Jack Albert Kinzler (January 9, 1920 – March 4, 2014) was an American NASA engineer. He was the chief of the Technical Services Center at NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. He was known within the agency as Mr. Fix It. He was awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal for creating the solar shield that saved Skylab. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Kinzler died from natural causes on March 4, 2014 in Taylor Lake Village, Texas. He was 94 years old.
Prickly pear
The prickly pear is Opuntia: a genus in the cactus family, Cactaceae. There are about 190 different species of Opuntia.
The genus is named after the Ancient Greek city of Opus. There, according to Theophrastus, an edible plant grew which could be propagated by rooting its leaves.
Prickly pears (mostly "Opuntia stricta") were originally imported into Australia in the 18th century for gardens. They were later used as a natural agricultural fencing. They quickly became a widespread invasive weed. They changed of farming land into an impenetrable green jungle of prickly pear, in places high.
In 1919, the Australian federal government established the Commonwealth Prickly Pear Board to coordinate efforts with state governments to eradicate the weed. Early attempts at mechanical removal and poisonous chemicals failed, so in a last resort, biological control was attempted. There is a moth, "Cactoblastis cactorum", from South America, whose larvae eat prickly pear. It was introduced in 1925 and rapidly reduced the cactus population. A memorial hall in Chinchilla (Queensland) commemorates the moth. This is one of the earliest known examples of the biological control of pests.
Magnetic field line
A magnetic field line or magnetic flux line shows the direction of a magnet's force and the strength of a magnet.
The idea of lines of force was invented by Michael Faraday. His theory is that all of reality is made up of force itself. His theory predicts that electricity, light, and gravity have finite propagation delays. Einstein's theory agrees with this.
One can make magnetic field lines show as if they were physical phenomena. For example, iron filings placed in a magnetic field line up to form lines that correspond to 'field lines'.
If there are a lot of lines through a magnet and not a great space between them, the magnet is strong. If the lines between a magnet are far apart and there aren't many lines, the magnet is weak. A way of determining the strength of a magnet is to do an experiment with iron filings. The iron filings will get attracted to the magnet and move into the shape of the flux lines. You then look at the shape of the iron filings and see the gap between the flux lines. This gives you an idea of the strength of the magnet.
The use of iron filings to display a field "alters the magnetic field so that it is much larger along the "lines" of iron". This caused by the large permeability of iron relative to air. Magnetic fields' "lines" are also visually displayed in polar auroras, when particles cause visible streaks of light that line up with the local direction of Earth's magnetic field.
Magnetic field lines are like the contour lines (constant altitude) on a topographic map in that they represent something continuous, and a different mapping scale would show more or fewer lines. There is an advantage to using magnetic field lines as a representation. Many laws of magnetism (and electromagnetism) can be stated completely and concisely using simple concepts such as the 'number' of field lines through a surface. These concepts can be quickly 'translated' to their mathematical form.
The actual magnetic field "itself" does not have "lines" in it; the "lines" are solely the iron filings becoming polarized themselves, reacting to each other and the field, lining up N and S with respect to each other "in" the field. If you could see the actual "fields" of force, it would be shaded and gradient, with a heavier, thicker shade near the stronger part of the magnet, fading the further you get from the source. And in all 3 dimensions, which iron filing demonstrations cannot reproduce. Ferrofluids will react in all 3 dimensions and can more accurately reproduce a field, except for gravity creating a weight restriction. Holding a strong magnet in front of a CRT-type monitor with a white screen can also give a representation of the fields, without any "lines of force" visible. The issue with using ferro/magnetic materials to view a field is, the materials themselves become magnetized and change the original field to include their own influence.
Thorny devil
The thorny devil (Moloch horrid us) is also called the thorny dragon, Moloch, or mountain devil. It is an Australian lizard, that lives in desert regions of central Australia.
The thorny devil grows up to 20 cm (7.9 in) long and can live for 15 to 20 years. The females are larger than the males. Most of these lizards are colored in camouflaging shades of desert browns and tans. These colors change from pale colors during warm weather and to darker colors during cold weather. These animals are covered entirely with conical spines that are mostly uncalcified (not bony).
Female thorny devils lay ten eggs during the September-December season (or Spring-Summer). They put the eggs in a burrow about 30 cm deep. These eggs hatch after about three or four months, but not all babies will survive, because of predators like wild birds and goannas.
The thorny devil is found in the arid regions of central Australia. It lives in sand, spinifex grasslands and scrub.
They only eat ants, and may eat thousands of ants in a day. The thorny devil's mouth is so specialized that it can only use it to eat ants, for example it cannot lick up water, and has developed other ways to drink. Ideally adapted to its harsh, desert habitat, it uses narrow channels between the scales on its stomach and legs to collect morning dew and water from damp or wet sand. The water travels up these channels to the lizard’s mouth.
Address Resolution Protocol
Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is a network layer protocol used to convert an IP address into a physical address (called a DLC address), such as an Ethernet address. A host wishing to obtain a physical address broadcasts an ARP request onto the TCP/IP network. The host on the network that has the IP address in the request then replies with its physical hardware address.
There is also Reverse ARP (RARP) which can be used by a host to discover its IP address. In this case, the host broadcasts its physical address and a RARP server replies with the host's IP address.
Markus Brüderlin
Markus Brüderlin (1958 – 16 March 2014) was a Swiss art historian, curator and writer. From 2006 to his death, he was the director of the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. He was born in Basel.
Brüderlin died unexpectedly on 16 March 2014 at his home in Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany. He was 55 years old.
Summerhill School
Summerhill School is an independent British boarding school which was founded in 1921 by A.S. Neill (Alexander Sutherland Neill). He believed the school should fit the child, not than the other way around.
Summerhill is run as a democratic community. Decisions are made in school meetings, which anyone, staff or pupil, may attend, and at which everyone has an equal vote. These meetings serve as both a legislative and judicial body. Summerhill is the oldest "children's democracy" in the world. It is probably the most famous alternative or 'free' school.
Members of the community are free to do as they please, so long as their actions do not cause any harm to others, according to Neill's principle "Freedom, not Licence". This extends to the freedom for pupils to choose which lessons, if any, they attend.
The school is not large. It varies 6080 boys and girls with ages ranging from 5 to 17. The school is now owned by Zoë Readhead, the daughter of A.S. Neill.
Apparently it does. The most recent OFSTED inspection of the school reported: