zoom South Korea’s Hyundai Mipo Dockyard (HMD) has been awarded a $330.5 million contract to build ten product carriers for a Marshall Islands-based shipper.The deal, announced yesterday on the Korea Exchange, didn’t reveal many details on the vessel particulars and delivery dates. But one thing is for sure, steel cutting ceremony for the first vessel is scheduled to take place on May 7th 2014.Hyundai Mipo, founded in 1975, entered into the newbuilding market in 1996, and has since specialized in the construction of medium-sized vessels of the highest quality. The shipyard was ranked in the world as the leading yard in PC (Product Carrier) segment with the market share of 50%, delivers about 70 new vessels every year. World Maritime News Staff, April 9, 2014
24Oct
HALIFAX – For Adrienne Carter, it still seems like yesterday that her phone rang in the middle of the night, waking her to an unimaginable horror playing out far from her New Jersey home.The 2 a.m. call came from her father in Baton Rouge, La., who had hours earlier driven her sister, brother in law and their young son to the airport to board a plane for Europe where the young couple was excited to introduce their baby boy to his French grandparents.Carter immediately turned on her TV to find early reports of a plane – Swissair Flight 111 – having gone down off Nova Scotia with little prospect that any of the 229 people on board could have survived.Carter says she knew almost instantly that her sister, Karen Maillet, her cherished nephew, Robert, and his father, Denis Maillet, were among those who died on that fateful night 20 years ago.“It created a hole and time-stamped a mark on my life’s timeline,” she said in an email as she reflected on the 20th anniversary of her sister’s death on Sept. 2, 1998.“(It’s) as if time stood still in that instant and part of me will forever be in that moment.”Carter said she will be getting together with her elderly parents in Baton Rouge this Sunday to mark the anniversary of the crash off Peggy’s Cove, where the jetliner plunged into the water after an electrical fire spread through the cockpit, causing a catastrophic failure.A service is also being held Sunday at a Swissair memorial in Bayswater, N.S., where remains of many of those lost in the accident are interred.Carter says she and her family would have liked to attend both the service and a gathering at a local community centre, but decided it was best to be at the side of her parents, who are both turning 90 in the coming days.“All of us kids had thought about being there. But for me, I’ve never left there … a piece will forever be at Peggy’s Cove,” she wrote. “I am sure the family will gather around them on Sunday with heavy hearts, but not whole hearts … and the missing parts will always be at Peggy’s Cove.”Claire Mortimer, who lost her father, John, and stepmother, Hilda, in the crash, helped organize the service that will include readings from religious leaders, songs and poems from a book written by a Nova Scotia woman about the disaster.She makes regular visits to the area from her home in Maine and says the stunning ocean vista that sits as a backdrop to the granite memorial still provides a degree of comfort for her, years after her father perished in the crash as he and his wife headed to southern France for a vacation.“That is really the only grave I have to visit,” she said in an interview Friday. “It’s right next to the ocean where the plane went down, I mean, it’s very significant. But it’s also very beautiful and it’s a place that he would have loved.”Mortimer also said she will share her concerns about the legacy of the crash on Nova Scotians who raced to the waters off Peggy’s Cove in a futile bid to find survivors, discovering instead a grisly array of human remains and plane wreckage mixed with a mundane assortment of personal belongings.She said she worries that people who suffered from the psychological toll of recovering and sifting through body parts may not be getting the help they need.In particular, some of the 200 divers who ventured 55 metres below the ocean surface found themselves in a macabre world of shattered fuselage and human remains.“I want to express how much I appreciate that our loss is still recognized, but I actually feel like the underlying, unspoken reason why this is so important to recognize every year is because of how deeply it has affected the people in these communities,” she said.“I consider them to be victims of Swissair the same as my father was.”Mortimer says she has heard of two suicides by people who were involved in the recovery effort and is hoping to provide expertise to counsellors and medical professionals who may be able to reach out to those still needing help.Carter too said she has an enduring respect for the kindness locals displayed and their efforts to salvage what they could, and she remains in touch with some who helped. After travelling to Halifax with her siblings soon after the crash, she said she was even able to find her sister’s passport and one of baby Robert’s toys amongst the thousands of recovered items.Vic Gerden led the investigation for the Transportation Safety Board, in what would become one of the costliest and most complicated probes in the history of aviation disasters.In 2003, he released a 337-page report that concluded the fire started when an arcing wire ignited a flammable insulation covering, or MPET, in the ceiling. The report included 23 recommendations on everything from flight recorders and material flammability to in-flight firefighting and what pilots should do if they smell smoke.In a statement this week, Gerden said 20 of those have led to improved safety measures on planes. “Perhaps the most significant change is that certain flammable materials such as MPET are no longer used in aircraft, reducing the risk of in-flight fires.”Air crew are also now trained to “quickly start planning for immediate landing until they are assured there is no fire threat to the aircraft or occupants,” when smoke is detected.– Follow @alison_auld on Twitter
(Ryan Arcand in Edmonton. Photo: Brandi Morin)Brandi Morin APTN National NewsEDMONTON — He was sitting on a bench at a bus stop near downtown Edmonton waiting to catch a ride to the cathedral where he pan handles every day.It’s before noon and Ryan Arcand already reeks of booze. He’s been sipping since early morning to maintain the buzz of his addiction.Dressed in dirty, unmatched clothes and a blue down jacket two sizes too big, wayward eyes of desperation shine out past his disheveled black hair.“It’s been terrible,” he says. “Things have not been kosher.”Just a week ago he got out of jail for a mix of petty crimes that added up enough to give him a warm place to stay and three hot meals a day for the last 6 months.The worn paper hospital band on his wrist wears like a permanent bracelet.The hospital is a familiar place that he visits on a regular basis, for various reasons. Sometimes he fakes being ill to have a warm place to sleep for a night or two, sometimes he’s experiencing genuine mental breakdowns or seeking treatment for bruising and stitches from drunken falls.It’s been a year and a half since a video of him playing on an outdoor piano, a haunting melody that he wrote went viral. Earning him the nickname “the Homeless Piano Man,” Arcand’s music was heard around the world making him instantly internet famous.His song, “The Beginning,” inspired millions, many who held high hopes of salvation for the phenomenal talent possessed by a man that seemed to have appeared out of the shadows.But he had always been in the shadows, before most people just passed him by. He’s spent most of his life on the streets. In fact he’s never really had a place to call home. Raised in foster care, until he ran away at age 13.Looking away for a few moments, he says it’s been about a month since he’s played piano. His fingers are “tipsy” lately.“I’ve been drinking. It’s terrible…I don’t know what to do anymore.”For a moment his eyes light up and a gummy smile emerges at the prospect of heading to the church to play his song, “The one that made me famous!”He said he’s always had hope in God and believes God gave him the gift to play music. But lately his hope has been dwindling. He keeps repeating, “I don’t know what to do anymore.”“It’s (my music) is a broken dream. A dream that could’ve been…There’s no more hope out there for me, to be honest.”He’s tried all the programs offered by the system, some many times over.But the cycle of life between jail and the streets is hard to break. It’s one that he’s grown used to. Now at 44 he doesn’t know any other way of living and not sure he could ever make the transition to a “normal” way of living, he said.But he believes he’s still got a purpose even if he’s living it out on the streets.People who have heard his music, which evokes pain and healing “emotion,” he said, are helping him and he’s helping them.“I believe that people who listen to me… even though it hurts, but in the long run people listening to the music – they wonder ‘who is this guy?’ And I kind of feel unauthorized. But I feel good that I have given back to people, because I feel that I owe people.”Rubbing his hands together like an excited child about to devour a sweet treat coupled with a beaming grin, Arcand eagerly slides his fingers across the polished black piano in the church foyer. A few passersby’s recognize the alluring melody he plays and stop to take videos and pictures with him.An hour later he heads back out to the comfort of the streets and back into obscurity.bmorin@aptn.ca
According to a report in Australia’s Manufacturers’ Monthly, Peruvian lubricants manufacturer, Vistony, will establish its Australia and New Zealand headquarters in Geelong, Victoria, with sights set on beginning operations in early 2019. Vistony supplies oils, lubricants and greases for the industrial, automotive and mining sectors globally, with branches across Latin America, the United States, India and Spain.The company’s operations in Australia and New Zealand will begin early next year following the construction of the new facility in Norlane, Geelong, where it will focus on provisioning sales and marketing for its products in these markets. Vistony’s Founder and chairman, Oswaldo Hidalgo, said he welcomed the efforts of the Victorian government in supporting the company.“The support of the Victorian Government was instrumental to our decision of establishing Vistony’s Australia and New Zealand Headquarters in Victoria,” Hidalgo said. The Victorian government recently established an office in Santiago to support and increase trade, education and investment activities between Victoria and the Latin America region.State industry and employment minister, Ben Carroll, said that Vistony’s move to set up its Geelong facility reflected Victoria’s status as an attractive investment destination for Latin American companies in the manufacturing, mining, technologies and agricultural industries. “Victoria is a global leader in manufacturing and this investment from Vistony cements that position,” Carroll said. “We’ll always back manufacturing because it creates local jobs and boosts our economy.”
A 36-YEAR-OLD MAN has been extradited from Amsterdam to Ireland in connection with a body found in a Meath field more than two years ago.Gardaí confirmed that the man was extradited from Netherlands last night on foot of a European Arrest Warrant.The man is due to appear before the Courts of Criminal Justice this morning over the murder of Ciaran Noonan.The body of 29-year-old Ciaran Noonan from Dublin was found in Trim in Meath on 4 November 2011, sixteen days after he had been bundled into a car and abducted in the East Wall area of Dublin city.Read: ‘Please give him back’: Abducted man’s mother begs for his return >
Eurozone finance ministers are considering allowing Athens to buy back up to 40 billion euros of its own bonds at a discount as one of a number of measures to cut Greek debt to 120 percent of GDP within the next eight years. Under a proposal discussed by ministers, Greece would offer private-sector bondholders around 30 cents for every euro of Greek debt they hold, allowing Athens to pay down some of its vast outstanding obligations, a senior official involved in the discussions told Reuters. Greek debt is trading at 20-30 cents on the euro depending on its maturity, but is likely to strengthen if the buy-back plan is confirmed, meaning any offer will have diminishing marginal returns. The ministers, who failed to reach agreement last week, have also discussed granting Greece a 10-year moratorium on paying interest on about 130 billion euros of loans from the euro zone’s emergency fund, which could save Athens around 44 billion euros over a decade, the official said. There is also the possibility of reducing the interest rate on loans made by euro zone countries directly to Greece in 2010, from 1.5 percent to just 0.25 percent, although the official said Germany was opposed to such a step. The range of options on the table underscored the determination to find a solution to Greece’s debt problems nearly three years after they were first exposed, leading to contagion across the eurozone. However, while some such as the debt buy-back have significant backing, others face opposition from one or more euro zone countries and the official emphasised that the ground could shift rapidly. As well as the 17 euro zone finance ministers, the meeting was attended by IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde and by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi. The IMF, which has participated with the euro zone in two bailouts of Greece since 2010, has said that Greek debt must be reduced to 120 percent of GDP by 2020 if it is to be sustainable in the long-run. If that isn’t possible, there is a risk that the IMF will have to withdraw from efforts to stabilise Greece. At a meeting a week ago, there were sharp differences between the EU and IMF, with Juncker saying Greek debt should be cut to that target only by 2022. Lagarde said that would be unacceptable. On Tuesday, officials began by agreeing that the aim was to cut the debt to 120 percent by 2020, the senior official told Reuters. But it remains uncertain just what mix of measures will achieve that goal. Under current projections, Greek debt is expected to be about 145 percent in eight years’ time, meaning measures totalling around 25 percentage points of GDP, or 50 billion euros, are needed to get Greece back on track. Pressure for the euro zone to come up with a solution is high not just because Greece is running out of money and financial markets want a dependable solution, but because Greece has taken virtually all the steps demanded of it to cut spending, raise taxes and overhaul its economy. Source: Kathimerini Facebook Twitter: @NeosKosmos Instagram
Cold and dry. That about sums it up so far this month and we can expect more of the same this week. OK, one small asterisk in that statement. It appears we may have a weather system later on Wednesday that may bring the greatest amount of rainfall so far this month. Maybe between a tenth and a quarter-inch of rain if it holds together. And maybe some light snow in the Columbia River Gorge and east county. The weak weather system that moved through over the weekend brought just a few hundredths of an inch along with a few flurries.Phil Delany above Dole Valley had about a quarter-inch of snow late Sunday evening as snow showers wandered westward from the Gorge. And speaking of the Gorge, blustery east winds were present near the west end of the Gorge and should be Tuesday, somewhat promising another dry day.Officially, Vancouver has recorded only 0.04 of an inch of rain this month, about two-and-a-third inches below normal. The average mean temperature is nearly six degrees below average, making this one of the coldest Decembers in the record books. And all of this without any arctic air settled in over us. Maybe things will change next week to a more typical December pattern, with rain and mountain snows like we are thinking; but some forecast models say wait a minute, a bout of rain or two then back to the same old thing. Time will tell so stay tuned.With the clear skies at sunset Monday evening and light winds in much of Clark County, I would think by early Tuesday morning many areas would dip to 20 degrees, maybe even some teens in the outlying locations. The dew point was only 20 degrees at 5 p.m. Monday which is an indicator of just how dry the air is. An old predictor of the overnight low says that if you take the dew point reading at 9 p.m. that will pretty much be the overnight low. Of course this applies only on clear nights and locations out of the wind.For those of you in east county getting a drift of east winds, you would be warmer — although probably feeling colder with the wind chill.
The two-wheeler enthusiasts in the country may have to wait even longer to get to see the much awaited Bajaj’s SS400 and CS400 Pulsars on Indian roads, as a new report reveals that the bike would make its way to the market only in 2015.The Bajaj’s two brilliant creations which took the two-wheeler lovers in the country by surprise at the Delhi Auto Expo have been anticipated for the launch in the country quite some time now. Although the maker of the SS400 and CS400 Pulsars keep mum on the matter, the folks at Motoroids claim that they have got to know the launch dates of the two bikes in India.The Super Sport 400 Pulsar (SS400) would be the first to make its entry to the market, followed by the Cruiser Sport 400 (CS400). While the SS400 is likely to make its India debut around October 2015 and the arrival of CS400 is expected only around April 2016, according to the report.Flaunting stylish design, the CS400 and SS400 Pulsars follow the design philosophy of the KTM Duke 390. Both bikes come with 375cc liquid-cooled, 4-valve triple spark engine under the hood and is mated to a six-speed transmission with fuel injection. Pulsar SS400 shares similarities with the earlier rumoured Pulsar 375 and is expected to come with premium features like split seat, mudguard-mounted taillight and clip-on handle bars. The bikes also house anti-lock braking systems (ABS).Although the costs of the bikes are yet to be known, rumours are rife that the Pulsar SS400 is likely to fall in the price range of 1.9 – 2.1 lakh and CS400 is likely to come with a price tag of 1.7 – 1.85 lakh (ex-showroom). It is also believed that the Pune-based bike maker would position its two new bikes below the KTM 390 Duke.Picture credit: Wikimedia Commons(Edited by Anu James)
Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo address Christian pro-Israel summit Share This! Marc Bennetts News Share This! By: Marc Bennetts By: Marc Bennetts As Amazon burns, Vatican prepares for summit on region’s faith and sustainabilit … August 30, 2019 Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn ReddIt Email,MOSCOW (RNS) — Early one evening in May 2018, days before the annual parade celebrating the Soviet victory in World War II, a convoy of military trucks carrying long-range nuclear weapons trundled to a halt on the Russian capital’s ring road.As police officers stood guard, two Russian Orthodox priests wearing cassocks and holding Bibles climbed out of a vehicle and began sprinkling holy water on the stationary Topol and Yars intercontinental ballistic missiles.Since relations between Russia and the West plummeted after the Kremlin’s seizure of Crimea in 2014, such scenes have become common here. Priests have sanctified S-400 surface-to-air missiles, nuclear submarines, tanks and fighter jets. Several years ago, a priest in Russia’s far east explained that weapons, including nuclear missiles, were “perceived as a means of protection and salvation.”But the practice could soon be a thing of the past. Last month, a Russian Orthodox Church committee on ecclesiastical law recommended that clergy concentrate on blessing soldiers, rather than weapons.“One can talk about the blessing of a warrior on military duty in defense of the fatherland,” said Savva Tutunov, a bishop of the Moscow Patriarchate. “At the end of the corresponding ritual, the personal weapon is also blessed — precisely because it is connected to the individual person who is receiving the blessing. By the same reasoning, weapons of mass destruction should not be sanctified.”Not everyone agrees with the committee’s proposal, which still has to be approved by Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill, center, welcomes relics of St. Spyridon, bishop of Trimythous, from Corfu, Greece, during a service at the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow on Sept. 21, 2018. (Igor Palkin, Russian Orthodox Church Press Service via AP)Vsevolod Chaplin, an influential priest and former spokesman for the patriarch, told the Vzglyad newspaper that nuclear weapons were the country’s “guardian angels” and necessary to preserve “Orthodox civilization.”“Only nuclear weapons protect Russia from enslavement by the West,” Chaplin said.In any event, a ban on sanctifying weapons of mass destruction is unlikely to affect the intertwining of Russia’s armed forces — including its nuclear forces — with the Russian Orthodox Church under President Vladimir Putin.Patriarch Kirill has described the Kremlin’s military campaign in Syria as a “holy war,” while uniformed clerics embedded with the armed forces are being trained to drive combat vehicles and operate communication equipment.Some critics have likened the role of priests in the modern Russian military to that played by Soviet-era political officers, whose task was to root out dissenting views. Russia is also constructing a vast Main Cathedral of the Armed Forces near Moscow, whose steps will be made from melted-down tanks seized from the Nazis.The ban would constitute a signal change in the church’s official policy regarding Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Although the global Orthodox Church has condemned weapons of mass destruction, Patriarch Kirill has credited Russia’s nuclear capability with “preventing World War III” and ensuring Russia’s state sovereignty. The Russian Orthodox Church also consecrated the country’s nuclear arsenal during a service in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral in 2007.Russia’s nuclear arsenal also has its own patron saint — St. Seraphim, whose remains were discovered in 1991 in a disused monastery in Sarov, a small town in central Russia that was home to several key nuclear facilities in the Soviet era.Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, left, talks to President Vladimir Putin, right, during the Easter service in the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, Russia, on April 28, 2019. Orthodox Christians around the world celebrated Easter on April 28. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)“The Russian Orthodox Church has systematically and openly supported the Kremlin’s foreign policy gambits involving nuclear weapons,” wrote author Dmitry Adamsky in his recently published book, “Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy: Religion, Politics, and Strategy.” “At a time of economic austerity, it supports the Kremlin’s national security course and legitimizes budget allocations to the defense sector.”In exchange for its support, Adamsky wrote, the church had received a boost to its “social and political influence.”Putin has memorably described Orthodox Christianity and nuclear weapons as “twin elements of Russia’s domestic and foreign security.” He has also used religious terms to discuss the nightmare scenario of nuclear war.“An aggressor should know that vengeance is inevitable, that he will be annihilated. Whereas we would become the victims of their aggression, and as martyrs, will go to heaven — they will just end up dead, because they won’t even have time to repent,” he said last year.Ideas such as these have been melded into a radical ideology described as “Atomic Orthodoxy” by Yegor Kholmogorov, a nationalist writer.“To remain Orthodox, Russia must be a strong nuclear power, and to remain a strong nuclear power, Russia must be Orthodox,” Kholmogorov wrote.Kholmogorov’s ideology was never officially approved by Patriarch Kirill, but it has gained a degree of popularity in recent years among radical Orthodox groups.“I was myself, to some extent, a medium for such ideas,” Dmitry Tsorionov, the former head of a radical Orthodox Christian movement called God’s Will that sometimes clashed with anti-Kremlin activists. “It was not uncommon to see how church functionaries openly flirted with these toxic ideas.”Tsorionov, who is better known by his pseudonym, Enteo, said he broke with militant Orthodox ideology when he witnessed how young Russian men took up arms and voluntarily headed to eastern Ukraine to fight “under the banner of Christ” after the Kremlin’s support for separatist forces there.“It was only then that I finally realized what the blessing of military hardware leads to,” Tsorionov said. 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Instagram apostasy stirs controversy over Christian ‘influencers’ August 30, 2019 Catholicism Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn ReddIt Email Cancel replyYou must be logged in to post a comment.,‘Unmatched wickedness’: Reports allege child separation, organ harvesting against … Photos of the Week August 30, 2019 Share This! Marc Bennetts,Add Comment Click here to post a comment Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn ReddIt Email Tagsfaith and politics homepage featured military nuclear arms Russia Russian Orthodox Church Top Story Vladimir Putin,You may also like Share This! By: Marc Bennetts
Photo Laura Isensee | Houston Public MediaOther bus arrives at Channelview High School after crash.The Houston family of a bus driver who died when his charter bus veered off an Alabama interstate with dozens of students aboard says it’s unlikely he fell asleep.Alisa Louis said Wednesday that her 65-year-old husband, Harry Caligone, had made the spring break trip to Disney World for years. This year, he had been driving students from Channelview High School near Houston.About three dozen students and adults went to hospitals after the accident, and nine remained hospitalized Wednesday. Caligone was the only person killed.Caligone’s son, Harrison Guy, told the Houston Chronicle that his father was a responsible driver who wouldn’t continue driving if sleepy.Investigators say the accident happened early Tuesday as Caligone drove to meet a relief driver less than an hour away in Mobil, Alabama. Share
Stay on target We’ve gone almost an entire console generation without a new Mega Man game. Thankfully, Capcom is about to release a proper mainline sequel in the form of Mega Man 11. This entry takes the classic Mega Man formula fans love and updates it for the 21st century. It’s exactly the game the franchise and fans deserve. Along with the recently announced Resident Evil 2 Remake, Mega Man 11 is another sign Capcom is good again.At this year’s E3, I went hands-on with Mega Man 11. Though I definitely got my butt handed to me even on “Casual” difficulty, I had a great time playing. From gameplay to graphics, everything about this game is on point. This is exactly the type of experience that Mighty No. 9 failed to deliver. Like I said in my hands-on preview, I consider Mega Man 11 this year’s Sonic Mania. It scratches all of the right nostalgic itches while bringing something new to the table. It’s awesome.In addition to hands-on time, I also had the opportunity to speak with Mega Man 11 producer Kazuhiro Tsuchiya and director Koji Oda at E3. We discussed the game’s new features and art style, how difficulty was balanced for different types of gamers, and why Mega Man continues to be one of gaming’s most beloved and iconic characters.Mega Man 11 has a very different art style from previous games in the series. Why did you decide to go with this new art style?Koji Oda: It has been a while since we’ve had a brand-new mainline Mega Man title. If you look at the previous numbered titles — Mega Man 9 and 10 — they went back to that classic 8-bit look. I felt that with such a long absence, it wouldn’t be right to go with that look again.On top of that, I felt like it wouldn’t be impactful. It would almost be like a curveball. So I felt the best way to approach this was to take a look at the modern hardware, PS4 and Xbox One, and see what the hardware is capable of. [We tried] to make a game that has the visual integrity that really fits the game industry nowadays.What new mechanics is Mega Man 11 introducing to the series?Oda: We have a brand-new system called the Double Gear system. When we were thinking of designing a new component to the game, I would take a look at a lot of YouTube videos and see how players played the games. What I found was, it started to lean very heavily towards long-time fans, die-hard fans, who were very very good at playing through the games. I felt like that was making it difficult for people who are trying it out for the first time. I wanted to make a system that made the game feel good even if you weren’t perfect at it.The Double Gear system is implemented in a way where veterans can enjoy the classic gameplay without detracting from it. It also offers brand-new fans a way to overcome challenges they might not have been able to overcome in the past.Was it difficult to marry the new mechanics with those that Mega Man fans know?Oda: I strongly feel the classic gameplay is very much complete. It’s not something I felt needed altering. We definitely didn’t need to fix something that’s not broken. It wasn’t so much about mixing it together but offering a new mechanic that emphasized the standard gameplay. It embellishes the gameplay and adds to it in a way that wouldn’t detract from [the core gameplay].Mega Man 11 is no longer simply two-dimensional, it’s 2.5D. What does this new dimension add to the gameplay that wasn’t possible before? Does it change the gameplay at all?Oda: I think the change between 2D and 2.5D is that, not only are there better visuals, but it allows us to offer more on the screen, it’s a little more fleshed out. I think the difference in visuals can add on to what was already there.Because of the higher visual fidelity, we did implement more animations. I feel like I probably made some of my staff members go through some pain as a result. But there’s definitely a lot of different subtle animations that are giving more life to the characters than ever before.Do the new animations change the classic gameplay?Oda: It doesn’t change the fundamental gameplay. I would say more accurately that it’s taking the classic tried and true gameplay and applying it fittingly to modern consoles.On the subject of difficulty, is this a game that both fans who want a challenge and who want an easier experience can enjoy? Is there any sort of balance between accessibility and challenge?Oda: In terms of difficulty we are aware there is a lot of different people coming with different backgrounds. We’ve created four different difficulty settings and fine-tuned them in a way we felt fit the type of gamer coming into the franchise.The easiest difficulty is very much for players who haven’t touched a 2D platforming game. It’s for those who are unfamiliar with Mega Man. This is the right difficulty for them. The next difficulty level is for people who have played Mega Man in the past, but perhaps they’ve walked away from it. It has been a long time and they may want a refresher course. The next difficulty level is very much for players who’ve been following the franchise for a while and are looking forward to [a new game]. Then you have the highest difficulty level, which is for players who want a challenge.We are very conscious of the fact that not everyone is coming with the same level of knowledge of the franchise. We made sure to address that as well.Will the game have any post-launch content coming in the coming months?Kazuhiro Tsuchiya: I can’t talk about anything we haven’t said already. What I can say is we’re making the game so that hopefully fans can enjoy it for a long period of time.Mega Man has been a beloved character for over 30 years. Why do you think he is still relevant today?Tsuchiya: It’s a difficult question that I don’t think there’s a simple answer to. For me, I think the fact that Mega Man’s design is very simple and charismatic. It’s not too complex. The gameplay itself I think it’s fine-tuned and balanced in a way that it allows people to not fight against the game itself. They really get to understand the game and get a sense of satisfaction when they get better playing at it. I think that those are factors that have allowed it to stay relevant for so many years. Let us know what you like about Geek by taking our survey.
Simon Belmont, King K. Rool, and Dead Luigi Join Smash Bros. UltimateAn Interview with Jump Force Producer Koji Nakajima 
But in the national security community in Washington, the blasts sparked panic. When intelligence officials briefed Stephen Lukasik, the director of the Pentagon’s secretive Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, he had an immediate reaction: “Holy shit. This is dangerous.”The Soviet Union, it turns out, had for more than a decade been studying ways to use nuclear weapons to create massive canals to reroute water for irrigation, and the plan involved hundreds of nuclear detonations. “The Soviets wanted to change the direction of some rivers in Russia,” Lukasik, now 87 years old, told me recently in an interview. “They flow north where they didn’t do any good for them and they wanted to turn them around so they would flow south.”The Pentagon didn’t particularly care which way rivers ran in the Soviet Union, but it cared about how this ambitious act of geoengineering, which would affect waters flowing into the Arctic Ocean, could potentially alter the world’s climate. Lukasik decided that Darpa needed to start a climate research program that could come up with ways to model the effects. The name of this climate program, highly classified at the time, was Nile Blue. At first glance, Darpa might have seemed like an odd place to study climate change. The agency was created in 1958 as a response to the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik, to help the United States get into space. But in those years, Darpa was also deeply involved in nuclear issues. It had created an extensive monitoring system precisely to tip off the Pentagon to secret tests like the Soviet effort in 1971.That same year, John Perry, a young Air Force officer, got an unexpected question from an official at Darpa (at the time called just ARPA; the D for “defense” was added in 1972.) “We need a program manager for this program we have. Would you like to come to Washington?” the Darpa official asked Perry. For Perry, a meteorologist by training, it wasn’t a hard decision, even if he didn’t know exactly what the job entailed. He soon found himself at Darpa’s headquarters in northern Virginia, where he was put in charge of the mysteriously named Nile Blue. One of the first things he decided to do was get rid of the secrecy. Even if the concerns about Soviet nuclear tests needed to be kept quiet, research on climate modeling could be done in the open. Keeping the program classified, particularly during the Vietnam War, would only hurt Darpa’s ability to work with academic scientists, he argued.The secrecy “did throw sort of a miasma over the program,” Perry recalled, noting there were rumors that Darpa was involved in weather-altering research. “In fact, I had a visit from a guy from the arms control office in the State Department who came over, armed with top-secret clearances and what-have-you, to find out what nefarious things we were doing. He was very disappointed to find out that there weren’t any.” “Washington was the not the Midwest or Vietnam, so I said, ‘Sure.’” Perry recalled answering. “I’ll discover later what the hell this thing is.” Once the program was declassified, the next step was finding scientists to do the necessary studies. Perry found himself in charge of $3 million in funding, a sizable sum in the early 1970s, and his mandate was about to expand.Soon after starting the research program, he was summoned to the director’s office to meet with Lukasik and Eric Willis, who directed Darpa’s nuclear monitoring program. Willis, who had been a student of Willard Libby, the inventor of radiocarbon dating, was interested in taking a historical look at climate.Willis “took the position that the climate research program really didn’t make any sense unless you had good information on past climates to be able to do the verification models,” Perry recalled. “He thought there should be an element of past climate research in there.”Perry knew nothing about this topic, so he nodded and smiled before walking out of the director’s office with a new charge to spend $400,000 on paleoclimate research. “Essentially, I called up a few people and said, ‘Hi, you don’t know me, but I want to give you a lot of money,’” he said. Reck, who confirmed the anecdote in a recent interview with me, said her point was that scientists were confusing their models with reality. “They had a right to feel glad that they were doing it, they were contributing a lot, but it didn’t mean it was the real thing. It just wasn’t,” she said. “That is very much like masturbation: If they do it enough, it becomes the focus of what they want.”Yet Darpa’s work was critical to sparking those debates. The research program for the first time was drawing together modelers, paleo-climatologists, radiation experts, and meteorologists. The program created an interdisciplinary field, according to Warren Wiscombe, who credits the agency for transforming him from an applied mathematician into a climate scientist in the 1970s. “All of the sciences then that later contributed to climate science were very separate and they had brick walls between them,” he said. “They were what we call stovepiped now.”As Darpa was building up its Nile Blue program, another government effort that would alter the course of climate research was taking place behind the scenes. In December 1972, George J. Kukla, of Columbia University, and R.K. Matthews, of Brown, wrote to President Richard Nixon expressing their concerns about “a global deterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experience by civilized mankind.”Their concern was not global warming, but cooling, which they feared could lower food production and increase extreme weather. It was a preliminary result (and one that would later be used by critics of climate change in a simplistic fashion to argue that climate predictions were wrong). The letter caught the attention of Nixon, who ordered an interagency panel to look at the issue. The recommendation, according to William Sprigg, who helped set up the national climate program, was “that the government should have some kind of a program, a plan that would set goals and determine who should be doing what.” The heart of the Nile Blue program was computational modeling. Darpa may not have had experience with meteorology, but it did have plenty of experience with computers. Just two years earlier, the agency’s computer science office had established the first nodes of ARPANET, the network that would later become the internet. Darpa was also in charge of the Illiac IV, one of the world’s first supercomputers.Darpa’s climate work helped justify the continuation of Illiac IV, whose costs were attracting scrutiny. “They needed to say that its capability was being developed for some customers who could pay for it,” Perry said. “Climate modeling is a very good customer for computer science.” (Critically, Darpa’s funding for modeling rescued the RAND Corporation’s work on climate simulation, which the National Science Foundation was on the verge of canceling.)The modeling work had its critics. Perry recalled that Ruth Reck, an atmospheric scientist at General Motors, expressed early skepticism of Darpa-funded climate models. “Modeling is just like masturbation,” he recalled Reck telling some of the Darpa-funded scientists at a conference. “If you do it too much, you start thinking it’s the real thing.” This story originally appeared on Undark and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.On March 23, 1971, the Soviet Union set off three Hiroshima-scale nuclear blasts deep underground in a remote region some 1,000 miles east of Moscow, ripping a massive crater in the earth. The goal was to demonstrate that nuclear explosions could be used to dig a canal connecting two rivers, altering their direction and bringing water to dry areas for agriculture.The nuclear bombs, it turned out, weren’t that effective for building canals, though they did create an “atomic lake” in the crater formed by the blast. But the tests had another lasting consequence, all but forgotten until now: They set in motion the first US government research on climate change—a far-reaching project that has continued into this decade.On the surface, the reaction to the Soviet tests was somewhat muted. Western countries, including the United States, detected the explosions and lodged a protest alleging a violation of the Limited Test Ban Treaty. Moscow wouldn’t publicly acknowledge the tests for several years. In the end, the Soviets abandoned their grand plan to alter the course of rivers, but by the time Darpa finished its research in 1976, the foundation of climate research was firmly in place: a community of scientists dedicated to the issue, and a political atmosphere conducive to continuing the research. Darpa, whose mandate is for fixed-term research, ended its climate program, but the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration picked up the work, eventually leading to the establishment of the national climate program.Even scientists like Reck, who were critical of some of the early modeling work, said the research has showed clearly that climate change is real. “I stand with what I told John [Perry] years ago: ‘I really don’t think we know, I think we are far from understanding the climate,’” she told me. “That does not mean we should not curtail everything that we can to slow down the rate of change. I think we have to do that. I think it’s absolutely frivolous not to do that.”While the debates go on about the accuracy of climate models, the scientific consensus is that climate change is real, and much of the credit for establishing that consensus goes to Darpa—whose role has been largely forgotten, except by the scientists funded by the program and who went on to take leading positions in climate research.More than 40 years after the end of Nile Blue, former Darpa officials like Perry and Lukasik still get together for a monthly lunch, where they reminisce about their days at the pioneering agency. Lukasik recalls Perry telling him: “You know, Steve, the work started in Darpa and continued by me in the National Science Foundation became the foundation for all of the understanding of global warming.”
Odoo provides a rapid application development framework that’s particularly suited to building business applications. This type of application is usually concerned with keeping business records, centered around create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations. Not only does Odoo makes it easy to build this type of application, but it also provides rich components to create compelling user interfaces, such as kanban, calendar, and graph views. In this tutorial, we will create list, form, and search views, the basic building blocks for the user interface. This article is taken from the book Odoo 12 Development Essentials by Daniel Reis. This book will tecah you to build a business application from scratch by using Odoo 12. Technical requirements The minimal requirement is for you to have a modern web browser, such as Firefox, Chrome, or Edge. You may go a little further and use a packaged Odoo distribution to have it locally installed on your computer. For that, you only need an operating system such as Windows, macOS, Debian-based Linux (such as Ubuntu), or Red Hat-based Linux (such as Fedora). Windows, Debian, and Red Hat have installation packages available. Another option is to use Docker, available for all these systems and for macOS. In this article, we will mostly have point-and-click interaction with the user interface. You will find the code snippets used and a summary of the steps performed in the book’s code repository, under the ch01 folder. It’s important to note that Odoo databases are incompatible between Odoo major versions. If you run an Odoo 11 server against a database created for a previous major version of Odoo, it won’t work. Non-trivial migration work is needed before a database can be used with a later version of the product. The same is true for add-on modules: as a general rule, an add-on module developed for an Odoo major version will not work on other versions. When downloading a community module from the web, make sure it targets the Odoo version you are using. On the other hand, major releases (10.0, 11.0) are expected to receive frequent updates, but these should be mostly bug fixes. They are assured to be API-stable, meaning that model data structures and view element identifiers will remain stable. This is important because it means there will be no risk of custom modules breaking due to incompatible changes in the upstream core modules. Creating a new Model Models are the basic components for applications, providing the data structures and storage to be used. We will create the Model for To-do Items. It will have three fields: Description Is done? flag Work team partner list Model definitions are accessed in the Settings app, in the Technical | Database Structure | Models menu. To create a Model, follow these steps: Visit the Models menu, and click on the upper-left Create button. Fill in the new Model form with these values: Model Description: To-do Item Model: x_todo_item We should save it before we can properly add new fields to it. So, click on Save and then Edit it again. You can see that a few fields were automatically added. The ORM includes them in all Models, and they can be useful for audit purposes: The x_name (or Name) field is a title representing the record in lists or when it is referenced in other records. It makes sense to use it for the To-do Item title. You may edit it and change the Field Label to a more meaningful label description. Adding the Is Done? flag to the Model should be straightforward now. In the Fields list, click on Add a line, at the bottom of the list, to create a new field with these values: Field Name: x_is_done Field Label: Is Done? Field Type: boolean The new Fields form should look like this: Now, something a little more challenging is to add the Work Team selection. Not only it is a relation field, referring to a record in the res.partner Model, it also is a multiple-value selection field. In many frameworks, this is not a trivial task, but fortunately, that’s not the case in Odoo, because it supports many-to-many relations. This is the case because one to-do can have many people, and each person can participate in many to-do items. In the Fields list, click again on Add a line to create the new field: Field Name: x_work_team_ids Field Label: Work Team Field Type: many2many Object Relation: res.partner Domain: [(‘x_is_work_team’, ‘=’, True)] The many-to-many field has a few specific definitions—Relation Table, Column 1, and Column 2 fields. These are automatically filled out for you and the defaults are good for most cases, so we don’t need to worry about them now. The domain attribute is optional, but we used it so that only eligible work team members are selectable from the list. Otherwise, all partners would be available for selection. The Domain expression defines a filter for the records to be presented. It follows an Odoo-specific syntax—it is a list of triplets, where each triplet is a filter condition, indicating the Field Name to filter, the filter operator to use, and the value to filter against. Odoo has an interactive domain filter wizard that can be used as a helper to generate Domain expressions. You can use it at Settings | User Interface | User-defined Filters. Once a target Model is selected in the form, the Domain field will display an add filter button, which can be used to add filter conditions, and the text box below it will dynamically show the corresponding Domain expression code. Creating views We have created the To-do Items Model. Next, we will be creating the two essential views for it—a list (also called a tree) and a form. List views We will now create a list view: In Settings, navigate to Technical | User Interface | Views and create a new record with the following values: View Name: To-do List View View Type: Tree Model: x_todo_item This is how the View definition is expected to look like: In the Architecture tab, we should write XML with the view structure. Use the following XML code: The basic structure of a list view is quite simple—a element containing one or more elements for each of the columns to display in the list view. Form views Next, we will create the form view: Create another View record, using the following values: View Name: To-do Form View View Type: Form Model: x_todo_item If we don’t specify the View Type, it will be auto-detected from the view definition. In the Architecture tab, type the following XML code: The form view structure has a root element, containing elements such as , Here, we also chose a specific widget for the work team field, to be displayed as tag buttons instead of a list grid. We added the widget attribute to the Work Team field, to have the team members presented as button-like tags. By default, relational fields allow you to directly create a new record to be used in the relationship. This means that we are allowed to create new Partner directly from the Work Team field. But if we do so, they won’t have the Is Work Team? flag enabled, which can cause inconsistencies. For better user experience, we can have this flag set by default for these cases. This is done with the context attribute, used to pass session information to the next View, such as default values to be used. This will be discussed in detail in later chapters, and for now, we just need to know that it is a dictionary of key-value pairs. Values prefixed with default_ provide the default value for the corresponding field. So in our case, the expression needed to set a default value for the partner’s Is Work Team? flag is {‘default_x_is_work_team’: True}. That’s it. If we now try the To-Do menu option, and create a new item or open an existing one from the list, we will see the form we just added. Search views We can also make predefined filter and grouping options available, in the search box in the upper-right corner of the list view. Odoo considers these view elements also, and so they are defined in Views records, just like lists and forms are. As you may already know by now, Views can be edited either in the Settings | Technical | User Interface menu, or from the contextual Developer Tools menu. Let’s go for the latter now; navigate to the to-do list, click on the Developer Tools icon in the upper-right corner, and select Edit Search view from the available options: Since no search view is yet defined for the To-do Items Model, we will see an empty form, inviting us to create the first one. Fill in these values and save it: View Name: Some meaningful description, such as To-do Items Filter View Type: Search Model: x_todo_item Architecture: Add this XML code: If we now open the to-do list from the menu, so that it is reloaded, we will see that our predefined filter is now available from the Filters button below the search box. If we type Not Done inside the search box, it will also show a suggested selection. It would be nice to have this filter enabled by default and disable it when needed. Just like default field values, we can also use context to set default filters. When we click on the To-do menu option, it runs a Window Actions to open the To-do list view. This Window Actions can set a context value, signaling the Views to enable a search filter by default. Let’s try this: Click on the To-do menu option to go to the To-do list. Click on the Developer Tools icon and select the Edit Action option. This will open the Window Actions used to open the current Views. In the lower-right corner, there is a Filter section, where we have the Domain and Context fields. The Domain allows setting a fixed filter on the records shown, which can’t be removed by the user. We don’t want to use that. Instead, we want to enable the item_not_done filter created before by default, which can be deselected whenever the user wishes to. To enable a filter by default, add a context key with its name prefixed with search_default_, in this case {‘search_default_item_not_done’: True}. If we click on the To-do menu option now, we should see the Not Done filter enabled by default on the search box. In this article, we created create list, form, and search views, the basic building blocks for the user interface for our model. To learn more about Odoo development in depth, read our book Odoo 12 Development Essentials. Read Next “Everybody can benefit from adopting Odoo, whether you’re a small start-up or a giant tech company – An interview by Yenthe van Ginneken. Implement an effective CRM system in Odoo 11 [Tutorial] Handle Odoo application data with ORM API [Tutorial]
Embark on an unforgettable 13-day journey through three of Chile’s most contrasting landscapes with andBeyond. The adventure kicks off in the Lake District, where a breathtaking landscape of snow-capped volcanoes and ancient forests awaits. The journey then continues to the Atacama Desert, the driest, most desolate and arid in the world. The Andean Altiplano will surprise guests with its stark beauty.A visit to Chile wouldn’t be complete without exploring its flourishing Wine Country. Perfect climaticconditions of hot summers, cool coastal breezes and gentle rainfalls ensure bountiful grape harvests thatcreate delectable varieties, including Carménère, the emblematic grape of Chile. This introduction to Chile offers a range of activities for all to enjoy, combined with exceptional accommodation and authentic hospitality.Inclusions:Welcome and assistance service at all airportsAccommodation as per the itineraryAll transport in private vehicle unless otherwise mentioned (except Vira Vira)Administration fees – where applicableMuseum and park entrance fees12 nights’ accommodation at andBeyond partner properties mentioned in the itineraryEnjoy three complimentary nights – expect a 26% savingFull inclusive rate per person sharing 1 May – 30 September 2017: USD$7555*Terms and conditions apply
AddThis Sharing ButtonsShare to TwitterTwitterShare to FacebookFacebookShare to RedditRedditShare to 電子郵件Email by Jocelyn Noveck, The Associated Press Posted Feb 5, 2019 6:59 am PDT Review: Farhadi channels Agatha Christie in Spanish thriller There are few more seductive things to watch onscreen than a big, wine-soaked, multi-generational family wedding like the one that happens early in “Everybody Knows,” Asghar Farhadi’s new thriller set in a picturesque Spanish village.But as good as Farhadi is at portraying the infectious revelry binding a family together, he’s even better at exploring what happens when those binds start to fray. And they do, pretty fast. The wedding cake is barely cut before anguished cries ring out and smiles morph into concern and fear.“Everybody Knows” is not Farhadi’s first movie set outside his native Iran, but it’s in Spanish, a language he doesn’t speak. His chief interpreters here are Spanish cinema royalty: Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem. The combination of this high-wattage real-life couple, the sun-dappled scenery and the page-turning plot have led some to worry that Farhadi’s latest effort might be a bit less incisive or penetrating than his usual fare, which includes the Oscar-winning “The Salesman” and “A Separation.”But Farhadi is as adept as ever here in painting complex relationships tested by the most trying of circumstances. And while he may leave a few dimensions less than fully mined — the village’s class and economic tensions, for example — he’s created a hugely engrossing study of a family undergoing a terrifying crisis.We begin with the arrival of Laura (Cruz) in her home village for her sister’s wedding, her teenage daughter and young son in tow. Laura’s been living for years in Argentina with her architect husband Alejandro (Ricardo Darin), who has stayed home from the wedding for murky professional reasons,Laura arrives to a family bustling with preparations for the big day. It doesn’t take long for her to run into the jovial Paco (Bardem), a local vineyard owner who seems a de facto leader of the town. It also doesn’t take long for us to learn that long ago, Laura and Paco were lovers. Their names are even etched in the wall of the church bell tower. A local boy shows this to Irene (Carla Campra), Laura’s daughter: “Everybody knows,” he says.That tantalizing title will come to mind again and again, changing meaning as we go along. Sure, maybe everybody knows of Paco and Laura’s romance, but what else do they know? Are there deeper, darker secrets to emerge?In any case, the joyful wedding — sumptuously depicted with both intoxicating close-ups and overheard shots that render just a touch of menace — soon morphs into a rainy, endless night. Laura goes to check on her sleeping daughter and finds she’s vanished. On a bed, someone has left newspaper clippings about the kidnapping of an 8-year-old girl years ago.This is enough to send Laura into a panic. Then comes the text from her daughter’s captors: Don’t contact the police, or we’ll kill her.Whodunit? Suspicion falls on local youths, or vineyard workers. Inevitably, someone suggests: “Maybe it wasn’t a stranger.” Alejandro flies in from Argentina. Paco spearheads a desperate search. Laura sinks deeper into a tailspin; Cruz’s expressive face seems to become permanently tear-streaked.Gradually we learn about long-simmering tensions between Laura’s father and Paco, who once worked for the wealthy family, bought land at a steep discount and now operates a thriving vineyard. In one of the best scenes, Laura’s father erupts: “You owe your estate to me!” Paco’s zeal in searching for Irene inevitably arouses tension with his own wife, Bea (an excellent Barbara Lennie), who’s at first eager to help, but becomes frustrated at Paco’s seemingly divided loyalties.Meanwhile, time is running out. A huge ransom is demanded. Irene has asthma and is having trouble breathing, her captors warn. The family agonizes over going to the police. Even Alejandro falls under suspicion: “Do you trust your husband completely?” Paco (a captivating Bardem, always seemingly masking something) asks Laura.Of course, more secrets will emerge, including a whopper that you may see coming but maybe not, so numerous (and occasionally frustrating) are the red herrings along the way.And by the end of this film — perhaps not Farhadi’s most piercing work but surely a polished, textured, and very engaging effort — you’ll look at the final two faces on the screen as they sit down to talk, and will likely still be asking yourself: Did everybody know?“Everybody Knows,” a Focus Features release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America “for some language.” Running time: 132 minutes. Three stars out of four.___MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.___Follow Jocelyn Noveck on Twitter at http://twitter.com/JocelynNoveckAPJocelyn Noveck, The Associated Press This image released by Focus Features shows Javier Bardem, from left, Eduard Fernández, Ricardo DarÃn and Penélope Cruz in a scene from “Everbody Knows.” (Teresa Isasi/Focus Features via AP) 
By Constantinos HadjistassouAT FIRST glance the official announcement of the appraisal drilling results for the Aphrodite natural gas field may not be the best news to an economy experiencing a severe economic recession.Preliminary findings allude to a range of natural gas volumes of 3.6 trillion cubic feet (tcf) to 6 tcf (102 bcm to 170 bcm) with a gross mean of 5 tcf (142 bcm), less than earlier tests had suggested. Things though are not as bleak as they were portrayed.One may wonder though, why was the gas quantity originally overestimated?There are several possible reasons. We need only note that the reservoir resides at a water depth of about 1,600 m of seawater and a total depth of about 7,200 m.Not surprisingly, interpreting invisible findings is often a risky, costly and tedious business.In order to reach credible estimates, an offshore operator (such as Noble Energy) collects data using various techniques with the ultimate purpose of minimising uncertainties while understanding the characteristics of a hydrocarbons field as exhaustively as possible.For instance, data are collected using geophysical methods, such as seismic and magnetic surveys, linewire logs while drilling, such as electric conductivity and acoustic measurements and many others (e.g., pressures, temperatures, permeability- ability of hydrocarbons to flow, etc.).Hence, the less detailed and narrower the data, the higher the degree of uncertainty of the gas estimates.Once an appraisal well is drilled, though, more data can be fed into the existing reservoir model which helps narrow down even further the level of uncertainty. A major factor believed to explain the downsizing of the gas volume is the thickness of the reservoir (net pay thickness).While exploratory well A-1 encountered a net pay of 94 m, appraisal well A-2 identified a net pay of about 40 m.Logically, halving the reservoir thickness shrinks the gas quantities that the formation can conceal. It also turned out that the gas formation is more complex than originally thought.According to published sources, the reservoir is characterised by three transverse faults which divide it into four compartments.Geologically, there is a strong probability that the reservoir is not a uniform structure but subject to discontinuities which obstruct the uninterrupted flow of gas.This is why the minister of energy unveiled the intention of the Noble consortium to drill another appraisal well. Evidently, the appraisal process is still a work in progress.There is also the need to process the wealth of data gathered during the first appraisal well and update the prevailing geological and other reservoir models.Variations in rock porosity (capacity of reservoir to hold hydrocarbon quantities) can also play an important role regarding gas volumes.Seismic uncertainties could also add to the explanation as to why the gas volumes were less than first expected.Despite the effectiveness of 3D seismic surveys in detecting the presence of a geological cap within which hydrocarbons could lie, imperfections still cast doubts as to the level of accuracy of the technique.Then there is the possibility of a fault impermeable seal which might be held accountable for permitting some of the natural gas to escape from the reservoir and migrate to different geological strata.The already detected transverse faults are likely to blame. Geological data indicate that this seal is made up of Messinian evaporites (salt layers) which formed some 60 million years ago.Owing to their small size, gas pockets which form from migrating hydrocarbons may be uneconomical to extract. In addition, the accuracy of linewire logs diminishes with distance.In aggregate, the first exploratory well gas estimates are subject to considerable deviations.Good news also surrounds the Aphrodite gas field. Usually companies resort to further appraisal wells when there are strong indications as to the existence of additional gas (also known as reserves growth).It is also of paramount importance that the gas field can be converted from a resource into a proved reserve (with a 90 per cent probability of being extracted).Furthermore, 3D seismic acquisitions conducted on behalf of Noble in Block 12 have identified some eight other hydrocarbon plays (prospective gas fields) some of which are believed to contain about 1 to 2 tcf of natural gas.Another positive development is the fact the Aphrodite field consists of dry gas (about 98 per cent methane) which requires minimal processing before being pumped onshore.Whatever the outcome, the Cypriot exclusive economic zone remains largely unexplored. More promising hydrocarbon discoveries are in the pipeline. The recent discovery of oil offshore Ashdod, in Israel, adds to the climate of euphoria.Tracing oil in the Cypriot EEZ is probably a matter of time. Being second-time lucky will forever alter Cyprus’s future and will turn the tide in our favour. In the meantime, positive thinking and patience will prove invaluable.Constantinos Hadjistassou is lecturer in Marine Hydrocarbon Technologies at the University of Nicosia and partner at Energy Sequel (www.energysequel.com).You May LikeLivestlyChip And Joanna’s $18M Mansion Is Perfect, But It’s The Backyard Everyone Is Talking AboutLivestlyUndoPopularEverythingColorado Mom Adopted Two Children, Months Later She Learned Who They Really ArePopularEverythingUndoSenior Living | Search AdsCheap Senior Apartments in Rowland Heights Are Turning HeadsSenior Living | Search AdsUndo Pensioner dies after crash on Paphos-Polis roadUndoCruise passenger airlifted to Paphos hospitalUndoRemand for pair in alleged property fraud (Updated)Undoby Taboolaby Taboola