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Amy Abell is 28 years old. She's 5 feet 6 inches (1.67 meters) tall, weighs 130 pounds (59 kilograms), has curly blonde hair, blue eyes and a tattoo of a Chinese symbol on her left hip. She was last seen on Sept. 12, 2005, at her home in Baltimore. Profile after profile on the National Center for Missing Adults Web site tells the same story. Kelly Allen disappeared from a friend's house in Berkley, Mo. In total, there are nearly 1 million people in the U.S. The stereotypical kidnapping by a stranger is just that -- a stereotype. That scenario comprises only a tiny fraction of missing persons cases. No matter the circumstances, the statistics are enough to make anyone want to do something about it. Read on to find out which organizations are on the case.S. In recent years, the federal government has created four missing persons databases to help investigators in their pursuits: the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) and the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP).
CODIS assembles nationwide DNA information obtained from unidentified remains and relatives of missing persons. Besides these government resources, a number of non-profit organizations have sprung up to help ease the backlog -- and heartache -- so common in these cases. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) was established in 1984 to prevent child abduction, as well as find those who are already missing. Want to help? Read on to find out how to get involved. The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) is the first national repository that anyone can use to search for missing persons. Run by the U.S. Department of Justice, it has two databases: The unidentified decedents database houses information from medical examiners and coroners about unidentified remains and the missing persons database links to state clearinghouses, victim assistant groups and missing persons legislation. The opportunities range from fundraising and planning special events to helping promote missing persons-related legislation and aiding in investigations. Most of these organizations have training programs that will educate you on the problem of missing persons, including common reasons for disappearance, statistics on who is most vulnerable and what kinds of services are available to aid families whose loved ones have vanished. For more information about how you can help, see the links on the next page. Besides the national missing persons organizations there are many small, specialized non-profits that may target your particular area of interest. The Garden of Innocence, for example, is a San Diego-based organization that provides burials for unidentified and abandoned babies. Fox Valley Technical College. Krajicek, David. "America's Missing." TruTV. National Center for Missing Adults.
They say necessity is the mother of invention, and for Silly Putty, the strange material that ships in an egg and behaves sometimes like a liquid and other times like a solid, necessity came in the form of Imperial Japan. In the early 1940s, as Germany waged war in Europe, the Empire of the Sun invaded rubber-producing countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines, cutting off supplies to the West. This was more than a minor issue. Japan's invasion of Southeast Asia threatened, literally, the entire war effort. At a loss, the U.S. War Production Board challenged industrial labs and academic institutions to develop a synthetic rubber that could be used to meet wartime production demands. Collectively, the chemists working on the problem may have achieved one of the greatest successes in the history of science: They produced a general-purpose synthetic rubber known as GR-S, or government rubber-styrene, in sufficient quantity to meet the needs of the U.S.
World War II. One of those wrong turns was made by James Wright in the laboratory of General Electric. Wright mixed boric acid and silicone oil together in the hopes of creating rubber that would make Charles Goodyear proud. General Electric sent Wright's concoction to engineers all over the world, hoping to make something awesome out of the accident. Unfortunately, no one ever discovered a practical use for the "bouncing putty," which seemed destined to fade quietly into history. One man, however, rescued the substance from obscurity. His name was Peter Hodgson, and his vision would eventually lead to Silly Putty, one of the most famous toys in the history of fun and games. In this article, we'll look at the long, strange journey of Silly Putty. We'll also investigate the material's many odd properties -- and the chemistry behind them. Our first order of business: Hodgson's great gamble. World War II had been over for four years, and James Wright's bouncing putty was still in circulation as an invention in search of a practical use.
Unfortunately, no factory or manufacturing plant ever discovered an application for the goop. Peter Hodgson, who owned his own ad agency in New Haven, Conn., was at a cocktail party when he spotted the putty making the rounds. He watched as people spent minutes at a time folding, stretching and squeezing the strange stuff. He approached Ruth Fallgatter, owner of the Block Shop toy store, about listing the putty in an upcoming catalog Hodgson was helping to produce. The bouncing putty became one of the Block Shop's biggest sellers. For reasons that remain unclear, Fallgatter declined to market the product any further, but Hodgson saw its potential. He borrowed $147 to order another batch from General Electric, then hired a Yale student to place 1-ounce (28-gram) wads in plastic eggs. At the same time, Hodgson began to brainstorm names for his product. He evaluated 15 possibilities, but eventually settled on Silly Putty, for which he secured a trademark.
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