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Posts: 79
Location: In my head...
Witch Hunter Robin (TV)
Genres: drama, mystery, supernatural
Themes: police, superpowers
Plot Summary: Witches are individuals with special powers like ESP, telekinesis, mind control, etc. (not the typical hogwart and newt potions). Robin, a craft user, arrives from Italy to Japan to work for an organization named STN Japan Division (STN-J) as a replacement for one of STN-J's witch hunters who was recently killed. Unlike other divisions of STN, STN-J tries to capture the witches alive in order to learn why and how they became witches in the first place.
Okay, I've been discussing this for a looong time now with someone and we keep looping so I thought I'd ask some others. The person I'm talking to thinks that Witch Hunter Robin has plot holes while I think that some if not all can be explained.
For example, the ones we're discussing are: Why did they wait a month to send the hunters after Robin? (I thought it had to do with 1. Amon 2. The orbo 3. Letting things settle back down. 4. Not knowing where she is 5.
The storyline, letting a month pass by makes sense plot wise. Yeah, I know a lot of speculations. LOL) Who ordered each hunt and why? (I thought the hunt on the apartment was 1. Partly a distraction so they could get the orbo 2. A hunt that was ordered by Juliano for Robin.
The hunt on the Robin in the warehouse was ordered by Zaizen, but why? The one on the STNJ was for the orbo. Correct me if I'm wrong. LOL) Also, why didn't they send the craft users right away? Why send the MIB first if she is so dangerous? Its also my belief that the Inquisitor himself played a part in the order of her hunt, not on purpose though. I thought maybe he was there to examine that other witch and check on Robin's progress. He thought she was doing well but Juliano feared she had become too strong and ordered the hunt. Tell me what you think, if I'm wrong or if you have your own ideas because I think I might not be too far off while that other person thinks they're all just plot holes.
[EDIT (7/3/14): Added the pic, encyc. entry, and all that fancy stuff, since this thread has gotten a recent revival, of sorts. -TK]
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Lone Wolf and Cub
Posts: 301
Location: tumbleweed, South Dakota
|I think a lot of what you say is speculation as you say. I do not have any problems with anything that happened in this series except for the ending. But even that was good, I don't really think there were plotholes. I loved the originality of the characters, and I loved Crispin Freeman as Amon in the dub. No complaints about anything, and this series is in my top ten
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Haiseikoh 1973
Posts: 1590
Location: Waiting for the Japanese 1000 Gunieas.
Correct me if i'm wrong:
spoiler[The main STN office probably had a issue with STNJ's practice of "Humane" Witch Hunts with the Orbo vs. outright killing witches. It could be implied that STN found out somehow about Orbo's true origins (or they began to suspect the Humane Hunts were not kosher), which was the use of witches that were "hunted" and use them in some sort of Alchemy Science, but they needed hard proof to confirm such suspicions. The whole Robin Witch Hunt was merely a distraction of sorts to gather info about the Orbo.]
Of course, how the Salem Witch and the PI fits in is beyond me.
Last edited by Haiseikoh 1973 on Thu May 27, 2004 5:11 am; edited 1 time in total
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Posts: 243
Location: Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
I have to agree with Haiseikoh. That sounds about right to me.
As to why they waited a month before sending in Robin? Maybe for preperation for her new job? Giving her all the information she'd be needing? And anyway, sending in a replacement right after someone has died is a little harsh.
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Haiseikoh 1973
Posts: 1590
Location: Waiting for the Japanese 1000 Gunieas.
Note i'm basing this on whatever info I can remember from the CN airings and Newtype USA.
spoiler[Amon supposedly killed the "slain" Hunter (or was it gave her the option of committing suicide?) because she was passing on info to someone. The rest of the team was told that she was killed by a witch when in reality, Amon killed her.
My guess is that the slain Hunter was a mole for the Director of STNJ/The Factory, and the death was to cover up the true identities of Dojima (aka "Miss Slacker Extrodinare") and Amon, who were working for STN, and the death also provided a good way to add Robin to the mix. Kinda like a distraction of sorts. (their's that word again, distraction). Why they waited a month is up to speculation, but I agree that it could've been a "debriefing" of STNJ. ]
spoiler[ STN Official: "Yeah, you have this hacker type dude, some woman that has psychic powers, some grunt, oh, and our operatives, the slacker, and the really scary dude dressed always in black. Oh, they have those two Metropolitain Police guys; total ---holes if you get my drift."
As to my previous comment, I realized that I didn't add a dumb reference to Orbo being the anime version of Solyent Green.
*cough* My apologies to Charleton Hesston for that lame rip-off. ]
Last edited by Haiseikoh 1973 on Thu May 27, 2004 1:58 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Posts: 2251
Location: Houston, TX
I'm not certain, but I believe spoiler[the question actually refers to why they waited a month after the attack on the STNJ to finally send the hunters after her, not when she first arrived at the STNJ. Robin first arrived at STNJ 6 months after the hunt for Kate (whom she replaces).
spoiler[Being that they attacked the STNJ for the orbo, and not for Robin as the STNJ believed, it wasn't very important at the time to track down Robin. Also, even though she had awakened as a witch, she hadn't yet realized her true powers. Once Julianno started getting scared that would occur that's when he sent the craft users.]
As for the attack at the warehouse, it was ordered by Zaizen, but ultimately from Solomon HQ, because Robin had been reclassified as a witch after she had awakened and killed the witch from the last hunt. The inquisitor no doubt reported that fact back to Solomon, which is why she was reclassified. The attack on the apartment was merely a continuation of the failed hunt at the warehouse.
spoiler[They didn't send craft users at first, because nobody at Solomon HQ except for Julianno and couple of others knew that she was a "super-witch". Also, the only other readily available craft users, would have been the STNJ. They most likely would have had problems with hunting Robin. If HQ had sent hunters, the STNJ could have helped Robin against them.]
As to what Haiseikoh 1973 wrote:
spoiler[Solomon HQ did want to check out what the issue with the Orbo was, which is why they sent Doujima in as a mole, Robin was at first sent in to find the secrets of the craft. The hunt for Kate occured because she had also awakened as a witch and become unable to completely control her powers. She knew that was going to be hunted fairly soon, so she leaked out secrets of the STNJ, most likely about the Orbo, which in turn is the reason that Doujima is sent in. Amon was ordered to hunt her and did so. ]
I have seen this series 3 times previously, and even rewatched some eps just to respond, so I feel pretty confident about it, but if anyone disagrees, feel free to bash me
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Haiseikoh 1973
Posts: 1590
Location: Waiting for the Japanese 1000 Gunieas.
spoiler[In Episode 15, when the attack on STNJ commences, Amon grabs Robin, and in the escape staircase, Amon reveals that Kate was afraid that her powers were manifesting out of control, so she opted to kill herself instead of having Amon kill her. Amon simply told everyone else that a witch killed Kate.]
Also, in that episode:
spoiler[When Amon is lying "dead" in front of Well which he had Robin escape thru, he utters that the hunt was a fraud, and it was for something else. Before that, we hear background voices where they mention a self-destruct Program, and the gathering of certain items. In Episode 16, Dojima recalls to Robin that those Tactical Men took an Orbo Gun and some info, but were unable to get into the system.]
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Posts: 2251
Location: Houston, TX
spoiler[Alright, this was taken directly from the subs from WHR that I have. This is from when they were in the escape staircase
Robin: "Amon, are you the one who hunted my predecessor?"
Amon: "Yes. I hunted Kate. She was trying to steal STNJ's secret. Because of her own greed."]
spoiler[ He then goes on to say that she actually was doing it because she knew she could no longer control her craft, and that she knew she would be hunted soon, and that she chose death before that happens. He doesn't say anything about her committing suicide. He said that there wasn't trust between the 2 of them, so he did it.
Yes, Amon said the attack on the STNJ was a fraud, they had thought it was the hunt for Robin, but it was really the hunt for the Orbo. Doujima was the mole that was planted for orbo information, but they got impatient because she wasn't getting hard evidence. But they could still see that Zaisen was stepping up what he was doing, or something to that effect. ]
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Haiseikoh 1973
Posts: 1590
Location: Waiting for the Japanese 1000 Gunieas.
Kate's death is subjective at this point. She died, and we know that she wasn't killed by a witch, so either she was killed by Amon, or she commited suicide. Remember spoiler[that Amon noted that Kate was pretty unstable mentally of her growing craft powers] so I would cater a guess that she might've taken her own life given her mental state. Because Amon spoiler[mentions later in Ep. 15 that he didn't want to hunt Robin and instead helped her escape] so that might be an indication that Amon didn't kill Kate, just maybe watched her die by her own hands.
That, or it's a plothole that has never been addressed.
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Posts: 2251
Location: Houston, TX
Well what he said was that spoiler[There was no "comrade's trust" between him and kate, which allowed him to hunt her. The reason Amon doesn't hunt Robin is because, as he said "I don't think of you as a witch." Amon hates witches which is one of the reasons he could hunt Kate, but since he didn't think of Robin as one, he didn't have that hatred, to give him the ability to hunt her. Of course you are correct it's up to debate, but as far as what Amon tells us, he is the one who hunted Kate, not that she killed herself. In the end, who knows for sure? ]
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Posts: 79
Location: In my head...
Thanks to everyone that replied, I got some new ways to look at it. I don't know what I put the first time but I got someone else to answer on another site...what do you think about this? Ignore the things like "Well what about the rest of the hunters" because this was originally to someone else.
The hunt on Robin at the warehouse- This hunt was ordered by Zaizen. As you remember Zaizen doesn't trust HQ and vice versa. This hunt was to get rid of Robin because of the orbo. He wanted to get rid of her before she found out what it was.
Now I know, or think, that your response would be similar to "Well, what about the rest of the hunters?" In case it is I will answer it. LOL He didn't worry about the other hunters because they weren't searching for what the orbo was. Amon was just following orders not worrying about it. Doujima was undercover so she wasn't important and as you know Miho and Sakaki weren't interested in it either.
When they sent Robin he didn't trust her in the first place so that hunt would make sense. The next hunt, the one on her apartment- It was for Robin. It was ordered because the Inquisitor reported back to Juliano of her progress. Even if the Inquisitor was pleased that doesn't mean Juliano would be given the circumstances. They sent in the MIB because they made a mistake. They knew she was strong but even though they knew that they underestimated her which resulted in a failed capture.
The next hunt, the one in the STNJ- It was for the orbo and Robin's capture was a side note kind of. If they could get her, fine. That was even stated by Amon himself. This will probably result in you asking something like "Why did they leave such a dangerous witch behind and go for the green jello?" Answer- This story is about Robin finding out what she is and finding out what the orbo is. Robin's past not coming into it until after the attack on the STNJ, well, not coming into it as the main plot.
The hunts after that- They waited a month because they didn't know where she was. They knew she was in Japan, not where they could find her though. And again, they were focusing on orbo, it was like a race to the finish. Zaizen trying to get rid of the need for hunters and HQ trying to find out what orbo was in the first place. Robin wasn't focusing on the orbo, she was focusing on her past which leaves her capture unattended to. They sent them after her a month later because she helped Doujima which gave away her position. That gave them an opportunity to strike.
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Posts: 2251
Location: Houston, TX
spoiler[ The hunt on the warehouse, I believe was through HQ since they reclassified her as a witch. If you recall, after the warehouse incident, we see Amon disposing of the spent "anti-witch" shells, which ties him to the firing of them. The only problem with that is Zaisen doesn't tell him that Robin has been reclassified until AFTER the warehouse incident, so it's speculation as to whether he actually fired, or someone else did and he merely disposed of the shells. Robin was not trying to find out about orbo, she was their to find the secrets of the craft. Doujima was the one sent in to find out about orbo, but Zaizen didn't know that.]
spoiler[ As I said before I believe the attack on her apartment was a continuation of the warehouse attack, especially since the same "anti-witch" shells were used. If you put the facts together, then you will see that since Amon is the only one who could have used the AW shells, then it was him at the warehouse and him at the apartment, so it must be the same hunt. A hunt which would have been ordered by HQ because Robin had just been classified as a witch.]
spoiler[ The attack on STNJ was only for the orbo, not for Robin. When we see Amon after he has been wounded he says, "It wasn't a hunt?", because they weren't concerned with Robin getting away. They waited a month, because as I said by this time Julianno is getting a great deal more scared when it comes to Robin. Helping Doujima didn't give away her position because nobody would have informed HQ, unless it was Doujima herself (the mole), which makes no sense. They also would not have put anything in their reports to HQ about Robin helping. Even when they sent hunters in they didn't know where to find her, they had to lure her out or track her down.]
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Posts: 79
Location: In my head...
See, I haven't seen it for a long time and I only saw it once. The way it presented everything was different, it made you think, and it caught me off guard. LOL I forgot about the anti-witch bullets...they came from HQ right? Zaizen didn't have access to them...hey wait, the only one that could use them was dead right? Leaving Amon? Sooo, it had to of been him. I thought that Zaizen was behind the warehouse hunt because of the orbo, not that she was looking for it though. I thought that because he was paranoid over not trusting HQ so HQ sending Robin over suspiciously got him all tense. He suspected HQ was up to something but obviously was off...even though they were up to something. But I had forgotten about when Zaizen told Amon of Robin's classification, I thought it happened before the warehouse hunt, which caused that specific hunt.
I also don't think that she had been classified as one by HQ yet, I think she was after the Inquisitor came back from the inquisition of that other witch. I don't think the attack on Robin in her apartment had to do with Zaizen because he didn't know what was going on as he said on the phone in his car...pretty sure he did anyways. He also didn't have access to those men that attacked, I'm pretty sure they were from HQ...the other men with the blue-ish outfits towards the end are FACTORY workers...right? LOL I also think it was ordered by HQ, Juliano specifically, not only because of that but also because of the letter.
The letter Juliano sent to Robin confessing everything. It wasn't Amon at the apartment remember? I however don't know how to explain why he was there, OR why Sakaki and Miho were there just in time. It couldn't have been Amon because there were more than one person there and that ended up getting Touko shot. Something he wouldn't have done. If he had tied her up she wouldn't have been that upset at the thought of not seeing him again. I also think that HQ can also classify craft users as witches, especially in Robin's case. I agree with you on the STNJ hunt, it was for the orbo.
I don't really think that Juliano was afraid of her, like terrified though. I think it had to do with his confusion over whether or not he should hunt her. Also, like I said before I think Robin's hunt, at that time, was less important than the orbo thing. When I said about her revealing her postion I meant that when she used her powers someone could have seen her. I mean, Amon did follow her, how easy would it be for someone else to?
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Posts: 2251
Location: Houston, TX
spoiler[It was easy for Amon to find her, because he sent her to Nagura, so it wouldn't be hard for him to follow her. HQ had no idea where she was except that she was in Japan. Yes there was more than one person in the attack on the apartment, but there were anti-witch shells used there also, and it was determined that Amon was the only one left who could use them. Yes, there were other people there, I don't think Amon shot Touko, it may have been one of the other attackers, but in any case I'm pretty sure Amon was there using the anti-witch bullets. After all, right after the attack they repel down the ropes, Robin runs down the stairs, and out of nowhere comes Amon running up the stairs, with a not so happy look on his face.]
spoiler[ Later, when he goes to the hospital to see Touko he says "I'm sorry" no doubt because he was involved in what happened to her. I just did some more checking by rewatching some eps, so Zaizen DID tell Amon about Robin being reclassified before the warehouse attack, you're right also, I just watched the end of ep 14 again and I forgot that after Robin goes to stay at STNJ. Amon goes to the apartment, where he meets Zaizen, who beats the crap out of Amon, saying "Why did you disobey my orders? If you did what I told you Touko wouldn't have been..." So we know that Zaizen was involved in the hunt, but most likely because HQ ordered it, which also means Amon was involved]
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Posts: 79
Location: In my head...
|No big, I forgot some too, like the anti-witch bullets thing because like I said, only saw it once so I'm going on memory. I never thought of it that way, the part about how Amon was there. What if he wasn't one of the ones shooting though, I do think he was involed though...now. LOL I don't think he was shooting because he appeared before her pretty quickly considering they had uniforms on (or whatever you want to call them...) that isn't possible. Maybe he provided the ammo. He he he... But that still doesn't make sense as to why Zaizen, or how for that matter, would order that. He didn't call HQ to get her, I still think HQ had to of done it...Zaizen doesn't have that much power So the warehouse attack was ordered by Zaizen but the apartment one was...hmm...that makes sense that Amon and Zaizen were involved but I think he didn't know what was going on...hey, could you check out when he made that phone call? He made one in his car sometime after the STNJ attack...or was it the apartment attack? LOL I can't remember but he made one where he said something about not knowing what was going on....
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Dixons / Currys Best UK price??
Started Jun 10, 2004 | Discussions thread
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Dave Chamberlain • Regular Member • Posts: 100
Dixons / Currys Best UK price??
Jun 10, 2004
Hi all,
I'm thinking of an early farther's day present.... To myself!
Can any one confirm the kit lens that comes with the D70 as sold by the Dixons/Currys chain??? I notice that they now offer 10% off all digi cams over £199... This now makes the D70 kit £765.... Not a bad price even if the lens is the 28-80G..
What do you think???
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Upgrading and Repairing PCs, Academic Edition / Edition 13by Scott Mueller
Pub. Date: 12/13/2001
Publisher: Pearson Education
1. Unparalleled
World-renowned PC hardware expert Scott Mueller has taught thousands in his weeklong seminars and millions through his books, videos and articles. Often, his students refer to him with nicknames, such as "St. Scott" and claim that this book changed their lives. Here are some of the features of latest edition of Mueller's classic reference:
1. Unparalleled coverage of AMD and Intel processors: No other PC book on the bookshelf provides comprehensive coverage of the bevy of processors available from AMD and Intel -- and no other PC book explains just exactly what you're up against when matching motherboards and RAM to these processors.
2. Cutting Edge coverage of the Pentium 4: Intel's long awaited Pentium 4 processor hit the shelves in 2000. Scott steers readers through what promises to be the biggest -- and most demanding -- processor upgrade since the world shifted from 486 processors to the Pentium.
3. Used by students, hobbyists and PC professionals around the world - U&R is found on the desks of teachers, students, hobbyists, repair technicians and even Interpol agents who use the skills they learn in Scott's book to track international criminals.
4. Praised in the media - Maximum PC, the PC hardware industry's leading magazine, reviewed the 12th Edition and dubbed it the "most comprehensive book on the subject we've ever seen" and would have given the book its coveted "Kick Ass" award if books were eligible for the award.
About the Author
Scott Mueller is the most trusted, authoritative hardware voice in the industry. In addition to teaching hardware repair to more than 10,000 computer professionals and enthusiasts, he has sold more than 2 million copies of Upgrading and Repairing PCs, making him a world-renowned hardware author and his book a classic. Scott has taught hardware repair to a host of agencies in the U.S. and foreign governments, and corporations in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe.
Product Details
- 9780789727152
- Publisher:
- Pearson Education
- Publication date:
- 12/13/2001
- Edition description:
- Academic Edition
- Pages:
- 1080
- Product dimensions:
- 7.36(w) x 9.13(h) x 3.74(d)
Table of Contents
|PC Hardware Introduction and Overview
|Primary System Components
|Input/Output Hardware
|Mass Storage Systems
|System Assembly and Maintenance
|Troubleshooting Hardware and Software Problems
|IBM System Technical Reference Section
(Valid only for the hardcover edition)
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text:
How many seasons of The Simpsons are out on dvd?
kgb answers » Arts & Entertainment » TV » How many seasons of The Simpsons are out on dvd?
Tags: the simpsons, simpsons
Monday, February 06 2012
Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096697/
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Verizon's double down bet on the web with AOL and Yahoo is unlikely to work, says Breakingviews. » Read More
Stocks pared their gains on Wednesday as banks pulled back but investors remained hopeful that the worst may be over for the economy. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told a Senate panel that financial markets are "starting to heal" and that a program to remove toxic assets from bank balance sheets would begin in the next six weeks. Read and listen to what experts had to say...
Alan Gayle of RidgeWorth Capital Management said the economy's transition from "hopes for survival" to "expectations of sustainability" is causing the market to "raise the bars for itself."
Stocks continue to gently whipsaw Wednesday, but the Vix volatility/fear index is still subsiding. Art Cashin, UBS Financial Services director of floor operations, offered CNBC his stock-market insights.
We're "long overall" and believe that the market has a lot of room to go higher, said Wayne Kaufman, chief market analyst at John Thomas Financial.
Sigma-Aldrich has risen more than 45 percent since its March lows, and some options traders apparently believe that the biochemical company has even more upside potential.
The stock market may hit new lows this year or the next as the current rally has been largely caused by the money printed by central banks and fundamental problems remain unsolved, legendary investor Jim Rogers told CNBC Wednesday.
The fall in asset prices brought on by the financial crisis has shrunk the size of sovereign wealth funds belonging to oil-rich countries and Asian exporters, the World Street Journal reported on Wednesday on its Web site.
Jim Iuorio, director at TJM Institutional Services, and Bryan Piskorowski, managing director at Wachovia Securities, weighed in on the best places to invest now.
Stocks ended a rocky session mixed as a banks rally fizzled and an unexpected drop in housing starts left investors a little shaky. Still, a gauge of fear dropped below a key level.
Chip designer Analog Devices posted sharply lower profit and sales for its fiscal second quarter Tuesday amid the economic turmoil that has dampened global chip demand.
Markets bounced back on Tuesday as banks rallied and a gauge of market fear — the Vix — dropped significantly. Stocks had gotten off to a weak start after a report showed housing starts unexpectedly fell to a record low. In the meantime, experts expressed mixed feelings about the market outlook. Read and listen to what they had to say...
Investors can control risk factors by investing in managed ETFs, said Carrie Coghill Kuntz, president and co-founder of D.B. Root & Company.
Lise Buyer of Class V Group and Kate Mitchell of Scale Venture Partners agreed that there will be more venture-backed IPOs in the coming months.
After a morning dip dampened Monday's gains, stocks bounced back Tuesday. Art Cashin, UBS Financial Services director of floor operations, offered CNBC his insights and outlook for the stock market.
Two bullish strategists, Kim Caughey of Fort Pitt Capital Group and Stephen Wood of Russell Investments, recommended the best sectors for investors to put their money.
Stocks bounced back Tuesday as banks rallied and a gauge of fear in the market dropped significantly.
Dan Greenhaus of Miller Tabak and Scott Minerd of Guggenheim Partners discussed their outlooks on the economy — and where to put your money.
Stocks declined Tuesday after housing starts unexpectedly fell to a record low.
Futures pared gains Tuesday after housing starts unexpectedly fell to a record low. Futures had been pointing higher for most of the morning, buoyed by news that banks may break free from the government's grip.
Peter Kenny, managing director of Knight Equities, and Charles Campbell, senior sales trader at Miller Tabak, weighed in on the best places to invest now.


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Before any election there is speculation as to the number of people who will show up to cast ballots. The Aug. 5, 2014, election is no different.
The turnout at August primary elections can be small, from statewide down to the grassroots level. Often there aren't many primary races on either ticket. That's true in Franklin County this year. The one primary race that has sparked the most attention is for recorder of deeds on the Republican ticket. There are five candidates. A number such as that is very unusual in Franklin County.
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ON FARM LEASE (Meriden, CT): Skylar is a super sweet, gentle, 11 y/o paint mare that goes English or western. Skylar is 15.1h all around mare with a colorful…$150
My husband and I are looking for a home for our old thoroughbred who just needs a place to relax and be a companion buddy for other horses. She has a long…$500
Hand Picked Treasure is a beautiful, stocky, registered quarter horse gelding by A Star In Time, AQHA's 3rd leading sire of performance ROM achievers,…$7,500
He was used as a lesson horse for beginner walk trot students in saddleseat. He can also go english pleasure or western. He is a attractive guy that needs…$1,000
go many places in life and I believe she will make a nice Western Pleasure riding horse. She needs$2,700
AQHA Bay Mare, 10yo, 15.1 hands, Precious and quiet for anyone, Western Pleasure or Hunter Under Saddle, smooth gaits. Big bodied and great mover this…$6,000
Dbl registered APHA PtHA Chestnut Overo Mare 7yo, 15.2 hands, Western Pleasure or Hunter Under$7,500
AQHA Bay Gelding, 7yo, 15.2 hands, Son of LAZY LOPER Western Pleasure, and Hunter Under Saddle deluxe, has quiet and easy gaits, will slow lope and jog…$6,000


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Photography Techniques
From lens focal lengths and fill-flash to portraits, macro or stunning landscapes there are techniques for everyone. Learn how to use metering, considering composition and shoot everything from classic cars to derelict buildings. We also have 100s of easy to follow step by step photo editing tutorials.
Create an online art gallery using Satori
Mark Graham looks at a technique to help you scan A3 images on an A4 scanner and then stitch them together using Satori image editing software.
- 4 Jan 2001
How To Selectively Colour An Object In GIMP
Michael Bates shows us how to use GIMP's Path tool to selectively colour an object.
- 6 Apr 2012
Heart shaped mask using Elements
We show you how to create an attractive heart effect in Adobe Photoshop Elements.
- 8 Jan 2002
Replace colour in photoshop
The Replace Colour command in Photoshop is really easy to use but very effective. Here's how you use it.
- 2 Aug 2010
Liquify your photos with Elements
Will Smith gives us a glimpse of the Photoshop Elements Liquify tool's potential to create some odd effects.
- 10 Jan 2002
Quick Beginner Tips About Focus Lock
See why Focus Lock is a useful too you should remember how to use.
- 18 Feb 2012
Shooting Landscapes With Compact Cameras
Is there such thing as the right camera when it comes to shooting landscapes? Robin Whalley gets his compact out to put this theory to the test.
- 9 May 2011
Photoshop Tutorial: How To Add Motion Blur
Using layers and Motion Blur filter to create a sense of speed.
- 24 Mar 2012
Rescue an underexposed portrait photography using free image editing software
This tutorial will show you how to fix the lighting in an outdoor photograph using GIMP's colour and sharpening tools while maintaining a natural end result.
- 29 May 2008
How to use the ISO setting on a digital camera
Digital cameras, like film cameras, often have an ISO setting, but what does this means and how do you use it? All is explained here...
- 6 Jan 2003
How the image May on the Moor by Simon Plant was created
Award-winning photographer Simon Plant shows us how he created one of his images. See how he plans, shoots and edits his work.
- 30 Sep 2008
Make your own passport photos
Why is it when we go on holiday and need a passport photo we rely on that robot booth to churn out automated pictures at a tune of over £3 per shot? Peter Bargh shows you how to shoot, prepare and print pictures for your passport with ease.
- 1 Jan 2003
- 7 Comments
Introduction To Hand-Held Light Meters
See how a hand-held light meter will help you get better exposures, even if you are using a digital camera.
- 27 Nov 2011
- 14 Comments
Using layer masks with Photoshop
Peter Bargh explains how you can use the valuable Layer Mask option of Photoshop to make better colour changes and selections, in this step by step image editing technique.
- 30 Nov -0001
Enhancing Eyes using Photoshop
The eyes are one of the most important parts of a portrait, and usually the first thing we notice. Therefore, a small amount of enhancement on the eyes can go a very long way to producing a portrait with real zing.
- 30 Nov -0001
- 6 Comments
Four Easy Ways To Create A Vignette In Photoshop
Vignettes are a simple yet subtle way to guide the eye through a shot and here are four ways to create one in Photoshop.
- 6 May 2016
- 4 Comments
How To Use A Neutral Density Filter
Attaching a neutral density filter to your camera lens will bring you several benefits, as Peter Bargh explains.
- 18 Nov 2011
- 10 Comments
Black & white high key effects in Photoshop
The famous high key effect is one of the most interesting, yet simple, effects you can achieve in digital photography
- 30 Nov -0001
- 2 Comments
Depth-of-field explained
Once you grasp the basic principles of focusing your photographs will take on a whole new depth.
- 6 Jan 2002
- 4 Comments
Watermarking your photos in Photoshop 7 and CS
Photoshop expert, Terry Steeley, kicks off the first of a new series of tutorials for ePHOTOzine that looks at how to watermark our digital images to protect them from being used without our consent.
- 30 Nov -0001
- 14 Comments
Create a pop art photo Andy Warhol style using Gimp
Andy Warhols work features one of the most recognisable styles of print in the art world and his silk screen prints of stars as famous as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor are iconic. Here Michael Bates recreates the effect for using the free image editing program, Gimp.
- 12 Jun 2008
- 5 Comments
6 Architectural Night Photography Tips
Night photos of buildings can give your collection of architectural shots a nice twist.
- 17 Sep 2015
Recipe For Black & White Landscape Success
Here are 10 steps you can follow today to instantly improve your black & white landscapes.
- 28 Jul 2016
- 1 Comments
Adding a low key vignette
Adding a vignette to your photos is easy in the darkroom and can be very effective, and the only extra you need is a piece of card. Peter Bargh of ePHOTOzine is our guide.
- 2 Jan 2002
Studio lighting tutorial
We're moving on from the first shoot to produce a different set of portraits with the same kit.
- 20 Jun 2010
Adding Realistic Film Grain In Photoshop
Give images some drama in Photoshop by adding film grain.
- 18 Jun 2012
- 1 Comments
Studio lighting on a budget
Despite what some experts say, you don't have to own five studio flash heads to produce high-key lighting.
- 3 Jan 2002
- 3 Comments
Create A Blurred Background With A Compact
Here are a few tips on how you can create blurry backgrounds with a compact camera.
- 3 Oct 2012
- 1 Comments
Pick some puffin photography tips up from site member Cheryl Surry.
- 30 May 2010
Low Light Church Photography Tips
We're heading back into the night but this time our focus is a church.
- 13 Dec 2015
- 10 Comments
How To Capture Creative Wedding Photographs As A Guest
So, you're not a professional wedding photographer but you still want to capture some creative and picture-perfect shots of the wedding you're attending. Well, we've got a few tips to help you out with exactly that.
- 25 Jul 2016
- Picanova
- 2 Comments


text: Sign inNot A Member? Join now! Find A Grave - Salem Memorial Park and Garden ad feedback Browse by Cemetery: Salem Memorial Park and Garden 2 records foundFilter by fame level: All Famous NamesSomewhat FamousVery FamousAttention:You are browsing our famous burial locations. If you arelooking for a non-famous grave, please start from our home page. Black, Ben b. December 11, 1889 d. December 26, 1950Composer, author, publisher, producer, music director of the Paramount Theatres in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Songs to his credit are include "Moonlight and Roses," and "Hold Me." (Bio by: Laurie)Salem Memorial Park and Garden, Colma, San Mateo County, California, USAPlot: Family vault Salomon, Edward Selig b. December 25, 1836 d. July 18, 1913Civil War Union Brevet Brigadier General, Washington Governor. Born in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, he emigrated to Illinois in 1856 and was elected an Alderman of Chicago's 6th Ward in 1861. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted in the 24th Illinois Infantry and was commissioned an officer. In August 1862, he joined the 82nd Illinois Regiment and was appointed lieutenant Colonel. He became a hero during the Battle of Gettysburg, became in permanent command of the 82nd Illinois in 1864...[Read More] (Bio by: John "J-Cat" Griffith)Salem Memorial Park and Garden, Colma, San Mateo County, California, USAPlot: Section B, Lot 6 2 records found ad feedback Privacy Statement and Terms of Service


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NYPD gets former military dog, 1st for the force
The 4-year-old German shepherd named Caeser served three tours of duty overseas. Now he'll be patrolling the NYC subways with Officer Juan Rodriguez
Associated Press
NEW YORK — The New York Police Department is welcoming a newcomer that's the first of his kind for the nation's largest police department: a former military service dog.
The 4-year-old German shepherd named Caeser served three tours of duty overseas. Now he'll be patrolling the New York City subways with Officer Juan Rodriguez.
The Defense Department has long made some of its retired dogs available to law enforcement agencies, but the NYPD hasn't had one before. The arrangement saves the police force the $6,000 to $8,000 cost of training an inexperienced dog.
NYPD Sgt. Randy Brenner is a member of the NYPD Transit Bureau's Canine Unit. He says military dogs make promising police partners, because they're "already used to working in stressful situations."
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press
Copyright Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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PASADENA, Calif.—The old optical microscopes that everyone used in high-school biology class may be a step closer to the glass heap. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have announced their invention of an optofluidic microscope that uses no lens elements and could revolutionize the diagnosis of certain diseases such as malaria.
Reporting in the journal Lab on a Chip, Caltech assistant professor of electrical engineering professor Changhuei Yang and his coauthors describe the novel device that combines chip technology with microfluidics. Although similar in resolution and magnifying power to a conventional top-quality optical microscope, the optofluidic microscope chip is only the size of a quarter, and the entire device—imaging screen and all—will be about the size of an iPod.
"This is a new way of doing microscopy," says Yang, who also has a dual appointment in bioengineering at Caltech. "Its imaging principle is similar to the way we see floaters in our eyes. If you can see it in a conventional microscope and it can flow in a microfluidic channel, we can image it with this tiny chip."
That list of target objects includes many pathogens that are most dangerous to human life and health, including the organism that causes malaria. The typical method of diagnosing malaria is to draw a blood sample and send it to a lab where the sample can be inspected for malaria parasites. A high-powered optical microscope with lens elements is far too big and cumbersome for inspection of samples in the field.
With a palm-sized optofluidic microscope, however, a doctor would be able to draw a drop of blood from the patient and analyze it immediately. This process would be much simpler and faster than the current method, and the equipment would be far cheaper and more readily available to physicians in third-world countries.
The device works by literally flowing a target sample across a tiny fluid pathway. Normally, the image would be low in resolution because the target would interrupt the light on a single pixel, thus limiting the resolution to pixel size.
However, the researchers have avoided this limitation by attaching an opaque metal film to a microfluidic chip. The film contains an etched array of submicron apertures that are spaced in such a way that adjacent line scans overlap and all parts of the target are imaged.
The new optofluidic microscope is one of the first major accomplishments to come out of Caltech's Center for Optofluidic Integration, which was begun in 2004 with funding from the federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for development of a new generation of small-scale, highly adaptable, and innovative optical devices.
"The basic idea of the center is to build optical devices for imaging, fiber optics, communications, and other applications, and to transcend some of the limitations of optical devices made out of traditional materials like glass," says Demetri Psaltis, who is the Myers Professor of Electrical Engineering at Caltech and a coauthor of the paper. "This is probably the most important result so far showing how we can build very unique devices that can have a broad impact."
Xin Heng, a graduate student in electrical engineering at Caltech, performed most of the experiments reported in the paper. The other Caltech authors are David Erickson, a former postdoctoral scholar who is now a mechanical-engineering professor at Cornell University; L. Ryan Baugh, a postdoctoral scholar in biology; Zahid Yaqoob, a postdoctoral scholar in electrical engineering; and Paul W. Sternberg, the Morgan Professor of Biology.
PASADENA, Calif.—The International Astronomical Union (IAU) today downgraded the status of Pluto to that of a "dwarf planet," a designation that will also be applied to the spherical body discovered last year by California Institute of Technology planetary scientist Mike Brown and his colleagues. The decision means that only the rocky worlds of the inner solar system and the gas giants of the outer system will hereafter be designated as planets.
The ruling effectively settles a year-long controversy about whether the spherical body announced last year and informally named "Xena" would rise to planetary status. Somewhat larger than Pluto, the body has been informally known as Xena since the formal announcement of its discovery on July 29, 2005, by Brown and his co-discoverers, Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory and David Rabinowitz of Yale University. Xena will now be known as the largest dwarf planet.
"I'm of course disappointed that Xena will not be the tenth planet, but I definitely support the IAU in this difficult and courageous decision," said Brown. "It is scientifically the right thing to do, and is a great step forward in astronomy.
"Pluto would never be considered a planet if it were discovered today, and I think the fact that we've now found one Kuiper-belt object bigger than Pluto underscores its shaky status."
Pluto was discovered in 1930. Because of its size and distance from Earth, astronomers had no idea of its composition or other characteristics at the time. But having no reason to think that many other similar bodies would eventually be found in the outer reaches of the solar system—or that a new type of body even existed in the region—they assumed that designating the new discover as the ninth planet was a scientifically accurate decision.
However, about two decades later, the famed astronomer Gerard Kuiper postulated that a region in the outer solar system could house a gigantic number of comet-like objects too faint to be seen with the telescopes of the day. The Kuiper belt, as it came to be called, was demonstrated to exist in the 1990s, and astronomers have been finding objects of varying size in the region ever since.
Few if any astronomers had previously called for the Kuiper-belt objects to be called planets, because most were significantly smaller than Pluto. But the announcement of Xena's discovery raised a new need for a more precise definition of which objects are planets and which are not.
According to Brown, the decision will pose a difficulty for a public that has been accustomed to thinking for the last 75 years that the solar system has nine planets.
"It's going to be a difficult thing to accept at first, but we will accept it eventually, and that's the right scientific and cultural thing to do," Brown says.
In fact, the public has had some experience with the demotion of a planet in the past, although not in living memory. Astronomers discovered the asteroid Ceres on January 1, 1801—literally at the turn of the 19th century. Having no reason to suspect that a new class of celestial object had been found, scientists designated it the eighth planet (Uranus having been discovered some 20 years earlier).
Soon several other asteroids were discovered, and these, too, were summarily designated as newly found planets. But when astronomers continued finding numerous other asteroids in the region (there are thought to be hundreds of thousands), the astronomical community in the early 1850s demoted Ceres and the others and coined the new term "minor planet."
Xena was discovered on January 8, 2005, at Palomar Observatory with the NASA-funded 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope. Xena is about 2,400 kilometers in diameter. A Kuiper-belt object like Pluto, but slightly less reddish-yellow, Xena is currently visible in the constellation Cetus to anyone with a top-quality amateur telescope.
Brown and his colleagues in late September announced that Xena has at least one moon. This body has been nicknamed Gabrielle, after Xena's sidekick on the television series.
Xena is currently about 97 astronomical units from the sun (an astronomical unit is the distance between the sun and Earth), which means that it is some nine billion miles away at present. Xena is on a highly elliptical 560-year orbit, sweeping in as close to the sun as 38 astronomical units. Currently, however, it is nearly as far away as it ever gets.
Pluto's own elliptical orbit takes it as far away as 50 astronomical units from the sun during its 250-year revolution. This means that Xena is sometimes much closer to Earth than Pluto—although never closer than Neptune.
Gabrielle is about 250 kilometers in diameter and reflects only about 1 percent of the sunlight that its parent reflects. Because of its small size, Gabrielle could be oddly shaped.
Brown says that the study of Gabrielle's orbit around Xena hasn't yet been fully completed. But once it is, the researchers will be able to derive the mass of Xena itself from Gabrielle's orbit. This information will lead to new insights on Xena's composition.
Based on spectral data, the researchers think Xena is covered with a layer of methane that has seeped from the interior and frozen on the surface. As in the case of Pluto, the methane has undergone chemical transformations, probably due to the faint solar radiation, that have caused the methane layer to redden. But the methane surface on Xena is somewhat more yellowish than the reddish-yellow surface of Pluto, perhaps because Xena is farther from the sun.
Brown and Trujillo first photographed Xena with the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope on October 31, 2003. However, the object was so far away that its motion was not detected until they reanalyzed the data in January of 2005.
The search for new planets and other bodies in the Kuiper belt is funded by NASA. For more information on the program, see the Samuel Oschin Telescope's website at http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomarnew/sot.html.
For more information on Mike Brown's research, see http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown.
For the past three years, astronomers at the California Institute of Technology's Palomar Observatory in Southern California have been using the High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN) as the data transfer cyberinfrastructure to further our understanding of the universe. Recent applications include the study of some of the most cataclysmic explosions in the universe, the hunt for extrasolar planets, and the discovery of our solar system's tenth planet. The data for all this research is transferred via HPWREN from the remote mountain observatory to college campuses hundreds of miles away.
Funded by the National Science Foundation, HPWREN provides Palomar Observatory with a high-speed network connection that helps enable new ways of undertaking astronomy research consistent with the data demands of today's scientists. Specifically, the HPWREN bandwidth allows astronomers to transfer a 100MB image from a telescope camera at Palomar to their campus laboratories in less than 30 seconds.
"The Palomar Observatory is by far our most bandwidth-demanding partner," says Hans-Werner Braun, HPWREN principal investigator, a research scientist with the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego. "Palomar is able to run the 45 megabits-per-second HPWREN backbone flat out and will be able to utilize substantially more bandwidth in the future. The current plan is to upgrade critical links that support the observatory to 155 Mbps and create a redundant 45 Mbps path for a combined 200 megabits-per-second access speed at the observatory."
Last summer astronomers making use of the Palomar 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope announced the discovery of what some are calling our solar system's tenth planet. The object has been confirmed to be larger than Pluto. The telescope uses a 161-million-pixel camera - one of the largest and most capable in the world. HPWREN enables a large volume of data to be moved off the mountain to each astronomer's home base. Modern digital technology with pipeline processing of the data produced enables astronomers to detect very faint moving and transient objects.
To find these objects, the telescope takes a relatively short exposure of a section of the sky. It then goes off and images a pre-arranged sequence of such target fields. After a period of time it comes back and repeats the sequence. Then it does it again after another interval. Any objects that are visible in all three images, but move consistently with respect to the background star field, are solar system objects such as asteroids, comets or Kuiper Belt objects. Because of the large amount of data, pipeline processing is used both to detect such objects and to calculate their preliminary orbits from the initial triplet data. Sedna and the tenth planet, 2003UB313, were found using this technique, as were a large number of Near Earth Asteroids by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) program.
The Nearby Supernova Factory piggybacks their hunt for a certain type of exploding star, known as Type Ia supernovae, with the data collected by the NEAT program, and they then use the observations of these supernovae as "standard candles" for measuring the accelerating expansion of the universe. To date the survey has discovered about 350 supernovae, including 90 Type Ia supernovae. Greg Aldering of the University of California's Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory says "The recent discovery that the expansion of the universe is speeding up has turned the fields of cosmology and fundamental physics on their heads. The QUEST camera and the speedy HPWREN link are giving us an unprecedented sample of supernovae for pursuing this exciting discovery. The Palomar supernovae will be compared with supernovae from the Hubble Space Telescope and other telescopes to try to determine what is causing this acceleration."
One of the universe's most mysterious and explosive events is the phenomenon known as a gamma-ray burst (GRB). They are briefly bright enough to be visible billions of light years away, but they are difficult to study because they are very short lived and take place at seemingly random locations and times.
Astronomers rely on satellites like Swift which detects a GRB and immediately relays the information to observers worldwide via the Gamma-Ray Burst Coordinates Network.
If a gamma-ray burst occurs when it is dark and clear at Palomar, the observatory's robotic 60-inch telescope immediately slews to the coordinates provided and images the fading optical glow of the explosion. "The rapid response by the Palomar 60-inch telescope is possible only because of HPWREN. With it we have observed and categorized some of the most distant and energetic explosions in the universe," remarks Shri Kulkarni, MacArthur Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Science and director of the Caltech Optical Observatories. These observations have allowed astronomers to reach new frontiers by classifying the bursts and theorizing about their origins.
For the last decade astronomers have been using indirect methods and giant telescopes (like the Keck in Hawaii) to make their first discoveries of planets outside our solar system (called exoplanets). The smallest telescope at the Palomar Observatory is performing its own search for exoplanets. With a small telescope it is possible to detect a giant Jupiter-sized world that lies close to its parent star. By looking at a great many stars each night the HPWREN-powered Sleuth Telescope hopes to catch such a planet in the act of passing directly in front of its star. Such an eclipse, known as a transit, dims the light of the star by about one percent.
Sleuth is an automated telescope, capable of observing target areas of the night sky without much human interaction. All the required actions are scripted in advance, and a computer running this script is placed in charge of the telescope. The observer can then get a good night's sleep and receive the data in the morning. The automated nature of this procedure allows for remote observing, so the observer need not even be on the mountain.
"Living in the modern age of astronomy has made observing much more efficient. Every night we transfer about 4 gigabytes of data via HPWREN from Sleuth to Caltech in Pasadena. It is on my computer and analyzed before I arrive at work in the morning," says Caltech graduate student Francis O'Donovan. "The ability to process the previous night's data enables us to quickly check the quality of that data. We can then ensure the telescope is operational before beginning the next night's observations."
"The current HPWREN funding supports research into an understanding, prioritization, and policy-based re-routing of data network traffic, something the bursty and predominantly night-time high-volume observatory traffic is very useful for," explains Braun. "This being alongside other research and education traffic, also including continuous low-volume sensor data with tight real-time requirements, creates an ideal testbed for this network research as well."
The High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network program is an interdisciplinary and multi-institutional UC San Diego research program led by principal investigator Hans-Werner Braun at the San Diego Supercomputer Center and co-principal investigator Frank Vernon at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. HPWREN is based on work funded by the National Science Foundation. The HPWREN web site is at http://hpwren.ucsd.edu/
More information on the tenth planet and how it was found can be seen at: http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/index.html and http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/survey.html
For more on Palomar's gamma-ray burst research, go to: http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/grb.html and http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/exhibits/grb/
For more information on Sleuth: http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~ftod/tres/sleuth.html
Contact: Scott Kardel (760) 742-2111 firstname.lastname@example.com
The results, which involve supercomputer simulations of what could happen to specific areas of greater Los Angeles in specific earthquake scenarios, were published in the latest issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, the premier scientific journal dedicated to earthquake research.
"This study has brought together state-of-the-art 3-D-simulation tools used in the fields of earthquake engineering and seismology to address important questions that people living in seismically active regions around the world worry about," says Swaminathan Krishnan, a postdoctoral scholar in geophysics at Caltech and lead author of the study.
"What if a large earthquake occurred on a nearby fault? Would a particular building withstand the shaking? This prototype study illustrates how, with the help of high-performance computing, 3-D simulations of earthquakes can be combined with 3-D nonlinear analyses of buildings to provide realistic answers to these questions in a quantitative manner."
The publication of the paper is an ambitious attempt by the researchers to enhance and improve the methodology used to assess building integrity, says Jeroen Tromp, the McMillan Professor of Geophysics and director of the Seismological Laboratory at Caltech. "We are trying to change the way in which seismologists and engineers approach this difficult interdisciplinary problem," Tromp says.
The research simulates the effects that two different 7.9-magnitude San Andreas earthquakes would have on two hypothetical 18-story steel frame buildings located at 636 sites on a grid that covers the Los Angeles and San Fernando basins. An earthquake of this magnitude occurred on the San Andreas on January 9, 1857, and seismologists generally agree that the fault has the potential for such an event every 200 to 300 years. To put this in context, the much smaller January 17, 1994, Northridge earthquake of 6.7 magnitude caused 57 deaths and economic losses of more than $40 billion.
The simulated earthquakes "rupture" a 290-kilometer section of the San Andreas fault between Parkfield in the Central Valley and Southern California, one earthquake with rupture propagating southward and the other with rupture propagating northward. The first building is a model of an actual 18-story, steel moment-frame building located in the San Fernando Valley. It was designed according to the 1982 Uniform Building Code (UBC) standards yet suffered significant damage in the 1994 Northridge earthquake due to fracture of the welds connecting the beams to the columns. The second building is a model of the same San Fernando Valley structure redesigned to the stricter 1997 UBC standards.
Using a high-performance PC cluster, the researchers simulated both earthquakes and the damage each would cause to the two buildings at each of the 636 grid sites. They assessed the damage to each building based on "peak interstory drift."
Interstory drift is the difference between the roof and floor displacements of any given story as the building sways during the earthquake, normalized by the story height. For example, for a 10-foot high story, an interstory drift of 0.10 indicates that the roof is displaced one foot in relation to the floor below.
The greater the drift, the greater the likelihood of damage. Peak interstory drift values larger than 0.06 indicate severe damage, while values larger than 0.025 indicate that the damage could be serious enough to pose a serious threat to human safety. Values in excess of 0.10 indicate probable building collapse.
The study's conclusions include the following:
o A 7.9-magnitude San Andreas rupture from Parkfield to Los Angeles results in greater damage to both buildings than a rupture from Los Angeles to Parkfield. This difference is due to the effects of directivity and slip distribution controlling the ground-motion intensity. In the north-to-south rupture scenario, peak ground displacement is two meters in the San Fernando Valley and one meter in the Los Angeles basin; for the south-to-north rupture scenario, ground displacements are 0.6 meters and 0.4 meters respectively. o In the north-to-south rupture scenario, peak drifts in the model of the existing building far exceed 0.10 in the San Fernando Valley, Santa Monica, and West Los Angeles, Baldwin Park and its neighboring cities, Compton and its neighboring cities, and Seal Beach and its neighboring cities. Peak drifts are in the 0.06-0.08 range in Huntington Beach, Santa Ana, Anaheim, and their neighboring cities, whereas the values are in the 0.04-0.06 range for the remaining areas, including downtown Los Angeles. o The results for the redesigned building are better than for the existing building. Although the peak drifts in some areas in the San Fernando Valley still exceed 0.10, they are in the range of 0.04-0.06 for most cities in the Los Angeles basin. o In the south-to-north rupture, the peak drifts in both the existing and redesigned building models are in the range of 0.02-0.04, suggesting that there is no significant danger of collapse. However, this is indicative of damage significant enough to warrant building closures and compromise human safety in some instances.
Such hazard analyses have numerous applications, Krishnan says. They could be performed on specific existing and proposed buildings in particular areas for a range of types of earthquakes, providing information that developers, building owners, city planners, and emergency managers could use to make better, more informed decisions.
"We have shown that these questions can be answered, and they can be answered in a very quantitative way," Krishnan says.
The research paper is "Case Studies of Damage to Tall Steel Moment-Frame Buildings in Southern California during Large San Andreas Earthquakes," by Swaminathan Krishnan, Chen Ji, Dimitiri Komatitsch, and Jeroen Tromp. Online movies of the earthquakes and building-damage simulations can be viewed at http://www.ce.caltech.edu/krishnan.
Contact: Jill Perry (626) 395-3226 firstname.lastname@example.com
PASADENA, Calif.—It may be surprising that a laser beam, when shot to the moon and returned by one of the mirrors the Apollo astronauts left behind, is a couple of miles in diameter at the end of its half-million-mile round trip. This spread is mostly due to atmospheric distortions, but it nonetheless underscores the problems posed to those who wish to keep laser beams from diverging or focusing to a point as light travels through a medium.
Now a team of physicists, mathematicians, and electrical engineers from the California Institute of Technology and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has figured out a trick to keep light pulses from diverging or focusing. Using a multi-layer sandwich of glass plates alternating with air, the scientists have provided the first experimental demonstration of a procedure called "nonlinearity management." This technique wouldn't do anything for light traveling all the way to the moon, but could be useful in future generations of devices involving optical switching and optical information processing, for which precise control of laser pulses will be advantageous.
Reporting in the July 21, 2006, issue of Physical Review Letters, the researchers demonstrate that a laser beam passing through multiple layers of glass and air can be made to last much longer than if it had passed through only one type of medium. This procedure exploits a phenomenon known as the "Kerr effect," which causes the refractive index of an individual material to change if the light energy is sufficiently intense.
When light is propagated only through glass, one obtains a focused beam so intense that it generates a plasma in the medium, stripping away its electrons. Using a multi-layer "Kerr sandwich" of light and air, however, keeps the plasma from being created because the different refractive indices of the media cause the light beam to diverge and converge several times.
"The idea is for the beam size on average to stay constant," says team member Mason Porter, a postdoctoral scholar in Caltech's Center for the Physics of Information.
The experimental setup was the work of Martin Centurion, also a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for the Physics of Information. According to Centurion, the laboratory apparatus consists of nine normal microscope slides, each about one millimeter thick, that are aligned parallel to each other at one-millimeter spacings. An intense femtosecond laser pulse is sent into the slides, and the pulse converges while in the glass medium, but then diverges again while traversing through air. The end result is a beam that is the same diameter when it emerges from the apparatus as it was when it entered, although it is slightly weaker due to reflection of a fraction of the energy at each interface.
The researchers say that the setup they used is intended to demonstrate that nonlinearity management can be performed, and it is not by any means the final version of a practical apparatus.
"This is focusing in space," Porter says. "If you could combine both space and time, you'd have a 'light bullet'-that is, a pulse that stays the same all the time."
Various devices in the future could be possible through nonlinearity management, adds Centurion, "but this is a demonstration that is pretty far from any applications."
"There are potential applications of the tight beams provided by the technique such as optical lithography and sensors," says Demetri Psaltis, the Myers Professor of Electrical Engineering at Caltech and another author of the paper.
The other author is Panayotis Kevrekidis, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
The title of the paper is "Nonlinearity Management in Optics: Experiment, Theory, and Simulation."
PASADENA, Calif.-When it comes to tiny motors, the flagella used by bacteria to get around their microscopic worlds are hard to beat. Composed of several tens of different types of protein, a flagellum (that's the singular) rotates about in much the same way that a rope would spin if mounted in the chuck of an electric drill, but at much higher speeds-about 300 revolutions per second.
Biologists at the California Institute of Technology have now succeeded for the first time in obtaining a three-dimensional image of the complete flagellum assembly using a new technology called electron cryotomography. Reporting in Nature, the scientists show in unprecedented detail both the rotor of the flagellum and the stator, or protein assembly that not only attaches the rotor to the cell wall, but also generates the torque that serves to rotate it.
The accomplishment is a tour de force within the field of structural biology, through which scientists seek to understand how cells work by determining the shapes and configurations of the proteins that make them up. The results could lead to better-designed nanomachines.
"Rotors have been isolated and studied in detail," explains lead author Grant Jensen, an assistant professor of biology at Caltech. "But in the past, researchers have been forced to break the motor into pieces and/or rip it out of the cell before they could observe it in the microscope. It was like trying to understand a car engine by looking through salvaged parts. Here we were able to see the whole motor intact, like an engine still under the hood and attached to the drive train."
In terms of basic science, Jensen says, the motor is intrinsically interesting because it is such a marvelous and complex "nanomachine." But the results of studying it may also one day help engineers, who might want to use its structure to design useful things.
"The process of taking science to practical applications goes from the observation of interesting phenomena, to mechanistic understanding, to exploitation," Jensen says. "Right now, we're somewhere between observation and the beginning of mechanistic understanding of this wonderful motor."
The bacterium used in the study was isolated from the hindguts of termites. Although beneficial to the termite host, the bacterium, belonging to a group of organisms known as spirochetes, is closely related to the causative agents of syphilis, Lyme disease, and several organisms thought to play a role in gum disease. In all these cases, swimming motility is implicated as a possible determinant in disease.
The article is titled "In situ structure of the complete Treponema primitia flagellar motor." It is available as an advanced online publication of Nature at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature05015.html.
The other authors are Gavin Murphy, a Caltech graduate student in biochemistry and molecular biophysics, and Jared R. Leadbetter, an associate professor of environmental microbiology at Caltech.
Photo caption: This image shows the three-dimensional reconstruction of the bacterial flagellar motor, as generated by electron cryotomography for the study. The rotor in the center (red) revolves at speeds of up to 300 times per second, driven by the stator assembly (yellow) that is embedded in the cell wall.
Photo by the authors (Gavin Murphy, Jared Leadbetter, and Grant Jensen, Caltech)
PASADENA, Calif.—Although the magnitude 8.7 Nias-Simeulue earthquake of March 28, 2005, was technically an aftershock, the temblor nevertheless killed more than 2,000 people in an area that had been devastated just three months earlier by the December 2004, magnitude 9.1 earthquake. Now, data returned from instruments in the field provide constraints on the behavior of dangerous faults in subduction zones, fueling a new understanding of basic mechanics controlling slip on faults, and in turn, improved estimates of regional seismic risk.
In the June 30 issue of the journal Science, a team including Ya-Ju Hsu, Mark Simons, and others of the California Institute of Technology's new Tectonics Observatory and the University of California, San Diego, report that their analysis of Global Positioning System (GPS) data taken at the time of the earthquake and during the following 11 months provide insights into how fault slippage and aftershock production are related.
"In general, the largest earthquakes occur in subduction zones, such as those offshore of Indonesia, Japan, Alaska, Cascadia, and South America," says Hsu, a postdoctoral researcher at the Tectonics Observatory and lead author of the paper. "Of course, these earthquakes can be extremely damaging either directly, or by the resulting tsunami.
"Therefore, understanding what causes the rate of production of aftershocks is clearly important to earthquake physics and disaster response," Hsu adds.
The study finds that the regions on the fault surrounding the area that slipped during the 8.7 earthquake experienced accelerated rates of slip following the March shock. The region dividing the area that slipped during the earthquake, and that which has slipped after the earthquake, is clearly demarcated by a band of intense aftershocks.
A primary conclusion of the paper is that there is a strong relationship between the production of aftershocks and post-earthquake fault slip-in other words, the frequency and location of aftershocks in a subduction megathrust are related to the amount and location of fault slip in the months following the main earthquake. Hsu and her colleagues believe that the aftershocks are controlled by the rate of aseismic fault slip after the earthquake.
"One conjecture is that, if the aseismic fault slip occurs quickly, then lots of aftershocks are produced," says Simons, an associate professor of geophysics at Caltech. "But there are other arguments suggesting that both the aftershocks and the post-earthquake aseismic fault slip are caused by some third underlying process."
In any case, Simons and Hsu say that the study demonstrates that the placing of additional remote sensors in subduction zones leads to better modeling of earthquake hazards. In particular, the study shows that the rheology, or mechanical properties, of the region can be inferred from the accumulation of postseismic data.
A map of the region constructed from the GPS data reveals that certain areas slip in different manners than others because some parts of the fault seem to be more "sticky." Because of the nature of seismic waves, the manner in which the fault slips in the months following a large earthquake has huge implications for human habitation.
"An important question is how slip on a fault varies as a function of time," Simons explains. "The extent to which an area slips is related to the risk, because you have a finite budget. Whether all the stress is released during earthquakes or whether it creeps is important for us to know. We would be very happy if all faults slipped as a slow creep, although I guess seismologists would be out of work."
The fact that the Nias-Simeulue's postseismic slip following the December 28, 2004, earthquake can be modeled so intricately shows that other subduction zones can also be modeled, Hsu says. "In general, understanding the whole seismic cycle is very important. Most of the expected hazards of earthquakes occur in subduction zones."
The Tectonics Observatory is establishing a network of sensors in areas of active plate-boundary deformation such as Chile and Peru, the Kuril Islands off Japan, and Nepal. The observatory is supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
The other authors of the paper are Jean-Philippe Avouac, a professor of geology at Caltech and director of the Tectonics Observatory; Kerry Sieh, the Sharp Professor of Geology at Caltech; John Galetzka, a professional staff member at Caltech; Mohamed Chlieh, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech; Danny Natawidjaja of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences; and Linette Prawfrodirdjo and Yehuda Bock, both of the University of California at San Diego's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences.
PASADENA, Calif.—Scientists at the California Institute of Technology have created a new method of detecting heavy water that is 30 times more sensitive than any other existing method. The detection method could be helpful in the fight against international nuclear proliferation.
In the June 15 issue of the journal Optics Letters, Caltech doctoral student Andrea Armani and her professor Kerry Vahala report that a special type of tiny optical device can be configured to detect heavy water. Called an optical microresonator, the device is shaped something like a mushroom and was originally designed three years ago to store light for future opto-electronic applications. With a diameter smaller than that of a human hair, the microresonator is made of silica and is coupled with a tunable laser.
The technique works because of the difference between the molecular composition of heavy water and regular water. An H2O molecule has two atoms of hydrogen that each are built of a single proton and a single electron. A D2O molecule, by contrast, has two atoms of a hydrogen isotope known as deuterium, which differs in that each atom has a single neutron in addition to a proton and an electron. This makes a heavy-water molecule significantly more massive than a regular water molecule.
"Heavy water isn't a misnomer," says Armani, who is finishing up her doctorate in applied physics and will soon begin a two-year postdoctoral appointment at Caltech. Armani says that heavy water looks just like regular water to the naked eye, but an ice cube made of the stuff will sink if placed in regular water because of its added density. This difference in masses, in fact, is what makes the detection of heavy water possible in Armani and Vahala's new technique. When the microresonator is placed in heavy water, the difference in optical absorption results in a change in the "Q factor," which is a number used to measure how efficiently an optical resonator stores light. If a higher Q factor is detected than one would see for normal water, then more heavy water is present than the typical one-in-6,400 water molecules that exists normally in nature.
The technique is so sensitive that one heavy-water molecule in 10,000 can be detected, Armani says. Furthermore, the Q factor changes steadily as the heavy-water concentrations are varied.
The results are good news for those who worry about the escalation of nuclear weapons, because heavy water is typically found wherever someone is trying to control a nuclear chain reaction. As a nuclear moderator, heavy water can be used to control the way neutrons bounce around in fissionable material, thereby making it possible for a fission reactor to be built.
The ongoing concern with heavy water is exemplified by the fact that Armani and Vahala have received funding for their new technique from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. The federal agency provides grants to university research that has potential applications for U.S. national defense.
"This technique is 30 times better than the best competing detection technique, and we haven't yet tried to reduce noise sources," says Armani. "We think even greater sensitivities are possible."
The paper is entitled "Heavy Water Detection Using Ultra-High-Q Microcavities" and is available online at http://ol.osa.org/abstract.cfm?id=90020.
PALOMAR MOUNTAIN, Calif.—Astronomers have recently been enjoying front-row seats to a spectacular cometary show. Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 is in the act of splitting apart as it passes close to Earth. The breakup is providing a firsthand look at the death of a comet.
Eran Ofek of the California Institute of Technology and Bidushi Bhattacharya of Caltech's Spitzer Science Center have been observing the comet's tragic tale with the Palomar Observatory's 200-inch Hale Telescope. Their view is helping them and other scientists learn the secrets of comets and why they break up.
The comet was discovered by Arnold Schwassmann and Arno Arthur Wachmann 76 years ago and it broke into four fragments just a decade ago. It has since further split into dozens, if not hundreds, of pieces.
"We've learned that Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 presents a very dynamic system, with many smaller fragments than previously thought," says Bhattacharya. In all, 16 new fragments were discovered as a part of the Palomar observations.
A sequence of images showing the piece of the comet known as fragment R has been assembled into a movie. The movie shows the comet in the foreground against distant stars and galaxies, which appear to streak across the images. Because the comet was moving at a different rate across the sky than the stellar background, the telescope was tracking the comet's motion and not that of the stars. Fragment R and many smaller fragments of the comet are visible as nearly stationary objects in the movie.
"Seeing the many fragments was both an amazing and sobering experience," says a sleepy Eran Ofek, who has been working non-stop to produce these images and a movie of the comet's fragments.
The images used to produce the movie were taken over a period of about an hour and a half when the comet was approximately 17 million kilometers (10.6 million miles) from Earth. Astronomically speaking the comet is making a close approach to Earth this month giving astronomers their front-row seat to the comet's break up. Closest approach for any fragment of the comet occurs on May 12, when a fragment will be just 5.5 million miles from Earth. This is more than 20 times the distance to the moon. There is no chance that the comet will hit Earth.
"It is very impressive that a telescope built more than 50 years ago continues to contribute to forefront astrophysics, often working in tandem with the latest space missions and biggest ground-based facilities," remarks Shri Kulkarni, MacArthur Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Science and director of the Caltech Optical Observatories.
The Palomar observations were coordinated with observations acquired through the Spitzer Space Telescope, which imaged the comet's fragments in the infrared. The infrared images, combined with the visible-light images obtained using the Hale Telescope, will give astronomers a more complete understanding of the comet's break up.
Additional support for the observations and data analysis came from Caltech postdoc Arne Rau and grad student Alicia Soderberg.
Images of the comet and a time-lapse movie can be found at:
Scott Kardel Palomar Public Affairs Director (760) 742-2111 email@example.com
PASADENA, Calif.—There's a time soon after conception when the stem cells in a tiny area of the embryo called the neural crest are working overtime to build such structures as the dorsal root ganglia, various neurons of the nervous system, and the bones and cartilage of the skull. If things go wrong at this stage, deformities such as cleft palates can occur.
In an article in this week's issue of Nature, a team of biologists from the California Institute of Technology announce that they have determined that neural crest precursors can be identified at surprisingly early stages of development. The work could lead to better understanding of molecular mechanisms in embryonic development that could, in turn, lead to therapeutic interventions when prenatal development goes wrong.
According to Marianne Bronner-Fraser, the Ruddock Professor of Biology at Caltech, the findings provide new information about how stem cells eventually form many and diverse cell types in humans and other vertebrates.
"We've always assumed that the precursor cells that form the neural crest arise at a time when the presumptive brain and spinal cord are first visible," she says. "But our work shows that these cells arise much earlier in development than previously thought, and well before overt signs of the other neural structures.
"We also show that a DNA binding protein called Pax7 is essential for formation of the neural crest, since removal of this protein results in absence of neural crest cells."
The work involves chicken embryos, which are especially amenable to the advanced imaging techniques utilized at Caltech's Biological Imaging Center. The results showed that interfering with the Pax7 protein also interfered with normal neural crest development.
"Because neural crest cells are a type of stem cell able to form cell types as diverse as neurons and pigment cells, understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying their formation may lead to therapeutic means of generating these precursors," Bronner-Fraser explains. "It may also help treat diseases of neural crest derivatives, like melanocytes, that can become cancerous in the form of melanoma."
The work was funded by the NIH and performed at Caltech by Martin Garcia-Castro, a former postdoctoral researcher who is currently an assistant professor at Yale University, and Martin Basch, a former Caltech graduate student who is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the House Ear Institute.
The paper appears in the May 11 issue of Nature. The title of the article is "Specification of the neural crest occurs during gastrulation and requires Pax7."


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