Can't ever pass this up

 

This Daily Mail article has several pictures of Michelle Keegan wearing fashionable clothes.

Of course I pay attention to an important news article like this.

As you may know, or if not, you will now, she does fashion lines with Very UK.  These pictures show off some of the glamorous looks, which look particularly fashionable on glamorous Michelle.

Michelle Keegan puts on a leggy display in black strapless gown with a daring thigh-split as she marks a major career milestone

I checked out the Very UK website and found a couple of intriguing views of Michelle posing in the line items that bear her name branding.  There's a lot of appealing shots where she smiles, which she does well. But in the picture below, she injected some personality. 

And this picture is about as close to nightwear as I've seen. Of course, she's done some great swimwear shots, too. But this has a certain appeal beyond the obvious.

This happened

 

Not long ago, I commented on the marriage of Ed Westwick and lovely Amy Jackson.

Well, it appears that they've been doing what comes naturally. She does have experience in this endeavor; she had a baby with her previous boyfriend.

Amy Jackson is pregnant! Actress, 32, reveals her bump for the first time as she announces she's expecting first child with husband Ed Westwick, 37 - two months after lavish wedding

And as I have done with other lovely women, here's a lovely picture of Amy.

A new place to see

 

I probably won't be able to visit this place anytime soon. But maybe, if I'm in the area, I'll remember to swing by. It's a "moderately challenging" hike to get to them. 

Here's a picture:

So how did they get that way?   This article covers that question.

Mystery of Crowley Lake Columns Solved

"In describing the formation of the columns, researchers believe that falling snow melted on top of the tuff rock deposits left after the eruption. This still-heated porous material caused the melted snow to boil, which created the even spaces between the columns that exist today."

Cement without the CO2 release?

If you didn't know, and if you want to read this article in its entirety, making cement gives off a lot of greenhouse gas CO2.  Nice quote from the article I'm about to link:

"If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of carbon, behind China and the United States."

So, here's the article:

Reinventing the world’s favorite building material

The idea is to use an industrial byproduct -- slag -- as a substitute for the limestone that is used to make cement in the traditional process. Because limestone is CaCO3, the process releases CO2.  A lot, as the quote above demonstrates.

So is this alternative feasible?

Perhaps.  As the article alludes to, at commercial scale, a lot of slag would be necessary. And I'm not sure how the amount of available slag compares to the amount of available limestone.

But if it could, it would probably be a significant improvement on the current situation., 

"The inventors at Material Evolution are using slag to make their cement because it has been already been super-heated and contains silica and alumina, materials that were transformed and are now “chemically activated,” ready to add strength to the concrete when water is added."

If you're curious, here's how cement is made:

It's been a (short) while

 

I have frequently noted, with a connoisseur's eye, the remarkable perfection of supermodel Izabel Goulart's prime posterior (such as here).  It is not difficult to find pictures of this fundamental feature online as well. But it hasn't been featured recently, until the Daily Mail provided another rear view. 

Izabel Goulart puts on a cheeky display in barely-there bikini while flaunting her incredible figure

This is where they hid it

 

A couple of weeks ago, there was a major theft in Britain.

The thieves (actually, scammers) purloined 24 tons of prime British artisanal cheddar.

Who stole 24 tons of cheddar? ‘Sophisticated’ cheese heist sparks police hunt.

"The stolen cheeses — Hafod Welsh Organic cheddar, Westcombe cheddar, and Pitchfork cheddar — are among “the most sought-after artisan cheeses” in the United Kingdom, the company said."

There was an arrest a couple of days later, but I don't know if there has been progress since then.

If you might be interested in the cheddar cheese that the cheese thieves chose, Pitchfork cheddar was one of the three stolen varieties.

Life all over

 

The Mars rovers, both working now and defunct, are looking for geological indications that life might have existed on Mars at one time. They won't necessarily find signs of life that unmistakably indicate it was alive; they are searching for indications that there could have been conditions when life was possible.

But this article refers to a study that suggests there could be real living life on Mars now.

Life on Mars? Researchers say mid-latitude ice could support life

"If the dusty mid-latitude ice on Mars melts below the surface for part of the year, then, like on Earth, microbes such as cyanobacteria could take advantage of the nutrients in the Martian dust mixed with the ice. They could use small amounts of melt water while living in a ‘radiatively habitable zone’ below the surface, where the temperature is just right for liquid water to be present."

This is the actual study:

Potential for photosynthesis on Mars within snow and ice

There aren't any pictures of Mars or Martians in this paper.  So here's a nice one.

This is from the Curiosity rover, and here's the article it appears in:

NASA's Curiosity rover captures 360-degree view of Mars — and finds strange sulfur stones