Tuesday, November 25, 2008

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City's crime ranking eases

There was some good news and some bad news for North Charleston in a new annual ranking of crime in U.S. cities. The good: the city's standing improved slightly. The bad: not by much.



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Bring guns, get money

North Charleston police want to make a deal. Give them a working gun, and in return, they'll give you a $100 gift certificate to Wal-Mart. No questions asked, no I.D. required. Drive up, drop off and drive away.

Gambling revenue might cut pain

Legalizing video poker and other gambling could bring the state new tax revenue to fund such programs as the Charles Webb Center that are being axed because of the budget crisis, state Sen. Robert Ford said Monday. Ford, a Charleston Democrat whose district includes the Webb Center, said he was unaware that the state Department of Disabilities and Special Needs cut $150,000 for the center, scheduled to close at the end of December.

Residents have 2 weeks to pay reduced fees

MONCKS CORNER â€" Berkeley County residents and developers have two weeks to pay a reduced fee for connecting to the county's water and sewer system.

Sheriff, council remain at odds

SUMMERVILLE â€" Dorchester County Sheriff Ray Nash is about to leave office, but there's no sign that his long-running feud with the County Council will end until he's gone. Tensions surfaced again last week when the council voted to freeze Nash's overtime spending during his last few weeks as sheriff.










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Presspass - Business Edition

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Restaurants fish for new supplier

Some area restaurants are bracing for a potential seafood shortfall on the heels of the abrupt closing of a big purveyor of fresh fish and other ocean fare. Charlotte-based wholesaler Poseidon Seafood shut down all of its operations, including a North Charleston processing plant that it acquired about 18 months ago, on Friday, blaming the weak economy.

Delfin USA to expand facility

An expansion-minded business previously known only by the code name "Project Bluewater" has been unveiled: Petroleum product manufacturer Delfin Group USA plans to expand its North Charleston plant.

Why Citi had to be rescued

WASHINGTON â€" Taxpayers may be wondering why they're forking over more money to rescue yet another behemoth, Citigroup, even as their own nest eggs crack and jobs evaporate. The answer is that Uncle Sam thinks letting Citi fail is unthinkable.

Business Briefs

Restaurants fish for new supplier

Some area restaurants are bracing for a potential seafood shortfall on the heels of the abrupt closing of a big purveyor of fresh fish and other ocean fare. Charlotte-based wholesaler Poseidon Seafood shut down all of its operations, including a North Charleston processing plant that it acquired about 18 months ago, on Friday, blaming the weak economy.










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Presspass - Sports Edition

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Last year's loss weighed heavily on USC defense

COLUMBIA â€" South Carolina's damaged and down defense had done its job for 58 minutes. The Gamecocks had been kicked around in the weeks preceding last year's Clemson game, making Heisman cases for Arkansas' Darren McFadden and Florida's Tim Tebow.

When in doubt, better to go with the home team

They say you can throw the record books out the window when South Carolina and Clemson play football, that this kind of rivalry is unpredictable.

Harrell was missing piece in Ashley Hall's quest

Starpower can be vital to the success of any athletic team, but possibly none more so than high school tennis. Ashley Hall's resurgence to the top of SCISA girls' tennis is proof. While veteran coach Mary Gastley had a deep and talented team this fall, the primary reason for the Panthers' return to the spotlight may have been a decision Jamie Harrell made last year to forgo fulltime tennis training in favor of becoming a fulltime high school student.

Road life in Death Valley is just as nice as The Brice

The Clemson Tigers, as they drove 61 yards for a game-winning field goal last November, did not seem bothered by the nearly 80,000 screaming Gamecocks fans at Williams-Brice Stadium.

Napier settling in on big stage

CLEMSON â€" It took South Carolina State coach Buddy Pough less than a week to figure out that Billy Napier wasn't long for Orangeburg.










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1210a 11/25 Update: Urine processor appears to work normally in extended test

=================================

CBS NEWS STS-126 STATUS REPORT: 67
Posted: 12:10 AM, 11/25/08

By William Harwood
CBS News Space Analyst

Changes and additions:

   SR-65 (11/24/08): Starboard SARJ work complete; port SARJ lubrication now half done
   SR-66 (11/24/08): Spacewalk ends
   SR-67 (11/24/08): Urine processor appears to run normally in extended test; additional test runs planned overnight; engineers hopeful

=================================

12:10 AM, 11/25/08, Update: Urine processor appears to run normally in extended test; additional test runs planned overnight; engineers hopeful

After three false starts and around-the-clock troubleshooting, the newly installed urine processor aboard the international space station was fired back up late Monday and appeared to run relatively smoothly after additional work earlier in the day to stabilize a centrifuge in the system's distillation sub-system. Despite occasionally sounding like a washing machine in the spin cycle, the processor continued running well past the times of earlier shutdowns.

"It looks like we are still spinning and it's been three hours and 18 minutes or something like that," station commander Mike Fincke reported just before 11:30 p.m.

"Yes, the UPA has been going very well," Robert Hanley replied from Houston. "Our regen (regenerative life support system) guys are actually smiling, which is really nice, here in the control center."

A few minutes later, Fincke said he could hear a change in the sound of the centrifuge.

"Stand by... I'm just hearing some washing machine noises that are coming from the UPA that wasn't there before and I can see on our motor currents that it's spiking a little bit. You guys probably see the same."

"Yeah, Mike, we see the same thing," Hanley replied.

"It definitely sounds like a washer in a spin cycle," Fincke said.

"OK, we copy that, Mike. And we think you may be hearing the sound go back to normal," Hanley said, apparently referring to telemetry.

"And we hear it going back to normal now and we can see the motor current dropping, so that sounds good," Fincke said.

A few minutes past midnight, Fincke said "I'd like to congratulate the entire team because we've been operating for four hours and two minutes now."

"Yes, everybody's very happy down here," Hanley said "it's looking good so far."

"Well, not to spoil anything, but I think up here we're feeling the appropriate words are 'yippee!'"

"There will be dancing later," Hanley said.

The urine processor assembly is a key component in a new system designed to convert condensate and urine into potable water for drinking, meal preparation, personal hygiene and oxygen generation. The closed-loop life support system is required before NASA can boost the station's crew size from three to six next May.

But the astronauts and flight controllers have had problems getting the urine processor assembly up and running. The first two test runs ended with computer-commanded shutdowns after about two hours of operation. Telemetry indicated a speed sensor was physically interfering with the operation of the centrifuge, possibly due to thermal expansion or harmonic effects as the spinning hardware warmed up.

Fincke and Endeavour astronaut Don Pettit removed rubber vibration dampers from the centrifuge housing to firmly lock the unit down in a bid to change the vibration modes thought to be contributing to the problem. In a third test run, the processor operated past the two-hour mark but eventually shut down with the same signature: slower motor speeds and higher currents.

On Monday, Fincke added two more bolts to add additional support to the distillation unit housing. The processor was restart shortly after 8 p.m. and was still running at midnight. Engineers planned to run the unit for five hours before shutting it down, allowing it to cool off and starting a new test run.

Earlier Monday, mission managers agreed to extend Endeavour's mission one day to give engineers more time to troubleshoot the UPA problem. During a briefing following the crew's fourth and final spacewalk Monday, station flight director Ginger Kerrick said flight planners are hoping for the best but, playing it safe, planning for the worst: bringing the distillation unit back to Earth for repairs if it fails to operate in an acceptable manner.

"The ground teams are looking at options for returning the urine processor assembly, potentially either in the shuttle middeck or in the MPLM (cargo module)," Kerrick said. "We hope to have a bingo time of sorts where we can continue out troubleshooting up to a certain time and, based on where the processor will be returning on the shuttle, MPLM or middeck, that bingo time will be slightly different. The addition of the plus one day does give us some additional time for further troubleshooting."

Even if the processor fails to operate normally, Kerrick said mission managers could still opt to leave the unit in place if tests show it can be operated in an on-again off-again way.

"If it passes and keeps running, I think our engineers will get comfortable that they have found a solution," Kerrick said. "If it fails, the alternative method is to operate it in one-hour and 45-minute increments with cool downs in between. We have not tested that yet, but we still have time with the additional docked day to test that theory. ... So I think there's two ways for folks to get comfortable with the urine processor remaining on board."

Earlier Monday, astronauts Stephen Bowen and Robert "Shane" Kimbrough staged a successful spacewalk to finish lubricating the station's two solar alpha rotary joint mechanisms. They also retracted a balky berthing latch on the Japanese Kibo module, mounted one of two GPS antennas and installed a new television camera on the station's solar power truss.

A major goal of Endeavour mission was to clean and lubricate the main drive in the station's right-side SARJ mechanism and replace 11 of 12 bearing assemblies. That work spilled over into Monday's spacewalk, but Bowen had no problems installing a final bearing assembly and completing the lubrication of a 30-degree segment of it's 10-foot-wide drive gear.

The starboard SARJ suffered extensive damage to one of its three bearing race rings because of a lubrication breakdown in space. Engineers hope the Endeavour crew's cleaning, lubrication and bearing replacement will reduce rolling friction and vibration and allow periodic "auto-track" sun tracking to improve power generation.

Engineers plan to test the starboard SARJ starting at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, commanding the massive joint to operate in auto-track mode for two full orbits. Sensors will measure vibration levels and drive motor currents while television cameras looks for any signs of unwanted shaking.

The astronauts said they wanted to watch the test, but flight controllers late Monday told them to stay in bed. Any vibrations caused by crew members moving around inside the station could affect data being collected to assess SARJ performance.

"They did want to see it and I can appreciate that, but we need to minimize disturbances on the space station so that we get the best data that we can," Kerrick said. "We're looking at some accelerometer data, vibration data, and we want to make sure that what we're seeing is truly caused by the SARJ and not by eager crew members looking out the window."

While Bowen serviced the starboard SARJ Monday, Kimbrough worked to lubricate the port-side drive gear's bearing races. The port mechanism has operated normally to this point, but Bowen reported today that he could see signs of wear on the outer bearing race similar to, but not as serious as, the damage on the right-side gear.

"I'm sure that got a lot of discussion back with our SARJ engineering team, Kerrick said. "That was a surprise to me, something different than we had heard reported from the port SARJ. But at the same time, we know the port SARJ could be susceptible to the same failure the starboard SARJ saw, so it seems to me we caught it in time."

=================================

Quick-Launch Web Links:

CBS News STS-126 Status Reports:
http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/space/current.html

CBS News STS-126 Quick-Look Page:
http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/space/currentglance.html

NASA ISS Expeditions Page:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/index.html

NASA Shuttle Web: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/index.html
NASA Station Web: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/index.html
Spaceflight Now: http://spaceflightnow.com/index.html
GoogleSatTrack: http://www.lizard-tail.com/isana/tracking/

=================================




745p 11/24 Update: Spacewalk ends

=================================

CBS NEWS STS-126 STATUS REPORT: 66
Posted: 7:45 PM, 11/24/08

By William Harwood
CBS News Space Analyst

Changes and additions:

   SR-63 (11/24/08): Spacewalk begins
   SR-64 (11/24/08): Inspection of port SARJ shows signs of wear on bearing race
   SR-65 (11/24/08): Starboard SARJ work complete; port SARJ lubrication now half done
   SR-66 (11/24/08): Spacewalk ends

=================================

7:45 PM, 11/24/08, Update: Spacewalk ends

Astronauts Stephen Bowen and Robert "Shane" Kimbrough ended at six-hour seven-minute spacewalk today at 7:31 p.m. after servicing the space station's two solar array rotary joints and making preparations for attachment of new components next year.

"Outstanding work today, guys," spacewalk coordinator Eric Boe radioed from the shuttle-station complex. "Great EVA, really enjoyed working with you and it was a great day."

Today's excursion was the 118th in station assembly history, the 19th of 20 planned this year and the fourth and final outing for the shuttle Endeavour's crew. Total station EVA assembly time now stands at 745 hours and 29 minutes, while Endeavour's total ends up at 26 hours and 41 minutes. Bowen logged 19 hours and 56 minutes during EVAs 1, 3 and 4 while Kimbrough put in 12 hours and 52 minutes during spacewalks 2 and 4. Crewmate Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, who participated in the first three spacewalks and two excursions in 2006, has logged 33 hours and 42 minutes of EVA time, moving her to 25th on the list of most experienced spacewalkers.

Bowen and Kimbrough accomplished all of their objectives today, finishing up work on the station's right-side solar alpha rotary joint by installing a final bearing assembly and lubricating a final 30-degree segment of its 10-foot-wide drive gear. One of the three bearing races on the drive gear has suffered extensive damage because of a lubrication failure and engineers hope the servicing by Endeavour's crew will permit periodic sun-tracking sessions to maximize solar power production. A test run is planned for Tuesday morning.

While Bowen worked on the starboard SARJ, Kimbrough lubricated the left-side joint to reduce friction and prevent similar problems down the road. He also installed a new TV camera on the solar power truss while Bowen prepared the Japanese Kibo module for the attachment of an external experiment shelf next year.

There were no problems of any significance other than a slight buildup of carbon dioxide in Kimbrough's suit toward the end of the spacewalk. He had similar buildups during a spacewalk last Thursday and flight controllers asked him to rest periodically to help lower the CO2 level.

Inside the station, meanwhile, commander Mike Fincke helped flight controllers in an on-going effort to troubleshoot problems with the lab's newly installed urine processor assembly. Today, while checking the water processing rack's cooling, Fincke discovered a connection that was not fully seated. He then filled the system for another test run early Tuesday.

=================================

Quick-Launch Web Links:

CBS News STS-126 Status Reports:
http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/space/current.html

CBS News STS-126 Quick-Look Page:
http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/space/currentglance.html

NASA ISS Expeditions Page:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/index.html

NASA Shuttle Web: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/index.html
NASA Station Web: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/index.html
Spaceflight Now: http://spaceflightnow.com/index.html
GoogleSatTrack: http://www.lizard-tail.com/isana/tracking/

=================================




Why Health Care Can't Wait | Stem Cell Research Ready for Human Testing?

AlterNet: The Mix is the Message   Health & Wellness Newsletter
November 24th, 2008
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Why the Economic Crisis Shouldn't Mean Putting Off Health Care  

Why the Economic Crisis Shouldn't Mean Putting Off Health Care
By Monica Sanchez, Campaign for America's Future
We can't afford not to tackle our health care crisis. Read more »

 

Most Americans agree that fixing our health care system is long overdue. But how quickly should it be done? And what effects would that have on the economy? In a previous issue of Health & Wellness, Maggie Mahar, a frequent AlterNet contributor and Century Foundation Fellow, wrote a compelling argument against using health care reform as an immediate way to boost the economy. This week, Monica Sanchez makes a strong case for the opposite, citing a report from the New America Foundation that shows the big-picture costs of remaining idle on reform.

Also in this issue of Health & Wellness, we have a roundup of last week's most important health news items from some of the Web's best progressive sources. We will continue to post these highlights once a week, thanks to Lindsay Beyerstein from The Media Consortium.

Thanks for reading!
Heather Gehlert
Managing Editor

 

Industry and EPA Collaborated to Hide the Truth about How Natural Gas Drilling Is Threatening Drinking Water  

Industry and EPA Collaborated to Hide the Truth about How Natural Gas Drilling Is Threatening Drinking Water

One of the greatest threats to our water and our health may come from a process involved in natural gas drilling. But EPA is keeping mum. Read more »

Stem Cell Research Heads for a Renaissance  

Stem Cell Research Heads for a Renaissance

New stem cell therapies may be a step closer to being tested in humans. Read more »

Revealed: Gulf War Syndrome is Real, Caused by Pills and Pesticides  

Revealed: Gulf War Syndrome is Real, Caused by Pills and Pesticides

A groundbreaking study has found that pills given to U.S. and British troops to counter nerve gas is one of the causes of Gulf War Syndrome. Read more »

Meditation May Protect Your Brain  

Meditation May Protect Your Brain

Research is confirming the medicinal effects that advocates have long claimed for meditation. Read more »

This Week in Health  

This Week in Health

A roundup of this week's best independent, progressive reporting on health. Read more »

  PEEK and Video: The hottest buzz and videos on the web  

Would Passing Universal Health Care Kill the GOP?  

Would Passing Universal Health Care Kill the GOP?

Signs point to yes. Read more »

Daschle as HHS Secretary: A Look at the Pros and Cons  

Daschle as HHS Secretary: A Look at the Pros and Cons

I'm okay with this selection -- and that's exactly as noncommittal a reaction as it sounds. Read more »

 

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Nightline Tonight Mon., November 24, 2008

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Tonight on 'Nightline'
Nov. 24, 2008

Action Plan

President-elect Barack Obama may not be on the job just yet, but with what he called "an economic crisis of historic proportions," he is wasting no time preparing for the task at hand. The morning after the government's decision to bailout Citigroup, he introduced his picks for his top economic advisors, and said, "That work starts today, because, the truth is, we do not have a minute to waste." Of no small note, the Dow closed up nearly 400 points for the day. "Nightline" co-anchor Terry Moran wraps the news of the day.

No Frills Grocery

In these tight economic times, we visit one of America's fastest-growing grocers, where you may not know the brands on the shelves, but you'll like the prices. ABC News correspondent Chris Bury takes a stroll down the aisle of an Aldi's to see what's so different about this grocery store chain.

Pacific Patients

We go inside Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, Calif., to see how injured or orphaned mammals, which include sea lions and seals, teach researchers about the ocean environment and how it may affect humans. These patients can have personality, and like humans, they put up a fight. ABC News correspondent Laura Marquez reports.

Platelist: Paula Deen

Thanksgiving week is here and we are ready for turkey and all the trimmings. Emmy Award-winning Food Network chef Paula Deen shares her Thanksgiving day-style in tonight's Platelist. We hope you'll join us.

The "Nightline" team

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