Moorbad Gmös

The peat therapy resort Moorbad Gmös in the vicinity of the town of Laakirchen (situated on the edge of the Salzkammergut) is one of the few moorland areas in the Alpine foothills of Upper Austria. The moor dates back to the Mindel glaciation and was created by a "dead-ice hole". In 1987 the local authorities of Upper Austria declared the area of 3.4 ha of the Gmöser Moor a natural preserve. A path around the area has since then given the visitor the opportunity of observing rare flora and fauna. In 2002 the spa was chosen as background scenery for the TV-production Schlosshotel Orth.

About the area

The habitat was formed on a moraine of the Mindel glaciation and forms one of the few moors in the Alpine foothills on the east side of the Traun River. Up to the time that humans began to interfere with nature, a moor landscape with its variety of flora and fauna was able to develop. Due to cultivation of the moor landscape by man (drainage, peat-working, litter-harvesting etc.) the 3.4 ha Gmöser Moor can today be designated as a moor land forest or as a lower moor land which the original forms of flora and fauna have survived.

Bill Nye

William Sanford "Bill" Nye (born November 27, 1955), popularly known as Bill Nye the Science Guy, is an American science educator, comedian, television presenter, actor, writer, scientist, and former mechanical engineer, best known as the host of the Disney/PBS children's science show Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993–1998) and for his many subsequent appearances in popular media as a science educator.

Early life and education

Nye was born on November 27, 1955, in Washington, D.C., to Jacqueline (née Jenkins; 1921–2000), a codebreaker during World War II, and Edwin Darby "Ned" Nye (1917–1997), also a World War II veteran, whose experience without electricity in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp led him to become a sundial enthusiast. His maternal grandmother was French, from Dancevoir.

After attending Lafayette Elementary and Alice Deal Junior High in the city, he was accepted to the private Sidwell Friends School on a partial scholarship and graduated in 1973. He studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University (where he took an astronomy class taught by Carl Sagan) and graduated with a B.S. in mechanical engineering in 1977. Nye occasionally returns to Cornell as a guest-lecturer of introductory-level astronomy and human ecology classes.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson (/ˈniːəl dəˈɡræs ˈtaɪsən/; born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science communicator. Since 1996, he has been the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City. The center is part of the American Museum of Natural History, where Tyson founded the Department of Astrophysics in 1997 and has been a research associate in the department since 2003.

Born in New York City, Tyson became interested in astronomy at the age of nine after a visit to the Hayden Planetarium. After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science, where he was editor-in-chief of the Physical Science Journal, he completed a bachelor's degree in physics at Harvard University in 1980. After receiving a master's degree in astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin in 1983, he earned his master's (1989) and doctorate (1991) in astrophysics at Columbia University. For the next three years, he was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University, and in 1994, he joined the Hayden Planetarium as a staff scientist and the Princeton faculty as a visiting research scientist and lecturer. In 1996, he became director of the planetarium and oversaw its $210-million reconstruction project, which was completed in 2000.