Couple brings contemporary aesthetic home

It's hard for Samuel Edwards, 63, to contain his enthusiasm about the contemporary ambience he and his wife, Angela, 54, have cultivated in their Wernersville home. It has involved many projects over the last 3 years, almost all done by Sam himself.

He says contemporary design is not something you see a lot of in Berks County, but he and Angela were eager to add their personal take on the look to their home.

The open floor plan of the home, which has a Colonial revival exterior, is what appealed to the Edwardses, and they snapped up the four-year-old house in September 2008. They had the vision to see the potential of the home despite a color palette that didn't suit their tastes.

"We like a lot of gray tones and wanted to get away from earth tones," Sam said. "A lot of people don't realize gray is a neutral."

After painting, one of the first major projects Sam did when they purchased the house was to remove all of the carpeting.Learn all about solarpanel. Hard surface flooring would make Sam's allergies more bearable, he said.

The creamy white marble with gray veining in the living and dining rooms was his first attempt at laying a tile floor,Where to buy or purchase plasticmoulds for precast and wetcast concrete? and he thought it turned out well despite his learning curve. Sam continued his flooring projects by installing sand-colored ceramic tile in the center hall and kitchen, charcoal-colored marble in the family room and other ceramic tile throughout the home. He even stripped the wood stairs leading to the second floor and stained them in alternating light and dark shades.

Sam also found a unique use for slate tiles he purchased from Ted Smith Flooring in Spring Township: covering for a focal wall in the family room.

Sam estimates he has saved thousands of dollars by doing projects himself. He also takes pride in getting the supplies he needs from locally based businesses.

By doing the work himself, he has been able to get the look just right to suit him and Angela.

"People confuse contemporary and modern," Sam said.Aeroscout rtls provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking. "Contemporary is more abstract in its design while modern is very simplistic and more conservative."

Angela's concept of contemporary design is one that employs different shapes and colors.

Their bold dining room with lavender walls is evidence they are not afraid of color. Teal accent pieces also dot the family room. Glass in clear and more opaque hues is also dominant in their décor choices and white leather couches pop in more than one room.

Much of their furniture was ordered from Gilbert's Furniture, 300 Penn St.

"They had to blow the dust off the contemporary catalog,Diagnosing and Preventing coldsores Fever in the body can often trigger the onset of a cold sore." Angela said.

A self-taught artist, many of Sam's pieces take center stage in their rooms. A large painting of an oriental woman dominates the living room and an abstract is a key feature of the family room.

He has the time now that he is retired.The best rubbersheets products on sale, After serving in the Vietnam War, he said he spent 36 years working in human services and still tries to help other veterans and their families when he can. He said he earned a degree in human resource development from Temple University.

Angela was a stay-at-home mom. In their blended family, the Edwardses have a total of nine adult children ranging in age from 21 to 43.

Sam spent most of his life in Yeadon, Delaware County, and Angela grew up in Kirkwood, Lancaster County. They were drawn to Berks by the amount of real estate that they could afford.

"The people living in Berks County tend to take Berks County for granted," Sam said. "They don't realize what a good value the homes are."

Cheese mould, a new sanitary sterilizer?

Since the days of the ancient Romans, humankind has relied on mould to craft pungent, tasty blue cheeses like roquefort, gorgonzola and stilton.

Now, researchers have harnessed that edible fungus, Penicillium roqueforti, to create a self-cleaning foil that contains an embedded mould that eats away at food spilled on it.

The product is still rudimentary – it took the mould two weeks to digest half a teaspoon of sugary broth.

But it is one of the first times scientists have combined living organisms and a material component. The researchers foresee complex future applications such as weaving toxin-producing mould into fabric to create a self-sterilizing surface.

The research team, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, has published its findings in the Jan. 3 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

The project’s inspiration was the French cheese camembert, said one of the researchers, Lukas Gerber.

A soft-ripened cheese, camembert has a white, downy rind – or as the research paper calls it, “a living, functional biomaterial.” The rind, which is inoculated with the Penicillium camemberti mould, acts both as a ripening agent and a protective surface against other micro-organisms.

“Now, we want to take such a function from a living body and incorporate it into an artificial material,” Mr. Gerber said in a telephone interview. “It’s the first time have designed a flat surface combining these two domains, the plastic and the micro-organisms.”

The foil they created was like a three-layered sandwich, with two polymer films encasing a thin coating of gelatinous culture holding the fungi.

The layer at the bottom was made with polyvinyl chloride, the material used in plumbing pipes and fake leather. The fungi, suspended in an agar mixture, were spread on that layer, then covered by a porous polycarbonate plastic membrane.

The researchers analyzed two sizes of the self-cleaning material, one about the width of a dollar coin and the other as large as a sheet of letter paper. A sugary broth made from potatoes was dropped on the samples. Within 14 days, the fungi consumed the spill until the sugar dropped “below detection limit,” Mr. Gerber said.

“That was cool; that was what we expected.”

Once the food was consumed, the fungi switched to a dormant state until another spill activated them.

As long as the material was kept from severely drying, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology mould remained active, even after the foil was rubbed with alcohol hand disinfectant or scrubbed with dishwashing soap.

This showed that the material had a shelf life and might survive standard hospital washing routines.

The research opens the door to future applications that combine the benefits of micro-organisms with flat surface materials, Mr. Gerber said. For example, penicillin-producing fungi could be used to create antibacterial fabric that would generate antibiotics only in the presence of germs. Or large surfaces such as skyscraper facades could be coated with algae, which transform carbon dioxide to oxygen, to improve air quality.

“We wanted to show how easy it is to combine micro-organisms and polymer science,” Mr. Gerber said.

Rae urges Harper to visit Attawapiskat, blames PM for aboriginal housing crisis

Liberal Leader Bob Rae is accusing the Conservatives and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of showing a "lack of respect" toward the troubled First Nations community of Attawapiskat.

On Saturday, as he wrapped up a visit to see the community's housing crisis first-hand, Rae chided Harper — who has long claimed to have a soft spot for northern Canada — for not travelling to the region himself.

“Where there are real people living, and living in really difficult conditions, the prime minister has nothing to say — he’s not there,” Rae said in a telephone interview.

“There’s a great concern about the lack of respect that’s been shown to people here. You show respect by coming, not by insisting that people come to see you.”

Harper's regular forays to remote northern communities since he took office have carried a strong emphasis on issues like defence and sovereignty, but rarely any evidence that the prime minister or the government has forged much of a relationship with the people who live there, Rae said.

“I don’t think he has a great deal of credibility with the people who are living here, or the people who are living in a great many other northern communities, because this is not about planes flying by or about defending the north from the Russians," he said.

"This is about defending the north from poverty, from terrible conditions in terms of housing and poor substandard education."

Rae's visit is the second for an opposition leader in as many weeks. NDP Leader Nycole Turmel visited Attawapiskat last month and promptly urged Harper to do the same.

A spokesman for the prime minister said in an email on Sunday that Harper will not being going to Attawapiskat and the top priority is to get help to the community.

The government infuriated local leaders by appointing a third-party manager to take over the band's financial affairs. Chief Theresa Spence has appealed to the courts for an injunction to oust the third party, who is being paid $1,300 a day from band funds. A ruling is expected Monday or Tuesday.

Emergency supplies continue to pour in — including washing machines, detergent and blankets. However, large families remain crammed into cold, mould-stained shacks with no bathroom or running water. In one case, 20 people are living together in a two-room house.

The federal government has promised 22 new houses and a retrofit of a local healing centre to help ease the crisis.

The government's attempt to "turn the political tables" by trying to put the spotlight on how the band has managed its funds is "disgraceful," said Rae. He blamed the prime minister for cancelling the Kelowna accord, a Liberal initiative designed to improve living conditions for First Nations communities, and for abandoning various investments to aboriginal communities.

"He (Harper) has to wear this thing, he has to take personal responsibility for what’s happened," Rae said.

"I certainly don’t intend to let him off the hook."

INEOS Styrenics Announces Launch of New Sustainable Line of Polystyrene Grades in North America

INEOS Styrenics announces the introduction of a new line of polystyrene products containing post consumer recycled polystyrene in North America. The new product launch includes two products each with 25% post consumer recycle content supplied by NextLife™.

The new grades of polystyrene are FDA approved for food contact and designed for injection molding applications requiring consistent resin properties. The resins also process the same as 100% virgin polystyrene. The target applications include injection molded opaque articles, such as cutlery, housewares, office accessories and appliance components.

"Nextlife's ability to provide sustainable post consumer FDA approved polystyrene resin helps create a true closed loop recycling solution. This collaboration with INEOS Styrenics is not only good for both of our companies; it is also good for the industry. Reuse through closed loop recycling has always been the best solution." said Robert Dishman, Vice President of Nextlife.