Monthly Archives: March 2024

A year of achievement, rebuilding and progress for utilities – Yoursun.com

Posted: March 16, 2024 at 10:13 am

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Astronomy clubs want to help you enjoy the eclipse safely – NPR

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Astronomy clubs want to help you enjoy the eclipse safely From Texas to Maine, they're teaching people how to enjoy the spectacle safely. Some will hand out glasses or answer questions at events. Others plan to take their own advice and get outta town.

Children use solar filters to safely view the sun in North Little Rock, Ark., in May. The event is part of the Central Arkansas Astronomical Society's public education effort to prepare for this year's April 8 total solar eclipse. Darcy Howard/Central Arkansas Astronomical Society hide caption

Danielle Rappaport has been fielding a flood of emails about the upcoming total solar eclipse: where to go and how to view what will be, for many people, a once-in-a-lifetime event. With San Antonio the first major U.S. city to glimpse the eclipse, Rappaport, the outreach coordinator for the local astronomy club, has some advice: Get out of town.

"Actually, it's only going to hit the westernmost part" of the city, she says. And any place in the path of totality the moment when the moon perfectly covers the sun that is easily accessible by road will be inundated with gawkers gazing skyward. "San Antonio is going to get swamped," she says.

While some of her fellow members of the San Antonio Astronomical Association will be at Northwest Vista College on April 8 to distribute eclipse glasses and answer questions, Rappaport is heading to Garner State Park, about 100 miles west of the city, to avoid the crowds. She recommends that others stay out of the cities.

The eclipse in the San Antonio area will begin at 12:14 p.m. CDT, with totality arriving 80 minutes later.

Rappaport and others in the San Antonio club have been busy giving public lectures on the eclipse, with a strong emphasis on safety making clear that no one should look at the sun without darkened eclipse glasses or other equipment designed specifically for observing the sun. Many people, she says, are confused about what an eclipse even is. Others just want to know where the best place is to view it.

In North America, an estimated 31 million people in the narrow path of totality will have a shot at viewing the total eclipse. Others will see at least a partial event perhaps a bit less impressive, but still worth it, Rappaport says.

Of course, it all depends on the weather.

There won't be another chance to view a total solar eclipse anywhere in the contiguous U.S. until 2044 and that one will be visible only in parts of Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota.

In Little Rock, members of the Central Arkansas Astronomical Society are trying to make the most of this year's event. Darcy Howard has had her head in the eclipse for more than two years now, "doing outreach and education and training the trainers and talking to libraries and talking to schools and talking to anybody who will listen," she says.

She says that informing the public is a key goal of the 130-member society for the "peace of mind" it will bring them on April 8. "So when the time comes, we can feel confident that people know how to look, what to look for and how to watch the eclipse safely."

A composite image of the 2017 total solar eclipse seen from the Lowell Observatory Solar Eclipse Experience in Madras, Ore. Stan Honda/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A composite image of the 2017 total solar eclipse seen from the Lowell Observatory Solar Eclipse Experience in Madras, Ore.

Part of her work is with the Little Rock-based World Services for the Blind. "How do you describe an eclipse to a person with low vision or who has never had sight?" she says. "This is a challenge and I'm looking forward to it."

One aid she's using is Getting a Feel for Eclipses, published in Braille by NASA. According to the space agency, the book features "[tactile] graphics [providing] an illustration of the interaction and alignment of the Sun with the Moon and the Earth."

About 15 minutes after totality in Little Rock, the residents of Indianapolis will get their first glimpse of the big show. Steve Haines, the public events coordinator for the Indiana Astronomical Society, is a little concerned about the weather.

"Actually, there's about a 60% chance of cloud cover that day," says Haines, a retired lead forecaster with the National Weather Service in Indianapolis who has looked at climatological trends in the state.

He's planning to be at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis on eclipse day, where his group will have a couple of telescopes set up. The society, the oldest and biggest astronomy club in the state, also has printed and distributed 15,000 eclipse brochures to libraries across central Indiana. And Haines says he and other club members have given at least 50 eclipse talks. "I just drove the other day a hundred miles away to give a talk."

Steve Haines of the Indiana Astronomical Society gives an eclipse presentation to students at Sunny Heights Elementary School in Indianapolis on March 8. Sarah Helfrich/Indiana Astronomical Society hide caption

Steve Haines of the Indiana Astronomical Society gives an eclipse presentation to students at Sunny Heights Elementary School in Indianapolis on March 8.

Like Rappaport in San Antonio, Haines is concerned about traffic congestion and crowds. "You have a lot of highways that converge on Indianapolis. That's why it's called the crossroads of America," he says. "So, we're going to get an influx of people from Chicago and northern Illinois to eastern and central Ohio."

Some small towns hoping to cash in on eclipse fever might get more people than they bargained for, he cautions. There are billboards advertising the eclipse in some places. Two Indiana cities, Evansville and Muncie, have even run prominent ads in Astronomy, the magazine confirms.

In Williston, Vt., located just east of Burlington, near Lake Champlain, where the Vermont Astronomical Society is based, totality will arrive at about 3:26 p.m. EDT. President Jack St. Louis says the society is making a big push to bring the eclipse message to the public.

St. Louis will be at ECHO, Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, "and we have members who are going to be at libraries and schools and supporting different areas along the way," he says.

He says some people have heard the warnings about looking directly at the sun but missed the part about how to safely view the eclipse. Others are wondering if they should even bother if they don't live in the path of totality. "We tell them any place you can see the sun in the afternoon, you're good."

Farther north, Jon Silverman, president of the Central Maine Astronomical Society, says members are keeping their fingers crossed for good weather but are prepared to move quickly to ditch the clouds.

"The real hardcore eclipse chasers look at the weather on the morning of the eclipse and they dash to where they think it's going to be clearest," he says.

But the roads in the state may complicate that, he says. "The thing about Maine is that ... there are lots of roads going north and south and very few going east and west," Silverman says. "Once you commit to where you're going, your ability to shift east and west is limited."

The eclipse's northernmost point in the U.S. is in the town of Houlton, Maine, reaching totality almost an hour (3:32 p.m. EDT) after San Antonio. Houlton is planning a weekend of festivities running through the Monday eclipse, including singers, comedians, crafts and a "metaphysical tent" featuring crystals, astrology and tarot card readings.

"The towns that are on the path or even near the path are promoting it heavily and hoping to not just have a good and busy and financially rewarding eclipse, but to get people to want to return," he says.

Eclipse enthusiasts wearing protective glasses view a partial eclipse from Beckman Lawn at Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., on Aug. 21, 2017. Another solar eclipse is just weeks away. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

For all of the excitement the eclipse has created, Silverman says there are also those who couldn't care less. "No interest. That just boggles me. This is such a wonderful, rare thing to see. A gorgeous thing," he says.

But there are no guarantees, even for the enthusiasts. Silverman says the weather is the biggest "if" in the equation, pointing out that Maine is not the best place to avoid clouds in April.

"One of my friends in our astronomy club booked a flight to Mexico. ... He has a good 80% chance or higher of seeing the eclipse," Silverman says.

"You can go down to, say, Texas or someplace down there, but it's not a huge advantage," Silverman says. So he plans to stay put and hope for the best.

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Trkiye: No Direct Dialogue with Damascus, No Progress in Normalization – Asharq Al-awsat – English

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Trkiye and Russia held a round of political consultations that discussed Syria and a number of other topics related to bilateral relations and regional issues, including the war in Ukraine and the situation in the Caucasus region.

In a statement on X, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the consultations were led by Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Burak Akabar, and his Russian counterpart, Mikhail Galuzin.

Diplomatic sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the consultations revolved around Syria and the Russian-sponsored normalization process between Ankara and Damascus, which was halted as both sides acknowledged the presence of many obstacles that need to be addressed.

In this context, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said that the normalization process has not witnessed any progress so far, adding that his country was not engaging in any direct dialogue with Damascus.

Turkish media quoted Keceli as saying on Friday that the Syrian government was setting preconditions for the normalization.

The Russian Presidents envoy to Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, confirmed in January that the process of normalization of relations between Trkiye and Syria had been completely halted since past autumn, noting the Syrian side wanted assurances from Ankara that Turkish forces currently present illegally on Syrian territory would be withdrawn in the future.

The Turkish military presence in northern Syria constitutes the main obstacle to the progress of the normalization process between Ankara and Damascus. The latter had announced that there would be no talk of any steps for normalization before the troops withdrawal.

Ankara, for its part, says that the presence of its forces was necessary until the completion of the political process, the adoption of the constitution, the holding of elections, and the formation of a Syrian government through elections that provide guarantees for the safe return of refugees.

Also, Trkiye says that it does not trust the current ability of the Syrian army to guarantee the security of the common border, in light of the presence of Kurdish militants in the south.

Trkiye: No Direct Dialogue with Damascus, No Progress in Normalization - Asharq Al-awsat - English

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You Can See a Rare, Bright Comet This Month. Will It Be Visible During the Solar Eclipse? – Smithsonian Magazine

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Roughly every 71 years, the bright periodic comet 12P/Pons-Brooks passes by the sun and Earth. At its brightest, it can be seen with the naked eye in fairly dark skies. Nielander via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

A bright comet that only appears oncemaybe twicein a lifetime is currently on its way through our solar system. Called 12P/Pons-Brooks, the city-sized comet has already made headlines for bright outbursts over the past several months. And now, some astronomers are speculating it could appear in the darkened sky during the total solar eclipse on April 8, provided the comet is glowing brightly enough.

Right now, the comet can only be seen with binoculars or a telescope. But in the coming weeks, it might become visible with the naked eye. Heres what you need to know about the rare dirty snowball.

Measuring roughly 18 miles in diameter, Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks is a ball of dust, rock and ice that orbits the sun once roughly every 71 years. Because its orbital period falls between 20 and 200 years, it is known as a Halley-type comet, calling to mind the famous comet that last passed Earth in 1986 and left enough debris to give us several meteor showers today.

But Pons-Brooks isnt your standard cometits a cold volcano. It intermittently lets out blasts of gas in frigid conditions, known as cryovolcanic activity, and these outbursts can lead it to glow more brightly. After one such explosion last July, the comaor cloud of vapor and dust around the comets rocky coreexpanded to more than 7,000 times the size of the comet itself, Richard Miles of the British Astronomical Association told Live Sciences Harry Baker at the time.

This outburst caused the coma to take on a horseshoe-like shape, leading some to term it the horned cometor even the devils comet.

The comets many trips around the sun have a long history of astounding human observers. Chinese astronomers may have spotted Pons-Brooks in 1385, and an Italian astronomer may have glimpsed it in 1457. But its two-part name comes from observations made in 1812 and 1883, first by French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons and then by American astronomer William Brooks.

This month, Pons-Brooks has appeared to move through the constellation Andromeda, and now, its setting out on a path past Pisces and Aries.

To spot it, look low on the northwestern horizon after sunset. As the month goes on, the comet will set earlier, so the best time to look for it will be just after it gets dark.

While Pons-Brooks is a bright comet, it will most easily be seen in dark skies. If you have a half-decent pair of binoculars, certainly attempt to look for it with those, Robert Massey, the deputy executive director of the Royal Astronomical Society in London, tells the Guardians Nicola Davis. You want to avoid haze, you want to avoid moonlight, you want to avoid light pollution.

As it makes its way across the sky, Pons-Brooks will appear to pass by a few notable celestial objects, making it easier to find on certain evenings. For instance, it will appear near the star Hamal, the brightest in the constellation Aries, on March 31. And from April 12 to 14, it can be seen very close to Jupiter. Regardless, using a night sky app can help you get oriented and find where the comet should be.

But the best time to see Pons-Brooks will be around April 21, when it will pass its nearest point to the sun, known as perihelion, and shine the most brightly. Look for the comet in the constellation Taurus.

Then, as the icy ball keeps moving, it will come even closer to Earth, crossing the point in its path nearest to our planet on June 2 and appearing in the constellation Lepus. But by that time, it will only be visible in the Southern Hemisphere, per New Scientists Abigail Beall.

During totality on April 8, skies will darken to a level resembling twilight, making some bright objects visible at a time they normally would be obscured by the sun. At this time, Pons-Brooks will lie above and to the left of the sun, near Jupiter.

Specifically, it should be about 21 degrees away from the sun, or roughly the amount of sky covered by both your fists held at arms length.

The comet has potential to appear during the eclipse, but some experts caution it might not be easily visible.

I dont want people to get disappointed if they dont see the comet, Rosita Kokotanekova, a planetary scientist at the Institute of Astronomy and National Astronomical Observatory at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, says to Scientific Americans Meghan Bartels. If people expect to see something extremely bright on a fully dark sky, I think that unless were very [lucky] with an outburst, it will be more challenging than that.

Amateur astronomer and comet expert John Bortle takes an even less optimistic view about seeing the comet during totality, per Space.coms Joe Rao. I would think that much more a fantasy than anything else, he tells the publication.

But in a sense, that might be for the best. While it could be fun to try to spot the comet during the eclipse, the spectacular phenomenon lasts for only a few minutes. During that short, rare moment, it might be most valuable to just focus on the sun and its ethereal corona.

Whether you want to tear your eyes away from the eclipsed sun to look around is up to you, writes EarthSkys Kelly Kizer Whitt. No matter how many minutes totality lasts, it will feel like its flying by.

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A WORK IN PROGRESS | News | shelbynews.com – Shelbynews

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U.S. Inability To Address Nuclear Waste Harms Environmental Progress – Newsweek

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If you need your garbage collected, you call Waste Management. But if you're a nuclear power plant operator, don't bother calling the federal governmentin 40 years they still haven't made a pickup.

In 1982, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA), which directed the Department of Energy to site, build, and operate a repository for the disposal of high-level waste and spent nuclear fuel. Since that time, political paralysis has prevented the government from creating a storage site, which has left spent fuel in communities that did not consent to its presence and were promised its removal. Overcoming this decades-long failure is critical to reviving nuclear power and achieving climate goals without unfairly burdening local populations or taxpayers.

The federal government's inability to fulfill its legal obligation has not stopped the private sector from safely managing spent nuclear fuel. For over 30 years power plant operators have stored spent fuel with zero incidents of radioactive leakage or death. Since the 1950s, the U.S. has generated a little over 90,000 metric tons of waste, which would be easy to permanently store and manage. If it were all stacked up, it would fit on a single football field at a depth of less than 10 yards.

While the industry's safety in the handling of spent fuel is commendable, the status quo is not sustainable for taxpayers or the environment.

The Department of Energy still holds the obligation to collect and dispose of the nation's spent fuel. But with no national storage facility available, the federal government currently pays power plant operators to store spent fuel on-site. Taxpayers have been left to pick up the tab, spending $2 million per day and nearly $9 billion total since 1998. If left unaddressed, this figure will rise to an estimated $30 billion by 2030.

America's inability to implement a feasible waste solution has also come at a cost to the environment. Eleven statesincluding California, New York, and New Jerseyhave imposed moratoriums on new nuclear power until a repository is completed. Instead of building out a fleet of reliable, carbon-free nuclear energy, these states have placed their hopes on renewables, which need baseload natural gas to survive.

Finding a solution to this challenge will require political willpower, community engagement, and innovative thinking.

Many of the answers have been outlined already in the 2012 Blue Ribbon Commission's report, which includes eight high-level recommendations to address spent fuel storage in the U.S. To date, the Department of Energy has begun to implement only one of those recommendationsstarting the process of developing a consent-based siting process for an interim storage facility for spent fuel in 2021.

However, under the current structure of the NWPA, the Department of Energy is not legally authorized to build an interim storage facility. While the original NWPA mandated and described a process to select a location for a repository, subsequent amendments have limited the scope to a single site, Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The law now functionally excludes consideration of any other sites or storage methods.

Congress should reform the law to give the Department of Energy the flexibility to site permanent and temporary storage facilities as it sees fit. Importantly, funding for the construction of these sites already exists through the Nuclear Waste Fund, which has over $44.3 billion collected to be spent on a nuclear waste disposal facility.

Reducing restrictions to a consent-based process is in the best economic and environmental interest of the United States. As has happened in the case of Yucca Mountain, a lack of community buy-in increases costs and delays projects. However, when stakeholders are engaged, approval for the nuclear industry greatly improves. In fact, the communities most supportive of nuclear power are the ones that have the technology in their vicinity.

Congress also should continue to fund R&D programs like the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Project, which is working to deploy a sodium-cooled fast reactor that effectively runs on spent nuclear fuel at the site of a retiring coal plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming. If this project is successful, it could provide a solution to address America's spent fuel challenges.

It has been over 40 years since Congress first set out to establish a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in the United States. Its failure to do so has cost taxpayers and the environment dearly, but solutions remain. By reforming the broken NWPA, engaging with communities, and investing in innovation, the U.S. can more efficiently handle its spent fuel and address one of the biggest roadblocks to unleashing a nuclear energy revolution.

Jeff Luse is a policy analyst at Generation Atomic.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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Solar Eclipse Path Map Shows States Where Sun Will Be Blocked Out – Newsweek

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A rare total solar eclipse will take place next month and will be the last chance for Americans to view the natural phenomena for two decades, astronomy experts have said.

A total eclipse will be experienced by millions of Americans on April 8 this yeara rare astronomical event in which the skies briefly turn dark during daylight hours. Next month's eclipse is a rare event, with the last one taking place over the U.S. in 2017.

"You definitely want to be looking at the sky on April 8th because if you miss the solar eclipse this year, you have to wait two decades until the next chance to see a total solar eclipse from the contiguous United States," Brian Lada, AccuWeather astronomy expert, told Newsweek.

"Total solar eclipses themselves are not rare. They happen every year somewhere around the world. What is rare is to have them visible here in the United States."

Total eclipses occur once every other year somewhere on the planet, but for each individual community, they occur once every few centuries with some exceptions, Lada explained.

According to Jonathan Belles, digital meteorologist for The Weather Channel, a solar eclipse takes place when the moon's orbit "takes it into the same plane as the sun, blocking out the sun."

There are numerous things to look out for - aside from the skies turning dark in the middle of the day - during a solar eclipse. Belles told Newsweek: "During a total solar eclipse, you can see explosions of matter being launched from the sun on some occasions. You'll likely see some eerie shadows in the form of eclipsed discs or even slithering snakes on the ground under trees and other objects. You might see bats and birds head out for food thinking that the sunset has arrived."

"If you look at the horizon, you may see thin clouds of ice that are usually invisible to the naked eye. You may also see clouds shrink over land or grow over the ocean. In elevated locations, you might also be able to tell where the sun is still shining."

According to Lada, those wishing to catch a glimpse of the phenomenon will need to be "in a narrow area called the path of totality", stretching from Texas all the way to Maine in the northeast.

A NASA map shows the full trajectory of the eclipse across the states, including times it will occur on April 8. Starting in Texas at around 1:30 p.m. CDT, the eclipse will occur in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and finally in Maine at 3:30 p.m. EDT. Small parts of Tennessee and Michigan may also experience the total solar eclipse.

"Everywhere outside of the path of totality will only experience a partial solar eclipse, of course, as long as it's not cloudy," Lada told Newsweek.

If you're planning to look skyward to see the event, you need to be prepared. NASA advises using the correct equipment to prevent causing serious damage to your eyes.

"When watching the partial phases of the solar eclipse directly with your eyes, which happens before and after totality, you must look through safe solar viewing glasses ("eclipse glasses") or a safe handheld solar viewer at all times," NASA explains. You can also use an indirect viewing method, such as a pinhole projector."

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Park Progress – Greater Wilmington Business Journal

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Pender County is seeing its Field of Dreams endeavor bear fruit, as Pender Commerce Park grows and thrives.

The planning began in the early 2000s when the county wanted to create an economic driver on its largely rural west side. Officials teamed up with Wilmington Business Development to focus on developing about 400 county-owned acres along U.S. 421, just north of the New Hanover County line.

In 2013 we took the property through the Duke Site Readiness Program and the first tenant, Acme Smoked Fish, was recruited shortly after, said Scott Satterfield, CEO of WBD. Acme has since been joined by Berkshire Hathaway-owned Empire Distributors, FedEx Freight, Coastal Beverage and the first foreign direct investment in the park Polyhose a manufacturer and distributor of hydraulic hose out of Chennai, India. (Read more about Polyhoses products in this months MADE feature here).

To accommodate Acme and other future tenants, Pender County built water and wastewater treatment plants on site. Piedmont Natural Gas ran its pipes into the park. In 2015, AT&T announced the installation of fiber optic cable to bring high-speed internet to the parks future tenants. Pender Commerce Park was the first business park in North Carolina to receive the designation of AT&T Fiber Ready.

The park welcomed Brooklyn, New York-based Acme Smoked Fish in early 2015. Six months later, the company was poised to hit its five-year job target as it increased its capacity more quickly than anticipated.

Acme is not the only park tenant that has grown.

This location and space helped us [achieve] our aggressive growth plan, said Brian Rector, chief financial officer of Coastal Beverage Co., which moved to Pender Commerce Park about five years ago from its location on Harley Street, off Market Street in Wilmington.

Unable to add all the space it needed at the Harley Street facility, the beer, wine and soft drink distributor worked with Will Leonard, of Cape Fear Commercial, to scout alternatives. After looking at a few possibilities, Rector said his team quickly understood that [the park] was the location for us.

We could build almost twice the size warehouse, which allowed us to maintain good inventory levels and to continue to see strong organic growth, Rector continued. Our brands continue to do well. Weve definitely seen some organic growth with the increase in [the regions] population, and we are always looking for new brands that fit Coastal Beverages plans.

We also acquired Atlantic Shores Distributors the same year we moved out here; we picked up their brands and service territory, Rector added. Theres quick access from here to several interstates.

Fellow beverage company Empire Distributors had found a home at the commerce park a couple of years before Coastal Beverage began building its new facility. Other companies have followed.

Joining those tenants in the park in recent years has been Chris Ramm, of Ramm Capital Partners/Taylor Development, Satterfield said. As part of a product development initiative, Ramm has worked with WBD and Pender County to stand up more than 250,000 square feet of speculative space in multiple buildings, which has since been leased to quality tenants including Colony Tire, Professional Builders Supply, Superior Pool Products, Lansing Building Products and The Home Depot. Our brokerage partner was Cape Fear Commercial.

The largest-scale project, to date, in the park is a 300,000 square-foot cold storage facility recently developed by RL Cold and leased to the largest transportation company in the world, Maersk, Satterfield added.

The facility is operated by Maersk subsidiary Performance Team.

Another tenant, Polyhose Inc., recently announced plans to double the size of its current plant. Polyhose officials also committed to an additional 8 acres at the park, citing more opportunities coming our way, as the company establishes its North American presence. Polyhose, whose U.S. unit supplies hoses to automotive and construction equipment manufacturers worldwide, expects the new phase to be complete in the first quarter of 2025.

The proof has certainly been in the pudding as far as our association with Wilmington and the local community is concerned, Fatema Mo, Polyhoses vice president of marketing and human resources, said in the announcement. We hope our association continues to get stronger and we are able to look at different ways in which we can contribute to the community and grow together.

Success stories like this help balance the reality that some prospects will get away.

A major disappointment to Pender and WBD officials was Amazons decision to abandon plans for a 1,000-job distribution center at the commerce park. But, said Satterfield, the company hasnt taken all its marbles and gone away.

Amazon has a holding in the park with plans to bring a final-mile delivery station to the market, he said, adding that Amazon owns Lots 6 and 7. Each deal in the park has been complex in nature but created significant jobs and tax base for the entire region.

A remaining asset ripe for redevelopment is the former BASF site which the larger proposed Amazon project was tied to that straddles New Hanover and Pender counties adjacent to the commerce park.

The southern/brownfield parcel more than 150 acres represents a tremendous economic development opportunity for end users considering greater Wilmington for expansion or relocation, Satterfield said. The site is high and dry with good sandy soils, sits along a four-lane highway, and is less than 15 minutes from downtown Wilmington, ILM and the Port of Wilmington.

Two years ago, the Golden LEAF Foundation gave Pender County a grant of $500,000 to clear and clean up the brownfield site. Satterfield has said WBD is bullish on the sites potential.

When WBD staffers pitch Pender Commerce Park to potential tenants, what attributes do they emphasize? Satterfield ticked off a few.

Location proximity to Wilmingtons assets and amenities, infrastructure and competitive cost are amongst the key advantages associated with the Pender Commerce Park, he said. Every client is unique; thus, the attractive attributes rank different for each respective client. With that said, this is widely recognized as one of the best industrial positions in the market and is the model for us with other business parks being developed in neighboring counties.

We knew the park was going to be successful, and we all know each other pretty well, Rector said. We continue to plan and hope for the growth of 421. From downtown Wilmington up to the park, things continue to build up.

Satterfield said that, although decades in the making, the Pender Commerce Park is delivering as officials hoped.

The Pender Commerce Park has become the premier business park in Southeastern North Carolina with over 1,000 jobs, more than 1 million square feet of industrial space under roof and more than $500 million in capital expenditure investment represented at the park, he said. The foresight and proactive investment by Pender County in land and infrastructure has led to this string of results and helped to drive activity up and down Wilmingtons most prominent industrial corridor.

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Park Progress - Greater Wilmington Business Journal

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Deep-space astronomy sensor peers into the heart of an atom – Space.com

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Scientists have taken an instrument originally designed to study huge celestial objects in the cosmos and repurposed it to investigate the world on an infinitely smaller scale. With this instrument, they managed to probe the heart of the atom.

The team wanted to understand quantum-scale changes that occur within unstable atoms, and realized there's a state-of-the-art gamma-ray polarimeter they could tap into. This device, known as a Compton camera, can measure the polarization of high-energy light waves. In other words, it can dissect what direction such high-energy light is orientated toward.

The only thing is, however, that this instrument was technically built for deep-space astronomy, not atomic investigations. In fact, scientists constructed it because they wanted to place it on the Hitomi satellite to make observations of high-energy cosmic processes. Yet, the camera has now proven its versatility. By capturing the polarization of gamma rays emitted from atomic nuclei rather than faraway galactic objects, it managed to reveal the internal structure of the atomic nucleus as well as any changes such nuclei may be undergoing.

Related: Atomic clocks on Earth could reveal secrets about dark matter across the universe

Compton cameras are used to determine the direction and energy of gamma rays using a phenomenon called "Compton scattering."

Compton scattering happens when a high-energy particle of light, or "photon," bounces off a charged particle, usually an electron. This interaction forces the photons hitting the electrons to "scatter," meaning they transfer some of their energy and momentum to the particles they've just hit. In turn, those electrons can recoil and essentially pop off the atom they were previously attached to. This process can help reveal something about the atom that's involved.

"The research team demonstrated that this Compton camera serves as an effective polarimeter for nuclear spectroscopy, revealing insights into the nuclear structure," Tadayuki Takahashi, researcher leader and Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe scientist, told Space.com. "Developed initially for space observations, this instrument has now proven its worth as a tool for addressing complex scientific questions in other domains as well."

You can think of atoms as composed of "shells." Each shell is filled with varying portions of negatively charged electrons "buzzing" around; the outermost shell is known as the valence shell and the electrons within the valence shell are called valence electrons. These atomic shells surround a central nucleus comprised of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons.

The number of protons in an atomic nucleus defines what element that atom represents.

For instance, hydrogen is the universe's lightest element, and it always has one proton in its atomic nucleus. At the other end of the periodic table is uranium, one of the heaviest natural elements, which always has 92 protons in its nucleus. The number of neutrons in a nucleus doesn't define what element an atom is, so it can vary. For instance, hydrogen can have no neutrons, one neutron in the case of deuterium, or two neutrons in the case of tritium. These atoms varying in weight, however, are called "isotopes." Some isotopes are stable others are not.

While 270 stable atomic nuclei are known to exist in nature, the number of known isotopes of elements jumps up to 3,000 when unstable atomic nuclei are factored in.

Interestingly, scientists have also recently observed phenomena associated with unstable atomic nuclei that aren't seen around stable ones. These include anomalies in the electron energy levels as well as the disappearance and emergence of so-called "magic numbers." Magic numbers refer to the amount of electrons it would take to fill those energy-level shells around an atomic nucleus. Conventionally, these numbers are 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82 and 126.

Thus far, however, conventional methods have been insufficient in investigating changes in nuclear structure related to these phenomena. This is due to the difficulty of balancing sensitivity and detection efficiency for instruments analyzing the characteristics of transitions undertaken by atoms.

Here's lies the important part for the team's investigation.

An unstable atomic nucleus will attempt to reach stability by ejecting a proton or a neutron. This is known as radioactive decay, and it's a process that carries energy away from the atom in the form of photons. Gamma rays are a kind of photon and the Compton camera can detect those gamma rays! Perhaps understanding the transition between instability and stability can help decode some of those weird atomic phenomena scientists have observed.

So, these researchers believed the Compton camera, which includes something called a Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) semiconductor imaging sensor, could be ideal for measuring the polarization of gamma rays from unstable nuclei. Again, this is because such a sensor offers high-detection efficiency and precise accuracy when determining the position of gamma rays (even though it was initially meant for deep-space gamma-ray signals).

The polarization of photons from charged particles turns unpolarized light into polarized light, with the orientation of polarization arising as a result of the scattering angle. The Compton camera can precisely measure this scattering angle and the polarization of these gamma rays, which indicates properties of particles within the atom, such as the value of quantum mechanical characteristics called "spin" and "parity."

The scientists used accelerator experiments at the RIKEN research institute to perform a series of nuclear spectroscopy tests that involved blasting a film of iron nuclei with a beam of protons. This caused the electrons in the thin iron film to reach an excited state and emit gamma rays as they returned to their ground state. The team controlled both the position and intensity of these emissions artificially. This allowed for a detailed analysis of scattering events and the realization of a highly sensitive polarization measurement to test the capabilities of the Compton camera.

"The multi-layer CdTe Compton camera possesses several characteristics that make it well-suited for this research. First is the detection efficiency of CdTe," Takahashi said. "Typically, gamma rays emitted from nuclei have energies in the order of Mega-electron Volt (MeV), where the detection efficiency for gamma-ray polarimeters tends to be low. However, the 20 layers of CdTe significantly enhance the efficiency of detecting these gamma rays."

The Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe scientist added that the CdTe sensor developed by his group also achieves high-energy resolution for sub-MeV gamma rays.

"Lastly, it achieves a few millimeters of positional resolution within the detector's effective area, enabling it to 'see' detailed Compton scattering patterns," Takahashi added. "These patterns reflect the characteristics of the linear polarization of light, including gamma-rays."

The emitted gamma rays were measured, revealing a peak structure, and the team was able to determine the angle at which photons were scattered. The team expected their results could be crucial for investigating the structure of rare radioactive nuclei, but even the lead researcher was surprised by just how successful this test was.

"The research group, comprised of experts in astronomical observation and nuclear physics, anticipated to some extent that gamma-ray polarimetry would be feasible for nuclear gamma-ray spectroscopy experiments," Takahashi said. "However, the performance and results surpassed expectations."

These experiments could be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to using space instruments to investigate atomic nuclei.

"There are various types of Compton cameras in astronomical observation, and they could be used similarly to measure the linear polarization of photons," Takahashi concluded.

The team's research is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

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Deep-space astronomy sensor peers into the heart of an atom - Space.com

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SF supervisor to hold hearing on homeless-shelter progress | Housing | sfexaminer.com – San Francisco Examiner

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SF supervisor to hold hearing on homeless-shelter progress | Housing | sfexaminer.com - San Francisco Examiner

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Monthly Archives: March 2024

A year of achievement, rebuilding and progress for utilities – Yoursun.com

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Park Progress – Greater Wilmington Business Journal

Deep-space astronomy sensor peers into the heart of an atom – Space.com

SF supervisor to hold hearing on homeless-shelter progress | Housing | sfexaminer.com – San Francisco Examiner

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