“With the advent of newer and faster technologies every day, newspapers are finding it harder to appeal to the market. The radio, television and especially the internet have become the information medium of choice for many consumers,” says Lowe Bull creative director Kirk Gainsford.

The ads are very effective and considering the subject matter they are dealing with, quite respectful too.

Agency: Lowe Bull Cape Town
Creative Director: Kirk Gainsford
Head of Copy: Alistair Morgan
Art Director: Brian Bainbridge
Copywriter: Simon Lotze
Account Manager: Lindsay Keen

Founded in 1987, the Chinese Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe is composed of performers with sight, hearing, mental and motor disabilities or speech impairments. The troupe is a symbol of the hopes and dreams of disabled people and has toured all over China and in about 40 countries on all five continents.

Their show is unique and dazzling both visually and musically. The story unfolds though a character who has several bodies. A deaf dancer moves to the rhythm of the music. A young paraplegic man delivers a song accompanied by choreographed gestures. The deaf and mute performers show off their mimicry, while those who are visually impaired speak their words for them.

In 2004, the China Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe participated in the closing ceremonies of the Paralympic Games in Athens, and is currently preparing for the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. It has also been appointed “Ambassador for persons with disabilities” by the World Assembly of Disabled Peoples´ International (DPI).

Author Alan Weisman decided to really think about a world with no humans and he wrote a fascinating book about the subject. Titled The World Without Us, the book is basically a grand thought experiment on a global scale and it reveals a wealth of interesting ideas about what could happen if we all died off tomorrow.

From Chapter 9

Newspapers, again belying a common assumption, don’t biodegrade when buried away from air and water. “That’s why we have 3,000-year-old papyrus scrolls from Egypt. We pull perfectly readable newspapers out of landfills from the 1930s. They’ll be down there for 10,000 years.”

In most way The World Without Us is a warning to each of us as to how tenuous a hold we have over the environment. We may think we are masters of our castle but in reality we are slave and prisoner to the whims of a planet that can get by just fine without us. However the book is not a total downer, in fact it’s meant to be educational and in a world that seems to be recognizing productiveness in the face of climate change and other global issues, Mr. Weisman’s book is quite possible the handbook all good citizens of Earth should carry to remind us why we care in the first place.

Below are paintings done by artist Kenn Brown which illustrates what would happen to Manhattan between 2 days and the next ice age if all civilization was to disappear right this moment.

Without humans to man the pumping equipment, subways would begin to flood after only 2 days.

After 2-4 years pipes would burs, buildings would moan and creek as their inner structures expanded and contracted and cockroaches which can’t survive in colder climates would die off.

Gas mains would explode after 5 years and fires would destroy most of the city.

After 300 years bridges would begin to fall, dams would fail or overflow and cities built in low laying areas along the coast would simply washout to sea.

500 years on forests would grow if the climate was right and much of the landscape would look like it did before development. Of course underneath the new landscape would be a foundation of old dishwashers, stainless steel cookware and a myriad of other forms of trash.

In 15,000 years the next ice age would be starting (that is if global warming has not already done permanent harm to the planet) and Manhattan would be eaten away by glaciers.

After 10 million years bronze sculptures would still be recognizable and CO2 levels would be back down to pre-human levels.

So what will happen to the Earth if we do decide to stick around, settle our differences of religion and culture, clean up the environment and learn to live in peace? The following animation will answer that question.

The HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) which is one of the marque scientific platforms aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been busy snapping pictures of potential landing sites for the Mars Science Laboratory. Unique to the images which have already been sent back is the fact all of these are in full, high resolution enhanced color.

While most people think of Mars as a boring dusty desert, the topography of Mars is actually quite varied and spectacular. By examining these images NASA planners will now be able to better determine future landing sites for the next batch of robotic missions. Previously scientists had to depend on lower resolution and fuzzy black and white images to pick interesting targets on our neighbor planet. With these new photos not only will interesting features become more readily apparent but they also make for some spectacular images.

The following text and images are credit NASA and JPL.

Dunes in Wirtz Crater

Volatiles and Gullies

Inverted Channels Near Juventae Chasma

This image shows several long, sinuous features on the plains near Juventae Chasma. These features have been explained as former stream channels now preserved in inverted relief.

Inverted relief occurs when a formerly low-lying area becomes high-standing. For instance, depressions may become filled with lava that is more resistant to erosion. In the case of stream channels, there are several possible reasons why the channel might stand out in inverted relief. The streambed may contain larger rocks, which remain while fine material is blown away by the wind, or it could be cemented by some chemical precipitating from flowing water.

These features are old, since several impact craters cut the ridges. They provide important information about past processes on Mars. Understanding how streams could have formed is an important issue in understanding the history of water on Mars.

West Candor Layering

Section Through Largest of Holden Crater Fans

Layers Exposed in Crater Near Mawrth Vallis

This above image covers an impact crater roughly 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) in diameter. The portion highlighted above shows a 1 kilometer segment of the crater wall and rim.

The surface outside the crater (top) is relatively dark, while the interior wall of the crater exposes lighter, layered bedrock of diverse colors. A few dark patches on the crater wall have small dunes or ripples on their surfaces, and are likely pits filled with dark sand. The crater provides a window into the subsurface of Mars, revealing layered sedimentary deposits.

Just 30 kilometers (20 miles) to the east of this crater lies Mawrth Vallis, an ancient channel that may have been carved by catastrophic floods. In layered deposits surrounding Mawrth Vallis, the orbiting spectrometers OMEGA (on Mars Express) and CRISM (on MRO) have detected phyllosilicate (clay) minerals, which must have formed in the presence of water. In this region on Mars, the colors of layers seen by HiRISE often correlate with distinct water-bearing minerals observed by CRISM, so the color diversity seen here may reflect a dynamic environment at this location on early Mars.

Note: the color in these images is enhanced; it is not as it would normally appear to the human eye.

Light-toned Layering on Plains South of the West Candor Region

Layered Terrain Near Putative Phyllosilicates in Mawrth Valles

Southern Layered Mound and Floor in Gale Crater

This HiRISE image shows the interior of Gale Crater, a region being considered as a landing site for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory.

Gale is distinguished from many other craters on Mars by a large interior layered mound that extends to the height of the crater rim. The top part of this image contains portions of the southeast part of the mound, with the bottom part showing details of the crater floor.

The mound material here is exposed as several distinct smaller hills. Close up, the hills show abundant rocks and debris aprons on their flanks, lacking distinct bedrock layers seen elsewhere on Mars. This suggests that the mound material is friable and easily eroded by the wind over time.

Other evidence of wind activity includes bright bedforms near the top of the image and dark bedforms and sand sheets at bottom. Between the hills and dark sand are a series of stacked stratigraphic units. Polygons are seen in some of the units, indicating contraction due to water loss, cooling, or some other process. Many of the polygons seem highly fractured.

Possible crossbeds are seen in some of the rock exposures near the bottom of the image. This and other images of Gale will be studied over the coming months and years in order to better understand the geology and further assess the potential as a future landing site.

Fan Delta and Layers in Holden Crater

Layers in Terby Crater

Layers in Becquerel Crater

The layers shown in the above image are formed by loose sediment accumulating within Becquerel Crater.

The layers are interesting in that there are repeated cycles of thick and thin layers. These cyclic changes in layer thickness shows that some environmental conditions varied in a repeated way as each subsequent layer was deposited.

These variations may be due to annual climate cycles and/or a cyclic variability in the source of the sediment. Most layers are parallel to each other, indicating that deposition occurred by material settling onto the surface. A few layers are cross-bedded, meaning that they are not parallel to the older or younger layers.

Cross-bedding indicates that at the time that the layers were deposited, the sediment was transported along the ground surface by wind or water.

At 100,000 square kilometers in volume, the lake pictured above is located at the southern pole of Saturn’s moon Titan and part of a complex of formations recently imaged by the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn. 20% larger than Lake Superior, which is one of Earth’s largest lakes, it also covers a larger percentage of land mass than that of our own inland sea the Black Sea. Of course you may not want to get your space dingy and carbon fiber astro-rod ready just yet because all of Titan’s lakes are filled with liquid hydrocarbons such as liquid ethane, methane and dissolved nitrogen.

From Live Science:

Scientists say it rains methane and ethane there, filling the lakes and seas. These liquids also carve meandering rivers and channels on the moon’s surface.

“The lakes we are observing on Titan appear to be in varying states of fullness, suggesting their involvement in a complex hydrologic system akin to Earth’s water cycle. This makes Titan unique among the extra-terrestrial bodies in our solar system,” said Alex Hayes, a graduate student who studies Cassini radar data at the California Institute of Technology in the USA.

For those of you sill interested in making the longest fishing trip in human history, a seasons on Titan lasts for 7.5 years, a quarter of Saturn’s seasonal progression of 29.5 years.

Of course finding something to catch is another story and you might actually have more luck heading to Saturn’s smaller moon Enceladus.

New false color images also from the Cassini spacecraft highlight slushy geysers of what is almost certainly water ice. These geysers form the thin E-Ring of Saturn and have recently been discovered to emanate from the tiger stripes on the moon’s south polar region.

Scientists have theorized the geysers might be powered by the grinding of ice sheets against one another and the periodic opening and closing of gaps on the moon’s surface.

Both mechanisms were thought to be driven by a process called tidal heating. Because Enceladus’ path around Saturn is elliptical, it is pulled unevenly by the planet’s gravity at different points along its orbit. This creates a bulge on the moon’s surface that grows and shrinks depending on the moon’s distance from Saturn.

The repetitive motion generates friction and heat, which scientists suspect drives the tiger stripes to open and close.

Though Europa (the ice moon of Jupiter) and Mars have long been considered the prime candidates for finding life off of the Earth, many scientists believe Enceladus holds the best chance at harboring some form of life because most of the required organic compounds needed to create and sustain life (as we know it, anyway) already exists in fair abundance on the little moon.