Astronaut Salutes Nimoy From Orbit

International Space Station astronaut Terry Virts (@AstroTerry) tweeted this image of a Vulcan hand salute from orbit as a tribute to actor Leonard Nimoy, who died on Friday, Feb. 27, 2015. Nimoy played science officer Mr. Spock in the Star Trek series that served as an inspiration to generations of scientists, engineers and sci-fi fans around the world.

Cape Cod and Boston, Massachusetts, Nimoy’s home town, are visible through the station window. via NASA http://ift.tt/1Anq0nv

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Feb. 26, 1966 Launch of Apollo-Saturn 201

Apollo-Saturn 201 (AS-201), the first Saturn IB launch vehicle developed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:12 a.m. on Feb. 26, 1966. The AS-201 mission was an unmanned suborbital flight to test the Saturn 1B launch vehicle and the Apollo Command and Service Modules. This was the first flight of the S-IB and S-IVB stages, including the first flight test of the liquid-hydrogen/liquid oxygen-propelled J-2 engine in the S-IVB stage. During the thirty-seven minute flight, the vehicle reached an altitude of 303 miles and traveled 5,264 miles downrange.

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Chicago in Winter

From the International Space Station (ISS), European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti took this photograph of Chicago and posted it to social media on Feb. 19, 2015. She wrote, “How do you like #Chicago dressed for winter?”

Crewmembers on the space station photograph the Earth from their unique point of view located 200 miles above the surface as part of the Crew Earth Observations program. Photographs record how the planet is changing over time, from human-caused changes like urban growth and reservoir construction, to natural dynamic events such as hurricanes, floods and volcanic eruptions. Astronauts have used hand-held cameras to photograph the Earth for more than 40 years, beginning with the Mercury missions in the early 1960s. The ISS maintains an altitude between 220 – 286 miles (354 – 460 km) above the Earth, and an orbital inclination of 51.6˚, providing an excellent stage for observing most populated areas of the world.

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High-End Home Buyers Call the Tune in a Cautious Market by DIONNE SEARCEY

By DIONNE SEARCEY

With demand for multifamily dwellings declining, builders are catering to those who can afford million-dollar houses.

Published: February 24, 2015 at 07:00PM

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After a Crisis Forces Introspection, Cincinnati’s Downtown Finds a Path Forward by KEITH SCHNEIDER

By KEITH SCHNEIDER

With new development and companies focused on consumer research, the city is seeing a resurgence.

Published: February 24, 2015 at 07:00PM

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Astronaut Barry Wilmore on the First of Three Spacewalks

NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore works outside the International Space Station on the first of three spacewalks preparing the station for future arrivals by U.S. commercial crew spacecraft, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2015. Fellow spacewalker Terry Virts, seen reflected in the visor, shared this photograph on social media.

The spacewalks are designed to lay cables along the forward end of the U.S. segment to bring power and communication to two International Docking Adapters slated to arrive later this year. The new docking ports will welcome U.S. commercial spacecraft launching from Florida beginning in 2017, permitting the standard station crew size to grow from six to seven and potentially double the amount of crew time devoted to research.

The second and third spacewalks are planned for Wednesday, Feb. 25 and Sunday, March 1, with Wilmore and Virts participating in all three.

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John Glenn During the Mercury-Atlas 6 Spaceflight

On Feb. 20, 1962, astronaut John H. Glenn, Jr., became the first American to orbit Earth. Launched from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 14, Glenn’s Mercury-Atlas 6 “Friendship 7″ spacecraft completed a successful three-orbit mission, reaching a maximum altitude (apogee) of approximately 162 statute miles and an orbital velocity of approximately 17,500 miles per hour. The flight lasted a total of 4 hours, 55 minutes, and 23 seconds before the spacecraft splashed down in the ocean. This photograph of John Glenn during the Mercury-Atlas 6 spaceflight was taken by a camera onboard the spacecraft.

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Magnetospheric Multiscale Observatories Processed for Launch

NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) observatories are processed for launch in a clean room at the Astrotech Space Operations facility in Titusville, Florida. MMS is an unprecedented NASA mission to study the mystery of how magnetic fields around Earth connect and disconnect, explosively releasing energy via a process known as magnetic reconnection. MMS consists of four identical spacecraft that work together to provide the first three-dimensional view of this fundamental process, which occurs throughout the universe.

The mission observes reconnection directly in Earth’s protective magnetic space environment, the magnetosphere. By studying reconnection in this local, natural laboratory, MMS helps us understand reconnection elsewhere as well, such as in the atmosphere of the sun and other stars, in the vicinity of black holes and neutron stars, and at the boundary between our solar system’s heliosphere and interstellar space.

MMS is a NASA mission led by the Goddard Space Flight Center. The instrument payload science team consists of researchers from a number of institutions and is led by the Southwest Research Institute. Launch of the four identical observatories aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is managed by Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Services Program. Liftoff is currently targeted for 10:44 p.m. EDT on March 12.

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Dawn Approaches: Two Faces of Ceres

These two views of Ceres were acquired by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on Feb. 12, 2015, from a distance of about 52,000 miles (83,000 kilometers) as the dwarf planet rotated. The images have been magnified from their original size.

The Dawn spacecraft is due to arrive at Ceres on March 6, 2015.

Dawn’s mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate’s Discovery Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., of Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The framing cameras were provided by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Göttingen, Germany, with significant contributions by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The visible and infrared mapping spectrometer was provided by the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, built by Selex ES, and is managed and operated by the Italian Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology, Rome. The gamma ray and neutron detector was built by Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, and is operated by the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona.

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Paid Notice: Deaths MAGID, ABRAHAM by Unknown Author

By Unknown Author

MAGID–Abraham, beloved husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and brother, passed away at age 86 peacefully at home surrounded by his devoted family on Saturday, February 7, 2015. Abe was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, and made his home…

Published: February 8, 2015 at 07:00PM

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Growing Deltas in Atchafalaya Bay

The delta plain of the Mississippi River is disappearing. The lobe-shaped arc of coastal land from the Chandeleur Islands in eastern Louisiana to the Sabine River loses a football field’s worth of land every hour. Put another way, the delta has shrunk by nearly 5,000 square kilometers (2,000 square miles) over the past 80 years. That’s as if most of Delaware had sunk into the sea.

Though land losses are widely distributed across the 300 kilometer (200 mile) wide coastal plain of Louisiana, Atchafalaya Bay stands as a notable exception. In a swampy area south of Morgan City, new land is forming at the mouths of the Wax Lake Outlet and the Atchafalaya River. Wax Lake Outlet is an artificial channel that diverts some of the river’s flow into the bay about 16 kilometers (10 miles) west of where the main river empties.

Both deltas are being built by sediment carried by the Atchafalaya River. The Atchafalaya is a distributary of the Mississippi River, connecting to the “Big Muddy” in south central Louisiana near Simmesport. Studies of the geologic history of the meandering Mississippi have shown that—if left to nature—most of the river’s water would eventually flow down the Atchafalaya. But the Old River Control Structure, built in the 1960s by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, ensures that only 30 percent of the Mississippi flows into the Atchafalaya River, while the rest of the keeps moving toward Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

More information.

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A Park Avenue Address, Not Exactly by JOANNE KAUFMAN

By JOANNE KAUFMAN

The awning says Park Avenue or Fifth. So why is it that the building actually stands around the corner, midblock on a side street?

Published: February 14, 2015 at 07:00PM

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Law Students Leave Torts Behind (for a Bit) and Tackle Accounting by ELIZABETH OLSON

By ELIZABETH OLSON

Law schools are adding business-oriented offerings to better equip students to compete in a redefined job market.

Published: February 12, 2015 at 02:51PM

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Virgin land measuring 30 acres of land, 300 plots good for schools,hospital event center or for speculation.

Originally posted on Real World Homes:

Virgin land measuring 30 acres of land, 300 plots good for schools,hospital event center or for speculation..

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Less Homes for Sale Means Higher Prices

Originally posted on c21goldberks:

It’s simple economics really. The less we have of something always makes the price go up. It’s called supply and demand and we all learned about when we were in school. Real Estate is no different and follows this rule closely, as we saw in the 4th quarter of last year.

Home prices showed solid gains in the 4th quarter as there were less homes for sale than in the previous years. We saw this trend throughout 2014 and with less bank foreclosures going up for sale, it also fueled the price increase as well.

Economists are predicting the interest rates will be going up this year which always threatens our market with less buyers buying. This year however, they are predicting home sales will be on the rise as well as prices, just not as much as last year.

How much home prices went up in the 4th quarter…

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It’s just walking…I’ll be good.

Originally posted on Fitforthehunt.com:

So you finally got the hunt you’ve been waiting on…and you deserve it. You sit in an office all day, dreamin about being in the woods. Well if your like most hunters, you are probably lucky to go hunting a couple times a year. We all get it, with work and family, it’s hard to get away, but being unprepared is simply not an option. Whether it’s losing an opportunity on your trophy buck, or even more serious, like getting sick in the middle of nowhere.

Showing up to the woods out of shape is something we have all experienced. The last thing you can afford to do is invest this time and money and come home empty-handed…and definitely not because you were sucking wind. I heard someone at the SCI convention in Vegas this week say that you should easily be able to walk 3-5 miles. I would say…

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Time to Get Positive About the Hunt?

Originally posted on adventures in conservation:

In order to court more readers, I thought I’d confront a contentious and volatile topic. Clickbait, I think they call it. Recently on the same day I came across two videos showing violent assaults taking place at hunts. One with the Master of the Tedworth hunt being beaten unconscious by hunt saboteurs, one with a member of the Blackmore and Sparkford Vale hunt knocking over a protestor with his horse. Both videos are edited for brevity, rather than to obscure and distort, obviously.

The League Against Cruel Sports has, as would be expected, made rather a gleeful point about incidents such as the latter while singularly failing to mention, let alone condemn, the former. This concerns me and I’m prepared to risk copping a whole load of flack (given my potential audience) by pointing out the hypocrisy displayed by The League here – condemning the attacks against sabs, while…

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