Astronauts bid farewell to Space Shuttle Discovery ( video)

In recent days, John Glenn and other astronauts that have flown on Discovery have visited the retired orbiter to say their goodbyes.?

While NASA prepares to deliver the space shuttle Discovery to its final museum home, some high-profile guests have visited the vehicle over the past few months to bid their goodbyes: the men and women who helped build the iconic space plane, and the privileged few who flew on it.

Skip to next paragraph The Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off for the last time on February 24, 2011.

The shuttle Discovery is scheduled to fly from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Washington, D.C.?atop a modified Boeing 747 aircraft?on April 17, weather permitting. It will be delivered to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va., to be placed on public display for posterity.

But before the orbiter departs from its soon-to-be-former Florida home port, many special visitors have come to say farewell, said Stephanie Stilson, NASA's flow director for the transition and?retirement of the space shuttles?at the Kennedy Space Center.

"There are a number of people who have come back for one last opportunity to sit in the seat and experience it," Stilson told SPACE.com. "Our center director, Bob Cabana, flew on Discovery multiple times, and he has gone into Discovery many times before, but he had his moment to say goodbye. Mike Coats, who is the center director at the Johnson Space Center, came by, and others too."

In February, during celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of?John Glenn?becoming the first American to orbit the Earth, Cabana and Glenn climbed aboard Discovery and posed for pictures on the shuttle's flight deck. [Photos: Inside Shuttle Discovery]

Glenn was a member of NASA's first astronaut class, and his Friendship 7 flight, on Feb. 20, 1962, was one of several important milestones that came out of the agency's so-called Project Mercury.

In 1998, at age 77, Glenn became the world's oldest astronaut after flying to space again on the shuttle Discovery's STS-95 mission.

Cabana is a veteran of four space shuttle missions, including two flights aboard Discovery. Cabana piloted Discovery on the STS-41 mission in 1990 and the STS-53 mission in 1992.

Other current and retired astronauts have visited Discovery since the orbiter was retired from service, Stilson said, as well as engineers who have helped build and maintain the vehicles over the course of NASA's 30-year program.

"It is nice to get to share that with them one more time and hear their experiences, and share their stories of what they were able to do with these great vehicles," Stilson said.

You can follow SPACE.com staff writer Denise Chow on Twitter?@denisechow. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter?@Spacedotcom?and on?Facebook.

Copyright 2012?SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Myanmar exiles urge US to seek more reforms

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The European Union's suspension of economic sanctions against Myanmar has riled exiled activists, who are urging the United States to press for further reforms by the dominant military before following suit.

The activists' opposition has exposed differences with democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose cause they have championed for more than two decades, which helped drive the sanctions in the first place.

Suu Kyi endorsed the EU move during a visit by British Prime Minister David Cameron to Yangon this month, but the activists are skeptical that sanctions could be re-imposed if Myanmar, also known as Burma, should backslide on the reforms. They say despite Suu Kyi winning a seat in parliament and the government reaching cease-fires with several ethnic armed insurgencies, the changes have yet to affect the lives of most citizens and rampant rights abuses continue.

"The EU has suspended sanctions knowing that its own benchmarks on Burma have not been met: the unconditional release of all political prisoners and a cessation of attacks against ethnic minorities," Soe Aung of the Forum for Democracy in Burma said by e-mail from Thailand. He accused the bloc of rushing to reward "murky reforms."

"It's illogical and a little hypocritical," Aung said.

While the influence of Myanmar activists who escaped the country in the years following a 1988 crackdown on democracy protesters is waning as the country opens up, they remain players in the debate. Last week, a group of them were lobbying opinion-makers in Washington, including at the State Department and the World Bank.

They say foreign investment before rule of law is established in the impoverished country would do more harm than good and benefit only the military and its cronies, who dominate the most lucrative sectors of the economy, such as timber, gemstones, oil and gas. Most of those resources are in, and need to be transported through, remote, ethnic-minority regions where hundreds of thousands of villagers have been displaced by fighting and where military abuses have been worst.

The Obama administration has taken those concerns on board. While the U.S. has led the charge in engaging Myanmar, it is moving more slowly than the EU in lifting sanctions. It is upgrading diplomatic ties and plans to allow U.S. investment in some sectors, but only in areas it judges would benefit the broader population.

Congressional committees that oversee U.S. policy toward Asia will take up the issue this week, hearing testimony by senior officials from the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Treasury Department.

Khin Ohmar, coordinator of Burma Partnership, a coalition of pro-democracy activists based in several Asian countries, said despite relaxation of restrictions on media and peaceful protests in Myanmar, the military still can act with impunity.

"People talk about President Thein Sein being reform-minded. That may be true. There's always been reform-minded people, even under the repressive system. But what we need in Burma is institutional changes, not changes based on personalities," she said in Washington.

She said the litmus test of political reform would be 2015 national elections, when the military's control of parliament will be challenged. Even after winning 43 of the 45 seats contested in recent special elections, Suu Kyi's party still controls fewer than 7 percent of the seats, and refused to take them up when parliament convened Monday due to a dispute over a single word in the oath of office ? a sign of the formidable hurdles that remain in political reconciliation.

Western governments maintain it's important to act now to reward Thein Sein's government and to weaken the hand of conservatives in the military who oppose the democratic reforms.

The EU announced Monday it was suspending most of its sanctions, except an arms embargo, for six months to a year while it assesses the country's progress. The restrictions currently target more than 800 companies and nearly 500 people. Last week, Japan said it would take steps to forgive about $3.7 billion of Myanmar's debt and resume full-fledged development aid.

Former political prisoner Aung Din of the U.S. Campaign for Burma, who will testify at one of this week's U.S. congressional hearings, says once Western businesses move into Myanmar it will be difficult to reverse the sanctions, and democracy advocates will lose leverage over the military. He questioned whether Suu Kyi and her party were properly informed of the risks before she endorsed the EU move.

Since the special elections, the U.S. has eased financial sanctions to allow private groups to do charity work in Myanmar, and is soon expected to open the way for investment in sectors such as agriculture, tourism, banking and finance. One influential lawmaker, Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., has suggested easing trade sanctions too.

Despite abiding Republican skepticism about the administration's willingness to reach out to authoritarian governments, the most influential lawmakers from both parties on Myanmar policy have broadly endorsed Obama's approach ? a rare example of bipartisanship in Washington.

"To most observers on the outside, it's clearly time to negotiate a transition here," said Priscilla Clapp, a former charge d'affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Yangon. "You can't be so hard-nosed as not to compromise."

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Dennis Rodman Facing Arrest Over Unpaid Child Support (VIDEO)

Dennis Rodman Facing Arrest Over Unpaid Child Support (VIDEO)

Former Chicago Bulls player, Dennis Rodman, is facing being tossed in the slammer for failing to take care of his child support obligations and for [...]

Dennis Rodman Facing Arrest Over Unpaid Child Support (VIDEO) Stupid Celebrities Gossip Stupid Celebrities Gossip News


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Ann Romney and the Caring Economy: The Politics of Motherhood ...

Post written by:? Riane Eisler and Valerie Young
Who says partisan politics only results in division, discord and gridlock?? After this week?s media frenzy over whether or not Ann Romney was ?working? when she raised five boys, a consensus of sorts has emerged.? Both Democrats and Republicans agree unreservedly that childrearing is a very important activity, valuable to the families involved, and essential to our civil society and national economy.

Now that that?s been settled, let?s check the political rhetoric against the policy realities.

The shocking truth is that our nation?s policies lag way behind those of every other developed nation in helping parents care for their children. We?re also way behind in helping families care for their elderly and sick.? Despite all the talk of family values, we fail to value the work of care. In fact, the U.S. is the only developed nation on earth that does not guarantee paid sick days or paid parental leave.

Even more shocking is that more than one of every five children in the U.S. lives in poverty and that our infant mortality rate is higher than all other industrialized countries, as well as those with significantly weaker economies, such as Greece, Cuba and Slovenia. Our maternal mortality rate is also so high that a woman in the U.S. has a greater chance of dying during childbirth or from a pregnancy-related condition than she does in all of Europe, Latvia, Oman or Belarus.? If superpower status were based on the survival of newborns and the women who give birth to them, we simply wouldn?t be one.

Behind these statistics lies enormous suffering that is the direct result of our nation?s failure to invest in caring for our people, starting in early childhood. A huge number of workers, both men and women, are periodically caregivers and care receivers across their lifespan.? The workforce is aging, and with smaller and more mobile extended families, family caregivers will be older, fewer and less able to provide care.? The care crisis we face requires a shift in our national priorities. This shift is both possible and affordable, as evidenced by nations such as Sweden, Finland, Norway and Germany that have highly successful economies.

This takes us to still another reason we need caring policies: a purely economic one. What counts the most for success as we shift from a manufacturing to a knowledge/service economy is the development of what economists like to call ?high quality human capital.? Other nations are committing a high percentage of their resources to human infrastructure, poised to realize the optimum potential of a creative, adaptable and educated society.? We must align our long-term investments with our stated goals of competing successfully in the global economy.

For businesses, making it possible for workers to tend to a seriously ill spouse or parent, or to bond in the early months with a new baby, reduces turnover costs, enhances productivity, and promotes loyalty and commitment.? Studies show that the financial gains to businesses and their investors from caring policies at work are tremendous. For example, companies listed on the Working Mother lists of the best companies to work for ? that is, companies with more caring policies ? have a substantially higher return to investors.

Doing what?s necessary to produce optimally functioning people requires time, energy and commitment, as Ann Romney brought to media attention.? However, most parents don?t share the financial advantage that Ann Romney has. The vast majority of mothers must also work outside their homes while providing most of the caregiving, vainly striving for work-life balance (the life component largely being caring for others).

Government policies such as paid sick leave and paid parental leave are essential, and it?s high time we caught up to other developed nations.? Our children, our elderly and our sick will benefit enormously, and so will the people (still mostly women) who care for them.

But in the end, the major beneficiary will be our nation, because in this rapidly changing technological and economic era, a caring economy is the only road to economic success and security. To date, the U.S. has failed to put its money where its mouth is. Support for family care must become a basic minimum labor standard and human right for the United States to deliver on its promise of the American Dream.

Riane Eisler is president of the Center for Partnership Studies and author of The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, now in 24 languages, and most recently The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics. For more information, see www.partnershipway.org

Valerie Young is a policy analyst and the Advocacy Coordinator at the National Association of Mothers? Centers.? She blogs about the intersection of motherhood and public policy at Your (Wo)Man in Washington.

Click here to read more posts from Your (Wo)manInWashington blog.

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Di Matteo happy to win ugly

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The World's Most High-Tech Blanket Could One Day Be Used For Easy 3D Modeling [Research]

It might not look like the traditional quilt your grandmother made for you, but that's because the IM Blanky is embroidered with sensors, resistors, and conductive fabrics making it self-aware. So it knows exactly how it's been folded, crumpled, or arranged. More »


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Is Marlo Hampton An Escort?!

Is Marlo Hampton an escort? I thought I hear it all but on the reunion show, the ladies went full force, holding nothing back. Marlow called Kim a whore, while Marlo was called an escort. I don’t know if it is true, but a lot of people seem to think Marlo is an escort. Regardless, I think the drama she brought to the show will ensure her presence on the RHOA next season, perhaps even replacing boring Sheree. Check out POTP for more! Amy Grindhouse- Lindsay Lohan Should Avoid The Standard Hotel. Or, maybe all hotels and clubs for longer than a hot minute???? Bumpshack – Jessica Simpson is STILL Pregnant – don’t believe the rumors people. Celebrity Smack has a HOT contest! Contest: WIN a WET Gift Basket! Daily Stab – Ted Nugent Pleads Guilty To Illegally Killing A Bear. What and assclown. Hollyscoop has 7 Celebs Who Vowed To Stay Virgins. Yeeeah – This isn’t shocking. Chris Brown is Still an Ass. Evil Beet – Yea, I don;t buy it. Who Broke Up with Who Here? Celebitchy – Gross!! Pamela Anderson forgets her pants in Berlin ? twice. Hollywood Rag has amazing photos of Demi Lovato?s Awesome Bikini [...]

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Helium-filled floating wind turbine, renewable energy with style

Helium-filled floating wind turbine, renewable energy with style

There's no doubting that the cause of renewable energy is a noble one. But, ethics aside, it also gives birth to the occasional technical marvel. Altaeros Energies, a company from Massachusetts (with MIT and Harvard blood in its veins) has created one such curiosity. The prototype is a wind-turbine that doesn't just languish on a hill-top, cutting a line in the horizon. No, this one has a helium-filled outer-section which allows it to deploy itself to 1,000 feet, where it can benefit from stronger, more consistent winds and gives nearly twice the power yields of its land bound brethren. That's all very nice, but we just thought it looked dang cool in action.

Helium-filled floating wind turbine, renewable energy with style originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 13:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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