goodfellowsmansfield.com

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

The Phoenix Police Department was called to a local church parking lot in northern Phoenix, Arizona, United States at 16:00 MST (2200 UTC) Tuesday for a vehicular fire where they found the critically burned Paul J. Lopez, a local Democratic political consultant, on the ground of an apparent self-immolation. Lopez was rushed to an area hospital alive, but in critical condition later being pronounced dead on Wednesday.

At the scene, initial reports from police suggests no evidence of an accident or foul play. According to police, it appeared that Lopez was in his vehicle, deliberately dosing himself with gasoline before igniting himself. At some point, he did exit the vehicle before being overcome by his injuries collapsing in the location first responders found him.

Friends of Lopez, like Lawrence Robinson, claim there were, “No signs.” Politicians and colleagues have since issued statements remembering Lopez. Mayor Greg Stanton of Phoenix took to Twitter with, “I couldn’t ask for a better friend than Paul Lopez. Through ups and downs, good times and bad…he was always there for me and my family. He was godfather to Violet and First Communion sponsor for Trevor. I admired his love of his family and our community. RIP good friend.”

In accordance with Arizona law, when a person is seriously wounded or killed police must complete a full investigation before ruling out acts of negligence or homicide. Currently, there are no leads to the rationale for Lopez’s self-immolation or instigating events. The official report regarding this apparent self-immolation will be released in a few weeks.

As a political consultant, Lopez helped founded The Endeavor Agency where he was the chief executive officer for 27 years. His clientele consists of several Democratic candidates for the state of Arizona on local, state, and federal levels.

[edit]

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Space probe Cassini performed a close flyby of Saturn‘s icy moon Enceladus on Wednesday. The fate of the $3.5 billion mission was in the balance as the bus-sized spacecraft swooped to just 50 km (30 mi) above the surface of Enceladus to sample the frozen spray issuing from geysers on the moon’s surface. The “water” spraying from these geysers is in the form of dust-sized, frozen water particles, which are ejected into space by gaseous water vapors that build up pressure deep within icy fissures on Enceladus.

Cassini’s cosmic dust analyzer was unavailable due to a glitch in the updated software that was supposed to provide an increased hit count of the geyser dust particles. However, dust samples were collected before and after the closest approach and the mass spectrometer functioned throughout the flyby, providing useful data which is now being analyzed.

Mission controllers will have a chance to capture more geyser dust on October 9, 2008 when they may choose to steer Cassini even closer to the surface of Enceladus.

Tidal flexing of this moon due to the gravitational proximity of its host planet, Saturn, continually heaves and cracks the icy surface. This suggests that Enceladus may have a squishy, liquid-water ocean beneath an icy crust. Deep, parallel fissures in the ice crust, dubbed the “Tiger Stripes”, measure warmer than uncracked, stationary surfaces nearby. Friction of these massive, moving plates of ice is thought to provide the heat responsible for the pressurized geysers of sublimated water and ice dust. The presence of these geysers amounts to more empirical evidence of a large, liquid water ocean below the surface of Enceladus.

The Cassini-Huygens space probe is an international mission involving the cooperative efforts of NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency. Launched in 1997, Cassini has orbited Saturn since 2004 but has never before flown so close to a moon. On 14 January 2005, the Huygens lander successfully explored the atmosphere and surface conditions of Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan.

Monday, April 3, 2006On Sunday, Iran tested its second underwater missile, the Fajr-3. The underwater missile, Iran claims, can evade sonar.

“The missile carries a very powerful warhead that enables it to operate against groups of warships and big submarines. Even if an enemy’s warship sonar can detect the missile, no warship can escape from this missile because of its high speed,” said General Ali Fadavi of the Revolutionary Guards. He said the missile can travel at 328 feet a second.

If Iran’s claims are correct, it would make this missile the fastest underwater missile in the world. The second fastest missile would be the Russian’s VA-111 Shkval, which was developed in 1995.

Iran successfully tested its first missile on March 31, 2006, and claims that it can “evade radar and it can evade anti-missile missiles,” said Hossein Salami, head of the Revolutionary Guards Air Force. “This technology is completely new, without copying any other missile systems that may exist in other countries” and also says it can carry several warheads.

It is also reported that more missiles will be tested during war games later in the week.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

New Paltz, New York — More than 350 U.S. students took part in a demonstration Friday outside the SUNY New Paltz Student Union Building where student leaders used a bullhorn from the rooftop to rally the gathering on the concourse below. University police dispersed student leaders from the roof which was followed by more than 100 students storming the Haggerty Administration Building (HAB).

During the 2004–2005 academic year, students lobbied for a $10 million renovation project for their Student Union Building, which has not been renovated since its construction more than 30 years ago.

HAB spokesman Eric Gullickson said that the supplemental appropriation for the project is the largest in the history of the college and that the six-member advisory committee includes three students but that; “the Student Association, which was offered the first seat on this committee, declined the opportunity,” Gullickson said.

Student leaders, including Student Body President R.J. Partington III and Student Senate ChairJustin Holmes, who played a role in organizing this demonstration, testified during the Spring 2005 semester before the New York State Assembly Committee on Higher Education, eventually winning the renovation project. Holmes says that Gullickson’s assertions are; “an out-and-out lie. The SA was never offered such a seat. We were offered 1 seat on a seven seat committee, with the administration selecting the other six members.”

The major arguments for a capital project on the Student Union Building were that it:

• did not accommodate organizations and organization office needs
• lacked crucial technology for student mobilization
• was built for a student population less than half the size of 2005, and
• was one of the longest standing Student Unions in the SUNY system which had not undergone a renovation

During the Fall 2005 semester the HAB claimed that it would oversee the renovation project, citing the need for a larger lobby and bookstore.

The Kingston Daily Freeman reported:

The crystallizing issue for the demonstration was the upcoming $10 million renovation of the Student Union building. The renovation, scheduled to begin in about two years, will be the first major change to the building since it was built 34 years ago, according to college spokesman Eric Gullickson, who said the supplemental appropriation for the project in the state budget is the largest in the college’s history.

Gullickson also said that a six-member committee had been formed to guide the design process, but student leaders, including Partington, were told that the proposed committee would be seven members, including four non-students and two students who were appointed by the HAB.

“No matter the size and makeup of the HAB’s so-called renovation committee, it has nothing to do with the actual renovation process, which will be administered by a student committee, with input from other parties of course considered,” responded Holmes.

During the Fall 2005 semester, Student Body President R.J. Partington III attempted to negotiate with Administrators, including HAB President Steven G. Poskanzer, over the project.

The HAB refused to concede to student demands.

At this point, the Student Senate passed legislation proclaiming that the project would be overseen by a committee where students constitute a majority, and Partington announced that he “did not recognize and would not sit on” any committee that did not meet the needs of students.

Vice President of Acacdemic Affairs & Governance, Stephanie Adika said, “If the HAB won’t even listen to us about our own building, how are they going to listen to us about all the other problems the students have with SUNY New Paltz.”

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

A team of scientists from Australia and US has found a solution for a challenging problem in climate research. Climate models predicted more greenhouse gases would weaken the equatorial Pacific trade winds.However, over the past two decades, observations showed this Walker circulation was getting stronger, accelerating sea level rise in the western Pacific, and consequent changes in global climate.The researcher team reports, “The answer to the puzzle is that recent rapid Atlantic Ocean warming has affected climate in the Pacific”.Their study, “Recent Walker circulation strengthening and Pacific cooling amplified by Atlantic warming”, was published on Sunday in Nature Climate Change.

While previous research supposed natural variability alone accounted for cooling in the eastern Pacific, this study highlights a previously overlooked climate feedback: as the Atlantic warms, it alters the winds over the Pacific, depressing the ocean temperature there.As coauthor Shayne McGregor of the University of New South Wales explains, “the main cause of the Pacific wind, temperature, and sea level trends over the past 20 years lies in the Atlantic Ocean […] We saw that the rapid Atlantic surface warming observed since the early 1990s, induced partly by greenhouse gases, has generated unusually low sea level pressure over the tropical Atlantic. This, in turn, produces an upward motion of the overlying air parcels. These parcels move westward aloft and then sink again in the eastern equatorial Pacific, where their sinking creates a high pressure system. The resulting Atlantic–Pacific pressure difference strengthens the Pacific trade winds.”

Coauthor Malte Stuecker of the University of Hawaii Meteorology Department reports that “Our study documents that some of the largest tropical and subtropical climate trends of the past 20 years are all linked: Strengthening of the Pacific trade winds, acceleration of sea level rise [three times faster than the global average] in the western Pacific, eastern Pacific surface cooling, the global warming hiatus, and even the massive droughts in California”. His colleague cauthor Fei-Fei Jin adds, “We are just starting to grasp the scope of the impacts of this global atmospheric reorganization and of the out-of phase temperature trends in the Atlantic and Pacific regions”.Work earlier this year by coauthor Matthew England, University of New South Wales, showed the stronger winds have churned up the waters of the Western Pacific Ocean, so more heat flows from the winds into the water. This appears to explain why global surface temperatures have recently risen more slowly.

Coauthor Axel Timmermann of the University of Hawaii notes a further amplifying effect: “Stronger trade winds in the equatorial Pacific also increase the upwelling of cold waters to the surface. The resulting near-surface cooling in the eastern Pacific amplifies the Atlantic–Pacific pressure seesaw, thus further intensifying the trade winds […] It turns out that the current generation of climate models underestimates the extent of the Atlantic–Pacific coupling, which means that they cannot properly capture the observed eastern Pacific cooling, which has contributed significantly to the leveling off, or the hiatus, in global warming.”As Professor England said, “It will be difficult to predict when the Pacific cooling trend and its contribution to the global hiatus in surface temperatures will come to an end. […] However, a large El Niño event is one candidate that has the potential to drive the system back to a more synchronized Atlantic/Pacific warming situation.”