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Emilia Clarke Named Most Desirable Woman of 2014
TV Guide
Mother of Dragons Emilia Clarke has been named the Most Desirable Woman of 2014 by Ask Men.
The Game of Thrones star beat out last year's winner Jennifer Lawrence, who slipped to No. 4.
TV shows we're losing this year
Community's Alison Brie landed in second place, followed by model Emily Ratajkowski (who pranced around topless in Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" video).Emma Watson, Kate Upton, Kerry Washington, Amy Adams, Margot Robbie and Kate Moss round out the top 10.
What do you think of the rankings?
View original Emilia Clarke Named Most Desirable Woman of 2014 at TVGuide.com
Other Links From TVGuide.com

subset: commoncrawl


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I took up the challenge to make a crown for Paul (a very dear crafting friend). He has a special dinner to attend and was simply themed 'hats'. Initially it was quite a difficult challenge as I had all these brilliant idea brewing in my head, from wiring an armature for papier mache to even using puff paints. After a few failed tries, I resorted to plain old chipboard. Ah! Why didn't I just use them ole cardboard! Duh!
|We wanted to replicate the crown from the series Game of Thrones.
|Cutting out the crown from the template. Drop me a comment if you want the template.
|Glueing the cut outs onto the circular frame.
|Arranging as you glue.
|I even copied the pattern at the base to add some texture at the bottom.
|Paper crown drying. Lot's of glue here and there.
|A base coat of brown. Dry painting is best here, you don't want to mush up the chipboard. This material absorbs more moisture, so the paint dries really fast.
|2 coats to make sure I cover the entire paper crown.
|Dry brushing gold onto the brown coat.
|Love this method! The dry brushing adds a real golden sheen to the whole crown.
|Glued amber gems on the four corners.
|See the felt at the brim.
|Close up of the gem. They're just plastic tacks I found at Daiso.
|Thanks Paul for the picture! Dashing isn't he?!! LOL.


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Taylor Swift Bonds With Little Girl Struck by Car Before Her Concert
Car accidents are the last thing Taylor Swift's fans are thinking about when they walk into her concerts, but for 7-year-old Grace Markel, it was an unfortunate reality.
The little girl was making her way into Swift's Chicago concert in August when she was hit by a car and severely injured. Thankfully, she is now recovering and finally got to attend a Swift concert on Saturday (Sept. 21). She even got to meet the country-pop sweetheart!
The accident was an emotional and scary time for Grace's parents, Amy and Will Markel of Columbia, Mo. -- she is their only child. After exiting a taxi at the Chicago concert venue with her father, Grace was hit by an SUV traveling 30 miles per hour, operated by a driver who was uninsured and owning a suspended license.
Instead of getting to take in a thrilling concert by her favorite artist, the 7-year-old was treated at the hospital for two skull fractures, a slight left orbital fracture, multiple head lacerations, a severe concussion and road rash over her face and body, according to People.
Grace is still in therapy, but healing up now — and as a celebration, her parents bought her tickets to Swift's concert in Nashville, where the songstress surprised them by bringing them backstage, greeting Grace by name and hugging her, her mom shares. "She told Grace she had a cold and asked Grace to sing extra loud to help her out," Mom adds of what Swift said to Grace.
And according to the sweet little girl, who was nervous to meet the singer, Swift is even more incredible in person. Grace gushes that she was even more "nice and tall and pretty" than expected. In addition, Swift thanked her for donning one of her shirts and penned it with her autograph, writing, "I heart Grace! Taylor" -- and in true Swift fashion, she hugged her again.
It was also a chance for Mama Swift and Mama Markel to bond. "Taylor's mother told Grace she was so sorry about what happened to her, and she gave me a hug saying she sympathized with what we'd been through," Grace's mother continues. "It was so surreal and amazing."
"[The meeting] was just a warm and genuine exchange that made it feel like time has stopped, and it was just the two of them," Amy reminisces.
The best part of the story? Grace was recently cleared to return to school and her activities. "It's so hard to reconcile what we witnessed at the time of the accident with her amazing recovery," her mother concludes. "We feel so very lucky and blessed."


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I would like to draw your attention to recent events in Egypt, where there have been some more riots and violence against the minority Coptic Christians. I pray for God's protection for my people, but it's hard to be too indignant, considering that in spite of frequent and unprovoked waves of violence, the Copts are still much better off than in Christians in almost all other Muslim-controlled countries (Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc). Just don't believe the "peaceful religion" propaganda; the Copts are second-class citizens, like all non-Muslims living in a Muslim country, and these riots are the mullahs' attempts to remind us that the modern era of openness with the West doesn't change our centuries-old status, imposed since the Muslim conquest of the Christian Middle East. This is what they want to make of Europe and the US, too; they won't be satisfied till we're all dhimmis, paying the jizya.
June 28, 2007
violence in EgyptPosted by Dr. Alice under Christianity, history, Islam
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SAN DIEGO >> Science fiction and science fantasy have always had a place at San Diego Comic-Con International. Fans of "Star Wars," "Star Trek" and "Battlestar Galactica," among others, flood the San Diego Convention Center floor year after year.
Attendees of this year's convention were able to meet real-life space cowboys, including Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon, and NASA's Mohawk Guy, Bobak Ferdowsi. The two brought plenty of science fact to the convention with a panel celebrating the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission on Thursday.
"I really like space exploration and came here for this," said Michael Diaz, who traveled from New Mexico, as he pulled the visor of his replica astronaut space suit down to take a picture with Aldrin's name card.
Diaz works for the New Mexico Museum of Space History and was encouraged to attend the convention by his co-workers.
"When I told them about the panel they told me I needed to come," he said, laughing.
His co-workers even lent him the replica suit the museum uses at events.
"Don't worry though, it's not an actual artifact," he added.
The room quickly filled with fans of the space program eager to hear about the next step for NASA. They cheered when the panelists and moderator, actor Seth Green, said it was like stepping on Mars — which is apparently going to happen someday.
"I have a plan that puts people there in the 2030s," said Ferdowsi. "There are a lot of assumptions within that plan including funding. It's a very really reasonable plan."
The panel, NASA's Next Giant Leap, was hosted by Green, and featured NASA's division director of Planetary Science Jim Green and astronaut Mike Fincke along with Aldrin and Ferdowsi.
Attendees learned about the historic Apollo 11 mission from Aldrin, who became the second person to set foot on the surface on of the moon on July 20, 1969, after Neil Armstrong.
Although Ferdowsi, flight engineer for the Mars Rover mission, has become a celebrity himself and Internet sensation following the landing of the Rover, he says he still becomes a bit star-struck when meeting Aldrin.
"It's not every day you get to talk to someone who has been on the moon," he said. "It is one of the rare times I will fangirl a little bit."
Green didn't hide his excitement about the program and the thought of possibly one day being able to see someone land on Mars.
"That's just amazing," Green said.
When Green asked the panel, why NASA should continue with space exploration and why try to get to Mars when "Earth rocks," Ferdowsi responded that exploration "helps us be better citizens of out own planet."
"Today, at NASA, we're working on the next giant leap — a human mission to Mars, standing on the shoulders of astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins," said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, in a recent blog post.
While this is the first time NASA has ever held a panel at the convention, Ferdowsi is no stranger to the massive event.
Last year, Ferdowsi served as an expert on a panel tackling the questions of which spacecraft would overpower another in an intergalactic fight. The group spent hours debating the strengths and weaknesses of 16 different crafts.
Ferdowsi said it's great to be surrounded by people who are passionate, or geeky, about something be it comic books, space, television or science.
"It's an amazing time," he said. "It's really fun to be around people who are excited about things as I'm excited about things," Ferdowsi said of the convention.
For updates from this year's Comic-Con, visit www.dailynews.com/topic/comic-con-2014


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Liquid water is one of the essential ingredients of life on Earth and it has properties conducive to life in general, so researchers have defined the concept of a habitable zone with water as its focus. For astronomers, the habitable zone is the area far enough from a host star that a planet would be cool enough to support liquid water, but not so far that the water would be frozen. Although there are many caveats to this definition—everything from the presence of greenhouse gasses to clouds will shift a planet's average surface temperature—the concept helps drive the search for a planet capable of supporting life.
The caveats, however, have led to a number of arguments over whether a given exoplanet is likely able to host liquid water, with some candidates shifting in and out of the habitable zone more than once. Still, it's pretty clear that given the large number of reported candidate exoplanets, the odds suggest we've already spotted one. Today, scientists are announcing an exosolar system that has two planets that are both likely to be within the habitable zone, along with three others that are closer to the host star.
The findings come from the Kepler mission, which is dealing with a backlog of roughly 2,000 planet candidates to sort through and confirm. Normally, confirmation requires observing changes in the light emitted by the host star, which gets dragged closer to and further from the Earth as the planets circle it. However, this method requires that the planets either be large or orbiting close to the star so that their gravitational influence is big enough to shift it.
The new exosolar system, Kepler-62, couldn't be confirmed that way, in part because the planets orbiting it are simply too small. Measured in terms of the Earth, the five planets are 1.31, 0.54, 1.95, 1.61, and 1.41 Earth radii, in order of their distance from the host star. These measurements make the second planet, Kepler-62c, one of the smallest exoplanets yet spotted. The researchers refer to it as a "hot Mars," due to its proximity to the host star.
To confirm that the changes in the star's light were likely caused by planets passing in front of it, the authors calculated the odds of the changes resulting from a variety of alternatives. These include things like a complex system of stars orbiting each other or a chance confluence of stars at different distances from Earth. In every case, a system of planets ended up being thousands of times more likely to be the cause of the light changes from Kepler-62.
So what can we tell about the nature of these planets? Normally, the same method to directly confirm that they were planets would have told us something about their masses, which would allow us to calculate their density and infer their composition. In the absence of that data, all the authors have to go on is a statistical inference: in the systems where we do have a measure of the planet's composition, bodies this size tend to be rocky, so the planets of the Kepler-62 system are most likely rocky as well. The star is old enough, at about 7 billion years, that any heat from formation has long since dissipated, which means the bodies would be solid rather than molten.
The three inner planets are clearly close enough to the star that they would be far too hot to support liquid water—their orbital periods are 5.7, 12.4, and 18.2 days. But from there out, the spacing gets much broader, at 122.4 and 267.3 days. Given the luminosity of their host star, the spacing means that the outer two get somewhat closer to Earth-like amounts of light: 1.2 and 0.41 times the solar flux that the Earth receives. This revelation raises the prospect that they might be able to support liquid water.
Assuming a cloud-free atmosphere of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor, this amount of light would place Kepler-62e (the fourth planet) just inside of the habitable zone. It's worth noting, however, that Earth sits right on the inner edge of this boundary, and it supports lots of liquid water (so this is likely just a rough guideline). Based on the brightness of the star, the authors place Kepler-62e well inside what they call the "empirical habitable zone," meaning it should be cooler than Venus. Kepler-62f, however, is squarely within both the calculated and empirical habitable zones.
The authors caution that "We do not know if Kepler-62e and -62f have a rocky composition, an atmosphere, or water." Given its distance from the Sun, we're not going to know any of those things about these planets any time soon. If we find enough systems that look like Kepler-62, the odds will be raised that we'll be able to find something simliar that's within the range of telescopes we can put into orbit.
Science, 2013. DOI: 10.1126/science.1234702 (About DOIs).


text: PHOENIX -- Corey Dickerson entered Sundays game with eight hits in his last 15 at-bats. Brent Seabrook Jersey . But until the 10th inning, the Colorado Rockies outfielder was hitless. That changed quickly when Dickerson drove a two-out, 0-1 pitch into the pool deck beyond the right field fence for the tiebreaking home run in the Rockies 5-3 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks. "I try to take the barrel straight to the ball. I dont try to do too much with it," Dickerson said. The Rockies avoided a seventh straight loss to Arizona and snapped a three-game skid overall with just their second win in 10 games. Dickersons 14th homer of the season came off Oliver Perez (2-2), who made a mistake with a hanging slider over the middle of the plate as he tried to use a quick-pitch. "Going through the at-bat I went up there looking for something out over the plate," Dickerson said. "He slide-stepped that second pitch and I just used my hands in reaction." Wilin Rosario, whose throwing error allowed the Diamondbacks to take a 3-2 lead in the fourth, hit a solo home run to tie the game in the sixth. Rosario singled in a run in the 10th to pad the Rockies lead. Ben Paulsen, called up Sunday to replace the injured Carlos Gonzalez on the roster, hit his first major league home run in the second, evening the score at 2. "The home run beat us," Diamondbacks manager Kirk Gibson said. "We had a lot of pressure on them, we had a lot of opportunities. We were 2 of 14 with guys in scoring position." Mark Trumbo doubled down the right field line in the first off Franklin Morales to drive in Ender Inciarte and Aaron Hill and give Arizona the lead. Diamondbacks starter Wade Miley struck out eight in six innings, allowing three runs on five hits with two walks. Morales was also fairly sharp, allowing two earned runs on five hits in six innings. Matt Belisle (3-6) got one out by working out of a bases-loaded jam in the bottom of the ninth for the win. LaTroy Hawkins picked up his 18th save by striking out the side in the 10th. "Were in a position where we cant play it safe. Take chances," Rockies manager Walt Weiss said. "Thats where were at." INCENDIARY INCIARTE Inciartes first-inning infield single gave him an 11-game hitting streak. Since July 12, Inciarte has hit safely in 18 of 19 games and reached base via a walk or hit in 20 of the last 21. BROTHERS GETS VOTE OF CONFIDENCE The Rockies Rex Brothers gets some credit for his teams win. In the ninth with the scored tied at 3, Brothers threw out the speedy Didi Gregorius at second base on a fielders choice, preventing runners from being on first and second with no outs. After loading the bases with a walk and single from Hill, Brothers induced a groundball to shortstop from the hot-hitting David Peralta for the second out, then gave way to Belisle. "It was kind of an instinctual play," Brothers said of throwing out Gregorius. TRAINERS ROOM Rockies: Gonzalez was placed on the 15-day disabled list Sunday with knee and ankle injuries. ... Pitcher Brett Anderson, on the DL since Aug. 6, will see a spine surgeon Monday morning regarding a bulging disk in his lower back. Diamondbacks: Catcher Miguel Montero isnt injured but got a second straight day off to rest. Manager Kirk Gibson said Montero will play less over the course of the season, spelled more often by Tuffy Gosewich. ... Pitcher Daniel Hudson (second Tommy John surgery) is pitching one inning in rehab outings and could pitch an inning in the majors in September. ... Shortstop Chris Owings (left shoulder) took groundballs during infield practice Sunday and could be back by September 1. ON DECK Rockies: Right-hander Jordan Lyles makes his second start since returning from two months on the disabled list with a broken left hand. Hes 6-1 in 13 starts and faces the San Diego Padres on the road on Monday. Lyles has allowed nine runs in 8 1-3 innings over two starts against the Padres this season. Diamondbacks: Right-hander Josh Collmenter (8-6) starts in Cleveland on Tuesday. Hes allowed three runs or less in six of his last eight outings. Bobby Hull Jersey . Coming off a 6-0 drubbing at Chelsea on Saturday, Arsenal endured another demoralizing result after rallying for a 2-1 lead -- only to concede a fluke equalizer. Adidas Patrick Kane Jersey . Pillar is batting .305 with 17 extra-base hits, 19 RBI and five stolen bases in 34 games for Buffalo this season. The right-handed hitter had an International League high, 18-game hitting streak this season and currently owns an IL high 26-game on base streak. http://www.cheapblackhawksjerseys.com/?tag=adidas-duncan-keith-jersey . Appearing on TSN 690 Monday afternoon, Mike Babcock said he had conversations with both P.K. Subban and Carey Price about those on-ice traits during Hockey Canadas summer orientation camp. Mike Babcock: McGill experience, P.As if all the action on the field was not enough, the Hoff helped the Hong Kong Sevens party atmosphere with a rendition of Delilah! The Baywatch and Knight Rider star is a Sevens Ambassador alongside the likes of rugby legends Brian ODriscoll, Jason Robinson and Olympian Daley Thompson.Fiji are defending champions but had a narrow escape against Canada - scoring a try in the final seconds for a 19-17 win. England kick off their campaign against SSouth Africa on Friday (1. Cheap Blackhawks Jerseys. 50pm GMT) before playing Scotland (6.32am GMT) and Russia (10.32am GMT) on Saturday.Watch all the action from the Hong kong Sevens on Sky Sports. Catch the action for £6.99 on NOW TV. No contract. Also See: Rugby on Sky Follow @SkySportsRugby Pundits Fixtures and results Cheap Steelers Jerseys Cheap Patriots Jerseys Cheap Bills Jerseys Cheap Jets Jerseys Cheap Giants Jerseys Cheap Redskins Jerseys Cheap Bears Jerseys Cheap Eagles Jerseys Cheap Cardinals Jerseys Cheap Jaguars Jerseys Cheap Raiders Jerseys Cheap Dolphins Jerseys Cheap Panthers Jerseys Cheap Lions Jerseys Cheap Browns Jerseys ' ' '


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pitchblende pĭch´blĕnd˝ [key], dark, lustrous, heavy mineral, a source of radium and uranium. Largely natural uranium oxides, triuranium octaoxide (U3O8) and uranium dioxide (UO2), it usually contains some lead and variable amounts of thorium and rare-earth elements. It is massive in form, frequently with a botryoidal, or grape-cluster, appearance, and has a variable but high specific gravity. Pitchblende is greenish, brownish, or black in color, with a pitchy to submetallic luster. The uranium yield is from 50% to 80%. Uraninite, a closely related ore richer in uranium (uranium dioxide), commonly crystallizes in the cubic system. It yields 65% to 80% uranium and has a specific gravity somewhat higher than that of pitchblende. The color range is from deep black to brown. Both ores occur as primary constituents of quartz veins and with other metals. They supply radium and polonium in addition to uranium. Although the ores occur in small quantities throughout the world, the Great Lakes region of Canada, Congo (Kinshasa), the Czech Republic, the Colorado Plateau, Australia, and South Africa are the major sources.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Mineralogy and Crystallography


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Bill Nye built a whole career on explaining complicated science in relatable terms, so it's no surprise that Gillette tapped him for their most recent campaign, which aims to answer the question of how, exactly, Superman manages to go from hirsute to clean-shaven in Man of Steel, which hits theaters today. And after he established the ground rules — no mirror-reflected heat-rays or anything else from the comic book canon, no kryptonite-coated blades — the mechanical engineer landed on a pretty reasonable explanation: grinding. (Don't worry; he'll explain.) Read on for The Science Guy's take on Clark Kent's stubble, his signature bow tie, and Jerry Seinfeld's belief in dressing better than your audience. (Don't worry; he'll explain that last one, too.)
Esquire.com: So, this is all about how Superman shaves. And your theory is that he's basically grinding down the hairs, as opposed to cutting them. What would he be using to grind them down?
Bill Nye: He might be using a Kryptonian material from his spaceship, but keep in mind that you can… Well, here's the old question in friction, in a study called tribology: A concrete road is substantially harder than a rubber tire, right? So why does a road ever wear out? Well it turns out you can shape things by grinding using materials that are no harder than the thing you are shaping. And this has to do with asperity, the roughness of surfaces. And so, it's quite reasonable to me that Superman would have something as hard as his hair that would allow him to grind off his hair. [Laughs.] It's such a cool thing. I mean, you're in the world of this guy who can fly and wears a cape, and yet you are trying to figure out how he shaves.
ESQ: So he could use something like… a belt sander?
BN: I'm shooting from the hip here, but Gillette might provide him with a product. [Laughs.]
ESQ: The Gillette Superman Belt Sander — I'd like to see that.
BN: Well, it may be a little more subtle than that. You know how the modern electric tooth brush is — it may not be quite so crazy. I mean look: We're trying to work with the constraints here of a man who can fly, has X-ray vision, super strength, super breath, an indestructible uniform — and now he's got a beard and then he doesn't. We're in an odd world.
Check out the video for an in-depth explanation of Bill's theory.
ESQ: Aside from Superman, I have to ask you about your bow tie. You've long been a proponent, and it's something of a signature look. How'd you arrive on it?
BN: Well there are sort of four things convergent here. First of all, when I was a junior in high school, by long tradition, the boys would wait on the girls at the girls' athletic banquet, where the girls receive their trophies for volleyball, gymnastics, field hockey, lacrosse. (You give a girl — a woman — a lacrosse stick, and watch out, man. Dangerous situation there.) But I said to my classmates, If we're going to be waiters, let's just dress like waiters. My father was a very good boy scout. He was very skilled with knots, and he showed me how to tie a bow tie. And it turns out that, although the knot is the same knot as on your shoe — a square bow — there are a lot of people that are unfamiliar with how to render one. So that gives it a unique quality. Another thing about a bow tie is that it doesn't slip into your soup. It doesn't flop into your flask. So in the laboratory, even if you're in a television laboratory, it's a great thing. It's under control, yet you're still showing respect for your audience by wearing a tie.
ESQ: We talk about that a lot — about how the way you dress says a lot about how you feel about the people around you, and dressing well can be a sign of respect for those people.
BN: Absolutely. Back in the day when I was living in Seattle in 1980, Jerry Seinfeld would come to town. I was an aspiring standup comic, and the cool thing to do, if you weren't able to be his opening act, was to meet him for brunch the next day. And the one thing he would emphasize is that you want to dress better than the audience. That's something Jerry Seinfeld said. That's why you dress up, is out of respect for the other people you are going to meet. And so when you go to the Oscars, or the Correspondents' Dinner, or whatever, you wear a tuxedo. And what do you wear with a tuxedo? You wear a bow tie. OK, certain actors go beyond that and wear a shirt with a button and no tie. Or they wear a nice straight tie with a tuxedo. But to me, it's not the same.
ESQ: I completely agree.
BN: You're dressed in a tuxedo, you wear a bow tie. A bow tie with a tuxedo is more formal than a straight tie with a tuxedo. Maybe it's because it displays the studs on your shirt and whatever details you have on your shirt. I'm not much for the ruffles, but I do like the washboard [pleats].
ESQ: I'm with you there, too. It's funny you mentioned talking with Seinfeld about looking better than your audience. We actually recently did a piece on how comedians dress now, and it seems that there's a very different attitude. Most comedians don't want to dress better than their audiences for fear of alienating them. What do you think about that?
BN: Run some tests. That's what I'd encourage them to do. I worked at comedy clubs — if I can use the term "work" — for several years. I middled at one point. I never made it; I was never a headliner. I never made enough time to write enough good material, in my opinion. Or maybe I'm just not that funny — although I am funny looking But I would strongly suggest that people collect data on that. When one shows up in jeans and a T-shirt, I strongly feel that the audience reacts in a very different way than when you show up in a sport coat and a tie. And also, when you wear a sport coat and a tie — and it's up to you — but I strongly encourage you to wear a shirt, as well.
ESQ: That's damn good advice.
BN: You can try it.


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We had made our way from Gocta to Iquitos, the largest city in the world that cannot be reached by road, to engage in what Loren Coleman, founder of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine, has dubbed "cryptotourism," a form of adventure travel driven by the hunt for creatures that have eluded science. Most cryptotourists are truer believers than we. But that's almost beside the point. Their expeditions sometimes seem to be as much about finding undiscovered animals as about creating an excuse to get out into some of the wildest places left on earth, to play-act as real explorers. The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, for example, coordinates regular Sasquatch hunts not only in the Pacific Northwest, where you might expect the elusive beast to hang out, but also in places like Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia. In some cases, cryptotourism can be quite cushy: One company offers a fully outfitted 18-day Yeti-hunting trek across the Bhutanese Himalayas for a mere $5,450 per person.
More commonly, though, cryptohunters are lone enthusiasts with a genuine mission to prove the world and science wrong. Recently, Mike Warner, a 74-year-old retired lithographer from Lisburn, Northern Ireland, poured his life's savings into a search for the giant anaconda, first commissioning satellite imagery and then organizing a two-week expedition to the confluence of the Napo and Amazon rivers, east of Iquitos. He returned with an aerial photograph that shows what is either the head of a 120-foot-long serpent or a mudbank.
It's a fine line between the curious and the kooky. On the Atlas Obscura, which bills itself as a user-generated compendium of "curiosities and esoterica," we regularly receive postings of haunted houses, "spook lights," UFO sightings, and countless other products of overheated imaginations. Our editors are supposed to scrape the site of anything that exudes a whiff of the paranormal or supernatural, unless it somehow tells us something legitimately interesting about the world we live in. But as a general rule, we retain a soft spot for cryptozoologists like Warner, who so earnestly wear all the trappings of science while chasing the impossible. In a world in which everything seems to have been explored, they're among the last people to believe that our planet still holds big, unrevealed secrets. Their pursuits may be naive, but they seem like an awful lot of fun.
Our own half-baked spell as cryptotourists landed us in the boat of Juan Carlos Palomino, a 35-year-old Peruvian ex-commando who once survived for 11 days in the jungle with nothing but his wits and a bowie knife. The grandson of a Nazi who escaped to the jungle after the war, Juan Carlos considers himself part German, part Indian, and something of an elite killing machine. He proudly gave us a guided tour of the half-dozen wounds he acquired in jungle gunfights with drug dealers and Shining Path terrorists. Even before we had broken bread together, he demonstrated the 10 different ways he could kill me with just two fingers.
Juan Carlos claims that his army unit once shot a 40-foot anaconda while on a commando mission deep in the Amazon. He says military brass took the beast—he suspects its bones are hanging on an officer's wall somewhere—and so his record-breaking catch was never verified. But he is convinced that with financial backing and enough time, he could mount an expedition that would bring back a snake just as big. "I'm 100 percent certain I can find one that tops 30 feet," he told me. "People have wasted a lot of money looking in the wrong places."
When big-snake hunters talk about giant anacondas, they seem to be referring to two different beasts: both unlikely, but one more so than the other. To some, the giant snake is simply a bigger, fatter version of Eunectes murinus, the common green anaconda found throughout the Amazon basin. Since snakes, like other reptiles, grow until death, they say it's not entirely inconceivable that a massive one might someday turn up from the very tail end of the bell curve. Others are chasing an entirely different species: a school-bus-sized monster that can lie dormant in lakes for months or even years at a time, stirring only rarely to gulp down a very big—ideally man-sized—meal. On our travels up- and downriver, in conversations with park rangers and local fisherman, we heard plenty of tales of both.
One night we camped in San Martín de Tipishca, a 600-person Cocama Indian village on the Samiria River, and spent the evening listening to locals recount their snake stories. One was dead certain he'd spotted a 60-footer, half in the water, half out. Another had seen a serpent spit a large bubble of water out of its mouth and knock a bird from the air. An elder from the village explained that the giant anacondas use underground tunnels to move between lakes. Farther downstream, a young boy showed us the spot where he said a giant snake had come crashing through the weeds, startling him and his uncle. Anaconda stories on the Amazon, we quickly learned, are like fish stories in Minnesota: Everyone seems to have a tale of locking eyes with a monster just before it slipped off the riverbank and disappeared—but nobody has ever caught one.
Our own entirely amateurish attempts to net an anaconda took place in the hours before dawn. On several dark and starless nights, Juan Carlos roused us at 3 a.m. to patrol the tributaries of the Samiria in a dugout canoe. We kept our flashlights trained on the prickly shoreside grasses where a snake would be likely to spend the night. Along the banks, the jungle is so thick that in most places, even in daylight, a person would disappear from sight within five steps of the water's edge. For protection, Juan Carlos carried a 6-foot spiked harpoon in the canoe. Whenever he thought our boat might be nearing a caiman, one of the giant crocodile relatives that are ubiquitous in this part of the Amazon, he made a loud gulping sound with his throat to let the croc know we were coming. Every hundred yards or so, one of our flashlight beams would pass over the sparkling orange reflections of a reptile's eyes. But none belonging to anacondas.
On the afternoon of our second full day on the water, we arrived at the Ungurahui ranger station, a small, primitive cabin set on the banks of the Samiria, and the only structure for dozens of miles in any direction. When we signed the visitors' logbook, we saw that the station hadn't seen a visitor in more than nine months. The rangers were grateful when we pulled a cooler of lukewarm beers from our boat and raised a toast to their solitude.
Over drinks, one of the rangers told us that just a month earlier, while patrolling a nearby lake famous for its 400-pound paiche fish, he'd spotted what he estimated to be a 45-foot-long anaconda. The next morning we set off with him at dawn on a hike through dense jungle. We passed under ficus lianas and wild mango trees, prop-root palms and ceibas with giant buttress roots that stand as tall as three people. When we finally reached the lake, Juan Carlos and the ranger made their way around the perimeter on foot, while we paddled around fruitlessly in a small dugout canoe. The only snake we encountered was a recently molted 2-foot-long emerald tree boa. It turns out that even less-than-giant anacondas are pretty hard to come by.
You might imagine that so much fruitless hunting would prove discouraging, but for cryptozoologists, there's always just enough evidence to justify the search. They point out—rightly—that weirder creatures than giant snakes have occasionally turned up over the years. Okapis, mountain gorillas, and Komodo dragons were all once considered too fantastic to be real, and the giant squid wasn't photographed alive until 2004.
In 2009, in Colombia, a group of paleontologists discovered several fossilized vertebrae of a giant 60-million-year-old snake they dubbed Titanoboa cerrejonensis. They figure the entire creature would have been 43 feet long and weighed 2,500 pounds. But they caution against drawing any conclusions about the maximum possible size of a snake today: 60 million years ago, the climate was about 6 degrees warmer and would have been considerably more hospitable to a humungous cold-blooded reptile. Still, for giant snake hunters, the find offered a suggestion of scientific credibility that will no doubt fuel many adventures even more ill-conceived than our own.
With special thanks to Davarian Hall.
Click here to launch a slide show on the search for giant anacondas.
GoPro provided the travelers with some camera equipment free of charge.
For more on the world's wondrous, curious, and esoteric places, check out Atlas Obscura.
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Dan Gilbert's son to undergo brain surgery
Cleveland — Nick Gilbert, the son of Dan Gilbert who became a good-luck charm during the NBA lottery, will undergo major brain surgery this week.
A team spokesman said the 21-year-old Michigan State student will have the operation in Detroit, hometown of his father, Dan, the Quicken Loans founder and owner, as well as the Cavaliers owner.
Gilbert was born with neurofibromatosis, a nerve disorder that causes tumors. He has undergone previous surgeries for the genetic illness.
In 2011, the younger Gilbert endeared himself to Cavs fans when he represented the team at the draft lottery.
Cleveland won the No. 1 overall pick, which the team later used to select All-Star guard Kyrie Irving and help offset the loss of LeBron James as a free agent. Wearing a bowtie and dark-rimmed glasses at the event, the then-14-year-old Gilbert cracked "What's not to like?" when asked how it felt that his dad considered him his "personal hero."
Dan Gilbert, who has five children, serves on the board for the Children's Tumor Foundation, which is trying to find a cure for his son's condition.
Following Monday's practice in Boston, Cavs coach Tyronn Lue said players and coaches sent a video to "Gillie" to wish him well.
"We're all praying for him and wish him the best," Lue said. "Hate to see a young guy go through that, let alone anyone, but being so young and having that spirit that he has is great. We hope everything works out."


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Summit Entertainment announced today the following have been cast in THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN for roles in The Denali Coven as outlined below.
* The Denali Coven is comprised of Christian Camargo (THE HURT LOCKER, Dexter) as Eleazar; Casey LaBow (Moonlight) as Kate; Mia Maestro (Alias, POSEIDON) as Carmen; MyAnna Buring (DOOMSDAY) as Tanya; as well as previously announced Maggie Grace (Lost, TAKEN) as Irina.
Christian Camargo
Casey LaBow
Mia Maestro
MyAnna Buring
Maggie Grace


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Full Title: Observations on Some Parts of the Answer of Earl Cornwallis to Sir Henry Clinton's Narrative. By Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Clinton, K.B. To which is added An Appendix; Containing Extracts of Letters and Other Papers, to which reference is necessary. London: Printed for J. Debrett, (Successor to Mr. Almon,) opposite Burlington-House, Piccadilly, M.DCC.LXXXIII. [1783]
WHEN I published a Narrative of my conduct during the period of my command in North America, which comprehends the campaign of 1781, I was in hopes I had said every thing that was requisite to explain the motives of my own actions, and to convince every unprejudiced person, that certain positions respecting them, advanced in Lord Cornwallis's letter to me of the 20th of October, had no foundation. But it gives me extreme concern to observe, that his Lordship's seeming to avow nearly the same sentiments in his Introduction to a late publication, styled, an Answer to that Narrative, lays me under the necessity of troubling the public again upon a subject, which they are probably tired of; and I sincerely wished to have done with. I hope, therefore, it may not be judged improper to request their attention to the following Observations on some of the opinions and assertions therein stated. Which (to be as concise as possible) I shall take according to the order in which they occur; — adding only, in an Appendix, the copies of such extracts from my correspondence, and other papers, as appear necessary.
I find upon enquiry that the four letters were omitted to be sent to the Secretary of State, which Lord Cornwallis mentions to have been wanting when the papers relating to this business were laid before the House of Lords. But the reasons for his Lordship's march from Cross-creek to Wilmington, and from thence into Virginia (stated in the first of them) had been before given in his letters of the 23d and 24th of April, to the Secretary of State, General Phillips, and myself; and these stand the first of those letters from his Lordship's correspondence, read before the House of Lords; the other three letters had been inserted in a pamphlet containing extracts from our correspondence, handed about at the time of the enquiry; and one of those pamphlets had been presented, by my order, to Lord Townshend, as a man of honour, and a friend to both parties, previous (I believe) to his noticing this omission to the House; and all the four missing letters were soon after published in the Parliamentary Register, along with those which had been read to the Lords. So that Lord Cornwallis could not well have sustained any injury by that omission. This, however, cannot be said to have been the case with mine of the 30th of November, and 2d of December to his Lordship, and of the 6th of December to his Lordship, and of the 6th of December to the American Minister; which were with-held, whilst Lord Cornwallis's letters of the 20th of October and 2d of December (to which they were answers) were suffered to operate, for a long time, upon the minds of the public, to my prejudice. . . .
Every man of sensibility must lament that Lord Cornwallis has so indiscreetly availed himself of the liberty, he supposed was given him by the late change in American measures. For as my secret and most private letter to General Phillips, dated April 30, contained nothing necessary for this Lordship's justification; the publishing it was highly impolite at least, not to say more—for reasons to obvious to need explanation. . . .
There remains little more necessary in reply to Lord Cornwallis's introduction, but to observe, that the army and its followers in Virginia had been so increased in consequence of his Lordship's move into that province; that it would have been impracticable to withdraw them by water (as his Lordship is pleased to suggest) for want of transports, even if the American minister had not directed me to support his Lordship there, and a pressing contingency had required it. And I must take the liberty to say, that the sending his Lordship's corps back to South Carolina by land, would have been a most absurd idea for me to adopt after the opinions I had given of the risks it run in its former march by that route.
I shall now beg leave to conclude with an opinion, which I presume is deducible from the foregoing (I trust candid) review of circumstances. Which is, that Lord Cornwallis's conduct and opinions, if they were not the immediate causes, may be adjudged to have at least contributed to bring on the fatal catastrophe which terminated the unfortunate campaign of 1781.
Harley -Street
April 3, 1783.
[SEE ALSO: SIR HENRY CLINTON'S NARRATIVE and AN ANSWER TO SIR CLINTON'S NARRATIVE]


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Everyone is adding up the balance sheet of the tax deal, and any assessment that uses standard GAAP methods will find that it is a textbook compromise—that is, it had something for everyone to like and hate. (By the way, "GAAP" in this context does not mean "Generally Accepted Accounting Principles." Heck, if the U.S. government used real GAAP, it would have been placed in receivership on about Day Two of the Obama presidency. Washington GAAP stands for "Government Approved Atrocious Policy.") We've already linked to people on both sides of the question. I'll just add that the most disappointed person in Washington right now has to be my old pal Norm Ornstein, because he's wedded to the view that the GOP is hopelessly obstructionist. Norm better hope the GOP gets its extremist mojo back by the time the debt ceiling expires in a couple of months.
There are some odd aspects of the denouement of the tax chapter of the story, which has several chapters to follow. In other words, our plunge over the fiscal cliff, however brief, had about it the same unreal peril as a person going over Niagara Falls in a heavily padded and shock-absorbent barrel: more threatening as a spectacle than in reality.
Some observations:
First, most of the folks lamenting the deal on the right are really lamenting that we lost the election. Guess what? This is what happens when you lose elections. I'm surprised the damage wasn't greater. In fact, the most startling thing to me is how much Obama and the Democrats gave away to reach the deal. I conclude from this that the White House was terrified of the sequester, not so much for the defense cuts, which liberals don't mind at all, but because so many of the Left's key constituencies rely upon discretionary spending that would be cut. If we went fully over the cliff, it might have been very difficult for Democrats to get back all of the discretionary spending they want and need. But all they got was a two-month deferral on the sequester, the prospect of which is unclear at the moment.
Second, even with the position of strength Obama had after the election, it is extraordinary how much he let Joe Biden give up for the sake of a deal, starting with tossing over the new $50 billion "stimulus" Obama wants that is really just a blue-state bailout. The overall size of the revenue package is remarkable for where it came out. As Conn Carroll points out, "Remember, Obama's first offer was for a $1.6 trillion tax hike and an infinite debt limit hike. Boehner countered with $800 billion. The final deal was for only $600 billion." This rather reminds me of Churchill's mordant line about the argument over battleships between the Exchequer and the Admiralty in 1909: "The Government asked for Four Dreadnoughts, the Admiralty wanted Six, so naturally we compromised at Eight." I'm amazed that Biden didn't hold out for some kind of treatment of the debt ceiling.
As Churchill reminded us about the difference between politics and war, in war you can only be killed once, while in politics you can be killed many times and still come back to fight another day. To switch metaphors, conservatives lost this hand, but played a band hand, dealt by a devastating election loss, about as well as could be expected short of running a huge risk that obstinacy would have swung public opinion quickly decisively around quickly. But bluffing works better in poker than in politics. The next hand looks better for Republicans if they can avoid demoralizing themselves with excessive self-criticism. Beyond the debt ceiling (which I think is only a limited opportunity), the preservation of so many stupid tax breaks and preferences means the ground is still fertile for sweeping pro-growth tax reform based on the idea of getting rid of special tax breaks and lowering rates across the board. I'm amazed that Obama didn't pocket Boehner's offer to raise revenue by cutting tax breaks, and then demand higher rates on the rich on top of that—a fight he probably would have won right now. While he may yet try for reducing tax breaks in a few months, I doubt he will succeed. This was his window, and it is likely now closed. This may turn out to have been a major blunder on Obama's part over the next four years and beyond.
Bonus feature: Yuval Levin's chart shows how unserious this deal was in terms of reducing the deficit–


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20.109(F11): Mod 3 Day 1 Growth of phage materials
Growth of phage materials
The accomplishments of the natural world can inspire us to great engineering feats. Biomineralization is one particularly impressive trick nature pulls off. Vertebrates, invertebrates and plants all have ways to precisely position inorganic substrates into crystalline order. For example, calcium carbonate will form unstructured dust in the absence of genetically-programmed organizers, but the same material can be made into the hard and luminous shells of sea creatures. Similarly, diatoms organize silicon dioxide into intricate patterns that manufacturers of electronic components can't begin to approach. In one more instance, bacteria align iron inside their cytoplasm to form magnetic rods on the submicron scale. These feats are accomplished without harsh chemicals, without extreme temperatures, and without noxious wastes that poison the nests of the organisms themselves. Humans have a lot to learn from nature's successes. In the upcoming weeks we'll use a virus that infects bacteria, namely the bacteriophage M13, and we'll rely on the self-assembling coat of this virus to template carbon nanotubes and TiO2. The interaction of these materials with a protein on the phage coat yields nanoscale-particles with useful energetic properties, as we'll see.
About M13
The bacteriophage M13 is a member of the filamentous phage family. It has a long (~900 nm), narrow (~20 nm) protein coat that encases a small (~6.4 kb) single stranded DNA genome. The genome encodes 11 proteins, five of which are exposed on the phage's protein coat and six of which are involved in phage maturation inside its E. coli host. The phage coat is primarily assembled from a 50 amino acid protein called pVIII (or p8), which is sensibly enough encoded by gene VIII (or g8) in the phage genome. For a wild type M13 particle, it takes about ~2700 copies of p8 to make the ~900 nm long coat. The coat's dimensions are flexible though and the number of p8 copies adjusts to accommodate the size of the single stranded genome it packages. For example, when the phage genome was mutated to reduce its number of DNA bases (from 6.4 kb to 221 bp) [2], then the p8 coat "shrink wraps" around the reduced genome, decreasing the number of p8 copies to less than 100. Electron micrographs of the resulting "microphage" and its wild type parent are shown below (image courtesy of Esther Bullitt, Boston University School of Medicine), where the black bar in each image is 50 nm long. And what about the upper limit to the length of the phage particle? Anecdotally, viable phage seems to top out at approximately twice the natural DNA content. However, deletion of a phage protein (p3) prevents full escape from the host E. coli, and phages that are 10-20X the normal length with several copies of the phage genome can be seen shedding from the E. coli host.
Phage life-cycle
The general stages to a viral life cycle are: infection, replication of the viral genome, assembly of new viral particles and then release of the progeny particles from the host. Filamentous phages use a protein at their tip, namely p3, to contact a bacterial structure known as the F pilus to infect E. coli. The phage genome is then transferred through the pilus to the cytoplasm of the bacterial cell where resident proteins convert the single stranded DNA genome to a double stranded replicative form ("RF"). This DNA then serves as a template for expression of the phage genes and produces new phage particles that shed off the surface of the infected cell. Other phage are known to lyse their host cells but in the case of M13 and E. coli, they co-exist in a balanced way, allowing the growth of both host and virus, though the infection does slow down the doubling time of the E. coli, causing "plaques" to form in a bacterial lawn.
Phage displayPhage display has been used for decades as a tool for discovery. This technique exploits natural selection and identifies functional peptide sequences that can be fused to the phage coat. Most often it's the p3 protein at the phage tip that's used for phage display because, despite the limited number of displayed peptides per phage (on the order of 5), there is enough flexibility to accommodate peptides of 20 to 30 amino acids. The other protein used for phage display, p8, is presented at much higher copy number per phage (on the order of 2700) but it has limited flexibilty. The semi-crystalline packing of p8 on the phage coat restricts fusions to only 4 to 6 neutral or negatively charged amino acids. For scientists who can tolerate a mix of p8 proteins on the phage coat for their work, there are phage-display variations that mix and match fusion and wild-type proteins on a phage coat, but for those who want phage of a particular form, the options are limited.
Nonetheless, peptides with remarkably diverse functions have been isolated with phage display. Once the fusion site is chosen, a library of sequences encoding random peptides can be synthesized and cloned. In this way a pool of phage, each with different fusions, can be made. Finally, the phage pool can be screened for interesting behaviors or properties. Peptide-fusion proteins to p8 or p3 that include stop codons or intolerable sequences are largely lost from the population after the first round of "panning." Other phage that can bind to a substance of interest or show enzyme activity or glow green…, these remain and can be directly isolated from the pool or further enriched by a second, third, fourth round of panning. Ultimately anywhere from 10 to 1000 candidate sequences may remain from a starting pool of 1 billion [3].
Despite phage display techniques being available for more than a generation, this tool has been applied only recently to the search for novel materials. Largely it's been Angela Belcher and her lab who highlighted and then demonstrated the usefulness of this search tool for finding peptides that interact with materials to meet human needs. That M13 could interact with inorganic materials could not have been predicted from the original genetic studies on the phage, but there was also no one who had tried it. Phage that can bind to cobalt oxide, gold, iridium and indium tin oxide are all in-hand thanks to their work (e.g see reference [4]). Today you will harvest a phage that can bind to single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) and TiO2 since these can be used to build nanocomposites that will be assembled into a photovoltaic device before this module is over.
In advance of this lab, a bacterial host ( XL1-blue) was infected with the modified M13 phage called "DSPH." The p8 modification (=DSPHTELP) was isolated from a library of p8 mutants that enable the phage to bind SWNTs doi:10.1038/nnano.2011.50. Today you will harvest the phage from the supernatant of the infected bacterial culture and then measure its concentration using the spectrophotometer. Before you leave you will react the phage with SWNTs so they'll be ready for the titanium next time.
Part 1: Phage purification
- Divide the overnight culture (~50 ml volume) into 2 Oak Ridge Centrifuge tubes
- Label with your group color using tape (not the small circles; these can come off in the rotor)
- Spin 10, 000 rpm, 10 minutes using a fixed angle rotor (you will be shown where down the hall you can find a centrifuge to spin this volume).
- Transfer the supernatant to a 50 ml conical tube and then clean your two Oak Ridge tubes by adding some 10% bleach and some water to the pellets, allowing the solutions to sit in the sink for 5 minutes and then washing the tubes with copious amounts of distilled water from the tap.
- Once the Oak Ridge tubes are clean, split the supernatant that is in the conical tube between the two Oak Ridge tubes. The transfer should be done with a plastic pipet and a bulb so you can measure the volume of supernatant.
- Add a 1/4th that volume of 20% PEG-8000/2.5M NaCl solution.
- Invert to mix then incubate on ice 60 minutes.
- Spin at 14,500 rpm for 15 minutes. A white pellet may be visible...these are your precipitated phage. If you can't see a pellet keep going, but be aware of where the pellet you can't see is in the tube and don't scrape a tip against it or you will accidentally remove it.
- Remove the supernatant by pouring most down the sink and the rest with aspiration (carefully so as not to disturb the pellet).
- Resuspend the pellet in 3 ml sterile H2O. This is best done by adding 3 ml of H2O to one of the Oak Ridge tubes, washing the water up and down the side of the tube with the phage pellet, and then moving the 3 ml of phage solution to the second tube and dissolving that pellet as well by washing the water up and down the side of the tube.
- Split the phage solution between three eppendorf tubes. For this part of the protocol, you will be given special eppendorf tubes that can hold 2 ml.
- Add a 1/4th volume of 20% PEG-8000/2.5M NaCl solution.
- Invert to mix. Then incubate on ice for 15 minutes.
- Spin the tubes full speed in a microfuge for 10 minutes.
- Aspirate the supernatant and resuspend the pellets (if you can see them) in 0.2 ml TBS--using 0.2 ml to resuspend one pellet and moving that volume to resuspend the next pellet, and then moving that volume again to resuspend the third pellet. This is your phage stock (yay!).
- If the solution looks at all cloudy, spin in a room temperature microfuge for 1 minute more and move supernatant with the phage to a new tube.
- Pool your volume of phage with that of two other teams (ask the teaching faculty which "super-team" you're on) and then measure the concentration of that mix as described in Part 2.
Part 2: Measuring concentration of phageWith this technique you will calculate the concentration of phage in your stock using the spectrophotometer. This method can approximate the number of phage based on the ability of the virions to absorb ultraviolet light. The number of phage is calculated by the formula:
- the molar extinction coefficient of the phage and the average size of a DNA base are used collected into the constant
- the absorbance at 269 nm reflects the protein and DNA content in the solution
- the absorbance at 320 nm corrects for the naturally high baseline value of the solution
- the number of DNA bases in M13 is ~6400.
This method for titering the phage stock is less informative than the traditional plaque method since materials other than phage might be contributing to the absorbance readings and the number of infectious particles isn't truly known. Since the latter attribute is not critical for the synthesis of SWNT-TiO2 nanowires, we can give this a go...
- Dilute the phage stock you have 1:10 by adding 70 ul of the phage to 630 ul of TBS, vortex to mix and then move this solution to a quartz (not plastic!) cuvette.
- A few things to be aware of when using quartz cuvettes:
- They are very expensive.
- The lab has very few.
- When you are done using your cuvette, you should carefully clean it by shaking out the contents into the sink and rinsing it once with 70% EtOH, then two times with water. Quartz cuvettes get most of their chips and cracks when someone is shaking out the contents since it is so easy for the cuvette to slip from wet fingers or be hit against the sink. Don't let this happen to you.
- A few things to be aware of when using quartz cuvettes:
- Read the absorbances of your phage dilution at 269 and 320, using TBS in a second quartz cuvette to blank the spectrophotometer at each wavelength.
- Calculate the number of phage particles/ml using the formula shown above.
Part 3: Dialysis of phage with SWNTs
The class will be testing the solar cell's efficacy as a function of the ratio of phage to SWNTs in this next synthesis reaction. There will be one "super-team" (made up of two or three groups) that will test a 1:1 ratio of SWNTs:phage. Another super-team will test 2.5:1 and a third super-team will test 5:1. The table below indicated the appropriate mass and phage particles to use, assuming a phage concentration of about 4x10^13 phage/ml. If the phage stock you have isolated is lower or higher, you will have to adjust the mass of SWNTs accordingly.
|SWNTs (ug)
|phage (# of particles)*
- Volume of phage should be between 0.5 and 5 ml to give this number of phage particles
- Prepare the tubing you'll need for dialysis. We will use dialysis tubing with a molecular weight cutoff of 12,000-14,000 against a pH'd solution of NaCl in order to change the electrostatic properties of the phage inside the bag. You should always wear gloves when handling the dialysis tubing.
- Cut a length of tubing that is 20 cm long for the narrow tubing, or 7 cm for the wide tubing.
- Soak the tubing in 50 ml dH2O in a falcon tube. It is recommended that the tubing soaks for 20 minutes, but a shorter time is fine too.
- Clips for the tubing are numbered in pairs and you should note which pair you have. Next time, this number will be the only way to distinguish your sample from the others.
- Open both clips. Remove the tubing from the water with a gloved hand and close one end with a clip, leaving ~0.5 cm overhang.
- Use a P1000 to transfer the phage solution to the tubing, being careful not to drop the tubing (it's slippery!) or let the liquid squirt out (so fill the tubing slowly with the tip low in the tubing).
- Use a P1000 to transfer the appropriate volume of SWNTs to the bag.
- Clamp the other end and dialyze the bag in 1 liter of 10mM NaCl, pH 5.3, with the other samples from the class. You may need to tie some teflon tape around the end of one of your clips and secure the other end of the teflon tape out of the liquid in order to keep your tubing from getting bashed around by the magnetic stir bar. After 2 hours, the NaCl will be replaced with fresh 10mM NaCl, pH 5.3. Tomorrow, one of the teaching faculty will refresh the beaker with clean 10 mM NaCl, pH 10 and the samples will remain in the beaker at room temperature until you return to lab.
Clean up
- The tubes that held the phage and bacterial culture can be rinsed with a squirt 10% bleach and then rinsed out well with water (three times is perfect). Place in the bin next to the sink (it will be washed in the dishwasher).
- Oak Ridge Centrifuge tubes: please rinse with a squirt of 10% bleach and then rinse out well with water (three times is perfect). Place in the bin next to the sink (it will be washed in the dishwasher).
- The quartz cuvettes can be returned, clean, to the instructors bench at the front of the room.
For next time
The primary assignment for this experimental module will be for you and your partner to develop a scientific research proposal. For next time, please describe five recent findings that might define an interesting research question. You should hand in a 3-5 sentence description of each topic and list the reference that led you to each item. The topics you pick can be related to any aspect of the class, i.e. DNA, system engineering, or bio-material engineering. During lab next time, you and your partner will review the topics and narrow your choices, identifying one or perhaps two topics for further research.
Reagents list
20% PEG 8000, 2.5 M NaCl
- 50 mM Tris
- 150 mM NaCl
- pH 7.6
- Stock prepared by Belcher lab (thank you!!) = 20 ug/ml
10mM NaCl
- 0.5844 g/liter, pH to 5.3 or 10


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After taking to the pitch for both Spain and Barcelona, Albert Ferrer knows about performing under pressure.
But how did the former full back fare when he made his debut for the CNN Football Club?
As the right back in Johan Cruyff's Barcelona team which won the club's first ever European Cup in 1992, Ferrer was well-placed to answer the week's poll question.
We asked you, is Barcelona's defense too weak to win the Champions League?
Ferrer, who spent five years with 2012 European champions Chelsea, also faced your questions as CNN FC put him On the Spot - see his answers below.
Vote in the poll above and don't forget to tune in to the CNN Football Club on CNN International at 1700 GMT on Thursdays.
You can also have your say by following our @CNNFC Twitter account or visiting the show's Facebook page.
yesterday we had a good game, but in my opinion Barcelona will not win the Champions League. Bayer is the best time right now and his game is more agreeable. thank you very much!
2 teams (Bayern and Dortmund) and 2 players (Ronaldo and Messi) qualified to the semi finals of the Champions League
Barcelona GOLDEN DAYS are OVER


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Pawlenty remains mum on 2012 plans
CANNON FALLS -- Despite rising national attention to his newly formed political action committee, Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Thursday continued to deny the group is his vehicle for a 2012 presidential bid.
CANNON FALLS -- Despite rising national attention to his newly formed political action committee, Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Thursday continued to deny the group is his vehicle for a 2012 presidential bid.
"It's not geared towards me running for president," he said after speaking to Cannon Falls Area Chamber of Commerce members.
The governor's visit fell on the same day as the official launch of his Freedom First PAC.
In a YouTube video appearing on the PAC's Web site, timpawlenty.com, he asks for support while addressing taxes, government accountability and American ideals.
"This is an important time in America," the second-term Republican says in the 1 minute, 52 second video. "The stakes are high. And standing on the sidelines isn't an option."
The PAC allows Pawlenty, who announced in June that he would not seek re-election, to raise money for political candidates and travel expenses.
The announcement -- buoyed by news that Pawlenty also assembled a team of advisers with ties to presidential campaigns -- reignited national attention to his possible presidential run. A headline beneath a photo of Pawlenty on the conservative-leaning Drudgereport.com screamed "CAN THIS MAN CONQUER OBAMA?"
Pawlenty downplayed the significance of the advisers, saying they were culled to help him build support for other politicians.
"They bring a lot of experience, wisdom and talent to the effort," he said.
According to Politico.com, the list of advisers includes Terry Nelson, Sara Taylor and Phil Musser, all described as GOP consultants with presidential experience.
Steve Sviggum, Pawlenty's close friend and Cabinet member, said the governor had "not directly" spoken to him about any presidential aspirations.
But the Department of Labor and Industry commissioner who also attended Thursday's speech said he "absolutely" sees Pawlenty as presidential material.
"Gov. Pawlenty has the capability to be a national presence and to make a real difference -- not just to the state of Minnesota -- but to the nation," Sviggum said. "He's a national player, if he wants it."
The governor steered clear of presidential campaign rumors during his address to chamber members, sticking to his established messages of lower taxes, education reform and reining in rising health care costs.
"We're trying to slow that train down," Pawlenty said of the state's health and human services budget. "It is hard."


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Automotive Sales Consultant - World Ford Pensacola
|Job ID
|Job Location
|Service Technicians
|Regular Full-Time
More Information About This Job
IMMEDIATE OPENING FOR SALES CONSULTANTs!!!
World Ford Pensacola is part of the fast growing Group 1 Automotive, a leader in automotive retail.
We are growing and looking for Quality Sales Consultants to work with a Quality Dealership representing a Quality Product!
We offer...
- A Great Working Environment
- Comprehensive Training & Advancement Opportunities
- Medical, Dental & Vision Insurance
- Life & Disability Insurance
- 401(k) with Company Match
- Employee Vehicle Purchase Program
- Employee Stock Purchase Plan
- Pinnacle Awards Program
You need…
- Automotive Sales Experience Preferred, but not Required
- Professional Appearance
- Positive & Friendly Attitude
- Interpersonal Communication Skills
- Basic Computer Skills
- High School Diploma or Equivalent
- Must have a Valid Driver's License
Group 1 is a Fortune 300 company that owns and operates automotive dealerships and collision centers in the United States and United Kingdom. We offer our associates a team environment, great benefits and ongoing training and support. If you are in alignment with our values of Integrity, Transparency, Professionalism, Teamwork and Respect - now might be the time for you to accelerate your career as part of the best company in automotive retail. Apply today or refer a qualified friend!
*All applicants must pass pre-employment testing to include: background checks and MVR in order to qualify for employment*
Group 1 Automotive is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer.


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Kiki Magazine and CCandy Clothing
Today I received a copy of Kiki Magazine which is a fashion magazine for "Girls with style and substance". I am sharing this with my readers because my article with Amber Sabathia who is the wife of Yankees ace pitcher CC Sabathia was featured in this months issue. Amber and I talked about MLB fashion and what inspired her to start her clothing line CCandy Clothing.
Make sure you check out the complete article in Kiki Magazine.


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At Barsalou & Associates, P.L.L.C., we understand that we are much more than simply legal advisors. We protect the value that our firm's clients have placed in investments, whether those investment assets are private corporations or residential real estate in homeowners and condominium associations.
Business Transactions, Real Estate Transactions and Homeowners Associations: Houston Lawyer Serving Surrounding Areas
Many times, our clients come to us because they have been referred by a current client who has seen how our firm adds value to their everyday operations. Clients turn to our firm for experienced guidance with some of their most fundamental decisions and responsibilities.
With more than three decades of experience in both the legal and business arenas, W. Austin Barsalou has a firsthand knowledge of what his clients need. Simply providing a legal opinion is not enough. Mr. Barsalou emphasizes the quick and cost-effective delivery of his legal services because he knows that his clients' needs are time-sensitive when it comes to effective legal service.
This client-centered approach to legal solutions also means that the law firm of Barsalou & Associates, P.L.L.C., is particularly results-driven: We know that, ultimately, a legal opinion is only as good as the guidance it provides to the clients. We craft all of our advice with the sole goal of helping our clients perform their actual daily tasks: dealing with real issues on a time sensitive basis.
Business, Real Estate, and Homeowners Associations: Texas Attorney Serving Houston And All Surrounding Areas
Discuss your matter with experienced Houston area homeowners association attorneys and business counsel by calling our firm at 713-396-3871 to schedule an initial consultation. All consultations are entirely discreet and completely confidential. You can also make an appointment by contacting us online.
4635 Southwest Freeway, Ste 580
Houston, Texas 77027
Phone: 713-396-3871
Fax: 713-650-8745
Website: https://www.barsalou.com/


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The legal battle over gay marriage, which began in a Massachusetts courthouse more than a decade ago, arrives at the highest court in the land this week, with the Supreme Court scheduled to hear two cases that could dramatically reshape the debate.
The oral arguments before the nine justices, likely to be the most closely watched of the term, come as public support for gay marriage is at an all-time high, according to public opinion surveys. Fifty-eight percent of Americans favor marriage rights for gay people, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll published last week. Thirty-six percent opposed gay marriage.
Support for gay marriage is overwhelming among young American adults: 81 percent of those ages 18-29 support marriage rights for gay people, according to the survey, mirroring findings in other polls.
"It will be interesting to see what impact, if any, the huge change in public opinion might have directly or indirectly on the justices," said Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who will attend part of the arguments in Washington this week. "We know that [justices] are people who do not totally live in a bubble anymore. They are very much aware of what is happening in the country."
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday in a California case challenging Proposition 8, a voter-approved state prohibition on same-sex marriage. Lower courts have struck down the prohibition as unconstitutional. Opponents of same-sex marriage appealed to the Supreme Court to maintain the ban.
Then on Wednesday, the court is expected to hear a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA, a federal law passed in 1996 and signed by President Clinton, which says same-sex married couples cannot receive federal marriage benefits. Clinton recently renounced the law and recommended it be overturned.
President Obama's administration has concluded DOMA is unconstitutional and declined to defend it from legal attacks.
The leadership of the House of Representatives is defending DOMA in court. House Speaker John Boehner said the courts should decide the law's constitutionality, not the president.
Coakley, who filed a brief urging the court to strike down DOMA as unconstitutional, led the first state challenge to the law in 2009. She said she will be watching the justices for hints, "particularly on our matter, which talks about the right of a state to define marriage and to challenge a federal government that has a different definition of marriage, imposing a burden on the state for no appreciable reason."
The court could offer sweeping rulings on whether or not gay people have a constitutional right to marry or the court could sidestep the big issues raised by the cases and decide them on narrow, technical grounds, said Carl W. Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law.
Whatever the court decides, Tobias predicts the votes will be closely split, probably 5-4.
He identified two key conservative judges likely to be the swing votes: Anthony Kennedy and Chief Justice John Roberts.
Kennedy has written previous opinions supporting gay rights, including in a ground-breaking 2003 case striking down state laws that criminalized sodomy.
Roberts joined the court's liberal wing last year as the surprise swing vote in a 5-4 decision to uphold President Obama's health care overhaul.
"Roberts is always concerned about the court's reputation as an institution and its credibility," said Tobias, who believes Roberts will note the obvious trend of public sentiment toward marriage rights for gay couples, especially the overwhelming support among young people. "When the court has gone against overwhelming numbers, eventually it has had to back down," and overturn previous decisions.
Decisions on both cases are expected to be handed down by summer.
Neither of this week's cases would be in the Supreme Court if not for a Massachusetts lawsuit that led to the Bay State becoming the first to establish gay marriage rights, in 2004.
"In Massachusetts we broke an historic barrier and in doing so it changed the discussion forever," said Mary L. Bonauto, civil rights project director at the anti-discrimination group GLAD and lead counsel in the Massachusetts case that led to gay marriage. "Finally people had a chance to see what it could look like when same-sex couples could join in marriage.
"Part of why I think there has been dramatic change on this issue the past 10 years is because the reality of the situation became visible to people,'' she said. "The fears have not entirely gone away, but the fears have dissipated overall and it has brought rationality into the discussion."
Since Massachusetts became the first state in which gays could legally marry, eight states have followed. Several others have passed bans on gay marriage.
Mark Arsenault can be reached at marsenault @globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @bostonglobemark


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A 21-year-old accused of sexual assault reported to the Curry County Adult Detention Center Thursday evening for 60 days of sexual offender diagnostic testing.
John Jacobs faces up to 18 months in state prison after entering into a plea agreement with prosecutors to one count of attempted criminal sexual penetration.
Jacobs had been accused in connection with the alleged sexual assault of four women in Curry County.
In October, a Roosevelt County jury found Jacobs innocent of charges he raped an Eastern New Mexico University student.
After his trial began in the first of the four Curry County cases, he entered an Alford plea.
"The way the North California vs. Alford plea works, it is admitted that if you went to court and the jury heard the case, you are saying there might be enough evidence the jury may find you guilty, but you are affirmatively saying to the world that you are not guilty and have committed no crime," said Jacobs' defense attorney, Gerald Baca.
Baca said his client entered the Alford plea to avoid the risk of a jury conviction, but strongly maintains his innocence and wants to get on with his life.
"If he had gone to trial and lost on all charges, he could have received up to 18 years in prison and he now faces a maximum of 18 months, which can be served at the discretion of the judge in state prison or on probation," Baca said. "My client is having mixed feelings. He's glad on the one hand to have resolution, but he's thinking, 'what if I had gone there and had been found not guilty?' He's hoping to qualify for probation.'"
Baca declined to specify what arguments he would make before Judge Teddy Hartley to justify probation rather than jail time before the sentencing hearing, which has not yet been scheduled.
Assistant District Attorney Matthew Chandler, who prosecuted the case along with Deputy District Attorney Andrea Reeb, said the plea agreement spares the people they believe were victims from having to go through a trial.
"Our victim testified, and the defense expressed interest in a guilty plea after we presented three-fourths of our evidence," Chandler said. "We began negotiating on that and came to an amicable decision, which would first and foremost protect any of our other victims from having to go to trial."
Chandler said the victims will have the opportunity to speak at the sentencing hearing once Jacobs' sexual offender diagnostic testing is completed.
"His exposure is up to 18 months in the Department of Corrections, but regardless of the sentence, he will be a registered sex offender," Chandler said.
Baca said Jacobs' future plans depend on whether he receives jail time, but didn't rule out returning to ENMU as a student.
"He has plans to continue with his life and continue with his education if he gets probation," Baca said.


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Source : Harun Yahya / 15 Aug 2014
Billions of people have lived on this earth since the time of the Prophets Adam, Moses, Abraham, Lot, Jonah, Joseph and the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon them all). They were both of deep faith and sincere devotion to Allah who obeyed their prophets with sincerity as well as proud and rebellious types, who followed their lower selves and refused to abide by the paths of the prophets.
They founded magnificent civilizations, built spectacular homes, walked in delightful gardens and rested on the impressive seats and thrones in the finest palaces. However, everyone will die without doubt at some time; they also died at the time appointed for them in destiny and departed this world, never to return.
Allah has always sent prophets to people who worshipped idols, rebelled in pride and became ever more arrogant, and called them to the true path with sacred books and thousands of verses. However, these peoples were so arrogant and proud that very few of them believed. Thereupon, our Lord destroyed them and brought them to their knees.
"...But found in it only one house of Muslims." (Qur'an, 51:36)
"How many generations We have destroyed before them! Do you see a trace of any one of them or hear even a whisper of them?" (Qur'an, 19:98)
There have always been people who have regarded themselves as indispensable, given themselves airs of being worker of wonders, who became ever prouder the more they listened to satan, and who regarded themselves as superior indeed. They have included scientists, artists, statesmen, world rulers and commanders of armies of tens of thousands.
There have been people whose beauty, majesty and splendor impressed everyone; and there have been highly intelligent inventors whose discoveries have changed the course of human life entirely but the result has always been the same. The cemeteries are now full of such people — a grim reminder that no one can escape death. None were able to postpone their appointed time of death by a moment. None managed to extend his allotted time on this earth by a single day. They all left behind the bodies, possessions and assets they valued so much, their peoples, families, careers, lands and promises, and entered the presence of Allah entirely alone: "You have come to Us all alone just as We created you at first, leaving behind you everything We bestowed on you. We do not see your intercessors accompanying you, those you claimed were your partners with Allah. The link between you is cut. Those you made such claims for have forsaken you." (Qur'an, 6:94)
Compassion, affection, reason, honesty, modesty and faith will always be victorious in this world; wickedness, cruelty, ruthlessness, arrogance and pride are all created such as to be defeated. As in the past, there are self-important people in all countries today.
The world is full of people who forget Allah and worship the temporal or power but these people share one very important thing with those people of the past: Just like them, they never imagine that power and might in fact belong to Allah. They are quite unaware that they are only a reflection of the infinite wisdom and beauty, the infinite might of Allah; they put on airs and show off with the fragments of wisdom, wealth and beauty given to them by Allah but they never realize what a fragile position they are really in. They forget that our Lord, the flawless Creator of the universe, is eternal, but that they will one day have to bid the world farewell and enter beneath the ground. They fail to see that the bodies they were arrogant and put on airs with will rot in the dry soil.
This will never change. Just like those who went before, they will depart this world as if they had never lived. Like billions of other people, they will appear helpless and very ordinary in the presence of our Lord and other people will make use of the palaces, roads and bridges they built. Nobody will even remember their names or realize that they have come and gone. They will join the billions of people who have come and left this world already, and the lids of their coffins will be closed down over them.
The end of this world is a source of terrible suffering for the people who are proud yet hell itself is awaiting those who were insanely arrogant and rebellious against Allah.
People are most reckless, when they are so helpless and all might and power belong to Allah; they are deceived by satan and become seized with pride. Everyone will realize the swamp they have fallen into after they die, but there can never be any return.
"Allah - there is no deity except Him, the Ever-Living, the Sustainer of [all] existence. Neither drowsiness overtakes Him nor sleep. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. Who is it that can intercede with Him except by His permission? He knows what is [presently] before them and what will be after them, and they encompass not a thing of His knowledge except for what He wills. His Kursi extends over the heavens and the earth, and their preservation tires Him not. And He is the Most High, the Most Great." (Qur'an, 2:255)
"Say, 'O Allah! Master of the Kingdom! You give sovereignty to whoever You will You take sovereignty from whoever You will. You exalt whoever You will You abase whoever You will. You have power over all things'." (Qur'an, 3:26)
Don't forget that just like there are millions of haughty, arrogant and conceited people who waste their lives in idleness, there are righteous people who are humble and in full submission to their Lord with great sincerity. Such pious people are very much aware of the fact that this is but a fleeting life, one that is passing very quickly.
With a continuous effort, they work sincerely to earn Allah's pleasure and strive to enter the Paradise. It doesn't matter where you live in the world; make sure to be one of these righteous believers as those people are the ones that will go to Heaven. While they work to deserve Allah's pleasure in this world, the most beautiful mansions in Heaven are being prepared for them.
Just like these righteous believers, understand the fleeting nature of the life of this world and work to deserve Heaven in the hereafter. Always remember that our Lord is the most-forgiving and that He is very compassionate towards His servants and that you can always repent. Don't forget that our Lord is ever forgiving and infinitely compassionate and He always rewards gratitude and every good and sincere deed performed for His pleasure.


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North Shore confirms two more crypto cases
The North Shore Health Department said Friday it now has 17 confirmed cryptosporidium cases.
The number of probable but unconfirmed cases stands at an additional 14.
Ozaukee County also confirmed one case earlier this week.
It has been confirmed by the North Shore Water Commission and Treatment Plant that the water supply remains safe to drink.
The exact source of the contamination has not yet been identified.
At a news conference Tuesday, officials said some of the affected people swam in pools at either the Jewish Community Center or Whitefish Bay High School.
Both the school and the JCC shocked their pools with chlorine over the weekend, and the JCC is taking an additional step by closing for 10 days to drain the pool and treat it again.
Anyone who has had diarrhea is advised not to swim for 14 days and to call their doctor or local health department.
For more information about cryptosporidium, click here.