The Riverplace Tower is a 28-floor office building on the south bank of the St. Johns River in Jacksonville, Florida. At the time of its construction, it was the tallest building in the state of Florida and was the defining landmark in Jacksonville's skyline. On April 18, 2012, the American Institute of Architects's Florida Chapter placed the building on its list of Florida Architecture: 100 Years. 100 Places as the Riverplace Tower / Formerly Gulf Life Tower. The Auchter Company, Jacksonville's oldest general construction contractor, built the 542,000 ft2 Gulf Life Tower for the Gulf Life Insurance Company in 1966, it was designed by Welton Becket and KBJ Architects. When completed in 1967, it was post-tensioned concrete structure in the world, it remained Florida's tallest for five years until Miami's One Biscayne Tower was constructed in 1972. It was Jacksonville's tallest for eight years until the Independent Life Building was built in 1974. In 2007, 40 years after its construction, Riverplace Tower was still the fifth tallest building in Jacksonville.

Gulf Life Insurance Company was merged into American General Life of Houston in 1991 and the Jacksonville Gulf Life Tower was unneeded and destined to be sold. American General wanted $30 million, but the building was 24 years old and no longer a class "A" property. Several prospective buyers looked at the building, but the property stayed on the market for more than two years. For tax reasons, American General was desperate to sell during 1993 and accepted a cash offer from Gate Petroleum for less than their asking price. Shortly thereafter, Gate began a multimillion-dollar renovation of the entire building and renamed it Riverplace Tower. Building occupancy was 40 %; the banner sign at the top of the building displayed "Gulf Life" in 1967. After Gulf Life was acquired by American General in 1991, it was changed to "SouthTrust", the structure was known as the SouthTrust Building; when SouthTrust and Wachovia merged in 2005, "Wachovia" signage was installed, but it was removed January 22, 2011.

Since 1968 until its closure in 2016, the University Club of Jacksonville occupied the building's top floor. There were 1,300 members: business executives of both genders; the private club was available to their guests, or ClubCorp affiliates. The facility was a hub for networking and entertaining clients, as well as providing conference rooms and offices for conducting business in private; the club offered two full service athletic facilities. The structural system consists of a poured concrete core; the concrete grid on the outside of the building is the only support needed to hold up the structure, leaving the interior available for use. Each of the exposed beams consist of fourteen precast units held together with high strength post-tensioned steel cables; the beams cantilever 42 feet from the columns as they inward. The color of the concrete façade comes from White quartz sand and white cement bonded to the surface; the Gate River Run Hall of Fame was established in 2002 and is permanently located on the concourse level.

Memorabilia from the event, which began in 1978, is on display, a five-minute video gives visitors an overview of the race. Plaques for each of the 12 persons inducted into the HOF are on display; the Southbank Grille is a public restaurant located on the second floor of the tower, it offers an excellent view of the river and northbank through its glass, north-facing wall. In honor of its 50th anniversary, the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute went through the arduous process of selecting the Seven precast concrete "Wonders", their choices were: the Department of Housing & Urban Development Headquarters in Washington, D. C.. According to an Architecture article in Time Magazine, " Gulf Life, placed in a shoddy, chaotic part of Jacksonville, is a tonic for its area, acts as an organizing beacon, and the bold Alcoa building…makes a positive contribution to San Francisco. Both buildings thus achieve excellence." Architecture of Jacksonville List of tallest buildings in Jacksonville Downtown Jacksonville Riverplace Official website University Club website

The Ig Nobel Prize is a satiric prize awarded annually since 1991 to celebrate ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research, its stated aim being to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, make them think." The name of the award is a pun on the Nobel Prize, which it parodies, the word ignoble. Organized by the scientific humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research, the Ig Nobel Prizes are presented by Nobel laureates in a ceremony at the Sanders Theater, Harvard University, are followed by the winners’ public lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Ig Nobels were created in 1991 by Marc Abrahams, editor and co-founder of the Annals of Improbable Research, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Irreproducible Results and master of ceremonies at all subsequent awards ceremonies. Awards were presented at that time for discoveries "that cannot, or should not, be reproduced". Ten prizes are awarded each year in many categories, including the Nobel Prize categories of physics, physiology/medicine and peace, but other categories such as public health, engineering and interdisciplinary research.

The Ig Nobel Prizes recognize genuine achievements, with the exception of three prizes awarded in the first year to fictitious scientists Josiah S. Carberry, Paul DeFanti, Thomas Kyle; the awards are sometimes criticism via satire, as in the two awards given for homeopathy research, prizes in "science education" to the Kansas State Department of Education and Colorado State Board of Education for their stance regarding the teaching of evolution, the prize awarded to Social Text after the Sokal affair. Most however, they draw attention to scientific articles that have some humorous or unexpected aspect. Examples range from the discovery that the presence of humans tends to sexually arouse ostriches, to the statement that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements for being the location of Hell, to research on the "five-second rule", a tongue-in-cheek belief that food dropped on the floor will not become contaminated if it is picked up within five seconds. Sir Andre Geim, awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in 2000 for levitating a frog by magnetism, was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics in 2010 for his work with the electromagnetic properties of graphene.

He is the only individual, as of 2020, to have received both an Ig Nobel. The prizes are presented by Nobel laureates at a ceremony in a lecture hall at MIT, but now in the Sanders Theater at Harvard University; the event contains a number of running jokes, including Miss Sweetie Poo, a little girl who cries out, "Please stop: I'm bored", in a high-pitched voice if speakers go on too long. The awards ceremony is traditionally closed with the words: "If you didn't win a prize—and if you did—better luck next year!" The ceremony is co-sponsored by the Harvard Computer Society, the Harvard–Radcliffe Science Fiction Association and the Harvard–Radcliffe Society of Physics Students. Throwing paper planes onto the stage is a long-standing tradition. For many years Professor Roy J. Glauber swept the stage clean of the airplanes as the official "Keeper of the Broom." Glauber could not attend the 2005 awards because he was traveling to Stockholm to claim a genuine Nobel Prize in Physics. The "Parade of Ignitaries" into the hall includes supporting groups.

At the 1997 ceremonies, a team of "cryogenic sex researchers" distributed a pamphlet titled "Safe Sex at Four Kelvin." Delegates from the Museum of Bad Art are on hand to display some pieces from their collection. The ceremony is recorded and broadcast on National Public Radio in the US and is shown live over the Internet; the recording is broadcast every year, on the Friday after U. S. Thanksgiving, on the public radio program Science Friday. In recognition of this, the audience chants the name of Ira Flatow. Two books have been published with write-ups on some winners: The Ig Nobel Prize, The Ig Nobel Prize 2, retitled The Man Who Tried to Clone Himself. An Ig Nobel Tour has been an annual part of National Science week in the United Kingdom since 2003; the tour has traveled to Australia several times, Aarhus University in Denmark in April 2009, Italy and The Netherlands. A September 2009 article in The National titled "A noble side to Ig Nobels" says that, although the Ig Nobel Awards are veiled criticism of trivial research, history shows that trivial research sometimes leads to important breakthroughs.

For instance, in 2006, a study showing that one of the malaria mosquitoes is attracted to the smell of Limburger cheese and the smell of human feet earned the Ig Nobel Prize in the area of biology. As a direct result of these findings, traps baited with this cheese have been placed in strategic locations in some parts of Africa to combat the epidemic of malaria. List of Ig Nobel Prize winners Darwin Awards – an award for enriching the human gene pool by idiotic self-destruction Golden Raspberry Awards – awards for bad movies Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year – a book prize Pigasus Award – exposing parapsychological, paranormal, or psychic frauds Golden Fleece Award – award for waste of government funds.

The Packerville Bridge is a historic stone arch bridge carrying Packerville Road over Mill Brook in Plainfield, Connecticut. Built in 1886, it is one of less than twenty surviving 19th-century stone arch bridges in the state, is a well-preserved example of vernacular 19th century masonry bridge technology; the bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. The Packerville Bridge is located in a rural setting southwest of Plainfield's central village, carrying Packerville Road over Mill Brook just north of its junction with Lowes Way; the bridge is located just downstream from the Packerville Dam, a remnant surviving element of a 19th-century mill that stood nearby at the time of the bridge's construction. It is a masonry arch bridge with cut-stone barrel and rubble spandrels with a span of 26 feet and a total structure length of 31 feet; the roadway width is about 20 feet, is set about that distance above the water flow. The bridge was built in 1886, it was built out of stone because locations below mill dams were considered at greater risk of flooding owing to dam breaches, stone bridges were thought to be better able to withstand that type of event.

The stone was quarried near Rhode Island. The principal alteration to this structure is the changing of the guard rails from stone to metal in the 20th century. National Register of Historic Places listings in Windham County, Connecticut List of bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Connecticut