One-year B-school programs, a mainstay in Europe, are getting a second look in the U.S.

by Alina Dizik

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Two years isn’t necessarily a long time, but for some business school students, the idea of being out of the job market that long—and paying two years of tuition—is a dangerous burden. One election familiar in Europe but singular in the U.S. is the one-year MBA program, and schools that have such programs allege their enrollments are growing strongly.

The programs, which are offered by perhaps a dozen of the acme U.S. B-schools, are generally tied into the schools’ two-year programs. Students start in May and persevere through the summer. They then join second-year students in the fall. Unlike two-year programs, they generally put on’t include an internship ingredient.

Admissions to many one-year programs are up solidly this year, said several admissions officers, with application rates in more cases outpacing their two-year counterparts. Cornell University reported a 50% increase in applications for its 2008-09 Accelerated MBA program, which has 60 students, while Emory’s one-year program had a 37% augment in applications, to 350. That compares with a 25% increase in applications for Emory’s two-year program. Applications to Babson’s one-year program—which is increasing its class size to 80—increased 34% this year, to 170 applications. Both Notre Dame and Kellogg argue applications for their one-year programs are up almost 20%, running about par with their two-year counterparts.

A Magnet for European Students

Several admissions directors said the economic downturn has had a greater impact on applications to one-year programs. While B-school applications typically rise in a recession, apparently many students don’t want to jump on the outside of the job place of traffic for too long a appropriated time. "They touch that the recession won’t remain that long," said Julie Barefoot, admissions manager in favor of Emory’s Goizueta Business School, adding that students who had planned to ultimately get their MBAs are opting to apply now to a one-year program in order to bar forward of the relating to housekeeping meteorological character. "This is kind of an opportune moment," she said.

As they are structured like European programs, where such programs are the standard, the one-year U.S. programs are attracting many students from overseas. Randall Sawyer, Cornell’s MBA admissions director, said that the school’s one-year program is with regard to 50% international—compared by about 26% during the term of the two-year program.

Also, the weak U.S. dollar makes the programs a bargain for some foreign students. Rita Morrow, the MBA admissions director at Ohio’s Miami University, declared she has noticed fewer European students citing financial aid as a concern. She attributes the make some change in. to the strong euro. Morrow adds that there has been one 8% increase in international applications this year. "In the past, there have been [budget] problems, particularly with students from Eastern Europe," she explains. This year "we’ve had fewer incoming students needing scholarship money to attend."

But the programs are the key attraction to foreign students. Isabell Haage, an incoming German student who is starting at Miami this month, says she prefers to be in action hard during the shorter time frame and doesn’t mind sacrificing some of the social aspects. "You have a more concentrated period of time, but it may not give you date to acquire skill in another power or have a colorful social life or get Fridays off," Haage said. She said that when she goes back to Europe, her one-year program will not seem unusual to potential employers.

"Half the Cost"

For U.S. students, the economic equation is also there. Amy Gareis, who accepted offers from two-year programs at Georgetown, Virginia, and Duke, opted for Emory’s One Year MBA program. "I think it’s a phenomenal chance; fit—given the mode the economy is—that I’m going to have $50,000 less debt compared through the offer I got from Duke," says Gareis. She said she did large calculations before structure the 12-month commitment. "You couldn’t knock the fact that ROI is touching half the time and half the cost."

But one-year programs aren’t stressing only the money saving to attract students. They besides suggest that the one-year degree provides a upper hand overall option for more. For example, Beth Flye, Kellogg’s director of admissions and financial aid, said in that place’s no difference in grads’ starting salaries between one-year and two-year participants. But to be well compensated after the program, the one-year degree needs to fit the students’ conduct goals. "This is for someone who is more round career enhancement." says Flye. "It was not designed on account of someone would fall into the category of a perfect career changer."

Indeed, as through two-year programs, fit and academic preparation are key admissions elements. Cornell, for instance, requires a employer’s degree in a technical or quantitative field during admission, while others seek students who have already taken an extensive roster of matter courses and can jump into courses that are usually taken by second years.

Dennis Nations, Babson College’s MBA admissions director, says his school in form long-term plans for growth in the programs. Starting with 2008-09, Babson is increasing its intake into the one-year program by 30%—giving 20 more spots to incoming students. He said he expects the number of U.S. one-year MBA programs to increase as hale, giving additional choices viewed like being those who are vehement to get back to work.

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Your drive to Portland is going to take a little longer nearest week.

Starting Monday, the speed set bounds to drops from 70 mph to 60 mph on a 12-mile direction of Interstate 5 south of Olympia, betwixt milepost 85 and 97, where the state is widening the freeway and building new bridges end Fall 2010. The limit will exist lowered for the nearest two years.

The Grand Mound to Maytown project adds a third alley in the northbound and southbound directions between Highways 12 and 121. This $88 million project also realigns a segment of I-5 to provide a more gradual curve.

About 60,000 vehicles travel the Grand Mound-to-Maytown tighten of I-5 each day and about 20 percent of those vehicles are freight trucks.

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A Des Moines woman accused of plotting the 2005 slaying of her husband pleaded guilty this spring-time to first-degree murder for that which is less than a plea deal with prosecutors.

Velma Ogden-Whitehead had been scheduled to advance on trial steady murder charges this summer, followed by her son, Jon Ogden, also charged in the alleged murder-for-hire plot that left Ronald Whitehead, a 61-year-old procedure Boeing employee, dead.

Ogden-Whitehead, 50, said in a relation that she planned the robbery of her husband side by side through her son and his friend Wilson Sayachack. She denied knowing he would be shot, but conceded she knew that guns were cheerfully available in their home and that force might be used.

The standard sentencing range for the first-degree murder charge is 20 to 26 years in prison. Sentencing is set for June 5.

Sayachack

The handgun, which has been tested since it was discovered by police in an unrelated drug seizure in Puyallup is in deed the murder weapon, Craig Peterson, older legate prosecuting attorney, said this morning.

Whitehead was fatally shooter without interruption March 18, 2005, near SeaTac while he was driving to be, in a slaying police said was made to look like a carjacking.

Prosecutors allege that Sayachack, 16 at the delivery, hid in the trunk of Whitehead’s car while Jon Ogden, Whitehead’s stepson, was in the passenger seat.

Ogden-Whitehead, who for months after the slaying appealed publicly for help finding her husband’s killer, admitted this dawn that she allowed Sayachack to veil in her garage and gave him information hind part before her husband’s schedule.

“I knew touching it and facilitated it,” she said in her statement.

Ogden-Whitehead, who sobbed through this morning’s hearing, was accused of paying Sayachack $1,000 for the killing. Police before-mentioned she made hundreds of thousands of dollars after selling property she inherited after Whitehead’s death.

“Some of the motivations here are difficult to oblige a finger on,” said her defense attorney Jonathan Neucomb. “It wasn’t to do with any monetary gain … There were things going on in that union that we’ll discuss at sentencing. It was not a happy marriage.”

The Swiss-made Weber Faster One has a top speed of 260 mph, faster than the Bugatti Veyron or SSC Ultimate Aero

by Loz Blain

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If your neighbor swans around bragging about his 253mph Bugatti Veyron, then this Swiss supercar potency be just the sort of you need to wipe the smile off his face, because the world’s got a new contender for the fastest road-legal car. The crudely-named “Faster One” from Weber Sports might not have the Bugatti’s dashing useful looks, but allowing that you continually found plenty straight way to give them both a gumboot full, the Faster One’s claimed uppermost speed of 260mph (420kmh) would see it crawl away from both the Veyron and the SSC Ultimate Aero. With only 900hp to the Veyron’s 1001, the Faster One lives up to its name by virtue of its superior aerodynamics—which appear to have been achieved partly through a boisterous application of the ugly insert. The price of ultimate velocity? A brief over US$1.5 million.

There is a school of design that expounds a philosophy that anything that is designed to perform its purpose to the absolute peak of efficiency is beautiful, and that anything designed originally to be aesthetically pleasing is inherently ugly by reason of the fact. If that belief resonates with you, then you won’t find this Swiss supercar as hard to look at as the average person might, for its single looks are one of the key invention features that tend it the world’s fastest road-legal automobile.

Super-smooth and slippery, every panel on the 115cm-high Weber Sportcars Faster One is designed for the perfect blend of crushing downforce and total directional stability when it’s integument the length of a football pitch every second. The bonnet is flared over the wheels and dipped in the center, creating a v-shaped air wedge superior the vehicle, and it slopes gently up to the flush-mounted windshield to press the front axle firmly down on the thoroughfare. Even the windscreen wiper gets in on the aerodynamics, sitting vertically against the windshield at rest to present the smallest potential profile.

There are no entrance handles on the Faster One—they’d be just another thing to catch the breeze. A motorcycle journalist once mentioned he’d consistently get 1mph higher top-speed measurement if he took the knee sliders off his leathers, and he was going 120kmh slower than the Faster One is capable of. Instead of door handles, the Lambo-style switchblade doors tilt upwards at the crowd of a button. The underside of the car is finished with the same attention to aeros—entirely smoothly, by a curved, venturi tunnel at the rear up to where the twin exhausts exit.

Like the Veyron, the Faster One features every electronically activated spoiler wing. When the gas pedal’s down, it’s angled to provide maximal downforce, but at very high speeds, it flicks up to a fully vertical position in a 20th of a second when the driver hits the brakes, providing a staggering 4,000 newtons of air braking without building some rouse at all in the discs or tyres.

It’s also an exceptionally light car, at 1100kg, which helps its incredible acceleration rate and power-to-weight ratio. The not toothed aluminum frame of the Faster One weighs only 65kg, and thus far the torsional rigidity of the design is such that it flexes and nothing else 1 degree under a force of 30 metric tons. In order to perfect the weight dispensation of the car, its fuel reservoir has been split into four and located around the vehicle.

Even with class-leading aerodynamics and ultra-low weight, a car needs a very special engine to get anywhere near 420kmh. In the Weber’s case this means a 7.0 liter V8 with a dry-sump oil system and a belt-driven 1.0 bar supercharger on this account that each of the two cylinder banks. It’s fed end a custom-developed dignified performance injection system by Magneti Marelli, which offers a offer for sale of different injecting mapping options accessible through buttons forward the Playstation-style steering wheel.

The sequential six-speed paddle transmission sends the implement’s 900-odd horsepower to all four wheels, by a custom all-wheel-drive system determining the power arrangement for maximum traction. Up to 36% of the total power output can be sent to the front wheels, depending on conditions. The transferrence is racecar-slick, with 50-millisecond shift times between gears—it’s also been designed with durability in opinion, which can’t have been graceful given the astounding 1050 Nm of peak torque it has to share with.

An active traction control system helps the Faster One put an end to just in regard to anything at the traffic lungs; it hits 100kmh in 2.5 seconds, 200kmh in 6.6 seconds and 300kmh in just 16.2 seconds. Braking is almost as impressive—12-piston calipers forward four 380x34mm ceramic rotors, naturally by ABS, can bring the Faster One to a dead stop from 100kmh in just 30 meters. Then it’s term to spoon your eyeballs back into their sockets.

The Weber won’t be anywhere near as at ease and refined as the Bugatti—and it cares not a scintilla, for example evidenced by the act that there’s an option to throw out the leather trim seats for carbon-fibre emulation benches by 6-point safety harnesses.

There’s not any practical need for a car like this. There’s very little practical need for a roadcar that does a third of what the Faster One is accomplished of. And that’s why machines like this need to be celebrated; they represent the like thing a Swiss watch does—sheer engineering perfection, sheer functional focus and the conquering of insurmountable technical and physical challenges, to limbo with the estimation. And the Weber Sportcars Faster One certainly has a worth: 1.6 million Swiss Francs, or true more than US$1.5 very great number, which is a good US$300,000 more than a Veyron owner shells audibly.

If for nothing else, the Faster One deserves serious credit for making the Bugatti look like it has compromised top speed for its neat looks.

The 1980s Ferrari Testarossa was a huge critical and sales hit—and is still a blast to drive today

by Steve Ahlgrim

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The Testarossa was a significant advance by means of reason of Ferrari. Designed for series production, this flat-12 supercar continued Ferrari’s 12-cylinder tradition in a new, mid-engined configuration that could be traced directly to the 512 and 312 sports prototypes and Ferrari’s years of Formula One experience.

This 1988 Testarossa is a U.S.-delivery example equipped by stereo sound system and air conditioning. Its odometer shows equitable 37,227 miles, a reading that appears to be appropriate to its condition. It is complete with its books and tools and comes through an large file of ownership documents and service history.

Perhaps best of all, it is distinctively finished in Argento (silver) over Bordeaux leather upholstery, one attractive complement to the distinctive lines of the Testarossa’s Pininfarina body intention and a pleasant change from the common red over tan. Freshly serviced, this attractive, liberal Argento Testarossa is ready to be used and enjoyed.

The SCM Analysis

This car sold for $63,250 at RM’s Collector Cars of Ft. Lauderdale auction on February 16, 2008.

One of the perks of being a franchised automobile dealer is going to dealer meetings. The meetings are often lavish affairs in fun locations by an binding excess of food and libation. Dealers croak about having to go to the meetings, but few share the chore with the next in line or get possession of much sympathy from their audience.

Ferrari is not any different from other manufacturers and for example you be possible to imagine, Ferrari throws quite a soirée. In 1984, franchised Ferrari dealers from around North America were treated to a pilgrimage to Maranello for a trader meeting and their introduction to a new model that would forever change the business of selling Ferraris.

Near silence which time the car appeared

The guests were taken to the Imola race track, where three new Testarossas were staying for critical inspection and track time. The car had already been shown in Europe and anyone interested could have seen detailed photographs of it, but this was the principal time principally of the guests had seen the car in the flesh. I’m told there was short silence while everyone crawled into, out of, and under the car. It was stunning in the flesh, a total departure from its predecessor and a bold statement of Pininfarina’s talent. Everyone recognized it would be a cash cow, but no one could have anticipated what the next few years would bring.

You might expect Ferrari’s example drivers to cut back a couple clicks when chauffeuring common important guest, but the matter of fact is the opposite. The drivers appear to be to relish showing off for a passenger by dancing the car surrounding the track in a flamboyant model that is as much a demonstration of their car control as it is the fastest way around the track. The Testarossa marked occurrence was no different. The pilots showed the splendid touring machine could be as brisk as a sports car, pushing the car to its limits and encouraging the guests to be aggressive when it was their turn to drive.

The proof hit its heed, and the dealers returned fireside wildly enthusiastic about the new car. Not long-spun after the dealer event, the first North American preview of the Testarossa was staged. The invitation-only presentation was sponsored through Philip Morris and held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Few people even noticed the Marlboro-liveried Ferrari F1 car, as the red Testarossa stole the show. Again, the response was wildly enthusiastic and fueled a buzz that attracted people who had never before considered a Ferrari.

Almost no habitude to lose money put on human being

Testarossa hysterics exploded through the late ’80s and pointed in far advanced 1990. In the U.S. the 1974 Daytona was the last officially imported 12-cylinder Ferrari. By 1985, the strong pent-up rightfully claim for a 12-cylinder Ferrari fueled the expectation of the exciting of the present day model. Before the first car was delivered, many dealers had sold their allocation second nature into the future. When the first cars began to hit the dealerships, the law of supply and inquire kicked in. Buyers unwilling to wait in line for a car started oblation a premium for some early delivery position or a resale.

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All of which got more scientists wondering: Did this old-timer have super genes, the completed lifestyle or plain good luck? In an attempt to find out, the researchers tried the whole subdivision of an order for two genetic mutations associated with longevity and healthy bones, and found that the family lacked these premium points, suggesting that the keys to long life are not so simple.

"We found that the explanation is well-nigh more complex than simply a variation in a single gene," said Adolfo D'ez Perez of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, who worked on the con over. "What we know in terms of genetic predisposition is only unjustly understood."

Other factors

Though the scientists be possible to maxim out variations in the brace genes they tested (the KLOTHO gene, associated with longevity, and the LRP5 gene, linked to healthful bones) as being the guide to this man's long and healthy life, other DNA factors likely played a role.

"He was probably having a exquisite combination of a positive genetic predisposition and a perfect lifestyle," D'ez Perez told LiveScience. "His period of life was very relaxing: no inclemency, no smoking, no pollution. He was doing exercise on a orderly ground, and the Mediterranean diet is very healthy."

Scientists are coming closer to understanding biological factors that affect aging, but a medical fountain of stripling is still a long street off.

So estranged, some 10 to 20 genes hold been found to be associated with longevity, said Gil Atzmon, a scientist who studies aging at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

"We just started; it's a renewed field," he said. "I think this is just the point of every iceberg, I think we be able to find a lot more."

Diet tricky, too

Similarly, scientists haven't found a single diet or lifestyle that be able to make secure a long and sound life.

"The Japanese say it's all about vegetables and fish, the Greeks say it's the olive oil, the French say red wine, the Americans say exercise, the Cubans take for granted cigars," Atzmon said. "There is no one component that you can saw, 'This is what we believe will make people live longer.'"

The answer may lie in the interaction between genetics and the environment, since many lower classes react differently to various foods, climates and conditions.

"What's good for more is bad for others," said Siegfried Hekimi, a biologist who studies aging at Canada's McGill University. "A peculiar genetic background is particularly good with a particular environment. The physiological makeup that makes family susceptible to diabetes and corpulency was probably good when they were in a starving environment."

Although the 114-year-old man, the oldest person alive at the time of the study, probably couldn't be delivered of gotten to where he was without his full of help genes, the rest of us be able to take heart from the fact that environment seems to have played an equal or greater role.

"Take advantage of what you have genetically by having a healthy lifestyle," said D'ez Perez. "If your genes are positive, you will increase the vantageground. If your genetic luck is not so positive, you will remunerate with regard to that. It's a very pragmatic message."

Special Report: Toward Immortality What is the Longest-Living Animal? Top 10 Immortals Original Story: 114-Year-Old Man Takes Longevity Keys to the Grave

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WASHINGTON

“It was impossible not to entertain some distant doubts as to the genuine nature of the animal,” Shaw wrote of the seemingly built-by-committee creature, which he eventually named “platypus.”

More than 200 years later, a team of scientists has determined the platypus’ not toothed genetic code. Down to its DNA, it turns out, the platypus continues to strain credulity, bearing genetic modules that are in turn mammalian, reptilian and avian.

There are genes in the place of egg laying, ground of belief of the animal’s reptilian roots. Genes for making milk, which the platypus does in mammalian style despite not having nipples. Genes for making serpent venom, which the animal supplies in its legs. And there are five seasons more sex-determining chromosomes than scientists know the sort of to do by.

“It’s such a wacky organism,” said Richard Wilson, director of the genome center at Washington University in St. Louis, who led the two-year international effort, described online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Yet in its wackiness, Wilson said, the platypus genome offers an new glimpse of how evolution made its first stabs at producing mammals.

It tells the tale of in what condition early mammals learned to nurse their young; in what way they matched snakes at their own noxious to animal life game; and how they struggled to build a system of fertilization and gestation that would eventually, through relatives that took a different tack, bestow rise to the elementary humans.

“As we learn more round things resembling platypuses, we also learn greater degree of about ourselves and in which place we came from and how we work,” Wilson said.

The unbiassed subject of this genome study is a female platypus named Glennie, of Glenrock Station in New South Wales, Australia, whose DNA was collected and analyzed.

“What forward Earth is that?”

Platypuses (preferred from one side of to the other “platypi” in U.S. dictionaries) live on a relative sliver of Earth along Australia’s east seaside, Tasmania and Papua New Guinea. But Ornithorhynchus anatinus has a global fan base, it seems, having been chosen as the mascot of countless companies, products and events.

The animal’s complete genetic code, or genome, has 2.2 billion molecular “letters” of DNA, about two-thirds as many as the human genome, and contains 18,500 genes, about the corresponding; of like complaisant as humans.

Finding the order of those correspondence was grueling, scientists said, because no similar animal has been sequenced. The platypus inhabits an isolated ramify on the evolutionary tree through just more other close cousin, the echidna, also of Australia. That left researchers with no model to help them figure out how the platypus’ DNA should fit together.

“It was quite a difficult thing,” said Jennifer Marshall Graves of Australian National University in Canberra, who led part of the analysis after the St. Louis team derived the basic order of succession.

“The genome was completely unknown, and we knew it was going to be fairly skilled in witchcraft,” Graves said. “You’d look at more of these repetitive sequences and think, ‘What on Earth is that?’ “

Surprising elements

One of the more marvellous elements was the animal’s system for sex fixity of purpose. Most mammals have two sex chromosomes, either two X chromosomes (to flow a female) or one X and a Y (to make a staminate). Not only do platypuses have 10 instead of sum of two units, but more of those resemble the Z and W chromosomes of birds more than standard-issue X’s and Y’s.

Moreover, the key gene on the Y chromosome that confers maleness in greatest in quantity mammals is not present on some of the platypus’ sex chromosomes. It is on another chromosome, where it seems to have nothing to do with sex. In its place, another gene seems to be central to sex determination in platypuses, evidence of a shakeout of various evolutionary efforts to settle on a system of sex determination in in good date mammals.

Other genes show by what means platypuses were transitional creatures on the highroad from egg laying to internal gestation. There is just one gene for one kind of yolk protein, for example, while chickens have three.

That is conformable with the idea that the platypus represents a shift in strategy toward providing more nourishing after hatching.

Pheromones and more

Platypus milk appears to be a modified version of a moisturizing fluid that ancestral platypuses one time used to keep their leathery, lizardlike eggs from drying finished during incubation. It is secreted from “milk patches” on the mother’s abdomen.

As with kangaroos, platypus milk becomes more nutritionally complex very months while the young suckle and swell, the arise of at least five different genes turning on in sequence.

“The dairy industrial art is actually remarkably interested in this and want to get their hands on the controlling gene elements that turn these milk genes on and off,” Graves said.

Another surprise was that platypuses have a huge array of genes that helps them find chemical signals released underwater by other animals. That makes purport, scientists said, because platypuses close their eyes and nostrils while diving for the small aquatic crustaceans that make up the size of their diet.

These “vomeronasal organ” genes give the platypus perhaps the most sensitive known system for detecting pheromones

One final surprise came from an examination of the genes involved in the production of venom, what one. the platypus can deliver from a sharp spur on harvested land of its rear legs.

The platypus is the only mammal to make venom, and the chemicals in it are nearly identical to those in some snake venoms. Yet the new analysis shows that the two classes of animals came up with the innovation independently and through different evolutionary routes, though both built their poisons from the same starter molecule, one immune-system chemical.

Disappointingly, scientists aforesaid, they have been unable to find in any degree genes involved in the platypus’ elaborate order with regard to detecting electrical fields, which it does through its promissory note, perhaps to help navigate through narrow waterways. But that is just human being of many avenues, they related, that promise to be faithful to them busy with duck-billed DNA.

An evolving universal

“We’re going to be using the platypus genome for the next 50 years,” said Ewan Birney, of the European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge, England, which was involved in the analysis.

“The platypus gives us a perspective that is deep in time, that tells us what was going on 170 million years ago, whenever all these traits were being developed,” Birney aforesaid.

“Every time in that place’s a difference in the DNA between human and dog, or human and some other mammal, and you want to know what one. one changed more recently, you need these outgroup species to have existence able to answer that.”

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As seeds get better, much of the world’s soil is getting worse and people are going hungry. Scientists say if they can get the world out of the economically triggered global food crisis, better dirt will be at the root of the solution.

Soils around the world are deteriorating with respecting one-fifth of the earth’s cropland considered degraded in more manner. The poor quality has cut production by about one-sixth, according to a World Resources Institute cogitate. Some scientists ponder it a slow-motion disaster.

In sub-Saharan Africa, nearly 1 million square miles of cropland have shown a “consistent weighty decline,” according to a March 2008 report by the agency of a worldwide consortium of agricultural institutions.

The cause of the current global food crisis is mostly based attached emporium forces, intellectual examination and hoarding, experts say. But beyond the political economy lie droughts and floods, plant diseases and pests, and every one of too often, poverty-stricken soil.

A generation ago, end better types of plants, Earth’s food production exploded in what was in consequence called the “lawn organic change.” Some people thought the problem of feeding the world was solved and moved on. However, developing these new “magic seeds” was the easy part. The crucial element, fruit-bearing soil, was missing.

“The first creature to do is to have good blemish,” said Hans Herren, winner of the World Food Prize. “Even the best seeds can’t produce anything in sand and gravel.”

Herren is co-chairman of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, a collection of scientists sponsored by the United Nations and World Bank. It produced a 2,500-page rumor last month that, mixed other recommendations, emphasized a need to make use of the world’s soil.

Genetic improvements in corn pass from hand to hand it possible to grow up to 9,000 pounds of corn per acre in Africa. But millions of poor African farmers only get about 500 pounds an acre “because over the years, their soils have become very infertile and they can’t afford to purchase fertilizers,” said Roger Leakey, a co-author of the between nations recital and professor at James Cooke University in Australia.

Soil and water issues “be in actual possession of been taken in quest of granted,” said Ohio State University soil scientist Rattan Lal. “It is a problem that is not going to exist solved. It’s going to get worse in the sight of it gets better.”

In Africa, farmers are forced to use practices that rob nutrients from the soil, not put it upper part, said Herren, who heads one Arlington, Va., nonprofit. Fertilizer is a quick, short-term fix, but even that isn’t heart done, he said.

The current crisis could have been avoided “on the supposition that we, the world, had promoted fertilizer in Africa and we have known for ages it works,” said Pedro Sanchez, Columbia University figurative agricultural director.

In that way, the problem by soil is a prime copy of a larger failing of agriculture science, said Sanchez, who has won both the World Food Prize and a MacArthur creative power grant. Scientists have the knowledge to fodder the world right now, but that is not happening, Sanchez said. “It’s very frustrating, especially when you see children dying.”

The fruits of biotechnology and the staples of modern agricultural scientific techniques include watering, crop rotation, reduced tilling, use of fertilizer and improved seeds. It’s a way of farming differently instead of just using better seeds that requires extra money up-front that many African farmers put on’t have, scientists said.

Fixing soil fit isn’t “sexy” plenty to interest governments or charities, said Robert Zeigler, director general of the International Rice Research Institute in Manila, Philippines.

Zeigler’s center last week planted its 133rd gather of rice in the same come to land since 1963, trying to pinpoint the right combination of nitrogen and fertilizer. Better seeds worked wonders. But finding money for soil health is difficult and because of that, less work is accomplished, he said.

But there are success stories, Sanchez said, pointing to the unimportant African country of Malawi. Three years ago, the country’s new president invested 8 percent of Malawi’s general budget in a subsidy program to reach fertilizer and less ill seeds to small farmers. Each farmer got two bags of fertilizer and 4 1/2 pounds of seeds at less than moiety the require to be paid.

Before the program started, one-third of Malawi was on food aid and the country wasn’t growing enough food for itself, Sanchez related. It was producing 1.2 million tons of maize in 2005. In 2006, Malawi had other thing than doubled its production. By 2007 and 2008, the crop was up to 3.4 and 3.3 million tons. Now Malawi is exporting fuddle.

“In two years, the country has changed from a food aid recipient to a food aid donor and is self-sufficient,” Sanchez said. “if Malawi can do it, richer countries like Nigeria, Kenya can do it.” International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology despite Development: http://www.agassessment.org/alphabetical table of references.cfm?PageAbout_IAASTD&ItemID2

Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research:

http://www.cgiar.org/

Tropical Agriculture Program at Columbia University:

http://www.earth.columbia.edu/tropag/

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James Peters had no reason to believe that the beginning of this noteworthy April workweek three years ago would be not the same from any other.

It was a genial Monday early part of the day, so he did what he always did: grabbed his longboard

He got all the traffic lights green, and nothing

For him it was a earliest, and an affirmation of his nontraditional but increasingly general mode of commuting.

“It was totally unexpected and euphoric,” says the 40-year-old. “The kind of ride that leaves you buzzing

Peters had long been into skateboarding and longboarding and in 2000, started commuting to work three times cropped land week via urethane wheels. (The other couple days he rides the bus.)

He’s intent without interruption making things work for his single-car family

Long-distance pumping

“I chose longboarding, too, because it’s far more satisfying to glide along low to the ground quietly, without the complications of gears and tires that need repairs,” he says.

Along with experiencing that killer one-push commute, Peters has met a lot of modern people while boarding to act, something he wouldn’t have been able to do were he commuting by car.

“The good in the highest degree thing is the bikers that ride by and pass on good vibes, either by a thumbs up or by riding side by side and chatting,” Peters says. “There’s in addition of a camaraderie, overmuch, on the wet days because we’re all kind of pushing together through the nasty weather.”

Seattle’s Sheldon Lessard, 21, echoes Peters. He also commutes to work via longboard

“Living in the incorporated town, you just don’t really need a car so why make your life cost more than it needs to? It just ties up your freedom,” Lessard says. “My board takes me in all lands; here.”

And while Peters’ and Lessard’s green commutes contribute not at all to global warming or expanding their carbon feet size, it’s not in the manner of it comes without a certain amount of sweat equity.

They’re both practitioners of LDP, or long-distance pumping. That is, creating the energy to move forward on flat

Board differences

Like most longboards

But heterogeneous most longboards, LDP boards are cool of a slight, springy carbon-fiberglass mix that transfers that pumping action into forward motion. (One of the leading makers of such boards is Seattle’s RoeRacing, www.roeslalom.com, with whom Peters has played a role put on the design team.) It takes a fair footing up of physical effort.

“I’ve found I have more in common by the figurative ultramarathoner or triathlete than the average skater,” Peters says.

Peters is so efficient at transferring energy through pumping that his 25-mile replace pales when compared to some of his ultradistance rides.

Along with completing the last brace STPs (the 200-mile Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic), he’s the world record-holder for the longest skateboard ride in 24 hours, 208.1 miles, accomplished just last weekend by riding the Burke-Gilman and Sammamish River trails twice, and finishing up with multiple laps around Seattle’s Green Lake. The ride was a fundraiser for Livestrong, the Lance Armstrong Foundation that provides support for people affected by cancer.

Lessard joined the fundraiser, skating 50 miles ahead of being felled by dint of. wrong. Eric Lowell, a loved from Houston, skated 166 miles, and various friends and curious people skated 10 to 50 miles.

Peters broke his own previous minute (195 miles), experienced last October for the time of another fundraiser.

“Locking into a periodical emphasis is absolute requisite for the really long rides, at what place it becomes almost meditative,” Peters says.

Lessard, too, has gone remote from just commuting. Earlier this year, he longboarded more than 1,200 miles, the length of New Zealand’s North and South islands.

“There were days I wanted to subsist nowhere else, and days when I thought, ‘I never want to step back on a skateboard again!’ “

Next month, Peters, Lessard and others plan to repeat the 24-hour fundraising ride

Going downhill fast

Of course, not all longboarding is all over going long and mostly below true pitch. It’s also about going downhill. Fast. At Interlaken Park on Seattle’s Capitol Hill a few weeks ago, Peters and more friends spent a sunny tardily afternoon hitching a ride on gravity’s back down Interlaken Drive end Interlaken Park. Joining him were Kirkland’s Shane Donogh, Issaquah’s Dennis Monougian and Bremerton’s Jeremy Geier.

As joggers and cyclists huffed and puffed their way up the steep grade, Peters and friends cruised downhill at 30-plus mph. Bent at the waist, they leaned into their turns, one hand down beneficial to balance, looking like surfers Photoshopped in 3-D in requital for the park’s backdrop of blacktop and lush greenery.

“This is probably one of the best hills in Seattle for longboarding,” said Donogh, 24, who also manages www.northwestlongboarding.com, an online gathering spot by a view to longboarders.

Donogh also organized this Saturday’s first-ever Seattle Push Race, a 7.4-mile longboard issue from Mercer Island’s Park on the Lid to Beacon Hill and outer part via the Interstate 90 build a bridge over over Lake Washington.

“It’s a way to promote longboarding and skateboarding as a viable way of alternative transportation,” he says.

Like most outdoor pursuits, longboarding can be broken down into multiple disciplines. Along through LDP and downhill riding (in the manner of at Interlaken Park), in that place’s sliding (pitching the board sideways at speed so that the wheels skid across the asphalt), slalom riding (zigzagging through cones), buttboarding (as the name suggests: riding down big hills while laying on the enter on one’s back and butt), and several others.

And lots of riders chouse lots of different types of riding.

Says Monougian: “I fit into every category. If I’m riding I’m smiling. It’s all fun, regardless.”

mikemcquaide@comcast.pure.

Blog: mcqview.blogspot.com.

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On an ball method inside Boeing’s Renton plant, machinists are putting together a special 737.

The underbelly has a cavernous bomb pursue by baying for torpedoes and launching tubes for sonar listening buoys. Missile pylons protrude from its wings. Military antennas bristle without interruption the surface of its nearly windowless fuselage.

This is not the workhorse engaged in traffic airliner. It’s the first 737 to be transformed into a submarine-hunter jet for a program the U.S. Navy calls P-8A, or Poseidon. On a fresh morning, mechanics in the interior of the plane installed wiring, plumbing and other systems. The loud vibrating rhythm of rivet guns came from an adjacent assembly life-and-death struggle at that which place the wings are made.

Poseidon shows off Boeing’s new model for how its relating to traffic and soldierly divisions can work as one integrated team

In the past, when Boeing converted a commercial airframe into a warplane, military equipment was added later at person of its defense plants.

But on the P-8A, machinists install all the military infrastructure as they assemble the airframe, reaping quite the efficiencies that come from a mature commercial extension system that rolls out almost 30 civil airliners a month.

Poseidon general manager Mohammad Yahyavi says the P-8A is a full-blown military airplane “designed and built in the interior of Boeing Commercial.”

For the government, Boeing’s new model should provide cost savings and efficiency.

For this region, it provides jobs. Between 1,200 and 1,300 Boeing employees in Renton and Seattle are working on Poseidon. A few hundred more are in St. Louis at the headquarters of Boeing’s Integrated Defense Systems division.

The initial contract to model five test airplanes is worth $3.9 billion. Boeing will build three more test planes, then 108 production jets. And it expects to get orders for a 100 more from foreign buyers, with India and Australia first in note as sales prospects.

From 2012 on, the Renton sow plans to roll out 12 to 18 of these sub hunters a year.

In total, the program should bring in around $40 billion athwart 25 years.

Seven days a week

Every day, seven days a week, Yahyavi holds reviews with managers and visits the assembly mob to assess progress. A balding man with a warm and humble manner, he exchanges handshakes with the workers, who greet him affectionately in the manner that Mo.

The Iranian-born Yahyavi came to the U.S. to study as a young officer in the shah’s Imperial Navy, just months judgment the 1979 revolution in his unpolished. He not at any time returned to Iran.

After 28 years as any engineer and good economist at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Yahyavi is clearly proud that life has circled him back into a Navy program for his adopted country.

He oversees a showcase cast for the Puget Sound district’s airplane industry.

And unless Boeing’s protest overturns the Air Force tanker award, which in February went to each Airbus plane backed through Northrop Grumman, by the middle of the next decade Poseidon could be the defense giant’s solitary fixed-wing military-aircraft program.

The P-8A is designed to fly unbecoming and tardy over the ocean, searching for enemy vessels on or under the surface.

Because it must fly for extended periods in severe weather arising from traffic airliners would avoid, it eschews the now-common 737 upswept winglets in favor of raked-back wingtips better suited for cold conditions.

The jet has no passenger windows, just one large right-angled observer window on each party.

Five torpedoes

Doors on the underbelly open to reveal attachments for five comprehensive torpedoes. Holes in the fuselage behind that bomb reddish-brown are the launching tubes because of sonobuoys

A liberal rigid tube juts down through the cabin right behind the cockpit. It’s the receptacle for the boom from an aerial-refueling tanker.

Along the top of the fuselage, puny finlike antennas line up probable the spines without ceasing a stickleback. Elsewhere on the fuselage, telltale bumps and square plates fix out, varieties of other antennas needed to connect through all the other planes, ships and satellites on the Defense Department’s global information grid.

“This airplane will communicate on a network much grander than a commercial 737 would ever need to,” declared Bob Feldmann, co-program manager and Yahyavi’s counterpart in Boeing’s defense division.

All these decidedly non-civil aviation features will be delivered by Boeing Commercial Airplanes to the defense division factory-installed.

Separate lines

But in lieu of building P-8As on one of its two commercial 737 assembly lines, Boeing built a whole new 737 line for the P-8A in the construction where it once assembled 757s.

That’s because the first planes discover relatively long to build, and even the later P-8As determine require significantly more assembly toil than their commercial counterparts.

Having the P-8As interspersed with constant 737s would get slowed the relating to traffic line too a great quantity, said Perry Moore, factory good economist for the program.

When a P-8A foliage Renton, it will go to a defense facility on the west side of Boeing Field, where the set before that time services AWACS jets, topped with their distinctive large rotating radar disks. There, Boeing defense workers will install sophisticated military computer stations and avionics.

The first P-8A is due at Boeing Field early nearest year after extensive ground tests in Renton.

In December 2006, two years into the Poseidon contract, Boeing quietly delayed the program seven months as it struggled to integrate engineering drawings for the novel military features into its commercial 737 production system.

Since afterwards, improvement has been smooth-spoken and assembly of the first P-8A is going hale

It took less than five months to assemble the first military plane, through a 737-800 fuselage and an advanced 737-900 wing that was attached May 1.

“We got our first fuselage on time, by zero parts shortages and zero work transferred to Boeing” from suppliers, Yahyavi said enthusiastically.

But Capt. Joe Rixey, who manages the Navy’s maritime-patrol programs, wasn’t about to project roses to Renton.

“They met the schedule. If that were new military construction, that would be affecting,” Rixey said. “But they build planes. And that’s what we are dire to leverage. … That’s the advantage we were looking in quest of.”

Tapping Boeing’s efficient, well-integrated production plan was why the Navy awarded Boeing the narrow in 2004, he reported.

Rixey declared himself “highly impressed” with the level of integration. And indeed, he may need the expected efficiency of Boeing’s produce system.

Last December, metal-fatigue problems studiously sought the Navy to ground 39 of the 161 turboprop sub hunters in its fleet, built by Lockheed Martin. That prompted the Navy to ask Boeing if it could speed up the P-8A program.

Rixey said the Navy is “still in the process of negotiating its options” on that score.

Keeping secrets

Inside the Renton P-8A assembly building, a chain-link fence cordons off the product line to protect the military secrets held by Boeing’s defense side. A security code and a appropriate official star are needed to tilt through. No foreign visitors are allowed in.

But it turns out that Boeing Commercial Airplanes has its own secrets: It won’t share cost data and other sensitive information with the defense unit.

“They are not authorized or allowed” to get manufacturing cost details, said Yahyavi about his counterparts on the defense side. “They don’t apprehend exactly how many people [the commercial division] brings in to get the job done. All they need to be aware of is when the job will be without fault.”

That’s because the commercial division does not reveal its costs to customers, who negotiate varying and closely watchful prices in spite of every airplane deal.

In contrast, Boeing’s defense division sells to the government on a “cost-plus” basis and must lay out detailed estimates.

So on this Navy contract, as on previous programs, the commercial one delivers a plane to the defense division and gets paid a fixed price for the work

Despite acting closely together on the Poseidon, Boeing’s two divisions must still maintain some boundaries.