Every school kid can identify the Father of the Airplane as Orville and Wilbur Wright, with a tip of the wings to Otto Lilinthal and Samuel Langley, but the parentage of the helicopter is considerably less obvious. Part of the confusion stems from the definitions involved. The Wright brothers achieved an obvious goal: manned flight, regardless of the machine involved. Exactly what constitutes helicopter flight is substantially more muddled.

In general, helicopter flight (Big Island helicopter tours) can be defined as the ability to hover above the ground without moving forward, yet having the ability to fly forward, climb, cruise at altitude, and descend vertically to the ground. These maneuvers should be accomplished in an aircraft utilizing rotating blades spinning about a shaft to provide lift, propulsion and control forces.

While the history of helicopter flight has no Kitty Hawk in its heritage, the helicopter industry can identify a home - the Delaware Valley around Philadelphia. Three of the four major helicopter manufacturers currently operating in the United States can trace their lineage to the Delaware Valley. Thus, it is appropriate that the history of vertical flight is celebrated at the American Helicopter Museum & Education Center in West Chester, Pennsylvania, about 25 miles west of Philadelphia.

Scientists and dreamers have been fascinated with these hummingbird-like movements for centuries; Leonardo Da Vinci sketched plans for an "aerial screw" in the 1400s. In 1907, four years after the Wright brothers conquered the air at Kitty Hawk, a French bicycle maker named Paul Corn actually took off vertically for a few tethered flights at low altitude in a rotor-powered flying machine although he was unable to control the aircraft.

The pursuit of vertical flight was truly an international affair with machines being tested in France, Russia, the Netherlands, Argentina, Austria, Great Britain and the United States. In 1923, a Spanish engineer named Juan de lo Shrove, after years of unsuccessful attempts became the first aeronaut to demonstrate a successful flight in a rotating-wing aircraft. De lo Shrives Autogiro was essentially a small airplane with a monstrous rotor on top. The engine drove the propeller while the rotor was started by a team of helpers pulling on a rope wound around the rotor shaft, in the manner of starting a rotary lawn mower. De lo Shrove would fly a later refined model, the Pit cairn Shrove Autogiro (PCA-1), in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, a short flight from the American Helicopter Museum.

The man credited with designing the first practical flying machine that could be recognized as a helicopter today is Igor Sikorsky, a Russian engineer who had first tinkered with vertical-lift aircraft as an 18-year old in 1907. Sikorsky abandoned this fancy and built the world's first four-engine airplane at the age of 25. He amassed a small fortune in his native land and helped arm Russia against Germany
in World War I before fleeing the Russian Revolution in 1917. He arrived in New York City almost penniless before building a reputation as an aircraft designer on fixed-wing craft with passenger amphibians and seaplanes, including the famous Pan American "Clipper." In the mid-1930s Sikorsky returned to the rotating blades of his youth and eventually developed the VS-300 helicopter. This machine had a single main lifting rotor and a small vertical rotor at the tail to offset twisting effects and to supply directional control. The VS-300 made its first successful free flight on May 13, 1940 and set a world's endurance record for helicopters in May, 1941 of one hour, thirty-two and one half minutes.

Several of these revolutionary aircraft are on display at the American Helicopter Museum, opened in 1996 with the aid of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Four of the helicopters on hand are on permanent loan from the Smithsonian, including a 1929 Pitcairn autogiro that is a sister ship of the first United States-made autogiro that aviation pioneer Harold Pitcairn flew in Bryn Athyn. Also on loan is Philadelphian Frank Piasecki's PV-2, the second helicopter to fly successfully in the United States in 1943 and the earliest surviving Bell helicopter, the Bell Model 30 Number 1A, which was designed in a nearby Paoli, Pennsylvania workshop in 1943.

The American Helicopter Museum has 38 varieties of choppers at its disposal. Featured aircraft include the only Sikorsky XR-4, the prototype for the worldÕs first mass-produced helicopter; a Bell H-13 (47D-1), seen in its familiar M*A*S*H* television series fatigues; a Hiller UH-12D built in 1950; a superbly restored Piasecki HUP-2 in its original Navy colors and a Bell 47B, the first helicopter certified to carry passengers. The star of the collection is the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey Prototype No,3, the controversial tilt-rotor vertical/short take-off aircraft championed as the future of military aircraft.

The 20,000 square-foot American Helicopter Museum & Education Center is located at 1220 American Boulevard at the Brandywine Airport in West Chester, Pennsylvania. The museum is open Wednesdays through Sundays.

Source: http://www.essortment.com/all/americanhelicop_rnwz.htm

Gold (sell gold for cash) is a precious metal which has been recognized as a symbol of wealth and luxury throughout history. Today, gold is not just for royalty; it is available to everyone, and there are several types and levels of quality from which to choose.

Gold is often combined or “alloyed” with other metals such as iron, nickel, silver, steel, or zinc to make it stronger. Certain metals can be used to give gold a different color. Mixing gold with both copper and silver creates yellow gold, while adding just copper gives it a rose or pink tone. Combining gold with silver produces a greenish color, and white gold is made by alloying gold with nickel, platinum, or other white metals.

The price of gold jewelry is determined by the purity of the gold, which alloy it is combined with, and by the amount of skill and labor that goes into the piece.

People who don’t wear gold due to allergies are probably not really allergic to the gold itself, but to the other metals with which it is alloyed. To determine this fact, a person can try different alloys and discover which metal he or she is actually allergic to through the process of elimination. A person with metal allergies should wear only jewelry made of high gold content, such as 18 karat gold.

Here is a guide to the different levels of purity found in gold jewelry:

24-KARAT GOLD

The purest gold, 24-karat, is of course the most expensive. It also happens to be the softest, which does not make it the best choice for creating everyday jewelry. More often, it is used for making delicate, special pieces or for gold-plated jewelry.

18-KARAT GOLD

This quality of gold is 75% pure. It is alloyed with 25% of a different metal, which makes it somewhat stronger and more substantial. It is still soft enough to make it easy to work with, so it can be used in pieces of jewelry that require intricate detailing.

14-KARAT GOLD

This is the most popular quality for gold jewelry. It is just over half-pure (nearly 60%), it is strong, and it is more moderately priced. This purity is a good choice for frequently-worn jewelry.

10-KARAT GOLD

In the United States, gold jewelry must be at least 10-karat in order to be advertised and sold as “real” gold. It is about 40% pure and is reasonably priced. This level of purity is the best choice for everyday jewelry because it is very strong.

The ease with which gold can be shaped is part of its lure for jewelry makers, but because gold is a “soft” metal, it can easily lose its shape or become scratched. This is especially true of high-purity gold.

Gold jewelry should be gently cleaned with warm water, mild soap, and a soft cloth. It should be rinsed and dried thoroughly before putting it away. It should also be kept separate from other pieces of jewelry to avoid scratching. You may want to wrap your favorite pieces in cloth or place them back in the box they came in before putting them into your jewelry box.

If you buy good quality gold jewelry and care for it properly, it will not only retain its beauty throughout your lifetime, but it may also be passed down as an heirloom for generations to come.

Source: http://www.essortment.com/lifestyle/goldjewelryfac_skhi.htm

When my seventeen-year-old granddaughter was brain injured in a serious motor vehicle accident on a sunny Sunday morning a few years ago, I learned how important it is to try to prevent such injury, and how vital it can be from the first moments of the dreaded diagnosis to fight proactively for the best treatment available. The very words, “traumatic brain injury,” make something inside us curdle like bad food. What we don’t realize is the enormity of the statistics and the validity of our fears.

Every fifteen seconds someone in the U.S. suffers a traumatic brain injury. Every five minutes one of those inured dies, and another is permanently disabled. Every year, brain injury disables 20 times more people, mostly children and young adults, than spinal cord injury, CP, MS, and MD combined!

Most traumatic head injury in children is caused in sports or play situations. On playground equipment, in diving and swimming accidents, on ski slopes, hockey, basketball and soccer fields, as well as in simple falls around the home, children encounter blows to the head that can cause the brain to seriously vibrate or otherwise move on its stem. Swelling of the brain, bleeding into the brain and fractures to the skull put the child at great risk.

Bicycling, football, roller blading and skateboarding are responsible for a huge portion of the traumas to children’s heads, and it is general knowledge that protective and adequate helmets must be worn when children participate in these activities. Headgear for other sports is not a bad idea either, and certainly seat belt use and abstinence from drugs and alcohol while driving save thousands from more severe injury.

If my granddaughter had not been wearing a seatbelt she may not have survived. Educattion to prevent serious debilitation from head injury is vital. But if that nightmare moment ever comes, despite our best care, and we must hear that our loved one has TBI, we need to know that, according to the Brain Injury Foundation, only one in 20 brain-injured persons receives adequate rehabilitation. Lives are wasted, untold personal tragedies abound, and the economic drain on society catapults.

Patient advocates need to be relentless in the crucial early days, for example, insisting on accurate diagnosis and appropriate therapies, ensuring adequate continued treatment and preventing premature discharge. Parents should leave no stone unturned if an attending neurologist says “everything is fine now,” because, while the immediate threat to further damage, particularly swelling and cranial bleeding, may no longer be a factor, other health professionals know more about rehabbing the brain injured person.

Services and support systems for early and extended care are vital. Call Rehabilitation Centers and hospitals, ask about care for even what seems to be slight residual aftereffects. Explore the possibilities for needed help after discharge, for example with Occupational, Speech, Physical and other therapies. Call a local branch of The Brain Injury Foundation, and if you can, find an advocate, such as a lawyer-social work specialist who can guide family and patient intheir search for services that are or may become necessary. Teen-agers or older children may especially require counseling in the days, weeks and months following a brain injury, depending on the degree of severity. Such services are costly, and many families convince themselves, unnecessary, in order to avoid costly expenditures that worry about.

Err on the side of caution, and provide the utmost in care for the head-injured child. Educate yourself and keep your child’s opportunities maximized. And before such a horrific injury occurs, consider helmets, and safer sports activities. The human brain controls all our human activity, from cognitive to physiological to emotional and moral actvity. Safeguard it with your best efforts.

My granddaughter started college a few months after her injury, completed college, and is on her way to becoming a contributing member of society. Without adequate care, she may not have fared as well. Be prepared, and learn everything you can to protect your child’s future.

Ruzzel Walsh
AZ injury lawyer

Source: http://www.essortment.com/all/childheadinju_rfxb.htm

MDMA, also known as Ecstasy - chemical name (3, 4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine), is a synthetic, psychoactive drug possessing stimulant and hallucinogenic properties. MDMA possesses chemical variations of the stimulant amphetamine or methamphetamine and a hallucinogen, most often mescaline. MDMA is a "mood elevator" that produces a relaxed, euphoric state.

Ecstasy was first produced in 1913 by a German company possibly to be used as an appetite suppressant. MDMA has no approved medical use in the U.S. It was originally intended as a weight-loss (anorectic) drug, but because of its side-effects MDMA was never marketed. Chemically, it is an analogue of MDA, a drug that was popular in the 1960s.

In the late 1970s, MDMA was used to facilitate psychotherapy by a small group of therapists in the United States. Illicit use of the drug did not become popular until the late 1980s and early 1990s. Before it was made illegal in 1985, MDMA was used by psychiatrists as a therapeutic tool. Studies are currently underway in Spain and Israel assessing MDMA's effectiveness in the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). There is much controversy over the use of MDMA for this purpose, which is beyond the scope of this article.

MDMA is frequently used in combination with other drugs. However, it is not often consumed with alcohol, as alcohol is believed to diminish its effects. According to Arizona injury lawyer, it is most often distributed at late-night parties called "raves," nightclubs, and rock concerts. As the rave and club scene expands to metropolitan and suburban areas across the country, MDMA use and distribution are increasing as well.

MDMA is taken orally, usually in tablet form; sometimes capsule form, in doses ranging from 50 to 150 mg. A normal dose is around 100 - 125 mg. 'Black market' ecstasy tablets vary widely in strength, and often contain other drugs. The size of the pill is not necessarily related to the dose. Its effects peak at about four hours and last approximately four to six hours.

How much does it cost?
It costs as little as 25 to 50 cents to manufacture an Ecstasy tablet in Europe, but the street value of that same Ecstasy tablet can be as high as $40, with a tablet typically selling for between $20 and $30. (Source, the US, DEA, 2002) Several of our readers have reported finding it for as low as 10 dollars a tablet and as high as 40 dollars for one tablet, depending upon their location in the U.S. In Europe the cost can be a bit less.

Users report that the experience is “very pleasant and highly controllable”. Even at the peak of the effect, people can usually deal with important matters. The effect that makes MDMA different from other drugs is empathy -- the sensation of understanding and accepting others.

At “raves” it’s common for “Ravers” to take an additional 1/2 or 1 tablet approximately 6 hours into the party. Some users will take more. Users of the drug say that it produces profoundly positive feelings, empathy for others, elimination of anxiety, and extreme relaxation. Doses of MDMA are often "piggybacked" on each other in a series over just a few hours leading to severe overheating and cardiac emergencies which require medical intervention.

MDMA is also said to suppress the need to eat, drink, or sleep, enabling users to endure two to three day parties. Consequently, MDMA use sometimes results in severe dehydration or exhaustion. While it is not as addictive as heroin or cocaine.

MDMA can cause other adverse effects including:

anxiety and paranoia
hallucinations -- some say this is not true.
chills and or sweating
increases in body temperature
tremors
involuntary teeth clenching
muscle cramping and nausea
blurred vision
MDMA users also report aftereffects of anxiety, paranoia, panic attacks and depression.
Death -- MDMA overdoses can be fatal, as they may result in heart failure or extreme heat stroke.

Read full article here: http://www.essortment.com/articles/ecstasy_100011.htm
Source: http://www.essortment.com/articles/low-interest-bad-credit-personal_103060.htm