More Power, No Problems

Ready to slay some dust bunnies this Spring cleaning? Tired of cat hair ruining your carpets, or sick of trying to clear out the cobwebs in your attic mostly by waving your hands around? Is your vacuum too heavy or loud, or are you constrained to using it within a few feet of an outlet? We’ve got an apartment dwellers dream, a compact, lightweight, extendable and portable vacuum cleaner from the company that reinvigorated the category.

The Dyson DC59 Animal Cordless Vacuum is certainly not your average model. When we last checked in with Dyson and their DC23 canister vac, we were impressed by the sheer power, as well as the space-age looks. The DC59 takes the same great industrial design and shrinks it, offering power comparable to a corded vacuum in a svelte battery-powered body. The last handheld model we saw was their DC31, and the latest update improves in every way on the predecessors. And it comes with a mini motorized tool, turning a hand vacuum into a flexible do-it-all wonder.

For starters, the low profile brush head slides under your couch, sofa, or other furniture easily. The battery life on older models was only about 15 minutes, and the DC59 just about doubles that, probably thanks to the change from lithium ion chemistry to new nickel manganese cobalt. Of course, the weight is also about doubled- but you’ll still barely notice it at under five pounds.

 Plus, it’s well balanced enough that even your average teenager gal will be able to extend the hose and clean the ceilings without feeling likely to fall over. The 28 airwatts of power- and we love that measurement- put by the ‘Cyclone’ technology is enough to handle even carpets and do a quick job on floors. It’s still loud, but not that bad, and comparable to most others in this class.

As you might guess from the Animal in the name, this little guy does a solid job on working with pets and their fur and dander. We tried it out to attempt to clear some rugs, blankets, and surfaces from the hair that inevitably gets everywhere- and only needed to take one pass, with everything looking fresh and clean moments later.

Army seeks greater Pacific role

Approaching from the Hawaii coast, the mosquito-shaped helicopter buzzed around this guided missile cruiser twice before swooping toward the landing pad. The Navy crew on the deck crouched, the helmeted faces betraying more than routine concern as the aircraft, flown by a pilot who had never before alighted upon a ship, hovered a foot off the tarmac and then set down with a thud. The sailors' trepidation was prompted by three words painted in black block letters on the drab olive fuselage: United States Army. The Army, which fights on terra firma, does not usually land its helicopters on ships — the domain of the Navy and the Marine Corps — but these are not usual times in the U.S. military. As the Obama administration winds down the Army-centric war in Afghanistan, Pentagon leaders are seeking to place the Air Force, Navy and Marines in dominant roles to counter threats in the Asia-Pacific region, which they China High Temperature hoses manufacturers have deemed to be the nation's next big national security challenge. Fearful that the new strategy will cut its share of the defense budget, the Army is launching an ambitious campaign to transform itself and assert its relevance in the Pacific. And that, in turn, is drawing the Army into a fight. Calculating that there are only slim chances of the Army fighting a big land war anywhere in the Far East other than the Korean Peninsula, the new top Army commander in the Pacific, Gen. Vincent Brooks, wants his forces to more quickly and effectively respond to small conflicts, isolated acts of aggression and natural disasters. Doing so, however, has traditionally been a challenge for the Army, which bases most of its soldiers assigned to the Orient in Hawaii, Alaska and Washington state. To overcome what he calls "the tyranny of distance," Brooks is trying to make his forces more maritime and expeditionary. To cut travel time and increase regional familiarity, he is seeking authorization to send key Low Temperature hoses suppliers elements of a U.S.-based infantry brigade to Asia and keep them there for months at a time, moving every few weeks to different nations to conduct training exercises. The rotating deployment, which amounts to the first proposed increase in U.S. forces in Asia in years, could enable the Army to move more speedily to address humanitarian crises and security threats. Brooks said he wants "a capable force that can respond to a variety of contingencies" — rapidly. "Forces that are already in motion have an advantage in responding," he said. The initiative, which Brooks is calling "Pacific Pathways," is also an opportunity to recast the Army's image in Washington, yielding television images of soldiers — not just Marines and sailors — responding to typhoons and cyclones. "We can no longer afford to build [combat] units and put them on a shelf to be used only in the event of war," Brooks's command wrote in an internal planning document.