Co. looks for worker after oil rig fire in Gulf

By JANET McCONNAUGHEY
Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - As crews searched Sunday for a worker still missing after an oil platform explosion and fire, doctors said one of four men burned in the blaze is improving and is now in fair condition.

Two remained in critical condition and one in serious condition, doctors say.

The company that owned the platform that caught fire in the Gulf of Mexico pledged Sunday to keep searching for a second worker still missing after a body was found in about 30 feet of water near one leg of the platform.

At Baton Rouge General Medical Center's burn unit, Wilberto Ilagan, 50, of the Philippines, told Dr. Jeffrey Littleton that he wanted to send a message, according to a news release issued Sunday.

"To my relatives, to my family, and to my country, I am alive and in good health," Ilagan said. "I am burned, but my heart and lungs are healthy."

According to The Advocate (http://bit.ly/ZT9WLy ), Littleton said Sunday that the other men's names are being withheld because they have not given their consent to release them.

The Philippine Embassy in Washington has said all the workers are from the Philippines.

The remains of the unidentified person were found Saturday night by divers hired by Houston-based Black Elk Energy, Coast Guard spokesman Carlos Vega said. He said the Coast Guard, which has suspended its own search, would turn over the body to local authorities.

John Hoffman, the president and CEO of Black Elk Energy, has said the body is apparently one of two crew members missing since an explosion and fire on the oil platform Friday morning. Hoffman said the body was found by a contract dive vessel.

He wrote in an email Sunday morning that a second dive vessel was brought in to speed up the search for the second missing worker.

"The workers impacted by this accident continue to be our primary focus," Hoffman wrote.

Hoffman said the body was found near where the explosion occurred. The missing and wounded workers were employees of oilfield contractor Grand Isle Shipyard, he said.

GIS CEO Mark Pregeant released a statement that the company has notified the families of those involved but was declining to release their names, WWL-TV in New Orleans reported.

The Coast Guard suspended its own search earlier Saturday after 32 hours spent covering 1,400 square miles near the oil platform, located about 20 miles southeast of Grand Isle, La.

Authorities have said the blaze erupted Friday morning while workers were using a torch to cut an oil line on the platform.

Pregeant's statement, however, said the cause of the fire and explosion is unknown and that "initial reports that a welding torch was being used at the time of the incident or that an incorrect line was cut are completely inaccurate."

A man who answered the phone at the company's Galliano, La., office on Sunday said the company had no comment.

Separate from the explosion, Grand Isle Shipyard is facing a lawsuit by a group of former workers from the Philippines who claim they were confined to cramped living quarters and forced to work long hours for substandard pay. The lawsuit was filed in late 2011 in a Louisiana federal court and is pending. Lawyers for the company have said the workers' claims are false and should be dismissed.

The workers recently obtained conditional class certification for allegations that Grand Isle Shipyard didn't pay them properly for overtime and may have violated other fair-labor standards, said attorney Joseph C. Peiffer. He said a notice will go out soon to let other workers know they might be able to join the lawsuit.

He said he was not representing the injured workers, but didn't rule out the possibility that he might do so.

Meanwhile, Black Elk said no oil was leaking from the charred platform, which hadn't been operating since August.

Black Elk Energy is an independent oil and gas company. The company's website says it holds interests in properties in Texas and Louisiana waters, including 854 wells on 155 platforms.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.wistv.com/story/20128870/company-vows-continued-search-near-burned-gulf-rig

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Essentials To Health And Fitness | Health

Living a life of health and fitness is hard but it is not impossible. In fact, with discipline and commitment, you can actually change your habits and finally get rid of those habits that affect your health.

Below are some of the things that we feel are important parts in the road to a better and healthier you. Read on and see if you have any of them or are doing most of them.

1. Serious commitment If you really want to change your life and get rid of habits that you have for so long been doing, you?ve got to want it real bad. You need to really commit on it to ensure that you will see the plan through. There are a lot of people who start eating healthy and living healthy who will fall back to their old ways after some time. Don?t be like those people. Starting and stopping will only serve to deflate your spirits and make you believe that you can never really do it. Start when you feel that you really want it bad enough and you can really do it. Will power can be really amazing. It can make miracles.

2. Support system Changing old habits whether foregoing with a bad diet or quitting a vice, is hard but when done with people who live and support you, the task can be easier and more manageable. This is the reason why diets and programs for quitting alcoholism and smoking have support system programs within their organization. People who share your experiences whether or not they are undergoing the same things as you are will help encourage you to continue with the goals that you have set.

3. Avoid temptations Without the will power to avoid temptations, your plan to change will constantly be derailed.

It is important that you remain in control when it comes to the changes that you want to do for yourself. But this however is not something that is easy to do. There will be lots of instances when you will be truly tested and most people will fail the test. They will go back to their old habits once, and then twice and then thrice until they completely forgo with their plans for a healthy lifestyle.

To avoid this, you should first stay clear of the temptations. If you have friends for instance who influence you to not eat and not live healthy, don?t go with them for the meantime especially if you know that you will only be tempted when you are with them. You should also avoid going to places that you know will tempt you to go back to your old ways.

4. Reminders People who are constantly being reminded of how they should proceed have better chances of making it through the program than those who are just doing it alone. This works in the same way as the support system but even better because in this instance, you have somebody who really point out to you what you should be doing. Sometimes, we go back to our old ways not because we want to but because it is something that your bodies are already so used to. So if you want to really change your ways and live a life of health and fitness, have somebody you trust and respect with you all the time.

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Apple's iMessage and FaceTime suffer another significant outage

Users are reporting that iMessage and FaceTime are experiencing outages across the U.S., the second time in a week that services attached to Apple's iCloud are seeing issues.

Update: All services have been restored as of 4:41 PST.
A number of AppleInsider readers reported on Sunday that they could not send or receive iMessages from their iPhones and iPads, a problem that is becoming more common since the company's newest iOS 6 was released in September.

According to Apple's iCloud system status webpage, "some" users unable to use iMessage or place FaceTime calls, with the error coming less than two days after an issue appeared with iCloud storage upgrade payment transactions. Apple said service will return to normal "ASAP."

Sunday's downtime marks the fourth such outage in the past three months, with one incident in September and two in October (1, 2) affecting users of iMessage on both iOS and OS X clients. At the time, messages sent through Apple's proprietary service were pushed through as SMS texts.

While iMessage and FaceTime appear to be the most prone to errors, iCloud's email service has also seen problems, the latest being a September outage that affected 1.1 percent of all users.

Introduced alongside iOS 5, iMessage is Apple's smartphone-integrated answer to online messaging services like AOL Instant Messenger and Google Chat. The service is data based, allowing iOS device users to communicate with each other and Macs running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, without racking up text fees.

Source: http://appleinsider.com.feedsportal.com/c/33975/f/616168/s/25b6750e/l/0Lappleinsider0N0Carticles0C120C110C180Capples0Eimessage0Eand0Efacetime0Esuffer0Eanother0Esignificant0Eoutage/story01.htm

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Improve Your State Of Mind With These Self Help Guidelines | Free ...

What more could someone desire than the absolute best personal development tips in existence. You want to change your life for the better and want to know how and where to get started. In this article, you will find some great pieces of advice to help you change for the better.

When things get hard, don?t give up. On the path of personal development, quitting should never be an option. You need to stick with it all the way until the end. Quitting is the number one reason that people fail. You can not afford to fail yourself, so you need to be 100% committed.

Personal development is a very important thing to strive towards. Try to come up with a goal. A good example would be to start saving money. This is important because you can learn to develop your impulse control. Start by saving when you would usually spend on things you do not need. For instance, every time you would buy something out of a vending machine, put that into a bank account. By developing good spending habits, you will develop great personal habits.

Learning to accept responsibility for mistakes is vital to the personal development process. Perfection is an unreachable goal; everyone is going to make mistakes from time to time. By accepting this fact, you can stop wasting time worrying about your mistakes or concealing them. Admit to them boldly and promise ? to yourself especially ? to do better next time.

Be sure to treat yourself periodically if you are putting a good effort into your personal development. It is hard to make changes, especially if it is a habit that you have had for a very long time. It is important to make yourself feel good for doing all that hard work.

Some level of contentment is crucial to mental health and self-improvement. While self-help tactics and tips focus on constant striving, there is a bigger picture to consider. You will never achieve holistic health and mental happiness without allowing yourself a bit of enjoyment. Learn to be content with things you cannot change (your family, last year?s earnings, etc.). Once you are satisfied with the permanent things in your life, you are ready to change the things you can control.

Seeking a mentor is a great step to improving your self-esteem, as well as in gaining the wisdom you will need to face life?s difficult situations. Think about the people in your life, and approach someone you truly respect. Meet with them for lunch or dinner once a week or even once a month. Try to learn from their experience and gain wisdom from them.

Personal development is just that, personal. It is something that only you can do and only you can master. As this article has shown you, there are a lot of things that you can do if you make the personal decision to grow. All it takes is a little bit of knowledge and time.

If you would like to learn how you can use the Empower Network blogging platform to Generate $100 a day income click on the following link personal habits.

Source: http://www.businesslistingnow.com/blog/improve-your-state-of-mind-with-these-self-help-guidelines/

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Insert Coin: XensrCase turns your iPhone into a state of the art 3D sports tracker

In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you'd like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with "Insert Coin" as the subject line.

Insert Coin XensrCase turns your iPhone into a state of the art 3D sports tracker

A lot of us use our phones to track our runs, bike rides and other outdoor activities. You've probably also noticed that GPS is not exactly the most accurate way of measuring your exercise (especially if you live in a city with a lot of tall, tightly-packed buildings). And, if you're less concerned with distance and time than you are with say... elevation, then your iPhone simply can't help you. A company called EpicSesh is hoping to turn your humble iOS device into a serious 3D sport tracker by packing a bunch of sensors in a sleeve called the XensrCase. Inside the rugged case is a highly accurate gyroscope, accelerometer, barometer and separate GPS module that samples motion data 400 times a second to create smooth records of your jumps, flips and tricks, as well as your distance and speed. There's also a companion app that pulls in the most relevant data and formats it appropriately for your sport of choice -- be it snowboarding or windsurfing.

To get the product off the ground EpicSesh is looking for $100,000 in funding. To claim a XensrCase for yourself you'll need to pledge $150, though, that deal is only good for the first 100 devices. After they're gone you'll need to pony up $170 for one in blue. For now the case is available for the iPhone 5, 4S and 4 as well as the iPod touch. But we're hopeful an Android version of the same TruMotion tech is in the works. Head on after the break to see it in action and hit up the source link to pledge your support.

Continue reading Insert Coin: XensrCase turns your iPhone into a state of the art 3D sports tracker

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Justice official: Register voters automatically

WASHINGTON (AP) ? One of the top enforcers of the nation's civil rights laws says government should be responsible for automatically registering citizens to vote by using existing databases to compile lists of all eligible residents in each jurisdiction.

The proposal by Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, chief of the Justice Department's civil rights division, follows an election with breakdowns that forced voters in many states to wait in line for hours.

In remarks at George Washington University law school, Perez said census data shows that of 75 million adult citizens who failed to vote in the 2008 presidential election, 60 million were not registered and therefore ineligible to cast a ballot.

Perez says one of the biggest barriers to voting in this country is an antiquated registration system.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2012-11-16-Justice-Voter%20Registration/id-1bf134e255f1469f96fc95bac768e656

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Clocks are ticking and climate is changing: Increasing plant productivity in a changing climate

ScienceDaily (Nov. 16, 2012) ? Dartmouth plant biologist C. Robertson (Rob) McClung is not your typical clock-watcher. His clocks are internal, biological, and operate in circadian rhythms -- cycles based on a 24-hour period. Living organisms depend upon these clocks to keep pace with Earth's daily rotation and the recurring changes it imposes on the environment. These clocks allow the plant or animal to anticipate the changes and adapt to them by modifying its biology, behavior, and biochemistry.

"If you know that the sun is going to go down, and if you are a photosynthetic plant, you have to readjust your metabolism in order to make it through the night," says McClung, the Patricia F. and Williams B. Hale 1944 Professor in the Arts and Sciences.

Seeking Knowledge Among the Weeds

McClung uses the Arabidopsis plant in his research on the mechanisms that affect plant behavior and its genetics. He jokingly refers to it as "an inconsequential little weed," but holds it in high esteem as an experimental test bed.

According to the National Institutes of Health, this member of the mustard family is the model organism for studies of the cellular and molecular biology of flowering plants. "Because plants are closely related, it is quite likely that knowledge derived from Arabidopsis studies can be readily transferred to agronomically important species," says McClung.

Water and the Changing Climate

McClung sees internal clocks as increasingly important in the face of global climate change, and to agricultural productivity in particular. "In the context of climate change and the need to exploit increasingly marginal habitats, fuller understanding of clock mechanisms may offer strategies to improve crop productivity," says McClung. "We need to know how an organism measures time and how it uses that information to coordinate its physiology and behavior."

Water is the landscape on which biological clocks and climate change intersect. Agriculture consumes the vast majority of our water, and warmer and dryer conditions are predicted for much of the agricultural land of the United States. This is based on our current understanding of the changes predicted to be associated with global warming, and in this scenario our aquatic resources will become increasingly scarce.

Water is lost during the gas exchange that takes place in photosynthesis -- carbon dioxide in, oxygen out -- through small pores in the surface of leaves that periodically open and close under the control of a biological clock. Exercising control over this clock could be a means of conserving water. "We know that these little cells on the surface of the leaf are controlled by the clock," says McClung. "It could be that different clocks regulate it slightly differently, and we would like to find the best clock, fine-tune it, and perhaps optimize the ability to get CO2 in without losing water."

Water figures prominently in another aspect of plant physiology. Water moves up through the stem to the leaves, involving proteins called aquaporins. "There is a big family of genes that encode aquaporins, and in Arabidopsis the circadian clock governs the expression cycles of about a third of those genes," says McClung. "That suggests there is a mechanism to actually regulate this hydraulic conductivity over time, constituting another instance where the clock is involved in water use efficiency."

New Frontiers

Together with colleagues in Wyoming, Wisconsin, and Missouri, McClung has been looking at another crop, Brassica rapa, a close relative of which is the source of canola oil. With a five-year National Science Foundation grant of more than $5 million, the group is investigating Brassica's circadian patterns, looking at inheritance and water use efficiency. "We have mapped 10 genetic regions that are associated with water use efficiency," says McClung. "We have also traced circadian parameters to most of those same areas, suggesting a link between the two. This association suggests that we could potentially use the clock to manipulate water use efficiency."

In a related project, McClung will be working with soybeans, attempting to correlate circadian period length with latitude. "If we can understand the clock, we might then manipulate the clock in ways to achieve desired goals, including water use efficiency and better yield."

Why and How?

McClung feels strongly that this sort of basic research has the potential to contribute in significant ways to food production increases. "Whether or not we achieve that increase or whether it allows us to fertilize a little less and so pollute a little less but maintain the same productivity level, anything in the net direction that is positive is going to help," he says. "We can't necessarily say exactly how it will help, but I think it's not unreasonable to think that this very basic research can have a real world impact, and one hopes it will."

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)

"We will need to genetically modify our plants to control our circadian biological clocks," says Professor Rob McClung. "Every domesticated plant and animal that we have today is already genetically modified. None of them are as they are found in nature. We have manipulated their genes by selective breeding and creating hybrids."

To produce the corn we eat today, prehistoric farmers first had to find some variant that had a desirable trait, keep its seeds and plant them, repeating the process for countless generations to bring out that trait. That is selective breeding and it produced a plant whose genome was modified.

To make a tomato plant resistant to a particular disease or pest, we might find some related pest-resistant species in the wild and cross it with our garden variety tomato to produce a hybrid. Successive crosses would preserve the "tomato-ness" while selectively retaining that little bit from the wild relative that resists tomato-eating bugs.

"Along with introducing the gene or set of genes encoding resistance, we may have also brought in a whole bunch of other ill-defined genes on either side," McClung says. "We don't know the extent of it. We don't know what else is in there. While some regard this as a 'natural' approach, the unknown genetic fellow travelers could be problematic or even dangerous."

For more than 20 years, we have possessed the technology to precisely insert a single gene, making one change and only one change, producing what is known as recombinant DNA. "We are modifying genes in a much more informed way and precise way, targeting specific genes and manipulating those," he says.

"Nevertheless, there is vocal opposition to this practice, in spite of the fact that we have been doing it for decades and there is yet to be a single example of anything bad happening from that," says McClung. "It is a philosophical standpoint based on a lack of understanding. People don't understand the science and they come up with a lot of arguments against it."

The dilemma rests on timing. Conventional breeding, though imprecise and unpredictable, is a workable but lengthy process. Recombinant DNA is fast. In a world beset by overpopulation, famine and global climate change, McClung questions whether we can really afford the time to wait.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Dartmouth College. The original article was written by Joseph Blumberg.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/WbC0oL_3Lf8/121116124646.htm

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Candidate for most distant galaxy discovered

ScienceDaily (Nov. 15, 2012) ? By combining the power of NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes and one of nature's own natural "zoom lenses" in space, astronomers have set a new record for finding the most distant galaxy seen in the universe.

The farthest galaxy appears as a diminutive blob that is only a tiny fraction of the size of our Milky Way galaxy. But it offers a peek back into a time when the universe was 3 percent of its present age of 13.7 billion years. The newly discovered galaxy, named MACS0647-JD, was observed 420 million years after the big bang, the theorized beginning of the universe. Its light has traveled 13.3 billion years to reach Earth.

This find is the latest discovery from a program that uses natural zoom lenses to reveal distant galaxies in the early universe. The Cluster Lensing And Supernova Survey with Hubble (CLASH), an international group led by Marc Postman of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., is using massive galaxy clusters as cosmic telescopes to magnify distant galaxies behind them. This effect is called gravitational lensing.

Along the way, 8 billion years into its journey, light from MACS0647-JD took a detour along multiple paths around the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0647+7015. Without the cluster's magnification powers, astronomers would not have seen this remote galaxy. Because of gravitational lensing, the CLASH research team was able to observe three magnified images of MACS0647-JD with the Hubble telescope. The cluster's gravity boosted the light from the faraway galaxy, making the images appear about eight, seven, and two times brighter than they otherwise would that enabled astronomers to detect the galaxy more efficiently and with greater confidence.

"This cluster does what no manmade telescope can do," said Postman. "Without the magnification, it would require a Herculean effort to observe this galaxy."

MACS0647-JD is so small it may be in the first steps of forming a larger galaxy. An analysis shows the galaxy is less than 600 light-years wide. Based on observations of somewhat closer galaxies, astronomers estimate that a typical galaxy of a similar age should be about 2,000 light-years wide. For comparison, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy companion to the Milky Way, is 14,000 light-years wide. Our Milky Way is 150,000 light-years across.

"This object may be one of many building blocks of a galaxy," said the study's lead author, Dan Coe of the Space Telescope Science Institute. "Over the next 13 billion years, it may have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of merging events with other galaxies and galaxy fragments."

The galaxy was observed with 17 filters, spanning near-ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths, using Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). Coe, a CLASH team member, discovered the galaxy in February while poring over a catalogue of thousands of gravitationally lensed objects found in Hubble observations of 17 clusters in the CLASH survey. But the galaxy appeared only in the two reddest filters.

"So either MACS0647-JD is a very red object, only shining at red wavelengths, or it is extremely distant and its light has been 'redshifted' to these wavelengths, or some combination of the two," Coe said. "We considered this full range of possibilities."

The CLASH team identified multiple images of eight galaxies lensed by the galaxy cluster. Their positions allowed the team to produce a map of the cluster's mass, which is primarily composed of dark matter. Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that makes up the bulk of the universe's mass. "It's like a big puzzle," said Coe. "We have to arrange the mass in the cluster so that it deflects the light of each galaxy to the positions observed." The team's analysis revealed that the cluster's mass distribution produced three lensed images of MACS0647-JD at the positions and relative brightness observed in the Hubble image.

Coe and his collaborators spent months systematically ruling out these other alternative explanations for the object's identity, including red stars, brown dwarfs, and red (old or dusty) galaxies at intermediate distances from Earth. They concluded that a very distant galaxy was the correct explanation.

The paper will appear in the Dec. 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

Redshift is a consequence of the expansion of space over cosmic time. Astronomers study the distant universe in near-infrared light because the expansion of space stretches ultraviolet and visible light from galaxies into infrared wavelengths. Coe estimates MACS0647-JD has a redshift of 11, the highest yet observed.

Images of the galaxy at longer wavelengths obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope played a key role in the analysis. If the object were intrinsically red, it would appear bright in the Spitzer images. Instead, the galaxy barely was detected, if at all, indicating its great distance. The research team plans to use Spitzer to obtain deeper observations of the galaxy, which should yield confident detections as well as estimates of the object's age and dust content.

MACS0647-JD galaxy, however, may be too far away for any current telescope to confirm the distance based on spectroscopy, which spreads out an object's light into thousands of colors. Nevertheless, Coe is confident the fledgling galaxy is the new distance champion based on its unique colors and the research team's extensive analysis. "All three of the lensed galaxy images match fairly well and are in positions you would expect for a galaxy at that remote distance when you look at the predictions from our best lens models for this cluster," Coe said.

The new distance champion is the second remote galaxy uncovered in the CLASH survey, a multi-wavelength census of 25 hefty galaxy clusters with Hubble's ACS and WFC3. Earlier this year, the CLASH team announced the discovery of a galaxy that existed when the universe was 490 million years old, 70 million years later than the new record-breaking galaxy. So far, the survey has completed observations for 20 of the 25 clusters.

The team hopes to use Hubble to search for more dwarf galaxies at these early epochs. If these infant galaxies are numerous, then they could have provided the energy to burn off the fog of hydrogen that blanketed the universe, a process called re-ionization. Re-ionization ultimately made the universe transparent to light.

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Guest Post: Using Stacked Stone to Make Your Office Sleek and ...

No office decor motif stands out like the smooth face of stacked stone. The multicolored layers of earth tones create a natural feel of warmth and simplicity, projecting your decorating taste across three dimensions. No matter what the outlay of a room, the veneer pillars of cut stone immediately draw attention once someone steps in the door. Though more expensive in comparison to other, cheaper decoration choices there is no backdrop that makes an office look more compelling and attractive than stacked stone.

Create an Image

Several different color schemes permit customers to design their office according to a preferred shade. Often times, these panels follow one of four separate primary colors meant to hold the viewer?s gaze in several different ways. Imagine how each color could best be used for your office, to woo clients, to sooth patients, or to create a sense of gravity to your profession.

Choose From an Array of Colors

The ochre blend color palate imitates the look of a slice of a mountain, brought into your own office. These natural stone veneers?create an image of rugged dependability, the earth tones mimicking a cliff face. For a cool and serious look, dark charcoal black stone appears solid, creating a sense of control. The creamy ivory stones, cut from sheer quartz, appear like a warm yellow, light and fluffy on the eyes. Finally, a cut of white quartz appears proud and resolute. How best you choose your color scheme depends on your professional style and approach to handling business. Every stone veneer is cut individually so that no two approaches strike the viewer in the same way.

Measure and Cut

A single stone will typically have one of three different cuts. A standard panel runs six inches tall and twenty-four inches wide. The cuts are glued together so that they are easy to break down, transport, and then install in a home or office setting. Each slab weighs in at about twelve pounds per square feet. An oversize panel, for colors or designs that have minimalistic contrasts, will be approximately twice as large as the regular. Whether you get the regular or oversize panels, you get by the box (four square feet) or by the crate. A full tile, finally, is cut nine times to create each twelve inches by one inch stone. These weigh about seven pounds. The stacked stone panels are not made of uniquely cut stone but rather designed to be easily interlocked.

Build to Your Own Specifications

Where could you put stacked stone veneers in your office? The answer is anywhere you desire. They can be fitted to the interior or the exterior of a cement board, attached onto brick or concrete blocks and steel. While they cannot be supported by drywall, they can easily be installed on any suitable foundation. Once they are set and waterproofed, they require no upkeep or maintenance for their lifetimes. You do not need to hire an expert in order to install one. To get stacked stone from the show floor to your office, all that is necessary is to haul the material and apply thinset with a trowel, making sure that the stone is level and clean.

Where to Use Stacked Stone

While these stacked stone veneers should not be used for paving, they can survive a lot of abuse. They are fully waterproof and can complement an aquarium or pool. Since they are sealed, they cannot stain carpets or walls. They can even be used as the outward face of a wall fire.

Author Bio: Andrew Deen writes and blogs in the areas of home and office improvement and DIY projects. This article was designed to explain different options of upgrading an office space, using quality materials such as Norstone USA Natural Thin Stone Veneer?office interior.

Photo credits: Norstone

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Source: http://greenbuildingelements.com/2012/11/15/guest-post-using-stacked-stone-to-make-your-office-sleek-and-professional-2/

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