By Mark Obmascik
Fats, forty-four, father of 3 sons, and dealing with a vasectomy, Mark Obmascik could by no means have guessed that his subsequent stream will be up a 14,000-foot mountain. but if his twelve-year-old son will get bitten by means of the hiking computer virus at summer time camp, Obmascik can't face up to the chance for a few high-altitude father-son bonding by way of mountaineering a top jointly. After their first joint climb, addled via the skinny air, Obmascik comes to a decision to maintain his head within the clouds and check out scaling all fifty four of Colorado's 14,000-foot mountains, referred to as the Fourteeners -- and to do them in under one year.
The result's midway to Heaven, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Obmascik's rollicking, witty, occasionally harrowing, usually poignant chronicle of an outrageous midlife event that's no sure bet, even if occasionally it's A stroll within the Woods -- yet with extra sweat and not more oxygen. part one million humans attempt mountain climbing a Colorado Fourteener each year, yet basically twelve hundred have mentioned summiting all of them. Can an obese, stay-at-home dad turn into No. 1,201?
With his ebullient character and glowing prose, Obmascik brings us contained in the quirky, colourful way of life of hiking obsessives who summit those mountains 12 months after yr. Honoring his involved wife's orders to not climb on my own, Obmascik drags outdated associates up the slopes, a few of them lifelong flatlanders tasting skinny air for the 1st time, and lures pro Rockies junkies into taking up a huffing, puffing beginner by means of bribing them with unfastened beer, lunches, and automobile washes. one of the new acquaintances he makes are an ex-drag racer attempting to practice a headstand on each summit, the lead oboe participant in a Hebrew salsa band, and a climber with the counterproductive pre-climb ritual of gulping down 4 beers and a burrito. alongside the best way, Obmascik studies the uncooked, rowdy, and barely visible intimacy of male friendship, braced via the double intoxicants of adrenaline and altitude.
Though chance is usually current -- the Colorado Fourteeners have killed extra climbers than Mount Everest -- Mark is aware his getting older scalp can't manage to pay for the hair-raising adventures of Jon Krakauer's Into skinny Air, and his quest turns into a narrative of family members, friendship, and fraternity. In Obmascik's summer season of mountaineering, he loses fifteen kilos, reveals a couple of dozen man-dates, and profits appreciate for the heritage of those storied mountains (home to cannibalism, gold rushes, shoot-outs, and one of many nation's most renowned spiritual shrines). As a lot approximately midlife and male bonding because it is set mountains, midway to Heaven tells how weekend warriors can continue to exist all of them as they succeed in for these such a lot far-off issues -- the summits of mountains and a teenage son. And as one guy exceeds the actual achievements of his formative years, he discovers that age -- like summit peak -- is simply a host.
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Additional resources for Halfway to Heaven: My White-Knuckled--and Knuckleheaded--Quest for the Rocky Mountain High
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Since the total entropy change is negative, DStot ¼ DSconf þ DSsovlent < 0, there is a transition temperature T m ¼ DHbond =DStot beyond which the free enthalpy change DG becomes positive. Hence, the coiled configuration is the favored equilibrium structure above this critical temperature. The driving force for the formation of the helical structure can be expressed by a parameter a ðDHbond À TDStot Þ=ðÀ2kB TÞ. Positive a means that the formation of the a-helix is thermodynamically favored. Its growth by one unit leads to a decrease of the free enthalpy by DG ¼ À2akB T.
6. In comparison to these values, common polymers such as polyethylene can be described with persistence lengths of less than 1 nm. Therefore, the stiffer biopolymers such as DNA or fibrous proteins of the cytoskeleton are also called semiflexible polymers. The high persistence length of these biopolymers is one essential advantage for their application as building blocks for manufacturing microscopic machine systems or as templates for electronic circuitries. The bend persistence length provides also a measure for Young’s modulus E of the polymer chain.
24). Also in this case, weak hydrogen bonds (between the complementary bases) are responsible for the helix stability. The helix is the stable phase at low temperature. When DNA melts, the hydrogen bonds between the bases break. At the same time, the disruption of the base stacks is connected with loss of favorable van der Waals attraction and dipole–dipole interactions. The gain of energy due to reduced Coulomb interaction of the negatively charged backbones is smaller than the energy increase of the above-mentioned interactions.