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It didn't take long for Braintree police to make an arrest for an early Thursday morning arson fire of two cars.
Chief Russell Jenkins said Christian R. Moran, 41, was charged for alleged arson shortly after he was seen walking away from the fires, which were in a business parking lot near the Pearl Street-Randall Avenue intersection.
Jenkins said evidence at the scene tied Moran to a total of four alleged car break-ins, including the two that were set afire. All four cars were in the same parking lot.
Along with two counts of arson, Moran is also charged with four counts of breaking and entering, four counts of threats to commit a crime, and one count of resisting arrest. Jenkins said he was held in jail and will be arraigned Thursday in Quincy District Court.
Fire Lt. Joe McLaughlin said police reported the car fires at 2 a.m. The fire left a Chevrolet Corsica a total loss, while a Cadillac sustained minor damage. McLaughlin said no firefighters were injured while putting out the fires.
Jenkins said a witness to the car fires later gave officers a clothing description of the person he observed in the area of the crime, and that description matched the clothing worn by Moran. He said evidence at one of the cars also connected Moran to that break-in.
Jenkins said Moran also allegedly tried to break into the coin box of a candy vending machine at the Shaw's supermarket on Pearl Street Wednesday night. Jenkins said that after his arrest, Moran threatened police officers at the scene.
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Hello there,
I recently read this article http://www.elledoesit.com/on-the-computer/wordpress-tip-add-a-divider-after-all-but-last-post about modifying the loop to change how the last post on a page is displayed. In the tutorial however it shows you how to add a html tag to the last post (like a break for example) and i was wondering whether there would be a way to apply a different css class using the same method? I'm not particularily skilled with php so any help would be greatly appreciated!
Many thanks

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4 beautiful chocolate and tan males born July 30th, 2016.
2 boys have a white blaze on the chest which may or may not fade.
Possible wirehair or smooth coats.
Mother and father are both wirehairs, showing for wheaten.
Puppies will be ready to go to their forever homes on Sept. 24.
Pups will be AKC registered - Limited
First shots/deworming will be done here.
Jul 30 -
Fairfield :
Milford - Dogs & puppies
these beautities will steal your heart. the boys have had first vaccine. the female is only 1.5 lbs at 8 weeks so no vaccine yet which means you have to wait to take her home. but u can reserve her. full custom puppy kit. gorgeous. pups. will be small. hypoallergetic.. course wire.please call we do not answer emails or text
Jul 17 -
Hudson Valley :
Middletown - Dogs & puppies
We I am currently have a male mini dachshund available, he is 18 months old UTD on his shots, he is a piebald red and white. He is housebroken, loves kids and loves to go on walks, I am downsizing, we are 15 minutes over the bay bridge on the Eastern shore side. He is $350.00. I really need to find him a forever home. If interested please email [email removed] or 410-829-9871
Jul 15 -
Baltimore :
Grasonville - Dogs & puppies
These babies were born 6/21/16 Ready to go to her new home on or after 8/23/2016 when they 9 weeks old. We have 2 Smooth coat Males (Silver Dapple & Chocolate Dapple) 4 smooth coat females (Dilute Red, Red, Cream) and 1 Long Haired Female (Dilute Red)
Prices Range Depending on Puppy (coat/color/sex) please email us directly or contact via Facebook messenger.
Check out tons of pics (and ...
Jul 11 -
Boston :
Manchester - Dogs & puppies
Hello! How are you guys doing today? My name is LeeLee and I want to find a kid friendly safe home for my baby Monroe. Monroe has been with me and my family since she was 9 weeks old she was born on June 4,2013 which makes her 3 years old. Monroe is so sweet she loves to play with her toys and take long walks. I'll be sad to see her go but were moving and can't take her with us . Monroe is ...
Jul 10 -
Washington DC :
Washington - Dogs & puppies
One male left from outstanding AKC bloodlines. Ready for new home July 25th with first shots. Both parents in home and family raised. Mother is from leading field trial and show lines, father from hunting lines. Super friendly. He would also make an excellent AKC field trial dog. Full AKC papers available. Born 5/19/2016.
Jul 7 -
Fairfield :
Hamden - Dogs & puppies
Purebreed 13 week old mini dachshund pup for sale. We purchased him from a breeder and are unable to keep him. Remy is a lovely & sweet hound. Beautiful coat & great temperament. We do not ship- located at east end of Long Island NY. Please bring offers.
Jun 26 -
New York City :
Shelter Island Heights - Dogs & puppies
Adorable mini dachshund puppies! Born April 27,2016 Long hair diluted creams and black/creams! Both parents have long silky coats so the pups will have beautiful long/silky coats! They are just over 8 weeks old ready for their forever loving home. Both parents are on site and live with us in our home. They are part of our family. The puppies are loved and played with several times a day. ...
Jun 24 -
Rochester (NY) :
Ontario - Dogs & puppies
Short hair , first shots ,dewormed
Jun 21 -
Central New York :
Hannibal - Dogs & puppies
2 14wk old mini dachshund one red and one Black and Tan adorable puppies must see!! Parents were AKC but don't come with papers. $600 or best offer
Jun 20 -
Rochester (NY) :
Victor - Dogs & puppies
I have 2 AKC Puppies left. Smooth Coat Short Hair Mini Dachshunds for Sale. DOB is March 28, 2016. They are ready to leave this weekend. Mother is a black and tan and Father was a Red. I am excepting non refundable deposits to hold puppy. Deposit is $100.00. Asking $600. Black and Tan Females and then my big boy is a Blue and Tan Male. They will come with shots and papers. If you would ...
Jun 13 -
Washington DC :
Waldorf - Dogs & puppies
1 male and 2 female first shots akc
Jun 12 -
Central New York :
Hannibal - Dogs & puppies
We have a litter of 5 beautiful longhair, AKC Registered Miniature Dachshund puppies. DOB is 5/4/16. They will be vetted and have their first shots and worming on 6/29/16, they come with a health guarantee, and will be ready for their new homes. Both parents are on premises. These are our pets, we are not a kennel, we are a private family breeder. Damn is an AKC Chocolate and Tan longhair ...
Jun 10 -
Norwich :
Brooklyn - Dogs & puppies
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Tobacco Blog Posts
Are E-Cigarettes Harmful?
May 04, 2015
We still don't know if e-cigarettes can hurt your lungs, but we do know that they deliver the same highly addictive nicotine as regular cigarettes. Read More »38 Comments
Cigarettes: More Dangerous Than Before
November 20, 2014
The U.S. Surgeon General says that cigarettes are more harmful now than in the 1950s because tobacco companies have added more toxic chemicals. Read More »13 Comments
'Marijuana: Breaking Down the Buzz' Helps Clear Up the Confusion
November 17, 2014
Younger people are beginning to view marijuana as 'okay' or 'normal.' It reminds us of tobacco nearly 100 years ago—and not in a good way. Read More »26 Comments
Stephen Strasburg's Commitment To Quit Tobacco
October 02, 2014
Quitting tobacco, whether it's smokeless or cigarettes, is not something you do on a whim. You have to want to quit and to make a plan for how you are going to get through those first couple of weeks. Read More »18 Comments
E-Cig Popularity on the Rise
July 09, 2014
As states continue to pass laws that restrict the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, this post from 2013 explores why they've become so popular with teens. Read More »14 Comments


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PASADENA, Calif.-In an effort to find ways to minimize the damage caused by natural hazards, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has established the Terrestrial Hazard Observation and Reporting Center (THOR), funded by $6.7 million from Foster and Coco Stanback of Irvine, California, and $3.35 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore matching program.
THOR will have the unique mandate of bringing together-under one program-innovative efforts to reduce the risks and costs associated with natural hazards. The center will span two divisions at Caltech, Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS) and Engineering and Applied Science (EAS).
The study of natural hazards and solutions is ordinarily undertaken in separate academic disciplines with little intellectual interaction. THOR will provide a new focal point that will unify these efforts and allow investigators to focus on critical societal issues.
"From the current flooding in Pakistan, to the recent earthquake in Haiti, to the constant threat of wildfires in our own backyard, we are consistently reminded of the devastating impact natural hazards can have on society," says Caltech president Jean-Lou Chameau. "Now, with the generous support of Foster and Coco Stanback, Caltech scientists and engineers will be able to study these critical issues in a unique interdisciplinary environment. THOR will help communities around the world determine how to best prepare for, anticipate, and respond to various natural hazards, hopefully saving lives in the process."
Natural hazards that will fall under THOR's purview include global climate change, earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, wildfires, and extreme weather events such as droughts, among others.
By providing support for the development of techniques and physical inventions, THOR will focus on practical societal aspects of natural hazards and their public policy implications.
For instance, THOR may help guide the distribution of limited resources following a major hazard such as an earthquake or tsunami, or lead to early-warning systems.
"The interdisciplinary and interactive nature of engineering at Caltech allows us to translate scientific knowledge and discovery into applications with direct societal impact," says Ares Rosakis, the von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics, professor of mechanical engineering, and chair of the division of Engineering and Applied Science. "One of the areas of pioneering research and innovation made possible by THOR is seismo-engineering. The boundaries of seismo-engineering are fuzzy ones and lie exactly in the interface between seismology and earthquake engineering. We are delighted to have the opportunity to explore these boundaries."
Caltech has a number of highly visible areas of expertise that already touch on natural-hazard issues, including the Seismological Laboratory, the Linde Center for Global Environmental Science, missions of the Caltech-managed Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) that provide critical high-precision data on Earth's climate and environment, multiple studies supported by the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) focused on future Earth-observing missions, and the Resnick Institute for Science, Energy, and Sustainability.
"The THOR center will provide a unique platform for collaboration among scientists, students, and policymakers, empowering them with the extensive resources of Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory," says THOR donor Foster Stanback. "By linking our eyes in the sky with the many eyes on the ground, we will be far better prepared to anticipate, mitigate, and eliminate many environmental hazards."
THOR's attention and resources will be applied in several ways, including the dissemination of the results of work supported by THOR; supporting efforts to transfer ideas and technologies that show promise of practical implementation; and prioritizing, seeding, and nurturing ideas encompassing research activities, along with the invention of technologies.
"THOR will give faculty in GPS and EAS the opportunity to develop innovative new ways to help mitigate the consequences and costs of the natural hazards society faces, from climate change to earthquakes to water scarcity," says Ken Farley, the W.M. Keck Foundation Professor of Geochemistry and chair of the division of Geological and Planetary Sciences. "This very applied research is difficult to support from federal sources, so my hope is that the gift will catalyze entirely new endeavors. THOR will also allow us to bring to our educational program a new focus on the societal and policy implications and relevance of our work."
The center will be housed within the newly renovated Linde + Robinson Laboratory on the Caltech campus.
PASADENA, Calif.—Using a diamond-anvil cell to recreate the high pressures deep within the earth, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have found unusual properties in an iron-rich magnesium- and iron-oxide mineral that may explain the existence of several ultra-low velocity zones (ULVZs) at the core-mantle boundary. A paper about their findings was published in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters (GRL).
ULVZs—which were first discovered in the early 1990s by researchers at Caltech led by Donald V. Helmberger, Smits Family Professor of Geological and Planetary Sciences—are found in a patchwork distribution just above the core-mantle boundary, which is located at a depth of 2,900 kilometers. In the ULVZs, which range from a few kilometers to tens of kilometers in depth and are up to 100 kilometers across, the velocities of seismic waves slow down by up to 30 percent.
Previously, geophysicists had suggested that the ULVZs might be composed of liquid-bearing, partially melted materials; in this region of the lower mantle, the earth is solid—but plastic and flowing—rock. The idea was that if these rocks contained some liquid, seismic waves would propagate more slowly through them. And, indeed, "the area is very hot and close to the core," says Jennifer M. Jackson, assistant professor of mineral physics at Caltech and coauthor of the GRL paper. The catch, she says, "is that the temperature and composition of this region are not very well known." In addition, she says, "these ULVZs are not always associated with surface hot spots" such as the Hawaiian islands.
Instead of being patches of partially melted (i.e., liquid-bearing) rock, the ULVZs—Jackson and her colleagues believe—are composed of an entirely solid, compositionally distinctive rock type with unusual properties that cause sound waves to slow down. "What we're suggesting here is that many ULVZs—it need not be all of them—are likely to be solid, not molten," Jackson says.
In reaching this conclusion, Jackson and her team studied the properties of iron-rich magnesium-iron oxides [(Mg, Fe)O]—similar to the mineral periclase known at the earth's surface—using specially prepared diamond-anvil cells. Within the piston-like chamber of the 4-inch-tall cell, two semiflawless natural diamonds—a quarter of a carat each—were squeezed together, sandwiching a small sample of the oxide and proportionally increasing its pressure.
After the pressurized samples were created, they were taken to the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois and exposed to X-rays, causing the scattering of photons at energies related to the speed at which sound would travel through.
Jackson and her colleagues conducted the measurements at pressures ranging from ambient pressure (at Earth's surface) up to 121 Gigapascals (GPa)—or over 17 million pounds per square inch, equivalent to about 2700 km depth. "The measurements stopped at pressures where the diamond-anvils broke," Jackson says.
Normally, solid materials increase in stiffness under increasing pressure, causing sound waves to travel at higher and higher velocities. But in iron-rich (Mg,Fe)O, the sound velocities took a surprising and significant dip of about 10 percent at just under 28 GPa. The sound velocities in the minerals did not return to their ambient-pressure levels until pressures of 50 to 60 GPa were reached.
To their surprise, the researchers found they could compress the iron-rich mineral to very high pressures and very high densities, "and yet it is still highly compressible" Jackson says. In fact, even at 121 GPa, sound velocities in the mineral were still much lower than in other known mantle materials. "It's quite unusual to have a solid this compressible under these pressures. Compared to silicate"—the main constituent of Earth's crust—"at the same pressures, it's like squishing a pat of butter between two bricks."
Jackson and her colleagues suspect that the velocity drops in this particular mineral are related to magnetic transitions that can make iron-rich oxides more compressible than many silicates. "Silicate acts more like a very stiff spring; iron-rich oxide is like a very weak spring," she explains. With increasing pressure, "the iron-oxide goes through a series of complex magnetic transitions that couple to its sound waves"—and thus explain the unusually low velocities, even at extremely high pressures. "But," she adds, "because the mineral is so iron-rich, it is likely only to exist near the core."
While the new result does not rule out partial melting as a cause of some ULVZs, Jackson says, "iron-rich periclase certainly provides one of the most robust explanations so far."
"The composition of the boundary layer between the earth's liquid outer core and silicate mantle not only influences the current thermal and chemical evolution of the earth's interior, but may hold the key to unlocking the planet's past thermo-chemical evolution," she says. "The iron-rich periclase patches may be fossil remnants of large-scale melting events occurring billions of years ago inside the earth. Having an iron-rich oxide in contact with the earth's core would facilitate propagation of the planet's magnetic field and contribute to the dynamic coupling between the core and the mantle."
The paper, "Very low sound velocities in iron-rich (Mg,Fe)O: Implications for the core-mantle boundary," was coauthored by Caltech graduate student June K. Wicks and Wolfgang Sturhahn, formerly at Argonne National Laboratory and now at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences.
PASADENA, Calif.—Computational scientists and geophysicists at the University of Texas at Austin and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed new computer algorithms that for the first time allow for the simultaneous modeling of the earth's mantle flow, large-scale tectonic plate motions, and the behavior of individual fault zones, to produce an unprecedented view of plate tectonics and the forces that drive it.
A paper describing the whole-earth model and its underlying algorithms will be published in the August 27 issue of the journal Science and also featured on the cover.
The work "illustrates the interplay between making important advances in science and pushing the envelope of computational science," says Michael Gurnis, the John E. and Hazel S. Smits Professor of Geophysics, director of the Caltech Seismological Laboratory, and a coauthor of the Science paper.
To create the new model, computational scientists at Texas's Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES)—a team that included Omar Ghattas, the John A. and Katherine G. Jackson Chair in Computational Geosciences and professor of geological sciences and mechanical engineering, and research associates Georg Stadler and Carsten Burstedde—pushed the envelope of a computational technique known as Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR).
Partial differential equations such as those describing mantle flow are solved by subdividing the region of interest (such as the mantle) into a computational grid. Ordinarily, the resolution is kept the same throughout the grid. However, many problems feature small-scale dynamics that are found only in limited regions. "AMR methods adaptively create finer resolution only where it's needed," explains Ghattas. "This leads to huge reductions in the number of grid points, making possible simulations that were previously out of reach."
"The complexity of managing adaptivity among thousands of processors, however, has meant that current AMR algorithms have not scaled well on modern petascale supercomputers," he adds. Petascale computers are capable of one million billion operations per second. To overcome this long-standing problem, the group developed new algorithms that, Burstedde says, "allows for adaptivity in a way that scales to the hundreds of thousands of processor cores of the largest supercomputers available today."
With the new algorithms, the scientists were able to simulate global mantle flow and how it manifests as plate tectonics and the motion of individual faults. According to Stadler, the AMR algorithms reduced the size of the simulations by a factor of 5,000, permitting them to fit on fewer than 10,000 processors and run overnight on the Ranger supercomputer at the National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported Texas Advanced Computing Center.
A key to the model was the incorporation of data on a multitude of scales. "Many natural processes display a multitude of phenomena on a wide range of scales, from small to large," Gurnis explains. For example, at the largest scale—that of the whole earth—the movement of the surface tectonic plates is a manifestation of a giant heat engine, driven by the convection of the mantle below. The boundaries between the plates, however, are composed of many hundreds to thousands of individual faults, which together constitute active fault zones. "The individual fault zones play a critical role in how the whole planet works," he says, "and if you can't simulate the fault zones, you can't simulate plate movement"—and, in turn, you can't simulate the dynamics of the whole planet.
In the new model, the researchers were able to resolve the largest fault zones, creating a mesh with a resolution of about one kilometer near the plate boundaries. Included in the simulation were seismological data as well as data pertaining to the temperature of the rocks, their density, and their viscosity—or how strong or weak the rocks are, which affects how easily they deform. That deformation is nonlinear—with simple changes producing unexpected and complex effects.
"Normally, when you hit a baseball with a bat, the properties of the bat don't change—it won't turn to Silly Putty. In the earth, the properties do change, which creates an exciting computational problem," says Gurnis. "If the system is too nonlinear, the earth becomes too mushy; if it's not nonlinear enough, plates won't move. We need to hit the 'sweet spot.'"
After crunching through the data for 100,000 hours of processing time per run, the model returned an estimate of the motion of both large tectonic plates and smaller microplates—including their speed and direction. The results were remarkably close to observed plate movements.
In fact, the investigators discovered that anomalous rapid motion of microplates emerged from the global simulations. "In the western Pacific," Gurnis says, "we have some of the most rapid tectonic motions seen anywhere on Earth, in a process called 'trench rollback.' For the first time, we found that these small-scale tectonic motions emerged from the global models, opening a new frontier in geophysics."
One surprising result from the model relates to the energy released from plates in earthquake zones. "It had been thought that the majority of energy associated with plate tectonics is released when plates bend, but it turns out that's much less important than previously thought," Gurnis says. "Instead, we found that much of the energy dissipation occurs in the earth's deep interior. We never saw this when we looked on smaller scales."
The paper, "The Dynamics of Plate Tectonics and Mantle Flow: From Local to Global Scales," was also coauthored by Lucas C. Wilcox of the University of Texas at Austin and Laura Alisic of Caltech. The work was supported by the NSF, the Department of Energy's Office of Science, and—at the Caltech Tectonics Observatory—by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
PASADENA, Calif.—In an announcement August 13 at the National Academies in Washington, D.C., the National Research Council (NRC) recommended three space- and ground-based astronomy and astrophysics projects with potential major roles for researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech): CCAT, a submillimeter telescope to be erected in the Chilean Andes, which will help unravel the cosmic origins of stars, planets, and galaxies; the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), designed to detect gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space and time formed by the most violent events in the universe; and the development of a Giant Segmented Mirrored Telescope (GSMT)—the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) being one of two such telescopes under development—which will yield the clearest and deepest view of the universe.
The recommendations were the result of the Astro2010 a decadal survey, in which a panel of experts was convened by the NRC to look at the coming decade and prioritize research activities in astronomy and astrophysics, as well as activities at the interface of these disciplines with physics.
"It is particularly gratifying to see that Caltech faculty are prepared to play leading roles in three of the major projects identified by the Astro2010 study," says Tom Soifer, professor of physics, director of the Spitzer Science Center, and chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy at Caltech. "Many of the important discoveries in the coming decades will be based on CCAT, TMT, and LISA, and our deep involvement in these projects will ensure that Caltech remains a vibrant, exciting center for astrophysics."
CCAT was recommended for an immediate start. CCAT is a collaboration between Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), managed by Caltech for NASA; Cornell University; the University of Colorado; and consortia in both Germany and Canada. It will be a 25-meter telescope located on a mountain site in Chile at an elevation of 18,500 feet above sea level. Taking advantage of recent advances in detector technology, CCAT will employ cameras and spectrometers to survey the sky at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths, providing an unprecedented combination of sensitivity and resolution across a wide field of view. CCAT will reveal young galaxies, stars, and solar systems enshrouded in clouds of dust that make these objects very faint or invisible at other wavelengths.
"We are making rapid progress on all fronts—in detectors, instruments, and new facilities—and this is leading to important scientific discoveries," says Jonas Zmuidzinas, Merle Kingsley Professor of Physics at Caltech, director of the Microdevices Laboratory at JPL, and a CCAT project scientist. "With CCAT, we will gain real insight into the evolution of stars and galaxies."
According to Riccardo Giovanelli, CCAT director and professor of astronomy at Cornell University, "CCAT will allow us to explore the process of formation of galaxies, which saw its heyday about a billion years after the Big Bang, some 13 billion years ago; to peek into the interior of the dusty molecular clouds within which stars and planets form; and to survey the pristine chunks of material left intact for billions of years on the outskirts of our solar system."
CCAT is a natural complement to the international Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) project now under construction in Chile, which will provide detailed, high-resolution images of individual objects over narrow fields of view. This complementarity provides a strong impetus to begin construction of CCAT as soon as possible. Indeed, as Nobel Laureate and CCAT Design Review Committee Chair Robert W. Wilson noted, "CCAT is very timely and cannot wait."
This sentiment was echoed in the Decadal Review Committee's report, which stated that "CCAT is called out to progress promptly to the next step in its development because of its strong science case, its importance to ALMA, and its readiness." The Committee recommended federal support for 33 percent of the construction cost for CCAT, as well as support in the operations phase.
The decadal survey recommended LISA as one of NASA's next major space missions, to start in 2016 in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA). In the U.S. the LISA project is managed by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and includes significant participation by JPL, which is managed by Caltech for NASA.
LISA is designed to be complementary to the ground-based observatories (such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, or LIGO) that currently are actively searching for signs of gravitational waves, which carry with them information about their origins and about the nature of gravity that cannot be obtained using conventional astronomical tools.
The LISA instrument will consist of three spacecraft in a triangular configuration with 5-million-kilometer arms moving in an Earth-like orbit around the sun. Gravitational waves from sources throughout the universe will produce slight oscillations in the arm lengths (changes as small as about 10 picometers, or 10 million millionths of a meter). LISA will capture these motions using laser links to monitor the displacements of gold–platinum test masses floating inside the spacecraft. It is slated for launch in the early 2020s. The instrument will observe gravitational waves in a lower frequency band (0.1 milliHertz to 1 Hertz) than that detectable by LIGO and other ground-based instruments and will sense ripples coming simultaneously from tens of thousands of sources in every direction.
The survey recommended LISA because of the expectation that observations of gravitational waves in space will answer key scientific questions about the astrophysics of the cosmic dawn and the physics of the universe.
"We are very pleased with the NRC's recognition of LISA's revolutionary research opportunities in astrophysics and fundamental physics and we are looking forward to unveiling a new window on the universe by observing thousands of gravitational wave sources," says Tom Prince, professor of physics at Caltech, senior research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the U.S. chair of the LISA International Science Team.
The decadal survey rated the development of a Giant Segmented Mirrored Telescope as a high priority. The TMT is one of two such telescopes under development by consortia with major involvement by private and public entities in the U.S., including Caltech.
Building on the success of the twin Keck telescopes, the core technology of TMT will be a 30-meter segmented primary mirror. This will give TMT nine times the collecting area of today's largest optical telescopes and three-times-sharper images. The TMT has begun full-scale polishing of the 1.4-meter mirror blanks that will make up the primary mirror. TMT also has developed many of the essential prototype components for the telescope, including key adaptive optics technologies and the support and control elements for the 492 mirror segments.
The TMT project is an international partnership among Caltech, the University of California, and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy, joined by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Department of Science and Technology of India.
PASADENA, Calif.—The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) announced today that they will be partnering on the development of the Mars Atmospheric Trace Molecule Occultation Spectrometer (MATMOS) instrument to be flown aboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter when it launches in 2016.
The project will be funded by a grant from NASA, with additional support coming from the CSA.
NASA participation in the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech, in partnership with the European Space Agency.
"The ExoMars investigation is designed to study the composition of Mars's atmosphere, with a focus on biogenically or volcanically derived trace gases," says Paul Wennberg, the R. Stanton Avery Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Science and Engineering at Caltech and director of the Ronald and Maxine Linde Center for Global Environmental Science. Wennberg is the principal investigator on the MATMOS team.
The ExoMars Orbiter's circular path around Mars will point the MATMOS telescope at the center of the sun as the spacecraft goes into orbital sunrise and sunset. During these periods, as the sun sets and rises through the atmosphere, MATMOS will take spectra of the sunlight, recording the absorption of numerous gases. The sun's long path length through the Martian atmosphere will allow MATMOS to measure the trace gases with very high sensitivity, notes Wennberg.
"If you take the spectra fast," says Geoffrey Toon, senior research scientist at JPL and a visiting associate in planetary sciences at Caltech, "you can measure the gas abundance at many different heights above the planet —70 measurements as the sun rises, and 70 as it sets."
Among the gases of interest to the team are those "diagnostic of active geological and biogenic activity," says Wennberg—gases like methane, as well as carbon, sulfur, and nitrogen-containing molecules, sulfur dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide.
MATMOS will be so exquisitely sensitive, says Wennberg, that it will be able to measure the concentrations of these gases down to parts per trillion.
"We did a calculation which shows that the microbial community found in three cows' bellies would produce an amount of methane that, in the Mars atmosphere, would be observable by MATMOS," says Mark Allen, principal scientist at JPL and a visiting associate in planetary sciences at Caltech.
MATMOS is based on the Atmospheric Trace Molecule Spectroscopy (ATMOS) experiment, developed by JPL, and the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment–Fourier Transform Spectrometer (ACE–FTS), pioneered by University of Waterloo and the Canadian Space Agency. The ATMOS instrument has flown four times on the Space Shuttle since 1985. ACE–FTS was launched in 2003 and is still operational.
"MATMOS is an excellent instrument and an opportunity for a great partnership," says CSA Senior Planetary Scientist Victoria Hipkin, co-principal investigator on the MATMOS project. "We have taken the optical systems of one of Canada's flagship satellite instruments (Scisat ACE–FTS) and combined it with state-of-the-art data processing from the US (JPL's ATMOS and MrkIV). Our team—with US and Canadian leadership and Canadian, US, French, and UK members—is looking forward to providing fundamental data about this fascinating planet."
PASADENA, Calif.-That dry, dusty moon overhead? Seems it isn't quite as dry as it's long been thought to be. Although you won't find oceans, lakes, or even a shallow puddle on its surface, a team of geologists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), working with colleagues at the University of Tennessee, has found structurally bound hydroxyl groups (i.e., water) in a mineral in a lunar rock returned to Earth by the Apollo program.
Their findings are detailed in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
"The moon, which has generally been thought to be devoid of hydrous materials, has water," says John Eiler, the Robert P. Sharp Professor of Geology and professor of geochemistry at Caltech, and a coauthor on the paper.
"The fact that we were able to quantitatively measure significant amounts of water in a lunar mineral is truly surprising," adds lead author Jeremy Boyce, a visitor in geochemistry at Caltech, and a research scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The team found the water in a calcium phosphate mineral, apatite, within a basalt collected from the moon's surface by the Apollo 14 astronauts.
To be precise, they didn't find "water"-the molecule H2O. Rather, they found hydrogen in the form of a hydroxyl anion, OH-, bound in the apatite mineral lattice.
"Hydroxide is a close chemical relative of water," explains coauthor George Rossman, Caltech's Eleanor and John R. McMillan Professor of Mineralogy. "If you heat up the apatite, the hydroxyl ions will 'decompose' and come out as water."
The lunar basalt sample in which the hydrogen was found had been collected by the Apollo 14 moon mission in 1971; the idea to focus the search for water on this particular sample was promoted by Larry Taylor, a professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, who sent the samples to the Caltech scientists last year.
"The moon has been considered to be bone dry ever since the return of the first Apollo rocks," Taylor notes. However, there are lunar volcanic deposits interpreted as having been erupted by expanding vapor. Although carbon dioxide and sulfur gases have generally been thought to dominate the expanding vapor, recent evidence from the study of the these deposits has suggested that water could also play a role in powering lunar volcanic eruptions. The discovery of hydroxyl in apatite from lunar volcanic rocks is consistent with this suggestion.
The idea of looking for water in lunar apatite isn't new, Boyce notes. "Charles B. Sclar and Jon F. Bauer, geoscientists at Lehigh University, first noted that something was missing from the results of chemical analyses of apatite in 1975," he says. "Now, 35 years later, we have quantitative measurements-and it turns out, they were right. The missing piece was OH."
The Caltech team analyzed the lunar apatite for hydrogen, sulfur, and chlorine using an ion microprobe, which is capable of analyzing mineral grains with sizes much smaller than the width of a human hair. This instrument fires a focused beam of high-energy ions at the sample surface, sputtering away target atoms that are collected and then analyzed in a mass spectrometer. Ion microprobe measurements demonstrated that in terms of its hydrogen, sulfur, and chlorine contents, the lunar apatite in this sample is indistinguishable from apatites from terrestrial volcanic rocks.
"We realized that the moon and the earth were able to make the same kind of apatite, relatively rich in hydrogen, sulfur and chlorine," Boyce says.
Does that mean the moon is as awash in water as our planet? Almost certainly not, say the scientists. In fact, the amount of water the moon must contain to be capable of generating hydroxyl-rich apatite remains an open question. After all, it's hard to scale up the amount of water found in the apatite-1600 parts per million or 0.16 percent by weight-to determine just how much water there is on the lunar landscape. The apatite that was studied is not abundant, and is formed by processes that tend to concentrate hydrogen to much higher levels than are present in its host rocks or the moon as a whole.
"There's more water on the moon than people suspected," says Eiler, "but there's still likely orders of magnitude less than there is on the earth."
Nonetheless, the finding is significant for what it implies about our moon's composition and its history. "These findings tell us that the geological processes on the moon are capable of creating at least one hydrous mineral," Eiler says. "Recent spectroscopic observations of the moon showed that hydrogen is present on its surface, maybe even as water ice. But that could be a thin veneer, possibly hydrogen brought to the moon's surface by comets or solar wind. Our findings show that hydrogen is also part of the rock record of the moon, and has been since early in its history."
Beyond that, Eiler continues, "it's all a great big question mark. We don't know whether these were igneous processes,"-in which rocks are formed by solidification of molten lava-"or metamorphic"-in which minerals re-crystallize or change in change in chemistry without melting. "They're both on the table as possible players."
In addition to Boyce, Eiler, Rossman, and Taylor, other authors on the Nature paper, "Lunar apatite with terrestrial volatile abundances," include Research Assistant Professor Yang Liu from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville; Edward Stolper, Caltech's William E. Leonhard Professor of Geology, and Yunbin Guan, manager of Caltech's ion microprobe laboratory.
Their work was funded by grants from NASA's Cosmochemistry Program, the National Science Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
PASADENA, Calif.—On Earth, lake levels rise and fall with the seasons and with longer-term climate changes, as precipitation, evaporation, and runoff add and remove liquid. Now, for the first time, scientists have found compelling evidence for similar lake-level changes on Saturn's largest moon, Titan—the only other place in the solar system seen to have a hydrological cycle with standing liquid on the surface.
Using data gathered by NASA's Cassini spacecraft over a span of four years, the researchers—led by graduate student Alexander G. Hayes of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Oded Aharonson, associate professor of planetary science at Caltech—have obtained two separate lines of evidence showing roughly a 1 meter per year drop in the levels of lakes in Titan's southern hemisphere. The decrease is the result of the seasonal evaporation of liquid methane from the lakes—which, because of Titan's frigid temperatures (roughly minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit at the poles), are composed largely of liquid methane, ethane, and propane.
"It's really exciting because, on this distant object, we're able to see this meter-scale drop in lake depth," says Hayes. "We didn't know Cassini would even be able to see these things."
One of the lakes—Ontario Lacus (named after Earth's Lake Ontario, which is of comparable size) —is the southern hemisphere's largest lake, and was the first lake to be observed on the moon. In a paper submitted to the journal Icarus, Hayes, Aharonson, and their colleagues report that the shoreline of Ontario Lacus receded by about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from June 2005 to July 2009, a period of time that represents mid-summer to fall in Titan's southern hemisphere. (One Titan year lasts 29.5 Earth years.)
Ontario Lacus and other southern-hemisphere lakes were analyzed using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image data from the Cassini spacecraft. In radar data, smooth features—such as lakes—appear as dark areas, while rougher features—such as mountain belts—appear bright. The intensity of the radar backscatter provides information about the composition and roughness of surface features. In addition to the SAR data, radar altimetry—which measures the time it takes for microwave signals bouncing off a surface to arrive back at the spacecraft—was collected across a transect of Ontario Lacus in December 2008.
"The combination of SAR and altimetry measurements across the transect gave information about the absorptive properties of the liquid, and argues that the liquids are relatively pure hydrocarbons made up of methane and ethane and not a gunky tar," Aharonson says.
"The liquid is not highly attenuating," explains Hayes, "which means it is fairly clear to radar energy—that is, transparent, like liquid natural gas." Because of this, radar can see through the liquid in Titan's lakes to a depth of several meters. "Then the radar hits the floor, and bounces back," he says. "Or, if the lake is deeper than a few meters, the radar is completely absorbed, producing a 'black' signature."
Once the liquid's optical properties were known, the researchers could use the radar data to "see" the lakebed underneath the liquid—at least, down to the depth where the signal is completely attenuated. "How far offshore you can see is determined by the local slope of the lakebed, or bathymetry," says Hayes. "This gave us the ability to take changes in radar signals and convert them to depths," and thus to calculate the slope of the lakebed around the entire lake.
"We were able to determine the bathymetry of the lake out to a depth of about 8 meters," he says. The lake is shallowest and most gently sloped along its southern edge, in areas where sediment is accumulating. Along its eastern shore, the slope of the lake is somewhat steeper. "This is what we are calling the 'beachhead,'" Hayes says. The slope is very steep along the lake's northern boundary, where it butts up against a range of mountains.
"The slope changes we see are consistent with the geology around the lake," Hayes says. The bathymetry measurements and their geologic correlations are discussed in a separate paper by Hayes, Aharonson, and colleagues, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR).
The researchers compared lake images obtained four years apart, and found that Ontario had shrunk. "The extent to which the lake has receded is related to the slope—i.e., where the lake is shallow, the liquid will have receded more," Hayes says. "This allows us to deduce the vertical height by which the lake depth has dropped, which is about 1 meter per year."
The researchers also analyzed the evaporation of methane from nearby lakes by comparing the radar signatures of these lakes as measured in December 2007 with data obtained in May 2009. Over that period, the "apparent darkness" of the lakes—indicating the presence of a radar-attenuating liquid—either decreased or disappeared entirely, which means that their liquid levels had been reduced. The researchers were able to calculate the drop in lake depth, "and we got the same result: 1 meter per year of liquid loss," Aharonson says.
Lakes in Titan's northern hemisphere—which is now entering spring—have also been covered multiple times by radar instruments, but so far no analogous changes have been conclusively detected.
That doesn't mean the changes haven't occurred, however. "We would expect it will happen, but we don't know how it would manifest in the data if the lakes in the north are significantly deeper. We'll continue to look for this effect with future radar images, to disentangle the seasonal variations from longer-term climate variations we previously have proposed." Aharonson says.
The work described in the two papers—"Transient Surface Liquid in Titan's Polar Regions from Cassini," which was submitted to Icarus, and "Bathymetry and Absorptivity of Titan's Ontario Lacus," which was accepted by JGR—was supported by the Cassini Project and NASA's Graduate Student Researchers Program, and was carried out in collaboration with members of the Cassini RADAR Science Team. The Cassini mission is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
PASADENA, Calif.—In the summer of 2002, a week of heavy rains in Central Texas caused Canyon Lake—the reservoir of the Canyon Dam—to flood over its spillway and down the Guadalupe River Valley in a planned diversion to save the dam from catastrophic failure. The flood, which continued for six weeks, stripped the valley of mesquite, oak trees, and soil; destroyed a bridge; and plucked meter-wide boulders from the ground. And, in a remarkable demonstration of the power of raging waters, the flood excavated a 2.2-kilometer-long, 7-meter-deep canyon in the bedrock.
According to a new analysis of the flood and its aftermath—performed by Michael Lamb, assistant professor of geology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and Mark Fonstad of Texas State University—the canyon formed in just three days.
A paper about the research appears in the June 20 advance online edition of the journal Nature Geoscience.
Our traditional view of deep river canyons, such as the Grand Canyon, is that they are carved slowly, as the regular flow and occasionally moderate rushing of rivers erodes rock over periods of millions of years.
Such is not always the case, however. "We know that some big canyons have been cut by large catastrophic flood events during Earth's history," Lamb says.
Unfortunately, these catastrophic megafloods—which also may have chiseled out spectacular canyons on Mars—generally leave few telltale signs to distinguish them from slower events. "There are very few modern examples of megafloods," Lamb says, "and these events are not normally witnessed, so the process by which such erosion happens is not well understood." Nevertheless, he adds, "the evidence that is left behind, like boulders and streamlined sediment islands, suggests the presence of fast water"—although it reveals nothing about the time frame over which the water flowed.
This is why the Canyon Lake flood is so significant. "Here, we know that all of the erosion occurred during the flood," Lamb says. "Flood waters flowed for several weeks, but the highest discharge—during which the bulk of the erosion took place—was over a period of just three days."
Lamb and Fonstad reached this conclusion using aerial photographs of the region taken both before and after the flood, along with field measurements of the topography of the region and measurements of the flood discharge. Then they applied an empirical model of the sediment-carrying capacity of the flood—that is, the amount of soil, rocks, boulders, and other debris carried by the flood to produce the canyon.
The analysis revealed that the rate of the canyon erosion was so rapid that it was limited only by the amount of sediment the floodwaters could carry. This is in contrast to models normally applied to rivers where the erosion is limited by the rate at which the underlying rock breaks and is abraded.
The researchers argue that the rate of erosion was rapid because the flood was able to pop out and cart away massive boulders (a process called "plucking")—producing several 10- to 12-meter-high waterfalls that propagated upstream toward the dam, along with channels and terraces. The flood was able to pluck these boulders because the bedrock below the soil surface of the valley was already fractured and broken.
The abrasion of rock by sediment-loaded waters—while less significant in terms of the overall formation of the canyon—produced other features, like sculpted walls, plunge pools at the bases of the waterfalls, and teardrop-shaped sediment islands. The sediment islands are particularly significant, Lamb says, because "these are features we see on Earth and on Mars in areas where we think large flow events have occurred. It's nice that here we're seeing some of the same features that we've interpreted elsewhere as evidence of large flow events."
The results, Lamb says, offer useful insight into ancient megafloods, both on Earth and on Mars, and the deep canyons they left behind. "We're trying to build models of erosion rates so we can go to places like Mars and make quantitative reconstructions of how much water was there, how long it lasted, and how quickly it moved," Lamb says. In addition, he says, "this is one of a few places where models for canyon formation can be tested because we know the flood conditions under which this canyon formed."
PASADENA, Calif.-Edwin S. Munger, professor of geography, emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), passed away peacefully June 15 at his home in Pasadena, California. He was 88 years old.
Munger was a renowned specialist on Africa, particularly race and ethnic relations. He made dozens of trips to the continent, visited every country on it, and lived there for a decade.
Born in La Grange, Illinois, Munger received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago. He was a visiting lecturer at Caltech throughout the 1950s before becoming professor of geography in 1961. He became professor emeritus in 1988.
Munger took his first trip to Africa in 1947-financed by his Army poker winnings-and his second in 1949 as the first Fulbright Fellow to Africa, attending Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. He was an Institute of Current World Affairs (ICWA) fellow in Africa from 1950 to 1954, and from 1955 to 1961 was an American Universities Field Staff member, during which time he lived a year each in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, while at the same time serving on the faculty of the University of Chicago.
He was an evaluator for the Peace Corps in Uganda (1966) and Botswana (1967) and chairman of the U.S. State Department Evaluation Team in South Africa (1971).
Munger once said, "One of the joys of being a geographer is that the world is my oyster, world travel my most stimulating teacher."
His passion for the region led to his founding of the African Studies Association and the U.S.-South African Leader Program, and later, he served as a board member of the South African Institute of Race Relations. For 14 years he served as president of the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, working to increase scientific knowledge and public understanding of human origins and evolution. He was also instrumental in launching the foundation's Baldwin Fellowships, which have helped more than 40 Africans obtain advanced degrees in archaeology. In 1985, Munger founded the Cape of Good Hope Foundation to help mostly black universities in southern Africa, and subsequently sent more than $3 million dollars worth of books to help those institutions. He edited the Munger Africana Library Notes (1969-1982) and amassed a library of over 60,000 volumes on sub-Saharan Africa, the largest private collection in the United States, and a unique cultural resource.
He was president of the Pasadena Playhouse (1966) and one of the founders of Caltech's Friends of Beckman Auditorium.
A respected teacher, Munger in 1976 received the top teaching prize given by Caltech's student body and in 1980 was made an honorary member of the Caltech Alumni Association. He continued to be a presence on the Caltech campus by joining notable faculty members at the campus faculty club-the Athenaeum-"round table," a lunchtime gathering of scientific leaders from various disciplines who meet to socialize and hold discussions of the highest order.
In 1993 he received the Alumni Citation Award for public service from the University of Chicago, and in 2002 he was the recipient of the Gandhi-King-Ikeda award from Morehouse College for his years of dedication to improving race relations.
Later in life, he developed an interest in collecting chess sets and at one point had amassed more than 400 ethnic chess sets from the more than 250 countries and islands he had visited.
A prolific author, Munger produced numerous titles, including 1965's Bechuanaland: Pan-African Outpost or Bantu Homeland?, 1967's Afrikaner and African Nationalism, 1983's Touched by Africa, and 1996's Cultures, Chess & Art, A Collector's Odyssey Across Seven Continents, Volume 1: Sub-Saharan Africa, which he followed with volumes 2 and 3.
Munger leaves behind his wife of 40 years, Ann Boyer Munger, daughter Betsy Owens from his first marriage with the late Elizabeth Nelson Munger, nephews Christopher and Roger, and nieces Jennifer, Trudie, and Sarah.
A memorial service will be held at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 24th at the Athenaeum, 551 S. Hill Avenue, Pasadena. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations in his memory be made to Friends of Beckman Auditorium, Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125 or to the Institute of Current World Affairs, 4545 42nd St. NW, Suite 311, Washington, D.C. 20016-4623.
PASADENA, Calif.—East Africa's Turkana Basin has been a hot savanna region for at least the past 4 million years—including the period of time during which early hominids evolved in this area—says a team of researchers led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). These findings may shed light on the evolutionary pressures that led humans to walk upright, lose most of our body hair, develop a more slender physique, and sweat more copiously than other animals.
Their findings—which were based on measurements of the spatial distribution and concentrations of isotopes in carbonate ions—are being reported this week in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
"When you measure the temperature of the ground, you learn a lot about the environment above it," says John Eiler, Robert P. Sharp Professor of Geology and professor of geochemistry at Caltech. In fact, he says, soil temperature tells you not just about air temperature, but about whether there were trees and plants to shade the soil, keeping temperatures cooler during the hottest part of the day.
Today, northern Kenya—where the Turkana Basin is found—is among the warmest areas on earth. It has little canopy forest, leaving the ground exposed to sunlight. "The question is, was the ground here ever cooler than it is today?" asks Eiler. "And if it was, why? Was it because the air was cooler, or because of more forest shading?"
To find out, the team examined the spatial organization (or "clumping") of rare, naturally occurring isotopes of carbon and oxygen—specifically, carbon-13 and oxygen-18—in the form of carbonate ions that are constituents of minerals found in buried soils from northern Kenya. The clumping of these isotopes, Eiler and his colleagues have demonstrated in previous papers, is dependent on temperature: Hot temperatures lead to less clumping; cold temperatures, more.
"These carbonates are a common constituent of these soils," Eiler explains. "If you have the ability to measure their isotopes, then you have a ground-temperature thermometer."
When the researchers applied that thermometer to various layers of buried soils from East Africa, they found what Eiler says was "such a straightforward answer, it wasn't obvious how we could talk ourselves out of the conclusion we reached."
That conclusion? "The Turkana Basin region—one of the key places where hominid fossils documenting human evolution are found—has been a really hot place for a really long time," says Benjamin Passey, formerly a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech. Passey, who led the work on this project, is now at Johns Hopkins University.
But why does it matter how hot Africa was millions of years ago? "This is the area where we find the occurrence of some of the earliest hominid species," notes Eiler. "It tells us that this environment, though harsh, was a place where our ancestors could thrive. It tells us that they were probably originally marginal species that lived in difficult-to-survive environments."
The findings also shed some light—and heat—on a longstanding debate over the origin of bipedalism in early humans.
"For a long time, anthropologists have hypothesized that bipedalism and other unique human traits would be advantageous to life in hot savanna environments," says Passey. "For example, by standing upright, we intercept less direct sunlight than if we were on all fours, and in hot, open environments, the ground and near-surface air can be appreciably hotter than the air a few feet above the ground. So, by standing upright, we are avoiding a high-temperature environment."
Of course, Passey adds, this strategy would only be of significant use if the environment in question is indeed a high-temperature one. "In cooler environments, these traits do not really have a thermal advantage," he notes. These considerations led to the team's interest in figuring out just how hot it was in the part of the world where bipedalism is most likely to have first gained a toehold.
Eiler cautions that the team's findings are simply assessments of the area's temperature over time, and have nothing to say about "the importance of ambient temperature in shaping human evolution." But, he notes, they are "consistent with the notion that the heat in the area would have been a selective pressure that could have made bipedalism advantageous."
In addition to Eiler and Passey, the coauthors on the PNAS paper, "High-temperature environments of human evolution in East Africa based on bond ordering in paleosol carbonates," were former Caltech postdoc Naomi Levin, now at Johns Hopkins University; and Thure Cerling and Francis Brown from the University of Utah. Their work was supported by grants from the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation and the National Science Foundation.


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Practice Area: Corporate and incorporation
Outcome: Successfully inc. protecting personal assets
Description: Client needed to incorporate new business in order to shield personal assets from liabilities of the corporation. Advocated to change name so as to avoid trademark infringement. All formalities and corporate resolutions to start new business implemented. These summaries are intended for informational purposes only and are not to be considered as any kind of guarantee, warranty or prediction concerning any other case. Every case is different, and the outcome is dictated by facts and circumstances unique to it. A good result in one case should not raise expectations of good results in any other case, regardless of any similarities. This website is intended to convey general information only. It is not meant to be, nor should it be used for, legal advice for any specific problem. While we believe the information found in this website is generally correct, it should not be relied upon by anyone seeking legal advice on a specific matter, and there is no representation, guarantee or warranty of its completeness or accuracy. Accurate and appropriate legal advice may be obtained only through a consultation with a lawyer.


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Latest Titles With Paul Barlow Jr.
- Job Types
- Movies or TV
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- IMDb Rating
- Instant Watch Options
- In Theaters
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1. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016)
Drama, History, War | Post-production
19-year-old Billy Lynn is brought home for a victory tour after a harrowing Iraq battle. Through flashbacks the film shows what really happened to his squad - contrasting the realities of war with America's perceptions.
Writers: Jean-Christophe Castelli, Ben Fountain | Director: Ang Lee | Stars: Vin Diesel, Kristen Stewart, Garrett Hedlund, Steve Martin
2. Creature Feature (2015)
Creature Feature is five interwoven tales of terror that occur one foggy Halloween night in Georgia. A babysitter learns a new appreciation for fine art and hard lesson about the ... See full summary »
Writer: Chase Smith | Director: Chase Smith | Stars: Libby Blanton, Becca Beton, Tenille Houston, Jason Vail
3. Welcome to Uranus (2014)
36 min | Short, Comedy
Two employees at an adult store discover that customers and management are rather spaced out--from tottering senior citizens to a crazed robber to a employer who finds adult toys handy
Writers: Barrington Marson, Travis Stanley | Director: Barrington Marson | Stars: Loren L. Baker, Paul Barlow Jr., Kenneth Bowen, Geo Broughton
4. Stand Your Ground (2013)
PG-13 | 107 min | Crime, Drama
A woman struggles with her faith when her son is falsely accused of murder and the odds are stacked against him.
Writers: Michael McClendon, Jackie Carpenter | Director: Michael McClendon | Stars: Francine Locke, Drew Matthews, Cameron Arnett, Sandra Elise Williams
Votes: 42
5. Faked Out (2013– )
Stars: Ashley LeConte Campbell, Eric Croas, Whit Davies, Daniel Orellana
Faked Out (2013– )
Directors: Alana Goldstein, Scott Thigpen | Stars: Paul Barlow Jr., Ashley LeConte Campbell, Clay Chappell, Eric Croas
7. Wanderlust (2012)
R | 98 min | Comedy
Rattled by sudden unemployment, a Manhattan couple surveys alternative living options, ultimately deciding to experiment with living on a rural commune where free love rules.
Writers: David Wain, Ken Marino | Director: David Wain | Stars: Jennifer Aniston, Paul Rudd, Malin Akerman, Justin Theroux
Votes: 62,044 | Gross: $17.23M
8. The Watch (I) (2012)
R | 102 min | Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi
Four men who form a neighborhood watch group as a way to get out of their day-to-day family routines find themselves defending the Earth from an alien invasion.
Writers: Jared Stern, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg | Director: Akiva Schaffer | Stars: Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, Billy Crudup
Votes: 103,767 | Gross: $34.35M
9. The Odd Life of Timothy Green (2012)
PG | 105 min | Comedy, Drama, Family
A childless couple bury a box in their backyard, containing all of their wishes for an infant. Soon, a child is born, though Timothy Green is not all that he appears.
Writers: Peter Hedges, Ahmet Zappa | Director: Peter Hedges | Stars: Jennifer Garner, Joel Edgerton, CJ Adams, Odeya Rush
Votes: 37,301 | Gross: $51.85M
10. The Industry (2012)
This film is about recording artists from a record label called "Aamon Records". It explores why the music industry is thought of as the "devil's playground".
Writer: Kade Merab | Directors: Kade Merab, Yuade Merab-Moore | Stars: Paul Barlow Jr., Natalie Bonner, Hillary Brant, Felicia Brown
Votes: 5
11. Because I'm Me (2012– )
Five wannabe entertainers with bad attitudes are running out of opportunities. They answer an ad for a reality show casting and are forced to live in the same house.
Stars: Paul Barlow Jr., Jermaine Blackburn, Raymond Horton, Thesia Mclashie
12. 2012 Presidential Debate Spoof (2012)
7 min | Short, Comedy
President Obama and Mitt Romney 2012 Presidential Debate Spoof face-off who will win?
Writers: Marcus Acosta, Joel Appleberry, Paul Barlow, Chivon Delaney, Deanna Ragin | Directors: Chivon Delaney, Deanna Rachelle | Stars: Marcus Acosta, Joel Appleberry, Paul Barlow Jr.
Two Naked Men Making a Sandwich (2010– )
Big Ass Sandwich!
Writer: Dominick Racano | Director: Taylor Mosbey | Stars: Paul Barlow Jr., Dominick Racano
Two Naked Men Making a Sandwich (2010– )
Green Eggs and Ham Sandwich!
Writer: Erin O'Connor | Director: Taylor Mosbey | Stars: Paul Barlow Jr., Bret E. Benson
15. The Change-Up (2011)
R | 112 min | Comedy, Fantasy
Dave is a married man with three kids and a loving wife, and Mitch is a single man who is at the prime of his sexual life. One fateful night while Mitch and Dave are peeing in a fountain, lightning strikes and they switch bodies.
Writers: Jon Lucas, Scott Moore | Director: David Dobkin | Stars: Jason Bateman, Ryan Reynolds, Olivia Wilde, Leslie Mann
Votes: 136,437 | Gross: $37.04M
16. Two Naked Men Making a Sandwich (2010– )
Each week two naked men make one delicious sandwich.
Stars: Dominick Racano, Taylor Mosbey, Timothy J. Richardson, Chris Fason
Votes: 13
17. Science of Speed Eating (2007 TV Movie)
46 min | Documentary
Writer: Sara Edelson | Stars: Chris Cook, Paul Barlow Jr., Tim Janus, David Metz
Votes: 5


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Separate names with a comma.
It should automatically jump on if its saved. Make sure you have the wifi sleep turned off in the wifi settings.
User error, im guessing.
Update: I didn't load the camera fix zip, figured it was included with the newer nightlies, guess not. Camera works now...
Well it installed, but I dont see it anywhere. Oh well.
I cant even take a pic right now with the stock camera with CM. It takes the pic, then...
You can probably load the Blur apk? Ill try it and post back...
Smoked glass would be awesome.
Love this theme so much! One suggestion: Make the 3G bigger. Other than that, best theme ever.
This along with music controls from the lock screen would be fantastic!
Do I have to not use ADW to make my launcher look like that?
The version I have is 1.2.1 build 843839-1.2.0-30
Its working for me and im on v.6.
No I havent got anything. Im talking with other people on gtalk right now so I know its working. Can you pm me your email and ill try to invite you?
Hmmmm I did not get it. Try to send me your email address.
Here is my email, try to contact me via gtalk if you can.
And that method didnt work either :(
Im downloading sbf lite right now (4.9) and the latest sbf file.
That would be awesome. Im going to try to get it into recovery via your method first. Are you on gtalk by any chance?
So I did a "no no" and loaded a theme that wasn't designed for v.6 Liberty and now my phone is stuck on the screen where there is a...
Why wont there be any updates anytime soon?
The phone came with a beta version of Flash Lite, so it only displayed some flash sites, but not heavy flash sites.
I love it that I can view...


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Around the Nation
The Origin Of 'Proof Is In The Pudding'
In a commentary this week on Morning Edition, Frank Deford said the "proof is in the pudding." A listener wrote in to say that keeping proof in a pudding would be messy. The original proverb is: The proof of the pudding is in the eating. And what it meant was that you had to try out food to know whether it was good.
Next, we have a correction of sorts, though it's also a story of how language evolves. We're following up on a phrase in a commentary by the sportswriter Frank Deford.
FRANK DEFORD: Maybe it still stings the purists that Richard's contrarian ways worked. The proof is in the pudding.
INSKEEP: The proof is in the pudding, he said. Tim Lowe wrote us all the way from Santiago de Cali, Colombia, and he writes the following: Frank, the proof is not in the pudding. It would be a messy, if not completely silly place to keep it. With that in mind, we called Ben Zimmer, language columnist at the Boston Globe.
BEN ZIMMER: Well, the proof is in the pudding is a new twist on a very old proverb. The original version is the proof of the pudding is in the eating. And what it meant was that you had to try out food in order to know whether it was good.
INSKEEP: Zimmer adds that the word pudding itself has changed. In Britain, dating back centuries, pudding meant more than a sweet dessert.
ZIMMER: Back then, pudding referred to a kind of sausage, filling the intestines of some animal with minced meat and other things - something you probably want to try out carefully since that kind of food could be rather treacherous.
INSKEEP: OK. So, over the years, the original proverb has evolved. The original was the proof of the pudding is in the eating. It was shortened to the proof of the pudding, and then here in America, it morphed again to the proof is in the pudding. Apparently, the proof of the listening is in the correcting.
INSKEEP: This is NPR News.
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Komperdell Powerlock Titanal
Retailers' Descriptions
Here's what other sites are saying:
No matter where you're hiking, or what time of year it may be, the Komperdell Mountaineer Titanal Powerlock trekking poles are guaranteed to make the trek even more enjoyable.. . . . Lightweight, two-section trekking poles made from Titanal, one of the strongest aluminum alloys on the market~ Comparable to steel, with only a third of the weight~ Highly resistant to abrasion and corrosion. Power Lock II adjustment system is Komperdell's strongest and safest, offering 90% more holding force than the original Power Lock system. EVA foam grips are lightweight, comfortable, and ensure a secure grip. Carbide tips offer secure traction on any terrain, including ice and wet rock. Includes 3.5 in. snow baskets. Made in Austria.
- EMS refers to the men's version
CLOSEOUTS . Komperdell Titanal Powerlock trekking poles reduce stress on joints, improve balance and add power on uphill hikes. The power-locking mechanism gets your poles adjusted quickly, easily and securely.
- Sierra Trading Post refers to the men's version
Ideal for nordic touring, the Men's Titanal Power Lock Trekking/ Touring Poles from Komperdell feature a Powerlock mechanism that's easy to adjust even when wearing gloves.
- Altrec Outdoors refers to the men's version
Komperdell Powerlock Titanal
$64.95 - $120.79
The Powerlock Titanal has been discontinued.previously retailed for:
$64.95 - $120.79
The Komperdell Powerlock Titanal is not available from the stores we monitor. It was last seen October 3, 2015 at EMS.
If you're looking for a new rigid trekking pole, check out the best reviewed current models.


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14 reviews | 4.1 out of 5
I bought this bow for my 13 year old grandson for Christmas. He loves it. It is made very well, easy to use. I thought the price was high until I seen it how it works. Im sure it will last a good while.
We bought this bow for our 13 year old. Ended up giving it to our 8 year old. Nice bow just not the right size for our 13 year old. Over all would not get this for an older child.
I tried to decreese the pull but it did not adjust like I wanted it to. The string just got very loose. I did not recieve the safty glasses that were suppose to come with it, and the fingers are just a piece of flat vinal that were hard for my 10 year old to use. I got the real fingers and he is liking them much better. The Bow is a good begginer bow. Shoot with some vilocity and is accurate at 20 yards. I found that adjusting the draw to be very easy.
Very nice bow for a beginner. Shoots very well and is really accurate. The addition of a peep sight and a string loop for release shooters is all that is needed. Nice product for what it is designed for. Love Bear Archery products!
didn't realize this bow was a child size until I picked it up at click n pull. Says Jr. on the box but I don't remember reading that in the description. Just wanted something fun for target practice, but did need it to be adult size. Returned it.
Let me start by saying that I know very little of bows or archery in general. This bow came packaged nice with good instructions and a few pictures for those like me who don't red instructions. It shoots nice and has a very nice look and feel to it. I don't think it's powerful enough to hunt with, but it is definitely not a child's toy. I looked at this as an intermediate bow to get him ready for the next step.
I bought this for my Grandson - age 10. He was thrilled. He has already used it.
Got this for my grand daughter's first youth bow! Shoots dead on, love it and would recommend it to anyone who wants to get a first bow for their child. It is fir youth's 7-10 yrs old. Just because it is the perfect size and the performance is amazing. Thanks for the quick delivery and the price was a huge bonus!!
The bow occupies a space right below a real hunting bow. It has features one associates with a hunting bow, and allows a young archer to develop their skills with equipment that will make it easier for them to transition to a hunting bow without having a steep learning curve. It was purchased for a 14 year old girl who was used to a recurved "youth" bow. She had no problem making the transition.
It shoots well and the kids enjoy it! For the price it is not a bad deal. *Note to product advertising person; The bow should say "warrior", not "warrier". Spell check may help.
Bow was purchased for a petite woman as a starter bow. Bow arrived broken cams cheap string. And very weak construction of the body. Returned and never purchasing a bow from wallmart again. If you wan a starter bow spend the extra on a real working bow.
He just loves it, he's having so much fun practicing with it too.
This item its ot for adults Don't Buy this item if your looking for one for the Man in your life. They should explain this in the item description but its not there !!!


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"There is a good way, instead of just using taxes to build a bridge, why not use a charge on pollution to build not only a bridge, but also clean air so kids can breathe. You get a twofer," Inslee said. "That's what we're going to do."
When the tax passed, all three airlines said they'd have to hike their ticket prices. Now that Australia has repealed the policy, all three say they never had to pass additional costs on to their consumers.


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Buckingham County Youth League Buckingham County Youth League 4 Gildan Men's 7.75 oz Contrast H
"Reigning Champs"
1st Place 2015 James River District Season
2015 James River District Champions
2015 James River District Champions...9 time winners.
The James River District Championship game is nothing new for the Buckingham County Youth League Varsity football teams. The BCYL Varsity Knights have won this title for the past eight seasons. Each one gets harder to defend but the Knights manage to take on the task and have prevailed.
The BCYL Knights was the first place seed in the JR District playoffs but had a tough Charlotte Patriots team in their way to win their ninth straight title. The Knights defeated the Patriots in the first meeting in a close 13-0 game and lose to them 2-0 a couple of weeks ago in a defensive battle that gave the BCYL Varsity Knights their first and only conference loss.
Unlike the game a couple of weeks ago, the Knights came out hitting on all cylinders scoring in the 1st and 2nd quarter to take a 13-0 halftime lead.
Without letting up on defense, the Knights kept the Patriots our of the end zone in the 3rd period of the game as they continue adding to the scoreboard with another TD and 1pt PAT to take a 20-0 lead. Late in the 4th the Charlotte Patriots scored a touchdown, but not enough time to come back as the Buckingham County Youth League Varsity football team won their ninth James River District Championship.
The BCYL Varsity team will now move on to 2015 JRSYSA Super Bowl where they will meet the Renegades from Emporia
Game 6
Buckingham Knights at Amelia Raiders
And here comes the BCYL Varsity Knights.
In the first meeting between the Buckingham County Youth League Varsity football team against the Amelia Raiders on the season's opener game, the BCYL Varsity team scored in each quarter except the fourth to win 19-0. Now at the beginning of the 2nd half of the season when every team in the league has gotten better, how will the Knights perform as with a 4-1 overall record and leading the James River District.
BCYL Varsity line in the pits.
In the first quarter of the game between the Varisity Knights and Raiders it was mostly a defensive game. In fact, throughout the first 3 periods of the game no team could get into the endzone.
In the 4th quarter the BCYL Knights broke the ice by getting into the endzone but failed on the PAT to take the 6-0 lead. It seems that was all need as the Buckingham County Youth League Varsity remains in first place of the JR Distict with a 5-1 overall record.
With good blocking up front, the BCYL Varsity moving the football.
The Varsity team have already advance to 6-1 this week because the next game Cumberland don't have a Varsity team and have been Forfeit by the Visiting team.
Game 5
Buckingham Knights vs Emporia Renegades
BCYL Players getting ready for defense.
The Buckingham County Youth League Varsity Football team hosted the Renegades of the Emporia-Greenville Recreation Association in our first non conference meeting of the season. The two programs met for the first time ever in 2009 in regular season play with the Knights winning both games that season. The next time the two team met in regular season action was last season. The Renegades defeated the Knights in both games. Last weeking is the 5th regular season game between the two clubs to break the tie.
Kicking off to start the Half of the game.
In the first period of the game, the Knights defense stuffed the Renegades offense early not allowing them to score in the 1st period. But the defense didn't hold up long as the Renengades scored the first TD in the 2nd period and converting on the 1pt PAT to take a 0-7 lead going into the half.
The Knights looked to move the ball at times as they did get some yardage on their offense. But could keep the Emporia team out of the end zone. Emporia scored again in the 3rd period of the game to extend the lead 14-0.
BCYL Varsity dropping back to pass, but all Wideouts look covered.
In the 4th period of the game the Knights allowed the Renegades in for their third TD as the Emporia Renegades seal the game taking the 21-0 victory over the BCYL Varsity Team.
The 4-1 Knights is still in 1st place of the James River District as they travel to Amelia next week to play the Raiders in the 2nd half of the season game.
Check listing for game times
Game 3
Buckingham Knights at Charlotte Patriots
BCYL Varsity with their dominating defense
The Knights really played their 2nd game of the season on this weekend. Due to Cumberland not being able to field a Varsity football team, the BCYL Knights had two week to prepare for the Charlotte Patriots. However, the Charlotte Patriots drew Cumberland and Prince Edward for their first two games, so this was their first game of the season. How would it go for the two good football clubs.
BCYL Varsity on the move offensively
After a 0-0 1st quarter, the Knights scored in the 2nd period of the game to take a 6-0 halftime lead. In the 3rd period of the game, it was almost like the first period ending with neither team scoring.
After a 13-0 victory over the Patriots the coaches, players and cheerleaders get together
In the 4th period of the game, the Knights broke through the Patriots with a mid field TD pass and with the Knights converting on the 1 point PAT, the Buckingham Knights sealed that game with a 13-0 victory.
Buckingham Knights vs Amelia Raiders
The Buckingham County Youth League Varsity Football team have been very successful in the past. The Knights have gone 2-2 against the Raiders of Amelia Parks and Recreation in the past four straight seasons opener games. So Amelia is a team that you can not take lightly in the beginning of the season.
BCYL Varsity Offensive Linemen blocked very well against Amelia's defensive front.
The BCYL Varsity Knights was the only team that came out strong in the first period of the game. Scoring on their first drive and continuing to pour it on the Raiders on the offense and defense side of the ball. Scoring in the 1st and 2nd quarter of the game, the BCYL Knights took a 12-0 lead at the half. Amelia started to get going after making some halftime adjustments, but it wasn't enough as the Knights scored another TD and adding with the PAT. The Knghts won their season's opener against Amelia 19-0 to start the 2015 season.
With good blocking the Knights was able to move ball throughout the day.
The next game for the BCYL Varsity football team is an AWAY game against the Cumberland Dukes. Check local listing for game times.


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