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...substance called aerogel, invented in the 1930s but recently refined by NASA, has been certified as the lightest solid in the world--yes, it's in the Guinness Book of World Records. Weighing in at a mere .00011 lbs. per cu. in. (thin air weighs about .00004 lbs. per cu. in.), aerogel resembles smoke that has been frozen into place--it's cloudy, translucent and virtually weightless. It's also surprisingly tough. Chemically similar to glass, aerogel is used on the space shuttle to trap tiny spaceborne particles traveling at high speed so they can be brought back to Earth...
...year campaign for an independent homeland. Despite opposition by leaders of the Catholic Church in the Basque region, the Senate is expected to pass the law, without amendments, on June 25. SYRIA Dam Busted Hundreds of homes were washed away when the Zeyzoun dam collapsed, releasing around 71 million cu m of water, inundating villages in the al-Ghab area 350 km north of Damascus. At least 20 people died and more than 8,000 hectares of crops and power lines were swept away by flood water and mud. Many villagers fled to higher ground after they saw cracks developing...
...gearing up for its next big energy battle. This week the Environmental Protection Agency will issue a crucial report on a plan to extract natural gas from an area in the Rocky Mountains four times the size of the proposed Arctic refuge site. The Administration says 25 trillion cu. ft. of natural gas is buried in Wyoming's Powder River Basin--enough to supply the U.S. for a year and worth up to $46 billion to energy companies. The Administration wants to green-light the drilling of more than 35,000 new methane wells in the basin by November...
...biggest problem with sanitizing a structure like the Hart Building is that it's so enormous: nine stories tall and 10 million cu. ft. in volume, with a 100-ft. atrium at its center. Perhaps the most direct way to clean the place is with Sandia foam, a shaving cream-like decontaminant that works by oxidizing and destroying the anthrax spore's outer shell. But it's not clear how you would apply the killer suds to a structure as complex as the Hart, or how you would do it without gunking up computers and other equipment...
...dirt and fill proved to be the biggest headache. For 100 years, the area was a dumping ground for ash and cinder containing cancer-causing substances called PAHs, or polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (think of the charred stuff left on your barbecue grill). In all, Victory developers moved 750,000 cu. yds. of dirt, with nearly half so hopelessly "dirty" that it was carted away in 15,000 huge truckloads. Because previous landowners like Union Pacific were paying some of the cleanup costs, accountants had to track each spadeful...