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  • Tpi Composites, Tpi Composites Stock Symbol 2010

    TPI is expanding its facility in anticipation of a greater demand for composite wind turbine blades from its customer General Electric and General Electric’s wind farm customers.

    TPI is just one of 183 projects and $2.3 billion in tax credits that the White House announced today. These tax credits will create tens of thousands of high quality clean energy jobs and support domestic manufacturing of advanced clean energy technologies including solar, wind and efficiency and energy management technologies.
    TPI Composites Inc is building a new manufacturing facility in Nebraska to produce next generation wind turbine blades. TPI Composites got $2.3 billion Tax Credit this year. TPI says the facility will create over 200 new jobs and will have a capacity equivalent to supplying 265 turbines rated at 2.5 MW for a total electrical output of 663 MW. TPI will also be expanding their existing manufacturing facility in Iowa. TPI’s composite materials are also used for lighter, stronger, and more fuel efficient vehicles. $52 million for world-leader Vestas to expand U.S. turbine blade production.

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  • Late night shake up: NBC Vs. Leno Vs. COCO

    (CNN) NBC’s gamble in prime time with “The Jay Leno Show” may be about to end, with the former longtime “Tonight Show” host possibly returning to his old 11:35 p.m. time slot, pushing back “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” by 30 minutes to 12:05 a.m. weeknights.

    Appearing on CNN’s Campbell Brown, New York Times television reporter Bill Carter said, “It looks like this is definitely a plan that’s probably going to take place,” possibly as soon as the end of the network’s coverage of the Winter Olympics in February, when regular NBC shows are pre-empted.

    Carter, who wrote a piece about the possible NBC plan for The New York Times, told Brown the scenario involves reducing Leno’s current 60 minute program to 30 minutes.

    He told Brown that contracts for both performers would have to be re-negotiated. “I think Jay is probably quite willing to do it. I think the question becomes, why would Conan want to do this?” Carter said, indicating O’Brien, the former host of “Late Night,” could be motivated to talk with competing networks.

    Carter told Brown that while Leno’s ratings during his long tenure on “Tonight” remained solid, NBC wanted to keep both stars happy. David Letterman jumped from NBC to CBS after being passed over for the “Tonight Show” when Johnny Carson retired.

    Carter says NBC affiliates were unhappy about the ratings for their late evening newscasts with the 10:00 p.m. Leno show as their lead-in programming. Moving Leno to 11:35 could signal a return of programs like “Law & Order” and “Dateline NBC” to the 10:00 p.m. time slot, said Carter.

    In a statement to CNN, NBC said “Both Jay (Leno) and the show are committed to working closely with them (NBC’s affiliates) to find ways to improve the performance.”

    http://campbellbrown.blogs.cnn.com/2…#comment-24393

  • Pete Carroll Leaving Usc Information 2010

    Carroll has also made it clear that he needs complete control of a team’s football operations in order to leave USC. But the Seattle job would offer exactly that, as the Seahawks are without a general manager.

    One has always wondered if Carroll has wanted another shot at the NFL after short stints in New York and New England. I’ve written several times that Carroll never really had a fair opportunity in the pros, getting fired from the Jets after just one season, and then following Bill Parcells with the Patriots. Still, Carroll has a winning record as an NFL coach with two playoff appearances in four seasons.

    In addition to full control, the Seahawks offer Carroll the opportunity to stay on the West Coast, which would be appealing to the Bay Area native. With USC facing potential sanctions, with the team coming off its worst season in eight years, and with impatient fans and short-memory media types stepping up their criticism of the coach, Carroll might feel like this is the right time to leave.

    One could make an argument that Carroll is the greatest coach in USC history. He won 7 straight Pac-10 titles, coached in 7 consecutive BCS bowl games, had a record of 6-1 in BCS games, and won two national titles. The great Howard Jones and John McKay never had a streak like Carroll. But if Carroll leaves USC with sanctions then that would certainly sour his legacy. And despite all his accomplishments, critics would say that Carroll’s teams under-achieved in recent years, suffering what seemed to a shocking upset loss each season. Second, there’s the opportunity. After Carroll left New England, I always had the feeling he would return to the NFL, determined to prove to his critics that, yes, he could win on the pro level just as easily as he could at USC.

    Third, there’s the timing. USC’s football program has been under scrutiny since stories broke in 2006 about Reggie Bush’s alleged acceptance of thousands of dollars in cash from would-be marketing agents, and the school’s compliance department last month began investigating Joe McKnight’s use of a sport utility vehicle owned by a Santa Monica businessman.

    Let’s see, you have motive, opportunity, timing and money. From where I sit, it’s easy to connect the dots and make a case for Carroll returning to the NFL.

    “All I know,” said one source close to the situation, “is that some people within the Seahawks this week were saying that something big was about to happen.”

    I don’t know if they were talking about the firing of Jim Mora or the possible hiring of Pete Carroll, and if you ask me, I’d say it was the latter. But courting Carroll and actually tying him down are two different things. Carroll has had his opportunities before, but always, always, always there wasn’t enough there to convince him to leave USC.

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  • Evening Crunch Crumbs: Proposition 8 Trial Will Air On YouTube; Randy Jackson Calls Simon Rumors “Distracting;” Halle Berry Doesn’t Do Lines At The Airport

    Links from the blogosphere take us to the weekend!

    -TomKat treated their 3-year-old daughter Suri to a stage production of Mary Poppins at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles on Wednesday. The family even posted backstage with the show’s stars Ashley Brown (Mary Poppins) and Gavin Lee (Bert)….

    -This is a “Man Down Situation!” Keyshia Cole is pregnant, engaged, and no longer is contact with her messed-up family…..

    -Snoop Dogg “Gets That a Lot…..”

    Southland’s Regina King is thisclose to marrying fellow ’80s child star and former Cosby Kid Malcolm Jamal Warner…..

    -Randy Jackson calls rumors of Simon’s departure from American Idol “distracting….”

    -Showtime has ordered 13 episodes of the Laura Linney cancer drama The Big C…..

    -Halle Berry doesn’t do lines at the airport….

    -Will Ted Koppel return to ABC?

    -The Proposition 8 Against Gay Marriage Trial will be aired on YouTube. Is that a good thing?

    The Los Angeles Times is cutting jobs….


  • Gary Coleman Nude Scene Caught On Camera

    Gary Coleman can’t seem to catch a break. While breaking up a fight during a scene in the upcoming release Midgets vs. Mascots, the 41-year-old star’s robe flew open, exposing his peen for the world to see.

    Coleman — who was hospitalized after a mild seizure this week — met with the film’s producers to keep the footage from being shown, according to The Los Angeles Times. But it seems Gary’s pleas have fallen on deaf ears. The producers have effectively refused to remove Gary’s nude scene, citing a contract the former child star signed which gives the studio total creative control over what’s feature.

    “With regards to Gary Coleman’s displeasure with a scene in the film in which he briefly shows full-frontal nudity,” the producers said in a prepared statement Friday. “The producers of the film have multiple contracts — signed by Gary — which give the filmmakers full rights and permissions to shoot any and all footage, including nudity, during the making of the film.”


  • Cars In India 2010 Information

    Regardless, the future of the auto industry is going to largely be built in Asia, and Asian automakers are quickly embracing hybrid technologies. Outside of Toyota, and Honda to some extent; however, small hybrid cars for the American market seem like an oxymoron for the US market.

    Nevertheless, can the US auto industry succeed without reconciling the extreme difference between the American auto market and that of the rest of the world?Though still a few months away from becoming a reality, the prototype on display at the Auto Expo would be enough to set any speedhead’s pulses racing. Within a day of being launched, www.polocup.in has already seen over 70 registrations.

    For the interested, the Polo Cup car is a 120 bhp racing version of the Volkswagen Polo. The suspension has been modified and fitted with special spring-damper units while the sport steering wheel has an airbag, and an integrated fire extinguishing system is activated in the cockpit and engine compartment in case of a fire.

    And if that wasn’t enough, to prepare young drivers for higher racing categories, all cars are fitted with a professional data logging system. As far as the racing format is concerned, all cars will be the same and every race weekend, drivers would be allotted a different car to build and develop racing skills. Interestingly, the winner of this championship will get a chance to drive abroad.

    “The suspension, telemetry, the steering wheel is all world class. Now our boys won’t need a couple of races to get used to the technology when they travel abroad because they will have it all here,” added Sharma.

    Open to drivers in the age group 16-24, the series comes to Indians at a highly subsidized rates of around Rs 35,000 per racing weekend, which roughly works out to be around Rs 2 lakh for six race weekends. For More 2010 Jaguar XJ Pictures Click Here & Here

    The all-new Jaguar XJ is just on the luxury segment that sports a superior design, unstoppable power and engineering added to it. The car was first premiered worldwide in London in July 2009, and deliveries across the world are beginning this year. Bookings for India too have opened, and deliveries will begin from June 2010.

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  • Love Field Movie Download, Love Field Movie Free Download

    Love Field is earnest, compassionate, smoothly directed, and something of a crock. Despite its humanist veneer, the movie, at heart, is a soft-pedaled thriller, with too many garish twists and turns. And Lurene and Paul are simply too brave, soulful, and well meaning to be believed: The scene in which their friendship climaxes with a steamy kiss might be more convincing if it didn’t feel like the meeting of two saints. The best reason to see the movie is Pfeiffer, who gives a finely modulated performance, showing us the delicate tug-of-war between Lurene’s rigid homespun values and her better nature. Yet those values are defeated a little too easily; by the end, even the layered emotionalism of Pfeiffer’s work is blanketed by the film’s need to see her as a role model. Love Field is designed to give audiences an easy way to feel good about themselves. It sprinkles its characters’ very ordinariness with liberal fairy dust. C+

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  • Diploma Exam Results Tamil Nadu 2009 Information

    Annamalai University is a State university in Annamalai Nagar, Tamil Nadu, India. It offers courses in several fields of higher education including Arts, Science, Indian Languages, Engineering and Technology, Education, fine Arts, Agriculture, Medicine, Dentistry and more.

    ANNAMALAI UNIVERSITY
    Annamalai Nagar – 608 002
    Tamil Nadu
    India
    telephone : 91 – 4144 – 238248/263/796
    fax : 91 – 4144 – 238080

    *

    http://www.tndte.com/

    *

    http://www.worldcolleges.info/

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    http://www.squarebrothers.com/

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    http://www.webulagam.com/

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    The Engineering Colleges and Polytechnics were under the control of the Directorate of Public Instruction and the Directorate of Industries and Commerce respectively. The Directorate of Technical Education was formed with effect from 14th October 1957, consequent to the suggestions made by the State Standing Advisory Board of Technical Education.Tamil Nadu Diploma Results is declared.

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  • Samsung Omnia Pro and Jet snapped at CES

    samsung-ces-1

    Samsung doesn’t have much in the way of sneak peeks at CES, but we did manage to catch a glimpse of two international handsets. First is the Omnia Pro or Samsung B7610. The Omnia Pro doesn’t look too much like its cousin, the Omnia II, and it features a slide out QWERTY keyboard. It’s also a Windows 6.5 device that has a front-facing camera for video chat. Unfortunately, the only carrier in the U.S. that supports video chat of any kind is AT&T and it’s only one-way video chatting. We’re also looking at a 5 megapixel camera, 800MHz processor, Wi-Fi, A-GPS, push email support and a 3.5″ AMOLED WVGA display. Click on through for the Jet and for the rest of the flicks in our gallery.

    Click on over to our Samsung Omnia Pro and Jet gallery!

    The other touch screen phone from Samsung is the Samsung Jet. It’s smaller than the Omnia Pro and it bears a striking resemblance to the Omnia 2, yet the OS is different. Featuring a blazing fast 800MHz processor, Wi-Fi, one-finger zoom, DivX and XviD support, it’s also packed with a 5 megapixel camera, face and blink detection, MS Exchange ActiveSync, 3.1″ AMOLED display and a 3D user interface. Don’t get us wrong, it’s a pretty swanky phone, but honestly, it doesn’t really get us excited. If you’re looking to swipe one of these international devices, our pick would be the the Omnia Pro.

    Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

    Read Original Article

  • Retromodo: Ever Wonder What CES Was Like In 1979? [Ces2010]

    Cable! $75 Cassette Movies! (Porno cost more)! Movie Discs! TV Printers! This video segment will answer all the questions you we’re dying to find out, PLUS MORE! (BONUS: Witness the birth of TBS and WGN!) [Yahoo via Josh Fruhlinger]







  • Diploma Results Tamilnadu, Diploma Results Tamilnadu 2009

    Annamalai University is a State university in Annamalai Nagar, Tamil Nadu, India. It offers courses in several fields of higher education including Arts, Science, Indian Languages, Engineering and Technology, Education, fine Arts, Agriculture, Medicine, Dentistry and more.

    ANNAMALAI UNIVERSITY
    Annamalai Nagar – 608 002
    Tamil Nadu
    India
    telephone : 91 – 4144 – 238248/263/796
    fax : 91 – 4144 – 238080

    *

    http://www.tndte.com/

    *

    http://www.worldcolleges.info/

    *

    http://www.squarebrothers.com/

    *

    http://www.webulagam.com/

    *

    http://www.schools9.com/

    *

    http://www.rediff.com/

    The Engineering Colleges and Polytechnics were under the control of the Directorate of Public Instruction and the Directorate of Industries and Commerce respectively. The Directorate of Technical Education was formed with effect from 14th October 1957, consequent to the suggestions made by the State Standing Advisory Board of Technical Education. Tamil Nadu Diploma Results is declared.

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  • Friday Game Night: SCRABBLE

    Good Evening readers! I hope you had a wonderful week, as I mentioned yesterday today is “Game Night” in our household and our choice game of the week is …..SCRABBLE. You know the game, where you make words out of letters and count up your points. Here’s a review of the game, some tips, a few rules and finally our own ideas.

    IMG: Amazon

    IMG: Amazon

    (The following review was played with two adults and two children. Their ages are 9 and 12)

    SCRABBLE: (Vintage Games Collection) Crossword Game
    by Hasbro
    2-4 player game
    $19.99

    First, unlike many of our board games this one came in a very nice cherry-colored wooden box. Keeping the game in the box means keeping it nice and looking new almost every time we pull it out. Not to mention this keeps everything organized and gives us more shelf space, due to its shape this could easily be placed on a bookshelf or on the top of the refrigerator. Inside the box is a neatly folded (to look like a pamphlet) gameboard, 100 letter tiles, 4 racks, instructions and a soft, velvet pouch. The top of the box slides off sideways which makes opening and closing it a snap.

    From my own experience, my two children have loved playing SCRABBLE so much that each morning this week one of them would pull it out and set it up. This has become a daily game, sometimes it is played three times a day with games played one or two times. They love trying to figure out words and see who gets the best score.

    The rules are pretty simple:
    Each player draws 7 tiles, one letter is laid in the center of the board and each player makes words. When a player can’t spell a word they need to draw. The player that does play a word will need to draw that many letters from the velvet bag. Throughout the game score is kept by adding the number at the bottom of the tiles together, plus adding additional points depending which block their letter falls on. Some blocks will read “Double letter score or triple word score.”

    Ex: an “e” is laid in the center
    Example someone plays, someone else may place the word “tile” off the end or beginning “e.”

    At the end of the game the scores are all added up and those that have tiles still on their rack must add the bottom number up and subtract it from their total. The person with the highest number points wins the game.

    IMG: Elizabeth Ferree

    IMG: Elizabeth Ferree

    TIPS for Education: Parents help your children think outside the box. Pull out a dictionary and sit it on the table along with a few sheets of paper and pencils. Whenever your child asks about a spelling or a word you used have them write it down and look it up. This will help them increase their vocabulary and show them how to use a dictionary at the same time.

    Family Rules: We like to use the rules I mentioned above, however some days we will have only 3 letter words, farm words, names, 5 letter words, etc. We always explain our game of choice before playing, if someone isn’t playing the draw from the bag to select the first letter.

    By the way, according to the National Rules the person that uses all 7 letters from their board on one turn gets an additional 50 points added to their total. I told my crew this rule tonight and everyone is really trying to think hard to get those extra points.

    Trivia: Did you know this game was invented in 1930s by a man named Alfred M. Butts when he was unemployed? It was also rejected at first and didn’t get manufactured until he teamed up with James Brunot.

    Thank you for visiting our Friday Game Night, hope you join us next week. Don’t forget to tell us what you are playing.

    Post from: Blisstree

    Friday Game Night: SCRABBLE

  • Change of Shift is Up at Emergiblog

    Change of Shift is up at Emergiblog! Get it while it’s hot! Here’s a link to the page where you can find the current edition and all of the past!


  • Pesticides Behind Mass Die-Off ?

    Yale Environment 360 has an article on the possible link between pesticides and various animal die-offs (including bee colony collapse disorder) – Behind Mass Die-Offs, Pesticides Lurk as Culprit.

    Ever since Olga Owen Huckins shared the spectacle of a yard full of dead, DDT-poisoned birds with her friend Rachel Carson in 1958, scientists have been tracking the dramatic toll on wildlife of a planet awash in pesticides. Today, drips and puffs of pesticides surround us everywhere, contaminating 90 percent of the nation’s major rivers and streams, more than 80 percent of sampled fish, and one-third of the nation’s aquifers. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, fish and birds that unsuspectingly expose themselves to this chemical soup die by the millions every year.

    But as regulators grapple with the lethal dangers of pesticides, scientists are discovering that even seemingly benign, low-level exposures to pesticides can affect wild creatures in subtle, unexpected ways — and could even be contributing to a rash of new epidemics pushing species to the brink of extinction.

    In the past dozen years, no fewer than three never-before-seen diseases have decimated populations of amphibians, bees, and — most recently — bats. A growing body of evidence indicates that pesticide exposure may be playing an important role in the decline of the first two species, and scientists are investigating whether such exposures may be involved in the deaths of more than 1 million bats in the northeastern United States over the past several years.

    White-nose Syndrome, named for the tell-tale white fuzz it leaves on bats’ ears and noses, has killed more than a million bats in the northeastern United States.
    For decades, toxicologists have accrued a range of evidence showing that low-level pesticide exposure impairs immune function in wildlife, and have correlated this immune damage to outbreaks of disease. Consumption of pesticide-contaminated herring has been found to impair the immune function of captive seals, for example, and may have contributed to an outbreak of distemper that killed over 18,000 harbor seals along the northern European coast in 1988. Exposure to PCBs has been correlated with higher levels of roundworm infection in Arctic seagulls. The popular herbicide atrazine has been shown to make tadpoles more susceptible to parasitic worms.

    Bee extinction also features in Douglas Coupland’s new novel “Generation A“, reviewed by The New York Times – Stung Together.

    “Generation A” (the term comes from a Kurt Vonnegut quotation) is not a sequel to but rather a thematic wink at Coupland’s first novel, “Generation X” (1991), about young slackers experiencing ­postindustrial fin de siècle ennui and sitting around telling stories. That novel kicked off both Coupland’s career and — to his ire — a global media frenzy and commodification orgy. From the beginning, Coupland’s novels have explored the vertiginous acceleration of culture as it intersects with media and technology, as well as the impact of those forces on a disaffected subgroup of drifters and eco-freaks, teenagers and young adults, dropouts and designers, programmers and cubicle inhabitants, gamers and geeks. All of it is rendered with the paradoxical combination of empathy and irony that marks Coupland’s work. And “Generation A” is no exception.

    Narrated by five characters who begin as strangers and come from five different parts of the world, the novel is set in a near future when bees are thought to have become extinct. A global “pollination crisis” results, and “a six-ounce bottle of 2008 Yukon fireweed honey” now fetches some $17,000 at Sotheby’s. Also extinct are heroin addicts, because, of course, “poppies require bees.” Instead, a sinister prescription drug called Solon has filled the gap, treating anxiety by blocking thoughts of the future.


  • A heretical question

    To put this in context my old diet was healthy and I have always been reasonably fit (I cycle to work and walk a lot). Weight is not a problem, actually keeping weight on tends to be a bigger problem.

    I am wondering why I should not stop taking Metformin, abandon the lowish carb diet, and simply take insulin. I think I can live a more normal life (closer to my old diet) with little, if any, loss of control. I am curious as to what I might be missing, apart from the ability to get my endo to sign up to this.

  • Guarujá – A Pérola do Atlântico

    Ultimamente tenho ido muito a essa maravilhosa praia paulista, e percebi que o SSC não da o devido respeito a ela em questões de fotos. Então resolvi garimpar várias fotos pela internet ( pois a anta aqui sempre esquece de levar a camera e tirar por conta própria). Pena que só consegui achar fotos da orla, e não fotos da cidade :ohno:
    Espero que gostem e se surpreendam com essa belíssima cidade. :banana:

    Alguns dados:
    Área 142,589 km²
    População 304.274 hab.
    Densidade 2.076,9 hab./km²
    IDH 0,788 médio PNUD/2000
    PIB R$ 2.585.481 mil IBGE/2005
    PIB per capita R$ 8.646,00 IBGE/2005

    Praia do Tombo:

    rm.fabri


    rm.fabri


    rm.fabri


    rm.fabri

    Astúrias:

    rm.fabri


    sergioall


    rm.fabri


    drcak07


    Andrey Antipin

    Pitangueiras:

    rm.fabri


    Marcelo Ricardo


    Marcelo Ricardo

    Enseada:

    rm.fabri


    rm.fabri


    keroldepaula


    ClaudioMachado

    Pernambuco:

    E por fim excelentes fotos feitas pelo Dante Laurini Jr:

    :cheers:

  • Innovation as Resource and China’s New Magnetism

    Jamais Cascio has a post on the kerfuffle about Chinese rare earth export restrictions and how the best solution is innovation – Innovation as Resource and China’s New Magnetism.

    You’ve probably seen “neodymium” (actually neodymium-iron-boron) magnets advertised in techie-oriented magazines and gadget blogs. They’re actually the strongest type of magnet available, and a pair of them can easily smash fingers. They’re also incredibly useful, with small neodymium magnets found in everything from hard drives to wind turbines. Neodymium is one of 17 “rare-earth metals,” and these elements have turned out to be critical to the rapidly-growing green technology industries. Rare-earth metals are used in hybrid and electric cars and low-energy lightbulbs, along with windmills (and numerous other greentech applications).

    And China is the source for over 95% of the rare-earth metals now in use–something that increasingly looks like a problem. How we respond to this problem can tell us something about how we can respond to other imminent resource and sustainability crises.

    Conventional wisdom says that we live in a globalized economy and if China can offer the metals at cheaper prices than other sources (namely, now-closed mines in South Africa, Greenland, and Canada), it’s good for us all, right? The fact that many high-tech military technologies rely on Chinese rare-earth metals may give some people pause, but so far, so good. But that model assumes that China is willing to sell as much mineral as it can produce, to whomever wants to buy–and that assumption may no longer be true.

    The U.K.’s Independent reports that China has been gradually cutting the amount of rare-earth elements it exports, now down 40% from seven years ago. China now exports only 25% of the rare-earth elements it mines. […]

    So what are our options? We (as in, the non-China parts of the industrialized world) could try to pressure China to sell more, but that’s unlikely to work–and China tends not to respond well to even mild criticism. We could try to rapidly reopen the now-closed rare-earth element mines, but mining is, frankly, an environmental nightmare and incredibly dangerous–hardly a sustainable practice.

    Our best option is to innovate our way out of the problem.


  • Salão de Detroit: PT Cruiser edição final

    chrysler

    A Chrysler vai apresentar no Salão de Detroit que irá começar no próximo dia 11 a edição final do PT Cruiser.

    A edição final terá o nome de Couture Edition e terá como diferencial duas cores, sendo que sua metade de cima será da cor preta e sua metade de baixo será da cor prata.

    No seu interior o modelo recebe novas modificações como bancos de couro vermelho e apliques cromados em quase todo seu painel, trazendo um ar de hot-rods.

    Essa iniciativa da Chrysler foi à mesma da Volkswagen quanto ao New Beetle que recebeu uma edição final, com várias modificações além de ser limitada.

    Fonte: Motor Gerais


  • Trofa | Variante Ferroviaria – Nova Estação

    (procurei o thread e visto não o ter encontrado decidi criar um novo, as obras já decorrem há bastante tempo)

    Noticia:
    Linha do Minho – Variante da Trofa

    Consignação da Empreitada Geral de Construção Civil, Via e Catenária

    A construção da Variante da Trofa, integrada na remodelação da Linha do Minho, entre S.Romão e Lousado, visa colmatar uma lacuna na modernização daquela linha na zona da Trofa, pondo fim ao estrangulamento ferroviário na rede principal actualmente existente no atravessamento em via única. Permitirá, igualmente, melhorar a regularidade dos serviços das Linhas do Minho e de Guimarães e do Ramal de Braga, aumentar a oferta de comboios e reduzir os tempos de percurso. Esta melhoria das condições operacionais da Linha do Minho é ainda imprescindível para assegurar a concretização da 1.ª Fase da Ligação de Alta Velocidade Porto/Vigo, permitindo cumprir o tempo de percurso fixado para essa nova ligação.

    A Variante da Trofa inicia-se ao km 19,895, um pouco antes do apeadeiro da Senhora das Dores, inflecte para Nascente, contornando a zona central da cidade da Trofa, e vai inserir-se, de novo, no traçado existente ao km 23,957, à entrada da ponte sobre o rio Ave.

    Com um desenvolvimento de 3555 metros, que encurta o actual percurso em 508 metros, integra um troço em túnel, com 1404 metros de extensão, e um viaduto com 327 metros de comprimento. Nos restantes 1824 metros, corre, ora em escavação, ora em aterro.

    A Empreitada Geral de Construção Civil, Via e Catenária, consignada a 12 de Fevereiro com a empresa OPWAY, SA, na presença da Senhora Secretária de Estado dos Transportes, Engª Ana Paula Vitorino, tem o valor de 23.478.603,09 euros e um prazo de 15 meses, e envolve as seguintes intervenções:

    Via-férrea
    – Via dupla electrificada, com sistemas de sinalização e de telecomunicações de tecnologias idênticas às usadas na restante rede;
    – As características do traçado consideradas em projecto permitirão velocidades de 120 km/h para comboios convencionais e de 140 km/h para comboios basculantes, como nos troços a montante e a jusante da variante.

    Estação – A nova estação da Trofa será integrada no viaduto, sendo dotada de dois cais de passageiros, localizados no lado exterior das vias.
    Sob o viaduto, ficarão as instalações técnicas e de acolhimento dos passageiros, que incluem uma área comercial; sobre o viaduto, ficarão as plataformas de passageiros, cobertas, com cinco metros de largura, às quais se poderá aceder por escadas e elevadores.
    – Na envolvente da estação será criada uma interface rodo-ferroviária que permitirá a ligação com outros modos de transporte público (Metro do Porto, que aí terá a sua estação terminal, autocarros e táxis), estando também previsto um parque de estacionamento de superfície com capacidade para 167 veículos.

    Supressão de Passagens de Nível
    Com a entrada ao serviço da variante serão suprimidas as três passagens de nível actualmente existentes no troço a desactivar da Linha do Minho.

    Estão em curso os trabalhos da 1.ª fase da Variante da Trofa, com a Empreitada de Concepção / Construção do Túnel, adjudicada ao Consórcio Soares da Costa / Spie Batignoles Europe, pelo valor 15.726.500,00 euros e um prazo de 730 dias. A consignação ocorreu em 29 de Janeiro de 2008, estando prevista a sua conclusão em Janeiro de 2010. Decorrido cerca de um ano, o túnel – construído para vencer uma elevação do terreno – encontra-se escavado numa secção total de aproximadamente 800 metros.

    O valor global do investimento na Variante da Trofa, considerando, para além das duas empreitadas referidas, os estudos / projectos, fiscalização, sinalização, materiais de via e expropriações rondará os 65,7 milhões de euros

    Fica uma ideia do trajecto:
    [IMG][/IMG]