June 4, 2010, 7:51 am

Wall Street Journal Examines BP Deepwater Spill

By Garrick Infanger

Oil Bird

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill continues to dominate the headlines. The Wall Street Journal adds:

Earlier Thursday, undersea robots completed a second cut of the fractured pipe connected to the deep-water oil well, paving the way for engineers to install the containment device that officials hope will send most of the oil to a vessel at the water’s surface a mile above.

The containment-cap effort is the latest in a series of procedures attempted by the U.K. oil giant, which has been sharply criticized in recent weeks as the spill affects an increasingly wide stretch of the U.S. Gulf Coast, threatening to cause massive environmental and economic damage.

Deepwater

The article continues:

In the Gulf, the oil slick from the spill continued to move northeast, threatening Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projected that winds will continue through Saturday to push oil on the surface of the Gulf toward barrier islands along the Mississippi and Alabama coasts.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said he saw a patch of light oil some three to four miles from Pensacola Beach on Thursday afternoon from a reconnaissance flight over the Florida Panhandle. Mr. Crist said other patches were visible about 10 miles off the Panhandle coast during the flyover.

Oil Spill

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June 1, 2010, 9:38 am

Gibraltar Airport Traffic Includes Planes and Cars

By Garrick Infanger

Gibraltar Intersection

The airport in Gibraltar is the only major airport runway that doubles as a traffic intersection for vehicle traffic. Cars are brought to a stop so planes can land and then are allowed to drive across the runway. This interesting roadway is set to be replaced with an underground tunnel in the future to accommodate more plane traffic.


Airport

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May 28, 2010, 8:38 am

Redesigning the Stop Sign

By Garrick Infanger

Gary Lauder expounds at the TED Conference about ‘Taking Turns’.

Ed Wagner, Tulsa Alternative Transportation Examiner, weighs in with a pro-Yield view:

For most drivers, stop signs have become defacto yields. We should recognize this and simply replace them with true yield signs. I realize it wouldn’t help those kids stranded on a street corner, but that problem could be addressed by stationing a crossing guard there.

But is it right to change the signage in order to align our streets with people’s behavior? Or should we expect that behavior should conform to the existing signage? I’m thinking that by changing most stop signs to yields, we can give the remaining stop signs greater impact on driver’s behavior, in effect, gaining compliance by reducing their numbers. Frankly though, that’s a supposition which should be confirmed via testing.

Hat tip and hat tip.

May 25, 2010, 9:55 am

Deterring a Nuclear Bomb: Why We Need Nuclear Forensics

By Garrick Infanger

Nuke

Newsweek’s Sharon Begley opines on the need for nuclear forensics:

The U.S. has not stood out in advancing the cause of nuclear attribution even at home. A 2008 analysis by physicists and nuclear chemists for the American Physical Society and AAAS concluded the U.S. has too few experts (about 50) in nuclear attribution, and many are close to retirement. Training programs for the minimum of 35 new Ph.D.s needed over the next decade are “inadequate and underfunded,” it warned; equipment to analyze debris after a detonation falls short of “the most modern and effective standards that prevail” in such countries as Japan and France.

Yet a 2008 bill was stripped of $4 million authorized to train experts. Even the Nuclear Forensics and Attribution Act that Obama signed in February “doesn’t have any money” to remedy the shortfall of equipment and expertise, says Tannenbaum.

That is breathtakingly stupid, for nuclear forensics has made real advances lately. Nuclear materials have atomic and chemical properties that may survive detonation and “serve as unequivocal markers of specific sources, production processes, or transit routes,” Michael Kristo of Lawrence Livermore National Lab told a U.S.-Russia workshop on nuclear security. Uranium can have a unique signature depending on where it was processed; the kind of reactor used to make weapons-grade plutonium leaves a telltale ratio of isotopes. The fraction of particles of different sizes in uranium-oxide powder can indicate what uranium conversion process was used, and therefore where it was carried out, while the dimensions of nuclear fuel pellets are often unique to a manufacturer. The ratio of oxygen-18 to oxygen-16 varies by region, and so can be used to pinpoint where nuclear fuel pellets were produced. Pollen and spores can indicate the route a nuke traveled (though only if it’s intercepted; if it goes off, pollen and spores are incinerated).

Even so, it may be impossible with today’s techniques to unambiguously trace nuclear materials to a unique source. That, Kristo warned, underlines the need to discover “new signatures…of the material that reveal the creator.”

May 20, 2010, 2:45 pm

Speeding Up Among Teenage Girls, Texting Up Among All Teens

By Garrick Infanger

Teen Driving

The Allstate Foundation recently conducted a new survey, Shifting Teen Attitudes: The State of Teen Driving 2009.

Texting is teen’s biggest distraction behind the wheel:

  • More than 49% of teens report texting as a distraction, up from 31% in 2005
  • 82% of teens report using cell phones while driving, while 23% admit to drinking and driving
  • More than 60% of teens worry about getting into a car accident, but still admit to practicing distracting or harmful actions while driving

Girls express a new need for speed:

  • Nearly half (48%) of girls admit they are likely to speed more than 10 m.p.h. over the limit, versus 36% of boys
  • 16% of girls describe their driving as aggressive, up from 9% in 200

Joseph B. White from the Wall Street Journal weighs in on the need for speed among teens:

The results were “a surprise to many people,” says Meghann Dowd of the Allstate Foundation, an independent charitable organization funded by Allstate which sponsored the survey.

While teens fessed up about their own bad behavior, they also said their friends drive even worse. The study found that 65% of the respondents, male and female, said they are confident in their own driving skills, but 77% said they had felt unsafe when another teen was driving. Only 23% of teens agree that most teens are good drivers. This suggests teens recognize in their friends the dubious and dangerous behavior they won’t admit to indulging in themselves.

May 17, 2010, 11:15 am

Debating a National Gene Database

By Garrick Infanger

Genes

Michael Seringhaus recently argued in the New York Times to keep everyone’s DNA on file in police databases:

The president was correct in saying that we need a more robust DNA database, available to law enforcement in every state, to “continue to tighten the grip around folks who have perpetrated these crimes.” But critics have a point that genetic police work, like the sampling of arrestees, is fraught with bias. A better solution: to keep every American’s DNA profile on file.

Your sensitive genetic information would be safe. A DNA profile distills a person’s complex genomic information down to a set of 26 numerical values, each characterizing the length of a certain repeated sequence of “junk” DNA that differs from person to person. Although these genetic differences are biologically meaningless — they don’t correlate with any observable characteristics — tabulating the number of repeats creates a unique identifier, a DNA “fingerprint.”

The genetic privacy risk from such profiling is virtually nil, because these records include none of the health and biological data present in one’s genome as a whole. Aside from the ability in some cases to determine whether two individuals are closely related, DNA profiles have nothing sensitive to disclose.

But for law enforcement, the profiles are hugely important: DNA samples collected from crime scenes are compared against a standing database of profiles, and matches are investigated. Obviously, the more individuals profiled in the database, the more likely a crime-scene sample can be identified, hence the president’s enthusiasm to expand the nationwide repository.

A counterpoint followed from Mike Habersack in a Letter to the Editor:

Michael Seringhaus’s suggestion that all people in the United States submit DNA to the police sacrifices the bedrock foundation of presumption of innocence for ”fairness.” This goes against more than 200 years of practice and principle in the United States. If fairness were more important, then we would have long ago required all people to submit fingerprints (presumably at birth) to the police.

Why not go one step further and require closed-circuit cameras inside everybody’s home? Would that not help the police even further in solving crime and also being fair?

The problem with this logic is that citizens do not exist to serve the police, but rather the reverse. The obvious answer that serves both fairness, justice and the presumption of innocence is that DNA profiles should be maintained only for those actually convicted of crimes.

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May 13, 2010, 1:37 pm

Harnessing the Power of Potholes

By Garrick Infanger

Bumpy Road

With the movement towards alternative energy in full swing, a couple of MIT graduates, Zack Anderson and Shakeel Avadhany, are harnessing the power of potholes. Their company, Levant Power, is turning the bruising up-and-downs of the suspension system into available automotive energy.

From the Levant Power company website:

Levant Power Corp. has identified an alternative energy source previously untapped by vehicles: the suspension system. The energy of a vehicle traversing varying roads and terrain is significant and currently dissipated as heat through conventional shock absorbers.

Our product, GenShock, recovers this energy and utilizes it for fuel economy gains, providing additional onboard electricity. In addition to extending a vehicle’s range, GenShock improves ride quality via an adaptable, variable-damping suspension. GenShock is a turnkey replacement for standard shock absorbers, requiring minimal installation time and little to no maintenance.

Scientific America profiles the Levant technology in a recent article:

But spread that device across millions of jittering vehicles, and the numbers become staggering. In 2007, medium-size and heavy trucks used 34 billion gallons of diesel fuel. According to E&E analysis, trimming 1 percent of that fuel would have saved 3.4 million tons of CO2.

Analysts of the trucking industry said they hadn’t seen something like GenShock before. Some said previous energy-generating efforts, using electromagnets, never caught on.

Anderson and Avadhany are meeting with truck manufacturers and one of Detroit’s Big Three carmakers. Transit operators have called, too, suspecting GenShock would reap huge fuel savings in their bus fleets. Levant keeps regular contact with military clients, whose vehicles navigate the roughest terrain there is. The technology isn’t just for new vehicles, either — it can also replace an old car’s shocks.

May 10, 2010, 5:58 am

NASA unveils new Solar Dynamics Observatory

By Garrick Infanger

Solar

NASA released the first images from the new Solar Dynamics Observatory.

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May 5, 2010, 6:33 am

Taiwan Landslide Overtakes Roadway

By Garrick Infanger

Landslide

A landslide in Keelung, Taiwan on April 25, 2010.

Photo credit.

May 4, 2010, 5:52 am

Times Square Bomber Leaves Wealth of Forensic Evidence

By Garrick Infanger

Forensic Investigation

Investigators found a an extensive amount of forensic evidence as they reviewed the Times Square SUV and bomb material.The New York Times reports on the failed bomb:

Among the enduring images left by car bombings, overseas or in the United States, is investigators on their hands and knees, crawling through the wreckage searching for clues: a blasting cap or a timing device, a piece of the explosive’s casing or a trace of the chemicals used.

Car bombs, by design, do their best to devour any evidence of their existence, or send it flying.

On Saturday in Times Square, a homemade bomb built inside a Nissan Pathfinder did not explode — and as a result, a trove of evidence was left behind for investigators to pore over, not only for physical evidence or forensic clues, but also as a reflection of an assailant’s methods, mind-set and possible motives.

More information should be forthcoming as the FBI investigates the SUV and related evidence at their lab in Quantico, VA:

And when the bomb in the Pathfinder did not go off, the authorities had not only the vehicle, but also the raft of explosive elements packed inside: two neon-color alarm clocks and the time one was set to, some batteries, two five-gallon gasoline containers, three propane tanks, firecrackers, fertilizer packed in clear plastic bags bearing a store’s logo, a cooking pot and a 78-pound metal gun box, a GC-14P 14-gun steel security cabinet manufactured by Stack-On, the police said.

Moreover, a car is an ideal receptacle for microscopic or invisible traces of who might have been inside. The authorities have been dusting the outside of the Pathfinder for fingerprints. Inside, they can search for traces of hair or skin cells that might have sloughed off on a steering wheel or a seat cover. They may find literature tucked into a glove box, or some food under a seat.

Each clue will be its own mini-investigation, in an inquiry that is involving “hundreds” of officers and agents, said Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman.

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April 30, 2010, 12:42 pm

Deepwater Horizon Drilling Rig Explosion

By Garrick Infanger

Oil Spill

The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion continues to dominate the headlines:

Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana declared a state of emergency Thursday afternoon, saying that the vast oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico “threatens the state’s natural resources.” Federal officials were concerned that the slick could reach the Mississippi River Delta marshes by Thursday evening.

The leak from the oil well, caused by an explosion on a drilling rig about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, which left 11 workers missing and presumed dead, is estimated at 5,000 barrels of oil a day. Such a disaster is very rare, but the financial and environmental costs are clearly high when it occurs. Last month, President Obama proposed opening more areas of the Gulf coastline to oil and natural gas drilling.

Concerning the investigation:

“It obviously was a catastrophic event,” O’Berry said. An investigation into the cause of the blast is under way, but there are no indications it was a terrorist incident, the Coast Guard said.

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April 30, 2010, 12:24 pm

Oprah Promotes ‘No-Phone Zone Day’

By Garrick Infanger

No Phone Zone

USA Today has an article on Oprah Winfrey’s new public service campaign:

Today is Oprah’s national “No-Phone Zone Day,” a grassroots campaign that is asking all Americans to be kind and save lives by not using their cell phones — texting or dialing by hand — while driving. She is also dedicating her entire show today to the campaign. Why all this hoopla?

Research shows that these activities can prove to be, not only dangerous, but deadly. In fact, one new British study found that “texting while driving slows reaction time more than being drunk or high,” writes Sari Harrar in O, The Oprah Magazine.

In addition to these pledges, Oprah is also asking folks to sign her No Phone Zone pledge, promising not to text or use hand-held phones while driving. More than 200,000 people — including several celebs — have signed the pledge so far.

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