Technical failure leads to widespread flight delays

A communication failure at a Georgia facility that processes flight schedules for the eastern half of the country has resulted in flight delays around the country.

While there are no safety issues involved with the failure, the Tuesday afternoon problem involved failure in a communication link that sends data from the Hampton, Georgia facility to a facility in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Although an exact number of how many flights were affected nationwide has not been determined, officials at the Atlanta airport are said to have inputted data manually to expedite the process.

DNC in the Mile-high City

The Democratic National Convention began Monday in Denver, Colorado, with Senator Ted Kennedy and presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s wife Michelle delivering the opening night’s speeches.

The two-act evening was highlighted by Senator Kennedy’s appearance, focusing on his current struggle with brain cancer. Michelle Obama’s speech was characterized by personal narratives intended to portray the Obamas as a family symbolic of the American dream.

“Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values,” said Michelle Obama. “That you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.”

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was the principal speaker on Tuesday evening, delivering a speech many political analysts considered to be key in bringing together a party still tense from division during the primaries.

Dean appointed dean of Architecture grad school

Effective this fall, Kathryn Dean was appointed dean of the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Design in the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University on August 26.

Dean, who previously was on faculty at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, started the acclaimed architecture firm Dean/Wolf in 1991 with her husband Charles Wolf.

Hailing from North Dakota, she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Architectural Studies from North Dakota State University in 1981 and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Oregon School of Architecture and Allied Arts in 1983.

“Kathryn brings incredible experience that spans practice and education to this important new position,” Bruce Lindsey, the E. Desmond Lee Professor of Community Collaboration and dean of architecture in the Sam Fox School, who made the announcement, said in an interview with The Record. “She will maintain her innovative architectural practice in New York City, while building on her extensive teaching experience at Columbia University to help us envision, design and develop the future of our school.”

NASA Phoenix mission nears finish

Though its primary mission came to a close on Tuesday, the Phoenix spacecraft will embark on an extended mission for NASA through the end of September as it continues its quest to learn more about composition of the icy Martian soil and its implications for the possibility of microbial life on Mars. Since late May, the lander has successfully dug up several Martian soil samples and detected water ice in the soil, and in its final primary mission days it has collected soil from a mid-depth layer at about seven centimeters deep and the deepest point yet, 18 centimeters, to determine the composition of the ice and soil at those depths.

In a recent Science Daily article, Washington University Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Ray Arvidson, primary operator of the Phoenix robotic arm, said, “We want to know the structure and composition of the soil at the surface, at the ice and in-between to help answer questions about the movement of water—either as vapor or liquid—between the icy layer and the surface.”