Chavez's body brought 'home' to military academy

A supporter of Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez holds images of him while the coffin containing his body passes in the street, from the hospital where he died on Tuesday to a military academy where it will remain until his funeral in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. Seven days of mourning were declared, all schools were suspended for the week and friendly heads of state were expected for an elaborate funeral Friday. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

A supporter of Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez holds images of him while the coffin containing his body passes in the street, from the hospital where he died on Tuesday to a military academy where it will remain until his funeral in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. Seven days of mourning were declared, all schools were suspended for the week and friendly heads of state were expected for an elaborate funeral Friday. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Covered by objects placed by supporters, the coffin carrying the body of Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez arrives to the military academy where his body will lie in state until his funeral in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. Seven days of mourning were declared, all schools were suspended for the week and friendly heads of state were expected for an elaborate funeral Friday. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

A woman holds a picture of President Hugo Chavez against her face as she cries outside the military hospital where he died Tuesday in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. Seven days of mourning were declared, all school was suspended for the week and friendly heads of state were expected for an elaborate funeral Friday..(AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

In this photo released by Miraflores Press Office, Venezuela's interim President Nicolas Maduro, left, and Diosdado Cabello, President of Venezuela's National Assembly stand next to the flag-draped coffin containing the body of Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez on display during his wake at a military academy where his body will lie in state until his funeral in in state in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. Seven days of mourning were declared, all schools were suspended for the week and friendly heads of state were expected for an elaborate funeral Friday. (AP Photo/Miraflores Presidential Press Office)

A woman holding a small image of Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez stands in the street to watch Chavez's coffin be moved from the hospital where he died on Tuesday to a military academy where his body will lie in state until his funeral in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. Seven days of mourning were declared, all schools were suspended for the week and friendly heads of state were expected for an elaborate funeral Friday. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) ? Hugo Chavez has been carried back to the military academy where he started his army career, his flag-draped coffin lying in state in the echoing halls as a mile-long (1.5 kilometer-long) line of mourners came to pay homage Thursday to the larger-than-life leader.

Cannon boomed a salute each hour as Venezuelans numbering in the hundreds of thousands filed past.

"I waited 10 hours to see him, but I am very happy, proud to have seen my comandante," said 46-year-old Yudeth Hurtado, who was weeping. "He is planted in our heart."

As a band played the hymn from his first battalion, Chavez's coffin was displayed at the academy after an emotion-drenched procession through Caracas.

With the entire government, including anointed successor Nicolas Maduro, caught up in the seven-hour procession, there were few answers to the most pressing question facing the country ? the timing of a presidential election that must be called within a month.

Generations of Venezuelans, many dressed in the red of Chavez's socialist party, filled the capital's streets to remember the man who dominated their country for 14 years before succumbing to cancer Tuesday afternoon.

Chavez's coffin made its way through the crowds atop an open hearse on an eight-kilometer (five-mile) journey that wound through the city's north and southeast, into many of the poorer neighborhoods where Chavez drew his political strength.

At the academy, Chavez's family and close advisers, as well as the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay, attended a funeral Mass around the president's glass-topped casket. The public then began filing past to peer at their longtime president, many of them coming closer to him than they had ever been while he was alive. Some placed their hand over their heart, others saluting or raising a fist in solidarity. The viewing lasted far into the night.

The head of Venezuela's presidential guard, Gen. Jose Ornella, told The Associated Press late Wednesday that Chavez died of a massive heart attack after great suffering.

"He couldn't speak but he said it with his lips ... 'I don't want to die. Please don't let me die,' because he loved his country, he sacrificed himself for his country," said Ornella, who said he was with the socialist president at the moment of his death Tuesday.

Set against the outpouring of grief was near-total official silence on where Venezuela is heading next, including when the election will take place. Even the exact time and place of Chavez's funeral Friday has not been announced, nor has it been revealed where he will be laid to rest.

During Chavez's nearly two-year health fight, the government never specified the exact location or type of cancer he had.

Opponents already have been stepping up criticism of the government's questionable moves after Chavez's death, including naming Maduro, the vice president, as interim president in apparent violation of the constitution, and the military's eagerness to choose political sides.

For a day, at least, Chavez's heartbroken supporters immersed themselves in emotion and sad farewells.

Maduro and Bolivian President Evo Morales, one of Chavez's staunchest allies, mingled with the crowd, and at one point both fell to the ground in the jostle of bodies pushing in every direction.

Military officers and Cabinet members ringed the president's coffin, stone-faced. Other mourners pumped their fists and held aloft images of the late president, amid countless yellow, blue and red Venezuelan flags.

"The fight goes on! Chavez lives!" the mourners shouted in unison, many through eyes red from crying for long hours.

Chavez's mother, Elena Frias de Chavez, leaned against her son's casket, while a priest read a prayer before the procession left the military hospital where Chavez died at age 58.

People who passed by the glass-topped coffin said Chavez's body was clad in the presidential sash and the military uniform and red beret of his days as a paratrooper.

Ricardo Tria, a social worker, said he waited nearly four hours to pass by the casket. Chavez looked "asleep, quiet, serious," he said.

"I feel so much pain. So much pain," said Yamile Gil, a 38-year-old housewife. "We never wanted to see our president like this. We will always love him."

Others who bitterly opposed Chavez's take-no-prisoners brand of socialism said they were sorry about his death, but hopeful it would usher in a less confrontational, more business-friendly era in this major oil-producing country.

"I am not happy that he has died, but I can't be sad either," said Delia Ramirez, a 32-year-old accountant who stayed away from the procession. "This man sowed hatred and division among Venezuelans."

The 1999 constitution that Chavez himself pushed through mandates that an election be called within 30 days to replace a president, but Chavez's top lieutenants have not always followed the law.

The charter clearly states that the speaker of the National Assembly, in this case Diosdado Cabello, should become interim president if a head of state is forced to leave office within three years of his election. Chavez was re-elected only in October.

But Chavez anointed Maduro for that role, and the vice president has assumed the mantle even as the government has named him as the ruling socialist party's candidate in the presidential vote.

The military also appears to be showing firm support for Maduro despite a constitutional mandate that it play no role in politics. In a tweet late Tuesday, state television said the defense minister, Adm. Diego Molero, had pledged military support for Maduro's candidacy against likely opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, raising concern among critics about the fairness of the vote.

Capriles, the 40-year-old governor of Miranda state who lost to Chavez in October, was conciliatory in a televised address after the president's death.

"This is not the moment to highlight what separates us," Capriles said. "This is not the hour for differences; it is the hour for union, it is the hour for peace."

Other opposition leaders were more critical of the military stance.

"When all Venezuela wants unity and peace, and a climate of respect between Venezuelans predominates, they're contrasted by what's unacceptable, the declarations of the minister of defense, that are, besides false, unconstitutional," said Ramon Guillermo Aveledo, executive secretary of the opposition coalition.

Cynthia Arnson, director of the Latin American Program at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said Maduro won't be able to harness "Chavismo" as Chavez did so successfully, but she expects him to win any upcoming presidential vote.

"There's really no one who can step into those shoes," she said.

In addition to spiraling crime and shortages of basic goods, the next administration must also control a ballooning public debt that has quadrupled to $102 billion since Chavez took office in 1999, despite Venezuela's booming oil exports

Maduro's Jekyll-and-Hyde-like behavior Tuesday has stoked worries about a future government.

He used a speech just before Chavez's death to lash out at the United States and internal opponents he accused of plotting to destabilize the government. He pointed to shadowy forces as being behind the president's cancer and expelled two American military attaches he charged with spying.

Then, in a televised appearance to announce the death, a shaken and somber Maduro called for peace, love and reconciliation among all Venezuelans.

Venezuela and the United States have a complicated relationship, with Chavez's enemy to the north remaining the top buyer of Venezuelan oil. But Chavez's inner circle has long claimed the United States was behind a failed 2002 attempt to overthrow him, and he has frequently used anti-American rhetoric to stir up support. Venezuela has been without a U.S. ambassador since July 2010 and expelled a U.S. military officer in 2006.

In Washington, senior Obama administration officials said Wednesday they hoped to rebuild the U.S.-Venezuelan relationship, but acknowledged that a quick rapprochement was unlikely given the Latin American country's impending presidential election.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter, expressed displeasure with the expulsion of the two U.S. military officials by Venezuela and Maduro's accusations that the U.S. was somehow responsible for Chavez's cancer.

"Yesterday's first press conference was not encouraging," a senior official said. "It disappointed us."

___

Associated Press writers Christopher Toothaker, Jorge Rueda and Fabiola Sanchez in Caracas and Bradley Klapper in Salt Lake City, Utah, contributed to this report.

___

Paul Haven on Twitter: www.twitter.com/paulhaven

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-03-07-LT-Venezuela-Chavez/id-8a1bec7523634a208b940ff0c7f6280b

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New research confirms plight of bumble bees, persistence of other bees in Northeast

Public release date: 4-Mar-2013
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Contact: Kendra Snyder
ksnyder@amnh.org
212-496-3419
American Museum of Natural History

Museum collections key to generating dataset spanning 140 years

A new study shows that although certain bumble bees are at risk, other bee species in the northeastern United States persisted across a 140-year period despite expanding human populations and changing land use. Led by Rutgers University and based extensively on historical specimens from the American Museum of Natural History and nine other bee collections, the study informs conservation efforts aimed at protecting native bee species and the important pollinator services they provide. The results are published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Eighty-seven percent of the world's flowering plants, including most of the leading global food crops, are pollinated by animals. Bees are considered the most important pollinators because of their efficiency, specificity, and ubiquity. However, despite concerns about pollinator declines, long-term data on the status of bee species are scarce.

In the new study, the researchers used new web-based software to compile 30,000 museum specimen records representing 438 bee species.

"A novel aspect of this study was the use of collaborative online tools that allowed data to be captured quickly and accurately across 10 institutions, many of which lacked pre-existing capabilities in this area," said John Ascher, a research scientist in the Museum's Division of Invertebrate Zoology and an author on the paper who led the data-collection effort.

From the years 1872 to 2011, the authors observed slight declines in the number of bee species in comparable samples from the northeastern United States. Statistical analysis revealed that only three species exhibited a rapid and recent population collapseall species of bumble bees, which also have been shown to be declining in previous studies. Other species, including the oil bee Macropis patellata, showed more gradual declines.

Although few species were found to have severely declined, more than half of all bee species changed in proportion over time, with 29 percent of the species decreasing and 27 percent increasing. Bees that showed the greatest increase are mostly exotic species that were introduced to North America. Few such species were present in the earliest historical samples but they make up an ever-increasing proportion of more recent samples.

"Environmental change affects species differentially, creating 'losers' that decline with increased human activity but also 'winners' that thrive in human-altered environments," said Ignasi Bartomeus, lead author on the paper who conducted this work as a postdoctoral researcher at Rutgers University. "Certain traits can make species more vulnerable."

The scientists found that declining bee species tend to have larger body sizes, restricted diets, and shorter flight seasons.

They also revealed that "southern" bees reaching their northern distributional limits in the Northeast are increasing, a finding that could reflect a response to climate change. The average April temperature increased by more than one degree during the last 40 years in the study region, causing bees and their host plants to emerge earlier in the season.

Ongoing data capture will continue to expand the bee database so that statistical analyses can be applied across a broader geographic area and to a wider range of species, especially those that are rare in collections and potentially of greatest conservation concern.

###

Data capture was supported by a National Science Foundation Biological Infrastructure grant, #0956388. Additional support for this work was provided by Robert G. Goelet, Chairman Emeritus of the Museum's Board of Trustees.

---

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 4-Mar-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Kendra Snyder
ksnyder@amnh.org
212-496-3419
American Museum of Natural History

Museum collections key to generating dataset spanning 140 years

A new study shows that although certain bumble bees are at risk, other bee species in the northeastern United States persisted across a 140-year period despite expanding human populations and changing land use. Led by Rutgers University and based extensively on historical specimens from the American Museum of Natural History and nine other bee collections, the study informs conservation efforts aimed at protecting native bee species and the important pollinator services they provide. The results are published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Eighty-seven percent of the world's flowering plants, including most of the leading global food crops, are pollinated by animals. Bees are considered the most important pollinators because of their efficiency, specificity, and ubiquity. However, despite concerns about pollinator declines, long-term data on the status of bee species are scarce.

In the new study, the researchers used new web-based software to compile 30,000 museum specimen records representing 438 bee species.

"A novel aspect of this study was the use of collaborative online tools that allowed data to be captured quickly and accurately across 10 institutions, many of which lacked pre-existing capabilities in this area," said John Ascher, a research scientist in the Museum's Division of Invertebrate Zoology and an author on the paper who led the data-collection effort.

From the years 1872 to 2011, the authors observed slight declines in the number of bee species in comparable samples from the northeastern United States. Statistical analysis revealed that only three species exhibited a rapid and recent population collapseall species of bumble bees, which also have been shown to be declining in previous studies. Other species, including the oil bee Macropis patellata, showed more gradual declines.

Although few species were found to have severely declined, more than half of all bee species changed in proportion over time, with 29 percent of the species decreasing and 27 percent increasing. Bees that showed the greatest increase are mostly exotic species that were introduced to North America. Few such species were present in the earliest historical samples but they make up an ever-increasing proportion of more recent samples.

"Environmental change affects species differentially, creating 'losers' that decline with increased human activity but also 'winners' that thrive in human-altered environments," said Ignasi Bartomeus, lead author on the paper who conducted this work as a postdoctoral researcher at Rutgers University. "Certain traits can make species more vulnerable."

The scientists found that declining bee species tend to have larger body sizes, restricted diets, and shorter flight seasons.

They also revealed that "southern" bees reaching their northern distributional limits in the Northeast are increasing, a finding that could reflect a response to climate change. The average April temperature increased by more than one degree during the last 40 years in the study region, causing bees and their host plants to emerge earlier in the season.

Ongoing data capture will continue to expand the bee database so that statistical analyses can be applied across a broader geographic area and to a wider range of species, especially those that are rare in collections and potentially of greatest conservation concern.

###

Data capture was supported by a National Science Foundation Biological Infrastructure grant, #0956388. Additional support for this work was provided by Robert G. Goelet, Chairman Emeritus of the Museum's Board of Trustees.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/amon-nrc030413.php

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Spain's jobless hits record 5 million in February

MADRID (AP) ? Spain now has a record five million people registered as unemployed as the country remains stuck in recession.

The Labor Ministry said Monday that the number of people on the unemployment list in February jumped by 59,444 compared with January, making for a total of 5.04 million.

Spain is battling to emerge from its second recession in just over three years with its economy still reeling from the collapse of the once-booming real estate sector.

The country's unemployment rate was at 26 percent at the end of the fourth quarter.

Associated Press

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Governor denies parole to ex-Manson follower

FILE - This file photo provided Jan. 29, 2013, by the California Department of Corrections shows former Charles Manson follower Bruce Davis, who has served over 40 years for two murders unrelated to the notorious Sharon Tate-LaBianca killings. Gov. Jerry Brown reversed a parole board's recommendation on Friday, March 1, 2013, and denied the 70-year-old's release from prison. (AP Photo/California Department of Corrections, File)

FILE - This file photo provided Jan. 29, 2013, by the California Department of Corrections shows former Charles Manson follower Bruce Davis, who has served over 40 years for two murders unrelated to the notorious Sharon Tate-LaBianca killings. Gov. Jerry Brown reversed a parole board's recommendation on Friday, March 1, 2013, and denied the 70-year-old's release from prison. (AP Photo/California Department of Corrections, File)

ADDITION ADDS-Gov. Jerry Brown has reversed a state parole board panel's decision to recommend parole for Davis-File-This file photo provided Jan. 29, 2013, by the California Department of Corrections shows Bruce Davis. California's governor is scheduled to approve or reject a recommendation of parole for former Charles Manson follower Davis. He has served over 40 years for two murders unrelated to the notorious Sharon Tate-LaBianca killings. (AP Photo/California Department Of Corrections,File)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? The enduring mystery of why young people joined Charles Manson's murderous family appeared to be at the heart of Gov. Jerry Brown's decision Friday to reverse a parole board's recommendation and keep Bruce Davis in prison.

Brown said he wants Davis, who has been behind bars for 42 years, to come clean about all the details of his involvement with Manson's cult and the two gruesome killings of a stuntman and a musician.

It was the second time in less than three years that a California governor has rejected a parole board ruling in Davis' case. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refused his release in 2010, citing the heinous nature of Davis' crimes and his efforts to minimize his involvement.

Brown repeated those reasons in a six-page decision but added his belief that Davis still has more to disclose about the killings.

"Until Davis can acknowledge and explain why he actively championed the Family's interests and shed more light on the nature of his involvement, I am not prepared to release him," Brown said.

"After 42 years of incarceration, it is encouraging that Davis is beginning to reveal the actual details of what happened. But it is clear that he continues to withhold information about these events," Brown said.

The state parole board, citing the prisoner's positive progress, approved release of the 70-year-old Davis, but the Democratic governor had the last word.

Brown gave his decision to The Associated Press at the downtown Los Angeles County courthouse after a meeting with District Attorney Jackie Lacey, who had recommended that Davis not be paroled.

Davis' attorney, Michael Beckman, called the governor's decision "horrible" and contrary to the findings of parole commissioners who conducted hearings for Davis and found him eminently suitable for parole. He said Davis has told everything he knows.

"I have represented over 700 life prisoners and of all of them, Bruce Davis is the most rehabilitated and qualified," the attorney said.

He said Brown's "paper review" of the case was insufficient to understand who Davis is today.

Brown said, "I find the evidence ... shows why he currently poses a danger to society if released from prison. Therefore, I reverse the decision to parole Mr. Davis."

But Beckman said that the governor failed to articulate any reason why Davis might pose a danger now.

If the problem is association with the Manson family, Beckman said, "They should pass a law saying if you were involved with these people you can't get out. But there is no such law. "

Brown's decision focused on Davis' role in the murderous Manson Family in the late 1960s.

"The record indicates that Davis fully embraced and championed the family's distorted values and goals, and was willing to protect the family's interests at all costs," the decision said.

Davis would have been only the second Manson-related murder defendant to be granted parole since the killing spree began in 1969.

Davis was not involved in the notorious Sharon Tate-LaBianca killings but was convicted with Manson and others in the murders of musician Gary Hinman and stuntman ranch hand Donald "Shorty" Shea.

Manson was a direct participant in both killings, according to witnesses.

Steve Grogan, another participant in those murders, was released in 1985 after he led police to where the bodies were buried in the San Fernando Valley.

Beckman noted that Grogan, a central figure in the killings, has lived as an upstanding citizen for 27 years with no problems since his release.

Davis was 30 when he was sentenced to life in prison in 1972 in the case, which was a postscript to Manson's notorious reign as leader of the murderous communal cult.

Davis long maintained that he was a bystander in the killing of the two men. But in recent years, he has acknowledged his shared responsibility. He said his presence may have emboldened others to take action because he was an elder of the group.

Brown said Davis' refusal to fully acknowledge his responsibility for the killings was central to his decision.

"I do not believe that Davis was just a reluctant follower who passively went along with the violence," he said. "Davis was older, more experienced, he knew what the Manson Family was capable of, and he knowingly and willingly took part in these crimes."

Davis became a born-again Christian in prison and ministered to other inmates, married a woman he met through the prison ministry, and has a grown daughter. The couple recently divorced.

Davis also earned a master's degree and a doctorate in philosophy of religion.

Brown commended him for his self-help efforts but said the work was outweighed by other factors.

Manson and three of his followers, Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkel and Charles "Tex" Watson, remain in prison for life in the Tate killings. Their co-defendant, Susan Atkins, died of cancer behind bars in 2009.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-03-01-Manson%20Family%20Member/id-a88ec157ac774476b8a9778ce860c914

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Christian Slater is Engaged!

Christian Slater proposed to Brittany Lopez! See more stars who are planning to tie the knot

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/engaged-celebrities-they-put-ring-it/1-b-277661?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Aengaged-celebrities-they-put-ring-it-277661

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NASA on course to launch Orion flight test

Mar. 1, 2013 ? The first spacecraft NASA has designed to fly astronauts beyond Earth orbit since the Apollo era is well on its way to making a flight test next year, agency officials said Wednesday. The mission is planned for launch in September 2014, and will see an Orion capsule orbit Earth without a crew and return through the atmosphere at speeds unseen since astronauts last returned from the moon in 1972.

"It's a key element of our overall plan to get humans beyond Earth orbit as quickly as we can," said Dan Dumbacher, deputy associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Development Division.

Exploration Flight Test (EFT)-1, will be the first chance engineers get to test Orion's design in space. Flying atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket, the spacecraft will be pressurized as it would be if astronauts were onboard. It will orbit Earth twice on a track that will take it more than 3,600 miles above us, about 15 times higher than the International Space Station.

From that height, Orion will be steered to a re-entry at speeds of about 20,000 mph, slamming into the atmosphere to test whether the heat shield will protect the spacecraft adequately.

"It allows us to stress the heat shield in conditions that are very close to what we will see coming back from a region around the moon," said Mark Geyer, Orion program manager. "This is going to help us make our heat shield lighter, safer and more reliable."

Launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the spacecraft will carry scores of instruments. Even the heat shield will have instruments to measure temperature and plasma flow around the spacecraft as it endures the searing conditions of high-speed reentry.

Engineers will use the readings to update computer models and refine designs for the spacecraft, ground support equipment and the in-development Space Launch System rocket. The agency also will provide the data to the agency's commercial partners developing their own spacecraft.

Orion will land under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean where recovery teams from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Department of Defense will retrieve it and return it to Florida.

Just as the mission will help spacecraft designers, the recovery will show those on the ground what to expect when they begin retrieving crews after long missions into deep space, said Pepper Phillips, director of the Ground Systems Development and Operations Program based at Kennedy.

"The teams are exercising some static tests now, but we're going to be ready with this full-up active test of a live spacecraft," Phillips told reporters who had gathered in the Young-Crippen Firing Room at Kennedy for the update Feb. 27.

The firing room, which has been refurbished and extensively modified since last hosting a space shuttle launch, will give engineers direct links to the Orion after it is powered up later this year. Launch controllers will follow the mission from the same firing room, as well.

NASA designed Orion as a versatile spacecraft able to handle the hardships of flying safely far beyond Earth's atmosphere to take astronauts to distant destinations such as an asteroid and Mars. Starting in 2017, Orion spacecraft will be paired with the agency's Space Launch System (SLS), a massive rocket in development more powerful than the Saturn V that propelled astronauts to the moon.

Although EFT-1 will focus largely on testing the Orion spacecraft, it also will aid the teams designing and building the SLS, said Todd May, program manager for the new booster.

"There are a lot of things about this mission that helps SLS," May said. "A lot of this data we're going to use to understand the structural properties, the aero-loading, the guidance navigation and control that we feed back into our calculations."

The SLS team, based at Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Ala., designed and built an adapter ring for this mission that will connect Orion's broad base with the much narrower Delta IV second stage.

While the Orion spacecraft takes shape inside the Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy, the heat shield's skin and skeleton have been finished. The heat-resistant coating will be applied next month and the all-important component will be shipped to Kennedy in July for attachment to the spacecraft.

NASA has designed the mission to evaluate how the spaceship behaves in 10 of the 16 highest risk areas for a crew. Avionics systems, software and the myriad other elements that go into a spacecraft are expected to get a rigorous workout. Those elements are making their way into the spacecraft in a careful procession as Lockheed Martin builds up Orion into a working spacecraft.

"We all have these great (computer) models but when you fly in the real environment, does it behave as you expect," Geyer said.

The flight will begin a series of flight tests for the Orion and Space Launch System programs as the agency moves toward launching astronauts into space in 2021. Orion is scheduled to fly a second test mission in 2017 aboard the first Space Launch System booster.

Along the way, engineers also will conduct smaller-scale flight tests to evaluate the performance of specific systems such as the escape rocket designed to pull a crew out of harm's way in the event of an emergency during launch and ascent.

The progression from concept drawings to working with mockups and replicas to building the actual spacecraft reinvigorates the teams, the officials said.

"I think it helps keep the team's morale up and you want to see a steady beat of successes as you move forward," May said.

"Now we're actually doing it," Geyer said. "It shows you that we're putting the expertise into actually making it happen."

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What are the main problems with this diet plan?

You shouldn?t eat the same thing every day, you?ve got to get some variety in there. And like you said you?re missing a lot of veggies. Sneak some of them in the smoothie. When I make smoothies, I put lots of berries, kiwis make it excellent, banana, an orange maybe, but also carrots and spinach. You can?t taste them. I also put flax seeds, they are great for you. Something else you can do that?s really good for you is squeeze a couple slices of lemon into your water every time you get a new glass full. Lemon is good for just about everything having to do with your body!!

I also don?t think that you should try to be full all day?.I?m sure you?ve heard this, but in general for your metabolism it is much better to snack all day than have three meals that ?fill you up?. Even if you are going to eat three meals for the most part, have an apple in between, or munch on some carrots, a few berries, a pear, anything!

It?s good that you keep trying veggies you don?t like. But you listed the ones you do like, so try to eat those every day. Broccoli is GREAT especially, so buy a head every time you go shopping. Why not?

Also, you say you only want to lose 20 pounds, so you are obviously not that out of shape?just a bit jiggly from the winter like many of us. So I wonder why you are starting with just walking? That is an extremely mild exercise and I feel like if you can motivate yourself to do more you should. If you don?t have a lot of time you can do a 40 minute tae bo workout on Youtube that will leave you so sore the next day that you can?t bend down to look at bras in Target without screaming (I just did that). Seriously, it?s tough, but you will feel the difference in a few hours!

I only ramble here because we are the same age and I recently lost a little bit of weight by just living more simply and being more active.

I don?t know where you live but if you can ride your bike anywhere, get a bike and do it! Especially for the upcoming summer! Best, most fun workout and it?s functional too. If you can?t, then disregard that whole statement.

Cayenne Pepper is also really good for you and if you are trying to get rid of excess waste or are feeling bloated or aren?t pooping as much as a healthy person should, take a shot of a little bit of cayenne mixed with some warm water. It?s intense but it will clear you out! And it has about a million other health benefits as well, such as speeding up your metabolism.

Also do you like nuts? Buy nuts in bulk and eat them all the time, they are so good for you.

Oh one more thing. Chia seeds. They are from Peru, I think, and I used to eat a spoonful of them before I went to work in the morning. They expand in your stomach and keep you fuller longer and are also really really good for you.

Wow I hope you find some of this helpful, I sure did ramble.

Source: http://www.fluther.com/156603/what-are-the-main-problems-with-this-diet-plan/

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