Model Airplanes

One of the few Khmer words Stephen Sumner knows is chhue. It means “pain,” and it’s something Cambodian people know a lot about from their three-decade-long civil war. Stephen, 53, is a brawny Canadian with an ebullient, even boisterous, manner. This is his third time here in as many years. He rides around on a longtail bicycle with a stack of lightweight mirrors behind the saddle, going to villages, hospitals, and physical rehabilitation centers looking for people who have lost their limbs.

Just as the pain of war lingers long after it is over, so an amputee’s pain can persist long after the limb has gone. It can be harrowing and difficult to treat with medication or surgery. Stephen helps people deal with their phantom pain, and he does it with mirrors.

We’re in Spean Tomneap village in the Battambang province of northwestern Cambodia—the most heavily mined region in one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. We’ve driven up along a mud road lined by fields and houses surrounded by tangled greenery. Stephen is perched on the landing near the staircase of a weathered wooden house on stilts. Chickens scurry about. A few onlookers gather.

In front of Stephen on an upturned pail sits Ven Phath, a soft-spoken, middle-aged father of five. His left trouser leg is rolled up to reveal a stump below the knee, the result of stepping on a mine in 1983. A plasticky prosthetic leg lies beside him.

Women who have undergone mastectomies report phantom breasts;

Article source: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/mirror-man-treating-phantom-limb-pain-simple-technology-87450/

topey@sanduskyregister.com

The second year of EHOVE Career Center’s new Engineering and Innovation Club will launch this September.

The club lifted off last year to give kids a real world-perspective of science by working with people in the industry, such as physics or aeronautical engineering.

The club is returning for another year starting with fall semester, Sept. 8 to Nov. 24, when club members will learn rocketry.

“The club is to create opportunities to foster the innate talent a child has,” said Brian Willis, a NASA Plum Brook aerospace engineer and mentor for the Engineering and Innovation Club.

“It will be interesting to see how many kids come back,” Willis said.

Working alongside him to challenge these kids will be Ron Bowerman, who retired from teaching at the University of Findlay and St. Wendelin High School in Fostoria.

This semester will challenge students in grades 7-9 from the 16 home districts EHOVE serves to design, test and evaluate the rockets to ensure they become familiar and comfortable with science, technology, engineering and math, known as “STEM”, said EHOVE assistant director Matt Ehrhardt.

“This club is about providing students the opportunity to see ‘is this what I want to do’ when they grow up,” Ehrhardt said.

“In three years when they enter high school, they are not passive — it is ‘I want to do this,” Willis said.

The grade levels were chosen because the children are mature enough to handle and understand the information, but have yet to enter high school, where they can get lost, Willis said.

NASA has several durable rockets the students will launch before every meeting, Willis said before learning the hows and

Article source: http://www.sanduskyregister.com/article/5957111

On any sunny summer day at Bullard Field in Elkhart you will find the sky full of aerobatic feats as planes perform loops, rolls and spins over the nearby rows of corn. During one Sunday the steady hum of engines was disrupted by a loud plunk as a plane lost control and crashed back to earth.

Club members with the Flight Masters of Elkhart County watched as a young pilot ran to the opposite edge of the flight field to search through the tall corn for his downed model plane. Five minutes later, the small crowd let out a cheer as the man returned with the plane intact.

“You can do a lot more with these than you can a real airplane,” said Jim Bowers, designated flight trainer for the club, “and they’re a lot cheaper.”

Up and down the flight line model planes of different shapes, sizes and colors were pulled out of the backs of cars, canvas bags and trucks.

Steve Bailey picked a spot near the end of the open field and worked on attaching the wings to his electric launch sail plane. When not in use, the electric propeller folds back, allowing the plane to soar, Bailey explained.

“What you’re doing is searching for bubbles of warm rising air and you try to keep yourself aloft with just that power,” Bailey said.

Farther up the field Harry Rombke, a club member since 1991, was having difficulty with his plane’s engine. A

Article source: http://www.elkharttruth.com/living/2014/08/06/Flight-Masters-of-Elkhart-County-continues-love-of-flying-with-model-airplanes.html

Editor’s note:  Get more business development news Monday at 7:40 a.m. on WDWS as the morning show crew visits with Champaign’s Planning Development Director Bruce Knight.

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If you’ve noticed more people than usual cruising around Champaign-Urbana on yellow tandem bikes, chalk it up to The Big Yellow Ride.

The tandem-rental project, which got underway last spring, is expected to pedal to a new level later this month, said Tim Chao, a partner in Neutral Cycle Workshop.

If things go as planned, The Big Yellow Ride will arrange with several food- and drink-based businesses in Champaign-Urbana to serve as bike-rental stations.

“The goal is ambitious, with stations that will be set in downtown Urbana, downtown Champaign and Campustown,” Chao said. “We’re going to have three stations in each city, for a total of six.”

The idea is that people can register online for a bike rental, then go to a participating business and pick up a helmet and a key

Article source: http://www.news-gazette.com/news/business/2014-08-03/its-your-business-project-chance-cyclists-share-rides.html