Texas Amateur Softball Association: Fill & Download for Free

At the end of the following list, the case which the questioner most probably had in mind, i.e. ‘ASA’ as a measure of the speed of photographic film, is explained with a few words.ASA as an abbreviation or initialism may refer to:BiologyAccessible surface area of a biomolecule, accessible to a solventAnterior spinal artery, the blood vessel which supplies the anterior portion of the spinal cordArgininosuccinic aciduria, a disorder of the urea cycleASA physical status classification system, rating of patients undergoing anesthesiaEducationAfrican Studies Association of the United KingdomAfrican Studies AssociationAlbany Students' Association, at Massey University, Auckland, New ZealandAlexander-Smith Academy, in Houston, TexasAlpha Sigma Alpha, U.S. national sororityAmerican Society for AestheticsAmerican Sociological AssociationAmerican Student AssistanceAmerican Studies AssociationArizona School for the ArtsArmenian Sisters AcademyAssociation of Social AnthropologistsAstronomical Society of AustraliaAustrian Studies AssociationOrganizationsAcoustical Society of AmericaAdvertising Standards Authority (disambiguation), advertising regulators in several countriesAid to Southeast Asia, a non-governmental organizationAmerican Scientific Affiliation, an organization of Christians in scienceAmerican Society of AgronomyAmerican Society of AnesthesiologistsAmerican Society of AppraisersAmerican Sociological SocietyAmerican Staffing AssociationAmerican Standards Association, a former name of the American National Standards InstituteAmerican Statistical AssociationAmerican Synesthesia AssociationAmericans for Safe Access, marijuana law reform groupAssociation for Social Advancement, microfinance institution, BangladeshAssociation of Scouts of AzerbaijanAssociation of Southeast AsiaAustralian Society of AuthorsAustralian Space AgencyAustrian Service AbroadAutism Society of AmericaUnited States Army Security AgencySportsAdult Soccer Association, in the U.S.Agremiação Sportiva Arapiraquense, Brazilian soccer clubAmateur Softball Association, in the U.S.Amateur Swimming Association, UKAmerican Sailing AssociationAmerican Speed Association, motorsports sanctioning bodyAmerican Sportscasters AssociationArizona Soccer AssociationAthletics South Africa, the national governing body for the sport of athletics in South AfricaAtlético Sport Aviação, Angolan multisports clubTransportationASA (automobile), Italian marque of automobilesASA Aluminium Body, Argentinian manufacturer of replicas of sports carsAeropuertos y Servicios Auxiliares, Mexican airport operatorAfrican Safari Airways, airline company based in East AfricaAir Services AgreementAtlantic Southeast Airlines, in Atlanta, GeorgiaAirline Superintendents Association, of Trinidad & TobagoAirservices Australia, air traffic management and related services provider for AustraliaAustralian Space AgencyThe International Civil Aviation Organization's code for Alaska AirlinesThe IOC designated country code for American SamoaOtherAdaptive simulated annealing, optimization algorithmAllied States of America, a fictional American nation in the television show JerichoAllmennaksjeselskap, the designation for a Norwegian public limited companyAnti-Soviet agitation, a criminal offense in the Soviet UnionASA carriage control characters, a system used for controlling mainframe line printersAssistant State's Attorney, a title for attorneys working in State's Attorney's office in the United StatesAs-salamu alaykum a greeting in Arabic that means "peace be upon you". The greeting is a standard salutation among Muslims, whether socially or within worship and other contexts.Auditory scene analysis, a proposed model for the basis of auditory perceptionCisco ASA, Adaptive Security AppliancesSpeed of photographic film.ASABased on earlier research work by Loyd Ancile Jones (1884–1954) of Kodak and inspired by the systems of Weston film speed ratings and General Electric film values, the American Standards Association (now named ANSI) defined a new method to determine and specify film speeds of black-and-white negative films in 1943.ASA Z38.2.1–1943 was revised in 1946 and 1947 before the standard grew into ASA PH2.5-1954.Originally, ASA values were frequently referred to as American standard speed numbers or ASA exposure-index numbers. (See also: Exposure Index (EI).)The ASA scale is a linear scale, that is, a film denoted as having a film speed of 200 ASA is twice as fast as a film with 100 ASA.(From Film speed - Wikipedia)

It’s a good question. Two actually.And, it’s one that gets tossed around in space exploration circles a lot. A whole lot, trust me. I distinctly recall sitting around with 6 of my crew members in a simulated Martian habitat situated on the Haughton meteor crater in the Canadian Arctic in 2003 asking “Why are we doing this?” - meaning, why the hell lwere we still just faking as if we would die a horrible death if we took off our play-like space helmets instead of doing it for real on Mars?Maybe one of the best and most recent such discussions I’ve seen in print was one undertaken by the editorial staff at Wired magazine a couple of years ago entitled THE 12 GREATEST CHALLENGES FOR SPACE EXPLORATION. I recommend you read it . . .https://www.wired.com/2016/02/space-is-cold-vast-and-deadly-humans-will-explore-it-anyway/.. . . But, I’ll give you a short and editorialized synopsis.First though, we can’t fairly begin with the proposition "What, if any, progress is being made regarding space travel?” - IF ANY being the controversial words, implying a total lack of progress in human space travel since Armstrong left his tracks in the fine dust on the moon on July 21, 1969, at 02:56:15 UTC. Certainly, humans have since routinely travelled to and from low earth orbit - at least space-like travel, if not actually space-travel. Close to a thousand humans have made round trips to the various space stations. And, amazing zero-g and one-g innovations have been spawned in the intervening half-century. Some of these innovations are significant in their relation to extended human occupation of space.I think the question expresses the frustration many of us feel, however, with the fact that since the Apollo 17 crew of Cernan, Evans and Schmitt returned to Earth on December 19, 1972 after a 12-day mission to the moon, it was the last time humans travelled beyond low Earth orbit. And, that was almost a half-century ago.The Wired staff more directly addressed the second question, “Why have humans not been able to advance our means of space transportation since landing on the moon?" And, here’s the gist of that discussion.Ann Leckie, the Hugo and Nebula award winning author of Ancillary Justice summed it up to succinctly to begin the discussion, “It’s a huge, dangerous, maybe impossible project. But that’s never stopped humans from bloody-mindedly trying anyway. Humanity was born on Earth. Are we going to stay here? I suspect—I hope—the answer is no.” What are the challenges? While it is by no means an exhaustive list, here’s the 12 big ones the Wired staff came up with to bolster the sentiment expressed by Leckie:Problem 1, Takeoff or “Gravity's a Drag” - Getting off Earth is TOUGH. If an object on Earth’s surface wants to fly free, it needs to shoot up and out at speeds exceeding 25,000 mph. And that’s expensive. When my family and I went to Florida to watch the historic launch of the Mars Curiosity rover, I probably dropped a grand. But, it cost nearly $200 million just to launch the rover. SpaceX is proving that the more you go to space, the cheaper it gets, but it’s still a mind-blowing bitch of a tab.Problem 2: Propulsion or “Our ships are way too slow.” - Without any friction to speak of, zooming through the vacuum of space is a cinch, but stepping on the accelerator? Not so much. Rockets are massive and the propellants get used up quickly. Even with the best we got, that would get you to Jupiter in 5-7 years. They are working on better ideas, but there’s not been that much progress.Problem 3: Space Junk or “Its a minefield out there” - The US Space Surveillance Network has eyes on 17,000 objects—each at least the size of a softball—hurtling around Earth at speeds of more than 17,500 mph; if you count pieces under 10 centimeters, it’s closer to 500,000 objects. And, it’s getting worse by the minute. Ideas abound to start cleaning it up, and clean it up we must do for there to be routine space travel, but the ideas are just that so far, ideas. If there’s ANY sort of military space warfare causing things to blow up, you can basically forget about it.Problem 4: Navigation or “There’s no GPS in space” - The Deep Space Network, a collection of antenna arrays in California, is the only navigation tool for space, and every modern spacecraft depends on it. An ultraprecise atomic clock on Earth times how long it takes for a signal to get from the network to a spacecraft and back, and navigators use that to determine the craft’s position. That’s it. After that, it’s like being at the North Pole with nothing but a magnetic compass - a dilemma our Mars simulation crew had a helluva time overcoming. Some are envisioning deep-space navigation systems that would collect images of heavenly targets and nearby objects and use their relative location to triangulate a spaceship’s coordinates—but, that’s just wishes and fishes right now.Problem 5: Radiation or “Space turns you into a bag of cancer” -Outside the safe cocoon of Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field, subatomic particles zip around at close to the speed of light. This is space radiation, and it’s deadly . . . cancer, cataracts, confusion (Alzheimer’s). Then there’s secondary radiation when these particles knock into the atoms of aluminum that make up a spacecraft hull. That’s to say nothing of unpredictable solar flares. They are looking at specialized plastics and magnets to minimize this, but it’s presently unsolved.Problem 6: Food and water or “Mars has no supermarkets” -Astronauts on the ISS have eaten a few leaves of lettuce they have grown in space, but large-scale gardening in zero-g is tricky and existing vehicle designs are very cramped.On the ISS, the pee-and-water recycling system needs lots of fixing, and interplanetary crews won’t be able to rely on a resupply of new parts or fresh supplies of H2O. They are working on microbial systems to purify the same water over and over, but you’re still gonna need to resupply eventually and relatively frequently.Problem 7: Bone and muscle wasting or “Zero gravity will transform you into mush” - Weightlessness wrecks the body. It makes certain immune cells unable to do their jobs, and red blood cells explode. It gives you kidney stones and makes your heart lazy. Astronauts on the ISS exercise to combat muscle wasting and bone loss, but they still lose bone mass in space, and those zero-g spin cycles don’t help the other problems. Artificial gravity would fix all that. But, the whole spacecraft will have to become a centrifuge. This problem may turn out to be one of the easier ones to tackle using a spinning spaceship shaped like a dumbbell, with two chambers connected by a truss.I would add another human health issue, that is controlling microbial contamination in enclosed spacecraft harboring inherently and necessarily contaminated human bodies. It’s the stuff of legend and lore in space circles.In the 1990s samples of extremophile moulds were taken from Mir. Ninety species of micro-organisms were found in 1990s, four years after the station's launch. By the time of its decommission in 2001, the number of known different micro-organisms had grown to 140. As a spacecraft get older, the problems with contamination increase geometrically. Part of the reason is that they grow on surfaces that are generally out of reach. The moulds in Mir were found growing behind panels and inside air-conditioning equipment. Then again, we are not going to spray disinfectants around too liberally either.Even our own International Space Station (ISS) is filled with bacteria and fungi. A new study has found compelling evidence that microorganisms from human skin are present throughout the station, and some of the bugs could cause serious harm to astronautsWe at Reactive Surfaces have taken a very serious look at addressing these problems. One thing is for certain, you cannot solve it with toxic biocides typically found in coatings. Our approach uses molecules that nature itself uses to disinfect living surfaces - enzymes and peptides. You can follow our progress in this area at ReactivSurfaces. com. Some the recent progress is summarized in the published study you can access at the following link:https://www.coatingsworld.com/issues/2018-04-01/view_features/self-sterilizingdna-free-coatings-in-space-and-on-earthProblem 8: Mental health or “Interplanetary voyages are a direct flight to space madness” -Signing up for interplanetary travel is to sign up for a year (at least) of living in a cramped spacecraft with bad food and zero privacy—a perfect recipe for looney tunes. People are playing with slowed-down, cold-controlled metabolism, but what’s working for worms and mice is way off from what will be acceptable for humans - for me at least!Problem 9: Touchdown or “Crashing is not an option” - Now, with an uber long transit of vast reaches of space, with your target in sight, all you have to do is land. But you’re careening through frictionless space at 200,000 mph. Unless you want your touchdown to be remembered as one giant splat for humankind, you have to slow way, way down. And, that’s monumentally difficult to do, usually requiring the tug of an entire planet’s gravity to capture your space craft and then to brake it with its atmosphere. That in and of it self requires a butt-load of shielding, chutes, cowlings, bouncy balls, etc. . . . i.e., lots and lots of extra mass you get to cart over millions of miles of space only to generally waste in a one-time shot at touching down. Real rocket scientists are trying to come up with solutions (SpaceX leading the pack with landings of its re-useable boosters), and my guess is they’ll figure this one out.Problem 10: Resources or “You can’t take a mountain of aluminum ore with you,” -When space caravans embark from Earth, they’ll leave full of supplies. But you can’t take everything with you. Seeds, oxygen generators, maybe a few machines for building infrastructure. But settlers will have to harvest or make everything else.Luckily, space is far from barren. Every planet has every chemical element in it. The moon has lots of aluminum. Mars has silica and iron oxide. Nearby asteroids are a great source of carbon and platinum ores.Problem 11: Exploration or “We can’t do everything by ourselves”Dogs helped humans colonize Earth, but they’d survive on Mars about as well as we would. To spread out on a new world, we’ll need a new best friend: a robot.See, settling takes a lot of grunt work, and robots can dig all day without having to eat or breathe. Theoretically, at least.Still, humans have a big leg up when it comes to fingers. If a job requires dexterity and precision, you want people doing it—provided they have the right duds. Today’s space suit is designed for weightlessness, not hiking on exoplanets. NASA’s prototype Z-2 model has flexible joints and a helmet that gives a clear view of whatever delicate wiring needs fixing. When the job’s done, just hop on an autonomous transporter to get home.Problem12: Space is big or “Warp droves don’t exist, yet” -The fastest thing humans have ever built is a probe called Helios 2. It’s dead now, but if sound traveled in space, you’d hear it screaming as it whips around the sun at speeds of more than 157,000 miles per hour. That’s almost 100 times faster than a bullet, but even at that velocity it would take some 19,000 years to reach Earth’s first stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri. It’d be a multigenerational ship, and nobody dreams of going to space because it’s a nice place to die of old age.To beat the clock, you need power—and lots of it. Maybe you could mine Jupiter for enough helium-3 to fuel nuclear fusion—after you’ve figured out fusion engines. Matter-antimatter annihilation is more scalable, but smashing those pugilistic particles together is dangerous. “You’d never want to do that on Earth,” says Les Johnson, technical assistant for NASA’s Advanced Concepts Office, which works on crazy starship ideas. “You do that in deep space, so if you have an accident, you don’t destroy a continent.” Too intense? How about solar power? All you’d need is a sail the size of Texas.Far more elegant would be hacking the universe’s source code—with physics. The theoretical Alcubierre drive would compress space in front of your craft and expand space behind it so the stuff in between—where your ship is—effectively moves faster than light. Tweaking the Alcubierre equations gets you a Krasnikov tube, an interstellar subway that shortens your return trip.All aboard? Not quite. Humanity will need a few more Einsteins working at places like the Large Hadron Collider to untangle all the theoretical knots. “It’s entirely possible that we’ll make some discovery that changes everything,” Johnson says. “But you can’t count on that breakthrough to save the day.” If you want eureka moments, you need to budget for them. That means more cash for NASA— and the particle physicists. Until then, Earth’s space ambitions will look a lot like Helios 2: stuck in a futile race around the same old star.Ok, it’s a Baker’s dozen, so she me . . .Problem 13: There’s only one Earth or “Let’s not boldly go - let’s boldly stay” - Other than for the science of it, why should we go to space? Robert Zubrin, with whom I don’t always see eye-to-eye but nevertheless admire for his vision and resolve to get humans to Mars, will tell you that the need to explore is built into us, ergo the pioneer spirit and manifest destiny. But since the New Horizons probe passed by Pluto in 2015, we’ve explored every type of environment in the solar system at least once. Humans could still go dig in the dirt to study distant geology—but when robots can do it, well, maybe not.Deplete the planet’s resources and asteroid-belt mining suddenly seems reasonable. Change the climate and space provides room for humanity (and everything else). But that’s a dangerous line of thinking.We have proposed much cheaper ways to canvas the solar system that use kinetic deeply penetrating probes with self-sterilizing and self-cleaning surfaces on every square nanometer of the spear. Using a fleet of such probes, we could go Deep & Cheap, Wide & Fast canvassing the entire solar system for evidence of living microbes. I’ve discussed this several places, most recently at the 2018 Contact Symposium.http://www.contact-conference.com/c18dabstracts.html***********In summary, Leckie got it right from the very beginning,“It’s a huge, dangerous, maybe impossible project. But that’s never stopped humans from bloody-mindedly trying anyway.” What the hell, let’s give it a try.************Steve McDaniel is a life-long, avid space enthusiast and amateur astrobiologist. He co-founded Explore Mars, served and commanded missions at simulated Martian desert and arctic habitats for the Mars Society, and served as biologist for the Swedish Polar Expedition team investigating gully formation and microbiology in the Norwegian polar regions. He is a frequent speaker on space-related technology, including presentations at conferences on Mars exploration, SETI and published debates on exo-life detection.Steve founded Reactive Surfaces in 2002 and currently serves as that company's Managing Member and Chief Innovation Officer. Reactive Surfaces builds bio-based functionalized coatings and additives. His company was awarded the 2008 American Coatings Award for its innovative technology. He holds numerous patents in the US and elsewhere related to his work on bio-based functional coatings.He received his BS in Biology from the University of Texas in 1974, a Master of Science in Genetics from Texas A & M University in 1976, his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Texas A & M University in 1985, after which he finalized his technical training as a post-doctoral fellow at Baylor College of Medicine. He has published numerous scientific works in his areas of expertise. In 1991, he obtained his Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from the University of Houston. He is the managing partner of McDaniel & Associates, P.C. (www.technologylitigators.com.), a law firm he established in 1999, whose attorneys specialize in technology litigation and intellectual property protection.***