DISH, Tex.—A satellite broadcasting company bought the rights to rename this town a few years ago in exchange for a decade of free television, but it is another industry that dominates the 200 or so residents: natural gas. Five facilities perched on the north Texas town's outskirts compress the gas newly flowing to the surface from the cracked Barnett Shale more than two kilometers beneath the surface, collectively contributing a brew of toxic chemicals to the air. It is because of places like DISH (formerly known as Clark) and similar sites from Colorado to Wyoming, that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has launched a new review of the practice known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking". From compressor stations emitting known human carcinogens such as benzene to the poor lining of wells after drilling that has led some water taps to literally spout flames, the full set of activities needed to produce natural gas gives rise to a panoply of potential problems. The EPA study may examine everything from site selection to the ultimate disposal of the fluids used in fracking. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=shale-gas-and-hydraulic-fracturing

Iguazu Falls, Iguassu Falls, or Iguaçu Falls are waterfalls of the Iguazu River located on the border of the Brazilian state of Paraná and the Argentine province of Misiones. The falls divide the river into the upper and lower Iguazu. Iguazu Falls is often compared with Southern Africa's Victoria Falls which separates Zambia and Zimbabwe. Iguazu is wider, but because it is split into about 270 discrete falls and large islands, Victoria is the largest curtain of water in the world, at over 1,600 m (5,249 ft) wide and over 100 m (328 ft) in height (in low flow Victoria is split into five by islands; in high flow it can be uninterrupted). The only wider falls are extremely large rapid-like falls such as the Boyoma Falls). With the flooding of the Guaíra Falls in 1982, Iguazu currently has the second greatest average annual flow of any waterfall in the world, after Niagara, with an average rate of 1746 m³/s. The water falling over Iguazu in peak flow has a surface area of about 40 Ha (1.3 million ft²) whilst Victoria in peak flow has a surface area of over 55 ha (1.8 million ft²). By comparison, Niagara has a surface area of under 18.3 ha (600,000 ft²). Victoria's annual peak flow very similar maximum water discharge (well in excess of 12,000 m³/s). Niagara's average flow is about 2,400 m³/s, although an all-time peak of 8,269 has been recorded. Iguazu and Victoria fluctuate more greatly in their flow rate. Mist rises between 30 metres (98 ft) and 150 m (492 ft) from Iguazu's Devil's Throat, and over 300 m (984 ft) above Victoria. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iguazu_Falls

On June 12 at the 16th annual West Chester University Poetry Conference, poets, scholars and other enthusiasts reveling in rhyme, meter and narrative in verse were lined up like smitten rock fans waiting for Natalie Merchant to sign copies of her new, deluxe-edition, double-disc recording, "Leave Your Sleep." (An abridged single CD has also been released.) Inside the student union building here, several people also clutched her previous solo albums, and one fervid fan gripped vinyl recordings of the pop-rock-folk band 10,000 Maniacs, which Ms. Merchant joined as a 17-year-old lead singer in 1981. The conference was founded in 1995 by Michael Peich, a WCU professor of English and the director of Aralia Press, and Dana Gioia, a poet and critic who served as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 to 2009. "This conference has grown from 85 to 300 people," Prof. Peich said, "and in 1999 we added a concert of art song to the program. Natalie's new album, where she sets music to verse, makes her a natural choice for this year's conference." Mr. Gioia, currently director of the Aspen Institute's Harman-Eisner Program in the Arts, believes Ms. Merchant "has done something important and innovative. Other pop singers have set a poem or two in the past to music, but I don't think anyone else has ever done it on the scale of Merchant. She has created something akin to pop art song and re-created the link between song and poetry." In "Leave Your Sleep," Ms. Merchant composed music for 26 poems by writers well known (E.E. Cummings, Ogden Nash, Christina Rossetti), less known (Charles Causley, Eleanor Farjeon, Rachel Field), and anonymous. The album features more than 130 guest performers whose styles include Cajun, reggae, blues, gospel, Native American, Chinese, orchestral and pop music. Those eclectic choices grew out of Ms. Merchant's desire to introduce her daughter, Lucia, now age 7, to music and verse that would engage her imagination and hone her language skills. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704009804575309183533157688.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_5

The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago's 'Pioneers of the Past' exhibition, on through Aug. 29, asks: Who owns the past? The display of artifacts, letters and photographs commemorates founder James Henry Breasted's first expedition to Egypt and what are now Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Ownership is just one of the contentious issues raised in the exhibition, which, having set the mind spinning, then ends on a subdued note with an overview of the sites Breasted recommended the Institute should excavate. This acts as an invitation to walk through the rest of the museum—where the show's final insight comes clear. In one gallery, colossal stone reliefs feature courtiers with flowing robes and a winged creature with the body of a bull and the head of a man. These once decorated palace walls in Khorsabad, one of five power centers on Breasted's list. Elsewhere, cases brim with more humble objects—tools, amulets, seals, terracotta figurines—valued by later scholars because they shed light on village life, agriculture and animal domestication. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703561604575282343365922152.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_5

Word unit palindromes occur when the words rather than the letters form the same sentence backward and forward, such as the sentence "I did, did I?" This example is a character-by-character palindrome and also a sentence palindrome, as the individual letters are the same backward and forward as well as the words
A line-unit palindrome is one in which the lines read the same from the top down as they do from the bottom up. Click this link to read an example of a line-unit palindrome poem, Doppelganger, by James A. Lindon.
Sentence palindromes occur when the words in a sentence read the same backward and forward. These are also called reversible sentences. Punctuation and word spacing is ignored when creating a sentence palindrome
http://research-writing-techniques.suite101.com/article.cfm/palindrome-examples-lists-and-facts-in-poetry-and-prose

Palindromes from a muse reader: Borrow or rob? Air an aria. A Toyota! Race fast, safe car! solos, rotor, radar, put up, refer, pull up, race car