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In my eight years covering foodservice for Nation's Restaurant News, I've heard lots of franchise owners talk passionately about developing team members to run their own restaurants some day. Jennifer Friends, a newly signed franchisee of Toppers Pizza, is the first operator I've interviewed to refer to her employees and future general managers as her children, but she isn't exaggerating.
Friends and her husband Barry have signed a five-unit area development agreement with Toppers, and four of their seven children will begin working in the new family business to be groomed to run one of the four stores set to open in 2014 or 2015. The family's first pizza restaurant will open this year near Minneapolis.
Three of Friends' daughters and one of her sons will join Mom and Dad in the Toppers franchise, including the oldest daughter and her fiancée as assistant managers at store No. 1. They have the most experience in foodservice, having worked as servers, hosts or bartenders since high school. Their youngest daughter, who is 15 years old, already works part-time at a McDonald's and wants to major in hospitality in college.
Meanwhile, one son comes into the family franchise from the paper distribution business, where he learned a little about restaurants from foodservice clients. Another daughter will work at her parents' Toppers location after serving out the school year as a teacher in Tennessee and moving back to Minnesota.
Jennifer Friends, a college professor, became very familiar with the brand, which has grown mostly in college towns and caters to the young-male audience with cheeky messaging like "We come fast, no apologies." Despite that irreverent tone — actually, because of it — Toppers is the family-friendly choice for the Friends' new business.
I spoke with her about her expectations for teaching her kids the value of a dollar and hard work in the restaurant industry.
How did you and Barry go from franchising a Toppers to be in business for yourselves, to getting four of your seven children involved in the franchise?
My husband was in foodservice distribution since he was dating me, and over the 32 years we've been married, he's had a new make-it-rich scheme all the time. We were going to open a custard stand, or a banana bread shop, and I've always humored him and let it go. He would go to an annual Dairy Queen convention and come back and say, "We need a DQ franchise here."
We moved to Wisconsin, and I happened into a Toppers and just cracked up. We're a heavy pizza-eating family with seven kids, so we started eating them all the time. But a year ago, when a girlfriend visited, and I had her call it in to hear their funny phone messages and had her read their website, and she said, 'Wow, we need a Toppers back home.' I thought, this is one franchise I could get behind. I told that to my husband and it went from there.
I started canvassing the kids and asked them if it's something they'd want to be part of. There's doom and gloom on the economic front, with everybody saying all kids are going to be living in basements and not doing better than their parents. But we always told them to study what they want. And as a result, we've got a creative-writing major and an art major, which may not translate right into jobs. … But we've got enough kids that are definitely interested that would become involved right away, and in time that might spread to the whole family.
What made Toppers the family-friendly choice?
I think it's a good product, and I like the irreverent sense of humor. There is that aspect of Toppers that's fun, and I appreciate that, because I don't think work should be a burden. I wanted my kids out of a restaurant with a bar. There's drugs and alcohol in a lot of restaurants, and I'd rather them be in the industry in a pizzeria with us to avoid those aspects.
If any of these locations go up in the area where we live, we're going to be inundated with friends' children looking for jobs, and we already discussed how to handle that. We'll have our future son-in-law interview those people, because he doesn't know them like we do.
Any advice for potential franchisees hoping to involve their families like you will?
I couldn't speak to any successes in franchising yet, so maybe I'm a fool. But I do think that it's important to like your family. We're not doing this just because we want to provide for them, but we like having our kids around us. That's not always the case in families. Now, one daughter is already saying she can't work with her one sister, but they pretty much like each other and it shouldn't be a huge clash.
I'm looking at is as parallel to my husband and me. He has the strengths that I don't have and vice versa, and of the four [children] coming into the business with us, two are like me and two are like him. We're hoping we all pull on our individual strengths, and after Barry and I bow out, it will balance out with the kids still in it. If it only worked with the two of us involved, that'd be a bust.


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Introducing The New Earth Institute of Southwestern CollegePosted May 28th, 2013 by & filed under Top News, The New Earth Institute.
Southwestern College's "Community Education Program" has not been a "community education program" for a long time.
It is, and has been, a jewel of a destination spot for holistic, integrative, indigenous, creative, and grounded New Age teaching and training. Some of the teachers and trainers and keynote presenters are names you…
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subset: commoncrawl


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Two instrumental parts, made in hip-hop style ,together with symphonic instruments perfectly suit as the background music for serious events: sports competition, culmination in theatre perfomance or an episode of the beginning of a battle in a movie as well.
The first part (length 1:08) is the dynamic introduction of cellos, brass and percussion instruments. It's a good choice for introduction or presentation.
The second part(length 1:09) is made in a classical way for hip-hop slice'n'dice ( sampling of symphonic instruments, mentioned in part 1) In this track You can hear powerfull drums and rocking hard bass . Quite possible to use it as an acoustic in rap songs.Both parts are connected and logically supplement each other. They can be used both together and separately.


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Road expansions, or capacity improvements, are on tap between now and fiscal year 2015, the biggest being the Palm Coast Parkway widening.
PALM COAST — There is one critical question City Councilman Bill McGuire said he will have in mind each time a capital improvement project gets put on the table for a vote.
"Is this a nice-to-have (project) or a need-to-have?" McGuire asked during a workshop meeting Tuesday morning.
Among the need-to-have projects is the bridge along Palm Harbor Parkway that runs over College Waterway, said City Manager Jim Landon. Roughly $975,000 of this year's budget is devoted to it.
Around the corner is the $1.1 million bridge project along Colechester Lane, which goes across the same waterway. That will be paid for during fiscal years 2014 and 2015, according to the capital-improvement plan the Palm Coast City Council talked about Tuesday.
"We need to rehab it or else you'll lose it and have to replace it," Landon said of the bridges listed in the 10-year plan.
Road expansions, or capacity improvements, also are on tap between now and fiscal year 2015, the biggest being the Palm Coast Parkway widening. That project will cost more than $7 million in fiscal year 2014 and another $3.6 million the following year.
The parkway expansion will include a 1.2-mile stretch of highway from Florida Park Drive to Cypress Point Parkway. The project will expand the parkway from four lanes to six and will include the bridge over Interstate 95. The design phase and the right-of-way property purchases have been completed. The City Council voted to purchase the land three weeks ago.
Other major road projects on tap during the next few years include the Old Kings Road extension, the Old Kings Road widening from Palm Coast Parkway to Forest Grove Drive and the Palm Harbor Parkway extension.
Recreation projects, to include everything from replacing lacrosse nets to installing cameras at public parks, also were listed in the 10-year plan.
The city has not made plans to build a new city hall, but a new sports complex and aquatic center remain a possibility beyond 2023, according to city officials.
The 10-year capital improvement plan will not be voted upon. Instead, it was designed to map out the city's future infrastructure plans and desires to the City Council.
"We tried to be consistent with our goals and strategies," Planning Manager Ray Tyner said. "We see this plan in the future to be a working document."


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Academic Capitalism
Richard Münch
Academic capitalism is a unique hybrid that unites the scientific search for truth and the economic maximization of profits. It turns universities into enterprises competing for capital accumulation and businesses into knowledge producers looking for new findings that can be turned into patents and profitable commodities. In order to understand what this new institutional setting means for science and the evolution of scientific knowledge, science as a field in a Bourdieusian perspective, which operates in the tension field between autonomy and heteronomy, is explored. On this basis, crucial features of academic capitalism and their impact on science as well as the evolution of scientific knowledge are described. Academic capitalism is located in the zone of the intersection of scientific research, economic profit maximization, and innovation policy. The institutional conflicts of interest involved in the corporate funding of academic research are addressed. The logic of academic capital accumulation is spelled out by describing the entrepreneurial university. Field effects of academic capital accumulation on science, namely over-investment at the top and under-investment among the rank and file, are examined, along with the organizational effects of academic capital accumulation in terms of managerial quality assurance on diversity and creativity as crucial prerequisites of advancing scientific knowledge. The main results of the analysis are summarized and some guidelines for future research are presented.
Civil War Termination
Caroline A. Hartzell
Civil wars typically have been terminated by a variety of means, including military victories, negotiated settlements and ceasefires, and "draws." Three very different historical trends in the means by which civil wars have ended can be identified for the post–World War II period. A number of explanations have been developed to account for those trends, some of which focus on international factors and others on national or actor-level variables. Efforts to explain why civil wars end as they do are considered important because one of the most contested issues among political scientists who study civil wars is how "best" to end a civil war if the goal is to achieve a stable peace. Several factors have contributed to this debate, among them conflicting results produced by various studies on this topic as well as different understandings of the concepts war termination, civil war resolution, peace-building, and stable peace.
Forgiveness and Ressentiment in the Age of Traumas
Nicolas Demertzis
Various therapeutic discourses on trauma claim that a successful working through of a traumatic experience amounts to forgiveness and the victim's reconciliation with the past. Recently, several voices have been raised against this claim, arguing that refusal to forgive is a sort of moral dignity, a defense of the victim's integral subjectivity, and a moral protest against the unjustifiable evils and wrongdoings the victim has suffered. Among the emotions the victim is left with after the traumatic experience and after the reluctance to forgive the perpetrators and get along with life are, of course, anger, hate, indignation, depression, humiliation, and shame. An additional and far more complex emotion that characterizes the posttraumatic experience is ressentiment.
Forgiveness and ressentiment are discussed as moral stances against evils and traumas. The basic tenets are: (1) the link between agency, forgiveness, and memory; (2) the moral nature of ressentiment as a Schelerean concept that parts company not only from resentment (qua moral indignation) but also from grudges and envy; (3) the dismembering of forgiveness and ressentiment premised not on the victim's resistance to dealing with the past (or moral hypermnesia), as is usually thought, but on the process of transvaluation inherent in ressentiment, which places forgiveness beyond the victim's hermeneutic horizon.
Gender and Religiosity in the United States
Mirya R. Holman and Erica Podrazik
Religiosity is a combination of public and private religious practices, beliefs, and experiences. While diversity exists in how religiosity is measured, three central components are consistent across the scholarship: organizational religious engagement, non-organizational religious activities, and subjective religiosity. To measure organizational religious engagement, scholars frequently look at church attendance and participation in congregational activities. Non-organizational religious activities include frequency of prayer, reading the Bible or other religious materials, or requesting others to pray for you. Subjective or intrinsic religiosity includes self-assessed religiousness (where respondents are asked, "How religious would you consider yourself?") or strength of affiliation, as well as specific beliefs, such as views of the afterlife, hell, and whether the Bible is the literal word of God.
Various groups express different levels of religiosity. One of the most well-documented and consistent group-based differences in religiosity is that women, including white women and women of color, are more religious than are men across religions, time, and countries. Women report higher rates of church attendance, engagement in religious practices (including prayer and reading the Bible), and more consistent and higher levels of religious interest, commitment, and engagement. Many explanations for these gaps in religiosity exist including differences in personality and risk aversion, gendered socialization patterns, and patriarchal structures within churches. Scholars have engaged in robust debates around the degree to which explanations like risk assessment or gender role theory can account for differences in religious behavior between men and women. Yet unresolved, these discussions provide opportunities to bring together scholarship and theories from religious studies, sociology, gender studies, psychology, and political science.
Religiosity shapes a variety of important political and social attitudes and behaviors, including political ideology and participation. The effects of religiosity on political attitudes are heterogeneous across men and women—for example, highly religious women and men are not equally conservative, nor do they equally oppose gay rights. The process by which religiosity shapes attitudes is also gendered; for example, the effects of women's religiosity on political attitudes and participation are mediated by gendered attitudes. And while religiosity increases political participation, the effects are not even for men and women, nor across all groups of women. Future research might examine the differing effects of religiosity on subgroups of men and women, including evaluations of how intersecting social categories like race, gender, and class shape both levels of religious engagement and the degree to which religiosity influences other political and social behavior.
Global Actors: Networks, Elites, and Institutions
Mikael Rask Madsen and Mikkel Jarle Christensen
Over the past several decades scholars have intensively debated what factors drive globalization. Answers have ranged from the emergence of the information society and the global economy to value-conflicts embedded in different civilizations. A different yet closely related question is who is driving globalization? That is, however, much less studied, even if it is arguably key to making global governance intelligible. A whole list of actors seem to offer possible answers to the question of who the globalizers are: Are they global institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) or the International Criminal Court (ICC); communities of experts providing technocratic solutions; transnational networks of activists seeking to alter global and national politics by pursuing, for example, environmental or human rights agendas; or are they powerful individuals forming transnational elites taking the fate of the global society in their hands at a safe distance from ordinary politics in places such as Brussels, New York, or Davos?
Intersectionality and Political Ambition
Shauna Lani Shames
Understanding political ambition in an intersectional way requires some familiarity with both subjects. Intersectionality is first explored as a concept and practice, and then the discussion turns to an explanation of political ambition (in multiple forms). In addition, intersectionality can be applied to the theory and research on political ambition, particularly in the context of candidate emergence.
Since Crenshaw's article, and especially after 2000, the term intersectionality and the concept that it defines have become a central part of women's, gender, and sexuality studies in academic circles and of feminist movement organizations in the real world. Although the term originally referred to the intersection of race with gender, it has expanded to include other forms of identity. The central metaphor for the concept as it has come to be used could be seen as the asterisk; each of us has a multiplicity of identities (race and gender, but also age, class, religion, sexual orientation, ability/disability, and more). The "self," or subject, lies at the intersection of these many axes of identity.
Difficulties continue to arise, however, in finding coherence in both theoretical and empirical works adopting an intersectional perspective. Should the concept be tied to its original understanding of the overlap between race and gender? Which race? With each additional axis of identity that we examine in a scholarly way, we gain specificity, but perhaps lose some generalizability. Taking into consideration all aspects of identity that define a whole person would be nearly impossible across any group. (Even a collection of young gay male Native Americans, say, would likely have all kind of differences that go far beyond their initial similarities.) Pushed to its logical extreme, the concept of intersectionality can threaten a feminist politics that seeks to take the "women" group as its subject.
Turning to women as political candidates, a growing number of studies examine gender and political ambition, particularly in the context of candidate emergence (with a smaller but also growing subset looking at a second type of political ambition, progressive, referring to the decision to run for higher office once someone is already in office.
Multiple works agree that women's initial and progressive political ambition are lower than their comparable male counterparts' levels, and such works give us valuable hypotheses and evidence about the reasons for this gender gap. Recent studies have begun to examine race as well as gender in order to perform studies of political ambition that are intersectional in approach and methodology, although these are limited in number, often due to the small numbers of women of color as candidates and elected officials. However, this article profiles some of the excellent work being done on this topic.
By first looking at previous thinking and empirical work on intersectionality, doing the same for political ambition, and then bringing together these two fields of study, this article addresses the theoretical and empirical issues involved in studying political ambition in an intersectional way. In particular, at this point in the study of political ambition, it is crucial that we see more studies examining the different types of identification that make up intersectionality, how they can fit together, and how this overlap can affect women's political ambition. Although this article is focused on American women, as they are the subject of much of the intersectionality and political ambition literature, this framework can be used more broadly by scholars studying women outside of the United States, who would certainly face many of the same challenges and questions.
Luhmann and Systems Theory
Mathias Albert
The German sociologist Niklas Luhmann has provided one of the most elaborate theories of society available, as well as numerous works on specific aspects of society. Commonly labeled as "systems theory," this is but a shorthand description of Luhmann's theory. In fact, the theory rests on at least three main theoretical pillars. In addition to systems theory, a theory of social evolution and a theory of social differentiation play important roles. The present article introduces these three pillars and describes Luhmann's theory of politics in this context. It outlines the crucial difference between a theory of politics as part of a theory of society on the one hand, and political theory as a reflective theory within the political system on the other hand. More specifically, it introduces Luhmann's accounts of the notions of "political power," "differentiation," "the state," "political steering," and "the self-description of the political system." The contribution concludes with some observations on the fact that Luhmann's theory has tended to overlook the dimension of international politics, but that his theory provides opportunities to account for it in innovative ways.
Marriage Equality Policy Diffusion
Helma G. E. de Vries-Jordan
Marriage equality movements have been successful in achieving policy change in an increasing number of states. Hence, a growing body of scholarship has explored institutional and cultural factors that influence activists' tactics and messaging and, in turn, contribute to marriage equality policy diffusion. Democracies with parliamentary, presidential, and semi-presidential systems, federal and unitary states with varying levels of centralization, and the presence or absence of constitutional anti-discrimination protections provide social movements with divergent political opportunity structures, contributing to dynamics in their tactical choices. In addition, the type of electoral system and party system, the presence of political parties that are movement allies, the use of conscience votes, the level of party discipline, the presence of out LGBT elected officials and straight political allies, and the degree of political will to enact policy change also impact activists' strategic calculations. Finally, the use of personalized narratives in advocates' messaging, the framing of marriage equality and LGBT rights as human rights norms, the adoption of family values frames to coopt opponents' messaging, and the use of homonationalist versus homophobic discourses to justify policymaking decisions regarding same-sex marriage are explored. This article provides a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art research concerning all of the states that have legalized same-sex marriage as well as a detailed analysis of the mechanisms used to achieve policy change. After examining how different explanatory factors perform in accounting for the dynamics in marriage equality activism and policy convergence across a broad range of national contexts, new directions for future scholarship are suggested.
Party Movements
Mildred A. Schwartz
Party movements are organizations that have attributes of both political parties and social movements. Like parties, they desire a voice in the decisions of legislative bodies. Like social movements, they challenge existing power and advocate change, often using non-institutionalized means for expressing their message. They appear in the space left open by the failure of existing political parties and social movements to adequately represent their interests and achieve their goals. They may become independent parties or work within existing parties. Party movements can be found in most political systems. Their impact is felt whenever they are able to introduce new issues onto the political agenda, force traditional political parties to take account of their grievances, or change the contours of the party system.
Political Representation: From Classical Research Traditions to Comparative Perspectives
Jean-Pascal Daloz
The literature on political representation is split between research traditions that have remained largely separate: a philosophical normative strand, a behavioralist one focusing mainly on the roles held by representatives, and a third, more distinctly sociological one concerned primarily with issues of representativeness. These classical perspectives have been extended through the introduction of new dimensions into the analysis. The normative tradition has thus been able to formulate novel questions by considering, for instance, issues relating to the representation of nonhuman species or of future generations. Present-day writings on political representation also depart from accepted premises by integrating additional infra-institutional forms of representation. Similarly, a postmodern vein of thought has drawn increased attention to the fluidity of the processes involved and a rather hybrid literature has emerged that combines empirical and normative ambitions. Despite claims by some analysts to have renewed approaches on the topic, there are not so much major theoretical innovations as developments relating to the dynamics of political representation itself in the contemporary era. It is important to realize that much of the analysis of political representation has been couched in very general terms and that the field itself suffers from a lack of serious comparative work. In this respect, more inductive explorations are needed into the perceptions of representation (too often reduced to mere constructivist mechanisms), the concrete logics of accountability, and the "theatrical" dimension of the relationship—in all of which there has been underinvestment by political scientists.
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Comprehensive DescriptionRead full entry
Taxonomy and Systematics
Mustelidae (weasels and relatives) is the largest family in the order Carnivora. Mustelids are found on every continent except Antarctica and Australia (although Ermine [Mustela erminea] and Least weasels [Mustela nivalis] were introduced by humans to New Zealand). Larivère and Jennings (2009) recognized 57 mustelid species in 22 genera, but noted that future research could result in this number changing.
There has been considerable uncertainty about the position of the mustelids in the carnivoran tree, as well as about phylogenetic relationships within the Mustelidae. With regard to the first question, although the skunks and stink badgers (family Mephitidae) were long considered a subfamily within the Mustelidae, several independent molecular phylogenetic studies have now established that Mephitidae represents a distinct lineage that is basal to a clade that includes the Ailuridae (Red Panda) basally and the Procyonidae (raccoons and relatives) and Mustelidae as sister taxa (Eizirik et al. 2010; Nyakatura and Bininda-Emonds 2012; Sato et al. 2012). Relationships within the Mustelidae are less well resolved, although there have been quite a few molecular genetic studies attempting to infer these relationships. Some results appear to be quite consistent among these studies, such as the position of the American Badger lineage, subfamily Taxidiinae (which includes just one extant species, Taxidea taxus), as the most basal mustelid lineage, and the relationship of the subfamilies Lutrinae (otters) and Mustelinae (weasels) as sister taxa (for review, see Yu et al. 2011 and references therein). Although the precise relationships among them are not entirely resolved, eight mustelid subfamilies are generally recognized (e.g., Koepfli et al. 2008; Larivère and Jennings 2009; Yu et al. 2011), with the following list of included genera and number of species from Larivère and Jennings (2009):
American Badger (1 species, Taxidea taxus, found from southern Canada and the midwestern United States south [west of the Mississippi River] to central Mexico). In contrast to the group-living European Badgers, American Badgers are solitary.
Honey Badger (1 species, Mellivora capensis, found across much of Africa, with the exception of most of North Africa, and in southwestern Asia).
Hog Badger (1 species, Arctonyx collaris, found in Southeast Asia). Helgen et al. (2008) recognized two additional Arctonyx species.
Eurasian badgers (Meles, 3 species, found in Europe and north-central and southeastern Asia). A 4th Meles species, formerly treated as a southwest Asian subspecies of the European Badger, was recognized by Del Cerro et al. (2010). All mustelids are solitary except for Eurasian badgers and some otter species.
Tayra (1 species, Eira barbara, found from Mexico south through Central America and much of South America north of Patagonia).
Wolverine (1 species, Gulo gulo, found across northern North America and northern Eurasia).
Martens and Fisher (Martes, 8 species; various species are found in North America, Europe, and Asia; in the 1950s, the Stone Marten [M. foina], of central and southern Europe and Asia, was accidentally introduced to Wisconsin in the United States, where it is now established at multiple localities). Larivère and Jennings (2009) noted that, in the context of recent data indicating that the genus Martes as currently formulated is paraphyletic unless the Fisher (M. pennanti) is excluded (Koepfli et al. 2008 and references therein), it has been proposed that the Fisher be placed in its own genus, Pekania.
Ferret-badgers (Melogale, 4 species, found in Southeast Asia).
Grisons (Galictis, 2 species, found in Central and South America). Bornholdt et al. (2013) confirmed and clarified the species delineations and geographic distributions within this genus.
Saharan Striped Polecat and Zorilla (Ictonyx, 2 species, found in Africa).
Marbled Polecat (Vormela peregusna, found in southeastern Europe and Central Asia).
African Striped Weasel (Poecilogale albinucha, found in southern Africa). Larivère and Jennings (2009) noted that, given recent data indicating that the African Striped Weasel is the sister taxon to the Zorilla (Ictonyx striatus) (Koepfli et al. 2008), it should probably be placed in the genus Ictonyx as well.
Giant Otter (Pteroneura brasiliensis, found in northern South America).
New World Otters (Lontra, 4 species, found in North, Central, and South America).
Sea Otter (Enhydra lutris, found in the coastal North Pacific Ocean).
Spotted-necked Otter (Hydrictis maculicollis, found across much of sub-Saharan Africa).
Old World Otters (Lutra, 2 species, found across much of Europe and Asia). Larivère and Jennings (2009) noted that the Japanese Otter is sometimes recognized as a distinct species, L. nippon, although they treated it as a subspecies of the Eurasian Otter (L. lutra).
African Clawless Otter and Asian Small-clawed Otter (Aonyx, 2 species, found across much of sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia). Larivère and Jennings (2009) note that a subspecies of the African Clawless Otter (A. capensis) is sometimes recognized as a distinct species, the Congo Clawless Otter (A. congicus). Aonyx otters feed on crabs and shellfish.
Smooth-coated Otter (Lutrogale perspicillata, from Southeast Asia).
Weasels, European Mink, and polecats (Mustela, 17 species, various species found across much of North America, Europe, and Asia; in Africa, the European Polecat [Mustela putorius] is present in Morocco and the Egyptian Weasel [Mustela subpalmata] is found in Egypt; Ermine [M. erminea] have been introduced to New Zealand and Least Weasels [M. nivalis] have been introduced to New Zealand, Malta, Crete, the Azores, and apparently São Tomé Island). The Domestic Ferret is believed to be descended from the European Polecat and is often referred to as M. putorius furo, but Steppe Polecats (M. eversamanii) may also be among the ancestors of the Domestic Ferret.
American Mink (Neovison vison, found across most of North America north of Mexico and introduced in China and Japan and widely in Europe). Based on new molecular phylogenetic studies, Harding and Smith (2009) concluded that the American Mink is closely related to several Mustela species and that together with the American Mink these should be segregated out from Mustela in a genus Vison. Although the American Mink and European Mink are morphologically and ecologically similar, molecular phylogenetic analyses indicate that they are not actually closely related within the subfamily Mustelinae.
Patagonian Weasel (Lyncodon patagonicus, found in western Argentina and central and southern Chile).
General Ecology
Morphology: Most mustelids are small to medium-sized carnivores with long bodies and short limbs (some, such as the Wolverine and badgers, have a stockier body shape). The Least Weasel, which is not only the smallest weasel but also the world's smallest carnivore, may weigh in at as little as 25 g when fully grown. Sexual size dimorphism in mustelids can be striking, with males often twice the size of females. The largest mustelid is the Sea Otter, which can reach 45 kg, and on land, the Wolverine, which can reach 18 kg. Mustelids have five toes on each foot and often strong claws. Their ears can be pointed forward or swiveled to the side, but not folded back.
The Ermine, Least Weasel, and Long-tailed Weasel (Mustela frenata) completely change their coats between summer and winter, with a dramatic change from brown to white in the northern parts of the range and at high elevations (in other areas, the summer coat is dark). Interestingly, Ermine and Long-tailed Weasels retain the black tail tip in the winter, which experiments have suggested may focus the attention of potential predators away from the body as a weasel makes its escape. Japanese Weasels (Mustela itatsi) replace their dark brown summer coat with a much paler yellowish one in the winter.
Habitat: Mustelids can be found in a great diversity of habitats, including marine (Marine Otter [Lontra felina] and Sea Otter), rivers (North American River Otter [Lontra canadensis] and Spotted-necked Otter), temperate forest (European Pine Marten [Martes martes] and American Marten [Martes americana]), dry open woodlands (African Striped Weasel), and grasslands (Black-footed Ferret [Mustela nigripes]). Some mustelids have very broad habitat preferences. For example, Ermine and Least Weasels can be found from grasslands to woodlands and Honey Badgers from forests to deserts.
Although most mustelids are terrestrial, their lifestyles are highly variable, ranging from fossorial (badgers--an American Badger can dig itself out of sight in just a few minutes), semi-fossorial (weasels and polecats), or semi-arboreal (martens) to semi-aquatic (mink and otters) or aquatic (Sea Otter and Marine Otter). River otters must actively swim to stay on the surface, but Sea Otters are so thoroughly aquatic they can drink seawater and can float passively on the surface thanks to their dense fur, which traps air and provides extra buoyancy.
Diet: Many mustelids have diverse diets, but animal prey is generally a major component of the diet—and mustelids must eat a lot to maintain their basal metabolism. If they are able to kill more than they need immediately, they may stash the surplus for later use in a rock crevice or burrow. In addition to killing their own food, some mustelids, such as Wolverines and Fishers, may also feed on carcasses of animals killed by other predators, such as wolves. Across much of their range, European Badgers rely heavily on earthworms, which can make up nearly two thirds of their diet, but at certain times of year and in certain places, fruit can make up the bulk of their diet—and they also feed on small vertebrates, acorns, roots, tubers, grass, and other foods.
During the 18th and 19th centuries Sea Otters were heavily hunted for their fur. Because Sea Otters prey on sea urchins, which in turn feed on algae, such as Giant Kelp, eliminating Sea Otters led to local increases in sea urchin populations and this in turn resulted in the loss of kelp beds as they were consumed by sea urchins. Thus, Sea Otters are a classic example of a "keystone species", i.e., a species whose impact on an ecological community is disproportionately large given its numbers and/or biomass.
Reproduction: Many mustelid species appear to be induced ovulators, with females shedding eggs from their ovaries only when stimulated by copulation. Some authors have speculated that the large baculum in the penis of the males of many mustelid species may serve to ensure sufficient stimulation of the cervix, triggering the release of a sequence of hormones that results in ovulation. Least weasels, the smallest mustelids, reach sexual maturity at three months; larger species such as Sea Otters, Giant Otters, and Wolverines reach sexual maturity at two years. Mustelid lifespans range from one to two years for the small weasels to up to 20 years for the largest mustelids.
Conservation Status
A close relative of the American Mink, the Sea Mink (Neovison macrodon), reportedly lived among rocks along ocean shores in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada, feeding mainly on fish, but little is known about this species since it was hunted heavily for its fur and was apparently extinct by the late 1800s, leaving no complete specimens behind. This is the only mustelid known to have been driven to extinction by humans, but a number of others are in trouble.
At the time of the review of the family Mustelidae by Larivère and Jennings (2009), the IUCN listed seven mustelid species as Endangered (Giant Otter, Marine Otter, Southern River Otter [Lontra provocax], Sea Otter, Hairy-nosed Otter [Lutra sumatrana], European Mink, and Black-footed Ferret); five as Vulnerable (Nilgiri Marten [Martes gwatkinsii], Marbled Polecat, Asian Small-clawed Otter [Aonyx cinereus], Smooth-coated Otter, and Colombian Weasel [Mustela felipei]); and four as Near Threatened (Hog Badger, Wolverine, Eurasian Otter, and Mountain Weasel [Mustela altaica]). Of the remaining species, 35 were listed as Least Concern and six as Data Deficient. In fact, so little is known about most mustelid species that reliable status assessments are difficult. The Colombian Weasel (Mustela felipei) was described only in 1978 (Izor and de la Torre 1978) and may be the rarest carnivore in South America (Ramírez-Chaves et al. 2012).
The Black-footed Ferret is a mustelid that came extremely close to extinction. Black-footed Ferrets were once common on the North American Great Plains, where they fed almost exclusively on prairie dogs. Unfortunately, the widespread destruction of prairie dog colonies led to a dramatic Black-footed Ferret decline to the point that the species was believed to be extinct, although unconfirmed sightings persisted. A tiny remnant population was rediscovered in Wyoming in 1981 when a dead individual was brought back by a dog. All wild individuals were brought into captivity for breeding and the species was listed as Extinct in the Wild for many years. Fortunately, intensive captive breeding and reintroduction efforts over many years have met with some limited success. Although the status of the species remains very precarious, the reintroductions have been sufficiently successful that in 2008 the IUCN changed the status of the species from Extinct in the Wild to Endangered.
Intensive trapping has seriously impacted populations of some mustelid species, such as the Fisher and American Marten, whose populations were severely reduced in many parts of their range in North America by the early 20th century. Fur trapping brought the Sea Otter to the brink of extinction by the early 20th century, but conservation efforts resulted in significant population rebounds in the latter part of the century.
Some other mustelids, such as the Sable (Martes zibellina) and American Mink, are still highly valued for their fur commercially and African Striped Weasel skins are used in traditional ceremonies in Africa. Although American Mink are still trapped in the wild, many millions are also bred on farms in the United States, Europe, and, more recently, China. The escape of American Mink from fur farms has resulted in the establishment of wild populations in Europe and Asia, which are believed to have negative consequences for competitors, such as European Mink, as well as for native prey, such as Water Voles in Britain. In New Zealand, Ermine and Least Weasels were introduced deliberately in the 1880s in an effort to reduce populations of introduced European Rabbits. Ermine have thrived, not only feeding on rabbits but also devastating local fauna, especially flightless birds. Today, Ermine are present in virtually all forested areas in New Zealand, although Least weasels are rare, presumably due to the scarcity of the smaller prey on which they specialize (voles are absent and feral House Mice are the only rodents smaller than 50 g).
Mustelids are hunted for food in some parts of the world, although they are more often taken incidentally (antelopes, deer, pigs, and primates being the most sought after targets). In Guinea, for example, where there is significant sale and consumption of bushmeat, Honey Badger and Spotted-necked Otter are among the species sold. Some mustelids, such as otters, are captured for the illegal international pet trade or for body parts for use in traditional medicine in China and elsewhere.
As with most species, the greatest threat faced by mustelids is generally habitat degradation, fragmentation, and destruction, although hunting poses a major threat to some species, such as the Neotropical Otter (Lontra longicaudis), which is heavily hunted for its pelts, and other threats may be important for particular species.
(Larivère and Jennings 2009 and references therein)


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Xóchitl Ysabela Tafoya, violinist/violist and member of the 4th class of Sistema Fellows, is immersing herself in YOURS this week and is guest blogging, sharing her experiences below:
This past week I conducted my fieldwork/residency at The YOURS (Youth Orchestras United Rita Sima) Project in Chicago, a Sistema inspired program supported by the People's Music School. Former Sistema fellow and Program Director, Albert Oppenheimer, has been absolutely wonderful at showing me around The YOURS Project and the great El Sistema-inspired values that they actively apply with their students, community and parents.
While at The YOURS Project, I was able to observe the YOURS String Orchestra sectional with intern teaching artist Annarita, from Loyola, preparing Vivaldi's Concerto for Four Violins. I remember being the same age as these YOURS musicians playing this piece and loving it! Good music is good music!
A HA moment # 1:
During my observations, Annarita asked the ensemble if they wanted to rehearse the piece regardless of some soloists being absent. With soloists missing, several string players were eager and excited to play this piece, and energetically volunteered to play the solo part. Instantly, seating order was rearranged, friends shared music and the piece began! YOURS students filled in where necessary, sight-reading solo parts and playing through this brilliant piece! These students loved this piece and more importantly loved playing together because they stepped in where necessary for the sake of the whole group. For them, it was about the music, creating something beautiful that they could all enjoy and be a part of something together! The YOURS project is not only developing great musical excellence, but also supporting and nurturing flexible and well rounded musicians who are actively challenged as both orchestra members and soloists.
Reflecting on my own musical experience as a junior high school student, I was never in a group where the orchestra members were valued as soloists. The flexibility of everyone being both a soloist and orchestra member was not fostered at the early stages of my musical education. But to witness the depth and significance of these YOURS string players being so versatile was inspirational. These "fill-in" musicians were supported and encouraged to take a shot at being a soloist. It did not matter if the playing was perfect. These musicians were united playing Vivaldi because it's beautiful and good music, but more importantly, they were having fun!
A HA Moment #2
The second A HA moment came about during the same rehearsal of a fugue like entrance where each string section enters at different times. It is a tricky entrance for students to count in. I even remember it was tricky for me when I learned this piece. Annarita did a great job rehearsing this difficult entrance and having students understand what a fugue was. The ensemble rehearsed and rehearsed with intensity, effectiveness and focus. Finally, in one magical moment, each section nailed their entrance and the fugue was created. Magic!!!
Not only did the string players beam, but Annarita could not contain herself and jumped up and down with joy and bliss that everyone started laughing and beaming from ear to ear. It was clear that the students heightened engagement combined with Annarita's musical bliss deepened the meaning and value for these young musicians.
After rehearsal, I congratulated Annarita on the success of that tricky entrance. It was great to see the students laughing while playing and sometimes unfortunately shocking to see this during a Vivaldi piece. I asked Annarita how she felt during that magical moment of the ensemble mastery during that tricky Vivaldi entrance. She replied to me, "it was really better than flirting with a boy. I cant wait to do it again!" I knew exactly what she was talking about.
-Xóxhitl Ysabela Tafoya


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It's past midnight in the dim telescope control room, but Dominique Naef's day has suddenly brightened. He twitches his computer cursor over a wavy line. "I like it," the Swiss astronomer says, beaming. "I like it a lot. Wow."
Fifty light-years away in the night sky, a star like our sun is doing a stately dance, stepping toward Earth and away again. From the La Silla Observatory in the mountains of Chile, Naef and his colleagues have stolen glimpses of the dance for months. But for much of that time their view was blocked by clouds, a foot of snow, and, this August night—midwinter in Chile—humidity so high that the telescope dome had to be shut to keep out frost. Earlier in the evening, between cups of espresso and cigarette breaks, Naef gloomily eyed a display of weather data. He feared another lost night.
Then the humidity dropped, and the telescope operator gave the go-ahead. Naef and Christoph Mordasini, a graduate student from Bern, huddled at their screens. They captured one more reading of the star's motion before, minutes later, the humidity shot up again and the operator called a halt for the night.
It's just another glimpse, but it's enough to turn a suspicion into a near certainty. The excited jiggle of Naef's cursor shows that the reading has fallen just where it should if an unseen planet is tugging the star to and fro. The next day the team leader, veteran planet hunter Michel Mayor of the University of Geneva, decides that it's time to announce the discovery. If it stands up to the scrutiny of other scientists, this planet, around a star called Mu Arae, will be a milestone in the quest for another Earth.
When Mayor and another colleague, Didier Queloz, found the first planet around another sunlike star a decade ago, it was a stunning feat. By now, astronomers tracking the wobbles of nearby stars have detected more than 130 alien planets. It's a strange harvest: gas-shrouded giants, mostly hundreds of times more massive than Earth, some in weirdly elongated orbits and others so close to their star that they circle it in days or even hours. But Mu Arae's planet, and two others reported at about the same time by U.S. groups, are far smaller than their predecessors and could be made largely of rock. With their discovery, the planet hunt has taken a turn toward the familiar.
These new planets are still no place for life as we know it. The planet around Mu Arae weighs at least 14 times as much as Earth—"an Earth on steroids," says one astronomer. It is scorchingly close to its star, completing an orbit every 9.5 days. But astronomers are convinced they will soon be finding solar systems where small, temperate planets like Earth could form and where some kind of life might flourish. "We're really on the doorstep of seeing systems like ours," says Debra Fischer of San Francisco State University, a member of the U.S. team that has found more than half the planets.
What they'll pick up first, they believe, are hints of giant planets in circular orbits far from their sun, like Jupiter—bodies that astronomers believe would raise the odds of Earthlike planets forming and surviving closer to the same star. The next step is actually taking a picture of an alien planet. At labs and mountaintop domes, engineers are at work on technologies capable of recording a planet's meager glow next to the glare of its sun. From the ground this optical wizardry could see a Jupiter-size planet. In space, aboard a multibillion-dollar mission called the Terrestrial Planet Finder that's scheduled to fly in a decade or so, it could pick up the light of a planet no bigger than Earth.
It's hard to overstate the excitement scientists feel at the prospect of seeing that faint blue dot. If it told of a watery, temperate place, humanity would face a 21st-century version of Copernicus's realization nearly 500 years ago that the Earth is not the center of the solar system. The discovery would show "that we're not in a special place, that we might be part of a continuum of life in the cosmos, and that life might be very common," says Michael Meyer, an astronomer at the University of Arizona. "To find oxygen, ozone, to see variations [in brightness] due to continents—that would be really exciting," says Sara Seager of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who is developing techniques for interpreting that first glimpse of an Earthlike planet. "That's why I work so hard every day. Because that's what I want. I want to find that."
None of this would be happening if not for the winter nights that Didier Queloz, then a Ph.D. student at the University of Geneva, spent a decade ago at a telescope high on a plateau in southern France. Queloz and his mentor, Michel Mayor, were searching for hints of companions to nearby stars. They hoped to find dim, failed stars called brown dwarfs. But they were also trying their luck in a game that had disappointed many other astronomers before them: hunting for alien planets.
Their strategy was to break the light of each star into all its colors, producing a spectrum, banded with dark lines like a bar code. Each dark line indicates a wavelength of light soaked up by gases at the star's surface. If the star is moving toward or away from Earth, the lines shift to slightly shorter or longer wavelengths. It's the same effect you hear in an ambulance siren: As it approaches, the sound waves are squeezed to shorter wavelengths, raising the siren's pitch; after it races by, the sound is stretched out and its pitch drops. A rhythmic wavelength shift in a star's spectrum, back and forth, can mean that the star is heading toward us, then away. Something massive must be orbiting it, tugging it this way and that. The extent of the shift is a rough gauge of the object's mass, and the timing tells how long it takes to complete an orbit.
"The principle is simple," says Mayor, "but the devil is in the details." The telltale shift in the lines can be minuscule—no more than the width of a dozen or so atoms on a detector, for planets as small as his group's latest prize.
Back in 1994 astronomers also believed that it would take years, maybe decades, to see a star moving under the spell of a planet. The only planets able to yank their star fast enough to register on the instruments of the day would be the mass of Jupiter or more—hundreds of times heavier than Earth. And theorists believed that, like Jupiter, giant planets would only be found far from their stars in orbits taking years to complete.
To Queloz's astonishment, one of the stars he watched that winter was rocking back and forth every 4.2 days. It could have been a fluke, but just maybe it was a planet half the mass of Jupiter in an orbit no one thought possible—so close that the planet was practically skimming its parent star. With Mayor's encouragement, Queloz stuck with it, building up data until he was sure. "Maybe it was intuition, maybe it was luck," he says. "Maybe it was because I was young and naive."
Some astronomers thought the planet, called 51 Peg b for its parent star in the constellation Pegasus, was too bizarre to be real. But it turned out to be the first of an avalanche. After Mayor and Queloz announced it in the fall of 1995, other planet hunters who had come up empty took another look at their data, alert for fastpaced wobbles. They also expanded their search to hundreds of other nearby stars. More giants quickly turned up, some in searingly close orbits—"roasters," as some astronomers now call them—and others careering near and far with each orbit, on wildly eccentric, or oblong, paths.
These discoveries told of planetary turmoil—giants swept from remote birthplaces into hot, close orbits, and planetary siblings playing gravitational tug-of-war until one was flung into deep space. As Greg Laughlin, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, says, "We're seeing the staggered, surviving remnants of systems that went berserk early in their history."
A few roaster planets have even been glimpsed more directly when they transit their star, crossing its face and dimming its light like a beetle crawling across a lamp. In the early years, skeptics argued that something other than planets might explain why the stars appeared to wobble. "The first transiting planet killed that idea," says David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, one of the planet's discoverers.
Found in 1999 orbiting a star named HD 209458, that first transiting planet also gave astronomers their first reading of an alien planet's dimensions. Although lighter than Jupiter, this one is bloated to a diameter 35 percent greater. Subtle color changes as starlight shines through the planet's heat-swollen atmosphere are also yielding hints about what this alien world is made of—hydrogen, helium, and sodium, for starters—as well as signs that it is slowly evaporating in the heat. All in all, says Laughlin, "it's a bonanza if you can find a planet transiting a bright star." So astronomers are eager to find more. A group including Charbonneau has set up a network of small telescopes that scan thousands of stars night after night, watching for any transits—and recently detected another giant planet crossing the face of its star.
Roasters and eccentric giants are nothing like the planets we know, and the gravitational tug of these rampaging giants could threaten the survival of Earthlike planets. Yet planetary scientist Jonathan Lunine, flashing computer models of planet formation on a monitor in his University of Arizona office, isn't dismayed by these freakish worlds. "They're common in the best possible way," he says. "They're common enough that it looks like planet formation is a normal process." But they're not so common that solar systems like our own, where Earths can coexist with giants that move in wide, circular orbits like Jupiter's, won't turn up. So far, astronomers have found planets around only about 10 percent of the sunlike stars they've inspected. That leaves plenty of room to find alien Jupiters as searches become more sensitive.
Computer models by Lunine's colleagues show why that matters: Jupiters help Earths take shape. In the disk of gas and dust that surrounds a newborn sun, giant planets are thought to form first, in a million years or so. The leftovers provide the raw material for smaller planets. Dust clumps together into gravel, gravel to rocks, and rocks to hundreds of planetary embryos about the size of Earth's moon. But then the process grinds to a stop, at least in most computer models, because the embryos stay in tidy circular orbits like freeway drivers keeping to their lanes. They don't smash into each other, so they don't grow.
"That's where Jupiter comes in," says Lunine. With its powerful gravity, "Jjupiter is going to gradually pull on them and make their orbits more eccentric." he clicks through a few screen images, leapfrogging through tens of millions of years. Frame by frame a Jupiter's influence churns an orderly set of embryos into an unruly, colliding swarm. A handful of Earth- and Mars-size planets take shape in the turmoil.
Jupiter bestows a second blessing, the computer models show. At an Earthlike distance from a young star, the disk is too hot for water to survive in the planet-forming material, leaving any planet embryos bone-dry. The newborn planetary system's water would be locked up in icy embryos several times farther out—too cold for life. But a Jupiter would cause distant embryos to veer inward toward the star, delivering a generous splash of water to any newborn planets they collide with. On Lunine's computer the planet embryos at an Earthlike distance start out red, for dry. As Jupiter stirs the pot and the embryos give way to full-fledged planets, the color shirts to blue or green—sopping wet.
Later on, Lunine and others believe, Jupiters would act as bodyguards for these small, watery worlds. In a newborn planetary system, chunks of leftover rock and ice big enough to devastate an Earth would probably be on the loose for hundreds of millions of years. In our solar system,—Jupiter helped clean up the neighborhood. With its powerful gravity, it took hits from some of the troublemakers, flung some into deep space or the sun, and herded most others into the asteroid belt. The result is a protected zone where Earth survives.
So the road to another Earth, it seems, leads through another Jupiter. But detecting the wobble that would reveal a Jupiter means monitoring a star for a decade or more, while the giant completes its stately orbit.
By now, the wobble-watchers have been at it for long enough to be getting close. Last year a group led by Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington reported a giant with a nearly circular, six-year orbit, about half the size of Jupiter's. Butler and his colleagues, including Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, and Debra Fischer, may be just a few measurements away from announcing the real thing. "They probably have several very beautiful true Jupiter analogues in their data, and they're just waiting to get more data so they're really sure," says Laughlin.
There ought to be a more direct way to find these Jupiters: Take a picture of one through an extraordinarily powerful telescope. But that means finding some way to vanquish the glare of the star.
In a workshop under the bleachers of the University of Arizona's football stadium in Tucson, a telescope mirror the size of a small skating rink rests in a cradle. Frosty white and sightless, it's in the midst of three months of grinding, as a diamond-coated wheel carves the 27.5-foot (8.4-meter) expanse into a near-perfect shape for final polishing. When it's done, it will be trucked to the summit of Mount Graham, 70 miles (112.7 kilometers) to the northeast, joining an already completed twin. There the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) is taking form. Starting in 2006, its dual mirrors will peer into space side-by-side like the saucer eyes of an owl, looking for Jupiters.
Sheer size will allow the LBT to see fainter objects than all but a handful of other telescopes in the world. But the real trick is the twin mirrors, which open the way to a feat of optical alchemy that can transmute starlight to total darkness.
That feat, called nulling interferometry, relies on the fact that light waves have crests and troughs, just like waves on water. By precisely aligning the light waves gathered by the two mirrors from a particular point in the sky, astronomers can overlap the wave crests from one mirror with the troughs from the other so that the light simply cancels out. Noise-canceling headphones use the same principle to deaden sound waves; with light, the result is a patch of darkness.
For this scheme to succeed, the light beams have to be guided and merged with exquisite precision. The payoff: blotting out the light of a star so that a giant planet, hundreds of thousands of times fainter and only a hairbreadth away on the sky, can be seen.
Even then the LBT probably couldn't see an exact counterpart of our Jupiter, dimly lighted by its distant sun. To be visible to an earthbound telescope, an alien Jupiter would have to be several times bigger or much younger—say half a billion years old instead of nearly five. Still warm from its violent birth, a young Jupiter would glow in infrared light, like a distant heat lamp.
Nulling has plenty of rivals as a Jupiter-finding tool. "This is a technical arms race," says Laird Close of the University of Arizona, who is pursuing a different approach. Working with telescopes in Arizona and Chile, he is exploiting subtle color differences between a star and a young Jupiter. With the right filters, he hopes to dim the star and make any planet pop out. Ben R. Oppenheimer of the American Museum of Natural History is trying something else. He has fitted a telescope on Maui with a set of precisely sized masks that physically block the starlight. "It's all just about deleting that star," he says.
None of this star subtraction would be possible without adaptive optics—a means of sharpening telescope images. In a perfect image a star would appear as a crisp point that could be neatly deleted, or just ignored, by astronomers searching for planets next to it. Instead, even the best earthbound telescopes ordinarily see a star as a fat smudge. Earth's atmosphere is the culprit: In the last few miles of light's journey from star to telescope, air turbulence scrambles and distorts it. Adaptive optics measures the scrambling with a special sensor, then sends the information to a flexible mirror that deforms and undulates many times a second—a frenetic funhouse mirror—to tidy up the image of the star.
Most of the world's big telescopes are already equipped with adaptive optics, and some planet hunters are trying their luck on existing systems, without any other tricks to mask out the star. A very young, red-hot giant planet just might be visible if it orbited at least ten times farther out than Jupiter. Even that "is sort of a long shot," admits Bruce Macintosh, an adaptive optics expert at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who is carrying out his search at the giant Keck II telescope on Hawaii.
A group at the Very Large Telescope in Chile has already glimpsed what may be a newborn giant planet near a dim brown dwarf. But it would be harder to spot such a planet in the glare of a normal star. Macintosh says that after examining a hundred stars, "we have candidates"—faint spots that might be a planet but could also be a star in the background—"but nothing I would describe as an obvious smoking gun."
Macintosh and others are working on a new version of adaptive optics that could deliver smoking guns by the dozen. Called extreme adaptive optics, it would replace the hundreds of tiny pistons that reshape current flexible mirrors with thousands of smaller ones, and correct the light not hundreds but thousands of times a second. "That would get us a bunch of real planets," Macintosh says—hot young Jupiters at a Jupiter's distance. Each one would mark its star as a place to look for Earthlike planets once the search begins in earnest.
Some astronomers aren't waiting until planets as small as Earth are in reach. They're hoping that current tools will reveal worlds that might be habitable, although quite unlike our home. That's one mission of HARPS, the instrument responsible for the Swiss team's latest discovery. Its lair is inside the concrete base of a telescope dome at La Silla.
Outside is the daytime brilliance of northern Chile's mountainous desert. Inside, darkened corridors lead to a door that Michel Mayor opens with a magnetic card. Behind it is another door, massively padlocked. Mayor, proud father of HARPS, has no key. At the moment, no one on the mountain does. "People will say we are completely crazy—that we believe it is a Swiss bank," he jokes. In fact, the way is barred because it would be all too easy to perturb the exquisite temperature control, high vacuum, and optical stability that allow HARPS to sift starlight for hints of planets smaller than any yet detected.
Silvery optical fibers snake into the innermost room, carrying starlight from the 3.6-meter (11.8-foot) telescope above. HARPS, sealed in a ten-foot-long (3.1-meter-long) vacuum tank, splits the light into a spectrum and monitors thousands of lines for wobbles. It's the same strategy that has yielded nearly all the planets found to date. But HARPS, up and running since late 2003, brings many times more precision to the task than Mayor's earlier instruments—precision enough to tell when a star tens of light-years away is moving toward or away from Earth at a speed no greater than a walk.
That sensitivity was key to glimpsing the Mu Arae planet, so small it exerts only a feeble tug on its star. It just might allow HARPS to detect similar planets—say 20 times Earth's mass, or roughly the mass of Neptune—in orbits the size of Earth's. No one knows what such worlds would be like, but planets like Mu Arae's have raised hopes that they exist. The Neptune we know is a ball of ice and rock near the edge of the solar system, but a similar planet closer to its star might resemble an oversize version of Earth, with a rock surface. Or it might have an ocean hundreds of miles deep. "We can dream," says Queloz.
So can Mayor and Queloz's competitors. Weeks before the Swiss team was sure of the Mu Arae discovery, two U.S. groups had quietly firmed up the case for other small worlds. Barbara McArthur of the University of Texas's McDonald Observatory found a planet weighing as little as 14 Earth masses—as small as the Mu Arae find—racing around the star 55 Cancri every 2.8 days. Paul Butler and his colleagues added their own bantamweight, at 21 Earths. Now, at the Lick Observatory near San Jose, California, their group is building a special-purpose telescope aimed at finding Neptune-size worlds far enough from their star to be habitable.
Robotically controlled for efficiency, the 2.4-meter (7.9-foot) Automated Planet Finder will capture every glimmer of starlight with mirrors plated with silver instead of the usual aluminum. Next year Debra Fischer will set it to work inspecting a hundred stars night after night for hints of worlds compact enough that they just might host life on a solid surface or in a deep ocean.
A planet as small as our own, however, will remain out of reach for both teams. That's because stars pulse and roil, creating surface motions that would make it impossible to detect a star's tiny drift—barely a crawl—under the spell of an Earth. But there are other ways to parse starlight for hints of real Earths.
Forty years ago William Borucki helped design heat shields for the Apollo moon missions. Not far from his office at NASA's Ames Research Center near San Jose, parachutes for the Mars landings in January were tested in the silvery wind tunnels that run between buildings like oversize air ducts. But Borucki's ambitions have vaulted far beyond the solar system. At an age when many people think about retirement, he's planning a four-year, 400-million-dollar space mission to hunt for Earth-size planets. "This is really pure exploration," he says. "This is sending the Nina and Pinta out to see how many dragons there are on your way to India." Borucki's vessel is Kepler, a space telescope half the size of the Hubble but designed for the single purpose of planet finding. To be launched in 2007, it won't capture light from other Earths. Instead, from a vantage far beyond the moon, it will chase their shadows. Like the astronomers watching from the ground for giant planets crossing the face of their stars, Kepler will watch 100,000 stars in a broad patch of sky—as wide as two hands held at arm's length, says Borucki—for a dimming that signals a planet the size of Earth, or even smaller. "I'm looking for this dip that repeats, and repeats exactly," he says.
The dip due to an Earth would be so tiny—less than one part in 10,000—that it could be seen only from space. Even then more than 99 of every 100 Earths would elude Kepler, because it will be able to detect only the half a percent that have orbits aligned so they pass directly in front of their stars. Spacecraft vibration and "sunspots" on the target stars could throw off the brightness measurements. But Borucki is confident in his instrument. The real uncertainty, he says, is "whether there are no Earths at all or tens of thousands" around the stars Kepler will watch.
He's quick to add that everything astronomers have learned about giant planets so far suggests these smaller siblings are out there too. By 2011 or so he expects Kepler to have detected a few dozen Earth- or Mars-size planets set just far enough from their stars to be comfortable for life. The shadows won't say much about what these worlds are like. But the flicker of distant Earths would galvanize the next step in the quest: actually capturing their light.
"That's a hard, challenging technology problem," says Charles Beichman, the project scientist for the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) mission. He's putting it mildly. Seeing alien Jupiters is proving hard enough, and a planet as small as Earth would be far more elusive, snuggled right next to a star shining ten million to ten billion times brighter, with an unknown amount of interplanetary dust adding its own distracting glow. Earth hunters like Beichman compare the challenge to that of seeing a firefly hovering next to a lighthouse searchlight 3,000 miles (4,828 kilometers) away—with a little fog rolling in.
The key is to blot out the lighthouse while leaving a clear view of the firefly. The project can draw on the technology already being tested for spotting Jupiters from the ground. But the stakes are vastly higher, because TPF will cost so much—upwards of a billion dollars—and generate so much anticipation. "You'd like not to have zero [Earths]," says Beichman, adding wryly, "Zero is a bad number, because you get called up in front of Congress and asked how come you spent a billion dollars and didn't find anything."
For now his team is betting on a pair of technologies. First to fly, in 2014, would be a single telescope, with a mirror perhaps 21 feet (6.4 meters) across and clever masks to banish starlight from the spot where a planet might appear. A nulling interferometer—multiple smaller infrared telescopes that merge light to create an optical dead zone blocking the star—would follow by 2020.
A possible joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency, the interferometer telescopes would fly independently, in a small fleet trading light beams. Free-flying telescopes could fan out across hundreds of feet, sharpening their combined view. But keeping them in near-perfect formation so that their beams mesh precisely would add to the technology challenges.
How masks, nulling, and other tools perform in the ground-based Jupiter hunt will help the TPF team refine their plans. Kepler's discoveries will feed into the planning as well: Knowing how common Earth-size planets are will help scientists decide how many stars to inspect.
By the time TPF is launched, astronomers should also have an idea which stars are the best prospects. As early as 2009 NASA hopes to launch another ambitious mission, called the Space Interferometry Mission, or SIM. SIM, like one version of TPF, is an interferometer—a set of small telescopes, in this case mounted on a single spacecraft. The 900-million-dollar mission is not designed to see an Earth directly but to monitor the positions of thousands of stars with painstaking precision. "Picture an astronaut on the moon holding a nickel edge on," says Stephen Edberg, a SIM scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. SIM should be able to pick up a change in a star's position on the sky no greater than that nickel's thickness.
Suppose SIM sees a nearby star sidling back and forth by that tiny amount over many months. Like the oscillations that planet hunters watch from the ground, this subtle shimmy would imply an unseen dance partner—a planet that might be only a little bigger than our own. That star would be a prime target for TPF. "If SIM can detect a planet," says JPL's Michael Shao, the project scientist, "it can tell TPF when and where to look" for the light of an Earth.
If TPF does see that faint point of light, scientists will wring every bit of information they can from it. They'll want to learn whether that distant world has an atmosphere and a surface anything like Earth's̵which means knowing what our own planet would look like if its light were reduced to a single point.
One clue, says Nick Woolf of the University of Arizona, comes from the pale glow seen on the dark part of a crescent moon. Called Earthshine, it's sunlight reflected from Earth onto the moon's rough surface and then back again. Earthshine is a jumble of light from our atmosphere, clouds, oceans, and continents, just as the faint light from an alien Earth would combine light from all of its surface features and atmosphere.
Woolf and others have found they can unscramble Earthshine to see the imprint of gases in our atmosphere, the color of the oceans, and the blue of the sky. They can even discern a signature of vegetation called the red edge: a jump in brightness at the boundary between red light—which plants absorb—and infrared, which they reflect.
The shine from another Earth could be millions of times fainter, and would be far less informative, at least to a first generation planet finder. But if that far-off world has an atmosphere like ours, TPF should be able to see signs such as carbon dioxide and water vapor. If the atmosphere is rich in oxygen or its chemical cousin, ozone, TPF should detect it. And that would be an epochal discovery. As astrobiologist Vikki Meadows of JPL explains, "That would give us a good clue that something funny is going on, because we don't think we can create large amounts of oxygen without life."
The gas's source might be just a green tinge in an otherworldly ocean, or a crust of microbes on alien soil. But that first inkling of life across the light-years would amount to a curl of smoke on the horizon, a first hint that the universe may not be as lonely as it has seemed. Nick Woolf is 72, a mentor to a new generation of astrobiologists. When he began working on concepts for an Earth finder nearly 20 years ago, worlds beyond our own were no more than a dream. "Now," he says, "finally there has come a chance to really see what's out there."


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They are plays, but they were not written for the theater.
They have intricate choreography, but they're not musicals.
They were not meant to be viewed, but you can see them at Theatre at Arts Garage.
The Delray Beach performance space recently announced a new "Arts Garage Radio Theatre" series that will begin Aug. 15 with "A Star Is Born."
"Scripts adapted from classic movies during the heyday of radio will be performed live, with performers utilizing specially designed sound-effect devices, providing a nostalgic trip to the past with a modern twist," says Lou Tyrrell, artistic director of Theatre at Arts Garage. "From Orson Welles and the thrilling Mercury Theatre broadcasts of the 1930s to Guy Noir and the hilarity of 'A Prairie Home Companion,' the radio play has been one of America's most beloved art forms."
The shows will continue through this year and into 2014 with "It's a Wonderful Life" on Dec. 12, "Casablanca" on Feb. 6 and "Sunset Boulevard" on April 3.
The radio plays will be produced by John Watts, executive director of Boynton Beach-based ArtsRadioNetwork.com. Previously, he staged Welles' notorious "War of the Worlds" at the Delray Beach Playhouse and the Caldwell Theatre in Boca Raton (soon to be rechristened the Wick Theatre). As part of the ArtSmart program in 2007, Watts did a series of radio plays — "Dracula," "Treasure Island," and "A Tale of Two Cities" — at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach that were simulcast on WXEL-FM.
"That really sold me on doing this," Watts says. "No one else is doing this in South Florida. The problem is that it's a big commitment, financially and with time. The Arts Garage has done that. They've committed."
Watts says he used scripts from the Mercury Theatre and the Lux Radio Theatre, which was also broadcast during the 1930s.
"I always wanted to do dramatic plays, and I'm not sure why," he says. "It was really hard to figure out what plays to do. I knew I wanted to do really well-known plays … to show [the audience] a different version of the same story they already know so well. They get to see 'A Star Is Born' and 'Casablanca' literally right in their face. They get to see how it's all orchestrated. It's a totally different experience with the choreography … even though there's no stage blocking."
Watts continues: "What's different is that the cast has the scripts in their hand, and they step up to the microphones, and there are special sound effects. The sound effects are another character, like another actor. And like in comedy, timing is everything."
A Star Is Born
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday Aug. 15
Where: Arts Garage, 180 N.E. First St., Delray Beach
Cost: $15 in advance, $20 at the door
Contact: 561-450-6457 or ArtsGarage.com.


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Game Leaders
Team Stats
Passing Yards
Rushing Yards
Time of Poss.
The Illinois College football team rolled up over 550 yards of total offense en route to a 48-35 win over Lake Forest College on Saturday as Michael Bates, Matt Williamson and Cecil Brimmage turned in strong performances.
Bates completed 27-of-40 passes for 340 yards and two touchdowns, while adding 69 yards on the ground. Williamson tallied just 20 yards rushing, but found the end zone four times. Brimmage chipped in 118 yards rushing and a touchdown to go along with four catches for 25 yards and another score.
IC (3-0, 2-0 MWC) gained 552 yards of total offense, thanks to its best rushing output of the season. The Blueboys' passing game was also on point as Bates found eight different receivers. Brock Thompson led the way with nine catches for 100 yards. Colin Duling added five catches for 67 yards and a touchdown.
Brothers Jake DeFauw (10 tackles) and Dylan DeFauw (7 tackles, 2 break ups) led the IC defense. Willie Barefield added seven tackles. Mitch Brasher was 4-of-5 on extra point kicks.
Illinois College is 3-0 for the first time since 2004, when the team started 4-0. The 2011 Blueboys will have a chance to match that when they host Monmouth College next Saturday at 1 p.m.


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Expedia-Verified Reviews
Don't miss out on a lower price on this hotel
Get an overview of this hotelLuxury Barcelona hotel in Eixample, walk to Palau de la Musica Catalana
Popular property highlights
Located in Eixample, this luxury hotel is within a 10-minute walk of Casa Calvet, Palau de la Musica Catalana, and Placa de Catalunya. Casa Batllo and Arc de Triomf are also within 15 minutes. Urquinaona Station is only a 5-minute walk and Tetuan Station is 5 minutes.
Hotel Features
Along with 2 restaurants, this smoke-free hotel has a full-service spa and an outdoor pool. WiFi in public areas is free. Additionally, a 24-hour fitness center, a bar/lounge, and a poolside bar are onsite.
Room Amenities
All 120 soundproofed rooms provide free WiFi, free wired Internet, and 24-hour room service. Comforts include premium bedding and pillow menus, and guests will also appreciate thoughtful touches like bathrobes and slippers.
Languages Spoken
- English
Hotel Amenities
Hotel Amenities
In addition to a full-service spa, El Palace features an outdoor pool and a 24-hour fitness center. Dining is available at one of the hotel's 2 restaurants. Guests can unwind with a drink at one of the hotel's bars, which include a poolside bar and a bar/lounge. Wired and wireless Internet access is complimentary.
Business-related amenities at this 5-star property consist of a 24-hour business center and meeting rooms. This luxury hotel also offers a terrace, tour/ticket assistance, and multilingual staff. Parking is available onsite for a surcharge.
El Palace is a smoke-free property.
- Bar/lounge
- Elevator/lift
- Full-service spa
- 24-hour front desk
- Poolside bar
- Porter/bellhop
- Tours/ticket assistance
- Meeting rooms 6
- Dry cleaning/laundry service
- Free WiFi
- Babysitting or childcare (surcharge)
- Free wired Internet
- Valet parking (surcharge)
- Outdoor pool
- Smoke-free property
- Safe-deposit box at front desk
- Terrace
- Luggage storage
- Breakfast available (surcharge)
- Number of restaurants - 2
- 24-hour business center
- Concierge services
- Total number of rooms - 120
- 24-hour fitness facilities
- Television in common areas
- Wedding services
- Garden
- Multilingual staff
- Free newspapers in lobby
Family Friendly Amenities
- Outdoor pool
- Free Wi-Fi
- Soundproofed rooms
- Babysitting or childcare (surcharge)
- Cribs/infant beds (complimentary)
Available in all rooms: Free WiFi , Free wired Internet
Available in some public areas: Free WiFi , Free wired Internet
Languages Spoken
- English
- French
- Italian
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Spanish
Valet parking (surcharge)
Room Amenities
- Premium bedding
- Soundproofed rooms
- In-room climate control (air conditioning)
- Air conditioning
- Free newspaper
- Phone
- Minibar
- Coffee/tea maker
- Free bottled water
- Daily housekeeping
- Private bathroom
- Designer toiletries
- Slippers
- Separate bathtub and shower
- Bathrobes
- Hair dryer
- Rainfall showerhead
- In-room safe
- Desk
- Blackout drapes/curtains
- Flat-panel TV
- Free WiFi
- Free wired Internet
- Number of bathrooms -
- Room service (24 hours)
- Connecting/adjoining rooms available
- Free cribs/infant beds
- Pillow menu
- Heating
Where to Eat
Buffet breakfasts are available for a surcharge and are served each morning.
El Palace has 2 restaurants on site.
24-hour room service is available.
Nearby Things to Do
Recreational amenities at the hotel include an outdoor pool and a 24-hour fitness center.
Spa Services
Guests can indulge in a pampering treatment at the hotel's full-service spa, Mayan Luxury Spa. Services include facials, body treatments, and manicures and pedicures. A variety of treatment therapies are provided, including aromatherapy and reflexology. The spa is equipped with a sauna.
The spa is open daily.
- Sauna in spa
- Reflexology
- Manicures and pedicures
- Body treatments
- Facial treatments
- Aromatherapy treatments
- Massages
If you have requests for specific accessibility needs, please note them at check-out when you book your room.
- In-room accessibility
Hotel Policies
Check-in time starts at 3 PM
Minimum check-in age is 18
Check-out time is noon
Payment types
Children and extra beds
- Children are welcome.
- Rollaway/extra beds are not available.
- Free cribs (infant beds)!
- Pets allowed for an extra charge of EUR 50 per pet, per night
- Up to 5 kg
- Specific rooms only, restrictions apply
- Pet-friendly rooms can be requested by contacting the property at the number on the booking confirmation
You need to know
Extra-person charges may apply and vary depending on property policy.
- No onsite parking is available. Parties and events are allowed on site. Please note that cultural norms and guest policies may differ by country and by property. The policies listed are provided by the property.
- A tax is imposed by the city: EUR 2.48 per person, per night, up to 7 nights. This tax does not apply to children under 17 years of age.
Optional extras
- Fee for buffet breakfast: EUR 29.00 per person (approximately)
- Valet parking fee: EUR 30.00 per day
- Pet fee: EUR 50 per pet, per night
Hotel Name
- El Palace Hotel Barcelona
- El Palace Hotel
- El Palace Barcelona
We should mention
Cash transactions at this property cannot exceed EUR 2500, due to national regulations. For further details, please contact the property using information in the booking confirmation. Reservations are required for massage services and spa treatments. Reservations can be made by contacting the hotel prior to arrival, using the contact information on the booking confirmation. The property has connecting/adjoining rooms, which are subject to availability and can be requested by contacting the property using the number on the booking confirmation. The property allows pets in specific rooms only and has other pet restrictions (surcharges apply and can be found in the Fees section). Guests can arrange to bring pets by contacting the property directly, using the contact information on the booking confirmation.
Awards & Affiliations
- The property is a member of the Leading Hotels of the World.


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Virgin Media ADSL punters suffer 2-day email meltdown
Tucows: Silly name, silly systems
Virgin Media says engineers are working to restore full email service to its ADSL subscribers after a hardware failure at partner Tucows downed the system.
The outage occurred on Tuesday evening and is still not fully resolved. A Virgin Media spokesman said on Thursday afternoon that webmail access has been fixed for all the 100,000 customers affected and about one third have client access.
Other ISPs have been affected by Tucows' problems too. The firm said: "We are working around the clock to resolve this issue and are in close communication with the ISPs to help in minimizing the impact of this service interruption. We deeply regret the inconvenience this has caused."
There's no word on when the fix will be complete.
Virgin Media said no email has been lost and that outstanding traffic will be delivered as soon as service is fully restored. The spokesman was unable to comment on whether Tucows had breached its a service level agreement by failing to offer effective backup systems. ®
ISPreview was first on to this one.


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How important is OpenCL support? I've only been following fairly technical Linux websites for a few months and I've only seen LLVM being mentioned or focused from that general category so apart from forgetting about OpenCL I had the impression it either wasn't needed or some other method for the same result was applied.
No announcement yet.
Reasons Mesa 9.1 Is Still Disappointing For End-Users
new posts
Personally, the most disappointing thing is radeon VDPAU acceleration, because it's being held up by legal reasons. The fruit's in the tree, but a team of AMD lawyers are guarding it waiting to put their wingtips up anyone's rear who gets near it. Not cool.
Unrealistic goal, so of course anyone expecting this is going to be disappointed. I didn't find a million dollars on the sidewalk today either...
As i have proven with Q3A, there is no real reason for this to be so. The lima driver will have performance which matches the binary driver, the only thing which can slow us down is the design of Mesa itself, and that can be kicked and kicked until it behaves.
That some hw designs are depending on software optimization that is the problem of the hw design though.
Originally posted by smitty3268 View PostThere's a pretty big difference between hardware that costs $5 to produce, and hardware that costs $500 to produce.
* selling millions of units as opposed to thousands.
* battery life is massively important so none of the available resources should ever be needlessly wasted.
This is exactly what made the mali-400 such a contender, and is exactly why i have such an easy time making my free software driver perform equally good or usually even better than the ARM developed binary driver.
Honestly though, those 495 dollars are not going towards hardware or software design. It is going towards low quantity. And therefor also to halfarsed hw design. If you really believe differently, then you do need some help. Mobile chips simply cannot afford the luxuries of the infinite powerdraw of desktop high-end GPUs and have no option but to shore up either design or to really shore up software (like pvr). And the overhead of maintenance and support of PVR is really killing imaginations business atm.
Face it. The desktop is dying. The desktop style GPUs are also dying. We can no longer afford to waste electrons, and this means that we better have solid hw. Nvidia and ATI desktop style GPUs, where power draw does not matter, are an evolutionary dead end.
I couldnt possibly disagree more There will always be a market for highend GPU's... The only real question is how big that market will be.....
It's -EXACTLY- that same attitude that fucked AMD in the CPU market... It was believed that competing with Intel at the very high end wasnt a very good idea because the market was shrinking... But in the end since they failed to develop a high end design, they didnt have anything to scale down and offer to mid and low end customers.... Now they are being forced to scale up.... And that is infinitely harder than scaling down. I sure as hell hope that they don't make the same mistake in the GPU market.Last edited by duby229; 02-21-2013, 11:43 PM.
Yeah, we get it, you don't like ati or nvidia.
Anyway, I'm not going to argue with you. I'll just point out that both companies have sunk a lot more money into optimizing their hardware and drivers for performance than the ARM manufacturers have. ARM manufacturers have optimized for cost and power use, which obviously makes sense for their market. But it means that trying to draw conclusions about drivers for one and assuming they are equally true for the other is a risky proposition.Last edited by smitty3268; 02-22-2013, 12:44 AM.
Mesa may be behind Khronos, but they will always be behind the spec.
Keep in mind, they only issue updates maybe once per year, and add to that I'd imagine at least some of the mesa developers were kept in the loop as to what the update would consist of (but maybe they had to sign an NDA until the official release).
Originally posted by liam View PostI'm not sure about that. Intel seems like they've put a great deal behind getting mesa up to ogles3 compliance. It would seem like you would only need another 4-6 full time devs working on mesa to keep abreast of the standard.
Keep in mind, they only issue updates maybe once per year, and add to that I'd imagine at least some of the mesa developers were kept in the loop as to what the update would consist of (but maybe they had to sign an NDA until the official release).
So I think it's probably likely that we will continue to see lags when trying to add features that require new hardware. However, new GL versions that can be implemented on existing hardware (like minor bumps from 4.2 -> 4.3) could be done reasonably quickly.
Originally posted by smitty3268 View PostThey actually have hardware that supports ogles3, though. That's true up to the current GL spec right now with Ivy Bridge, but typically speaking Intel has not been extremely fast about even having hardware that can run brand new DX versions, let alone having the software drivers ready for it.
So I think it's probably likely that we will continue to see lags when trying to add features that require new hardware. However, new GL versions that can be implemented on existing hardware (like minor bumps from 4.2 -> 4.3) could be done reasonably quickly.
Having said that I agree that lag is still likely even if only because I don't see 4-6 devs being hired to work on mesa exclusively anytime soon.