Franklin ships have already been found

Maybe, just maybe, the 160-year dream of discovering one of the lost ships of the Franklin Expedition has already been realized, and the Parks Canada-led team that completed a month-long search last week just doesn’t know it yet.

That’s a slim but real possibility, acknowledges Parks Canada underwater archeologist Ryan Harris, who says a portion of the seabed data gathered during this summer’s high-profile probe of Arctic waters near King William Island still has to be examined for possible traces of HMS Erebus or HMS Terror, the two Royal Navy vessels commanded by Sir John Franklin that famously vanished during his search for the Northwest Passage in the late 1840s.Flight attendants trained in shaolin kung fu ?

“It’s possible, because there actually is some AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) data that I haven’t looked at yet,Welcome to India Beads factory your final destination for all kinds of Glass Beads. and there is some multi-beam sonar data,” said Harris, who led the Canadian government’s renewed hunt for the ships.

“There were areas of the ocean that were really shallow north of the Royal Geographical Society Islands, so we have a small path that was done with multi-beam because it would have been a bit tricky to tow a side-scan sonar system in those shallow waters,” Harris told Postmedia News. “And that data has to be post-processed at a very high resolution to identify targets in the shallow waters.Polypropylene and polythene can be used in a process called Injection Mold.

“It’s a small chance,” he added, “but there is the outside possibility” of identifying the resting place of one of the ships while processing and analyzing the sea-floor data this fall.

“It has happened to us in the past that in reviewing (data) we have identified wreck sites that we didn’t see in real time,” said Harris, who also led the successful 2010 search off Banks Island in the Western Arctic for HMS Investigator, one of 19th-century British vessels sent to search for Franklin’s lost ships.

While it’s not “outside the realm of possibility” that a Franklin ship could be discovered at a Parks Canada computer lab in the coming months, Harris said: “I imagine we’ll be at this (seabed scanning) again.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced in August that the federal government — in cooperation with the government of Nunavut — was launching a new, three-year effort to discover the ships, which have already been declared national historic sites despite their unknown locations.

Franklin, a Royal Navy explorer who had already led two important overland expeditions in northern Canada, embarked on his ill-fated search for a route through the Northwest Passage in 1845. By 1848, after the 130 sailors aboard Terror and Erebus had experienced extreme hardship and little progress through the ice-choked Eastern Arctic, Franklin was dead and his ships were trapped frozen waters near King William Island.

A desperate attempt by the survivors to march south to a fur-trading post on mainland Canada led to the deaths of all members of the expedition. The ships, probably crushed by the ice, drifted to unknown locations and vanished beneath the waves.The academy provides ideal conditions to learn kung fu in china traditional quiet surrounding.

An earlier bid to find the vessels was launched by Harper’s government in 2008. Although Parks Canada conducted searches in 2008, 2010 and 2011, no trace of the ships was found.

Harris described the underwater component of this year’s search a success because his team will at least be able to rule out a significant swath of the Arctic Ocean that had been considered a potential site for the wrecks of the Erebus or Terror.

But there were some notable discoveries earlier this month along the shore of King William Island during the dry-land component of this year’s search, headed by Government of Nunavut archeologist Doug Stenton. Combing an area where more than 100 survivors from Franklin’s abandoned ships traveled by small boats and on foot in the late 1840s — their ultimately ill-fated attempt to reach the mainland after Terror and Erebus had become hopelessly locked in the ice — Stenton’s team discovered bone fragments, nails and screws believed to have been left behind by the Franklin Expedition and, most remarkably, a 19th-century toothbrush that must have belonged to one of Franklin’s doomed sailors.

Harris acknowledged there was “nothing earth-shattering” among the artifacts “in terms of what it’s going to tell us about the fate of the expedition.”

But he said: “I think the value is really in the evocative nature of the artifacts recovered. The toothbrush, which is such a personal item, really reflects this attempt at a dignified retreat from the ships.”

Harris also noted that most of the artifacts recovered from the Franklin Expedition during 19th- and 20th-century searches of the region have ended up at the Smithsonian museums in the U.S. or at the National Maritime Museum in Britain.

“Very few of these materials are available for curation and display in our own country,” said Harris. “So even though these are previously identified Franklin sites,A dry cabinet is a storage container in which the interior is kept at a low level of humidity. I think the continued archeological examination of these sites is certainly worthwhile, if only to repatriate the Franklin story somewhat, and to share it better and more evocatively with Canadians.”

Apple iOS 6

Apple's iOS 6 is more of an incremental update than a game-changer, but with more than 200 features there is plenty to like here. Outside of the new Maps app, Passbook,Welcome to India Beads factory your final destination for all kinds of Glass Beads. and new Siri functions, most of the changes are small, but the total package is more than its individual parts.

The update will make your iPhone experience better and more efficient, and make the device easier to use. Sure, some of the new features have long existed on other devices, and on some they're better, but that's not really the point. Rather, Apple again has managed to smooth out the rough edges and offer a solid experience across the board.

With the Google Maps app gone from the device, Apple now has its own map app, built in-house, and it's a big improvement on a few fronts,Polypropylene and polythene can be used in a process called Injection Mold. but falls short in several others. Vector-based graphics make text and details easy to read, and swiping to pan and two-finger touch rotation are both very smooth -- even at full zoom.The academy provides ideal conditions to learn kung fu in china traditional quiet surrounding.

On newer iOS devices like the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, and the new iPad, you also get 3D views, directions with voice, and flyover features. The 3D and flyover views are truly beautiful to look at, with several cities now showing detailed views of buildings on all sides at an impressively high frame rate. The experience of virtually touring a city is breathtaking in that "Look what technology can do!" sense, but its actual usefulness in your everyday iOS device use is questionable. I like the feature, and it's really well-implemented, but once I've browsed all the available cities, how much am I really going to use it besides when I'm showing off to friends?

The 3D views have an alternate use, however. The directions with voice features let you set a destination, with Siri dictation on newer devices, then switch to 3D to get a nice-looking illustrated view (if your iPhone is mounted on your dashboard, for example) as you get turn-by-turn directions on your way to your destination. With the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, and the new iPad, Siri will speak the directions for you, but the feature is still useful on earlier devices; it just means you'll need to glance to see what the next direction is on your trip. In our testing of the turn-by-turn directions side-by-side with Google Maps on an Android device, Apple's solution performed admirably, but it wasn't anywhere near perfect. Check out CNET's field test here.

While this feature is extremely useful and well-thought-out, Android phones have been able to provide turn-by-turn directions for a long time. But like many of the additions in iOS 6, this feature will be very welcome for people with iOS devices despite being nothing new to users of other smartphones. Maps also uses real-time traffic conditions to show where the slow spots are and will give you new routes based on live traffic data. Again, this is not a new feature for smartphones, but will still be very useful to iOS users.

There is one major feature that is missing from the new Maps app. When you ask for directions, you still have the option to choose your mode of transport, but you'll only be able to easily access driving and walking directions--public transportation requires an outside app. The former Google-powered offering had buttons for both public transit and walking included, with time estimates for each. This is a major omission because obviously not everyone is going to be traveling by car. Hopefully this is something Apple will add to the app in a future update. The sooner, the better.

I have to note, too, that for all the good things about Apple's Maps, it has a flip side, in that it takes people away from the Google mapping services that they've long used. So not only is Google Maps no longer integrated, but also you're further walled into Apple's ecosystem.

Only a day after iOS 6's release, reports came flooding in about Apple's Maps app having significant problems with missing cities along with distorted buildings and landmarks. We are currently performing some tests of our own, with the Turn-by-turn Field Test linked above and another test of map details we will link as soon as we finish testing. Check back later for more details.

Launched alongside the iPhone 4S, Siri was one of the most talked-about (no pun intended) features of Apple's previous handset. Siri was impressive, but limited in its debut, acting mostly as a way to answer trivia questions and inspire viral videos of people saying, "Look what I made Siri say!" It certainly had practical uses, such as finding nearby restaurants, accessing Wolfram Alpha, and giving you meeting reminders, but users seemed to focus more on trying to stump Siri or simply relishing the novelty of a phone that could talk back to you. On the Galaxy S3, Samsung has a similar app called S Voice and CNET's Jessica Dolcourt has compared their features.

With iOS 6, Apple has given Siri features to make it more of an integral method for interacting with the iPhone.Flight attendants trained in shaolin kung fu ?A dry cabinet is a storage container in which the interior is kept at a low level of humidity. With the added capabilities of opening apps, remembering recent questions, and more integration with commonly used functions on your iPhone, Siri will be much more useful across the board. You'll now be able to ask Siri for sports scores and get a nice-looking scoreboard right in the Siri window that you can tap for more info. Similarly, ask Siri about movies and she'll bring up a Rotten Tomatoes movie-listing interface without having to open external apps. New Yelp integration will give you more information about restaurants, such as hours and cuisine types. None of this is groundbreaking, but it's certainly useful. Of course you can still make calls, set reminders and alarms, check the weather, and schedule meetings. But added functionality also lets you get directions (as mentioned in the Maps section above), post to Facebook or Twitter, dictate texts and emails, and other helpful things.

The new Eyes Free features announced at WWDC will bring Siri into your car, but they're not available yet at the time of the iOS 6 release. Apple is reportedly working with car manufacturers such as Toyota, GM, Mercedes, BMW, Honda, and Audi to let you use Siri from the steering wheel. You'll get spoken alerts without the screen lighting up, and the car integration means that you'll be able to use Siri safely and without taking your hands off the wheel. We still have no hard release date, but Apple said its partners would complete integration for new vehicles within the next 12 months (counting from June).

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U.The academy provides ideal conditions to learn kung fu in china traditional quiet surrounding.S. poised to hand over $197 million

SoloPower has initiated a strategy to differentiate it from struggling commodity players in the solar panel industry. Still,Welcome to India Beads factory your final destination for all kinds of Glass Beads. there are several similarities between SoloPower and Solyndra - which became a lightning rod in the U.S. Presidential campaign this year after taking in more than $500 million in government loans and then filing for bankruptcy.

Like Solyndra, SoloPower is a Silicon Valley start-up and uses the same non-traditional raw material in its solar panels. And,A dry cabinet is a storage container in which the interior is kept at a low level of humidity. like its now-defunct peer, SoloPower is one of just four U.S. panel manufacturers to clinch loan guarantees under the Department of Energy's $35 billion program to support emerging clean energy technologies. The DOE payments to SoloPower will come on top of the $56.5 million SoloPower has collected in loans, tax credits and incentives from the state of Oregon and the city of Portland, where its first factory will be located.

And, perhaps most importantly, SoloPower is entering the market at a time of cutthroat competition from cheaper solar products made in China.

Though global demand for photovoltaic solar installations is expected to grow about 8 percent this year, rapid expansion of panel manufacturing in Asia in recent years - combined with a pullback in government incentives in key European markets - has left a glut of solar panels in the market, sending prices down 30 percent this year alone.

Companies that make those panels are now struggling to survive. Even the world's largest solar panel maker, China's Suntech Power Holdings Inc, warned on Friday that it may be delisted by the New York Stock Exchange because its share price, which reached $90 in 2008, is now less than $1. Debt-heavy Suntech has also been hurt since it said in July that its partner in a solar development fund might have defrauded it with a bogus collateral pledge of hundreds of millions of German bonds.

These struggles have heaped political pressure on the sector. Republicans, intent on taking back the White House in November's election, are using Solyndra and other U.S.Our guides provide customers with information about porcelain tiles. Department of Energy loan failures to brand the Obama administration's green incentives a waste of public money and fountain of cronyism. Solyndra, for instance, was backed by George Kaiser, a major fundraiser for Obama.

As the failures accumulate, Obama is under pressure to show better results for the program.Flight attendants trained in shaolin kung fu ?

Earlier this month, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a "No More Solyndras" bill that would phase out the program for energy loans. It is highly unlikely to be taken up by the U.S. Senate or signed by Obama.

SoloPower says the comparisons to Solyndra are unwarranted.

The San Jose, California company's lightweight, flexible solar panels have a unique advantage, Chief Executive Tim Harris said in an interview. They are pointed squarely at commercial and industrial rooftops that can't support traditional panels, according to Harris, who said half of the buildings in the world can't bear the weight of heavy, rigid panels made with silicon. This includes many of the buildings that house warehouses and big box retailers, Harris said. In addition, he said SoloPower panels are commanding a price premium in a market that has become increasingly commoditized.

"We have way more demand than we have capacity at a very substantial premium price," Harris said in an interview. He declined to specify the premium SoloPower is able to charge, but said his company's product is best suited for markets such as Japan, Italy and Korea, which have high electricity prices and favorable incentives for rooftop systems.

The company has been able to raise more than $200 million in venture funding from investors including Crosslink Capital, Hudson Clean Energy Partners, Convexa Capital Ventures and Firsthand Capital Management.

"Before one dollar of the DOE loan is relied upon it will be demonstrable that this is a company that absolutely can manufacture a product that there will be verifiable demand for," said John Cavalier, a managing partner with Hudson Clean Energy Partners, which invested in SoloPower. "I don't think anyone will question the wisdom of making a loan of this nature to this company."