Ohio started the month of July with its pedal to the metal. The Buckeye State became the 34th state to adopt the 70 miles-an-hour speed limit. Drivers can now do up to 70 on more than 570 of Ohio's 1,332 miles of interstate highway. Congress repealed the 55 mph national limit in 1995. Despite predictions of calamity and carnage on the highways, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported in October 1998 that "the traffic death rate dropped to a record low level in 1997". That pattern has continued since then.

Volunteer hosts went to the airport, picked up assigned students, fed them dinner, took them to the opening lecture at the Clay Center, put them in spare bedrooms for the night, then fed them breakfast this morning and will deliver the outstanding teens to buses that convey them to the mountain retreat where they undergo a month of intensive science training and outdoor fun.

Luckily, this year, enough local families volunteered to host all the brilliant youths. In the past, the number of guest homes sometimes fell short, and some of the visitors slept on cots and sleeping bags at local churches. They're adventurous teens and don't mind this makeshift camp-in but it's better if friendly hosts give them a more personal welcome for their stay.

A perennial stream or perennial river is a stream or river (channel) that has continuous flow in parts of its stream bed all year round during years of normal rainfall. "Perennial" streams are contrasted with "intermittent" streams which normally cease flowing for weeks or months each year, and with "ephemeral" channels that flow only for hours or days following rainfall.

A utility cooperative is a type of cooperative that is tasked with the delivery of a public utility such as electricity, water or telecommunications to its members. Profits are either reinvested for infrastructure or distributed to members in the form of "patronage" or "capital credits", which are essentially dividends paid on a member's investment into the cooperative. Each customer is a member and owner of the business with an equal say as every other member of the cooperative, unlike investor-owned utilities where the amount of say is governed by the number of shares held.

The Vikings were seafaring north Germanic people who raided, traded, explored, and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia, and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th centuries. The Vikings employed wooden longships with wide, shallow-draft hulls, allowing navigation in rough seas or in shallow river waters. The ships could be landed on beaches, and their light weight enabled them to be hauled over portages. These versatile ships allowed the Vikings to travel as far east as Constantinople and the Volga River in Russia, as far west as Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland, and as far south as Nekor. This period of Viking expansion, known as the Viking Age, constitutes an important element of the medieval history of Scandinavia, Great Britain, Ireland, Russia, and the rest of Europe.