tinan, I doubt that noise is as easily abated by plantings as you may think. CALTRANS engineers are experts and even they have a hard time abating sound. Sometimes sound-deflecting walls are built only to find the sound, instead of being deflected upwards, goes in unexpected directions and creates headaches for another neighborhood which previously had no problems at all. Land topography has more impact on noise deflection than anything else. If you walk along the Bodega Head trail, at certain sections the ocean noise is thunderous; yet 50' away without any change except for a shift 10' inland and a protruding cliffside edge, the wave noise drops by two-thirds. No trees or level change are involved at all; it is all topographic noise deflection. Take a side path below cliff level and suddenly you can't hear any ocean noise, everything is silent. Certainly trees "en masse" will deflect noise. But you'd have to own a half-acre lot to plant enough trees to mass thickly enough to create a viable deflection wall on a level property. Walk around a freeway underpass, and you'll probably find that in certain spots almost underneath the freeway (it needs to be solid, not the type with separate roadways) the car noises stop. Sometimes they merge into a deep booming noise that is more pressure than noise, a rather odd feeling. All of us live in a geographically hilly area. This means that cell phone reception gives carriers nightmares and that noise from our maze of freeways travels upwards and outwards in a variety of directions, funneled by geography and climate. I can occasionally hear train whistles from the Amtrak lines two miles west - but not always, only at certain times. If sound were a simple thing, I would ALWAYS be able to hear them - the tracks don't move, and neither does my house (unless there's a rupture in the Hayward Fault, LOL). But I can't, even though I know that the trains blow their whistles at the same crossing twenty times a day.

I used to be a strong proponent of fencing until I learned that fencing not only kept the deer out but in many instances fencing had an adverse impact on many other creatures also, almost no matter how small an area was fenced, i.e., you might inadvertently cut off a box turtle from a food source. Fencing a larger area could cut off other creatures from their regularly traveled pathways as well as food sources. When other creatures of the land are excluded from an area, then the benefits those creatures bring to that section of land are also excluded. Further, excluding deer from one's property is really a selfish act as it only drives them to someone else's property. Out here where I live, an effort is being made to prevent landowners from fencing off large sections of their properties and especially from having fencing within a certain distance of a road. When fencing is erected close to the road, it serves only to increase the number of deer-car collisions, causing possible injury and death to humans and, of course, an increase in insurance costs. (I believe I read someplace of a driver who'd been injured quite badly in a collision with a deer and was suing a property owner who had a fence installed close to the road - unfortunately, I can't find a link.) While many may not like it, the best way to control deer is by culling the herds, through hunting. In the northern part of the state, coyotes have begun to hunt deer in packs, just like their wolf ancestors, and I have heard that in some places that hunting is keeping the deer population levels down. (The coyotes here in the East, unlike coyotes in the west, have wolf DNA in them, and seem to be larger than western coyotes.) Of course, there are now those people who are screaming for all the coyotes to be killed.....I'm not going there. :-) By far, the best product I have found and I found it only last year is Deer Scram. I had deer walking along my dog fence nibbling shrubs as they went until about 8 weeks ago I put down a "barrier" of Deer Scram. The deer have not been along the fence since then - not one track in the snow. Deer control is a thorny problem with no easy solutions, as we all know.

Wayne, here's the headline...Crystal power Palmtop Nuclear Fusion Device Invented By Michael Schirber LiveScience Staff Writer posted: 27 April 2005 01:00 pm ET The nuclear reaction that powers the Sun has been reproduced in a pocket-sized device, scientists announced today. Researchers have for years tried to harness nuclear fusion to power the world. But its cousin, nuclear fission -- the breaking apart of atoms -- is the only method so far commercially viable. The latest invention is not in the same league as efforts to build complex commercial reactors. The new device creates a relatively small number of reactions, and requires more energy to operate than it produces. The Real Deal (AP) - Previous claims of tabletop fusion have been met with skepticism and even derision by physicists. In one of the most notable cases, Dr. B. Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and Martin Fleischmann of Southampton University in England shocked the world in 1989 when they announced that they had achieved so-called cold fusion at room temperature. Their work was discredited after repeated attempts to reproduce it failed. Fusion experts noted that the new UCLA experiment is credible because, unlike the 1989 work, it did not violate basic principles of physics. "This doesn't have any controversy in it because they're using a tried and true method,'' said David Ruzic, professor of nuclear and plasma engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "There's no mystery in terms of the physics.'' -- Associated Press But the configuration is so small and simple that its creators think it may inspire unforeseen applications. "I certainly find it interesting that you can heat a cubic centimeter crystal in your hand, then plunge it in cold water and it will cause nuclear fusion," Seth Putterman from the University of California Los Angeles told LiveScience. Putterman's lay description greatly oversimplifies how the compact apparatus works. Specifically, Putterman and collaborators heat a pyroelectric crystal, lithium tantalite, from minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit to plus 45 in a matter of minutes. This generates an electrical charge -- 100,000 volts -- across the tiny crystal, which is housed in a chamber filled with deuterium gas, a heavy form of hydrogen. The high voltage is focused onto a needle-thin tip, which strips electrons from nearby deuterium nuclei and then accelerates them at a solid target containing deuterium. When two deuterium nuclei collide together at high speed, they fuse to form helium. The Sun also fuses atoms in thermonuclear reactions that create light and heat. The byproduct of the newly discovered lab reaction is a particle called the neutron. The scientists detect about 1,000 neutrons per second. Because neutrons are so penetrating, Putterman said that a hand-held neutron source might one-day be used to do geologic surveys or to look into cargo containers for nuclear devices. "Current neutron generators are extremely cumbersome," Putterman said. "They are about as big as a dentists X-ray machine, so you canÂt carry them into the field." Pyroelectric crystals could also provide a beam of ions for use as a microthruster in a miniature spacecraft. The research is described in the April 28 issue of the journal Nature.

Another interesting group. Really like the Hiriam Johnson quote and who of us can forget Christa McAuliff. That was the only launch I did not watch in all those years.