do the rest.

A second later, they would emerge on the other side of the galaxy!

While this might sound encouraging to those who think wormholes could be a means of space travel someday, Maldacena and Milekhin's work presents some significant drawbacks as well.

For starters, they emphasize that traversable wormholes would have to be engineered using negative mass since no plausible mechanism exists for natural formation.

While this is possible (at least in theory), the necessary spacetime configurations would need to be present beforehand. Even so, the mass and size involved are so great that the task would be beyond any practical technology we can foresee. Second, these wormholes would only be safe if space were cold and flat, which is not the case beyond the Randall Sundrum II model.

On top of all that, any object that enters the wormhole would be accelerated and even the presence of pervasive cosmic background radiation would be a significant hazard.

However, Maldacena and Milekhin emphasize that their study was conducted for the purpose of showing that traversable wormholes can exist as a result of the "subtle interplay between general relativity and quantum physics."

In short, wormholes are not likely to become a practical way to travel through space at least, not in any way that's foreseeable. Perhaps they would not be beyond a Kardashev Type II or Type III civilization, but that's just speculation. Even so, knowing that a major element in science fiction is not beyond the realm of possibility is certainly encouraging!

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

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There's a Theory Beyond Relativity That Would Allow You to Fly Through a Wormhole - ScienceAlert

Northcoast Veterans Museum looking to expand in Gibonburg – The News-Messenger

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Tanks and other war artifacts dating back to the War of 1812 can be found at the Northcoast Veterans Museum.(Photo: Doug Hise/Correspondent)

GIBSONBURG - There was a time 20 years ago when the Northcoast Veterans Museum had so many war artifacts there wasnot enough room to display them.

From military uniformsto equipment and other items, curator Rex Postlethwait said all they needed was space.

In 2000, they finally got the space they needed in Gibsonburg, at 411 N. Main St., and began the museum.

Now, 20 years later, Postlethwait, a retired master sergeant of the United States Air Force,said the museum is bursting at the seams with even more war artifacts and is looking to expand its space.

The Northcoast Veterans Museum is staffed by volunteers, from left, Bobby Whetsel, Mark Lodge, Vaughn Billow and Rex Postlethwait.(Photo: Sheri Trusty/Correspondent)

"We're trying to raise money to build a new building in Gibonburg," Postlethwait said.

The new building would increase the size of the museum and be used by a historical society, Postlethwait said.

Postlethwait said the museum is hoping to secure around $100,000 to build a new structure in Gibsonburg that would have more space and allow them to display more of the county's history.

"Right now we have about a quarter of that," Postlethwait said.

While some artifacts date back to the War of 1812, Postlethwaitsaid the majority of items on display are from the Civil War through today, with the artifacts changing out each week.

The museum is open from 5:30 to 8 p.m. each Monday, but Postlethwait said he is flexible, and if anyone is interestedthey will open the museum even at 2 a.m. for a tour.

"We have a little bit of everything," Postlethwait said. "We have weapons, uniforms, but we'redoing individual stories of World War II veterans and we have a four-by-four lighting case with uniforms and photographs and memorabilia."

The Northcoast Veterans Museum, 411 N. Main St., in Gibsonburg offers a historical snapshot of war artifacts and ties to local war history.(Photo: Doug Hise/Correspondent)

Sandusky County's rich military tradition is scattered from one end of the county to another, Postlethwait said, citing the Fremont Armory's role in the 37th Infantry Division an Ohio group called the Buckeye Division that fought in the Pacific during World War II.

"And the 37th Division stayed overseas longer than just about all other units in the Pacific," Postlethwait said.

Rodger Young, the namesake of Rodger Young Park and a Medal of Honor recipient, came from the Fremont Armory and the 37th Division that fought in the Pacific theater, includingbattles in Fiji Solomon Island and New Georgia, where Young was killed in action.

Stories like Young's can be viewed through the use of artifacts.

"We tell all these varied stories through the history of local veterans," Postlethwait said. "The Village of Gibsonburg itself, if you look at the number of people that volunteered or went into service per population, they had more than most other villages or cities in Ohio per capita."

Postlethwait said the museumwill travel, having displayed items at fairs and other military events.

The Northcoast Veterans Museum, 411 North Main St., Gibsonburg, is full of military displays and items that date back to the War of 1812. The museum is open to the public on Mondays from 5:30-8:00 p.m.(Photo: Doug Hise/Correspondent)

On Sept. 26 and 27, Postlethwait said the museum will set up an exhibit at the Military Vehicle and Equipment Display at Liberty Aviation Museum, 3525 E. State Rd., Port Clinton.

"We're going to set up a tent and have a small display there," Postlethwait said. "It will be more along the lines of a living history, we'll have volunteers dressing up in World War II uniforms and telling visitors about the museum."

cshoup@gannett.com

419-334-1035

Twitter: @CraigShoupNH

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Northcoast Veterans Museum looking to expand in Gibonburg - The News-Messenger

No – Space.com

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David Blaine's aerial stunt may have been impressive and dramatic, but other ballooning skydivers have gone far higher.

Blaine rose into the Arizona sky today (Sept. 2) beneath a bouquet of multicolored balloons, employing the escape strategy pioneered by curmudgeon Carl Fredricksen in the 2009 Pixar film "Up." During the livestreamed event, called "Ascension," Blaine reached an altitude of nearly 25,000 feet (7,620 meters), then slipped out of his harness and fell back to Earth.

Twenty-five thousand feet is way up there, but it doesn't even sniff the balloon-skydiving record. In 2014, Google executive Alan Eustace jumped from a scientific balloon at an altitude of 135,890 feet (41,419 m). That's nearly 26 miles (42 kilometers) above Earth's surface.

Related: Real-life 'Aeronauts': the true stories of high-altitude balloonists

Eustace broke a mark set just two years earlier by Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner, who dove from his balloon at 128,000 feet (39,000 m). Baumgartner's dive smashed a record that had stood since 1959, when U.S. Air Force test pilot Joe Kittinger jumped from about 19 miles (31 km) up.

Eustace and Baumgartner both wore special pressurized suits during their landmark dives, and Baumgartner ascended inside a custom-built capsule. Blaine, by contrast, took to the skies wearing regular street clothes a black jacket, black pants and sunglasses. (Blaine did take supplemental oxygen with him, however, and began breathing the stuff once he reached about 20,000 feet, or 6,100 m.)

To be clear, Blaine did not set out to smash the altitude record with "Ascension." The project, a mixture of danger, drama and aesthetic appeal, was intended to push different buttons.

"The idea is, I want to grab a bunch of balloons and go floating all the way up into the sky until I almost disappear," the illusionist and endurance artist said in an update about the project this weekend.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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Bicyclist, teen driver killed in separate Ascension crashes overnight, officials say – The Advocate

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Two people were killed in separate Ascension Parish crashes between late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning.

A teenager died after his vehicle ran off the road and struck a tree on the side of Interstate 10, according to State Police. The driver was identified as Mason Pusey, 17, of St. Amant.

He was traveling westbound on I-10 about 11 p.m. Tuesday when the crash occurred near the La. 641 exit, State Police said. The investigation is ongoing.

Several hours later, shortly before 5 a.m. Wednesday, a bicyclist died after being struck by a vehicle on La. 22 near Melancon Road in Sorrento.

Jessica White Gibbs, 27, was transported to the hospital but pronounced dead a short time later, according to the Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office. That case also remains under investigation.

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Bicyclist, teen driver killed in separate Ascension crashes overnight, officials say - The Advocate

Ascension Michigan health system to lay off and outsource 223 IT jobs in Troy – Detroit Free Press

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An information technology division within AscensionMichigan, formerly known as St. John Providence Health System, plans to lay off 223 workers in Troy this fall and outsourcetheir jobs.

An executive with Ascension Technologiesnotified state officials this week about the layoffs, which are planned to begin Oct. 24. The affected employees work at the organization's Network Operations Center and Service Desk, which has anoffice in the North Troy Corporate Park, 800 Tower Drive.

Those who can't find different work within Ascension will get severances, the layoff notice said. Some of the affected workers also could get hired by the new vendor.

AnAscension representative on Wednesdaywouldn't provide further details about the layoffs or identify thevendor.

In a recent blog post, Ascension's Chief Information Officer Gerry Lewis said the health system will be shifting some of its IT jobs to outside vendors as part of Ascension's "digital transformation."

Ascension Michigan's hospitals include Ascension Providence Hospital in Southfield.(Photo: Ascension Michigan)

"These transitions will enable us to design, deliver and innovate the best end-to-end customer and clinician experience, using best practices and industry standards, while being good stewards of our resources," Lewis wrote in the post.

More: Trinity Health Michigan lays off, furloughs another 1,000 employees

More: Michigan unemployment claims decline, but are 4 times higher than before coronavirus

Ascension Michigan is part of St. Louis-based Ascension Health, a nonprofit Catholic health system.

Since the coronavirus pandemic began, Ascension Health has received $815 million in grants and $1.3 billion in loans through the federal CARES Act relief package, according to the website COVID Stimulus Watch.

Contact JC Reindlat 313-222-6631 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@jcreindl. Read more on business and sign up for our business newsletter.

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Ascension Michigan health system to lay off and outsource 223 IT jobs in Troy - Detroit Free Press

David Blaine’s balloon flight over Page, Arizona, goes off without a hitch. Watch here – The Arizona Republic

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David Blaine stuck the landing.

The magician floated up into the skyabovePage, Arizona, rising more than 20,000 feet with the help of a couple dozen weather balloons on Wednesday morning.

Then he released the balloons and wentcatapulting back to Earth, having put on his parachute pack on the ride up. Blaine had traveled too far off-course to make it back to the planned landing zone, but despite his apparent nerves he was able to spot a safe place to land.

Hundreds of thousands of people watched Blaine's "Ascension" stunt, which spanned about an hour, live on YouTube.

You can watch Blaine's journey here:

The helium-balloon rig, which had to be classified as an experimental aircraft by the FAA, hadan airworthiness certificate and was approvedto take flight, the FAA confirmed toThe Arizona Republic on Tuesday.

In a statement to TheRepublic on Monday, the agencysaid,"The FAA is working closely with David Blaine and his team to ensure that the proposed flight meets all regulatory requirements. ... The FAA will closely monitor the flight and will provide air traffic services as needed."

MORE: Lake Powell, Horseshoe Bend and Antelope Canyon keep people coming to Page, Arizona

"Ascension" was years in the making.Blaine'sgoal wasto reach 18,000 feet above the ground, Variety reported, and hehadto put on his parachute pack in midair.

"If there's a catastrophic balloon failure partway up, David comes crashing down to Earth," a narrator saidin a promotional YouTube video for the event.

"This groundbreaking (research and discovery) flight will be done for the first time right here in Arizona, which is the most beautiful backdrop that I've ever seen in my life," Blainesaidin an Instagram video."I want tograb a bunch of balloons and go floating all the way up into the sky until I almost disappear."

Blaine had to obtain a hot air balloon pilot certificate and a skydiving license on top of learning how to read the wind, he said in a video.

The original plan was to soar across the Hudson River from New Jersey to New York City, but due to its complexity, Blaine announced last weekend that he was moving it to Arizona.

Blaine could haveexperienced oxygen deprivation or hypoxia and hypothermia. There wasalso a chance he could have goneplummetingback to Earth if he didn'tget his parachute on in time.

There was also that potential for "catastrophic balloon failure."

Blaine is known for stunts such as "Buried Alive" in 1999, in which he was sealed in a plastic box beneath a 3-ton water tank for seven days, and "Frozen in Time" in 2000, in which he was encased in a block of ice for more than two days in Times Square.

"Ascension"washis first major live stunt since "Electrified: One Million Volts Always On" in 2012.

The helium balloon flight isn't the only reason Blaine has been in the news in recent years. In 2019, The Daily Beast,New York Times and other media published reports that the New York Police Department was investigating Blaine over two accusations of sexual assault. He denied the allegations and said he would cooperate with law enforcement.

Reach the reporter at kimi.robinson@gannett.com or at 602-444-4968. Follow her on Twitter @kimirobinand Instagram @ReporterKiMi.

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David Blaine's balloon flight over Page, Arizona, goes off without a hitch. Watch here - The Arizona Republic

Ascension Seton Hospital ranked 14th best in Texas – Hays Free Press

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Ascension Seton in Kyle was ranked the #3 hospital in the Austin Metro area and the 19th in Texas on markers including patient safety and survival and nurse staffing by U.S. News and World Report in July.

By Anita Miller

KYLE North Hays County residents might not know it, but they are within minutes of a hospital intent on being one of the best in the nation.

Ascension Seton in Kyle was ranked the #3 hospital in the Austin Metro area and the 19th in Texas on markers including patient safety and survival and nurse staffing, by U.S. News and World Report in July.

The magazine also recognized Ascension Seton Hays as high performing in the areas of heart bypass surgery, congestive heart failure and COPD. In June, Newsweek magazine ranked the hospital 14th in the state and 274th nationwide. It was the only Seton facility to be ranked.

Back in 2016, Ascension Seton Hays Chief Medical Officer Fausto Meza told the Hays Free Press that he gathered physicians and nurses and asked them what they wanted the future to be.

They told us they thought we were a good community hospital, he said. But they told us they wanted to be in the top 10% of hospitals in the country and to grow from a community hospital to a regional hospital.

At that time their journey to greatness began. What youre seeing now, he said, is the result of four and a half years of dedicated work you are just starting to see the fruits of our labor.

Other accolades have also started to pour in. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which assigns a letter grade to hospital performance, has given Ascension Seton Hays four out of a possible five stars, and the Leapfrog Group, which ranks hospitals, has Ascension Seton highly ranked.

Nurses are really the tip of the spear, Meza said, noting that Nicky Rivers, who has since left Seton, was instrumental as far back as that first meeting in 2016. Its been purposeful, he said. It might look to others like it happened overnight, but it was purposeful.

He said the journey is continuing for the facility to get a five-star rating from CMS, with the goal to achieve that by years end.

His hope is that more and more Hays County residents will come to a realization that, Wow. I may not need to go to Austin or San Antonio or Houston.

Ascension Seton Hays is fast becoming a well-used trauma center as well, Meza said. Though officially ranked as a Level 3 Trauma Facility it has been functioning at the higher Level 2. Meza said that designation might have been officially upped this year but was delayed because of COVID-19.

We have saved peoples lives that youve probably read about in the news from motor vehicle accidents to gunshot wounds and stabbings. People in our community have lived because we have developed and been serving as a Trauma Level 2.

Meza said more physicians and other staff members have been recruited to help the hospital grow as the community grows. We are becoming that regional medical center, he said. We are one of the top hospitals in the state, and we are just getting started. Nurses, physicians and other people want to come work at one of the top hospitals in the state you will see us break into the top 10% within a few years.

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Ascension Seton Hospital ranked 14th best in Texas - Hays Free Press

Ground-Breaking Ceremony for Ascension Saint Thomas New Salem Surgery Center – rutherfordsource.com

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Leaders from Ascension Saint Thomas Rutherford, United Surgical Partners International (USPI), and the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce were among those in attendance at Thursdays 12 PM ground-breaking ceremony for the highly anticipated Ascension Saint Thomas New Salem Surgery Center.

The multi-speciality ambulatory care center is a joint-venture between Ascension Saint Thomas and United Surgical Partners International, the nations largest ambulatory services provider with over 400 facilities. USPI serves more than 3.4 million patients per year. The Ascension Saint Thomas New Salem Surgery Center will span 13,000 square feet on 3 acres at the southwest corner of New Salem Highway and St. Andrews Drive in Murfreesboro.

Opening remarks were provided by Kelli Beam, Vice President of Membership Development for the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce, who discussed Rutherford Countys growing healthcare needs. Gordon Ferguson, President and CEO of Ascension Saint Thomas Rutherford, explained how the new surgery center complements the recent hospital expansion by providing an access point for convenient care in the heart of the New Salem community. Dr. Lindsay Keith of Ascension Medical Group/Saint Thomas Medical Partners attended on behalf of the facilitys group of physician investors. The blessing of the ground was led by Tracey Biles, Vice President of Mission Integration for Ascension Saint Thomas Rutherford, and was followed by ceremonial shoveling of the dirt. Chris Hartshorn, Market President for United Surgical Partners International, gave closing remarks.

Project completion is expected in 2021.

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