"Defending Jacob" (Delacorte Press), by William Landay: An assistant district attorney receives a case that will change his life in William Landay's "Defending Jacob."
Andrew Barber has a beautiful wife, a wonderful son, Jacob, and great friends and colleagues. Then the murder of a 14-year-old boy in the woods near a school changes everything.
When the victim's classmates are interviewed, a terrifying pattern emerges: All the students seem to be elusive when authorities question them.
Then Jacob is charged with murder. Friends become enemies, and Barber becomes unemployed. His family life begins to crumble as he desperately tries to solve the case on his own and prove his son's innocence. The evidence begins to mount against Jacob, and when the courtroom battle begins, Barber has to face the man he trained and had considered a friend.
Secrets, political agendas and an examination of how tenuous life can be are all examined in the social microscope of the media and public opinion.
Landay has written a legal thriller that's comparable to classics such as Scott Turow's "Presumed Innocent." Jacob comes across as somewhat of an enigma, but the other characters and the storyline ring true.
Tragic and shocking, "Defending Jacob" is sure to generate buzz.
LONDON ? British and French foreign ministers are heading to New York on Monday to bolster Arab League efforts to press for a United Nations resolution aimed at halting Syria's violent crackdown on anti-regime protests.
Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague and French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe both confirmed they would attend U.N. talks scheduled for Tuesday.
Officials hope that Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim and Arab League officials, who will also attend, can help persuade Russia and China to back away from their opposition to a U.N. Security Council resolution.
Russia has insisted that it won't support any resolution which could enable foreign military intervention in Syria.
On Monday, it said Syria's government has agreed to come to Moscow for talks with the country's opposition representatives in. It was not immediately clear if Syria's opposition representatives would agree to such talks, but in the past they have said that an end to violence was their precondition for a meeting.
The French Foreign Ministry said Juppe would travel to New York "to convince the Security Council to assume its responsibilities in the face of the worsening of crimes against humanity by the Syrian regime."
In London, British Prime Minister David Cameron's office urged Moscow to reconsider its stance. "Russia can no longer explain blocking the U.N. and providing cover for the regime's brutal repression," a spokeswoman for Cameron said, on customary condition of anonymity in line with policy.
The U.N. estimates about 5,400 people have been killed in 10 months of violence.
Talks on Tuesday are scheduled to focus on a draft resolution based on an Arab League peace plan. That plan calls for a two-month transition to a unity government in Syria.
A British official, who requested anonymity to discuss negotiations on a resolution, said the U.N. would seek to approve a resolution calling for progress on halting the crisis.
The Security Council will threaten possible sanctions in no progress is made within two weeks, the official said.
However, the text would stress there are no plans for any military intervention in Syria ? though the option would not be explicitly, or permanently, ruled out, the official said.
Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby said Sunday in Egypt that contacts were under way with China and Russia in the hope of overcoming their opposition to a resolution.
On Saturday, the Arab League halted the work of its observer mission in Syria because of the escalating violence there.
Officials test the signals and lights at an intersection where an SUV and Light Rail train collided in Sacramento, Calif., on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012. Authorities say a light-rail train has collided with a sport utility vehicle in Sacramento, killing a man, a woman and a baby and injuring seven other people. (AP Photo/Steve Yeater)
Officials test the signals and lights at an intersection where an SUV and Light Rail train collided in Sacramento, Calif., on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012. Authorities say a light-rail train has collided with a sport utility vehicle in Sacramento, killing a man, a woman and a baby and injuring seven other people. (AP Photo/Steve Yeater)
Officials test the signals and lights at an intersection where an SUV and Light Rail train collided in Sacramento, Calif., on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012. Authorities say a light-rail train has collided with a sport utility vehicle in Sacramento, killing a man, a woman and a baby and injuring seven other people. (AP Photo/Steve Yeater)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) ? The driver of an SUV veered around a crossing arm and ignored flashing warning lights before the vehicle was struck by a light-rail train in Sacramento on Saturday, killing an infant and two adults, authorities said.
The other person inside the Nissan Pathfinder, a woman in her 30s, was taken to a local hospital with serious injuries, said Niko King, assistant chief with the Sacramento Fire Department. Six of the roughly 50 passengers on the light rail train suffered minor injuries and were taken to a hospital, he said.
King and a spokeswoman for the transit line said video from a camera at the crossing clearly shows the SUV driving around the crossing arm. The light rail followed two Union Pacific freight trains, which use separate tracks, and the arms had remained down during the interval, said Alane Masui, spokeswoman for the Sacramento Regional Transit District.
"They were down after the UP trains and before the (light rail) train approached, so the crossing arms were properly working," she said.
She said the length of time between the freight trains clearing the intersection and the light rail train crossing it had not yet been determined and would be part of the investigation. Investigators also were reviewing video from a camera mounted on the light rail train.
The collision, in a working class neighborhood south of downtown, occurred shortly after 4 p.m. and pushed the Pathfinder about 30 yards from the point of impact.
"All I heard was a big bang, and I saw a light-rail train heading south with a big truck smashed on it," said Ravin Pratab, 42, of Davis, whose car was among those waiting for the train at the rail crossing, on the opposite side of the tracks from the Pathfinder.
The train was going about 55 mph at the time, a typical speed for that location.
Authorities did not release the identities of those in the Pathfinder or their relationship. A man and woman in the vehicle, both in their 40s, died at the scene while the baby was pronounced dead at a hospital. Firefighters said one had been ejected.
The University of California, Davis Medical Center in Sacramento would say only that the woman remained in serious condition late Saturday.
The light rail system carries an average of 50,000 passengers a day, with lines stretching from the state capital to its suburbs in the north, south and east.
Masui said there are four sets of tracks at the crossing ? two for freight and two for light rail so trains from both systems can run in either direction.
The physical property of magnetism has historically been associated with metals such as iron, nickel and cobalt; however, graphite ? an organic mineral made up of stacks of individual carbon sheets ? has baffled researchers in recent years by showing weak signs of magnetism.
The hunt for an explanation has not been without controversy, with several research groups proposing different theories. The most recent suggestion, published today, 27 January, in the journal EPL (Europhysics Letters), has been put forward by a research group from the University of Manchester that includes Nobel prize-winning scientist Professor Sir Andre Geim.
The research group, led by Dr Irina Grigorieva, found that magnetism in many commercially available graphite crystals is down to micron-sized clusters of predominantly iron that would usually be difficult to find unless the right instruments were used in a particular way.
Finding the way to make graphite magnetic could be the first step to utilising it as a bio-compatible magnet for use in medicine and biology as effective biosensors.
To arrive at their conclusions, the researchers firstly cut up a piece of commercially-available graphite into four sections and measured the magnetisation of each piece. Surprisingly, they found significant variations in the magnetism of each sample. It was reasonable for them to conclude that the magnetic response had to be caused by external factors, such as small impurities of another material.
To check this hypothesis, the researchers peered deep into the structure of the samples using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) ? a very powerful microscope that images samples by scanning it with a beam of electrons ? and found that there were unusually heavy particles positioned deep under the surface.
The majority of these particles were confirmed to be iron and titanium, using a technique known as X-ray microanalysis. As oxygen was also present, the particles were likely to be either magnetite or titanomagnetite, both of which are magnetic.
The researchers were also able to deduce how many magnetic particles would be needed, and how far apart they would need to be spaced in order to create the originally observed magnetism. The observations from their experiments agreed with their estimations, meaning the visualised magnetic particles could account for the whole magnetic signal in the sample.
Dr Grigorieva, said: "The excitement around the findings of ferromagnetism in graphite, i.e. pure carbon, is due to the fact that magnetism is not normally found in organic matter. If we can learn to create and control magnetism in carbon-based materials, especially graphene, this will be an important development for sensors and spintronics."
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The paper can be downloaded from http://iopscience.iop.org/0295-5075/97/4/47001
Institute of Physics: http://www.iop.org
Thanks to Institute of Physics for this article.
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Researchers in Japan have now discovered that the arachnids accurately sense distances by comparing a blurry version of an image with a clear one, a method called image defocus.
Jumping spiders, which hunt by pouncing on their prey, gauge distances to their unsuspecting meals in a way that appears to be unique in the animal kingdom, a new study finds.
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The superability boils down to seeing green, the researchers found.
There are several different visual systems that organisms use to accurately and reliably judge distance and depth. Humans, for example, have binocular stereovision. Because?our eyes?are spaced apart, they receive visual information from different angles, which our brains use to automatically triangulate distances. Other animals, such as insects, adjust the focal length of the lenses in their eyes, or move their heads side to side to create an effect called motion parallax ? nearer objects will move across their field of vision more quickly than objects farther away.
However,?jumping spiders?(Hasarius adansoni) lack any kind of focal adjustment system, have eyes that are too close together for binocular stereovision and don?t appear to use motion parallax while hunting. So how are these creatures able to perceive depth?
Researchers in Japan have now discovered that the arachnids accurately sense distances by comparing a blurry version of an image with a clear one, a method called image defocus.
Jumping spiders have four eyes densely packed in a row: two large principal eyes and two small lateral eyes. The spider uses its lateral eyes to sense the motion of an object, such as a fly, which it then zeros in on using its principal eyes, Akihisa Terakita, a biologist at Osaka City University in Japan and lead author of the new study, explained in an email to LiveScience.
Rather than having a single layer of?photoreceptor cells, the retinas in the spider?s principal eyes have four distinct photoreceptor layers. When Terakita and his colleagues took a close look at the spider's principal eyes, they found that the two layers closest to the surface contain ultraviolet-sensitive pigments, whereas the deeper layers contain green-sensitive pigments.
However, because of the layers' respective distances from the lens of the eye, incoming green light is only focused on the deepest layer, while the other green-sensitive retinal layer receives defocused or fuzzy images. The researchers hypothesized that the spiders gauge depth cues from the amount of defocus in this fuzzy layer, which is proportional to the distance an object is to the lens of the eye.
To test this, they placed a spider and three to six?fruit flies?in a cylindrical plastic chamber, housed in a white styrene foam box. They then bathed the bugs in different colored lights: If the defocus of green light is important to the spiders, then they should not be able to accurately judge jumping distance in the absence of green light.
Sure enough, the spiders could easily catch the flies under green light, but consistently underestimated their jumps under red light (which doesn't contain shorter-wavelength light, such as green and blue). The researchers suggest that green light is just right to produce the image defocus necessary to gauge distances, unlike other wavelengths of light.
The team doesn?t know if any other animals employ similar depth-perception techniques, though they think the findings could have important implications for the future design of?visual systems in robots.
"Further investigation of the optics, retinal structure and neural basis of depth perception in jumping spiders may provide biological inspiration for computer vision as well," they write in their study, published in the Jan. 27 issue of the journal Science.
Contact: William Mitsch Mitsch.1@osu.edu 614-292-9774 Ohio State University
COLUMBUS, Ohio A new study comparing the carbon-holding power of freshwater wetlands has produced measurements suggesting that wetlands in temperate regions are more valuable as carbon sinks than current policies imply, according to researchers.
The study compared several wetlands at two Ohio wetland sites: one composed of mostly stagnant water and one characterized by water regularly flowing through it. The study showed that the stagnant wetland had an average carbon storage rate per year that is almost twice as high as the carbon storage rate of the flow-through wetland.
In addition, the scientists came up with measures of carbon storage in the stagnant wetland that exceed carbon measurements recorded in recent years in various types of wetlands, suggesting to the researchers that temperate freshwater wetlands may have a significant role in worldwide strategies to offset greenhouse gas emissions.
All types of wetlands deserve more credit than they receive as carbon sequestering systems in global carbon budgets, the researchers say. However, they also say that boreal peatlands wetlands containing deep layers of organic matter in subarctic regions should not be the only wetlands favored in policy considerations.
"These numbers are a lot higher than those often used to determine policy about wetlands. All of our numbers are, in general, considerably higher than average rates of carbon sequestration for boreal peatlands, but the boreal peatland numbers rule the roost in climate change," said William Mitsch, senior author of the study and an environment and natural resources professor at Ohio State University. "Wetlands make up 6 to 8 percent of the landscape, but they hold much more than 6 to 8 percent of the world's carbon. They are the forgotten carbon sink."
Mitsch completed the study with Blanca Bernal, a graduate student in Ohio State's School of Environment and Natural Resources. The research appears online and is scheduled for future print publication in the journal Global Change Biology.
Mitsch and Bernal collected soil core samples from a forested wetland in Gahanna, in central Ohio, and from Old Woman Creek, a freshwater wetland near Lake Erie in northern Ohio. The Gahanna wetland is called a depressional wetland, or a swamp that remains saturated year-round. Old Woman Creek is part of a state park connecting an agricultural watershed with the lake that experiences pulses of water from both entry points.
They analyzed both the carbon content of the soil as well as the depth of the sediment that had stored carbon over the past 50 years.
The depressional wetland community as a whole sequestered an average of 317 grams of carbon per square meter per year (2,750 pounds of carbon per acre per year), compared to the average 140 grams per square meter per year (1,215 pounds per acre per year) stored by the flow-through wetland area. By comparison, boreal peatlands in Canada and Siberia sequester much less, at 15 to 25 grams carbon per square meter per year (130 to 220 pounds of carbon per acre per year).
Because the depressional wetland is just 59 acres, compared to the flow-through wetland's coverage of 138 acres, the total annual carbon storage for each is similar: almost 85 tons of carbon per year.
In the study, Mitsch and Bernal noted other measurements taken since 1993 in wetlands, most located in North America. In the depressional or forested wetlands in particular, the average carbon-storage measurement in this new study exceeded those other readings in every case. To Mitsch, this suggests that determining the carbon storage in swamps, and forested pools in particular, should be a priority.
"Few studies have been done in temperate wetlands other than ours, and even fewer have been done in forested wetlands like our Gahanna Woods wetland, where we measured the highest rates," Mitsch said.
In almost all cases the measurements were taken using the same methods. To determine the age of the sediments in wetlands and therefore the rate of carbon storage per year researchers use radiometric dating with cesium-137. Above-ground nuclear testing in the mid-20th century left behind the cesium-137 compound as a marker in sediments throughout the world. Based on how deep cesium-137 was detected in the soil cores, the researchers were able to date sediment from each wetland that has built up since 1964, the year the concentration of the compound reached its peak.
A backup method to determine sediment age by assessing the level of Pb-210, a radioactive form of lead, is used when cesium-137 is not a reliable marker.
The highest carbon sequestration rate 473 grams per square meter per year (4,100 pounds per acre per year) was found in the most heavily forested area of the stagnant wetland.
This suggests that the leaves, bark and wood from the trees in these areas might be less likely to decompose than are marsh plants that populate many wetland communities, Mitsch said, noting that those forest remnants dropping into the water lead to the collection of more carbon in the soil. Plants in a wetland are the key to carbon storage they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. And the standing water in wetlands reduces the amount of respiration of that carbon dioxide back into the air.
"In an ecosystem that's terrestrial, especially a forest, plant life falls to the floor but the forests don't fill up with leaves because they're decomposing, returning some of that carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere," Mitsch said. "Wetlands tend to accumulate this litter over centuries, maybe over thousands of years, and they have plants and are productive systems, but they tend not to decompose everything. So carbon builds up in the soil for a long time."
Mitsch is making the case for wetlands as carbon sinks in an effort to foster preservation of wetlands, which are also coastal protection systems, buffer zones between land and waterways, and filters of chemicals in water that runs off from farm fields, roads, parking lots and other surfaces. He, Bernal and other Ohio State graduate students are conducting similar research to gauge carbon sequestration rates in wetlands based in tropical areas.
###
This work was supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, Ohio State's School of Environment and Natural Resources and the Wilma H. Schiermeier Olentangy Wetland Research Park at Ohio State.
Contact: William Mitsch, (614) 292-9774; Mitsch.1@osu.edu
Written by Emily Caldwell, (614) 292-8310; Caldwell.151@osu.edu
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: William Mitsch Mitsch.1@osu.edu 614-292-9774 Ohio State University
COLUMBUS, Ohio A new study comparing the carbon-holding power of freshwater wetlands has produced measurements suggesting that wetlands in temperate regions are more valuable as carbon sinks than current policies imply, according to researchers.
The study compared several wetlands at two Ohio wetland sites: one composed of mostly stagnant water and one characterized by water regularly flowing through it. The study showed that the stagnant wetland had an average carbon storage rate per year that is almost twice as high as the carbon storage rate of the flow-through wetland.
In addition, the scientists came up with measures of carbon storage in the stagnant wetland that exceed carbon measurements recorded in recent years in various types of wetlands, suggesting to the researchers that temperate freshwater wetlands may have a significant role in worldwide strategies to offset greenhouse gas emissions.
All types of wetlands deserve more credit than they receive as carbon sequestering systems in global carbon budgets, the researchers say. However, they also say that boreal peatlands wetlands containing deep layers of organic matter in subarctic regions should not be the only wetlands favored in policy considerations.
"These numbers are a lot higher than those often used to determine policy about wetlands. All of our numbers are, in general, considerably higher than average rates of carbon sequestration for boreal peatlands, but the boreal peatland numbers rule the roost in climate change," said William Mitsch, senior author of the study and an environment and natural resources professor at Ohio State University. "Wetlands make up 6 to 8 percent of the landscape, but they hold much more than 6 to 8 percent of the world's carbon. They are the forgotten carbon sink."
Mitsch completed the study with Blanca Bernal, a graduate student in Ohio State's School of Environment and Natural Resources. The research appears online and is scheduled for future print publication in the journal Global Change Biology.
Mitsch and Bernal collected soil core samples from a forested wetland in Gahanna, in central Ohio, and from Old Woman Creek, a freshwater wetland near Lake Erie in northern Ohio. The Gahanna wetland is called a depressional wetland, or a swamp that remains saturated year-round. Old Woman Creek is part of a state park connecting an agricultural watershed with the lake that experiences pulses of water from both entry points.
They analyzed both the carbon content of the soil as well as the depth of the sediment that had stored carbon over the past 50 years.
The depressional wetland community as a whole sequestered an average of 317 grams of carbon per square meter per year (2,750 pounds of carbon per acre per year), compared to the average 140 grams per square meter per year (1,215 pounds per acre per year) stored by the flow-through wetland area. By comparison, boreal peatlands in Canada and Siberia sequester much less, at 15 to 25 grams carbon per square meter per year (130 to 220 pounds of carbon per acre per year).
Because the depressional wetland is just 59 acres, compared to the flow-through wetland's coverage of 138 acres, the total annual carbon storage for each is similar: almost 85 tons of carbon per year.
In the study, Mitsch and Bernal noted other measurements taken since 1993 in wetlands, most located in North America. In the depressional or forested wetlands in particular, the average carbon-storage measurement in this new study exceeded those other readings in every case. To Mitsch, this suggests that determining the carbon storage in swamps, and forested pools in particular, should be a priority.
"Few studies have been done in temperate wetlands other than ours, and even fewer have been done in forested wetlands like our Gahanna Woods wetland, where we measured the highest rates," Mitsch said.
In almost all cases the measurements were taken using the same methods. To determine the age of the sediments in wetlands and therefore the rate of carbon storage per year researchers use radiometric dating with cesium-137. Above-ground nuclear testing in the mid-20th century left behind the cesium-137 compound as a marker in sediments throughout the world. Based on how deep cesium-137 was detected in the soil cores, the researchers were able to date sediment from each wetland that has built up since 1964, the year the concentration of the compound reached its peak.
A backup method to determine sediment age by assessing the level of Pb-210, a radioactive form of lead, is used when cesium-137 is not a reliable marker.
The highest carbon sequestration rate 473 grams per square meter per year (4,100 pounds per acre per year) was found in the most heavily forested area of the stagnant wetland.
This suggests that the leaves, bark and wood from the trees in these areas might be less likely to decompose than are marsh plants that populate many wetland communities, Mitsch said, noting that those forest remnants dropping into the water lead to the collection of more carbon in the soil. Plants in a wetland are the key to carbon storage they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. And the standing water in wetlands reduces the amount of respiration of that carbon dioxide back into the air.
"In an ecosystem that's terrestrial, especially a forest, plant life falls to the floor but the forests don't fill up with leaves because they're decomposing, returning some of that carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere," Mitsch said. "Wetlands tend to accumulate this litter over centuries, maybe over thousands of years, and they have plants and are productive systems, but they tend not to decompose everything. So carbon builds up in the soil for a long time."
Mitsch is making the case for wetlands as carbon sinks in an effort to foster preservation of wetlands, which are also coastal protection systems, buffer zones between land and waterways, and filters of chemicals in water that runs off from farm fields, roads, parking lots and other surfaces. He, Bernal and other Ohio State graduate students are conducting similar research to gauge carbon sequestration rates in wetlands based in tropical areas.
###
This work was supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, Ohio State's School of Environment and Natural Resources and the Wilma H. Schiermeier Olentangy Wetland Research Park at Ohio State.
Contact: William Mitsch, (614) 292-9774; Mitsch.1@osu.edu
Written by Emily Caldwell, (614) 292-8310; Caldwell.151@osu.edu
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
How student organizations obtain funding for travel expenses will be reviewed this semester, along with several other changes, as the Student Senate Finance Committee updates the 11-year-old Student Senate Budget Code.
Finance Committee chairman Josh Dean said members of the committee are altering the Budget Code, Article VIII of the Student Senate Rules and Regulations, to make its structure and language clearer for the student body. The committee also intends to take record of rules that are currently in practice but have never been written down.
?The last overhaul of the budget code took place in 2000, and people have made lots of amendments, and many rules have been changed,? Dean said. ?Right now, the rules are very confusing for people.?
One such rule is item 8.2.5.6.1, which says, ?No funds from student fees shall be allocated or apportioned to any corporation, organization, or group for travel expenses.? Organizations are able to apply for an exemption to this rule, but requirements for the exemption are not written in the code and currently need to be interpreted by the Finance Committee.
Article 8.2.5.6.1
?No funds from student fees shall be allocated or apportioned to any corporation, organization, or group for travel expenses.?
Source: Student Senate Rules and Regulations, last updated in 2000
Any student organization can apply for the exemption with a bill that must receive two-thirds of the vote in the Finance and Rights committees before going to the Senate for another two-thirds vote.
?The big test we use is, ?Is travel vital to the existence of your group?,?? Dean said about any organization seeking a travel exemption.
If the general answer is yes, the organization may be eligible for an exemption. Another parameter the committee looks at is if the organization is inclusive to all students, Dean said.
While these specifications have been the unofficial benchmarks for a travel exemption for many years, at least one student organization has not agreed with the committee?s answer to that question.
Engineers Without Borders, a student organization that participates in engineering projects around the world, applied for a travel exemption in November. It was denied, because the Finance and Rights committees thought it was an organization that could exist without travel.
Rights Committee chairman Aaron Harris ruled out the proposed exemption for Engineers Without Borders, because he thought the organization wasn?t completely inclusive.
?We can?t fund a group that charges dues to its members,? he said. ?If a group wants funding, it must be open to all students, not those who pay.?
But the leader of Engineers Without Borders contends that the group is still inclusive by being open to all KU students from any major.
?We have other majors besides engineering that travel with us,? said Mary Adams, the president of Engineers Without Borders.
The travel exemption request was brought to a vote in the Finance Committee, but didn?t receive the two-thirds vote to move onto the Senate. Adams said she thought the bill was rejected because Engineers Without Borders doesn?t participate in competitions like some organizations with the exemption, and because it was compared with other organizations that didn?t have the same travel requirements.
?To exist as a chapter we have to travel in this case, but to exist as a member in the chapter, you don?t have to travel,? she said.
Dean said the committee discussed that the organization doesn?t participate in competitions and that most group members don?t travel when the committee made its decision.
Engineers Without Borders was hoping to take about eight people to Bolivia to build latrines for underdeveloped areas, but are now taking fewer people, Adams said. The organization has applied for funding in previous years, but was also denied then.
?The fact that they?ve been around without (student fee) funding shows they can exist,? Harris said.
Clarification of the rules and regulations about funding may help organizations better determine if they should put resources into providing exemption requests.
?I think it would be very beneficial to be more clear about that,? Adams said about the Finance Committee?s review of the Budget Code.
According to Dean, members of the Finance Committee are currently reviewing the student-fee portion of the Budget Code, but he estimated the committee will start reviewing the part related to travel exemptions in March.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum is preparing to welcome the space shuttle Discovery into its collection.
Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough (cluff) says the shuttle will be flown to Washington Dulles International Airport on the back of a Boeing 747 in April. A flyover is planned above the nation's capital before Discovery makes its final home at the museum's massive hangar in northern Virginia.
Clough said Monday the flyover is planned for April 17. A formal welcome ceremony is planned for April 19 at the museum's Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va.
Shuttle Endeavour will travel to the California Science Center in Los Angeles in the second half of the year.
I just started teaching my spring classes, and on the first day a student asked me if my work as a science journalist had taken me to any cool places. I said that in 1985 I rode a trolley into a tunnel at the Nevada Test Site in which a nuclear bomb would be detonated the next day. In 1991 I stood at the edge of an oil field whose wells, ignited by Iraqi troops during the first Gulf War, shot huge jets of fire into the sky, which was so black with smoke that I could barely see my notebook. In 2002 I sat in a teepee on a Navajo reservation eating peyote with 20 members of the Native American Church. But by far the coolest trip I?ve ever taken, I said, took me to the South Pole.
The Antarctic has received lots of press lately. Just over century ago, on January 17, 1912, Robert Falcon Scott arrived at the South Pole, only to discover that Roald Amundsen had arrived there more than a month earlier. Scott and his men perished on their return journey, and ironically their failure is commemorated more than Amundsen?s success.
My expedition?compared to those of these rugged explorers, who relied on dogs, ponies and their own muscles for transport?was like a trip to the mall. Together with three other journalists, I flew in a cavernous C-130 military-transport plane from Christchurch, New Zealand, to McMurdo Station, a gritty American base perched on the edge of Ross Island. From the window of our plane, the Antarctic resembled an endless porcelain landscape, through which jagged black mountains protruded. I felt as though I was visiting not just another part of Earth but another planet.
Just a short tramp from McMurdo was Discovery Hut, built by Scott in 1902 during his first expedition to the Antarctic. The inside of the hut, cluttered with crates and cans of food, was eerily well-preserved, as though Scott and his men might burst through the door at any moment. During my 10-day sojourn (which took place in November, when the sun never sets), my colleagues and I were whisked around on snow cats and a helicopter.
Some other memories from the trip: Peering into the smoking maw of Mt. Erebus, an enormous active volcano. Swooping through a canyon in the Dry Valleys so narrow that I kept thinking the helicopter?s blades were going to strike the rock. Standing on an ice floe as a flock of Emperor penguins leaped out of the sea and waddled toward us, eyeing us with curiosity. Climbing straight down beneath the sea ice into a metal tube, through the windows of which I could see Weddell seals gliding through the frigid twilight.
The high point, however, was when a C-130 flew us from McMurdo to the South Pole?s Amundsen-Scott Station, where some 80 people lived and worked in a geodesic dome and other structures. On that day, the Pole was a balmy 44 degrees Celsius below zero (-47 Fahrenheit), almost 90 below (-130 F) with the wind chill. In the photo that accompanies this column, I?m standing next to the sign that marks the Geographic South Pole.
The Pole was also marked by a column, striped like a candy cane, with a mirrored ball mounted on top. Somewhere in my apartment is a hat, which I bought at Amundsen-Scott, bearing an embroidered likeness of that kitschy column. After our plane touched down, my journalistic colleagues and I watched in astonishment as member of the plane?s crew peeled off his jump suit, stripped down to his underwear and dashed around the column; we learned later that this ritual is required for crew members arriving at the Pole for the first time.
The U.S. National Science Foundation now spends more than $300 million a year to support scientific programs in the Antarctic, about $100 million more than when I visited the continent in 1992. This money is well spent, because it is helping us come to grips with riddles about our past and future. Astrophysicists at the South Pole, which has some of the driest, clearest skies on Earth, have sent balloons aloft to measure the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the big bang. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, just constructed at the Pole, could yield clues about the nature of mysterious ?dark matter? thought to pervade the universe.
Biologists probing frozen Antarctic lakes have discovered new species of bacteria, which may provide clues to the origin of life on Earth more than four billion years ago. Geologists pondering ice cores and rocks have deduced that the Antarctic ice sheet, which to my eyes looked eternal, is anything but. During my visit almost 20 years ago, I learned that the sheet has fluctuated dramatically over the past few million years, and some scientists fear that global warming may shrink the ice enough to trigger a catastrophic surge in sea levels world-wide.
The period during which Scott, Amundsen, Ernest Shackleton and others trekked across the Antarctic has been called the ?Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.? We still live in such an age, even if scientists?and journalists?no longer risk their lives in quite the way that those intrepid explorers did.
WASHINGTON?? A U.S. aircraft carrier sailed through the Strait of Hormuz and into the Gulf without incident on Sunday, a day after Iran backed away from an earlier threat to take action if an American carrier returned to the strategic waterway.
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The carrier USS Abraham Lincoln completed a "regular and routine" passage through the strait, a critical gateway for the region's oil exports, "as previously scheduled and without incident," said Lieutenant Rebecca Rebarich, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fifth Fleet.
The Lincoln, accompanied by strike group of warships, was the first U.S. aircraft carrier to enter the Gulf since late December and was on a routine rotation to replace the outgoing USS John C. Stennis.
The departure of the Stennis prompted Iranian army chief Ataollah Salehi to threaten action if the carrier passed back into the Gulf.
"I recommend and emphasize to the American carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf. ... We are not in the habit of warning more than once," he said.
The threat led to a round of escalating rhetoric between the two sides that spooked oil markets and raised the specter of a military confrontation between Iran and the United States.
Iran threatened to close the strait, the world's most important oil shipping gateway, while the United States warned such a move would require a response by Washington, which routinely patrols international sea lanes to ensure they remain open.
Iran appeared to ease away from its earlier warnings on Saturday, with Revolutionary Guard Corps Deputy Commander Hossein Salami telling the official IRNA news agency that the return of U.S. warships to the Gulf was routine and not an increase in its permanent presence in the region.
"U.S. warships and military forces have been in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East region for many years and their decision in relation to the dispatch of a new warship is not a new issue and it should be interpreted as part of their permanent presence," Salami said.
Pentagon officials declined to comment directly on Salami's remarks, but reiterated that continued U.S. presence in the region reflected the seriousness with which Washington takes its security commitments to partner nations in the region and to ensuring free flow of international commerce.
The Lincoln's arrival in the Gulf was unrelated to Iran's statement on Saturday.
Tensions between Iran and the United States have been escalating in recent weeks as President Barack Obama prepares to implement new U.S. sanctions against Iran over its nuclear enrichment program, which Tehran says is for energy production but the West believes is aimed at producing atomic weapons.
The EU is preparing to intensify sanctions against Tehran with an embargo on Iran's oil exports and possibly freezing the assets of Iran's central bank. Obama is preparing new U.S. sanctions that target foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran's central bank.
Both sides tried to scale down the rhetoric last week. The White House emphasized the United States was still open to international talks on Iran's nuclear program, even as it denied Iranian assertions that discussions were under way about resuming a dialogue.
The White House would not confirm or deny Iranian reports that Obama had sent a letter to Iranian leaders, but spokesman Jay Carney said any communications with Tehran would have reinforced the statements Washington has made publicly.
The United States supports talks between Iran and the so-called P5 + 1, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- Russia, China, France, England and the United States -- plus Germany.
Carney urged Iran to respond to the letter sent in October on behalf of the P5 +1 by European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
"If the Iranians are serious about restarting talks, then they need to respond to that letter," Carney told a White House briefing. "That is the channel by which ... the restarting of those talks would take place."
Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
A Second Take on Meeting the Press: From an up-close look at Rachel Maddow's sneakers to an in-depth look at Jon Krakauer's latest book ? it's all fair game in our "Meet the Press: Take Two" web extra. Log on Sundays to see David Gregory's post-show conversations with leading newsmakers, authors and roundtable guests. Videos are available on-demand by 12 p.m. ET on Sundays.
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady responds to a reporter's question during a media availabilityat the NFL football team's facility in Foxborough, Mass., Wednesday morning, Jan. 18, 2012. The Patriots are slated to host the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC championship on Sunday, Jan. 22. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia)
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady responds to a reporter's question during a media availabilityat the NFL football team's facility in Foxborough, Mass., Wednesday morning, Jan. 18, 2012. The Patriots are slated to host the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC championship on Sunday, Jan. 22. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia)
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady leaves a media availability at the NFL football team's facility in Foxborough, Mass., Wednesday morning, Jan. 18, 2012. The Patriots are slated to host the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC championship on Sunday, Jan. 22. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia)
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) ? Tom Brady is back practicing. Everyone associated with the New England Patriots is acting like he never missed a snap.
Brady returned to the field Thursday after being out the previous day resting his left, non-throwing shoulder. If it's a big deal to the football world that the Patriots' star quarterback briefly was sidelined four days before the AFC championship, his teammates and coach treated it as an inconsequential blip.
So did the two-time league MVP.
"It's not the first practice I have missed over the years," Brady said with a shrug of his shoulders ? including the sore left one. "When coach feels its best that you do other things to get yourself ready, that's what you do, and you still use all that time very wisely. When your coach feels it is best to do other things to get yourself ready, that is what you do."
Coach Bill Belichick revealed little about Brady's absence on Wednesday, lumping it in with every other player in the NFL who gets nicked. Then again, Belichick doesn't give out much information or insight on anything injury-related. Ever.
New England hosts the Baltimore Ravens for the AFC championship on Sunday.
Brady missed one practice and was limited for two others during the final week of the regular season, but he played all but the final offensive series in a 49-21 win over Buffalo. Last Saturday, he played every New England offensive series in a 45-10 divisional playoff win over Denver after being on the injury list but practicing in full all week.
The quarterback stretched and ran a few drills Thursday during the 15 minutes the media were allowed access to the session. He ran with the ball in his left arm as backup quarterback Brian Hoyer half-heartedly attempted to knock it out. Brady showed no signs of being in pain.
The day before, Brady had to find ways to keep himself occupied during the missed session.
"You don't go lounging around taking naps or anything like that," he said with a chuckle. "You just try to do other things to get yourself ready to go. So catch up on your film work and get some extra treatments and so forth. It's just a matter of ultimately we're trying to be as prepared as we can for Sunday. I'm certainly going to be as prepared as I possibly can be.
"It's not the first practice that I've missed over the years. You come off a game Saturday or Sunday and you're just doing everything you can to be prepared. You're just putting in extra work and making sure you're getting prepared."
Then Brady promised to be out on the field, and a while later he was.
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) ? This year's Sundance Film Festival will be the biggest buyer's market ever.
But will any of the movies picked up there become a breakout hit?
That's the question that hangs over Park City, Utah, as the indie film world converges on the resort for the festival, which kicks off with a quartet of opening-night films on Thursday.
Last year's festival was one of the best in memory for acquisitions -- 40 films were scooped up -- but for none of them broke through on the order of "Little Miss Sunshine." The Paul Rudd comedy "Our Idiot Brother" topped last year's entries with a $24.8 million gross.
Films like "Like Crazy," "Martha Marcy May Marlene," and "Win Win" drew favorable reviews and awards attention, but none are really in the position to receive Best Picture nominations the way recent Sundance entries "The Kids Are All Right," "Precious," "An Education" and "Winter's Bone" did a year after their debut at the festival.
Buyers are trekking to Park City this week to check out movies starring the likes of Joel Edgerton, Julie Delpy and Sean Penn, plus the usual plethora of documentaries. The independent film community is hoping for another strong edition of the most important American film festival, and the key showcase for independent film anywhere.
How much a buyer's market is this year's festival? For the first time, every film premiering there did not have a buyer when Sundance booked it. Nearly every one of them still remains completely up for grabs.
This year's lineup boast more than 117 feature-length films, 45 of them by first-time filmmakers. They were selected from more than 4,000 submissions.
It will kick off with a quartet of films: actor-turned-director Todd Louiso's "Hello, I Must Be Going," featuring a buzzed-about performance from Melanie Lynskey; "Wish You Were Here," a Cambodian-set drama starring Joel Edgerton; "Searching for Sugar Man," a documentary about the obscure '70s rock 'n' roller Rodriguez; and Lauren Greenfield's doc "The Queen of Versailles," which stirred up controversy not because of the film but because of the Sundance press release announcing it.
The film details the construction of a 90,000-square-foot Florida mansion whose owner, David Siegel, sued Greenfield, her husband and the Sundance Institute over a description in the release that said his house had been foreclosed, which it had not. (TheWrap initially ran that description, but changed it when a Sundance rep contacted us to say that their initial wording was incorrect.)
Other competition films that have picked up attention include Behn Zeitlin's "Beasts of the Southern Wild," made with a cast of non-actors; Jonathan Kasdan's high-school drama "The First Time"; So Yong Kim's "For Ellen," with Paul Dano as a musician fighting for custody of his daughter; Ben Lewin's "The Surrogate," which stars John Hawkes as a man determined to lose his virginity even though he lives in an iron lung; and "Simon Killer," an Antonio Campos movie from the Borderline Films group that produced "Martha Marcy May Marlene."
The out-of-competition films showcase even bigger names: Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon in the financial thriller "Arbitrage," Bruce Willis and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Stephen Frear's "Lay the Favorite," Sigourney Weaver and Robert De Niro in Rodrigo Cortes' "Red Lights," and Chris Rock in actress-director Julie Delpy's "2 Days in New York," a follow-up to "2 Days in Paris."
Spike Lee is also bringing "Red Hook Summer" to the festival, while Lee Toland Krieger's relationship comedy "Celeste and Jesse Forever" and Jamie Travis' phone-sex comedy "For a Good Time, Call . " have buyers sniffing around.
"Bachelorette" insists that it's not another "Bridesmaids," but the comedy with Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fisher and Lizzy Caplan does look at the female side of wedding rituals.
Typically, Sundance showcases a number of young breakout stars, with last year's "Sundance It Girls" including Elizabeth Olsen ("Martha Marcy May Marlene" and "Silent House") and Felicity Jones ("Like Crazy"). Olsen is back this year with "Liberal Arts" and "Red Lights," while candidates for 2011 breakout status include Mary Elizabeth Winstead in "Smashed" and Gina Rodriguez in "Filly Brown."
The documentary side is traditionally a Sundance strength: Six of the Academy's 15 shortlisted feature docs screened at last year's festival. Competitive entries include Rachel Grady's "Detropia," Kirby Dick's "The Invisible War," Eugene Jarecki's "The House I Live In." HBO Documentary Films has already bought U.S. broadcast rights to "Me at the Zoo," about video blogger Chris Crocker.
Non-competition docs include Stacy Peralta's skateboard chronicle "Bones Brigade: An Autobiography," Rory Kennedy's look at her mother, "Ethel," and Joe Berlinger's "Under African Skies," which follows Paul Simon's return to South Africa 25 years after recording the "Graceland" album.
Whether or not he attends, Berlinger is also apt to be a presence when "West of Memphis" screens - because that documentary, directed by Amy Berg and produced by Peter Jackson, looks at the case of the West Memphis Three, which was exhaustively chronicled by Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky in the three "Paradise Lost" movies.
The big question: What will Berg and Jackson reveal that wasn't already covered by Berlinger and Sinofsky?
Then there's "Humpday" director and Sundance vet Lynn Shelton's "Your Sister's Sister," with Emily Blunt and Mark Duplass, and an anniversary screening of the iconic indie film "Reality Bites," and Paolo Sorrentino's "This Must Be the Place," with Sean Penn as an androgynous-looking rock star. Add an extensive lineup of midnight films and experimental films and short films, and the buyers will have an enormous amount to choose from.
If past Sundance Film Festivals are any indication, a surprisingly large percentage of the entries will wind up with theatrical distribution.
But will any of them turn a profit? That's a question that won't be answered in Park City over the next two weeks - though it'll definitely be asked, over and over.
TheWrap will have full coverage of the festival in the Report From Sundance column.
Alienware may have just upgraded its Aurora gaming rig, but that's not to keep the company from giving more diminutive form factors some love. Just this evening, the subsidiary of Dell announced the X51, a slim gaming PC that's designed to orient itself either vertically or horizontally on the desktop -- complete with an Alienware logo that properly rotates depending on positioning. The system includes both Core i3 and i5 options, and features a slot-loading optical drive with an option for Blu-ray. While it's no shocker, the X51 can be upgraded to 8GB of RAM and a full 1TB of storage. Further, the case accommodates a single, full size graphics card and features an external power supply, (available in 240W or 330W versions, depending on configuration). Users can also expect HDMI 1.4, on-board WiFi, USB 3.0 and digital 7.1 surround sound. As a nifty trick, the computer's accent colors can be conveniently modified with the Alienware Command Center software. Touting immediate availability, customers can place orders for the X51 right away, with configurations starting as low as $699. For the complete set of specs that make up this Mini-ITX gamer, just follow the break.
ANKARA, Turkey ? U.S. Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry drew Turkey's ire on Tuesday after suggesting the country is ruled by Islamic terrorists and questioning its NATO membership.
Turkey's Foreign Ministry released a scathing statement saying Perry's comments were "baseless and inappropriate" and that the United States has no time to waste with candidates "who do not even know their allies."
The U.S. State Department also distanced the U.S. government from Perry's remarks late Tuesday.
"We absolutely and fundamentally disagree with that assertion," spokesman Mark Toner said.
Perry, the Texas governor whose candidacy briefly soared when he entered the race in August but whose shine faded after a series of weak debate performances, said Turkey was ruled by "what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists" and questioned the country's NATO membership.
In a debate ahead of the South Carolina primaries, he said Turkey was moving "far away from the country that I lived in back in the 1970s as a pilot in the United States Air Force that was our ally, that worked with us."
Turkey, which has assisted NATO in Afghanistan and other missions said it has been at the forefront of the fight against terrorism. It said it was "strongly condemning" Perry's words.
"Turkey joined NATO while the governor was still 2 years old," the statement said. "It is a member that has made important contributions to the trans-Atlantic alliance's conflict-full history. It is among countries that are at the front lines in the fight against terrorism."
Toner described Turkey as a stalwart U.S. ally and security partner within NATO, and said it had made a "very courageous stand" against the crackdown in Syria and was an example of "Islamic democracy in action."
Turkey has been ruled by a government led by pious Muslims since 2002. Although its ties with Israel have deteriorated, the government has maintained a close relationship with the West while seeking to represent the views of the Muslim world.
Most recently, Turkey began to host NATO's early warning radar system as part of NATO's missile defense system, which is capable of countering ballistic missile threats from Iran.
Perry also said Turkey should not receive foreign aid. While the United States recently deployed four Predator drones to Turkey from Iraq to aid Ankara in its fight against the autonomy-seeking Kurdish rebels, Turkey does not receive U.S. foreign aid.
The Turkish statement said Turkey's leaders were "personalities respected not only in the United States, but in our region and in the world and whose opinions are strongly relied on."
The Turkish statement said Perry's low standings in polls were proof that the Republicans in the U.S. do not endorse his opinions.
"Figures who are candidates for positions that require responsibility, such as the U.S. presidency, should be more knowledgeable about the world and exert more care with their statement," the Turkish statement said.
The Turkish ambassador to Washington, Namik Tan, said: "We do hope this episode in last night's debate leads to a better informed foreign policy discussion among the Republican Party candidates, one where long-standing allies are treated with respect not disdain."
Perry did poorly in the first two nominating contests, the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, and needs to do well in South Carolina to keep his candidacy alive.
National polls show him far behind the front-runner, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
Season three of the Polish ESL Pro Series concluded Monday evening in Warsaw, with ESC Gaming winning their third title in a row, defeating Drunken Five 2-0 in the Grand Final.
The third season of ESL Pro Series was set to conclude in Warsaw's Multikino cinema, where the third place decider, as well as the Grand Final would be played. In the third place decider, DELTA overcame ZKTeam 2-0, which secured them 1,300 Polish zloty, equivalent to ?296.
After hitting delays at the venue, supposedly due to DDoS attacks, the final between ESC Gaming and Drunken Five (former Fear Factory) kicked off. The match started on what is considered as ESC's favorite playground, with the WCG champs starting on the Terrorists side. Little went in favor of Drunken Five in the first half, as the found themselves dominated from start to finish, only gathering four CT rounds before switching sides. From the CT ESC won five rounds straight to win 16-4 and claim a 1-0 lead.
On second map de_inferno D5 started on the CT side, which seemed to fit them, as they managed to build up a 10-5 lead, going into the second half. Despite having a five round lead, D5 were not able to fend off ESC, who secured eleven rounds, versus two for D5, giving the third ESL Pro Series victory in a row to ESC Gaming.
Despite not featuring HLTV, the organizers have promised us to send demos at a later stage. With the victory ESC Gaming clinched their third ESL Pro Series title in a row, having won a total of ?3,477 over the course of three seasons.
Hey everybody. I'm DeathGodKyo, said username being a sort of evolution from a previous username on other sites, which was YamiKyoKitty. Yami is based on the Japanese word for Darkness and the alter-ego of Yugi from Yu-Gi-Oh went by said name, Kyo is my favorite online name, and... DeathGod replaces Kitty and Yami as a pretty fair and more serious exchange. Yeah.
I found this place from within the depths of the magical land of Google while searching for war-based roleplays. Hmmm, I wonder if I'm going to be hypothetically stabbed for that. Anyway, yeah. I like roleplaying, though Google doesn't seem to have a forum activity perception, so I've spent the past few months shuffling through inactive forums. Ouch, I just got bit by my lack of pride. *Emo voice* Somehow I've been pulled into this site well enough, but I'm questioning activity here as well.
I've been roleplaying for many lifespans. Really? No. I have a few years of experience under my belt but honestly, I'm not even that good, though I do at least try my best. Where did I start and gain interest? D&D. Nothing further. Also, most of my roleplaying experience has been, admittedly, forum-based and usually rather short term, accounting for my lack of skill.
I tread upon the ever-so-magical grounds of kittens and squirrels and roleplaygateway merely because I'm looking for a constituted and active roleplay center. I want to be able to find different categories of roleplays and immerse myself in other worlds, mostly because I'm too emo to enjoy this one :P. Most of all, I like the system here from what I've read. You guys seem relatively awesome. Meaning your radioactive glow burns me.
I mostly enjoy war-based RPs (mostly midieval) and, which I should be ashamed to admit but am not ashamed to admit, high school romance RPs. However, I also greatly enjoy spy, martial arts, and ever so occasionally, fantasy RPs, however it is extremely difficult for me to enjoy fantasy as it's gotten to the point that so little of it is actually original and most of it seems cliched to obsene levels. On fantasy, I enjoy non-Eragon dragon things, the occasional vapire roleplay though those tend to be the most cliched of all, and of course, what emo computer fiend couldn't love a total magic mesh, with wizards and spells and summoning and magical adventures and the like? It's impossible to cliche something that large-scale.
I write, roleplay, and flirt with girls. However, I have no hobbies, as that implies the capability to enjoy something. I also do soccer and martial arts. Wink.
I'm good at close to nothing. Anybody want friend-juice? It's only 98% alcohol. :D
I have no friends. Especially none on this site. Of course, I'm open to friends if my post-pubescent rainbow-colored emo doesn't scare everybody away. Still offering friend-juice.
If you come say hi to me I'll give you cookies and ponies, as I no longer have any desire for such fun things. I'm also offering friend-juice. Anybody? :D Also, considering my layout, I give free emo rainbow sparkle blood glitter to anybody who knows what guide I used to format this. Cheers.
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Public release date: 26-Jan-2012
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The Antarctic has received lots of press lately. Just over century ago, on January 17, 1912, Robert Falcon Scott arrived at the South Pole, only to discover that Roald Amundsen had arrived there more than a month earlier. Scott and his men perished on their return journey, and ironically their failure is commemorated more than Amundsen?s success.
ESC Gaming - 5,000 zloty (?1,138)