6:35 P.M. — SAN JOSE MINE, Chile ? Fresh air and freedom were just hours away today for the first of 33 miners trapped a half-mile underground for 69 days, men whose endurance and unity captivated the world as the Chilean government meticulously prepared their rescue. No one in the history of mining has been trapped so long and survived.

The first miner was expected to be lifted to the surface late today in a custom-made capsule. President Sebastian Pinera was at the mine, waiting to greet him.

“We made a promise to never surrender, and we kept it,” Pinera said at about 5:45 p.m. local time (4:45 p.m. EDT), shortly before two rescue workers were expected to go down to prepare the miners for their trip. The president said the first miner will be brought up about two hours later.

Chile has taken extensive precautions to ensure the miners’ health and privacy, sending down Navy special forces paramedics to prepare them for the trip and using a screen to block the top of the shaft from more than 1,000 journalists at the scene.

The miners will be ushered through an inflatable tunnel, like those used in sports stadiums, to an ambulance for a trip of several hundred yards (meters) to a triage station for an immediate medical check. They will gather with a few family members, in an area also closed to the media, before being transported by helicopter to a hospital.

Each ride up is expected to take about 20 minutes, and authorities expect they will be able to haul up roughly one miner an hour. The rescue of the last miner will end a national crisis that began when a cave-in sealed off the gold and copper mine Aug. 5.

The only media allowed to record them coming out of the shaft will be a government photographer and Chile’s state television channel. Their images will be delayed about 30 seconds or more to prevent the release of anything unexpected.

The worst technical problem that could happen, rescue coordinator Andre Sougarett told The Associated Press, is that “a rock could fall,” potentially jamming the capsule partway up the shaft. But test rides suggest the ride up will be smooth.

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Panic attacks are the rescuers’ biggest concern. The miners will not be sedated ? they need to be alert in case something goes wrong. If a miner must get out more quickly, rescuers will accelerate the capsule to a maximum 3 meters per second, Health Minister Jaime Manalich said.

Mining Minister Laurence Golborne, whose management of the crisis has made him a media star in Chile, said authorities had already thought of everything.

“There is no need to try to start guessing what could go wrong. We have done that job,” Golborne said. “We have hundreds of different contingencies.”

As for the miners, they were kept busy today making final preparations “to keep their spirits up,” Manalich said. He added that they were doing well: “It remains a paradox ? they’re actually much more relaxed than we are.”

Rescuers finished reinforcing the top of the 2,041-foot (622-meter) escape shaft early Monday, and the 13-foot (four-meter) tall capsule descended flawlessly in test runs.
The white, blue and red capsule ? the biggest of three built by Chilean navy engineers ? was named Phoenix I for the mythical bird that rises from ashes.

The miners will be closely monitored from the moment they’re strapped into the claustrophobic steel tube to be hauled up the smooth-walled tunnel. For the last six hours before surfacing, they’ll drink a special high-calorie liquid diet prepared and donated by NASA, designed to keep them from vomiting as the rescue capsule rotates 10 to 12 times through curves in the 28-inch-diameter escape hole.

Engineers inserted steel piping at the top of the shaft. They stopped sooner than planned after the sleeve became jammed during a probe of the curved top of the hole, which is angled 11 degrees off vertical at its top before plunging like a waterfall.
Drillers had to curve the shaft so that it would pass through “virgin” rock, narrowly avoiding collapsed areas and underground open spaces in the overexploited mine, which had operated since 1885.

As each miner is hauled up, a small video camera in the escape capsule will be trained on his face so rescuers can watch for panic attacks. The miners will wear oxygen masks and have two-way voice communication.

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Their pulse, skin temperature and respiration rate will be constantly measured through a biomonitor around their abdomens. To prevent blood clotting from the quick ascent, they took aspirin and will wear compression socks.

The miners will also wear sweaters because they’ll experience a shift in climate from about 90 degrees Fahrenheit underground to temperatures hovering near freezing if they emerge at night. Those coming out during daylight hours will wear sunglasses.

Seconds before each miner surfaces, an ambulance-like siren will sound and a light will flash for a full minute. Officials are calling this the Genesis alarm, meant simply to alert doctors that a miner is arriving.

Many steps have been taken to protect the emerging miners from the media.
Photographers and camera operators will be able to see light but little more from a platform set up more than 300 feet (90 meters) away.

After initial medical checks and visits with family members selected by the miners, the men will be airlifted to the regional hospital in Copiapo, roughly a 10-minute ride away. Two floors have been prepared where the miners will receive physical and psychological exams and be kept under observation in a ward as dark as a movie theater.

Chilean air force Lt. Col. Aldo Carbone, the choppers’ squadron commander, said the pilots have night-vision goggles but will not fly unless it is clear of the Pacific Ocean fog that rolls in at night, a notoriously thick, humid blanket Chileans call “the camanchaca.” Night traffic on the mine road was banned as a precaution to keep headlights from interfering with the night-vision goggles, and to keep the road clear for ambulances should they be necessary.

Families were urged to wait and prepare to greet the miners at home after a 48-hour hospital stay.

“In Chile, we have huge families,” Manalich said, joking that if they weren’t stopped, entire football teams of people would crowd into the hospital’s wards. He also said that no cameras or interviews will be allowed until the miners are released, unless the miners expressly desire it.

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Officials have drawn up a secret list of which miners should come out first, but the order could change after paramedics and a mining expert first descend in the capsule to evaluate the men. First out will be the four miners best able to handle any difficulties and tell their comrades what to expect. Then, the 10 who are weakest or suffer from hypertension, diabetes, dental and respiratory infections and skin lesions from the mine’s oppressive humidity.

The first miner to be rescued will be Florencio Avalos, according to his mother, Maria Silva, and uncle Alberto Avalos, who said Pinera told them that.

The last miner out, according the list, will be shift foreman Luiz Urzua, whose leadership was credited for the miners’ survival during the 17 days when they were utterly closed off from the outside world. The men stretched an emergency food supply meant to last just 48 hours by taking tiny sips of milk and bites of tuna fish every other day.

Several of Urzua’s relatives told the AP that he was last on the list, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid upsetting government officials.

“He’s a very good guy ? he keeps everybody’s spirits up and is so responsible ? he’s going to see this through to the end,” said his neighbor Angelica Vicencio, who has led a nightly vigil outside the Urzua home in Copiapo.

The government has promised that its care of the miners won’t end for six months at least ? not until they can be sure that each miner has readjusted.

“We learned something in medicine, that our job is to provide benefit and not harm,” Manalich said. “We have to protect them until the last minute, until they can return to normal lives with their families.”

Psychiatrists and other experts in surviving extreme situations predict their lives will be anything but normal, and that both the miners and their families have been forever changed by this experience.

Since Aug. 22, when a narrow bore hole broke through to their refuge and the miners stunned the world with a note, scrawled in red pen, that announced their survival, these families’ lives have been exposed in ways they never imagined. Miners had to describe their physical and mental health in minute detail with teams of doctors and psychologists. And in some cases, when both wives and lovers claimed the same man, everyone involved had to face the consequences.

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By the time of the rescue, nerves were beyond frayed outside the mine in “Camp Hope,” where miners’ families and reporters from all over the world slept side by side in tents and campers, enduring the baking days and frigid nights of the desolate Atacama desert.

Many relatives privately described their feuds and jealousies with an AP reporter who spent the past month at the camp.

“Here the tension is higher than down below. Down there they are calm,” said Veronica Ticona, sister of 29-year-old Ariel Ticona, a trapped rubble-removal machine operator.

Alberto Iturra, chief of the psychology team, told the families to go home, get some rest, and prepare to reunite in several days.

“I explained to the families that the only way one can receive someone is to first be home to open the door,” Iturra said.

1:26 p.m. update

SAN JOSE MINE, Chile ? The first of 33 trapped miners is expected to be lifted to the surface late Tuesday after miraculously surviving more than two months about half a mile below ground, Chile’s Mining Minister Laurence Golborne announced.

The minister told a news conference that officials “hope to have at least one of our miners on the surface” before the end of the day ? apparently the longest period anyone has ever been trapped underground.

President Sebastian Pinera was expected to arrive shortly before the first miner is pulled out in a carefully choreographed operation meant to minimize any risk.

Asked about the biggest technical problem that could hit the rescue operation, coordinator Andre Sougarett said: “A rock could fall.”

“There is no need to try to start guessing what could go wrong. We have done that job,” a confident Golborne said. “We have hundreds of different contingencies.”

Rescuers were keeping the miners busy on final preparations they were to climb into a custom-made capsule for what tests indicated should be a smooth ride to the outside world.

“The miners are very busy ? that’s also to keep their spirits up,” Health Minister Jaime Manalich said. “It remains a paradox ? they’re actually much more relaxed than we are.”

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As the miners emerge, they will be sheltered from the glare of TV cameras. They will get an immediate medical check and gather with a few family members in an area closed to the news media. Officials say a siren will sound as each miner emerges.

Then, they will ride in helicopters ? two at a time if they are in beds, or four at a time if they can sit up ? to the regional hospital in Copiapo for a battery of physical and psychological exams.

“Our job is to provide benefit and not harm,” Manalich said, urging the media ? more than 1,000 journalists are working on the story ? to respect their privacy. “We have to protect them until the last minute, until they can return to normal lives with their families.”

Nearby, the miners’ families have been holding vigil at a place called “Camp Hope.”

“Here the tension is higher than down below. Down there they are calm,” said Veronica Ticona, sister of 29-year-old Ariel Ticona, a trapped rubble-removal machine operator.

After 68 days of shared fears and jitters ? all of it under the close scrutiny of dozens of reporters that have now grown to a battalion ? the early fellowship has frayed. Some relationships, once at least cordial, are as hostile as the desolate sands of the surrounding Acatama desert.

Relatives privately shared stories of the divisiveness with an Associated Press reporter who spent the past month at the camp, frequently bedding down in a tent beside theirs, sharing coffee and gossip.

The feuds and jealousies within families centered on such matters as who got to take part in weekend videoconferences with the miners, who received letters and why ? or even who should speak to the media and how much they should be revealing about a family’s interior life.

Some relatives complained about distant kin seeking the international media limelight, giving interviews about trapped miners they barely know.

Then there are those who, despite only distant blood ties to miners, lined up for donated gifts including sexy lingerie, bottles of wine and electronic toys and Halloween costumes for children.

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There were even fights over who constitutes a close relative ? or even a miner’s preferred conjugal companion.

So Alberto Iturra, the chief of the psychology team advising the trapped men, decided that after each miner rides an escape capsule to daylight, the rescued man will meet with between one and three people whom the miner has personally designated.
Then there is the question of money.

It has already strained relations between families as some seem to be getting more than others, including from some news media, who outnumber the miners’ relations several fold.

Cognizant of the emotional toll, Iturra recommended Monday that the relatives leave the mine, go home and get some rest.

“I explained to the families that the only way one can receive someone is to first be home to open the door,” Iturra said.

The dramatic endgame was hastening as the rescuers finished reinforcing the escape shaft early Monday and the 13-foot (four-meter)-tall rescue chamber descended flawlessly nearly all the way to the trapped men in a series of test runs.

On Monday, the Phoenix I capsule ? the biggest of three built by Chilean navy engineers, named for the mythic bird that rose from ashes ? made its first test runs after the top 180 feet (55 meters) of the shaft were lined with steel pipe, the rescue leader said.

Then the empty capsule was winched down 2,000 feet (610 meters), just 40 feet (12 meters) short of the shaft system that has been the miners’ refuge since an Aug. 5 collapse.

“We didn’t send it (all the way) down because we could risk that someone will jump in,” a grinning Golborne told reporters on Monday.

Engineers had planned to extend the piping nearly twice as far, but they decided to stop after the sleeve ? the hole is angled 11 degrees off vertical at its top before plunging down, like a waterfall ? became jammed during a probe.

Officials have drawn up a secret list of which miners should come out first, but the order could change after paramedics and a mining expert first descend in the capsule to evaluate the men and oversee the journey upward.

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First out will be the four miners fittest of frame and mind, health minister Jaime Manalich said. Should glitches occur, these men will be best prepared to ride them out and tell their comrades what to expect.

Next will be 10 who are weakest or ill. One miner suffers from hypertension. Another is a diabetic, and others have dental and respiratory infections or skin lesions from the mine’s oppressive humidity.

The last out is expected to be Luiz Urzua, who was shift chief when the men became entombed, several family members of miners told the AP, speaking on condition of anonymity because they did not want to upset government officials.

The men will take a 20-minute ride to the surface in the capsule, which will rotate as it passes through gentle bends in the bore hole. It should take about an hour for the rescue capsule to make a round trip, Aguilar told the AP.

Plans called for the media to be blocked by a screen from viewing the miners when they reach the surface. A media platform has been set up more than 300 feet (90 meters) away from the mouth of the hole.

After being extracted, the miners will be ushered through inflatable tunnels, like the ones used in sports stadiums, to ambulances that will take them to a triage station.

Once cleared by doctors there, they are to be taken to another area where they’ll be reunited with the chosen family members. Next stop: a heliport and the flight to Copiapo.

At the hospital, all the miners will be kept for 48 hours of observation that will begin when the last one exits the escape shaft.

Chile choreographs dramatic finish to miner rescue saga

Jason Hodge, father of four children from Barstow, Calif., says he’s “not paranoid” but he is concerned, and that’s why he bought space in what might be labeled a doomsday shelter.

Hodge bought into the first of a proposed nationwide group of 20 fortified, underground shelters ? the Vivos shelter network ? that are intended to protect those inside for up to a year from catastrophes such as a nuclear attack, killer asteroids or tsunamis, according to the project’s developers.

“It’s an investment in life,” says Hodge, a Teamsters union representative. “I want to make sure I have a place I can take me and my family if that worst-case scenario were to happen.”

There are signs that underground shelters, almost-forgotten relics of the Cold War era, are making a comeback.

The Vivos network, which offers partial ownerships similar to a timeshare in underground shelter communities, is one of several ventures touting escape from a surface-level calamity.

Radius Engineering in Terrell, Texas, has built underground shelters for more than three decades, and business has never been better, says Walton McCarthy, company president.

The company sells fiberglass shelters that can accommodate 10 to 2,000 adults to live underground for one to five years with power, food, water and filtered air, McCarthy says.

The shelters range from $400,000 to a $41 million facility Radius built and installed underground that is suitable for 750 people, McCarthy says. He declined to disclose the client or location of the shelter.

“We’ve doubled sales every year for five years,” he says.Other shelter manufacturers include Hardened Structures of Colorado and Utah Shelter Systems, which also report increased sales.

The shelters have their critics. Ken Rose, a history professor at California State University-Chico and author of One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture, says underground shelters were a bad idea a half-century ago and they’re a bad idea now.

“A terrorist with a nuke in a suitcase pales in comparison to what the Cold War had to offer in the 1950s and ’60s, which was the potential annihilation of the human race,” he says.

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Steve Davis, president of Maryland-based All Hands Global Emergency Management Consulting, also is skeptical.

All Hands has helped more than 100 public and private sector clients with emergency management and homeland security services, according to its website.

The types of cataclysms envisioned by some shelter manufacturers “are highly unlikely compared to what we know is going to happen,” Davis says.

“We know there is going to be a major earthquake someday on the West Coast. We know a hurricane is going to hit Florida, the Gulf Coast, the East Coast,” he says. “We support reasonable preparedness. We don’t think it’s necessary to burrow into the desert.”

The Vivos network is the idea of Del Mar, Calif., developer Robert Vicino.

Vicino, who launched the Vivos project last December, says he seeks buyers willing to pay $50,000 for adults and $25,000 for children.

The company is starting with a 13,000-square-foot refurbished underground shelter formerly operated by the U.S. government at an undisclosed location near Barstow, Calif., that will have room for 134 people, he says.

Vicino puts the average cost for a shelter at $10 million.

Vivos plans for facilities as large as 100,000 square feet, says real estate broker Dan Hotes of Seattle, who over the past four years has collaborated with Vicino on a project involving partial ownership of high-priced luxury homes and is now involved with Vivos.

Catastrophe shelters today may appeal to those who seek to bring order to a world full of risk and uncertainty, says Alexander Riley, an associate professor of sociology at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa.

“They’re saying, ‘I can control everything,’ ” Riley says. ” ‘With the right amount of rational planning, I can even survive an asteroid hitting the Earth that causes a dust cloud like the kind we believe wiped the dinosaurs out.’ “

The Vivos website features a clock counting down to Dec. 21, 2012, the date when the ancient Mayan “Long Count” calendar marks the end of a 5,126-year era, at which time some people expect an unknown apocalypse.

Vicino, whose terravivos.com website lists 11 global catastrophes ranging from nuclear war to solar flares to comets, bristles at the notion he’s profiting from people’s fears.

“You don’t think of the person who sells you a fire extinguisher as taking advantage of your fear,” he says. “The fact that you may never use that fire extinguisher doesn’t make it a waste or bad.

“We’re not creating the fear; the fear is already out there. We’re creating a solution.”

Doomsday shelters making a comeback

Nancy Smith, founder of the Shy Wolf Sanctuary, gives a kiss to Chocowa, a gray wolf who lives at the sanctuary, a two and a half acre piece of land off of White Boulevard. Former sanctuary volunteer Susan Cabot Rather died and left $120,000 to the sanctuary. Sanctuary board of directors used the money in April to purchase 20-acres of land on Dove Tree Street in the Golden Gate Estates to be the future site of the sanctuary.

Photo by LEXEY SWALL // Buy this photo

Nancy Smith, founder of the Shy Wolf Sanctuary, gives a kiss to Chocowa, a gray wolf who lives at the sanctuary, a two and a half acre piece of land off of White Boulevard. Former sanctuary volunteer Susan Cabot Rather died and left $120,000 to the sanctuary. Sanctuary board of directors used the money in April to purchase 20-acres of land on Dove Tree Street in the Golden Gate Estates to be the future site of the sanctuary.

Shy Wolf Sanctuary

1161 27th Street SW, Naples

For more information or to become a supporter of the Shy Wolf Sanctuary, call 455-1698 or see the website www.shywolfsanctuary.com.


The volunteers at Shy Wolf Sanctuary spend a lot of time these days planning. Planning and hoping that the community which has long supported them will continue to come to the aid of nearly 60 animals in their care.

Plans are underway to relocate most of the sanctuary from its current, cramped 21/2-acre quarters to a new 20-acre property the sanctuary was recently able to obtain. Susan Cabot Rather bequeathed the funds for the Sanctuary to purchase the new land, which will be named in memory of her. The full name will be the Shy Wolf Sanctuary Education and Experience Center in Memory of Susan Cabot Rather.

But first, the board of directors must obtain the funding required to make the move.

The Shy Wolf Sanctuary rescues, houses and cares for wolves, wolf-dog hybrids, panthers and a variety of other unwanted animals neglected or abandoned by previous owners. Its purpose is to provide a place for these animals to live out the rest of their often difficult lives. There are about 40 volunteers — and no paid employees — at Shy Wolf.

“As long as they have a good quality of life, we’ll take care of them,” said Mark Scarola, a volunteer and member of the board of directors. “We’re the last resort for these incredible animals who would otherwise be put down.”

The cost of rescue services, vet bills, and basic sanctuary upkeep is staggering, costing more than $108,000 annually. One of the wolves named Timka came to the rescue from west of Gainesville. She had been used for breeding and left to die on an 8-by-10 foot slab of concrete. It took Shy Wolf volunteers three weeks to encourage Timka to stand on her own.

When the Sanctuary took in two wolf pups and Timka came to life. The pups gave Timka the purpose she needed to live.

Another wolf in the Sanctuary’s care named Julie had been purchased for use in a television show. The man who purchased Julie tried to sell her. When he couldn’t make money on Julie, he dumped her at a Brooksville rescue shelter that subsequently went out of business. Shy Wolf Sanctuary stepped in to rescue Julie, who is slowly recovering from her ordeal.

“Whatever happened to Julie scared her half to death and it was so deeply embedded in her psyche, and all this time, she has not been able to be anywhere near a man,” said Shy Wolf Sanctuary board president Nancy Smith.

“We believe she was whipped or yanked or possibly beaten but she is making great strides to be rehabilitated.”

The wolves live securely in enclosures with 8-foot fences and dig wire, which prevents them from tunneling out. Five foxes, five Florida panthers, six prairie dogs, a few tortoises and two rabbits also share space at the Sanctuary. These panthers were also born and raised in captivity, without learning hunting or protection skills, so they, too, cannot survive on their own in the wild.

Like wolves, big cats appear to have a close connection to nature.

“Kiowa, one of the big cats at the Sanctuary, reacted to Hurricane Charlie before it hit,” said Smith. “She began pacing frantically and agitated, like she was trying to get away from something and then suddenly, she stopped pacing.” Smith said she knew the storm wasn’t going to hit Naples when Kiowa suddenly lay down and became instantly relaxed.

The wolves, however, are the main focus of the shelter’s care. Some of them are nearing the end of their lives; others are recovering from horrific treatment at the hands of humans. The Sanctuary is also caring for several wolf puppies rescued from an accidental breeding incident in the Florida Panhandle.

“The owner separated the litter of nine pups from their mother too soon, which suppressed their immune system development and we took in four of those puppies,” said Smith. “Vet bills for the pups have exceeded $7,500 so far, and that’s because they require such extensive care.” Treatment for the pups has included blood transfusions, medication, and extended stays at the emergency vet clinic.

The addition of the pups to the Sanctuary brings the number of wolves there to 36. For the new facility the Sanctuary will need to raise $2 million in donations and in-kind services.

“In addition to monetary contributions, we would love to receive in-kind donations to sponsor various projects that will be required to make the move a reality,” said Scarola. “We’re asking businesses who can help to please consider donating their services for things required to run the facility.”

Some of those needs include contracting services that would help the Sanctuary navigate the process of working with the county for permitting purposes, fencing, staff housing, infrastructure improvements, labor for building enclosures and installing other building structures, electrical contracting and veterinary services. The list goes on.

Scarola says the Sanctuary will also need kitchen equipment, including freezers and refrigerators. The volunteers feed the animals four times a week, a massive undertaking that requires hours of messy manual labor.

Many of the volunteers, including Smith, must regularly cut up dozens of large containers of raw chicken and meat to prepare the more than 3,000 pounds of meat per month the animals consume. That does not include the greens volunteers procure for the turtles and other animals who require roughage in their diets.

Property maintenance is also a considerable expense for the sanctuary.

Something as simple as a donation of a lawn mower makes a big difference in the operating budget, Scarola says. He hopes someone will come forward to donate a new workshop, such as a prefab structure at the new property to store equipment and supplies. Partners and donors will be able to sponsor enclosures and individual wolves among other opportunities to give. The sanctuary is a 501(c)3 organization.

Smith says she hopes that, with help from local universities and contractors, the new Shy Wolf facility can be entirely green. Solar power is an option the group is exploring.

The move cannot come fast enough for the staff and animals that have outgrown the current space. The new facility will enable the Sanctuary to rescue more unwanted animals and increase the common space, among other needs.

With the sheer number of volunteer hours and the cost to run the sanctuary, it’s tempting to ask a question that ruffles feathers among animal lovers: Is all of this worth it to save wolves?

Smith has an answer.

“Responsibility means the ability to respond, and when we acquire an animal, we’re supposed to be making a promise to care for that animal until the end of its life,” she said.

Too often, people who buy exotic animals for pets do not keep that promise, Smith continued. Irresponsible breeders sell wild animals that should never become pets. Buyers ignorant of the work required to care for these animals eventually abandon or mistreat them.

Places like Shy Wolf Sanctuary provide the chain of commitment that should exist. Smith says the Sanctuary’s mission is to provide a home for those animals that have been treated like garbage. Volunteers are quick to point out that animals don’t come as the “good” or “bad” creatures that fairy tales make them out to be.

“Wolves have gotten a bad rap in literature — Three Little Pigs and Red Riding Hood stories — but they really are amazing and have this strong connection with nature,” said Tom Hornyal, a recent volunteer at the sanctuary. “I am astonished at how much this organization can accomplish with so few people – you really can make an immediate impact.”

Smith imparted some of her hard-earned wisdom to her volunteers as they prepared the rest of the feed on this particular day.

“I do not want this message of saving these animals to die with me,” said Smith, who is also a great grandmother. “If just one person gets it and keeps the dream alive, we’ll have done our job.”

As if on cue, just as Smith completed cutting up her last bucket of raw chicken, one of the wolves began to howl. One by one the rest of the wolves joined in for a haunting chorus of baying as if they too, know a change is coming.

? 2010 Naples Daily News. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

PHOTOS: Shy Wolf Sanctuary hopes to turn new 20-acre site into better home for its animals in need

Nancy Smith, founder of the Shy Wolf Sanctuary, gives a kiss to Chocowa, a gray wolf who lives at the sanctuary, a two and a half acre piece of land off of White Boulevard. Former sanctuary volunteer Susan Cabot Rather died and left $120,000 to the sanctuary. Sanctuary board of directors used the money in April to purchase 20-acres of land on Dove Tree Street in the Golden Gate Estates to be the future site of the sanctuary.

Photo by LEXEY SWALL // Buy this photo

Nancy Smith, founder of the Shy Wolf Sanctuary, gives a kiss to Chocowa, a gray wolf who lives at the sanctuary, a two and a half acre piece of land off of White Boulevard. Former sanctuary volunteer Susan Cabot Rather died and left $120,000 to the sanctuary. Sanctuary board of directors used the money in April to purchase 20-acres of land on Dove Tree Street in the Golden Gate Estates to be the future site of the sanctuary.

Shy Wolf Sanctuary

1161 27th Street SW, Naples

For more information or to become a supporter of the Shy Wolf Sanctuary, call 455-1698 or see the website www.shywolfsanctuary.com.


The volunteers at Shy Wolf Sanctuary spend a lot of time these days planning. Planning and hoping that the community which has long supported them will continue to come to the aid of nearly 60 animals in their care.

Plans are underway to relocate most of the sanctuary from its current, cramped 21/2-acre quarters to a new 20-acre property the sanctuary was recently able to obtain. Susan Cabot Rather bequeathed the funds for the Sanctuary to purchase the new land, which will be named in memory of her. The full name will be the Shy Wolf Sanctuary Education and Experience Center in Memory of Susan Cabot Rather.

But first, the board of directors must obtain the funding required to make the move.

The Shy Wolf Sanctuary rescues, houses and cares for wolves, wolf-dog hybrids, panthers and a variety of other unwanted animals neglected or abandoned by previous owners. Its purpose is to provide a place for these animals to live out the rest of their often difficult lives. There are about 40 volunteers — and no paid employees — at Shy Wolf.

“As long as they have a good quality of life, we’ll take care of them,” said Mark Scarola, a volunteer and member of the board of directors. “We’re the last resort for these incredible animals who would otherwise be put down.”

The cost of rescue services, vet bills, and basic sanctuary upkeep is staggering, costing more than $108,000 annually. One of the wolves named Timka came to the rescue from west of Gainesville. She had been used for breeding and left to die on an 8-by-10 foot slab of concrete. It took Shy Wolf volunteers three weeks to encourage Timka to stand on her own.

When the Sanctuary took in two wolf pups and Timka came to life. The pups gave Timka the purpose she needed to live.

Another wolf in the Sanctuary’s care named Julie had been purchased for use in a television show. The man who purchased Julie tried to sell her. When he couldn’t make money on Julie, he dumped her at a Brooksville rescue shelter that subsequently went out of business. Shy Wolf Sanctuary stepped in to rescue Julie, who is slowly recovering from her ordeal.

“Whatever happened to Julie scared her half to death and it was so deeply embedded in her psyche, and all this time, she has not been able to be anywhere near a man,” said Shy Wolf Sanctuary board president Nancy Smith.

“We believe she was whipped or yanked or possibly beaten but she is making great strides to be rehabilitated.”

The wolves live securely in enclosures with 8-foot fences and dig wire, which prevents them from tunneling out. Five foxes, five Florida panthers, six prairie dogs, a few tortoises and two rabbits also share space at the Sanctuary. These panthers were also born and raised in captivity, without learning hunting or protection skills, so they, too, cannot survive on their own in the wild.

Like wolves, big cats appear to have a close connection to nature.

“Kiowa, one of the big cats at the Sanctuary, reacted to Hurricane Charlie before it hit,” said Smith. “She began pacing frantically and agitated, like she was trying to get away from something and then suddenly, she stopped pacing.” Smith said she knew the storm wasn’t going to hit Naples when Kiowa suddenly lay down and became instantly relaxed.

The wolves, however, are the main focus of the shelter’s care. Some of them are nearing the end of their lives; others are recovering from horrific treatment at the hands of humans. The Sanctuary is also caring for several wolf puppies rescued from an accidental breeding incident in the Florida Panhandle.

“The owner separated the litter of nine pups from their mother too soon, which suppressed their immune system development and we took in four of those puppies,” said Smith. “Vet bills for the pups have exceeded $7,500 so far, and that’s because they require such extensive care.” Treatment for the pups has included blood transfusions, medication, and extended stays at the emergency vet clinic.

The addition of the pups to the Sanctuary brings the number of wolves there to 36. For the new facility the Sanctuary will need to raise $2 million in donations and in-kind services.

“In addition to monetary contributions, we would love to receive in-kind donations to sponsor various projects that will be required to make the move a reality,” said Scarola. “We’re asking businesses who can help to please consider donating their services for things required to run the facility.”

Some of those needs include contracting services that would help the Sanctuary navigate the process of working with the county for permitting purposes, fencing, staff housing, infrastructure improvements, labor for building enclosures and installing other building structures, electrical contracting and veterinary services. The list goes on.

Scarola says the Sanctuary will also need kitchen equipment, including freezers and refrigerators. The volunteers feed the animals four times a week, a massive undertaking that requires hours of messy manual labor.

Many of the volunteers, including Smith, must regularly cut up dozens of large containers of raw chicken and meat to prepare the more than 3,000 pounds of meat per month the animals consume. That does not include the greens volunteers procure for the turtles and other animals who require roughage in their diets.

Property maintenance is also a considerable expense for the sanctuary.

Something as simple as a donation of a lawn mower makes a big difference in the operating budget, Scarola says. He hopes someone will come forward to donate a new workshop, such as a prefab structure at the new property to store equipment and supplies. Partners and donors will be able to sponsor enclosures and individual wolves among other opportunities to give. The sanctuary is a 501(c)3 organization.

Smith says she hopes that, with help from local universities and contractors, the new Shy Wolf facility can be entirely green. Solar power is an option the group is exploring.

The move cannot come fast enough for the staff and animals that have outgrown the current space. The new facility will enable the Sanctuary to rescue more unwanted animals and increase the common space, among other needs.

With the sheer number of volunteer hours and the cost to run the sanctuary, it’s tempting to ask a question that ruffles feathers among animal lovers: Is all of this worth it to save wolves?

Smith has an answer.

“Responsibility means the ability to respond, and when we acquire an animal, we’re supposed to be making a promise to care for that animal until the end of its life,” she said.

Too often, people who buy exotic animals for pets do not keep that promise, Smith continued. Irresponsible breeders sell wild animals that should never become pets. Buyers ignorant of the work required to care for these animals eventually abandon or mistreat them.

Places like Shy Wolf Sanctuary provide the chain of commitment that should exist. Smith says the Sanctuary’s mission is to provide a home for those animals that have been treated like garbage. Volunteers are quick to point out that animals don’t come as the “good” or “bad” creatures that fairy tales make them out to be.

“Wolves have gotten a bad rap in literature — Three Little Pigs and Red Riding Hood stories — but they really are amazing and have this strong connection with nature,” said Tom Hornyal, a recent volunteer at the sanctuary. “I am astonished at how much this organization can accomplish with so few people – you really can make an immediate impact.”

Smith imparted some of her hard-earned wisdom to her volunteers as they prepared the rest of the feed on this particular day.

“I do not want this message of saving these animals to die with me,” said Smith, who is also a great grandmother. “If just one person gets it and keeps the dream alive, we’ll have done our job.”

As if on cue, just as Smith completed cutting up her last bucket of raw chicken, one of the wolves began to howl. One by one the rest of the wolves joined in for a haunting chorus of baying as if they too, know a change is coming.

? 2010 Naples Daily News. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

PHOTOS: Shy Wolf Sanctuary hopes to turn new 20-acre site into better home for its animals in need

BBC – dot.life: Microsoft and Murdoch: Teaming up to bash Google?

This is dot.life – a blog about technology from BBC News.

Transcript: Health On The Hill – November 23, 2009 – Kaiser Health

Here to discuss what's ahead are Mary Agnes Carey of Kaiser Health News, Julie Rovner is joining us today with National Public Radio, and Eric Pianin, a long time Washington journalist. Welcome to you all. What are the major hurdles the …

Why a Deal With News Corp Would Make Bing the Trader Joe's of Search

A confession. Sometimes I use Bing.com. Stop looking at me that way. I said I use Bing.com. I didn't say …

2012

BBC – dot.life: Microsoft and Murdoch: Teaming up to bash Google?

This is dot.life – a blog about technology from BBC News.

Transcript: Health On The Hill – November 23, 2009 – Kaiser Health

Here to discuss what's ahead are Mary Agnes Carey of Kaiser Health News, Julie Rovner is joining us today with National Public Radio, and Eric Pianin, a long time Washington journalist. Welcome to you all. What are the major hurdles the …

Why a Deal With News Corp Would Make Bing the Trader Joe's of Search

A confession. Sometimes I use Bing.com. Stop looking at me that way. I said I use Bing.com. I didn't say …

Is Doomsday Coming? Perhaps, but Not in 2012

Published: November 16, 2009

NASA said last week that the world was not ending — at least anytime soon. Last year, CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, said the same thing, which I guess is good news for those of us who are habitually jittery. How often do you have a pair of such blue-ribbon scientific establishments assuring us that everything is fine?

On the other hand, it is kind of depressing if you were looking forward to taking a vacation from mortgage payments to finance one last blowout.

CERN’s pronouncements were intended to allay concerns that a black hole would be spit out of its new Large Hadron Collider and eat the Earth.

The announcements by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, in the form of several Web site postings and a video posted on YouTube, were in response to worries that the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012, when a 5,125-year cycle known as the Long Count in the Mayan calendar supposedly comes to a close.

The doomsday buzz reached a high point with the release of the new movie “2012,” directed by Roland Emmerich, who previously inflicted misery on the Earth from aliens and glaciers in “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow.”

In the movie, an alignment between the Sun and the center of the galaxy on Dec. 21, 2012, causes the Sun to go berserk with mighty storms on its surface that pour out huge numbers of the elusive subatomic particles known as neutrinos. Somehow the neutrinos transmute into other particles and heat up the Earth’s core. The Earth’s crust loses its moorings and begins to weaken and slide around. Los Angeles falls into the ocean; Yellowstone blows up, showering the continent with black ash. Tidal waves wash over the Himalayas, where the governments of the planet have secretly built a fleet of arks in which a select 400,000 people can ride out the storm.

But this is only one version of apocalypse out there. In other variations, a planet named Nibiru crashes into us or the Earth’s magnetic field flips.

There are hundreds of books devoted to 2012, and millions of Web sites, depending on what combination of “2012” and “doomsday” you type into Google.

All of it, astronomers say, is bunk.

“Most of what’s claimed for 2012 relies on wishful thinking, wild pseudoscientific folly, ignorance of astronomy and a level of paranoia worthy of ‘Night of the Living Dead,’ ” Ed Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory, in Los Angeles, and an expert on ancient astronomy, wrote in an article in the November issue of Sky & Telescope.

Personally, I have been in love with end-of-the-world stories since I started consuming science fiction as a disaffected child. Scaring the pants off the public has been pretty much the name of the game ever since Orson Welles broadcast “War of the Worlds,” a fake newscast about a Martian invasion of New Jersey, in 1938.

But the trend has gone too far, suggested David Morrison, an astronomer at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., who made the YouTube video and is one of the agency’s point people on the issue of Mayan prophecies of doom.

“I get angry at the way people are being manipulated and frightened to make money,” Dr. Morrison said. “There is no ethical right to frighten children to make a buck.”

Dr. Morrison said he had been getting about 20 letters and e-mail messages a day from people as far away as India scared out of their wits. In an e-mail message, he enclosed a sample that included one from a woman wondering if she should kill herself, her daughter and her unborn baby. Another came from a person pondering whether to put her dog to sleep to avoid suffering in 2012.

All of this reminded me of the kinds of letters I received last year about the putative black hole at CERN. That too was more science fiction than science fact, but apparently there is nothing like death to bring home the abstract realms of physics and astronomy. In such situations, when the Earth or the universe is trying to shrug you and your loved ones off this mortal plane, the cosmic does become personal.

Dr. Morrison said he did not blame the movie for all this, as much as the many other purveyors of the Mayan prediction, as well as the apparent failure of some people, reflected in so many arenas of our national life, to tell reality from fiction. But then, he said, “my doctorate is in astronomy, not psychology.”

In an e-mail exchange, Dr. Krupp said: “We are always uncertain about the future, and we always consume representations of it. We are always lured by the romance of the ancient past and by the exotic scale of the cosmos. When they combine, we are mesmerized.”

A NASA spokesman, Dwayne Brown, said the agency did not comment on movies, leaving that to movie critics. But when it comes to science, Mr. Brown said, “we felt it was prudent to provide a resource.”

If you want to worry, most scientists say, you should think about global climate change, rogue asteroids or nuclear war. But if speculation about ancient prophecies gets you going, here are some things Dr. Morrison and the others think you should know.

To begin with, astronomers agree, there is nothing special about the Sun and galactic center aligning in the sky. It happens every December with no physical consequences beyond the overconsumption of eggnog. And anyway, the Sun and the galactic center will not exactly coincide even in 2012.

If there were another planet out there heading our way, everybody could see it by now. As for those fierce solar storms, the next sunspot maximum will not happen until 2013, and will be on the mild side, astronomers now say.

Geological apocalypse is a better bet. There have been big earthquakes in California before and probably will be again. These quakes could destroy Los Angeles, as shown in the movie, and Yellowstone could erupt again with cataclysmic force sooner or later. We and our works are indeed fragile and temporary riders on the Earth. But in this case, “sooner or later” means hundreds of millions of years, and there would be plenty of warning.

The Mayans, who were good-enough astronomers and timekeepers to predict Venus’s position 500 years in the future, deserve better than this.

Mayan time was cyclic, and experts like Dr. Krupp and Anthony Aveni, an astronomer and anthropologist at Colgate University, say there is no evidence that the Mayans thought anything special would happen when the odometer rolled over on this Long Count in 2012. There are references in Mayan inscriptions to dates both before the beginning and the ending of the present Long Count, they say, just as your next birthday and April 15 loom beyond New Year’s Eve, on next year’s calendar.

So keep up those mortgage payments.

No matter how much time you spend at the website there are always things that you are going to miss out on. I was completely oblivious to the Meteor Crash Site on Kreludor when it occurred but once I found out about it I bookmarked the page and hit it several times a day. So far I haven't been able to determine if there is a specific time that is best. With some events like Coltzan's Shrine you can visit at certain times to try and improve your chances of getting an item or level increase.

When you arrive at the crash site you will be presented with one of a handful of images of the meteor; so far I have only had one option and that is to poke the meteor with a stick. You could choose to run away from it but that isn't much fun. Most of the time this is the result: “Meteors are funny like that. They just don't feel like company sometimes. Try again later” If you are lucky enough to get something from it you will see a message that reads: “The meteor has cracked open and a small object falls out.”

Food items include the following: “Spiced Apple Pie”, “Green Tea”, “Space Tots”, “Dirt Pie”, “Slime Sundae”, “Meteor Bites”, “Intergalactic Spiced Beans”, “Sugarbunny Surprise”, “Cherries Jubalee”, “Festering Coffee”, “Iceberg Sundae” and “Chicken Cordon Bleu”. I went a little crazy and started buying tons of the food items to stock up on so I can make a killing if they ever decide to change the items that the meteor gives out.

There are a few creatures that you can get from the meteor, so far I have only gotten a “Nedler” but the “Tencals”, “Rashpid” and “Mibblie” are also Petpets that you can get. You can find these for under 1,000 NP on the Shop Wizard if you want to get one for your Neopet. The “Rashpid” sells for a little more so I am assuming that this is one of the rarer items that the meteor gives out.

Common items that fall out of the meteor include “Balloons”, “Unstable Slime”, “Meteor Rock”, “Slime Covered Window”, “Attack On Kreludor”, “MechaBerry Bomb” and “Glowing Rock”. So far the only book that has been given out is the “Attack On Kreludor”; you can find these for under 200 NP on the Shop Wizard.

This was first released at the website in mid June of 2007 and there have been speculations that on the year anniversary there will be more options added to it. You can visit the crash site once a day and try your luck at getting something. Almost all of the items that have been given away at the crash have dropped significantly in price on the Shop Wizard so if you are a hoarder and like to stock up on things, check the list above and start shopping!

Where To Find The Crash:
www.neopets.com/moon/meteor.phtml

05. November 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: Space · Tags: , , ,

Google CEO Eric Schmidt envisions the <b>news</b> consumer of the future <b>…</b>

For all the bluster about Google as an enemy of the <b>news</b> industry, you might be surprised to learn that Eric Schmidt, the company's CEO, is kind of a.

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BrightCove:type='mini';titleid=48129677001;featuredName=null;playerName=null;rsslid=1753282621;rsspid=17823922001;configpid=1378342539;lineupCollapse='true';lineupName=null;stylesheet=null;numItems=5;startMinimized='false';width=500 …

Custom Sections Directory for Google <b>News</b>

Google <b>News</b> added a directory for custom sections and an easy way to create your own custom sections. Until now, the only way to add a section to Google <b>News</b> was to perform a search and click on "create custom section" at the bottom of …

A Black Hole Engine That Could Power Spaceships


Artificially generated black holes could provide us with the power to make inter-solar travel a possibility. New research shows how strapping a black hole to your starship might just give you the juice to get to Alpha Centauri.

Louis Crane and Shawn Westmoreland of Kansas State University propose a way to use black holes as fuel that is entirely within the bounds of physics and technology as we know them, but would take phenomenal amount of engineering.

The crux of their idea involves using using a laser to form a micro black hole, which could be used as an energy source. This would be a Schwarzschild, or non-rotating, black hole which outputs Hawking Radiation, and the smaller the black hole, the more energetic.

Of course, making a black hole isn't the world's most easy undertaking. It takes a huge amount of power to build one in the first place. To make one of these mini black holes, Crane and Westmoreland propose a 370km2 solar panel, at an orbit one million km from the surface of the sun, which, if perfectly efficient, would gather enough energy per year to make one black hole. This power would be fed to a spherically converging gamma laser, with a lasing mass of around 10^9 tonnes. However, after you make a few black holes, you can use them as a power source to make more.

According to the authors, a black hole to be used in space travel needs to meet five criteria:

1. has a long enough lifespan to be useful,
2. is powerful enough to accelerate itself up to a reasonable fraction of the speed of light in a reasonable amount of time,
3. is small enough that we can access the energy to make it,
4. is large enough that we can focus the energy to make it,
5. has mass comparable to a starship.

Fortunately, black holes have a sweet spot in terms of size, power and lifespan which is almost ideal. If you take a trip to Alpha Centauri, with an acceleration of 1g to the half way point, and then decelerate at 1g for the remainder of the journey, the trip takes a relativistic 3.5 years. A black hole that would survive the entire trip would have a radius of 0.9 attometers, would have a mass of 606,000 tonnes, and a power output of 160 petawatts. The lifespan of the black hole could be extended by feeding it mass, too.

For longer trips, you could use larger but weaker holes, and smaller and more powerful ones for short trips.

Getting the black hole to act as a power source also requires a bit of work. One potential method involves placing the hole at the focal point of a parabolic reflector attached to the ship, creating forward thrust. A slightly easier, but less efficient method would involve simply absorbing all the gamma radiation heading towards the fore of the ship, and let the rest shoot out the back to push you onwards.

Of course, there are potential problems with Crane and Westmoreland's ideas. According to Govind Menon, Professor of Physics at Troy University, most views on extracting energy from black holes involve using ones that rotate. “With non-rotating black holes, this is a very difficult thing…we typically look for energy almost exclusively from rotating black holes. Schwarzschild black holes do not radiate in an astrophysical, gamma ray burst point of view. It is not clear if Hawking radiation alone can power starships.” Menon adds that extracting energy from black holes is highly problematic. “Given [this type] of black hole, it is not clear to me how someone would go about extracting energy.”

Another issue is what to do with the black hole when it reaches the end of its life span, as they tend to explode. “Such an explosion is powerful by terrestrial standards, but not by astronomical standards”, say Crane and Westmoreland, so it's merely a matter of dropping the black hole around 1 AU away from anything too important, and letting it detonate.

With a set of four machines: black hole generator, black hole drive, power plant, and a self perpetuating black hole powered black hole generator, the potential is enormous. As Crane and Westmoreland say:

A civilization equipped with our four machine tool set would be almost unimaginably energy rich. It could settle the galaxy at will.

[googletranslate("A Black Hole Engine That Could Power Spaceships


Artificially generated black holes could provide us with the power to make inter-solar travel a possibility. New research shows how strapping a black hole to your starship might just give you the juice to get to Alpha Centauri.

Louis Crane and Shawn Westmoreland of Kansas State University propose a way to use black holes as fuel that is entirely within the bounds of physics and technology as we know them, but would take phenomenal amount of engineering.

The crux of their idea involves using using a laser to form a micro black hole, which could be used as an energy source. This would be a Schwarzschild, or non-rotating, black hole which outputs Hawking Radiation, and the smaller the black hole, the more energetic.

Of course, making a black hole isn't the world's most easy undertaking. It takes a huge amount of power to build one in the first place. To make one of these mini black holes, Crane and Westmoreland propose a 370km2 solar panel, at an orbit one million km from the surface of the sun, which, if perfectly efficient, would gather enough energy per year to make one black hole. This power would be fed to a spherically converging gamma laser, with a lasing mass of around 10^9 tonnes. However, after you make a few black holes, you can use them as a power source to make more.

According to the authors, a black hole to be used in space travel needs to meet five criteria:

1. has a long enough lifespan to be useful,
2. is powerful enough to accelerate itself up to a reasonable fraction of the speed of light in a reasonable amount of time,
3. is small enough that we can access the energy to make it,
4. is large enough that we can focus the energy to make it,
5. has mass comparable to a starship.

Fortunately, black holes have a sweet spot in terms of size, power and lifespan which is almost ideal. If you take a trip to Alpha Centauri, with an acceleration of 1g to the half way point, and then decelerate at 1g for the remainder of the journey, the trip takes a relativistic 3.5 years. A black hole that would survive the entire trip would have a radius of 0.9 attometers, would have a mass of 606,000 tonnes, and a power output of 160 petawatts. The lifespan of the black hole could be extended by feeding it mass, too.

For longer trips, you could use larger but weaker holes, and smaller and more powerful ones for short trips.

Getting the black hole to act as a power source also requires a bit of work. One potential method involves placing the hole at the focal point of a parabolic reflector attached to the ship, creating forward thrust. A slightly easier, but less efficient method would involve simply absorbing all the gamma radiation heading towards the fore of the ship, and let the rest shoot out the back to push you onwards.

Of course, there are potential problems with Crane and Westmoreland's ideas. According to Govind Menon, Professor of Physics at Troy University, most views on extracting energy from black holes involve using ones that rotate. "With non-rotating black holes, this is a very difficult thing...we typically look for energy almost exclusively from rotating black holes. Schwarzschild black holes do not radiate in an astrophysical, gamma ray burst point of view. It is not clear if Hawking radiation alone can power starships." Menon adds that extracting energy from black holes is highly problematic. "Given [this type] of black hole, it is not clear to me how someone would go about extracting energy.”

Another issue is what to do with the black hole when it reaches the end of its life span, as they tend to explode. “Such an explosion is powerful by terrestrial standards, but not by astronomical standards”, say Crane and Westmoreland, so it's merely a matter of dropping the black hole around 1 AU away from anything too important, and letting it detonate.

With a set of four machines: black hole generator, black hole drive, power plant, and a self perpetuating black hole powered black hole generator, the potential is enormous. As Crane and Westmoreland say:

A civilization equipped with our four machine tool set would be almost unimaginably energy rich. It could settle the galaxy at will.”,'en','fr')]