Mountain Views News, Pasadena Edition [Sierra Madre] Saturday, August 18, 2018

8

FOOD & DRINK

Mountain Views-News Saturday, August 18, 2018 


TABLE FOR TWO by Peter Dills

thechefknows@yahoo.com

OHHHH THE TIMES, THEY ARE 
A-CHANGING…

I sat down with a local restaurant manager, and he asked me 
“what’s happening in the local restaurant scene?” Well, did 
you know that Pasadena is right behind San Francisco for the 
number of restaurants per capita? It makes me wonder why 
anyone would open a new restaurant with all that competition, 
but I know the answer: everyone thinks they can do it better. 
My friend, David Yost, owner of some popular eateries in 
town, is not opening anything new, but he is changing things 
around a little. David’s group of friends (as he calls them) has 
officially taken over the reigns of the Proper in La Canada and 
has renamed the Central Park to Central Grille. I once wrote 
that the Central Park was a true rising star on the Pasadena 
restaurant scene with their selection of reasonably priced 
entrees and wine list. 

 I recently went to Central Grille with friend Sean Lorenzini 
and his fiancée Gwynn. Sean religiously orders the eggs 
Benedict. Breakfast is notable here and it makes sense, since 
the owners also own Canoe House, Shakers, and the Diner 
on Main St., which are known for a good breakfast. Now, 
I wouldn’t call Central Grille “upscale”, however it would be wrong to translate the visual and flavor 
experiences of those two restaurants to Central Grille.

 Central Grille occupies the one hundred year-old flower warehouse. You might remember it as Soda 
Jerk’s at one point. It still has the same beautifully exposed brick walls, and Central Grille has their own 
off-street parking, which gives you enough time to really enjoy your meal without worrying if there is 
enough money in your meter. I place Central Grille in a similar category with Parkway Grill, Houston’s 
and Smitty’s, the difference being that Central Grille is a little less expensive than these other three.

 Check out their web page www.centralgrille.net for hours and prices. Bargain Note: $6 Martinis on 
Monday Nights

 I am a fan of Central Grille and I am sure with a single visit, you will be too.

 Central Grille 219 S. Fair Oaks Pasadena (626) 449-4499

 Visit me on my website at www.peterdills.com and listen to Dining w/Dills on KLAA AM 830 at 5 PM 
Sundays


ARECIBO OBSERVATORY TO GET $5.8 MILLION UPGRADE TO EXPAND VIEW


The National Science Foundation has awarded a 
team of scientists $5.8 million to design and mount 
a supersensitive antenna at the focal point of the 
Arecibo Observatory’s 1,000-foot-diameter dish, 
which is managed by the University of Central 
Florida (UCF). The antenna, called a phased-
array feed, will increase the telescope’s observation 
capabilities 500 percent.

 The team, led by Brigham Young University 
engineering professors Brian Jeffs and Karl 
Warnick, includes collaborators at UCF and Cornell 
University. UCF and its partners have managed the 
facility since April when the team won a bid from 
the NSF to run the site.

 “We already have one of the most powerful 
telescopes on the planet, and with this award 
we will be able to do even more,” said Francisco 
Cordova, Arecibo site director and an engineer. 
“We are very excited with the award to fund the 
new ALPACA (Advanced Cryogenic L-Band 
Phased Array Camera for Arecibo) receiver at the 
Arecibo Observatory. This receiver, which is the 
next generation of our most-used receiver, will be 
able to increase the survey speed by a factor of five. 
The receiver will accelerate research in gravitational 
waves, fast radio bursts, dark matter and pulsar 
surveys, ensuring that AO continues to be at the 
forefront of radio astronomy for years to come.”

 Cordova has been working with BYU for months 
to prepare the NSF proposal. Jeffs and Warnick are 
considered the world’s foremost experts in phased-
array feeds and are familiar with Arecibo. Nine years 
ago, they installed a gold-plated array of many small 
antennas at Arecibo that increased the surveying 
ability of the telescope from one beam of radio 
waves to seven beams. The new NSF-sponsored 
phased-array feed will have 166 antennas and will 
increase the field of view of the telescope to 40 
beams, providing much smoother and continuous 
coverage of the sky than conventional receivers. The 
new array is scheduled to be installed by 2022.

 “We’re taking the most sensitive radio telescope 
in the world and opening it up so that it can view 
a larger part of the sky at one time,” Warnick said. 
“There’s a lot of things in space you can see with an 
optical camera, but you can see even more with a 
radio telescope.”

 One scientific objective of the new feed will 
be tracking new pulsars—especially millisecond 
pulsars that help signal the presence of gravitational 
waves. Such waves are produced by catastrophic 
events, such as two colliding black holes, and they 
cause ripples in the fabric of space-time.

 The phased-array feed will also search for 
extraterrestrial intelligence, detect fast radio bursts 
and conduct surveys to help unravel the mystery of 
dark matter in the universe.

 Arecibo, which was built in the 1960s, has been 
making headlines recently for its contributions 
to major space science news. It helped confirm 
gravitational waves and FRBs. Scientists from 
around the world use the facility’s powerful 
instruments to study everything from pulsars and 
dark matter to solar weather, and NASA uses it to 
study asteroids.

 UCF is leading the consortium that includes 
Universidad Metropolitana in Puerto Rico and 
Yang Enterprises Inc. based in Oviedo, Florida, in 
managing the NSF facility. The facility, which was 
damaged when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico 
last year, opened quickly after the storm. Emergency 
repairs that needed immediate attention, such as 
patching roofs and repairing electrical feeds, have 
been underway since May after the site received 
hurricane-relief funding.

 You can contact Bob Eklund at: b.eklund@
MtnViewsNews.com.

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