New wood market aims to provide koa to craftsmen
The Hawaii Forest Industry Association (HFIA) has teamed up with Kamuela Hardwoods and Paniolo Tonewoods to make processed live edge acacia koa wood available to local craftspeople, woodworkers, instrument makers and other artisans.
The newly launched Kamaaina Wood Market will help facilitate an open and transparent koa wood marketplace, the nonprofit HFIA announced in a press release.
As an important initiative of HFIA, Kamaaina Wood Market is in line with the organization’s goal of promoting the use of Hawaii-grown woods and ensuring that local woodworkers have the resources they need.
It aims to get processed and semi-processed Hawaii-grown wood, including koa, into the hands of local craftspeople and artisans.
Historically, koa has been sold in very large lots to buyers offshore including a strong demand in the international market. The new market is making small bundles of Hawaii’s wood available for purchase to the local market.
More info: info@kamuelahardwoods.com or (808) 657 4797.
Interested buyers must be current members of HFIA to participate in Kamaaina Wood Market program. HFIA membership is nominal and applications may be found online at www.hawaiiforest.org
For more information contact HFIA Executive Director Heather Simmons at 933-9411 or email: hfia@hawaiiforest.org. More info: info@kamuelahardwoods.com or 657-4797.
Strange features in galaxy discovered
A team of astronomers led by the University of California Observatories have studied in great detail a galaxy so faint and in such pristine condition it has acted as a time capsule, sealed shortly after the dawn of our universe only to be opened by the newest technology at W. M. Keck Observatory, the observatory said in a press release.
Using the Keck Cosmic Web Imagery, the team discovered a bizarre, solitary ultra-diffuse galaxy, or UDGs.
This transparent, ghost-like galaxy, named DGSAT I, contradicts the current theory on the formation of UDGs. All previously studied UDGs have been in galaxy clusters, which informed the basis for the theory that they were once “normal” galaxies, but with time have been blasted into a fluffy mess due to violent events within the cluster.
“There seemed to be a relatively tidy picture of the origins of galaxies, from spirals to ellipticals, and from giants to dwarfs,” said lead author Ignacio Martín-Navarro, a postdoctoral scholar at UCO. “However, the recent discovery of UDGs raised new questions about how complete this picture is. All of the UDGs that have been studied in detail so far were within galaxy clusters: dense regions of violent interaction where the galaxies’ characteristics at birth have been scrambled up by a difficult adolescence.”
The team’s results will be published in the April 11 issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and is now available online.