Home Improvement Ideas And Inspiration For All Types ? Free ...

If you are thinking about ripping up some carpet to see what lies beneath, then it is best to start in a corner out of eyeshot. Use needle nose pliers to gently pull back the carpeting far enough to see the sub floor. You may be pleasantly surprised to see hardwood floors hiding under the carpet. Then again, you can always secure the carpet again if you did not find anything spectacular.

Installing new shelves in a garage or other area can give one much more space to store whatever they choose while also clearing space off the ground. This will open up the walking areas of the room and also make things look more organized. Shelves can be used for home improvement needs.

Always use a guide when you are using a circular saw. A guide is a straight piece of material that you may simply push the saw against while you are cutting. Circular saws are notoriously difficult to control, and by simply clamping down a scrap piece of wood, you will ensure a straighter, more controlled cut.

For an easy way to update your home, consider covering dated popcorn ceilings with plaster. All you need is a bucket of joint compound, a wide putty knife for spreading the mud, and plenty of patience. You can create a smooth surface over the popcorn or get creative with the way you apply the mud, and you can paint over the plaster for a modern look.

Know where the water supply shutoff valves are located before you begin a project, especially when working near pipes. You never know when you may need to turn the water off in a bathroom or kitchen, and you should be prepared to prevent a flood if need be. Knowing where the valves are ahead of time will mean you don?t have to frantically look for them later.

Cover your door knobs, hinges and other hardware with petroleum jelly before painting. It is an easy way to insure they don?t get covered in paint. All you have to do when you are finished painting is use a soft cotton cloth to wipe the petroleum jelly from the surfaces of the hardware.

If you are thinking of buying a new tub, sit in the tub before purchasing it. You may feel embarrassed, but sometimes bathtubs may look much bigger than they actually are. Some tubs are can not be returned or have a very high restocking fee, so make sure you are pleased with the tub before buying.

A great tip for home improvement is to inspect your windows and see if they need to be replaced. The key here is to make sure you are going to get enough value for what you pay for. If the windows just need some maintenance it is better to do that than replace because windows are a major investment.

If the caulking surrounding your tub is stained or mildewed, consider replacing it. With less than an hour of work, your bathroom will look much nicer. Use a screwdriver or other tool to remove the old caulking, and ensure that the surface is dry before applying the new caulking. Look for a variety specifically meant for bathrooms; many of these also resist mildew growth.

Instead of adding on to your home, consider new ways of using the space that already exists. By removing a wall or changing the way that you use a particular room, you can maximize the space you already have without adding square footage to your home that will need lighting, heating, and cooling.

Ceiling fan installation is a fantastic and cost effective home improvement project that you should consider. Ceiling fans are great for circulating the air in the home, and keeping the home cool. They can also help reduce the cost of your electric bills by eliminating the need for air conditioning during the cooler days of the summer.

One of the smallest improvements to your home with the biggest impact is a deep cleaning of the house. Spending the time to clean every section of your house will improve the overall smell, look, and environment of your home. A thorough cleaning is often overlooked as a cost effective method of home improvement.

So you?ve figured out by now that home improvement doesn?t have to be that complicated. Mastering some basic information makes it easy to get started on just about any project, no matter how simple or complicated. Just remember what you?ve learned from this article and soon, your home will be looking better than ever.

Jerrell Mattera posesses an internet site on the subject of water filter systems for home

Source: http://historyquest.biz/home-improvement-ideas-and-inspiration-for-all-types/

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First US woman into space dies

23 July 2012 Last updated at 20:55 ET

Physicist Sally Ride's reach for the stars began in 1977 when she replied to a Nasa astronauts' job ad

Sally Ride, the first US woman to travel into space, has died aged 61, 17 months after she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, her foundation says.

"Sally's historic flight into space captured the nation's imagination and made her a household name," Sally Ride Science said in a statement.

She blasted off in the US space shuttle Challenger in June 1983.

Ride was not the first woman in space - that was Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova in June 1963.

Since her first mission in 1983, more than 45 women from the US and other countries have flown in space, including two as shuttle commander.

Ride died on Monday in La Jolla, California.

Once an aspiring tennis player, she went on to earn no fewer than four university degrees including a doctorate in physics.

National hero

In a statement, US President Barack Obama said he was "deeply saddened" to hear about her death.

Continue reading the main story

?Start Quote

Her star will always shine brightly?

End Quote Charles Bolden Nasa administrator

"As the first American woman to travel into space, Sally was a national hero and a powerful role model," he said in a statement.

Ride was born and grew up in Los Angeles, California, attending Stanford University for master's and doctorate degrees in physics.

According to her foundation, Ride applied to Nasa after seeing an ad in the Stanford student newspaper, calling for scientists and engineers, including women to apply to the astronaut corps.

She joined Nasa in 1978 - one of 35 people selected as astronauts from a field of more than 8,000 who applied.

Ride went on her first space shuttle mission on board Challenger in 1983.

As well as being the first American woman in space, she was also - at the age of 32 - the youngest person in America at the time to go into orbit.

Great expectations

As part of that mission she used a robotic arm - which she had helped develop - to retrieve a satellite.

She reached orbit again the following year, and was scheduled for a third trip when the Challenger space shuttle broke apart during lift-off in 1986.

The disaster occurred just over a minute into the mission, killing all seven crew members, and prompting an almost three-year hiatus in the American space programme.

Following the disaster, she served as a member of the presidential commission that investigated the causes of the fatal accident. She also sat on a similar board following the Columbia space shuttle, which broke apart during its re-entry to Earth in 2003.

"Sally Ride broke barriers with grace and professionalism - and literally changed the face of America's space program," Nasa administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. "She will be missed, but her star will always shine brightly."

Ms Ride's former husband Steve Hawley said in a statement: "Sally was a very private person who found herself a very public persona. It was a role in which she was never fully comfortable."

The former astronaut, who was married to Ride from 1982 until 1987, added: "I was privileged to be a part of her life and be in a position to support her as she became the first American woman to fly in space."

After leaving Nasa, Ride became a professor at University of California, San Diego, and served as a science fellow at Stanford University.

She launched Sally Ride Science, which created science programmes and publications for young students, in 2001. She also wrote five children's science books.

"The fact that I was going to be the first American woman to go into space carried huge expectations along with it," Ride said in a 2008 interview.

"I didn't really think about it that much at the time - but I came to appreciate what an honour it was to be selected," she said.

Ride is survived by her mother Carol and her partner of 27 years Tam O'Shaughnessy.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18963939#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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iheartdaily: The Animal Ring-dom http://t.co/QDjREwyb

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Artificial Jellyfish Built from Rat Cells

A jellyfish made of silicone and rat heart cells 'swims' in water when subjected to an electric field. Image: Harvard Univ./Caltech

How does a Venus flytrap know when to snap shut? Can it actually feel an insect?s tiny, spindly legs? And how do cherry blossoms know when to bloom? Can they...

Read More??

From Nature magazine

Bioengineers have made an artificial jellyfish using silicone and muscle cells from a rat?s heart. The synthetic creature, dubbed a medusoid, looks like a flower with eight petals. When placed in an electric field, it pulses and swims exactly like its living counterpart.

?Morphologically, we?ve built a jellyfish. Functionally, we?ve built a jellyfish. Genetically, this thing is a rat,? says Kit Parker, a biophysicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the work. The project is described today in Nature Biotechnology.

Parker?s lab works on creating artificial models of human heart tissues for regenerating organs and testing drugs, and the team built the medusoid as a way of understanding the ?fundamental laws of muscular pumps?. It is an engineer?s approach to basic science: prove that you have identified the right principles by building something with them.

In 2007, Parker was searching for new ways of studying muscular pumps when he visited the New England Aquarium in Boston, Massachusetts. ?I saw the jellyfish display and it hit me like a thunderbolt,? he says. ?I thought: I know I can build that.? To do so, he recruited John Dabiri, a bioengineer who studies biological propulsion at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. ?I grabbed him and said, ?John, I think I can build a jellyfish.? He didn?t know who I was, but I was pretty excited and waving my arms, and I think he was afraid to say no.?

Janna Nawroth, a graduate student at Caltech who performed most of the experiments, began by mapping every cell in the bodies of juvenile moon jellies (Aurelia aurita) to understand how they swim. A moon jelly's bell consists of a single layer of muscle, with fibres that are tightly aligned around a central ring and along eight spokes.

To make the bell beat downwards, electrical signals spread through the muscle in a smooth wave, ?like when you drop a pebble in water?, says Parker. ?It?s exactly like what you see in the heart. My bet is that to get a muscular pump, the electrical activity has got to spread as a wavefront.?

Form and function

Nawroth created a structure with the same properties by growing a single layer of rat heart muscle on a patterned sheet of polydimethylsiloxane. When an electric field is applied across the structure, the muscle contracts rapidly, compressing the medusoid and mimicking a jellyfish?s power stroke. The elastic silicone then pulls the medusoid back to its original flat shape, ready for the next stroke.?

When placed between two electrodes in water, the medusoid swam like the real thing. It even produced water currents similar to those that wash food particles into jellyfish's mouths. ?We thought if we?re really good at this, we?re going to recreate that vortex, and we did,? says Parker. ?We took a rat apart and rebuilt it as a jellyfish.?

?I think that this is terrific,? says Joseph Vacanti, a tissue engineer at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. ?It is a powerful demonstration of engineering chimaeric systems of living and non-living components.?

Parker says his team is taking synthetic biology to a new level. ?Usually when we talk about synthetic life forms, somebody will take a living cell and put new genes in. We built an animal. It?s not just about genes, but about morphology and function.?

The team now plans to build a medusoid using human heart cells. The researchers have filed a patent to use their design, or something similar, as a platform for testing drugs. ?You?ve got a heart drug?? says Parker. ?You let me put it on my jellyfish, and I?ll tell you if it can improve the pumping.?

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Jury selection to start in Drew Peterson trial

FILE - In this Nov. 26, 2007 file photo, former Bolingbrook police sergeant Drew Peterson talks to the media as he leaves his home in Bolingbrook, Ill. Peterson was indicted in May 2009 on a murder charge in the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. Jury selection is scheduled to begin in his trial Monday, July 23, 2012, at the Will County Courthouse in Joliet, Ill. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File)

FILE - In this Nov. 26, 2007 file photo, former Bolingbrook police sergeant Drew Peterson talks to the media as he leaves his home in Bolingbrook, Ill. Peterson was indicted in May 2009 on a murder charge in the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. Jury selection is scheduled to begin in his trial Monday, July 23, 2012, at the Will County Courthouse in Joliet, Ill. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File)

FILE - In this May 8, 2009 file photo, former Bolingbrook, Ill., police sergeant Drew Peterson yells to reporters as he arrives at the Will County Courthouse in Joliet, Ill., for his arraignment on charges of first-degree murder in the 2004 death of his former wife Kathleen Savio, who was found in an empty bathtub at home. Jury selection in his trial begins Monday, July 23, 2012. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File)

FILE - In this Nov 19, 2007 file photo, former Bolingbrook police officer Drew Peterson leaves his home on his motorcycle in Bolingbrook, Ill. Peterson was indicted in May 2009 on a murder charge in the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. Jury selection is scheduled to begin in his trial Monday, July 23, 2012. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 22, 2008 file photo, flowers and a small angel statue surround the grave marker of Kathleen Savio, the third wife of former Bolingbrook, Ill., police officer Drew Peterson, at the Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside, Ill. Originally ruled an accident, her death was later changed to a homicide. Peterson was charged with her murder in May 2009. Jury selection in his trial begins Monday, July 23, 2012, at the Will County Courthouse in Joliet, Ill. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)

FILE - This undated file photo provided by her family shows Stacy Peterson, 23, of Bolingbrook, Ill., and her husband, Drew Peterson, 53, a police officer with the Bolingbrook Police Department. Drew Peterson, long suspected in the 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy, was charged with murdering his third wife, Kathleen Savio, whose 2004 death had been ruled accidental before authorities revisited it once Stacy Peterson vanished. Jury selection in his murder trial begins Monday, July 23, 2012, at the Will County Courthouse in Joliet, Ill. (AP Photo/Family of Stacy Peterson, File)

JOLIET, Ill. (AP) ? Jury selection is to begin Monday in Drew Peterson's long-delayed murder trial, in which prosecutors want the former suburban Chicago police officer's wives to effectively testify from their graves about his threats to kill them.

Peterson, 58, is charged with killing his third wife, Kathleen Savio, in 2004. Her body was found in a dry bathtub in her home, her hair soaked with blood. The ex-Bolingbrook police sergeant also is a suspect in the 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, although he has not been charged.

Those picked for the jury are likely to hear statements that the wives allegedly made to friends and relatives about threats Peterson made. Such hearsay is usually barred, but an appellate court ruled jurors can hear the statements.

Will County Judge Edward Burmila will vet would-be jurors starting Monday. A 200-person jury has been waiting three years for a trial to get under way. It was put off because of appellate court battles over the hearsay statements.

"I've never heard of anything comparable to this ? a jury pool waiting around for so long knowing what case they're going to be in and the reliance on hearsay," said Gal Pissetzky, a Chicago defense lawyer with no link to the case. "It's all very unusual."

The legal saga surrounding Peterson and whether he used his status as a police officer to try to get away with murder has attracted national attention. Rob Lowe portrayed Peterson in a 2011 TV movie, "Drew Peterson: Untouchable."

Vetting would-be jurors typically takes a few days, but extra time is sometimes required in high-profile cases to weed out those who come in with well-formed opinions. Opening statements at Peterson's trial in Joliet are slated for next Tuesday.

The defense raised concerns that some prospective jurors may have violated orders to avoid all news about Peterson. Among the questions in the 25-page questionnaire jurors filled out was whether or not they saw the TV movie, as well as what kind of newspapers they read, Peterson's lead attorney, Joel Brodsky, said Monday outside the courthouse.

Pissetzky wonders if those in the jury pool succumbed to temptations to peek at the news or search online about the case.

"It's like you tell a kid, 'Now, don't you eat that pie over there,'" he said. "What are they going to do? Eat the pie!"

One question that looms over the trial is how much Peterson's personality will influence the jury. Before his arrest, Peterson was often seen joking about a "Win A Date With Drew" contest, his missing wife's menstrual cycle and other topics that were widely seen as inappropriate.

Brodsky has said the three years that Peterson has been in jail and largely out of the public eye might help him because the memories of his behavior have faded somewhat.

On Monday, one of Peterson's other attorneys, Steve Greenberg, said he didn't think Peterson's likeability will be an issue.

"Most people we represent are not likable. ... And some people don't like Drew," he said. "But if 12 people want to convict him because they don't like him, then God help this country."

An appellate court ruled this year that jurors can hear witnesses say Savio and Stacy Peterson told them Peterson threatened them. There's apparently no physical evidence, so the hearsay is the heart of prosecutors' case.

At a 2010 hearing to determine what hearsay a jury could hear, dozens of witnesses testified that Savio told them she feared Peterson would kill her and make it look like an accident.

The 40-year-old Savio's death was initially declared an accident, but Peterson was charged after Stacy Peterson disappeared. The 23-year-old's body has never been found, but authorities say they believe she's dead.

Peterson, jailed since his 2009 arrest, pleaded not guilty. His attorneys say Savio's death was an accident and that Stacy Peterson ? 30 years younger than Drew Peterson ? ran off with another man and is alive.

___

Follow Michael Tarm at www.twitter.com/mtarm .

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-07-23-Drew%20Peterson%20Trial/id-d177c6894ad641c1921d85d6b7035216

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Video: How will U.S. move forward politically?

A Second Take on Meeting the Press: From an up-close look at Rachel Maddow's sneakers to an in-depth look at Jon Krakauer's latest book ? it's all fair game in our "Meet the Press: Take Two" web extra. Log on Sundays to see David Gregory's post-show conversations with leading newsmakers, authors and roundtable guests. Videos are available on-demand by 12 p.m. ET on Sundays.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/vp/48275848#48275848

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Nas featuring Amy Winehouse: Cherry Wine [Video]

Nas has a new album. It's pretty good. It's also got a song featuring Amy Winehouse. And oh man, this song. More »

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