Man throws puppies off of Port Arthur sea wall.

PORT ARTHUR, Texas (AP) - Three rescued puppies are recovering after being thrown over a seawall and on to some rocks in Port Arthur.

Firefighters rescued the crying pups and placed the creatures with animal control.

KFDM-TV reports the man who tossed the animals on Sunday was heard saying he was "turning them into soldiers." A bystander noticed the abandoned puppies and summoned help.

Pat Lavergne with Port Arthur Animal Control says the puppies, with health problems such as mange, were at the shelter Tuesday and available for adoption. She described them as a retriever mix.

The owner of the dogs, who was not immediately located, could face animal cruelty charges.

Space Station Gets Room With A View

Ten years after astronauts first moved into the International Space Station, they finally installed a picture window last week to take in the neighborhood.

The Lineage of a View

By Phil Patton


The Italian-built “cupola,” delivered by the shuttle Endeavour, has seven large windows centered on a 30-inch central pane. NASA calls the cupola “the largest window ever built for space.” Until now, space travelers have had to be content with the view from portholes.

NASA refers to the cupola as a control tower, and it does resemble an early 1930s airport control tower. Its primary role is functional. It will provide astronauts with a view of the space station’s exterior robotic arm and of visiting spacecraft docking with the space station. But the $27 million cupola also provides a panoramic view of Earth and the surrounding cosmos.

Last Wednesday, the protective shutters covering the windows were opened for the first time. Africa’s Sahara Desert filled the view. “The astronauts who are accustomed to views that you and I cannot really describe were moved to tears when they looked out the windows of the cupola for the first time,” Bob Dempsey, the NASA flight director for the mission, said.

Windows have always been important to astronauts. In “The Right Stuff,” Tom Wolfe told of how the first American astronauts had to beg for a window in their tiny capsules.

Engineers hate windows. They are vulnerable to micrometeorite strikes. They admit sunlight that increases the heat load when, in the space station’s case, it orbits through the day half of the earth. The seals can deteriorate after years of enduring the drastic temperature changes in space.

To address some of those dangers, the cupola’s windows come with shutters.

Julie Robinson, a space station scientist, said in a NASA news release that “crews tell us that Earth-gazing is important to them. The astronauts work hard up there and are away from their families for a long time. Observing the Earth and the stars helps relax and inspire them.”

The new window is reminiscent of dramatic round windows in classical buildings, like the duomo in Florence or Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. It also resembles the cupola-like cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo’s spaceship in “Star Wars,” and Captain Nemo’s giant porthole in the study of the submarine Nautilus in “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” The cupola attaches to a new section of the station with waste-processing equipment, exercise gear and some living quarters, including more comfortable sleep stations. It used to be known as Node 3. Now it is named Tranquility.

It is late in the game for the window to arrive. The station is almost complete. Only four more shuttle flights are scheduled. The station was originally supposed to be vacated after 2015, although President Obama has proposed extending its life to 2020. Adding the cupola now has a bit of the feel of a suburban home owner trying to spruce up his dull tract house by installing a bay window in the family room.

But the view is to kill for.

LA Times: Capybara puts Alvin on map

LA TIMES:

It's one thing to get a goldfish because your daughter begs for one. It's quite another to end up with a 100-pound rodent who has more than 2,700 Twitter followers.

Caplin Rous is a capybara. Related to the guinea pig, the capybara is the largest species of rodent. Though they're native to South America, Caplin was born in Texas and lives in the town of Buda with Melanie Typaldos, who never expected this animal to take over her life quite the way he has.

Typaldos says it all started on a trip to Venezuela, when her daughter Coral got to hold a young capybara and "fell in love."

"After we got back, she pretty relentlessly pestered me about getting one for a pet," Typaldos says. "Since Coral lived in an apartment and was planning on spending a year in Asia, she couldn't have a pet capybara herself so, she felt, it was up to me to fulfill her capybara vision."

Even capybaras that are bred in captivity like Caplin are not domesticated animals, so early handling and contact is critical for them to be comfortable living with people. Typaldos got Caplin when he was only 11 days old, and took him to work every day for the first three months. Then, "someone complained there was a furry, pig-like animal in the building," and she took a month of vacation and stayed home with him.

Caplin Rous is now 2 1/2. The second part of his name, which Typaldos pronounces like "rose," stands for "Rodent of Unusual Size" (a reference to the movie "The Princess Bride"). He's also a rodent of unusual abilities. He can walk on a leash and even do some tricks, but Typaldos says it's important not to exaggerate any similarity to a dog doing tricks.

"Dogs have thousands of years of being trained to be subservient to people," she says. "A capybara will not do a trick just to make me happy. The quality of the trick is very dependent on the quality of the treat."

Most people who keep capybaras keep them as farm animals, like a sheep or goat, but Caplin basically lives indoors with Typaldos (he eliminates in a pan of water in her bathroom). Outdoor space is necessary as well for grazing and swimming in his pool; in the wild, capybaras are semi-aquatic, diving into rivers to escape predators. Somewhat ponderous on land, capybaras are surprisingly graceful in the water.

"On land he's not very active," she says. "When he's in the water he's like another animal. That's where he's really the happiest."



There's no way of knowing how many private individuals own capybaras, but Justin Damesta, a breeder in Alvin, Texas, says that he sells five to 10 of them a year as pets.

Damesta recommends that a pet capybara be raised indoors for the first few months and then kept outdoors with sturdy fencing, a heated shelter and a pool. Potential buyers who contact him are usually fairly well informed, but, he says, "I have and will turn down people I don't consider qualified or capable."

Some other pet capybaras also can be followed on the Internet, such as Dobby in Seattle. But Typaldos is probably unique in the way she has made the capybara her mission: She spends a couple of hours a day updating Caplin's Internet presence on a blog and social networking sites.

When asked how much time it takes to care for a capybara, she says, "I spend all my time with him, but that's a matter of choice."



Caplin's Web activities are partly fun -- such as interactive games of "Rodent Jeopardy" -- with a serious educational purpose, too. "When I was thinking of getting him, there was nothing on the Web about getting a pet capybara," says Typaldos. "That was a large impetus for the blog. They're not the right pet for most people."

Typaldos has a background in biology, and also keeps horses and reptiles. Her property is big enough that Caplin can graze and swim, and she lives in a climate appropriate for a tropical animal.

On her blog, she's honest about the problems in caring for a capybara. When people ask her about getting one, she tells them first to read her whole blog, including the entries about when he has bitten her.

But Typaldos also sees Caplin as an ambassador of sorts.

"People don't like rodents," she says, but many rodents make good pets. Her kids had pet rats when they were young. "If someone says something bad about rats, on the blog or Facebook, he'll always step in and say something."

LINK TO ORIGINAL STORY WITH MORE PHOTOS

Endeavour Arrives at International Space Station

Space shuttle Endeavour docked with the International Space Station at 12:06 a.m. EST Wednesday, delivering the Tranquility module and its new room with a view, the cupola.

Endeavour Commander George Zamka guided the orbiter to a docking with Pressurized Mating Adapter-2 as the two spacecraft were flying 215 miles above Earth off the western coast of Portugal.

When the shuttle arrived within 600 feet of the station, Endeavour performed the nine-minute Rendezvous Pitch Maneuver, or “back flip.” Zamka rotated the orbiter backwards, enabling space station Commander Jeffrey Williams and Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov to take high-resolution pictures of the shuttle. The images will be analyzed by experts on the ground to assess the health of Endeavour’s heat shield.

The shuttle and station crews opened hatches at 2:16 a.m. as Endeavour and the outpost flew off the northwest coast of Australia. With the arrival of Endeavour’s six astronauts, the station’s population grows to 11 and its mass tops 1 million pounds.

Endeavour’s crew will awaken at 4:14 p.m. Wednesday’s work will focus on supply transfers, spacewalk preparations and Water Recovery System repairs. Thursday’s work will focus on installation of the new Tranquility module onto the Unity module and the mission’s first spacewalk.

Author publishes first children’s book

By Jim Higgins
Special to The Daily News
Published February 10, 2010

LEAGUE CITY — Hurricane Rita uprooted trees and lives in East Texas in 2005, but one young woman who evacuated from the storm put down new roots in League City and began writing new chapters of her life.

The path she followed and the career she chose would at first glance seem incongruous to everyone except Christina Smith, who is as comfortable around pumps and compressors as she is reading Dr. Seuss or reciting Leonard Cohen poems.

But it is writing children’s stories and poetry that Christina Smith enjoys the most after a day of studying pumps and compressors in College of the Mainland’s process technology associate degree program.

“My dad has an English degree and reads more than anyone I have ever known but decided to work in the plants back in Orange where I grew up,” the full-time COM students and single mother of a 2-year old, said.

“My dad and mom read to me as a child. My mom wrote poetry. I guess I got my love of words from them.”

Her love for her young daughter, Samantha, coupled with a love of words led her to pen her first children’s book last year, “Skeeter Sneeter Doodlebop.”

“I came up with the name Skeeter Sneeter Doodlebop one day just talking nonsense to Sam, my little girl, when she was barely born.

“I wrote the name down and just built the story around it. Amy, a friend and illustrator who lost everything in Hurricane Ike, went with her own imagination to draw the characters.

“They are very unique-looking characters, unlike any I have seen before.”

After several rejection letters from publishers, Skeeter was picked up by Nimblebooks and became the publisher’s first children’s book.

Smith said the book, which can be purchased online, is doing quite well for an unknown author.

“Children’s books are the best. They are the happiest books on earth. They are filled with imagination and hope and offer a peacefully simplistic outlook on life in comparison to other genres.”

She already is working on her second children’s book, “Skeeter Uses Manners.” It will be available this spring. A book of her poetry, Orange Smiles and Simple Truths also was published this year.

Smith also works 25 to 30 hours a week for a local diving company.

So how will this single mom with a toddler in tow and a passion to write balance all that plus shift work once she graduates in December 2010?

“My mom and sister moved up here to help me out when I had Sam. It is because of them that I can actually do homework or go to Phi Theta Kappa events. It works out great, and Sam never has to be anywhere but at home even if I have a night class. I honestly couldn’t do it without them.

“Lone Star Diving Inc. is my adopted family. They have helped me with everything from actually getting into school, truck repairs, feeding me and even helping me study for tests. I am blessed to be surrounded by people who care about me and my future.

“I know there will be times that are hard because of shift work, but I also know that it is the quality of time you spend with a child that outranks the quantity. I am doing this all for her and I know that one day she will understand. We are going to be just fine.”

Obama's Budget Could Hurt Clear Lake

NASA budget creates uncertainty in Clear Lake
By ERIC BERGER and STEWART M. POWELL
Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle

Change came to Washington a year ago with the election of President Barack Obama, and one year later it is thundering through Houston's space community like a shuttle's sonic boom.

The totality of impacts from Obama's proposed NASA budget for Houston, the Clear Lake community surrounding Johnson Space Center and even for the astronauts themselves is still far from certain.

Space agency officials declined Tuesday to even confirm that NASA's astronaut corps would continue after the space shuttle retires within the next year.

“Right now I just don't think it's right to guess one way or another,” said William Gerstenmaier, who, as associate administrator for space operations, oversees human spaceflight at NASA.

But it's the economic impact from potential job losses fueling the most concern.

Obama's proposal to terminate the shuttle program after five more flights was widely anticipated, but his additional proposal to end the next-generation Constellation Program raises questions — most unanswered — over whether there can be a smooth transfer for employees from one spaceflight program to another.

The NASA manager who oversaw Constellation's efforts to design the next generation of rockets and spacecraft, Doug Cooke, acknowledged that “its end will create an angst among the workers who have been working it, and the immediate effect it will have on jobs.”

It's an angst being felt across the Clear Lake area.

“It will definitely impact our local economy and trickle down to small businesses,” said Cindy Harreld, president & chief executive of the Clear Lake Area Chamber of Commerce.
Up to 2,500 jobs at stake

According to the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, the region may lose 2,200 to 2,500 jobs with Constellation's cancellation. There are about 18,000 aerospace jobs in Houston, more than 90 percent located in the Bay area.

Johnson Space Center manages about $4 billion in federal aerospace contracts each year.

“Our hope is that Congress will see the importance of manned spaceflight and overturn what the president is proposing,” Harreld said.

The space center is the heart of NASA's human spaceflight program, housing its astronaut corps and directing all activity in space, including the International Space Station.

From that perspective, Obama's decision to extend the station's life through 2020 provides at least one concrete role for the space center for the next decade.

The uncertainty comes from two other proposals.

The cancellation of Constellation would remove a firm commitment from NASA to launch humans and fly them beyond Earth's orbit.
Ex-astronaut hopeful

The astronaut corps already was facing a reduction in spaceflight opportunities from a couple dozen a year, with the shuttle's retirement, to a handful aboard the space station. Without Constellation, there's no specific plan for any other flights.

And it's possible that astronauts flying to the station might be hired and supervised by a private contractor.

“I'm sure there's a lot of uncertainty in the astronaut corps over the future,” said Leroy Chiao, a veteran of three shuttle flights and a six-month stint aboard the ISS. “I know I'd be concerned if I were still in the corps.”

Yet Chiao, who also served on last summer's panel to review human spaceflight, led by Norman Augustine, noted that Space Station Freedom, first proposed in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan, was nearly canceled before being transformed into the space station program.

Chiao believes a new strategy for human spaceflight beyond Earth's orbit will emerge from NASA planners. “I feel confident the United States is not going to give up human spaceflight,” he said. “But until there's a new program I would expect there to be some angst.”

The other major change in Obama's space policy calls for $6 billion to be spent to help private companies develop rockets and crew capsules to carry astronauts to the ISS.

California has a larger private aerospace industry than Texas, but the hope is that Houston firms will get some of the work.

On Tuesday NASA Administrator Charles Bolden selected seven commercial aerospace firms to serve as the nation's “space pioneers” in Obama-era exploration, including Houston-based Boeing Space Exploration. It won $18 million to develop a transportation system and seven-person crew capsule that NASA may choose to ferry astronauts and cargo to the ISS as early as 2016.

Bolden, a former astronaut, said the administration was abandoning the long-standing practice of having the space agency finance human space exploration to enlist “the entrepreneurial mind-set into a field that is poised for rapid growth and new jobs.”
Possible job transfers

Boeing already does significant space shuttle work for NASA, and the new contract, as well as subsequent funding, would allow the company to transfer some shuttle employees in Houston to the new concept, said Keith Reiley, program manager for the company's Commercial Crew Development initiative.

Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land, said he did not have any independent assessment of NASA-related job losses in Houston, though he has been a reliable supporter of the Constellation program and voiced opposition to canceling it. “We are on the verge of abandoning human space flight in the near term,” Olson said. “And I fear beyond that.”

eric.berger@chron.com
stewart.powell@chron.com

Atascocita growing by leaps and bounds!

Business Week:

Tired of reading about how rotten the real estate market is? Here's some good news that shows that even during the worst of the recession plenty of American cities, towns, and suburbs continue to grow.

One such place is Atascocita, Tex. A mostly residential community 20 miles from Houston, it gained more than 1,800 households in 2009, an 8% year-over-year increase, according to new data from Little Rock-based data firm Gadberry Group. Over the decade, amenities that have helped attract residents to this wooded locale include Lake Houston, just east of the city; the school district; and proximity to the city of Houston. With new roads in the area under construction, "we're starting to see major industry start to take a look at the area," says Mike Byers, president of the Lake Houston Area Chamber of Commerce.

Migration levels nationwide stayed low last year as homeowners saddled with pricey mortgages stayed put—but there are some positive trends. Research by the Gadberry Group shows that some areas, resisting the effects of the recession, continue to attract both domestic and foreign migrants and, as an effect, bring in new businesses to provide services. While other cities across the U.S. have contracted, these have continued to grow.

Some states are better off than others, though. As thousands of people left places such as New Orleans and Flint, Mich. (the country's two fastest-shrinking cities), in the last decade, communities with the best mix of economic activity, proximity to job centers, and a good environment for families continued to grow. While not entirely spared by the economic downturn (some homes in these areas are now in foreclosure), people continued to move in during 2009.
Texas Grew the Most

Texas came out on top of Gadberry's survey, with four high-growth cities: Atascocita, Katy, Mansfield, and Wylie. The report only included areas larger than 10,000 occupied households that met requirements for growth rate, household income, length of residence, and other factors.

Larry Martin, principal of the Gadberry Group, says many of the places with the biggest housing growth at the beginning of the last decade, such as Nevada, Florida, and Arizona, also saw the biggest drop-off since the economy sank. Texas, however, enjoyed relatively strong housing and job markets over the last 10 years, thanks in large part to the presence of major employers in the robust energy business. As of December, the state unemployment rate was 8.3% (lower than the national rate of 10%), according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It also had the largest state population growth between July 2008 and July 2009, according to a December release by the Census Bureau. "New homes are still being built and people are still moving into these homes" in Texas, says Martin.

Part of the state's strength, says Mark Mather, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C., is its diversified economy. Main industries include petroleum refining, chemical production, aerospace, and information technology.

Meanwhile, areas that depended on the housing boom are now dealing with high foreclosure rates. Places such as Summerlin South, Nev., which appear in Bloomberg BusinessWeek's slide show of fast-growing cities, gained population but, like the rest of the state, may be dealing with high mortgage default rates.

"If you live by migration, you also die by migration," says Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute. "It doesn't guarantee continued growth."
New Business Opportunities

Migration is typically highest among people in their 20s seeking jobs near large urban cores, but employment opportunities are not the only draw. "Amenities are also important in migrational decisions," says Johnson. Many families consider factors such as schools and recreational amenities like scenic areas and parks.

This is a consideration now in Spring Hill, Tenn., which gained 7,645 households since 2000 as many young families moved to the town for affordable housing and work at the General Motors plant, which is now idle. Dustin Dunbar, chairman of the Spring Hill Economic Development Commission, says this has created demand and opportunity for businesses that provide youth activities and entertainment. "We hope to recruit some businesses to cater to our largest demographics," he says.

While migration in 2010 may remain sluggish, "we'll see a continuation of urban sprawl once the economy bounces back," says Mather.

Dr. Conrad Murray to surrender today.

Dr. Conrad Murray is expected to surrender to authorities in Los Angeles this week on charges related to Michael Jackson's death, according to The Associated Press and CNN. Murray arrived in Los Angeles recently from Houston in anticipation of a decision from the district attorney's office, spokeswoman Miranda Sevcik told the AP..

"Dr. Murray is in Los Angeles for a dual purpose — on family business and to be available for law enforcement," Sevcik told the AP. "We're trying to be as cooperative as we can."

"Dr. Murray is more than ready to surrender and answer to any charges," Ed Chernoff, one of Murray's lawers, told CNN, adding that prosecutors have not announced any charges, and Murray has not been told how or where he should surrender.

No official comment has been made about when charges might, come; David Walgren, the deputy district attorney handling the case, declined to comment to the AP on Tuesday (February 2).

Law enforcement officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the AP that Murray is likely to be charged with involuntary manslaughter in Jackson's June 25 death from an anesthetic overdose. Murray has denied criminal wrongdoing.

"We continue to maintain that Dr. Murray neither prescribed nor administered anything that should have killed Michael Jackson," Sevcik said.

Earlier this year, TMZ reported that the Los Angeles Police Department had completed its investigation into Jackson's death and was preparing to send the case to the DA's office within weeks.

Murray has told investigators that he administered the surgical anesthetic propofol, as well as other tranquilizers, to Jackson several times in the hours leading up to his death, and the coroner has ruled the singer died of lethal levels of the drug. Involuntary manslaughter charges would require prosecutors to show that Murray engaged in gross negligence in his actions but did not intend to cause harm or death to Jackson.

Obama's Budget Nix's Constellation

CNN) -- American astronauts will not return to the moon as planned if Congress passes President Obama's proposed budget.
Obama's budget -- which aims to tighten the nation's purse strings in certain areas while increasing money used to create jobs -- would cancel NASA's Constellation Program, which had sought to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020.
Constellation also intended to study the idea of establishing a moon colony. The program was set to follow the U.S. space agency's shuttle missions, which are due to end in September.

On its Web site, the White House Budget Office says the program to send astronauts to the moon is behind schedule, over budget and overall less important than other space investments.
"Using a broad range of criteria, an independent review panel determined that even if fully funded, NASA's program to repeat many of the achievements of the Apollo era, 50 years later, was the least attractive approach to space exploration as compared to potential alternatives," the site says.

"Furthermore, NASA's attempts to pursue its moon goals, while inadequate to that task, had drawn funding away from other NASA programs, including robotic space exploration, science, and Earth observations."
Overall, Obama's proposed budget increases the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's budget by $6 billion over the next five years. The president's budget would give NASA a $19 billion budget in 2011, compared to its $18.3 billion budget this year.

Congress has to approve the federal budget, and a final ruling may not happen for months.
The budget changes will not prevent NASA from returning astronauts to the moon and exploring the rest of the solar system, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said in a conference call with reporters on Monday.
"Imagine trips to Mars that take weeks instead of nearly a year; people fanning out across the inner solar system, exploring the Moon, asteroids and Mars nearly simultaneously in a steady stream of firsts ... That is what the president's plan for NASA will enable, once we develop the new capabilities to make it a reality," Bolden said.

The NASA administrator emphasized the fact that the president's budget would increase NASA funding overall and said the Constellation program was behind schedule and over-budget anyway.
"The truth is we were not on a sustainable path to get back to the moon's surface, and as we focused most of our efforts and funding on getting back to the moon we were neglecting investment in key technologies to get us beyond," he said.
Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat from Florida, criticized the president for slashing NASA's moon-mission program from his suggested budget.

The move could cause the U.S. to fall behind other countries in space exploration, he said.
"If they don't push hard now for research and development of the new big rocket that'll take us out of low-Earth orbit and let us explore the heavens, then we are going to be falling behind China and Russia, and that's something I don't think will sit well with the American people," he said in an interview with CNN.
Louis Friedman, executive director of The Planetary Society, called that assertion "ridiculous," and said he's hopeful the end of

Constellation would lead to the U.S. returning to the moon more quickly.
Friedman believes that Constellation is a flawed and bloated program, which should be replaced with a new program that would get the U.S. back to the moon more efficiently.

Constellation was behind schedule, and a new program offers a fresh start and puts needed emphasis on space exploration beyond the moon, he said.

"I think the Constellation program probably fell on its own weight as opposed to any major policy change," he said.
Others questioned what will happen to the money NASA has already spent on its program to return to the moon.
"I think that some of the things they're working on could be used regardless of what the program is," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org and a space policy expert. "Some of it however, I think is just going to end up on the cutting room floor."

About $250 million in federal stimulus money has paid for investments in the Constellation Program, according to a CNN report. NASA's current budget gives Constellation $3.47 billion in funding, according to the White House Budget Office.
NASA says the Constellation research and technology would be useful in other space endeavors.
NASA first sent astronauts to the moon in 1969, and the space agency's Apollo program sent astronauts to the moon at total of six times.