Badlands

Badlands are a type of dry terrain where softer sedimentary rocks and clay-rich soils have been extensively eroded by wind and water. They are characterized by steep slopes, minimal vegetation, lack of a substantial regolith, and high drainage density. They can resemble malpaís, a terrain of volcanic rock. Canyons, ravines, gullies, buttes, mesas, hoodoos and other such geological forms are common in badlands. They are often difficult to navigate by foot. Badlands often have a spectacular color display that alternates from dark black/blue coal stria to bright clays to red scoria.

Composition

Badlands are partially characterized by their thin to nonexistent regolith layers. The regolith profiles of badlands in arid climates are likely to resemble one another. In these regions, the upper layer (~1–5 cm) is typically composed of silt, shale, and sand (a byproduct of the weathered shale). This layer can form either a compact crust or a looser, more irregular aggregation of "popcorn" fragments. Located beneath the top layer is a sublayer (~5–10 cm), below which can be found a transitional shard layer (~10–40 cm), formed largely of loose disaggregated shale chips, which in turn eventually gives way to a layer of unweathered shale. Badlands such as those found in the Mancos Shale, the Brule Formation, the Chadron Formation, and the Dinosaur Provincial Park can be generally said to fit this profile.

Oregon Badlands Wilderness

The Oregon Badlands Wilderness is a 29,301-acre (11,858 ha) wilderness area located east of Bend in Deschutes and Crook counties in the U.S. state of Oregon. The wilderness is managed by the Bureau of Land Management as part of the National Landscape Conservation System and was created by the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama on 30 March 2009.

The area is known for igneous castle-like rock formations, harsh terrain, ancient Juniper trees, sagebrush, and extensive arid land. Desert wildflowers, dry river canyons, and Native American pictographs can be found. The blind iditarod racer Rachel Scdoris trained in the area, and the wilderness is home to the western terminus of the Oregon Desert Trail.

Geology

The wilderness is situated on high desert terrain and is associated with a volcanic rootless shield. This broad 10-to-12-kilometre (6.2 to 7.5 mi) volcanic shield issued lava from a rootless vent. The lava flow dates to about 80,000 years old and comes from a main vent further up the slopes of Newberry Volcano. This main vent was located near Lava Top Butte and the lava that came out of this vent travelled through the Arnold Lava Tube System to arrive at the current location of the Badlands. An irregularly-shaped pit crater at the top of the shield marks the site where lava flowed in all directions to create the Badlands.Lava tubes acted as conduits for the lava in some instances and are evidenced on the surface by tumuli, also known as pressure ridges. Soils in the Badlands were largely formed from ash associated with the eruption of Mount Mazama some 7,700 years ago.

Badlands (film)

Badlands is a 1973 American crime film written and directed by Terrence Malick, starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek.Warren Oates and Ramon Bieri are also featured. The story, though fictional, is loosely based on the real-life murder spree of Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, in 1958, though such a basis was not acknowledged when the film was released.

In 1993, four years after the United States National Film Registry was established, Badlands was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Synopsis

Badlands is set in 1959 and is narrated by the impressionable 15-year-old Holly Sargis (Spacek), a teenage girl living in a dead-end South Dakota town called Fort Dupree. Holly lives with her sign painter father, although their relationship has been strained since her mother died of pneumonia some years earlier. One day she meets the 25-year-old garbage collector Kit Carruthers (Sheen). Kit is a young, troubled greaser, who resembles James Dean, an actor Holly admires. Kit charms Holly, and she slowly falls in love with him. Holly's narration, describing her adventures with Kit in romantic clichés, is juxtaposed with the gradual revelations of Kit's increasingly antisocial and violent behavior.

Common name

In biology, a common name of a taxon or organism (also known as a vernacular name, English name, colloquial name, trivial name, trivial epithet, country name, popular name, or farmer's name) is a name that is based on the normal language of everyday life; this kind of name is often contrasted with the scientific name for the same organism, which is Latinized. A so-called "common name" is sometimes frequently used, but that is by no means always the case.

Sometimes common names are created by authorities on one particular subject, in an attempt to make it possible for members of the general public (including such interested parties as fishermen, farmers, etc.) to be able to refer to one particular species of organism without needing to be able to memorise or pronounce the Latinized scientific name. Creating an "official" list of common names can also be an attempt to standardize the use of common names, which can sometimes vary a great deal between one part of a country and another, as well as between one country and another country, even where the same language is spoken in both places.

Ibex (vehicle)

An Ibex is a specialist off-road vehicle, ready-built or supplied as a kit to build with donor parts from a Land Rover Defender on a monocoque chassis. The Ibex can be delivered with different wheel bases and body type.

Among other features, the Ibex can be built or delivered with Foer's patented Vector winching system. A winch is mounted centrally in the vehicle, and the cable runs to fairleads front and rear. This allows the vehicle to pull in either direction, or pull out the cable and secure it both ways, so that the vehicle can pull along the cable like a cable car.

There has been four generations of ibex from the mk1 in 1988 to the current "IBEX F8"

Ibex are manufactured in the Hexham, Northumberland, United Kingdom by Foers Engineering Ltd.

See also

External links

Interstellar Boundary Explorer

Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) is a NASA satellite that is making a map of the boundary between the Solar System and interstellar space. The mission is part of NASA's Small Explorer program and launched with a Pegasus-XL rocket on October 19, 2008.

Results from IBEX have repeatedly shocked the scientific community and overturned old theories. The first shock came when it revealed a narrow ribbon of energetic neutral atom (ENA) emission. Then it showed shifts over time in this band. Another surprise came when no bow shock was found. The repercussions of overturning the bow shock theory are huge, because decades of research are based on that concept.

The design and operation of the mission is being led by the Southwest Research Institute, with the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center serving as co-investigator institutions responsible for the IBEX-Hi and IBEX-Lo sensors respectively. The Orbital Sciences Corporation manufactured the spacecraft bus and was the location for spacecraft environmental testing. The nominal mission baseline duration was two years to observe the entire Solar System boundary. This was completed by 2011 and its mission was extended to 2013 to continue observations.