The Fountains of Paradise is a science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. Set in the 22nd century, it describes the construction of a space elevator; this "orbital tower" is a giant structure rising from the ground and linking with a satellite in geostationary orbit at the height of 36,000 kilometers. Such a structure would be used to raise payloads to orbit without the expense of using rockets; the novel won both the Nebula Awards for Best Novel. The novel focuses on a project proposed by the main character, Vannevar Morgan, known as the Orbital Tower; the tower is to stretch from the Earth's equator to a satellite, in geostationary orbit. Such a structure would reduce the cost of sending people and supplies into space; the main story is framed by two other stories. The first one tells of King Kalidasa, living thousands of years before Morgan is born, constructing a large tower; the other story, taking place long after Morgan has died, deals with aliens making contact with Earth. Due to many technical issues, there are only two locations on Earth where the Orbital Tower can be built.

One is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the other is Sri Kanda. However, there is a Buddhist temple on the island, Mahanayake Thero, the head of the order, refuses to give permission to begin construction. Hearing of the difficulties, a group of people living on Mars contacts Morgan and suggests that the tower be built there instead, it would be smaller than the one planned for the Earth and reach from Mars to one of its moons, Deimos. After a few setbacks, including some fatalities, construction of the tower gets underway. Although the engineer's heart is failing, he rides up the tower to take food and oxygen to a group of stranded students and their professor. After overcoming serious difficulties he succeeds dies of a heart attack on the way back down; the main theme of the novel is preceded by, to some extent juxtaposed with, the story of the life and death of King Kashyapa I of Sri Lanka. It foreshadows the exploits of Vannevar Morgan in his determination to realize the space elevator.

Other subplots include human colonization of the Solar system and the first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. Clarke envisions a strong "hyperfilament" that makes the elevator possible. Although the hyperfilament is constructed from "continuous pseudo-one-dimensional diamond crystal", Clarke expressed his belief that another type of carbon, Buckminsterfullerene, would play the role of hyperfilament in a real space elevator; the latest developments in carbon nanotube technology bring the orbital elevator closer to possible realisation. The story is set in the fictional equatorial island country of Taprobane, which Clarke has described as "about ninety percent congruent with the island of Sri Lanka", south of its real-world location; the ruins of the palace at Yakkagala as described in the book closely match the real-life ruins at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka. The mountain on which the space elevator is built is called Sri Kanda in the book, bears a strong resemblance to the real mountain Sri Pada.

In the middle of The Fountains of Paradise, an unmanned robotic spaceship of alien origin, called "Starglider" by Clarke, passes through the Solar system. This situation is similar to Rendezvous with Rama, though the ship exterior and its interactions with humans are different; the first third of 3001: The Final Odyssey describes details of the interior of the ring habitat that encircles Earth, is connected to Earth's surface with four space elevators. At the end of The Fountains of Paradise, this ring habitat is shown for the first time, though it has six space elevators rather than the four of 3001: Final Odyssey. At the end of the novel, Earth turns into an icy wasteland; the same situation occurs in the story "History Lesson". The alien shown near the end of The Fountains of Paradise is a somewhat more physical form of the Swarm, the aliens that land on primeval Earth in "The Possessed". A space elevator is constructed in the course of Clarke's final novel, The Last Theorem. Winner, Hugo Award for Best Novel - 1980 Winner, Nebula Award for Best Novel - 1979 Nominee, Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel - 1980 Nominee, British Science Fiction Association Award - 1979 Materials science in science fiction The Fountains of Paradise title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database The Fountains of Paradise at Worlds Without End

Plague is a 2014 Australian horror film directed by Kostas Ouzas and Nick Kozakis, written by Ouzas, starring Tegan Crowley, Scott Marcus, Steven Kennedy. After a zombie apocalypse and her husband John struggle to survive on their own, they receive help in the form of a resourceful stranger, who shows up one day and offers to assist them. It had a private screening at the Astor Theatre in Melbourne on 29 October 2014 and premiered at the Fantastic Planet Sci-Fi, Fantasy Film Festival on 22 November. Society breaks down; when Evie's husband John becomes separated from the rest of the group during an attack, the survivors fall back to their emergency shelter. Gary and Evie want to wait for John, as they all agreed they would do in such a circumstance, but Bob becomes impatient. Citing the realities of the situation, Bob says they must assume John is dead and leave for a more permanent shelter. Although Bob backs down, he takes the group's car and supplies by force; when Gary objects, Bob shoots him in the head.

Sammy, the group's mechanic, Marge, Bob's wife, leave with him. They leave Evie behind. John arrives, he is angered to find. Evie's protestations are cut short when Sammy returns on foot and infected. John shoots her. John and Evie are besieged by zombies; as John is about to commit suicide, a stranger named. John explains they have nothing he can steal; when Charlie explains he wants nothing more than their companionship and offers to share his supplies, Evie welcomes him. As the three come to trust each other, John explains that he is a former college professor and Evie is a schoolteacher. Charlie introduces himself as a family man. With Charlie's resourcefulness and skill, the survivors increase their quality of life, though Evie remains bitter about John's previous suicide attempt; when she accuses him of being self-obsessed, Charlie tells her that he can provide for her better than John. Evie becomes uncomfortable. John suffers a serious asthma attack, Evie begs Charlie to find medicine. Charlie insinuates that he knows where to find it, but he will only retrieve it if Evie submits to sex.

Desperate, she does. As John and Charlie talk, Evie searches through Charlie's belongings and finds evidence that he lied about having a family. John dismisses her concerns and says that they need Charlie to survive, they run him off when Charlie reveals that he keeps a former lover, who has since become infected, chained in his car to observe. Charlie returns and angrily confronts them. Since they can not survive without his help, he asserts. John surrenders his pistol to Charlie and watches helplessly as Charlie drags Evie into their shelter to rape her again. John does nothing to assist her; when a lost soldier shows up, John disarms him and learns about an extraction point. John kills shoots Charlie; as he dies, Charlie shoots Evie in the arm. John bandages her. Charlie's car breaks down near the extraction point. Drawn by John's yelling to alert the military forces he assumes must be near, zombies begin to converge on their location. John pushes for them to continue on foot. After urging her to stand several times, John gives up and hands her a pistol.

When she realizes that he intends to leave her to die, Evie shoots John in the leg and uses him as a distraction while she escapes from the approaching zombies. Evie proceeds on her own to the extraction point as John is devoured by the zombies. Tegan Crowley as Evie Scott Marcus as John Steven Kennedy as Charlie Don Bridges as Gary Nicholas Stribakos as Bob Sarah Ranken as Sammy Liza Dennis as Marge Benjamin Rigby as Corporal Davies The directors met each other at film school, where they became friends; the actors were recruited locally, they did not use auditions. Instead, actors were asked what they could bring to the character. Principal photography took place over two weeks in January 2014 in Victoria; the directors split the chores in order to complete the film as as possible. Ouzas worked with the actors, Kozakis set up shots and worked with the crew; the directors decided to use fast zombies instead of Romero-style slow zombies to reflect current fears. Ouzas said that they symbolize "irrational, unpredictable enemies".

Ouzas describes the film as "more a drama than horror film" that focuses on characters rather the zombies. Ouzas believes that horror films became more popular during times of social uncertainty, he wanted to explore what would happen when the social contract broke down. A female protagonist was chosen to demonstrate. Evie represents the belief that there is an innate good in humanity, while Charlie represents a more self-serving amorality. Plague had a private screening at the Astor Theatre in Melbourne on 29 October 2014 and had its world premiere on 22 November 2014 at the Fantastic Planet Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy Film Festival in Sydney; the filmmakers chose to focus on digital distribution because theatrical distribution seemed more oriented toward big-budget releases. Plague was the most popular horror film on iTunes after its debut. Screen

Eric Veach is a Canadian computer scientist, who won two technical Academy Awards. He won his 2014 Academy Award for work in colour perception, as applied to computer graphics, described in his 1997 PhD thesis, he told CTV News. Veach had worked at Pixar, more he had been a senior developer at Google, his PhD thesis, Robust Monte Carlo Methods for Light Transport Simulation, is cited. In 2008, the University of Waterloo, the institution where he earned his Bachelor of Mathematics, in 1990, awarded him a J. W. Graham Medal, an annual award granted to a distinguished alumnus who had studied computer science there, his PhD is from Stanford University. Veach is a strong believer in environmental causes and serves as the chair of the Rainforest Trust board. Farhad Manjoo named Veach and two of his non-American colleagues, at Google, in an article entitled, "Why Silicon Valley Wouldn’t Work Without Immigrants". Manjoo's article attempted to explain why newly inaugurated President Donald Trump's attempts to squeeze off the flow of immigrants to the US was dangerous.

He argued that America disproportionately benefits from allowing intellectual foreigners like Veach to find work. Veach is the primary developer of Google's S2 geometry for geohashing

Corporal Gamini Kularatne PWV, SLSR was a Sri Lankan soldier. He was the first recipient of the Parama Weera Vibhushanaya, the highest award for gallantry awarded by the Sri Lanka Army for his actions during the Elephant Pass Siege, in which he was killed. Gamini Kularatne was the second son of a family of a sister, he obtained his primary education at Ranasinghe Premadasa Madhya Maha Vidyalaya at Hasalaka. Some claim that he was a survivor of the Aranthalawa Massacre on 2 June 1987 as Mahiyangane Dhammajothi Thero. After seeing the brutality of the Tiger massacre he pleaded with the chief Thero and left robes to join the Sri Lanka Army on 27 August 1987 with the blessings of his father S. G Babanis and mother S. G Juliet. On the night of 10 July 1991 over 5000 LTTE fighters surrounded the 600 strong army garrison located at Elephant Pass; the base was known as the gateway to the northern Jaffna Peninsula. Enlisted to the Sri Lankan Army Sinha Regiment Sixth Battalion as a Rifleman, Lance Corporal Gamini Kularatne, along with the rest of his regiment, was tasked with watching for possible LTTE infiltrators.

As dusk fell the LTTE launched several human wave attacks. Flanked by hundreds of armed fighters, they surrounded the Army's fortifications; as the battle ensued a unknown armored bulldozer resembling a tank advanced on the military installation. Equipped with a machine gun and containing a haul of arms and ammunitions inside, the armored bulldozer rumbled towards the southern entrance of the camp. Lance Corporal Kularatne recognized the armored rolling weapon would be able to swarm the garrison within seconds, inflict heavy casualties. Above all the fall of Elephant Pass to the enemy would be catastrophic and counterproductive at a national level. Although the LTTE began pounding the Army camp with heavy mortars and weapons to the cries of injured and dying soldiers amidst deafening explosions, all eyes were still centered on the enemy's approaching mysterious bulldozer laden with sophisticated weapons. Lance Corporal Kularatne, holding two grenades in his hands, dashed out towards the oncoming bulldozer tank, clambered up the tank's ladder and tossed the two grenades inside it, disregarding the numerous injuries he himself had suffered from LTTE bullets.

The grenades disabled the bulldozer amidst bursts of fire accompanied by a series of explosions. Lance Corporal Kularatne was flung to lay motionless; as the siege of Elephant Pass Army Camp was broken, one of the most ferocious battles in Sri Lanka's modern history ended. The camp had been saved from being overrun by the LTTE in part by Corporal Kularatne's bravery. In recognition of his act of gallantry Lance Corporal Gamini Kularatne was promoted to the rank of Corporal posthumously and honored with the award of "Parama Weera Vibhushanaya" on 10 October 1991, the highest gallantry award in Sri Lanka for the first time in the history of Sri Lanka Army, he came to be known as the Hasalaka Weeraya After the war was over, a memorial to Corporal Gamini was set up in Elephant Pass with the remains of the bulldozer he destroyed. The memorial, as well as the destroyed vehicle, can be seen on the A9 road on the way to Jaffna. A statement made by Dambara Amila Thero in March, 2015 in recommending the removal of this memorial sparked massive public outcry and widespread condemnation.

The Sri Lankan Baila singer Dhanapala Udawatta sang "Hasalaka Gamini", a song tribute to the famous war hero. Awards and decorations of the military of Sri Lanka Elephant Pass Hasalaka Gamini Kularatne - Supreme Sacrifice No one told him - he knew what had to be done: Sunday Times Article Sri Lankan Army Website Article Created by using Blogspot Article that released under the GNU Free Documentation License Army, Sri Lanka.. "50 YEARS ON" - 1949-1999, Sri Lanka Army. ISBN 955-8089-02-8 Sri Lanka Army Ministry of Defence: Sri Lanka Media Center for National Security: Sri Lanka SPUR

Ixtlán de los Hervores known as Ixtlán, is a city in the Mexican state of Michoacán. It is located 29 kilometres from Jiquilpan by state highway 16 and 26 kilometres to the northeast of the city of Zamora by way of highway 35, it is about 80 miles southeast of Guadalajara. Ixtlán de los Hervores is known for its thermal water springs. In Ixtlán de los Hervores one will find three geysers that surges up from the depths of the earth with tremendous pressure; the jet reaches temperatures of 96 degrees Celsius. There are one near the soccer field. A rustic spa has been built near the geyser with services for people who are seeking the healing powers of sulphurous waters found here. Geyser

The 1975 National Football League draft was held January 28–29, 1975, at the New York Hilton at Rockefeller Center in New York City, New York. Walter Payton, running back from Jackson State taken 1st round 4th overall by the Chicago Bears. Inducted: Professional Football Hall of Fame class of 1993. Randy White, defensive tackle from Maryland taken 1st round 2nd overall by the Dallas Cowboys. Inducted: Professional Football Hall of Fame class of 1994. Fred Dean, defensive end from Louisiana Tech taken 2nd round 33rd overall by the San Diego Chargers. Inducted: Professional Football Hall of Fame class of 2008. Robert Brazile, linebacker from Jackson State taken 1st round 6th overall by the Houston Oilers. Inducted: Professional Football Hall of Fame Class of 2018. NFL.com – 1975 Draft databaseFootball.com – 1975 Draft Pro Football Hall of Fame