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2013 De Rosa Nuovo Classico in London Green color
COMPONENTS
Sugino OX801D Compact Plus+ Crankset 172.5mm 46T-30T
Shimano Ultegra 6700 Bottom Bracket Cup Set – 70 mm Italian Thread
Shimano FD-CX70-F Cyclocross Front Derailleur (Grey Color)
Shimano RD-6700-A-SS Short Cage Rear Derailleur (Grey Color)
Shimano Ultegra ST-6700 Shifters with PTFE Cables
Shimano Ultegra BR-6700-G Brake Set (Grey Color)
Shimano Chain CN-6700
Campagnolo Record alloy threaded headset
Campagnolo quick release skewers
Shimano Ultegra hubs (Front-36H and Rear-36H)
D/T Swiss Competition double butted spokes and Pro Lock brass nipples in Black Color
Mavic Open Pro rims in Black Color
Schwalbe Ultremo DD 700 x 23C tires
Schwalbe SV15 40mm butyl inner tubes
Nitto S-83 seatpost
Nitto Technomic stem
Nitto M179 STI handlebar
Nitto Bottle Cage R
MKS Prime Sylvan Touring Pedals (Silver Color Cages)
MKS Super Deep Steel Toeclips
MKS Spin-II Pedal Flips
Brooks B15 Swallow Chrome Saddle in Brown Color
Cinelli Imperial Leather Handlebar Tape (Natural/Brown Color)
Brooks Toe Straps in Brown Color
Zimbale Leather Saddlebag in Brown Color
Jagwire Tube Tops rubber cable/frame protectors
Fred
Kentucky, USA
* The Zimbale Leather Saddlebag is just the right size to hold a Lezyne Pressure Drive mini pump, an inner tube, and some tire patch supplies and still maintain the leather and steel retro look. ( www.zimbale.com/Front/Product/?url=Product&product_no... )
** Finally, a couple of somewhat unusual features of the bike include:
(1) the M179 STI handlebar is designed specifically for Shimano STI levers (store.somafab.com/nittom179bar.html), and it flows very nicely into the Ultegra controls.
(2) a 46/30T Sugino Compact Plus+ OX801D crankset (www.suginoltd.co.jp/english/ox801d_main_english.htm) was mounted on the De Rosa Nuovo Classico frame along with a Shimano FD-CX70 cyclocross front derailleur. (In case you are wondering, the Sugino Compact Plus+ OX801D is a higher end crankset which costs more than an Ultegra 6700 crankset, but it offers many more chainring options. www.alexscycle.com/cranks/road-1-2-3-4-5-6/sugino-ox801d-...) According to the Shimano web site (bike.shimano.com/publish/content/global_cycle/en/us/index...), the FD-CX70 is designed for use with top gear chain rings of 46-52 teeth and has a maximum capacity of 16 teeth. So, it works fine with the Sugino 46/30T crankset. The FD-CX70 is also fully compatible with current Shimano ST-6700/ST-5700/ST-4600 10-speed road shifters as is the Sugino Compact Plus+ OX801D crankset. That means that the combination of the Sugino Compact Plus+ OX801D crankset and the Shimano FD-CX70 front derailleur works with Ultegra 6700 shifters and the Ultegra 6700 rear derailleur and a 12-30T cassette. The combination of a 46/30T crankset and a 12-30T cassette gave a reasonable top gear of 100.7 gear inches and a low gear of 26.3 gear inches. That gearing is great for general riding up and down hills.
A technician with the John C. Stennis Space Center's Fluid Component Facility studies samples to determine cleanliness of valves and fittings used on pipes that transport liquid fuel and propellants. The clean room where the technicians work is similar to a hospital surgical room.
Credit: NASA
Image Number: 95-081-19
Date: 1995
PictionID:44808603 - Title:Atlas Payload Component - Catalog:14_014197 - Filename:14_014197.TIF - - - Image from the Convair/General Dynamics Astronautics Atlas Negative Collection. The processing, cataloging and digitization of these images has been made possible by a generous National Historical Publications and Records grant from the National Archives and Records Administration---Please Tag these images so that the information can be permanently stored with the digital file.---Repository: San Diego Air and Space Museum
not so grainy on larger size [all sizes]
constructive components made of paper tubes, rolls of aluminum (offset) rubber and some wire, exceeds of the press of a newspaper
sort of shigeru ban
“Cuatro Torres Business Area” (CTBA). Antigua Ciudad Deportiva del Real Madrid. Paseo de la Castellana. Los componentes más recientes de la Skyline de Madrid
El parque empresarial “Cuatro Torres Business Area” (CTBA) se edifica sobre los terrenos de la antigua Ciudad Deportiva del Real Madrid al extremo norte del paseo de la Castellana, conformado por cuatro rascacielos, los edificios más altos de España. El conjunto comprende un anillo de circulación subterráneo que da servicio a aparcamientos y plantas bajo rasante de cada uno de los edificios. Proyectado en 2002-2003, la construcción se inició en 2004 y la urbanización se culmina en 2009 con la inclusión de algunas interesantes esculturas como la Menina de Manolo Valdés entre las torres CajaMadrid y Sacyr Vallehermoso.
En este recinto se situará además el Centro Internacional de Convenciones de Madrid con un auditorio principal con capacidad para 3.500 personas, según proyecto del equipo formado por Emilio Tuñón y Luis Moreno Mansilla ganadores del concurso convocado en 2007. El edificio propuesto se conforma mediante un círculo erigido verticalmente que se presenta como un disco solar delante de las dos torres centrales.
El Conjunto es fruto de la operación urbanística llevada a cabo por el Real Madrid Club de Fútbol, siendo presidente el empresario Florentino Pérez, por lo que algunos han dado a las torres el nombre de cada uno de los jugadores “galácticos” que fichó el citado presidente como consecuencia de la operación: Figo, Ronaldo, Zidane y Beckham.
Torre CajaMadrid (inicialmente Torre Repsol)
Arquitecto: Norman Foster & Partners
Estructura: Halvorson & Partners - Gilsanz Murray Steficek LLP. Instalaciones: Aguilera Ingenieros. Responsables del proyecto de construcción José Ramón Burgos Morcillo y Pedro González Lejarriaga
Es el edificio más alto de España, con 45 plantas y 250 metros de altura. Proyecto: 2003. Edificado entre 2004 y 2009. La estructura está compuesta por un entramado de acero, que permite una planta rectangular de oficinas, soportado por dos grandes núcleos de hormigón, que encierran los elementos de comunicación vertical y de servicio, que se unen en el remate superior mediante un elemento tipo puente. La fachada se cubre de vidrio en la zona de oficinas y de placas de acero inoxidable en los núcleos de hormigón. Las plantas de oficinas se agrupan en tres cuerpos prismáticos intercalados entre los dos núcleos verticales que los sustentan, conformando una geometría que da su característica imagen al edificio.
Una vez iniciada la construcción, Repsol decidió cambiar la ubicación de su futura sede por lo que el edificio en obras fue adquirido por Caja Madrid con el fin de convertirlo en su sede principal en 2009
Torre Sacyr Vallehermoso (Hotel Eurostars Madrid Tower)
Arquitectos: Carlos Rubio Carvajal y Enrique Álvarez-Sala Walter (R&AS).
Estructura: MC2, Julio Martínez Calzón y Miguel Gómez Navarro. Instalaciones: UTE Aguilera-Úrculo.
Proyectada en 2003, promovida por el Grupo SYV, se construye entre 2004 y 2008, con una altura de 236 metros y 52 plantas
Los autores conciben el edificio a partir del análisis de geometrías rigurosas, capaces de albergar diferentes usos aportando la flexibilidad necesaria. Se configura mediante la superposición de un centro de congresos, un hotel de gran lujo, que ocupa los dos tercios inferiores, y unas oficinas en alquiler, sobre las 17 plantas superiores.
Su planta se genera mediante un triángulo equilátero cuyos lados son curvos, tres arcos que envuelven a tres cilindros situados en posición triangular, optimizando la longitud de la fachada en relación con la superficie construida. Tres pliegues verticales dividen el edificio en gajos, haciéndolo más esbelto e introduciendo luz y ventilación en el núcleo central. Las fachadas, compuestas de una doble piel formada por escamas de vidrio y aluminio que ofrecen una resistencia mínima al viento, presentan una imagen singular dentro del Conjunto, con su tonalidad oscura.
Torre de Cristal
Arquitecto: César Pelli.
Colaboradores: Íñigo Ortiz y Enrique León.
Promovido por la compañía aseguradora Mutua Madrileña, es el edificio más alto de España, junto a la Torre Caja Madrid, con una altura de 250 metros distribuidos en 52 plantas. Proyectada por el arquitecto de origen argentino afincado en New York Cesar Pelli en 2003, se edifica entre 2004 y 2009. Las plantas varían a lo largo de la altura, generando cuatro planos con biseles oblicuos, que confieren a las fachadas del edificio, formadas por muros cortina de vidrio, la apariencia de un cristal tallado, rematado por un plano inclinado bajo el que se conforma un jardín cubierto de invierno. Un gran bloque de cristal transparente, cuyas caras captan la luz “como si fuera un diamante tallado”. La variedad de los ángulos que delimitan cada uno de las caras da vida y movimiento a la torre a través de la diferente intensidad de luz que éstas reflejen durante el día. Su destino es el de oficinas de alquiler. Uno de los atractivos del edificio, que finalmente no autorizó el Ayuntamiento, era una especie de faro situado en su parte más alta, destinado a iluminar el invernadero, que haría visible el rascacielos desde varios puntos de la ciudad.
Torre Espacio
Arquitecto Henry N. Cobb de la firma Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, fundada por Ieoh Ming Pei. Colaborador: José Bruguera.
Colaborador en la dirección de las obras: Reid Fenwick Asociados, de Madrid. Estructura: MC2. Instalaciones: R. Úrculo Ingenieros Consultores.
Proyectada en 2003, promovida por la Inmobiliaria Espacio S.L, se construye entre 2004 y 2008, con una altura de 236 metros y 57 plantas sobre el nivel del suelo. La fachada está formada por un muro cortina de vidrio. Las plantas, varían de forma y dimensiones a lo largo de su altura, pasando del cuadrado en la base, hasta alcanzar la forma de un ojo abierto, es decir dos arcos de circunferencia secantes, en su culminación; dando al edificio una fisonomía exterior muy variable, desde un prisma a una botella, dependiendo del punto de vista. Las aristas son curvas y las fachadas no son planas, por lo que hubo que dotar de un especial diseño a los soportes de hormigón. Alberga, entre otras, oficinas de empresas pertenecientes al grupo promotor como la Inmobiliaria Espacio o la constructora OHL, y algunas embajadas. Cuenta con dos áreas de descanso de ocho metros de altura situadas en las plantas 18 y 33. Su sistema de climatización está compuesto por el "Techo Frío" emisor y la “fachada activa” de doble capa con movimiento de aire interior.
Durante su construcción, en septiembre de 2006 se declaró un incendio entre la planta 40 y 42, la última en construcción en ese momento, pero no afectó a su estructura.
The Narcotic-Administering Arms Division was a key component of the Human Preservation Act that was passed by the Allied Nations in 2473. The Act was an attempt to preserve humanity from self-extinction in the face of devastating losses incurred during the then-ongoing Vraashan War. Despite the larger interspecies conflict, Earth was still wracked with petty civil wars, crime, and urban violence, so the Allied Nations sought to enforce a blanket ban on the use of lethal force against humans.
The global reaction was far from unified or compliant, but some military and law enforcement entities did register with the newly-formed NAAD. Individuals belonging to NAAD-registered organizations were outfitted with high-end riot-control gear and cutting-edge "weapons". Here, for example, are two medium-outfitted soldiers.
The one on the left wields ZADpulse nullifiers whose specially-tuned subsonic emanations induce extreme dizziness to cow large crowds.
The soldier on the right has a sleepsaber. A sleepsaber's "blades" are actually intangible electric fields which can harmlessly pass through flesh. These fields communicate an overriding bioelectric signal to neurons they contact that travels to the brain and forces an opponent into an entire sleep cycle.
Nationaal Archief/Spaarnestad Photo/Het Leven
Nederlands: Schaars geklede, bewapende eunuch houdt door traliehek heen harem in de gaten. Tunis, 1931.
English: Scantily dressed eunuch carrying a weapon keeps an eye on a harem in Tunis, Tunisia, 1931.
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Meer foto’s van Spaarnestad Photo zijn te vinden op onze beeldbank: www.spaarnestadphoto.nl/
Belgian Air Component F-16AM FA-84 from 350Sqn in display markings gets airborne from RWY 09 at RAF Fairford for its display at RIAT 2012.
OBSERVATORY MUSEUM
Established 1982. (A component of the Albany Museum Complex).
10 Bathurst Street, Grahamstown.
Tel : (046) 622 2312
This building was originally a 19th Century jeweller's shop and family home. Its connection with the identification of the Eureka, South Africa's first authenticated diamond, in 1867, prompted De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited to purchase the building and restore it in 1981-1982, to commemorate the beginnings of the country's diamond industry. It was opened on 2 February 1982 by Mr H F Oppenheimer of De Beers, and was formally presented to the Museum Trustees to become part of the Albany Museum's Cultural History division. The original owner-designer of the Observatory, Henry Carter Galpin, was a watchmaker and jeweller who lived in Grahamstown from 1850 until his death in 1886. His special interests - optics, astronomy and the measuring of time - are impressively reflected in this gracious multi-storeyed building. In the topmost tower is the only Victorian Camera Obscura in the Southern Hemisphere. Through the system of lenses and mirror in the revolving turret in its roof, this ingenious device projects an enchanting full colour live panorama of the town and its activities onto a flat viewing surface in a darkened room. Beneath it, Galpin built a Meridian Room where he could ascertain the precise time of local noon - 14 minutes behind South African standard time. The nearby Telescope Room contains his 8-inch reflector telescope which was initially installed in the rooftop observatory, from which the house got its name. On the Victorian Floor, five rooms of fine furnishings recapture the atmosphere of an upper middle class home of the time. Display panels detail the award-winning restoration project which returned the building to Galpin's original plan. The Diamond Story display tells the story of the identification of South Africa's first authenticate diamond and a full-size replica of the Eureka diamond is its sparkling focal point. In the basement a Victorian kitchen and dining room have been restored and a herb garden adds interest out-of-doors.
Hours :
Monday-Friday 09h30-13h00, 14h00-17h00
Saturday 09h00-13h00
Closed Sundays, Good Friday, Workers' Day, Christmas Day, New Year's Day.
After completing commission, gathering all components needed to pack up and ship out hand sculpted a robot wedding cake topper. Packaging flair: business card and hang tag, placed in recycled kraft box, then USPS Postal Box. Lots of tape and bubble wrap. Robot sculptures combining polymer clay, wire woven into coil springs, varnish and a little heart handmade by HerArtSheLoves. theawesomerobots.com
PictionID:44808994 - Title:Atlas Payload Component - Catalog:14_014229 - Filename:14_014229.TIF - - - Image from the Convair/General Dynamics Astronautics Atlas Negative Collection. The processing, cataloging and digitization of these images has been made possible by a generous National Historical Publications and Records grant from the National Archives and Records Administration---Please Tag these images so that the information can be permanently stored with the digital file.---Repository: San Diego Air and Space Museum
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the model, the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Me 309 project began in mid-1940, just as the Bf 109 was having its first encounters with the Spitfire in the Battle of Britain, the first aircraft to match the 109 in speed and performance. Already, Messerschmitt anticipated the need for an improved design to replace the Bf 109. The Reich Air Ministry, however, did not feel the same urgency, with the project given a low priority, resulting in the design not being finalized until the end of 1941.
The new fighter had many novel features, such as tricycle landing gear (with a nose gear strut that twisted through 90° during retraction, to a "flat" orientation under the engine) and a pressurized cockpit, which would have given it more comfortable and effective high-altitude performance. Each of the new features was first tested on a number of Bf 109F airframes, the V23 having a ventral radiator, the V31 with a radiator and tricycle landing gear, and the V30 having a pressurized cockpit.
Low government interest in the project delayed completion of the first prototype until spring 1942, and trouble with the nose wheel pushed back the 309's first flight to July. When it did fly, the Me 309's performance was satisfactory – about 50 km/h (30 mph) faster than a standard Bf 109G – but not exemplary. In fact, the Bf 109G could out-turn its intended replacement. With the addition of armament, the aircraft's speed decreased to an unacceptable level. In light of its poor performance and the much more promising development of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190D, the Me 309 in its original form was canceled.
However, the design was not dead and eventually found its way into the Me 509 (with a mid-engine layout) and the Me 609 (a heavy fighter which joined two Me 309 fuselages with a new centre wing section). By the time designs were being ironed out in the course of 1943, revolutionary turbojet engines became operational and with them new designs like the Me 262 or the He 162. These promised superior performance concerning speed, but they had only a short range and the new turbojets’ reliability was poor.
In another attempt to keep the Me 309 alive, Franz Hirschleitner, a young engineer who had formerly worked for Blohm & Voss, proposed the addition of a turbojet engine to the piston fighter as a booster. This would combine the range and reliability of the old technology with the new engine’s potential gain of speed. Having worked on the innovative Bv 141 reconnaissance aircraft before, Hirschleitner proposed an unusual solution for the Me 309 update: since as many original parts of the fighter were to be retained (what ruled out a redesign of the fuselage to carry the turbojet engine), he presented an asymmetrical layout which added a new pod with the cockpit, the armament and an underslung BMW 003 turbojet, which was connected to the Me 309 fuselage with a short wing. The Me 309 fuselage itself was virtually identical with the original fighter, just the weapons had been deleted from it (saving weight) and the former cockpit was faired over, the internal space being used for additional fuel tanks. The outer wings were taken from the Me 309, too, except for a reinforced landing gear which now retracted outwards, so that the aircraft’s track width was kept in acceptable limits. The front wheel still retracted into the Me 309 fuselage.
This aircraft, called the Me 309 T (for “Turbine” = jet engine), was envisioned as a heavy single-seat fighter, armed with four 30 mm cannon. Hardpoints under the middle wing section allowed an external ordnance of 1.000 kg (2.202 lb), including two bombs of up to 500 kg (1.100 lb) caliber each or two 300l drop tanks. Furthermore, the cockpit pod was large enough to add a second crew member under an extended canopy, so that the type could also be developed into a night fighter with a radar.
Despite initial skepticism at the Messerschmitt design bureau, Hirschleitner’s proposal was accepted and presented to the RLM in late 1943. Not surprisingly, it was rejected at first for being “too innovative”. Nevertheless, growing pressure from the Allied forces made the RLM reconsider the Hirschleitner design, since it was based on existing components and could be quickly realized. Therefore, the Me 309 T was ordered into production as the T-0 version in Spring 1944. From these initial aircraft, 12 were produced until August 1944 and used for field tests and conversion training. The T-0 was powered by a DB 603G and a BMW 003C and armed with four MK 108 machine cannon. These initial frontline tests lasted until December 1945 and the aircraft was ordered into full production as the T-1.
Just as the first production machines left the factories in April 1945, an upgraded variant, the T-2, was introduced. It shared the same airframe as the earlier variants but had an upgraded turbojet engine, a BMW 003D, which offered 10.76 kN (2,420 lbf) of thrust instead of the former 8.81 kN (1,980 lbf), together with improved reliability. The armament was upgraded, too: Two of the MK 108s were replaced by MK 103 30 mm machine cannon, a weapon that offered a much higher range and penetration power, so that the aircraft could fire effectively while keeping outside of the Allied bombers' defensive fire, which now frequently entered German airspace. Furthermore a Rüstsatz (R1) was introduced which put two additional MK 108 behind the cockpit, firing obliquely upwards as "schräge Musik" .
Despite the acceptable performance, which made it superior to pure piston-driven fighters of the time like the Republic P-47 or the North American P-51D, the Me 309 T was not very popular among the pilots. The handling on the ground was difficult, not only because of the offset front wheel, but also due to the fact that the left fuselage blocked almost the complete portside field of view. This flaw also created a significant blind spot during flight. Furthermore, getting the Me 309 T into the air without the support from the jet engine could be a gamble, too, esp. when the machine carried external loads. The BMW 003D, even though its reliability had been improved over time, was prone to failure, and the resulting lack of thrust made it a dead weight that severely hampered the aircraft's performance. All in all, only 123 machines were eventually built, with no two-seat night fighter or a trainer ever produced.
General characteristics:
Crew: one
Length: 9.46 m (31 ft 0 in)
Wingspan: 13.60 m (44 ft 7 in)
Height: 3.9 m (12 ft 10 in)
Wing area: 21.1 m² (226 sq ft)
Empty weight: 3,795 kg (8,367 lb)
Gross weight: 6,473 kg (14,271 lb)
Max takeoff weight: 7,130 kg (15,719 lb)
Powerplant:
1× Daimler-Benz DB 603G inverted V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine, 1,287 kW (1,726 hp)
1× BMW 003D (TL 109-003) turbojet with 10.76 kN (2,420 lbf) / 10,000 rpm / sea level
Performance:
Maximum speed: 840 km/h (522 mph, 464 kn) with both powerplants
695 km/h (431 mph, 383 kn) with the DB 603G only
Cruise speed: 665 km/h (413 mph, 359 kn)
Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi)
Service ceiling: 12,000 m (39,000 ft)
Wing loading: 256 kg/m2 (52 lb/sq ft)
Power/mass: 0.31 kW/kg (0.19 hp/lb)
Armament:
2× 30 mm (.1.181 in) MK 103 cannon
2× 30 mm (.1.181 in) MK 108 cannon
Underwing hardpoints for a total external ordnance of 1.000 kg (2.202 lb)
The kit and its assembly:
This model went through a prolonged development phase. It is based on the question whether an asymmetrical Blohm & Voss design could be made compact enough for a fighter aircraft? Aircraft like the Bv 141 reconnaissance aircraft (which actually flew) or the P-194 attack aircraft (which only existed as a paper project) were considerably bigger than typical single seat fighters.
While doing legwork I also found the relatively compact Blohm & Voss P-197 project in literature, which already came closer to my idea - I initally planned to build something along its lines, based on a Revell P-194 kit, but the latter turned out to be too big for this plan and I shelved the idea again.
However, the projected lingered in the back of my mind and was soon revived through the idea of using a Fw 190D fuselage as an alternative. But, alas, I still did not find the affair to be convincing enough for a build, also because of conceptual problems with the landing gear.
Then I eventually stumbled upon a HUMA Me 609 in the stash and considered a "modernized" asymmetrical layout with a tricycle landing gear. And this became the Me 309T.
It sounds so simple: take an aircraft model and add the cockpit pod, together with a new wing middle section. But turning this plan into hardware caused serious headaches. The biggest issue became the landing gear: the only space to stow the main landing gear would be the outer wings. Bu using the original Me 309 landing gear, which retracted inwards and already had a wide track, was impossible. So I decided to "reverse" the landing gear wells for an outward-retracting arrangement. Easier said than done, because the thin Me 309 wings come as single pieces in the HUMA kit: I had to cut out the complete well section on each wing, switch it around and re-sculpt the wings' profiles and surfaces. A lot of work!
The Me 309 fuselage was built OOB and I used the cockpit cover that comes with the Me 609 kit. The Bv P-194 cockpit pod with the jet engine was built OOB, too, but the wing attachment points had to be heavily re-sculpted because the P-194's wings are much deeper and thicker than the Me 309's. For the same reason I could not use the P-194's mid wing section - I had to scratch one from a leftover section of a VEB Plasticart 1:100 An-12, styrene sheet and putty. Messy affair, but at least it matches the outer Me 309 wings in shape and thickness.
A lot of putty was furthermore needed to finish the Me 309 fuselage and re-build all the wing/fuselage intersections. The HUMA Me 309 is a very basic affair, and fit as well as detail are mediocre, putting it in a polite fashion. The Revell P-194 is a little better, but it has many doubtful details like a pilot seat and canopy for pygmies or a poorly fitting jet exhaust section.
Thanks to the wing surgery, the Me 309's OOB landing gear could be retained - it looks pretty stalky, though, and the front wheel strut comes very close to the propeller disc.
Sice the HUMA Me 609 does not come with separate stabilizers I finally had to improvise again: I initially considered and asymmetrical layout (somewhat compensating for the cockpit pod on the starboard side with and extended span at port side), but when I saw how close the fuselages were, I settled upon an enlarged, convetional layout in the form of stabilizers from a Heller He 112.
Painting and markings:
This caused some headaches, too. I did not want a "conventional" late WWII Luftwaffe scheme, even though I wanted to use standard RLM colors. I eventually found inspiration in Me 262 recce aircraft, which frequently featured a unique paint scheme in the form of an overall RLM 76 livery onto which very fine dots or ondulating, thin lines in one or more darker contrast colors (RLM 81 and/or 83) were painted or sprayed. At first In wanted to adapt this scheme to the whole aircraft, but eventually decided to give the wings' upper surfaces a different, more "planar" scheme.
So, the whole model initially received and overall coat of RLM 76 (Humbrol 247), with the wings' undersides left in bare metal and the rudders painted in a greenish-grey primer. The cover of the DB 603 was kept in bare metal, too.
Contrast areas in RLM 81 and 83 (Braunviolett and Dunkelgrün, both from ModelMaster's Authentic line) were added onto the top of the wings, while I painted the fuselages and the fin with a semi-translucent "snake" pattern in RLM 82 (Humbrol 102).
The decals come from a Sky Models Fw 190A/F sheet, the crosses on the fuselage and under the wings come from a generic TL Modellbau sheet.
The cockpit interior as well as the landing gear wells were painted in very dark grey (Revell 09), while the landing gear struts became RLM 02 (Revell 45). The spinner received a black-and-white spiral, with black green propeller blades.
Well, I am not 100% happy with the result. While the overall model looks quite balanced, I am not happy with the finish - partly due to the massive use of putty and the fact that I had to mount parts in a fashion that the kits' manufacturers never expected to happen, but also due to the paint: The Humbrol enamels that I used turned out to be from the poor batch when the fabrication was moved to Belgium a while ago. With the result of a poor and gooey quality. That could have gone better. :-(
Nevertheless, I like the odd look of the asymmetrical design, esp. with the tricycle landing gear. From certain angles, the model looks really weird! And I am amazed how good the camouflage works - it's really disruptive.
DIY Tutorial - make a rolled paper Christmas ornament.
Blogged: www.allthingspaper.net/2013/12/rolled-paper-christmas-orn...
Eco Smart provides Solar Panels of world class premium brands up to 25 years of manufacturer warranty at wholesale prices. We provide many benefits over our Solar Panels and Components which will foremost bring you a long lasting value of our recommended components.For more information visit www.ecosmart-solar.com
1st Floor, Al Riqqa Building,
Near Clock Tower, Deira,
Dubai, U.A.E.
Phone: +971 4 2669986
E-mail: dubai@ecosmart-intl.com
Picture taken 1983 - digitally captured from paper print
__________________________________________
The orangutans (also spelled orang-utan, orangutang, or orang-utang) are the two exclusively Asian species of extant great apes. Native to Indonesia and Malaysia, orangutans are currently found in only the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra. Classified in the genus Pongo, orangutans were considered to be one species. Since 1996, they have been divided into two species: the Bornean orangutan (P. pygmaeus) and the Sumatran orangutan (P. abelii). In addition, the Bornean species is divided into three subspecies.
Based on genome sequencing, the two extant orangutan species evidently diverged around 400,000 years ago. The orangutans are also the only surviving species of the subfamily Ponginae, which also included several other species, such as the three extinct species of the genus Gigantopithecus, including the largest known primate Gigantopithecus blacki. The ancestors of the Ponginae subfamily split from the main ape line in Africa 16 to 19 million years ago (mya) and spread into Asia.
Orangutans are the most arboreal of the great apes and spend most of their time in trees. Their hair is typically reddish-brown, instead of the brown or black hair typical of chimpanzees and gorillas. Males and females differ in size and appearance. Dominant adult males have distinctive cheek pads and produce long calls that attract females and intimidate rivals. Younger males do not have these characteristics and resemble adult females. Orangutans are the most solitary of the great apes, with social bonds occurring primarily between mothers and their dependent offspring, who stay together for the first two years. Fruit is the most important component of an orangutan's diet; however, the apes will also eat vegetation, bark, honey, insects and even bird eggs. They can live over 30 years in both the wild and captivity.
Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates; they use a variety of sophisticated tools and construct elaborate sleeping nests each night from branches and foliage. The apes have been extensively studied for their learning abilities. There may even be distinctive cultures within populations. Field studies of the apes were pioneered by primatologist Birutė Galdikas. Both orangutan species are considered to be endangered, with the Sumatran orangutan being critically endangered. Human activities have caused severe declines in the populations and ranges of both species. Threats to wild orangutan populations include poaching, habitat destruction, and the illegal pet trade. Several conservation and rehabilitation organisations are dedicated to the survival of orangutans in the wild.
ETYMOLOGY
The name "orangutan" (also written orang-utan, orang utan, orangutang, and ourang-outang) is derived from the Malay and Indonesian words orang meaning "person" and hutan meaning "forest", thus "person of the forest". Orang Hutan was originally not used to refer to apes, but to forest-dwelling humans.
The Malay words used to refer specifically to the ape are maias and mawas, but it is unclear if those words refer to just orangutans, or to all apes in general. The first attestation of the word to name the Asian ape is in Dutch physician Jacobus Bontius' 1631 Historiae naturalis et medicae Indiae orientalis – he reported that Malays had informed him the ape was able to talk, but preferred not to "lest he be compelled to labour". The word appeared in several German-language descriptions of Indonesian zoology in the 17th century. The likely origin of the word comes specifically from the Banjarese variety of Malay.
Cribb et al. (2014) suggest that Bontius' account referred not to apes (which were not known from Java) but rather to humans suffering some serious medical condition (most likely endemic cretinism) and that his use of the word was misunderstood by Nicolaes Tulp, who was the first to use the term in a publication.
The word was first attested in English in 1691 in the form orang-outang, and variants with -ng instead of -n as in the Malay original are found in many languages. This spelling (and pronunciation) has remained in use in English up to the present, but has come to be regarded as incorrect. The loss of "h" in Utan and the shift from n to -ng has been taken to suggest that the term entered English through Portuguese. In 1869, British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, co-creator of modern evolutionary theory, published his account of Malaysia's wildlife: The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise.
The name of the genus, Pongo, comes from a 16th-century account by Andrew Battell, an English sailor held prisoner by the Portuguese in Angola, which describes two anthropoid "monsters" named Pongo and Engeco. He is now believed to have been describing gorillas, but in the 18th century, the terms orangutan and pongo were used for all great apes. Lacépède used the term Pongo for the genus following the German botanist Friedrich von Wurmb who sent a skeleton from the Indies to Europe.
TAXONOMY, PHYLOGENY AND GENETICS
The two orangutan species are the only extant members of the subfamily Ponginae. This subfamily also included the extinct genera Lufengpithecus, which lived in southern China and Thailand 2–8 mya, and Sivapithecus, which lived India and Pakistan from 12.5 mya until 8.5 mya. These apes likely lived in drier and cooler environments than orangutans do today. Khoratpithecus piriyai, which lived in Thailand 5–7 mya, is believed to have been the closest known relative of the orangutans. The largest known primate, Gigantopithecus, was also a member of Ponginae and lived in China, India and Vietnam from 5 mya to 100,000 years ago.
Within apes (superfamily Hominoidea), the gibbons diverged during the early Miocene (between 19.7 and 24.1 mya, according to molecular evidence) and the orangutans split from the African great ape lineage between 15.7 and 19.3 mya.
HISTORY OF ORANGUTAN TAXONOMY
The orangutan was first described scientifically in the Systema Naturae of Linnaeus as Simia satyrus. The populations on the two islands were classified as subspecies until 1996, when they were elevated to full species status, and the three distinct populations on Borneo were elevated to subspecies. The population currently listed as P. p. wurmbii may be closer to the Sumatran orangutan than the other Bornean orangutan subspecies. If confirmed, abelii would be a subspecies of P. wurmbii (Tiedeman, 1808).
Regardless, the type locality of P. pygmaeus has not been established beyond doubts, and may be from the population currently listed as P. wurmbii (in which case P. wurmbii would be a junior synonym of P. pygmaeus, while one of the names currently considered a junior synonym of P. pygmaeus would take precedence for the northwest Bornean taxon). To further confuse, the name P. morio, as well as some suggested junior synonyms, may be junior synonyms of the P. pygmaeus subspecies, thus leaving the east Bornean populations unnamed.
In addition, some fossils described under the name P. hooijeri have been found in Vietnam, and multiple fossil subspecies have been described from several parts of southeastern Asia. It is unclear if these belong to P. pygmaeus or
P. abelii or, in fact, represent distinct species.
GENOMICS
The Sumatran orangutan genome was sequenced in January 2011. Following humans and chimpanzees, the Sumatran orangutan has become the third species of hominid to have its genome sequenced. Subsequently, the Bornean species would have its genome sequenced. Genetic diversity was found to be lower in Bornean orangutans (P. pygmaeus) than in Sumatran ones (P. abelii), despite the fact that Borneo is home to six or seven times as many orangutans as Sumatra.
The comparison has shown these two species diverged around 400,000 years ago, more recently than was previously thought. Also, the orangutan genome was found to have evolved much more slowly than chimpanzee and human DNA. Previously, the species was estimated to have diverged 2.9 to 4.9 mya. The researchers hope these data may help conservationists save the endangered ape, and also prove useful in further understanding of human genetic diseases.
Bornean orangutans have 48 diploid chromosomes.
ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY
An orangutan has a large, bulky body, a thick neck, very long, strong arms, short, bowed legs, and no tail. It is mostly covered with long, reddish-brown hair and grey-black skin. Sumatran orangutans have more sparse and lighter-coloured coats. The orangutan has a large head with a prominent mouth area. Though largely hairless, their faces can develop some hair in males, giving them a moustache.
Adult males have large cheek flaps to show their dominance to other males. The cheek flaps are made mostly of fatty tissue and are supported by the musculature of the face. Mature males' throat pouches allow them to make loud calls. The species display significant sexual dimorphism; females typically stand 115 cm tall and weigh around 37 kg, while flanged adult males stand 136 cm tall and weigh 75 kg. A male orangutan has an arm span of about 2 m.
Orangutan hands are similar to human hands; they have four long fingers and an opposable thumb. However, the joint and tendon arrangement in the orangutans' hands produces two adaptations that are significant for arboreal locomotion. The resting configuration of the fingers is curved, creating a suspensory hook grip. Additionally, without the use of the thumb, the fingers and hands can grip tightly around objects with a small diameter by resting the tops of the fingers against the inside of the palm, creating a double-locked grip.
Their feet have four long toes and an opposable big toe. Orangutans can grasp things with both their hands and their feet. Their fingers and toes are curved, allowing them to get a better grip on branches. Since their hip joints have the same flexibility as their shoulder and arm joints, orangutans have less restriction in the movements of their legs than humans have. Unlike gorillas and chimpanzees, orangutans are not true knuckle-walkers, and are instead fist-walkers.
ECOLOGY AND BEHAVIOUR
Orangutans live in primary and old secondary forests, particularly dipterocarp forests and peat swamp forests. Both species can be found in mountainous and lowland swampy areas. Sumatran orangutans live at elevations as high as 1500 m, while Bornean orangutans live no higher than 1000 m. Other habitats used by orangutans include grasslands, cultivated fields, gardens, young secondary forest, and shallow lakes. Orangutans are the most arboreal of the great apes, spending nearly all their time in the trees.Most of the day is spent feeding, resting, and travelling. They start the day feeding for 2–3 hours in the morning. They rest during midday then travel in the late afternoon. When evening arrives, they begin to prepare their nests for the night. Orangutans do not swim, although they have been recorded wading in water. The main predators of orangutans are tigers. Other predators include clouded leopards, wild dogs and crocodiles. The absence of tigers on Borneo may explain why Bornean orangutans can be found on the ground more often than their Sumatran relatives.
DIET
Orangutans are opportunistic foragers, and their diets vary markedly from month to month. Fruit makes up 65–90% of the orangutan diet, and those with sugary or fatty pulp are favoured. Ficus fruits are commonly eaten and are easy to harvest and digest. Lowland dipterocarp forests are preferred by orangutans because of their plentiful fruit. Bornean orangutans consume at least 317 different food items that include young leaves, shoots, bark, insects, honey and bird eggs.
A decade-long study of urine and faecal samples at the Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Project in West Kalimantan has shown that orangutans give birth during and after the high fruit season (though not every year), during which they consume various abundant fruits, totalling up to 11,000 calories per day. In the low-fruit season, they eat whatever fruit is available in addition to tree bark and leaves, with daily intake at only 2,000 calories. Together with a long lactation period, orangutans also have a long birth interval.
Orangutans are thought to be the sole fruit disperser for some plant species including the climber species Strychnos ignatii which contains the toxic alkaloid strychnine. It does not appear to have any effect on orangutans except for excessive saliva production.
Geophagy, the practice of eating soil or rock, has been observed in orangutans. There are three main reasons for this dietary behaviour: for the addition of mineral nutrients to their diet; for the ingestion of clay minerals that can absorb toxic substances; or to treat a disorder such as diarrhoea. Orangutans also use plants of the genus Commelina as an anti-inflammatory balm.
SOCIAL LIFE
Orangutans live a more solitary lifestyle than the other great apes. Most social bonds occur between adult females and their dependent and weaned offspring. Adult males and independent adolescents of both sexes tend to live alone. Orangutan societies are made up of resident and transient individuals of both sexes. Resident females live with their offspring in defined home ranges that overlap with those of other adult females, which may be their immediate relatives. One to several resident female home ranges are encompassed within the home range of a resident male, who is their main mating partner.
Transient males and females move widely. Orangutans usually travel alone, but they may travel in small groups in their subadult years. However, this behaviour ends at adulthood. The social structure of the orangutan can be best described as solitary but social. Interactions between adult females range from friendly to avoidance to antagonistic. Resident males may have overlapping ranges and interactions between them tend to be hostile.
During dispersal, females tend to settle in home ranges that overlap with their mothers. However, they do not seem to have any special social bonds with them. Males disperse much farther from their mothers and enter into a transient phase. This phase lasts until a male can challenge and displace a dominant, resident male from his home range. Adult males dominate sub-adult males.
Both resident and transient orangutans aggregate on large fruiting trees to feed. The fruits tend to be abundant, so competition is low and individuals may engage in social interactions. Orangutans will also form travelling groups with members moving between different food sources. These groups tend to be made of only a few individuals. They also tend to be consortships between an adult male and female.
COMMUNICATION
Orangutans communicate with various sounds. Males will make long calls, both to attract females and advertise themselves to other males. Both sexes will try to intimidate conspecifics with a series of low guttural noises known collectively as the "rolling call". When annoyed, an orangutan will suck in air through pursed lips, making a kissing sound that is hence known as the "kiss squeak". Infants make soft hoots when distressed. Orangutans are also known to blow raspberries.
NESTING
Orangutans build nests specialized for both day or night use. These are carefully constructed; young orangutans learn from observing their mother's nest-building behaviour. In fact, nest-building is a leading cause in young orangutans leaving their mother for the first time. From six months of age onwards, orangutans practice nest-building and gain proficiency by the time they are three years old.
Construction of a night nest is done by following a sequence of steps. Initially, a suitable tree is located, orangutans being selective about sites though many tree species are used. The nest is then built by pulling together branches under them and joining them at a point. After the foundation has been built, the orangutan bends smaller, leafy branches onto the foundation; this serves the purpose of and is termed the "mattress". After this, orangutans stand and braid the tips of branches into the mattress. Doing this increases the stability of the nest and forms the final act of nest-building. In addition, orangutans may add additional features, such as "pillows", "blankets", "roofs" and "bunk-beds" to their nests.
REPRODUCTION AND PARENTING
Males mature at around 15 years of age, by which time they have fully descended testicles and can reproduce. However, they exhibit arrested development by not developing the distinctive cheek pads, pronounced throat pouches, long fur, or long-calls until they are between 15 and 20 years old. The development of these characteristics depends largely on the absence of a resident male.
Males without them are known as unflanged males in contrast to the more developed flanged males. The transformation from unflanged to flanged can occur very quickly. Unflanged and flanged males have two different mating strategies. Flanged males attract oestrous females with their characteristic long calls. Those calls may also suppress development in younger males. Unflanged males wander widely in search of oestrous females and upon finding one, will force copulation on her. While both strategies are successful, females prefer to mate with flanged males and seek their company for protection against unflanged males. Resident males may form consortships with females that can last days, weeks or months after copulation.
Female orangutans experience their first ovulatory cycle around 5.8–11.1 years. These occur earlier in females with more body fat. Like other great apes, female orangutans enter a period of infertility during adolescence which may last for 1–4 years. Female orangutans also have a 22– to 30-day menstrual cycle. Gestation lasts for 9 months, with females giving birth to their first offspring between the ages of 14 and 15 years.
Female orangutans have eight-year intervals between births, the longest interbirth intervals among the great apes. Unlike many other primates, male orangutans do not seem to practice infanticide. This may be because they cannot ensure they will sire a female's next offspring because she does not immediately begin ovulating again after her infant dies.
Male orangutans play almost no role in raising the young. Females do most of the caring and socializing of the young. A female often has an older offspring with her to help in socializing the infant. Infant orangutans are completely dependent on their mothers for the first two years of their lives. The mother will carry the infant during travelling, as well as feed it and sleep with it in the same night nest. For the first four months, the infant is carried on its belly and never relieves physical contact. In the following months, the time an infant spends with its mother decreases.
When an orangutan reaches the age of two, its climbing skills improve and it will travel through the canopy holding hands with other orangutans, a behaviour known as "buddy travel". Orangutans are juveniles from about two to five years of age and will start to temporarily move away from their mothers. Juveniles are usually weaned at about four years of age. Adolescent orangutans will socialize with their peers while still having contact with their mothers. Typically, orangutans live over 30 years in both the wild and captivity.
INTELLIGENCE
Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates. Experiments suggest they can figure out some invisible displacement problems with a representational strategy. In addition, Zoo Atlanta has a touch-screen computer where their two Sumatran orangutans play games. Scientists hope the data they collect will help researchers learn about socialising patterns, such as whether the apes learn behaviours through trial and error or by mimicry, and point to new conservation strategies.
A 2008 study of two orangutans at the Leipzig Zoo showed orangutans can use "calculated reciprocity", which involves weighing the costs and benefits of gift exchanges and keeping track of these over time. Orangutans are the first nonhuman species documented to do so. Orangutans are very technically adept nest builders, making a new nest each evening in only in 5 to 6 minutes and choosing branches which they know can support their body weight.
TOOL USE AND CULTURE
Tool use in orangutans was observed by primatologist Birutė Galdikas in ex-captive populations. In addition, evidence of sophisticated tool manufacture and use in the wild was reported from a population of orangutans in Suaq Balimbing (Pongo abelii) in 1996. These orangutans developed a tool kit for use in foraging that consisted of both insect-extraction tools for use in the hollows of trees and seed-extraction tools for harvesting seeds from hard-husked fruit. The orangutans adjusted their tools according to the nature of the task at hand, and preference was given to oral tool use. This preference was also found in an experimental study of captive orangutans (P. pygmaeus).
Primatologist Carel P. van Schaik and biological anthropologist Cheryl D. Knott further investigated tool use in different wild orangutan populations. They compared geographic variations in tool use related to the processing of Neesia fruit. The orangutans of Suaq Balimbing (P. abelii) were found to be avid users of insect and seed-extraction tools when compared to other wild orangutans. The scientists suggested these differences are cultural. The orangutans at Suaq Balimbing live in dense groups and are socially tolerant; this creates good conditions for social transmission. Further evidence that highly social orangutans are more likely to exhibit cultural behaviours came from a study of leaf-carrying behaviours of ex-captive orangutans that were being rehabilitated on the island of Kaja in Borneo.
Wild orangutans (P. pygmaeus wurmbii) in Tuanan, Borneo, were reported to use tools in acoustic communication. They use leaves to amplify the kiss squeak sounds they produce. The apes may employ this method of amplification to deceive the listener into believing they are larger animals.
In 2003, researchers from six different orangutan field sites who used the same behavioural coding scheme compared the behaviours of the animals from the different sites. They found the different orangutan populations behaved differently. The evidence suggested the differences were cultural: first, the extent of the differences increased with distance, suggesting cultural diffusion was occurring, and second, the size of the orangutans' cultural repertoire increased according to the amount of social contact present within the group. Social contact facilitates cultural transmission.
POSSIBLE LINGUISTIC CAPABILITIES
A study of orangutan symbolic capability was conducted from 1973 to 1975 by zoologist Gary L. Shapiro with Aazk, a juvenile female orangutan at the Fresno City Zoo (now Chaffee Zoo) in Fresno, California. The study employed the techniques of psychologist David Premack, who used plastic tokens to teach linguistic skills to the chimpanzee, Sarah. Shapiro continued to examine the linguistic and learning abilities of ex-captive orangutans in Tanjung Puting National Park, in Indonesian Borneo, between 1978 and 1980.
During that time, Shapiro instructed ex-captive orangutans in the acquisition and use of signs following the techniques of psychologists R. Allen Gardner and Beatrix Gardner, who taught the chimpanzee, Washoe, in the late 1960s. In the only signing study ever conducted in a great ape's natural environment, Shapiro home-reared Princess, a juvenile female, which learned nearly 40 signs (according to the criteria of sign acquisition used by psychologist Francine Patterson with Koko, the gorilla) and trained Rinnie, a free-ranging adult female orangutan, which learned nearly 30 signs over a two-year period. For his dissertation study, Shapiro examined the factors influencing sign learning by four juvenile orangutans over a 15-month period.
ORANGUTANS AND HUMANS
Orangutans were known to the native people of Sumatra and Borneo for millennia. While some communities hunted them for food and decoration, others placed taboos on such practices. In central Borneo, some traditional folk beliefs consider it bad luck to look in the face of an orangutan. Some folk tales involve orangutans mating with and kidnapping humans. There are even stories of hunters being seduced by female orangutans.
Europeans became aware of the existence of the orangutan possibly as early as the 17th century. European explorers in Borneo hunted them extensively during the 19th century. The first accurate description of orangutans was given by Dutch anatomist Petrus Camper, who observed the animals and dissected some specimens.
Little was known about their behaviour until the field studies of Birutė Galdikas, who became a leading authority on the apes. When she arrived in Borneo, Galdikas settled into a primitive bark and thatch hut, at a site she dubbed Camp Leakey, near the edge of the Java Sea. Despite numerous hardships, she remained there for over 30 years and became an outspoken advocate for orangutans and the preservation of their rainforest habitat, which is rapidly being devastated by loggers, palm oil plantations, gold miners, and unnatural forest fires.
Galdikas's conservation efforts have extended well beyond advocacy, largely focusing on rehabilitation of the many orphaned orangutans turned over to her for care. Galdikas is considered to be one of Leakey's Angels, along with Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. According to the World Wildlife Fund, half of the habitat of the Bornean orangutan has been lost since 1994.
A persistent folktale on Sumatra and Borneo and in popular culture, is that male orangutans display sexual attraction to human women, and may even forcibly copulate with them. The only serious, but anecdotal, report of such an incident taking place, is primatologist Birutė Galdikas' report that her cook was sexually assaulted by a male orangutan. This orangutan, though, was raised in captivity and may have suffered from a skewed species identity, and forced copulation is a standard mating strategy for low-ranking male orangutans.
A female orangutan was rescued from a village brothel in Kareng Pangi village, Central Kalimantan, in 2003. The orangutan was shaved and chained for sexual purposes. Since being freed, the orangutan, named Pony, has been living with the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. She has been re-socialised to live with other orang-utans.
LEGAL STATUS
In December 2014, Argentina became the first country to recognize a non-human primate as having legal rights when it ruled that an orangutan named Sandra at the Buenos Aires Zoo must be moved to a sanctuary in Brazil in order to provide her "partial or controlled freedom". Although animal rights groups interpreted the ruling as applicable to all species in captivity, legal specialists considered the ruling only applicable to hominid apes due to their genetic similarities to humans.
CONSERVATION
CONSERVATION STATUS
The Sumatran and Bornean species are both critically endangered according to the IUCN Red List of mammals, and both are listed on Appendix I of CITES.
The Bornean orangutan population declined by 60% in the past 60 years and is projected to decline by 82% over 75 years. Its range has become patchy throughout Borneo, being largely extirpated from various parts of the island, including the southeast. The largest remaining population is found in the forest around the Sabangau River, but this environment is at risk.
Sumatran orangutan populations declined by 80% in 75 years. This species is now found only in the northern part of Sumatra, with most of the population inhabiting the Leuser Ecosystem. In late March 2012, some of the last Sumatran orangutans in northern Sumatra were reported to be threatened with approaching forest fires and might be wiped out entirely within a matter of weeks.
Estimates between 2000 and 2003 found 7,300 Sumatran orangutans and between 45,000 and 69,000 Bornean orangutans remain in the wild. A 2007 study by the Government of Indonesia noted a total wild population of 61,234 orangutans, 54,567 of which were found on the island of Borneo in 2004.
During the early 2000s, orangutan habitat has decreased rapidly due to logging and forest fires, as well as fragmentation by roads. A major factor in that period of time has been the conversion of vast areas of tropical forest to palm oil plantations in response to international demand. Palm oil is used for cooking, cosmetics, mechanics, and biodiesel. Hunting is also a major problem as is the illegal pet trade.
Orangutans may be killed for the bushmeat trade, crop protection, or for use for traditional medicine. Orangutan bones are secretly traded in souvenir shops in several cities in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Mother orangutans are killed so their infants can be sold as pets, and many of these infants die without the help of their mother. Since 2004, several pet orangutans were confiscated by local authorities and sent to rehabilitation centres.
CONSERVATION CENTRES AND ORGANISATIONS
A number of organisations are working for the rescue, rehabilitation and reintroduction of orangutans. The largest of these is the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, founded by conservationist Willie Smits. It is audited by a multinational auditor company and operates a number of large projects, such as the Nyaru Menteng Rehabilitation Program founded by conservationist Lone Drøscher Nielsen.
Other major conservation centres in Indonesia include those at Tanjung Puting National Park and Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan, Kutai in East Kalimantan, Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan, and Bukit Lawang in the Gunung Leuser National Park on the border of Aceh and North Sumatra. In Malaysia, conservation areas include Semenggoh Wildlife Centre in Sarawak and Matang Wildlife Centre also in Sarawak, and the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary near Sandakan in Sabah. Major conservation centres that are headquartered outside of the orangutan's home countries; include Frankfurt Zoological Society, Orangutan Foundation International, which was founded by Birutė Galdikas, and the Australian Orangutan Project.
Conservation organisations such as Orangutan Land Trust work with the palm oil industry to improve sustainability and encourages the industry to establish conservation areas for orangutans. It works to bring different stakeholders together to achieve conservation of the species and its habitat.
WIKIPEDIA
Copyright © 2021 by Craig Paup. All rights reserved.
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Here are the main sections of the Banshee. When transporting this for shows, this is probably how I'll do it - otherwise it'll just get banged up and pieces will go everywhere.
A visit to the National Trust property that is Penrhyn Castle
Penrhyn Castle is a country house in Llandygai, Bangor, Gwynedd, North Wales, in the form of a Norman castle. It was originally a medieval fortified manor house, founded by Ednyfed Fychan. In 1438, Ioan ap Gruffudd was granted a licence to crenellate and he founded the stone castle and added a tower house. Samuel Wyatt reconstructed the property in the 1780s.
The present building was created between about 1822 and 1837 to designs by Thomas Hopper, who expanded and transformed the building beyond recognition. However a spiral staircase from the original property can still be seen, and a vaulted basement and other masonry were incorporated into the new structure. Hopper's client was George Hay Dawkins-Pennant, who had inherited the Penrhyn estate on the death of his second cousin, Richard Pennant, who had made his fortune from slavery in Jamaica and local slate quarries. The eldest of George's two daughters, Juliana, married Grenadier Guard, Edward Gordon Douglas, who, on inheriting the estate on George's death in 1845, adopted the hyphenated surname of Douglas-Pennant. The cost of the construction of this vast 'castle' is disputed, and very difficult to work out accurately, as much of the timber came from the family's own forestry, and much of the labour was acquired from within their own workforce at the slate quarry. It cost the Pennant family an estimated £150,000. This is the current equivalent to about £49,500,000.
Penrhyn is one of the most admired of the numerous mock castles built in the United Kingdom in the 19th century; Christopher Hussey called it, "the outstanding instance of Norman revival." The castle is a picturesque composition that stretches over 600 feet from a tall donjon containing family rooms, through the main block built around the earlier house, to the service wing and the stables.
It is built in a sombre style which allows it to possess something of the medieval fortress air despite the ground-level drawing room windows. Hopper designed all the principal interiors in a rich but restrained Norman style, with much fine plasterwork and wood and stone carving. The castle also has some specially designed Norman-style furniture, including a one-ton slate bed made for Queen Victoria when she visited in 1859.
Hugh Napier Douglas-Pennant, 4th Lord Penrhyn, died in 1949, and the castle and estate passed to his niece, Lady Janet Pelham, who, on inheritance, adopted the surname of Douglas-Pennant. In 1951, the castle and 40,000 acres (160 km²) of land were accepted by the treasury in lieu of death duties from Lady Janet. It now belongs to the National Trust and is open to the public. The site received 109,395 visitors in 2017.
Grade I Listed Building
History
The present house, built in the form of a vast Norman castle, was constructed to the design of Thomas Hopper for George Hay Dawkins-Pennant between 1820 and 1837. It has been very little altered since.
The original house on the site was a medieval manor house of C14 origin, for which a licence to crenellate was given at an unknown date between 1410 and 1431. This house survived until c1782 when it was remodelled in castellated Gothick style, replete with yellow mathematical tiles, by Samuel Wyatt for Richard Pennant. This house, the great hall of which is incorporated in the present drawing room, was remodelled in c1800, but the vast profits from the Penrhyn slate quarries enabled all the rest to be completely swept away by Hopper's vast neo-Norman fantasy, sited and built so that it could be seen not only from the quarries, but most parts of the surrounding estate, thereby emphasizing the local dominance of the Dawkins-Pennant family. The total cost is unknown but it cannot have been less than the £123,000 claimed by Catherine Sinclair in 1839.
Since 1951 the house has belonged to the National Trust, together with over 40,000 acres of the family estates around Ysbyty Ifan and the Ogwen valley.
Exterior
Country house built in the style of a vast Norman castle with other later medieval influences, so huge (its 70 roofs cover an area of over an acre (0.4ha)) that it almost defies meaningful description. The main components of the house, which is built on a north-south axis with the main elevations to east and west, are the 124ft (37.8m) high keep, based on Castle Hedingham (Essex) containing the family quarters on the south, the central range, protected by a 'barbican' terrace on the east, housing the state apartments, and the rectangular-shaped staff/service buildings and stables to the north. The whole is constructed of local rubblestone with internal brick lining, but all elevations are faced in tooled Anglesey limestone ashlar of the finest quality jointing; flat lead roofs concealed by castellated parapets. Close to, the extreme length of the building (it is about 200 yards (182.88m) long) and the fact that the ground slopes away on all sides mean that almost no complete elevation can be seen. That the most frequent views of the exterior are oblique also offered Hopper the opportunity to deploy his towers for picturesque effect, the relationship between the keep and the other towers and turrets frequently obscuring the distances between them. Another significant external feature of the castle is that it actually looks defensible making it secure at least from Pugin's famous slur of 1841 on contemporary "castles" - "Who would hammer against nailed portals, when he could kick his way through the greenhouse?" Certainly, this could never be achieved at Penrhyn and it looks every inch the impregnable fortress both architect and patron intended it to be.
East elevation: to the left is the loosely attached 4-storey keep on battered plinth with 4 tiers of deeply splayed Norman windows, 2 to each face, with chevron decoration and nook-shafts, topped by 4 square corner turrets. The dining room (distinguished by the intersecting tracery above the windows) and breakfast room to the right of the entrance gallery are protected by the long sweep of the machicolated 'barbican' terrace (carriage forecourt), curved in front of the 2 rooms and then running northwards before returning at right-angles to the west to include the gatehouse, which formed the original main entrance to the castle, and ending in a tall rectangular tower with machicolated parapet. To the right of the gatehouse are the recessed buildings of the kitchen court and to the right again the long, largely unbroken outer wall of the stable court, terminated by the square footmen's tower to the left and the rather more exuberant projecting circular dung tower with its spectacularly cantilevered bartizan on the right. From here the wall runs at right-angles to the west incorporating the impressive gatehouse to the stable court.
West elevation: beginning at the left is the hexagonal smithy tower, followed by the long run of the stable court, well provided with windows on this side as the stables lie directly behind. At the end of this the wall turns at right-angles to the west, incorporating the narrow circular-turreted gatehouse to the outer court and terminating in the machicolated circular ice tower. From here the wall runs again at a lower height enclosing the remainder of the outer court. It is, of course, the state apartments which make up the chief architectural display on the central part of this elevation, beginning with a strongly articulated but essentially rectangular tower to the left, while both the drawing room and the library have Norman windows leading directly onto the lawns, the latter terminating in a slender machicolated circular corner tower. To the right is the keep, considerably set back on this side.
Interior
Only those parts of the castle generally accessible to visitors are recorded in this description. Although not described here much of the furniture and many of the paintings (including family portraits) are also original to the house. Similarly, it should be noted that in the interests of brevity and clarity, not all significant architectural features are itemised in the following description.
Entrance gallery: one of the last parts of the castle to be built, this narrow cloister-like passage was added to the main block to heighten the sensation of entering the vast Grand Hall, which is made only partly visible by the deliberate offsetting of the intervening doorways; bronze lamp standards with wolf-heads on stone bases. Grand Hall: entering the columned aisle of this huge space, the visitor stands at a cross-roads between the 3 principal areas of the castle's plan; to the left the passage leads up to the family's private apartments on the 4 floors of the keep, to the right the door at the end leads to the extensive service quarters while ahead lies the sequence of state rooms used for entertaining guests and displayed to the public ever since the castle was built. The hall itself resembles in form, style and scale the transept of a great Norman cathedral, the great clustered columns extending upwards to a "triforium" formed on 2 sides of extraordinary compound arches; stained glass with signs of the zodiac and months of the year as in a book of hours by Thomas Willement (completed 1835). Library: has very much the atmosphere of a gentlemen’s London club with walls, columned arches and ceilings covered in the most lavish ornamentation; superb architectural bookcases and panelled walls are of oak but the arches are plaster grained to match; ornamental bosses and other devices to the rich plaster ceiling refer to the ancestry of the Dawkins and Pennant families, as do the stained glass lunettes above the windows, possibly by David Evans of Shrewsbury; 4 chimneypieces of polished Anglesey "marble", one with a frieze of fantastical carved mummers in the capitals. Drawing room (great hall of the late C18 house and its medieval predecessor): again in a neo-Norman style but the decoration is lighter and the columns more slender, the spirit of the room reflected in the 2000 delicate Maltese gilt crosses to the vaulted ceiling. Ebony room: so called on account of its furniture and "ebonised" chimneypiece and plasterwork, has at its entrance a spiral staircase from the medieval house. Grand Staircase hall: in many ways the greatest architectural achievement at Penrhyn, taking 10 years to complete, the carving in 2 contrasting stones of the highest quality; repeating abstract decorative motifs contrast with the infinitely inventive figurative carving in the newels and capitals; to the top the intricate plaster panels of the domed lantern are formed in exceptionally high relief and display both Norse and Celtic influences. Next to the grand stair is the secondary stair, itself a magnificent structure in grey sandstone with lantern, built immediately next to the grand stair so that family or guests should not meet staff on the same staircase. Reached from the columned aisle of the grand hall are the 2 remaining principal ground-floor rooms, the dining room and the breakfast room, among the last parts of the castle to be completed and clearly intended to be picture galleries as much as dining areas, the stencilled treatment of the walls in the dining room allowing both the provision of an appropriately elaborate "Norman" scheme and a large flat surface for the hanging of paintings; black marble fireplace carved by Richard Westmacott and extremely ornate ceiling with leaf bosses encircled by bands of figurative mouldings derived from the Romanesque church of Kilpeck, Herefordshire. Breakfast room has cambered beam ceiling with oak-grained finish.
Grand hall gallery: at the top of the grand staircase is vaulted and continues around the grand hall below to link with the passage to the keep, which at this level (as on the other floors) contains a suite of rooms comprising a sitting room, dressing room, bedroom and small ante-chamber, the room containing the famous slate bed also with a red Mona marble chimneypiece, one of the most spectacular in the castle. Returning to the grand hall gallery and continuing straight on rather than returning to the grand staircase the Lower India room is reached to the right: this contains an Anglesey limestone chimneypiece painted to match the ground colour of the room's Chinese wallpaper. Coming out of this room, the chapel corridor leads to the chapel gallery (used by the family) and the chapel proper below (used by staff), the latter with encaustic tiles probably reused from the old medieval chapel; stained and painted glass by David Evans (c1833).
The domestic quarters of the castle are reached along the passage from the breakfast room, which turns at right-angles to the right at the foot of the secondary staircase, the most important areas being the butler's pantry, steward's office, servants' hall, housekeeper's room, still room, housekeeper's store and housemaids' tower, while the kitchen (with its cast-iron range flanked by large and hygienic vertical slabs of Penrhyn slate) is housed on the lower ground floor. From this kitchen court, which also includes a coal store, oil vaults, brushing room, lamp room, pastry room, larder, scullery and laundry are reached the outer court with its soup kitchen, brewhouse and 2-storey ice tower and the much larger stables court which, along with the stables themselves containing their extensive slate-partitioned stalls and loose boxes, incorporates the coach house, covered ride, smithy tower, dung tower with gardeners' messroom above and footmen's tower.
Reasons for Listing
Included at Grade I as one of the most important large country houses in Wales; a superb example of the relatively short-lived Norman Revival of the early C19 and generally regarded as the masterpiece of its architect, Thomas Hopper.
Ice Tower - you can go up it to the first floor.
For the components of Yee Sang and what they symbolizes, please click on the following link :
Yusheng, yee sang or yuu sahng (Chinese: 魚生), or Prosperity Toss, also known as Lo Hei (Cantonese for 撈起) is a Teochew-style raw fish salad.
It usually consists of strips of raw fish (most commonly salmon), mixed with shredded vegetables and a variety of sauces and condiments, among other ingredients. Yusheng literally means "raw fish" but since "fish (魚)" is commonly conflated with its homophone "abundance (余)", Yúshēng (魚生) is interpreted as a homophone for Yúshēng (余升) meaning an increase in abundance. Therefore, yusheng is considered a symbol of abundance, prosperity and vigor.
While versions of it are thought to have existed in China, the contemporary version is created and popularised in the 1960s amongst the ethnic Chinese community and its consumption has been associated with Chinese New Year festivities in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. In Malaysia and Singapore, government, community and business leaders often take the lead in serving the dish as part of official functions during the festive period or in private celebrity dinners.
To me, the tossing ritual of yee sang at the beginning of family reunion dinner has been a tradition symbolizing "togetherness" :)
Oh yes.. for those who wonders what it tastes, it's mainly crunchy from the shredded vegetables and crackers furnished with sweet and sour plum sauce.
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Please visit this link for more Chinese traditions:
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It's getting closer!
On Friday the 24th we will have a launch event for the bike from 5pm to 8pm
at the Cascade Barrel House. More info here www.shift2bikes.org/cal/viewpp2011.php#24-2357
Starting June 27th, 2011 you can rent the Beer bike! - www.metrofiets.com/rentals/