Oatey Perfect Slope installs a perfect tile shower pre-slope that ensures half the mortar and half the time required.

Visual Components, developer of 3D simulation software, surveyed more than 300 manufacturing decision-makers in the U.S., UK and Germany.

Three patterns in three new colorways have been introduced to Artaic's Design on Demand collection. 

Previous studies have shown that the obsidian pozzolana of the Sabaloka area processes a high pozzolana index. Therefore, it was chosen to study the effect of its curing condition and use of additives on the compressive strength of lime pozzolana mortar. The investigation revealed that the strength of pozzolana mortar is affected positively or increases with the curing condition (humidity, t...

The construction industry in Nigeria plays a pivotal role in economic growth, yet it faces a critical challenge: a shortage of skilled labor. This study aims to identify the key factors influencing skilled labor availability in Nigerias construction sector and propose actionable solutions. Through an extensive literature review and distribution of questionnaires to construction professionals...

Children's Geographies; 08/30/2022
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Children's Geographies; 10/01/2023
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Children's Geographies; 12/01/2023
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The post “Those Folks Never Had Their Lights Turned Off.” On the Literary Importance of Highlighting the Haves and the Have-Nots was curated by information for practice.

The post Where Is the Workforce? Understanding the U.S. Labor Shortage and Working Toward Solutions was curated by information for practice.

The post Co-knowledge production linking science, communities and public policy under deep uncertainty in a modern risk society in Japan was curated by information for practice.

The post AERA Announces Dissertation and Research Grantees was curated by information for practice.

The post Early Care and Education Research Scholars: Head Start Dissertation Grants (Estimated Post Date: Feb 28) was curated by information for practice.

Rosanne Cash's latest album, "She Remembers Everything," cuts a path through gun violence, sexism and the relentless march of time. "There's no point in hedging my bets about what I write about anymore," she says.

President-elect Donald Trump named Stephen Miller his deputy chief of staff and Tom Homan as his “border czar,” appointing a battle-tested duo to design and direct immigration policy from the White House.

Older homes are the only ones many Americans can afford, but they are costly to fix and maintain, especially for seniors. A patchwork of programs to help are underfunded and have years-long waitlists.

A majority of practicing Christians, including pastors, admit to viewing pornography and a large share say they are comfortable with the habit, a new study has found.

One of the most common sayings in the English language is "the straw that broke the camel's back," signifying the gradual accumulation of heavy burden until finally, one additional blade of straw collapses the camel to his knees, no longer able to successfully bear the burden.

Carnival confetti fall to kill the most important thing about Victory Day - the perception of the Great Patriotic War as the greatest tragedy. In today’s Russia, even 30-year-olds, let alone youngsters, increasingly associate Victory Day with something like Halloween at the state level. Fuhrer as a hero of the Great Patriotic War I personally was very moved by the idea of ​​the Immortal Regiment. This is probably the most important and humane part of the format of Victory Day celebrations. This is very sincere and humane indeed, and such things always echo in people’s hearts.  Of course, with the introduction of restrictive measures in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic, all activities were moved online not to violate the regime of self-isolation. In addition to the federal "Immortal Regiment", corporate ones also appeared on the Internet. 

El Departamento de Seguros de Texas (TDI, por su nombre y siglas en inglés) anunció a Dan Paschal como el Comisionado Adjunto de la recién creada división de Relaciones Externas. Esta división incluirá Comunicaciones (actualmente Asuntos Públicos) y Relaciones Gubernamentales (actualmente Asuntos de la Agencia).

El Departamento de Seguros de Texas (Texas Department of Insurance - TDI, por su nombre y siglas en inglés) anuncia el nuevo comisionado jefe adjunto y nuevos líderes para las divisiones de Operaciones Administrativas, Seguros de Vida y de Salud, y las Divisiones del Concejo General.

Un ajustador de seguros público de Texas acusado de robar más de $268,000 en reclamaciones de seguros a múltiples víctimas ha sido acusado por un gran jurado del condado Kimble.

El Departamento de Seguros de Texas (Texas Department of Insurance, TDI, por su nombre y siglas en inglés) tiene consejos para ayudarle a reconocer y evitar las estafas comunes de contratistas.

Septiembre se considera la etapa cumbre de la actividad ciclónica, pero es importante recordar que la temporada de huracanes se extiende hasta noviembre.

By Bryan Luna, freelance writer.

Read on to learn the different types and features present in various barcode scanners to make the right decision for your business and employee needs.

SUZOHAPP is pleased to announce the appointment of Simon James as its new Executive Vice President of Retail & Transportation.Simon joined SUZOHAPP as Managing Director (MD) of the United Kingdom & Ireland, on September 1, 2018 and has made a very positive impact on our business there in a year's time.

It has recently been reported that German scientist Reiner Protsch had committed a number of scientific frauds. Protsch apparently could not even operate his own carbon-dating equipment, and routinely made up dates for bones that had been sent to him for dating, often giving recent specimens dates that were much too old.

Today's copy of The Australian newspaper contains an article (not online) about two Australian Aboriginal boys who are auditioning for the role of a Neandertal boy in a German film. A number of people, including me, find this somewhat unsettling...

The April 1997 issue of Discover magazine had a pretty good April Fool's joke about some Neandertal musical instruments that had supposedly been discovered in Germany. It was an unlikely collection, featuring bagpipes, a tuba, a triangle and a 'xylobone', along with a cave painting of marching musicians. Some creationists, however, didn't get the joke ...

"Tell me the numbers, I'll take care of the politics." Shashi Nambisan, director of the Transportation Research Center (TRC) at UNLV, recalled a pivotal discussion in the early 1990s with then-County Commissioner Bruce L. Woodbury about the transportation needs of a region on the precipice of substantial growth.

Unfortunately for drivers, we often see the highest gas prices during the summer, starting around Memorial Day. In May 2022, U.S. consumers paid an average of $1.50 per gallon more than they were at the same time in 2021, according to AAA.

Your hairbrush is full of hair and dust, and you don't know how to clean it. Simply follow these instructions and learn how to clean a hairbrush.

[Economy] :
Prime Minister Han Duck-soo says the government will consult with the justice ministry and consider expanding the scope of the E-7 visa for professional workers, if the shipbuilding industry deems it necessary.  Han made the remark during a news conference on Wednesday when asked how the government plans ...

[more...]

BGS releases 10K maps through updated maps portal  British Geological Survey

BGS maps portal  British Geological Survey

Natural flood management: is geology more important than trees?  British Geological Survey

This study introduces a compact, portable femtosecond fibre laser system designed for synchronization with SPring-8 synchrotron X-ray pulses in a uniform filling mode. Unlike traditional titanium–sapphire mode-locked lasers, which are fixed installations, our system utilizes fibre laser technology to provide a practical alternative for time-resolved spectroscopy, striking a balance between usability, portability and cost-efficiency. Comprehensive evaluations, including pulse characterization, timing jitter and frequency stability tests revealed a centre wavelength of 1600 nm, a pulse energy of 4.5 nJ, a pulse duration of 35 fs with a timing jitter of less than 9 ps, confirming the suitability of the system for time-resolved spectroscopic studies. This development enhances the feasibility of experiments that combine synchrotron X-rays and laser pulses, offering significant scientific contributions by enabling more flexible and diverse research applications.

Historically, knowledge of the mol­ecular packing within the crystal structures of organic semi­con­duc­tors has been instrumental in understanding their solid-state electronic properties. Nowadays, crystal structures are thus becoming increasingly important for enabling engineering properties, understanding poly­mor­phism in bulk and in thin films, exploring dynamics and elucidating phase-transition mech­a­nisms. This review article introduces the most salient and recent results of the field.

CdaA is the most widespread diadenylate cyclase in many bacterial species, including several multidrug-resistant human pathogens. The enzymatic product of CdaA, cyclic di-AMP, is a secondary messenger that is essential for the viability of many bacteria. Its absence in humans makes CdaA a very promising and attractive target for the development of new antibiotics. Here, the structural results are presented of a crystallographic fragment screen against CdaA from Listeria monocytogenes, a saprophytic Gram-positive bacterium and an opportunistic food-borne pathogen that can cause listeriosis in humans and animals. Two of the eight fragment molecules reported here were localized in the highly conserved ATP-binding site. These fragments could serve as potential starting points for the development of antibiotics against several CdaA-dependent bacterial species.

This paper was motivated by the articles `Same or different – that is the question' in CrystEngComm (July 2020) and `Change to the definition of a crystal' in the IUCr Newsletter (June 2021). Experimental approaches to crystal comparisons require rigorously defined classifications in crystallography and beyond. Since crystal structures are determined in a rigid form, their strongest equivalence in practice is rigid motion, which is a composition of translations and rotations in 3D space. Conventional representations based on reduced cells and standardizations theoretically distinguish all periodic crystals. However, all cell-based representations are inherently discontinuous under almost any atomic displacement that can arbitrarily scale up a reduced cell. Hence, comparison of millions of known structures in materials databases requires continuous distance metrics.

The hardware for data archiving has expanded capacities for digital storage enormously in the past decade or more. The IUCr evaluated the costs and benefits of this within an official working group which advised that raw data archiving would allow ground truth reproducibility in published studies. Consultations of the IUCr's Commissions ensued via a newly constituted standing advisory committee, the Committee on Data. At all stages, the IUCr financed workshops to facilitate community discussions and possible methods of raw data archiving implementation. The recent launch of the IUCrData journal's Raw Data Letters is a milestone in the implementation of raw data archiving beyond the currently published studies: it includes diffraction patterns that have not been fully interpreted, if at all. The IUCr 75th Congress in Melbourne included a workshop on raw data reuse, discussing the successes and ongoing challenges of raw data reuse. This article charts the efforts of the IUCr to facilitate discussions and plans relating to raw data archiving and reuse within the various communities of crystallography, diffraction and scattering.

In recent years, there is a significant interest from the crystallographic and materials science communities to have access to raw diffraction data. The effort in archiving raw data for access by the user community is spearheaded by the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) Committee on Data. In materials science, where powder diffraction is extensively used, the challenge in archiving raw data is different to that from single crystal data, owing to the very nature of the contributions involved. Powder diffraction (X-ray or neutron) data consist of contributions from the material under study as well as instrument specific parameters. Having raw powder diffraction data can be essential in cases of analysing materials with poor crystallinity, disorder, micro structure (size/strain) etc. Here, the initiative and progress made by the International Centre for Diffraction Data (ICDDR) in archiving powder X-ray diffraction raw data in the Powder Diffraction FileTM (PDFR) database is outlined. The upcoming 2025 release of the PDF-5+ database will have more than 20 800 raw powder diffraction patterns that are available for reference.

JUAMI, the joint undertaking for an African materials institute, is a project to build collaborations and materials research capabilities between PhD researchers in Africa, the United States, and the world. Focusing on research-active universities in the East African countries of Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda, the effort has run a series of schools focused on materials for sustainable energy and materials for sustainable development. These bring together early-career researchers from Africa, the US, and beyond, for two weeks in a close-knit environment. The program includes lectures on cutting-edge research from internationally renowned speakers, highly interactive tutorial lectures on the science behind the research, also from internationally known researchers, and hands-on practicals and team-building exercises that culminate in group proposals from self-formed student teams. The schools have benefited more than 300 early-career students and led to proposals that have received funding and have led to research collaborations and educational non-profits. JUAMI continues and has an ongoing community of alumni who share resources and expertise, and is open to like-minded people who want to join and develop contacts and collaborations internationally.

Tadanobu Asano (L) and Chin Han (R) in "Mortal Kombat."; Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

L-R Access Hollywood film critic Scott Mantz moderates a talk by Neil deGrasse Tyson at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, June 9, 2017. Courtesy of the American Cinematheque; Credit: Robert Enger

Neil deGrasse Tyson came onto the science-themed, late night talk show circuit with some clout. The "Cosmos" host, author, educator, and Hayden Planetarium director's first guest when StarTalk "jumped species" from podcast to television was Whoopi Goldberg. 

On Friday June 9, 2017, Tyson opened up a screening of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" at the American Cinematheque's Aero Theatre in Santa Monica with a talk on his career as an astrophysicist-turned-broadcaster. Access Hollywood's film critic, Scott Mantz, moderated the event and asked Tyson for his three favorite StarTalk guests.

1. Nichelle Nichols

While StarTalk was still just a podcast, Nichols appeared on StarTalk twice. Tyson learned that Star Trek had been a holdover gig for Nichols while paying her dues to land dancing parts on Broadway. Tyson didn't think being Lieutenant Uhura was anything to sneeze at. "She is actually in the chain of command to be captain of the ship," remarked Tyson.

Early on into the series, Nichols decided it was time to go back to New York and find her dream job, Tyson said. However, before leaving she attended a party where she bumped into Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

"And he says, 'Oh, my children! We line up at night, and you make us all proud.' And she said, 'Oh, thank you, but I'm going back to New York,' and he said, 'You can't do that. There are no other black people on television. Much less, what there are, they're not in any kind of role of responsibility, and integrity, and dignity.' And he convinced her to stay with the series." - Neil deGrasse Tyson

Tyson teared up, searched for tissues, and said he opened up a bottle of wine at eleven in the morning during the taping with Nichols. "And then, I think it was only one and a half glasses of wine," Tyson said, before he asked Nichols about her and William Shatner's interracial kiss on Star Trek, one of the first interracial kisses on television. Tyson said Nichols told him that the producers of the show wanted to film a version of the scene without the kiss, but that she and Shatner purposefully kept messing up the non-kiss until they ran out of filming time so that the editors of the show wouldn't have any such scene to work with.

Nichols then asked Tyson if he wanted to see what a "racial kiss" was, and then she kissed him.

Tyson also recognized Nichols for her role in recruiting women and people of color for NASA space missions from engineering schools across the United States. Tyson said Nichols was able to find these recruits by looking where NASA had not been looking.

"You were only looking at the U.S. Naval Academy and not Tuskegee Institute where they have a huge engineering group. So she laid out this recipe, and that first astronaut class: it had black people, it had Asians, it had women. And they were at the top of their class when they came out of college and graduate school, so she shaped the modern view of NASA."

2. Biz Stone

"The name doesn't even sound real," said Tyson, referring to the co-founder of Twitter. Tyson counts Stone among the great entrepreneurs who never finished college: Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg.

"Until he described how he envisioned Twitter, I had not fully appreciated what it was," said Tyson. Stone asked Tyson if he had ever seen birds suddenly take flight and flock together after behaving independently, and then, just as swiftly as they started, return to their posts and be "individuals again."

"Twitter is a flocking mechanism for humans," Tyson said. "I live near Ground Zero in New York City," Tyson recalled what could be described as a Twitter moment from 2011. "I'm watching TV, all of a sudden I heard noises in the street. Crowds were developing. I said, 'What's going on?'" While Tyson was sitting in his home, it had been announced that Osama Bin Laden had been killed.

Tyson got on the internet and read the news. "I missed all that, but all these people got the tweet, and everyone gathered back at Ground Zero." That realization of the nature of social media made Biz Stone Tyson's number two guest.

3. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Jabbar's appearance on StarTalk is from the upcoming season, so Tyson did not want to reveal the topics of the episode, but he could not resist including Jabbar because of his numerous qualifications.

• He has written a novel about Sherlock Holmes' older brother, Mycroft Holmes (which Jabbar talked with Off-Ramp about in 2015)
• He had a column in Time Magazine
• His high scores on Celebrity Jeopardy
• He's the highest scorer ever for the NBA, with 38,387 career points (Kobe Bryan is third with 33,643 points)
• He played in the All-Star Game 19 times out of his 20 NBA seasons
• He has six NBA Championship rings
• And he was in "Airplane!" and Bruce Lee's "Game of Death"

Tyson gives us one giveaway though, from Jabbar's interview. The one film role that Jabbar is disappointed about never being cast in was Chewbacca in "Star Wars."

Neil deGrasse Tyson's new book is Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. Thanks to him and the American Cinematheque for allowing us to excerpt their presentation on Off-Ramp.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Athletes compete during the cycling portion of the IRONMAN 70.3 Steelhead on June 27, 2021 in Benton Harbor, Michigan. ; Credit: Patrick McDermott/Getty Images for IRONMAN

Whether you’re new to running or you’ve finished your tenth triathlon, we want to hear from you about what motivates you and how that translates into pushing yourself physically. 

Guests: 

Mark Remy, longtime runner and writer in Portland, Oregon; creator of humor website dumbrunner.com; he is the author of many books, including The Runner's Rule Book: Everything a Runner Needs to Know--And Then Some (Runner's World) (Rodale Books, 2009)

Sharon McNary, infrastructure correspondent at KPCC; she finished her 11th Ironman Race last week at Coeur d’Alene; she tweets @KPCCsharon

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The final stages of the 2011 property revaluation process in Catawba County have begun with the presentation of the proposed 2011 Schedule of Values to the Board of Commissioners, and will continue into November, when property owners will receive notice of the new value of their property, and into December and early 2011 when the appeal process begins.

As it continues to note National Emergency Preparedness Month, Catawba County Emergency Services reminds citizens who have family members with special needs, and caregivers of those with special needs, that it�s very important to be prepared in advance to help those with special needs cope with an emergency or disastrous situation.