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Thursday’s launch from Vandenberg could have provided an opportunity for SpaceX to take another step on its path to reusability. Given the light payload and short flight of Formosat-5, the Falcon 9 booster would have more than enough fuel to navigate back to land for the first ground landing outside of Cape Canaveral. But SpaceX doesn’t have the proper approval to use its California landing pad just yet. Instead, the booster will come flying back to the Just Read the Instructions robotic ship parked in the Pacific Ocean.
The loss-leading mission puts all the more pressure on SpaceX’s strategy of reusability. SpaceX indicated it will also attempt to recover the rocket’s payload fairing—which encapsulates the satellite—during takeoff, which is worth around $6 million. Elon Musk says that a factory fresh Falcon 9 booster accounts for 70 percent of the $37 million in direct launch costs which totals to around $26 million. If SpaceX can reuse that booster enough times to pay for itself, the long-term loss from Formosat-5 will not be as significant.
For an industry struggling to reduce the price and accessibility of space, the Formosat-5 launch is a dramatic waste of resources. It also reveals an emerging but underserved market for customers hoping to launch smaller satellites. Vector Space Systems—founded by former SpaceX exec Jim Cantrell—is promising a dramatic reduction in launch costs for smaller payloads with readily available flights. It completed a test flight of its rocket with commercial payloads earlier this month. And launch startup Rocket Lab, with $75 million in funding, recently tested a rocket at its facility in New Zealand.
SpaceX wasn't built to serve the small satellite sector. But if it can perfect a rapidly reusable Falcon 9, it could manage to schedule multiple small-sat payloads on a single mission. After all, Elon Musk is certainly going to want a piece of what is expected to be a $7.5 billion industry.
Nobody likes having operations – the helplessness, the exposure of our bodies to strangers, sickness and germs. For me, it was especially traumatic because my only experience with hospitals was having my tonsils out when I was 7.
Also, I’m squeamish. While my sister donates blood regularly, I have to turn away at a bloody accident on TV. But now there was no reprieve. I had what is euphemistically known as “female trouble” – a prolapsed uterus. The diagnosis came from a general practitioner, who gave me the bad news: I needed surgery. She supplied me with the names of two gynecologists in private practice for further exams, and thus the process began.
Costa Ricans are lucky in that they can choose private or state health care. Many doctors who work for the Caja, as the state health system is known, have private offices after hours, and for many minor problems it’s more convenient to visit a doctor after 4 p.m. Also, many drug stores have doctors’ offices on the premises. The doctor gets space at low rent and the drug store gets all the prescriptions. This works for the public, too, in that consultations cost little.
With my friend Sonia taking me by the hand, I went to her private gynecologist, who put me at ease but did not spare me the ultimate news. He explained what the operation would entail and showed me an ultrasound of what my insides look like. He said I could go to a private hospital, such as CIMA or Clínica Bíblica, where the operation would cost about $3,000 and I could get it over with sooner; or I could go to the Alajuela hospital for free because I had Caja insurance, but I’dhave to wait for an opening. I picked Alajuela because the insurance covered everything, the hospital is only three years old and, most important, it was close to home. There’d be no languishing in a hot car in a traffic jam while weak from an operation.
But first I would have to have blood and urine tests, either at a Caja hospital or a private clinic. For this I chose private, mainly because there was a clinic with a parking lot close to home and I was sure I would faint from the blood test. This was September 2007.
In March 2008, I had my first exam at the hospital. The staff was helpful, the doctor thorough and the appointment on time. The operation was scheduled for February – 11 months away! However, I couldn’t complain about the delay because I: 1) lost the list of gynecologists the first doctor gave me and had to start over; 2) didn’t know I was supposed to take the test results to the doctor myself and lost a couple of weeks wondering what happened to them; and 3) forgot to take my insurance card to the hospital to make the appointment and had to go back a second time.
A phone call a few days before the operation reminded me to report to patient services at 7 a.m. and bring slippers, towel, toothpaste and personal items. There, I joined a dozen other nervous people waiting to be signed in and taken away into the bowels of the building.
After my personal data were reviewed, I was given a wrist bracelet and a plastic bag for my clothes and, along with two other women and a guide, was sent to the second floor. Here we were weighed and measured, had our blood pressure taken, were given peach-colored, crossover Diane von Fürstenberg-style dresses and were assigned beds.
Six of us shared a room, which contained a shower, bathroom and sink and was only steps away from the nurses’ station.
The first day was for tests, X-rays and explanations. A doctor came around for a little chat about my uterus, made a drawing of it and said they would decide on the operating table how much to take out. I had to sign a release that said I could stop the procedure at any time. (Could I scream, “Stop!” on the operating table, I wondered?) Several doctors came by, one with a string of students, to check on us, and it was impressive how they protected our modesty by closing the curtains around the beds and holding up sheets so no unauthorized people could peek. When we six ladies were alone, we cheerily discussed our organs.
The morning of the operation, two nurses helped me to dress, all in green, and be ready to roll at 7:30 after tucking the book containing my data under the headrest of the gurney.
All the way to the third floor, I was greeted by green-gowned operators. At least seven times someone took the book and asked my name and what type of operation I was having. It was reassuring that they checked and wouldn’t take out my appendix or a lung instead.
In the operating room, the surgeon introduced himself, opened my data book and confirmed my name and what type of operation I was having. Then the anesthesiologist introduced himself and a nurse came over to the table, and that was it for me. The next thing I knew, it was 9:30 and I was back in bed 253. Later that day, the doctor looked me over, congratulated me on such an easy operation and said I could go home the next day.
I felt the care was good, the attention plentiful, my roommates and their families nice (helping raise and lower beds, lending cell phones, calling a nurse, etc.), but there were negative points, too. The food was too greasy for me (a health-food nut) and we had only tablespoons for eating. I didn’t even try to cut the big round chunk of carrot, envisioning it flying across the room and landing in someone’s lap. And the jabbing of the intravenous tube into my hand hurt like hell!
I don’t plan on any more operations, but, should the need arise, I am no longer terrified at the prospect. Caja hospitals are not bad.
Four secret Bush-era Justice Department memos and a 2008 Senate report, now made public, lay out in shocking detail the reckless lawlessness at the highest levels of the administration of President George W. Bush.
They show that, under the direction of top officials, in early 2002 a program to train U.S. soldiers to defendthemselves from torture was turned into an aggressive “crash course” to administer torture to foreign prisoners held by the U.S.
Of course the basics are not news.
More than four years ago, we ran a story headlined, It reported on documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The documents indicated that Bush had issued an Executive Order authorizing use of extreme coercive measures barred by international law in interrogation of prisoners. Other documents showed that Alberto Gonzales, then White House counsel, and top Justice Department lawyers advised that the Geneva Conventions outlawing torture were “quaint,” “obsolete” and did not apply to detainees held by the U.S. in Guantanamo or elsewhere.
But as we know, they did hide from public scrutiny.
Now the question is, what to do about it.
President Obama, rightly we believe, says the nation has to look forward rather than backward. At the same time he suggested the possibility of “a further accounting” of the torture scandal and urged it be done in a bipartisan fashion.
The Obama administration has begun the task of repairing the vast damage done by the Bush administration. The architects of that damage should be held accountable. The goal should be “to learn some lessons so that we move forward,” the president said. We agree.
Hawaii Gov. David Ige has declared a state of emergency to deal with the state's homelessness crisis just days after Honolulu and state officials cleared one of the nation's largest homeless encampments.
The move will help the state speed up the process of building a homeless shelter for families, with four possible sites under consideration, Ige said at a news conference Friday.
Hawaii saw a 23 percent increase in its unsheltered homeless population from 2014 to 2015 and a 46 percent increase in the number of unsheltered families, said Scott Morishige, the state's homelessness coordinator.
There were 7,260 homeless people in Hawaii at the latest count, meaning Hawaii has the highest rate of homelessness per capita of any state in the nation.
The state has identified $1.3 million to expand services to homeless individuals and families, he said. In addition to a new shelter, the money also would go to the state's Housing First program, which provides homes and services to chronically homeless individuals without requiring them to get sober or treat mental illness first and programs that help families pay deposits and rent.
The new transitional shelter the state is envisioning would house about 15 families at a time, Morishige said. Two of the sites under consideration are in Kakaako, a Honolulu neighborhood where the large homeless encampment was cleared; the other sites are in Liliha and near Sand Island.
The recent clearing of the Kakaako homeless encampment could be used as a model in other parts of the state, Ige said. By coordinating with service providers, more than half the estimated 300 residents of the encampment, including 25 families, were moved into shelters and permanent housing, he said.
"They definitely are off the streets and in a better situation, where we are in a position to provide them services that will help us move them permanently out of the state of homelessness," he said.
On Friday crews were installing converted shipping containers for Honolulu's latest homeless shelter on a gravel lot on Sand Island. The rooms in the first units were designed for couples and are 73 square feet.
"If they're living in tents now, the individual units are going to be just as large or larger," said Chris Sadayasu, the asset management administrator for the Honolulu Office of Strategic Development.
The rooms, which were made from new shipping containers, each have a window and a screen door for ventilation. The structures are insulated, and the roofs have white reflective coating, and an awning will provide shade for relaxing outside, said Russ Wozniak, an architect and engineer from Group 70, an architecture firm. The coating and insulation keep the units about 30 degrees cooler than they would otherwise be, he said.
"It's kind of as comfortable as you can get without mechanical air conditioning," he said.
A trailer on site has five bathrooms that each have a toilet and shower, and there's a separate portable toilet and shower that are accessible for the disabled.
When completed in December, the shelter, in an industrial part of Honolulu, will temporarily house up to 87 clients at a time.
SAN ANTONIO – A Texas jury has returned a guilty verdict against a man accused of fatally beating and dismembering a 35-year-old man before burning his amputated and charred limbs on a barbecue grill.
A jury took about three hours to before finding Daniel Moreno Lopez guilty of murder in the 2014 killing of Jose Luis Menchaca.
After the verdict was read Tuesday, Lopez began to flail and was forced from the courtroom by Bexar County sheriff deputies.
According to testimony, Menchaca had stabbed Lopez in the back in a botched drug deal days before the killing. Witnesses testified Menchaca’s death had been in retaliation for the assault.
Lopez’s girlfriend has pleaded guilty to murder and awaits sentencing. Jailed co-defendant Gabriel Moreno awaits trial on a murder charge.
[ Academia ] [ Litigation ] [ Regulatory & Policy ] [ Transactional ] as a Related Elective for those interested in Antidiscrimination : Employment discrimination laws generally prohibit discrimination based on status in a protected class, such as race, gender, national origin and religion. The application of federal laws to benefit plan sponsors has the impact of preventing discrimination in fringe benefits. An employee benefits lawyer should have a good understanding of these laws.
Residents struggle to rebuild their lives after a massive explosion.
A massive explosion at a rubbish dump outside the Mexican capital of Mexico City has left hundreds of homes damaged and huge cracks in the ground.
Officials say a build-up of methane gas under the waste caused the blast, but as local and state officials governments argue over who is to blame, the poor who live in the area are struggling to rebuild.
Al Jazeera's Franc Contreras reports.
Science|Is ‘Do Unto Others’ Written Into Our Genes?
Is ‘Do Unto Others’ Written Into Our Genes?
Where do moral rules come from? From reason, some philosophers say. From God, say believers. Seldom considered is a source now being advocated by some biologists, that of evolution.
At first glance, natural selection and the survival of the fittest may seem to reward only the most selfish values. But for animals that live in groups, selfishness must be strictly curbed or there will be no advantage to social living. Could the behaviors evolved by social animals to make societies work be the foundation from which human morality evolved?
In a series of recent articles and a book, “The Happiness Hypothesis,” Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist at the University of Virginia, has been constructing a broad evolutionary view of morality that traces its connections both to religion and to politics.
Dr. Haidt (pronounced height) began his research career by probing the emotion of disgust. Testing people’s reactions to situations like that of a hungry family that cooked and ate its pet dog after it had become roadkill, he explored the phenomenon of moral dumbfounding — when people feel strongly that something is wrong but cannot explain why.
Dumbfounding led him to view morality as driven by two separate mental systems, one ancient and one modern, though the mind is scarcely aware of the difference. The ancient system, which he calls moral intuition, is based on the emotion-laden moral behaviors that evolved before the development of language. The modern system — he calls it moral judgment — came after language, when people became able to articulate why something was right or wrong.
The emotional responses of moral intuition occur instantaneously — they are primitive gut reactions that evolved to generate split-second decisions and enhance survival in a dangerous world. Moral judgment, on the other hand, comes later, as the conscious mind develops a plausible rationalization for the decision already arrived at through moral intuition.
Moral dumbfounding, in Dr. Haidt’s view, occurs when moral judgment fails to come up with a convincing explanation for what moral intuition has decided.
So why has evolution equipped the brain with two moral systems when just one might seem plenty?
He likens the mind’s subterranean moral machinery to an elephant, and conscious moral reasoning to a small rider on the elephant’s back. Psychologists and philosophers have long taken a far too narrow view of morality, he believes, because they have focused on the rider and largely ignored the elephant.
Dr. Haidt developed a better sense of the elephant after visiting India at the suggestion of an anthropologist, Richard Shweder. In Bhubaneswar, in the Indian state of Orissa, Dr. Haidt saw that people recognized a much wider moral domain than the issues of harm and justice that are central to Western morality. Indians were concerned with integrating the community through rituals and committed to concepts of religious purity as a way to restrain behavior.
On his return from India, Dr. Haidt combed the literature of anthropology and psychology for ideas about morality throughout the world. He identified five components of morality that were common to most cultures. Some concerned the protection of individuals, others the ties that bind a group together.
Of the moral systems that protect individuals, one is concerned with preventing harm to the person and the other with reciprocity and fairness. Less familiar are the three systems that promote behaviors developed for strengthening the group. These are loyalty to the in-group, respect for authority and hierarchy, and a sense of purity or sanctity.
The five moral systems, in Dr. Haidt’s view, are innate psychological mechanisms that predispose children to absorb certain virtues. Because these virtues are learned, morality may vary widely from culture to culture, while maintaining its central role of restraining selfishness. In Western societies, the focus is on protecting individuals by insisting that everyone be treated fairly. Creativity is high, but society is less orderly. In many other societies, selfishness is suppressed “through practices, rituals and stories that help a person play a cooperative role in a larger social entity,” Dr. Haidt said.
He is aware that many people — including “the politically homogeneous discipline of psychology” — equate morality with justice, rights and the welfare of the individual, and dismiss everything else as mere social convention. But many societies around the world do in fact behave as if loyalty, respect for authority and sanctity are moral concepts, Dr. Haidt notes, and this justifies taking a wider view of the moral domain.
The idea that morality and sacredness are intertwined, he said, may now be out of fashion but has a venerable pedigree, tracing back to Emile Durkheim, a founder of sociology.
Religious behavior may be the result of natural selection, in his view, shaped at a time when early human groups were competing with one another. “Those who found ways to bind themselves together were more successful,” he said.
The emotion of disgust probably evolved when people became meat eaters and had to learn which foods might be contaminated with bacteria, a problem not presented by plant foods. Disgust was then extended to many other categories, he argues, to people who were unclean, to unacceptable sexual practices and to a wide class of bodily functions and behaviors that were seen as separating humans from animals.
He sees the disgust evoked by such a scene as allied to notions of physical and religious purity. Purity is, in his view, a moral system that promotes the goals of controlling selfish desires and acting in a religiously approved way.
Notions of disgust and purity are widespread outside Western cultures. “Educated liberals are the only group to say, ‘I find that disgusting but that doesn’t make it wrong,’ ” Dr. Haidt said.
They found that people who identified themselves as liberals attached great weight to the two moral systems protective of individuals — those of not harming others and of doing as you would be done by. But liberals assigned much less importance to the three moral systems that protect the group, those of loyalty, respect for authority and purity.
Conservatives placed value on all five moral systems but they assigned less weight than liberals to the moralities protective of individuals.
Dr. Haidt believes that many political disagreements between liberals and conservatives may reflect the different emphasis each places on the five moral categories.
Take attitudes to contemporary art and music. Conservatives fear that subversive art will undermine authority, violate the in-group’s traditions and offend canons of purity and sanctity. Liberals, on the other hand, see contemporary art as protecting equality by assailing the establishment, especially if the art is by oppressed groups.
Extreme liberals, Dr. Haidt argues, attach almost no importance to the moral systems that protect the group. Because conservatives do give some weight to individual protections, they often have a better understanding of liberal views than liberals do of conservative attitudes, in his view.
Other psychologists have mixed views about Dr. Haidt’s ideas.
Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at Harvard, said, “I’m a big fan of Haidt’s work.” He added that the idea of including purity in the moral domain could make psychological sense even if purity had no place in moral reasoning.
But Frans B. M. de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University, said he disagreed with Dr. Haidt’s view that the task of morality is to suppress selfishness. Many animals show empathy and altruistic tendencies but do not have moral systems.
“For me, the moral system is one that resolves the tension between individual and group interests in a way that seems best for the most members of the group, hence promotes a give and take,” Dr. de Waal said.
He said that he also disagreed with Dr. Haidt’s alignment of liberals with individual rights and conservatives with social cohesiveness.
“It is obvious that liberals emphasize the common good — safety laws for coal mines, health care for all, support for the poor — that are not nearly as well recognized by conservatives,” Dr. de Waal said.
That alignment also bothers John T. Jost, a political psychologist at New York University. Dr. Jost said he admired Dr. Haidt as a “very interesting and creative social psychologist” and found his work useful in drawing attention to the strong moral element in political beliefs.
But the fact that liberals and conservatives agree on the first two of Dr. Haidt’s principles — do no harm and do unto others as you would have them do unto you — means that those are good candidates to be moral virtues. The fact that liberals and conservatives disagree on the other three principles “suggests to me that they are not general moral virtues but specific ideological commitments or values,” Dr. Jost said.
In defense of his views, Dr. Haidt said that moral claims could be valid even if not universally acknowledged.
This isn’t Kill Bill, it’s The Walking Dead.
The Walking Dead is back but, unfortunately, your regular recapper is not. Rob Bricken wasn’t able to recap this week so I’m filling in as the io9 staff member who quit The Walking Dead most recently. That being, about two seasons ago. So my apologies up front if I miss some nuance or characters that have been introduced since the war between the heroes and Saviors was raging because, frankly, that’s when I gave up.
My first thought? Color me impressed. After giving up on The Walking Dead two seasons ago, to come back and find the beginnings of a new villain and some major characters at even bigger crossroads was a hell of a warm welcome.
Of course, this is one of the Whisperers, a new group of villains who wear zombie skins to blend in and are generally awesome. The discovery of their existence drives the main characters in the episode. After the events in the cemetery these characters know, if they see zombies, they can’t just assume they’re all going to act the same way. So Darryl shooting them in the leg to see if anyone screams was a genius way to pick out a Whisperer, and then the two zombies that slowly turn around revealed themselves as well. Michonne made quick work of one and the other was taken as a hostage to finally get some answers. Which, at least at the start, didn’t go too well.
The group brought the young Whisperer back to Alexandria where the fact Jesus is dead was taken hard. They want vengeance, and this young girl is the lone person to put that on. This puts Tara, Michonne, and Darryl in a bad situation because they need answers about these creepy skin wearers, but also to keep the town at bay. A few tense scenes later and the girl finally gives up a tiny bit of additional information, but not enough. Not yet. So she’s spared, only to reveal to Henry (who is still in jail for getting drunk) that her name is Lydia. Is getting information out of Lydia Henry’s “place” in all of this? Or will he make the dumb teenage decision and side with her? I’m guessing the latter. But at least now we know her name, that there are more Whisperers, and one of them is her mother.
Henry is about to become a major player.
The fact we know the Whisperers are out there just makes things more intense. Now, anytime the audience sees zombies, it’s not a guaranteed win for the heroes. Case in point, Negan’s story. After somehow talking Judith into letting him escape, Negan is out on his own, where he wants to be. He claims to be a changed man, but that doesn’t stop him from finding a new leather coat and going back to the Savior hideout, where he oh-so-conveniently had a motorcycle hidden behind a wall.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been away from the show for a while but I still haven’t forgiven Negan for all he’s done. So to see him out and about, with seemingly no one looking for him at all, felt really odd. Sure it’s been like five or six years but the dude just up and escaped and no one cares? Has he really been reformed? The episode played with that a lot, as Negan tries his best to only kill when it’s absolutely necessary. Then, there’s the added layer that we know some of the zombies he encounters could be Whisperers, which adds a whole new dynamic. What happens if a charismatic dude like Negan finds these evil people? It’s teased but never happens, and that led to the episode’s weirdest moment.
The show sets up that Negan is seeing things. Like the river he drinks out of that’s actually sand. So, we assume when he’s riding his hidden motorcycle back to Alexandria to give himself up, the fact that he sees young Judith with Rick’s gun, hat, and Michonne’s sword is a vision. I mean, it better be. Otherwise, how the hell did she get out on her own? She’s a child. Either way, Negan talks to Judith/his vision of her and agrees with what she said earlier in the episode, “There’s nothing out there for you.” Negan says his cozy cell is better than the outside world and he’s ready to go back. Is he’s being honest? Again, we’ll have to wait and see.
Look, I hated The Walking Dead when it was humans fighting humans for what felt like forever and the zombies were an afterthought. But jumping back in for this episode, I remembered what this show could be. Scary, surprising, exciting, all that potential was there in “Adaptation.” Hell, I may even tune in again next week whether Rob is back or not.
Maybe I missed it but when Michonne thanks Darryl for looking for “Him” (I assume Rick), and also for what he did “After,” was that a tease or just a piece of the puzzle I’m missing?
Building robots: Hands-on activity is a hallmark of the STEM Education Alliance summer academies. This academy, at Corporate Landing Middle School in Virginia Beach, centered around robot design and construction.
A rocket made out of a two-liter bottle shoots into the blue sky, a line of white smoke trailing behind. The middle-school students that comprise the launch team shield their eyes from the sun as they watch the bottle-rocket’s descent, estimating the heights it reached and thinking of ways they can make it climb even higher. Nearby, scientists and engineers—who have faced similar questions in their careers, but with much larger equipment and real-life consequences—stand ready to assist.
For the students, the scientists are the ultimate study aid, providing both guidance and a concrete example of what a career in science, technology, engineering or math might look like. For the scientists, the students are prospective colleagues and the possible future of their career fields.