Before setting out in a pink S.U.V. to comb the schoolyards and shopping malls of southern Brazil, Alisson Chornak studies books, maps and Web sites to understand how the towns were colonized and how European their residents might look today.
The goal, he and other model scouts say, is to find the right genetic cocktail of German and Italian ancestry, perhaps with some Russian or other Slavic blood thrown in. Such a mix, they say, helps produce the tall, thin girls with straight hair, fair skin and light eyes that Brazil exports to the runways of New York, Milan and Paris with stunning success.
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Yes, you read that right: Nuclear. Fusion. Reactor. And no, it’s actually not illegal to make one in your own home.
Mr Suppes, 32, is part of a growing community of “fusioneers” – amateur science junkies who are building homemade fusion reactors, for fun and with an eye to being part of the solution to that problem.
He is the 38th independent amateur physicist in the world to achieve nuclear fusion from a homemade reactor, according to community site Fusor.net. Others on the list include a 15-year-old from Michigan and a doctoral student in Ohio.
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What’s the difference between a good idea and a great one? While the secrets to success vary, it’s become very clear that even the smartest ideas require the right infrastructure and technology to enable them. Here are some of the game-changing innovations that shaped the course of life and business in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Between 1945 and 1962, the United States conducted over 300 atmospheric nuclear tests above the ground, in the ocean or in outer space.
On August 5, 1963, the United States and the former Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, effectively banning the testing of all nuclear weapons except those tested underground. Atmospheric nuclear test blast photography came to an end.
The twins’ happiness is apparent to all around them — they laughed and played the entire day the “Nightline” crew was with them. “They … have this connection between their, what’s called the thalamus, between the thalami, one in each to the other,” said Dr. Doug Cochrane, the twins’ pediatric neurologist. “So there’s actually a bridge of neural tissues in these twins, which makes them quite unique.”