Everyone blames the oil. We should not ship oil by train.
It is not the oil. Rail lines ship a lot more hazardous material than just oil. The train could have been filled with gravel or lumber, chemicals, ammunition for Afghanistan (oh, I forgot, we are coming home from that) etc., and there would still have been a lot of trouble at the crash but no fire?maybe.
When operating a 73-car+ oil train, the operator and the owner are responsible for the ?safe? parking of this line of fuel, especially when a sloped rail line is to either end of the train.
There again, it is not the oil?s fault, it is the operators.
Then ask, why is such a line of oil cars left unattended if our national government is so afraid of terrorist? If it is so easy to let this train of oil slip loose and run into town for a large destruction of people and assets, should more emphasis not be put on its ?safe parking,? ie: someone responsible for its safe parking or an attendant for overnight. There used to be cabooses on all trains, now we just have a little smart box taped to the end car. I assume the little smart box could not stop the train or ask for help or alert the trouble to head office?
In driver training for automobiles, we are taught to park our cars with the wheels turned in the correct direction for parking on a hill or slope and to use our parking brake.
Many companies want fewer and fewer workers but still want safe operations and make more money. What is this accident not going to cost the operating company?lawyers, suits and compensation.
Please do not forget the many lost lives and the families and friends left behind with the memories.
In our Rocky Mountains there are long freight trains going both ways every 20 minutes and they have to park many times to allow for hill climbing and passing trains but these don?t seem to have the same problems. Attention to detail and routine operation could be the answer, along with training of staff who are qualified to do the work.
I believe this operating company and others can and should do better in the future. Let us hope something good comes from this ie: regulations regards parking, attendants etc.
Of course, we could all change our ways and not use any oil products again?ever?no matter if the oil comes by pipe, boat or train. Yes, we could go back to the days of horse and buggy. Do I hear any takers? It would be a simpler life but then there could be a runaway horse and buggy because someone forgot to tie the horse up or set the park brake.
A FORMER drug kingpin and business tycoon that the US government once dubbed the "godfather of heroin" has died in his home in Myanmar ...
Once a divisive pariah Myanmar could aid Southeast Asian unity
Christian Science Monitor - Sunday 7th July, 2013
Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations once disagreed with the West over Myanmar sanctions. Now the opening of the country's economy could help ASEAN attain a big ...
Media Advisory Presentation of Credentials at Rideau Hall
Interest! Alert - Sunday 7th July, 2013
Upon their arrival in Canada, and before they can carry out their duties as heads of mission, new ambassadors, as well as new high commissioners of countries for which Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is not head of State, must be officially welcomed by the governor general of Canada. High commissioners representing countries for which The Queen is the head of State are formally introduced to the ...
Man dubbed Godfather of Heroin dies in Burma
General Sources - Sunday 7th July, 2013
A former drug kingpin and business tycoon once dubbed the "Godfather of Heroin" by the U.S. government has died in his home in Burma's main city, a source close to the family said Sunday. Lo Hsing Han died Saturday in Yangon, the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not have authorization to speak to the media, said, citing a relative of the former drug ...
CSA Group Announces Appointment of Two Vice Presidents in Asia
General Sources - Sunday 7th July, 2013
Ash Sahi, President and CEO, CSA Group, today announced the appointments of two new Vice Presidents in Asia. Effective immediately, Mr. Jiang Yi is appointed to the position of Vice President for China & Hong Kong and Ms. Claudia Chan is appointed to the position of Vice President for North & Southeast Asia. "Mr. Yi and Ms. Chan bring extensive Asian business experience and an ...
Myanmar Opium Elimination Plan
General Sources - Sunday 7th July, 2013
A recent peace initiative in Myanmar's eastern Shan State could play a key role in poppy eradication in a country which is the world's second largest opium producer, analysts say. "It's a very important milestone," said Jason Eligh, country manager for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Myanmar, explaining a new plan to wean farmers off poppy in ...
Did attacks on Muslims in Myanmar trigger Bodh Gaya blasts
India Today - Sunday 7th July, 2013
Are the serial blasts in Bodh Gaya a reaction to the prosecution of Muslim minorities in Buddhist-majority Myanmar? Jihadists have been clamouring for action for long. 'The Indian government is working in cahoots with Burmese government to wipe out Muslim population of #Burma': Jama't ud Da'wah chief Hafiz Saeed, based in Lahore, had tweeted on June 14. There were five more ...
Telenor promises 3G network in Myanmar
Mizzima News - Sunday 7th July, 2013
Telenor Group, the major shareholder of Thailand's Total Access Communication (DTAC), plans to introduce commercial third-generation (3G) mobile service in Myanmar next year after winning a licence in a highly competitive tender. The Norwegian firm aims to complete the nationwide roll-out of its 2G and 3G network using high-speed packet access (HSPA) technology within five years under an ...
Education for girls is key
Mizzima News - Sunday 7th July, 2013
EDITORIAL -- When I was at school I remember a poster on the wall in my history classroom that read: "Education for women is the greatest investment in the world today." The picture showed a young woman, perhaps Indian, reading a book with her daughter. In the background was a mystic collage of Wall Street buildings, dollar signs, construction cranes and other symbols of development or ...
CIMB Bank Brings the Color Run to Singapore
Interest! Alert - Sunday 7th July, 2013
, a unique five-kilometre fun run that gathers participants to run through showers of coloured powder in a celebration of health and happiness will debut in Singapore, the first city in ASEAN, over the weekend of 17 and 18 August, 2013. Dubbed the "happiest 5k on the planet", the untimed event, presented by CIMB Bank Singapore and organised by IMG, is expected to attract 16,000 ...
More natural gas deposit found in Myanmar offshore block
Global Times - Sunday 7th July, 2013
The PTTEP of Thailand has found new natural gas deposit from three more test wells at M-3 Mottama offshore block in Myanmar, official media reported Sunday.The three test wells Aung Thinkha- 4, 5 and 6, which were drilled in February and May 2013, are yielding 4.38 million cubic feet and 20 barrels of condensate, 5 million cubic feet and 30 barrels of condensate and, 14.34 million cubic feet and ...
Massacre of Muslims in Burma ignored
General Sources - Sunday 7th July, 2013
MEIKHTILA, Burma (AP) -- Their bones are scattered in blackened patches of earth across a hillside overlooking the wrecked Islamic boarding school they once called ...
Myanmar must face Rohingya responsibility
General Sources - Sunday 7th July, 2013
Myanmar is in the midst of a sweeping transition, but one thing that has not changed is that Thailand is still left with little moral choice but to shelter its refugees. These days, that means mostly Rohingya who have taken to the sea and washed up on Thai shores after fleeing mob violence directed at them in Myanmar's Rakhine state. As international outrage mounted following reports that ...
Myanmar journalists decry approved press bill
General Sources - Saturday 6th July, 2013
Myanmar journalists, including members of the interim Press Council, have categorically rejected the Printing and Publishing Enterprise Bill that the Lower House of Parliament approved last week after making some amendments. The bill drafted by the Information Ministry was also criticised for being in parallel with the media bill written by the Press Council on the ground that the legislation ...
Burma?s Bluff on the Two-Child Policy for Rohingyas
Human Rights Watch - Saturday 6th July, 2013
President Thein Sein should stop being a silent spectator and revoke the two-child policy once and for all. He should demonstrate his commitment to human rights by expanding access to health care and education for the Rohingya, and press Parliament to grant them citizenship rights on an equal basis with all other people in ...
Live television is rife with opportunities for bloopers. From strange audience members to unpredictable interviewees, news anchors never know what they might encounter. And these 10 GIFs demonstrate just that.
June 30, 2013 ? Anyone who's ever heard a Beethoven sonata or a Beatles song knows how powerfully sound can affect our emotions. But it can work the other way as well -- our emotions can actually affect how we hear and process sound. When certain types of sounds become associated in our brains with strong emotions, hearing similar sounds can evoke those same feelings, even far removed from their original context. It's a phenomenon commonly seen in combat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in whom harrowing memories of the battlefield can be triggered by something as common as the sound of thunder. But the brain mechanisms responsible for creating those troubling associations remain unknown. Now, a pair of researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has discovered how fear can actually increase or decrease the ability to discriminate among sounds depending on context, providing new insight into the distorted perceptions of victims of PTSD.
Their study is published in Nature Neuroscience.
"Emotions are closely linked to perception and very often our emotional response really helps us deal with reality," says senior study author Maria N. Geffen, PhD, assistant professor of Otorhinolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery and Neuroscience at Penn. "For example, a fear response helps you escape potentially dangerous situations and react quickly. But there are also situations where things can go wrong in the way the fear response develops. That's what happens in anxiety and also in PTSD -- the emotional response to the events is generalized to the point where the fear response starts getting developed to a very broad range of stimuli."
Geffen and the first author of the study, Mark Aizenberg, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in her laboratory, used emotional conditioning in mice to investigate how hearing acuity (the ability to distinguish between tones of different frequencies) can change following a traumatic event, known as emotional learning. In these experiments, which are based on classical (Pavlovian) conditioning, animals learn to distinguish between potentially dangerous and safe sounds -- called "emotional discrimination learning." This type of conditioning tends to result in relatively poor learning, but Aizenberg and Geffen designed a series of learning tasks intended to create progressively greater emotional discrimination in the mice, varying the difficulty of the task. What really interested them was how different levels of emotional discrimination would affect hearing acuity -- in other words, how emotional responses affect perception and discrimination of sounds. This study established the link between emotions and perception of the world -- something that has not been understood before.
The researchers found that, as expected, fine emotional learning tasks produced greater learning specificity than tests in which the tones were farther apart in frequency. As Geffen explains, "The animals presented with sounds that were very far apart generalize the fear that they developed to the danger tone over a whole range of frequencies, whereas the animals presented with the two sounds that were very similar exhibited specialization of their emotional response. Following the fine conditioning task, they figured out that it's a very narrow range of pitches that are potentially dangerous."
When pitch discrimination abilities were measured in the animals, the mice with more specific responses displayed much finer auditory acuity than the mice who were frightened by a broader range of frequencies. "There was a relationship between how much their emotional response generalized and how well they could tell different tones apart," says Geffen. "In the animals that specialized their emotional response, pitch discrimination actually became sharper. They could discriminate two tones that they previously could not tell apart."
Another interesting finding of this study is that the effects of emotional learning on hearing perception were mediated by a specific brain region, the auditory cortex. The auditory cortex has been known as an important area responsible for auditory plasticity. Surprisingly, Aizenberg and Geffen found that the auditory cortex did not play a role in emotional learning. Likely, the specificity of emotional learning is controlled by the amygdala and sub-cortical auditory areas. "We know the auditory cortex is involved, we know that the emotional response is important so the amygdala is involved, but how do the amygdala and cortex interact together?" says Geffen. "Our hypothesis is that the amygdala and cortex are modifying subcortical auditory processing areas. The sensory cortex is responsible for the changes in frequency discrimination, but it's not necessary for developing specialized or generalized emotional responses. So it's kind of a puzzle."
Solving that puzzle promises new insight into the causes and possible treatment of PTSD, and the question of why some individuals develop it and others subjected to the same events do not. "We think there's a strong link between mechanisms that control emotional learning, including fear generalization, and the brain mechanisms responsible for PTSD, where generalization of fear is abnormal," Geffen notes. Future research will focus on defining and studying that link.
Contact: Robert J. Hamers rjhamers@wisc.edu 608-262-6371 University of Wisconsin-Madison
MADISON -- In the world, there are a lot of small molecules people would like to get rid of, or at least convert to something useful, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison chemist Robert J. Hamers.
Think carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas most responsible for far-reaching effects on global climate. Nitrogen is another ubiquitous small-molecule gas that can be transformed into the valuable agricultural fertilizer ammonia. Plants perform the chemical reduction of atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia as a matter of course, but for humans to do that in an industrial setting, a necessity for modern agriculture, requires subjecting nitrogen to massive amounts of energy under high pressure.
"The current process for reducing nitrogen to ammonia is done under extreme conditions," explains Hamers, a UW-Madison professor of chemistry. "There is an enormous barrier you have to overcome to get your final product."
Breaching that barrier more efficiently and reducing the huge amounts of energy used to convert nitrogen to ammonia by some estimates 10 percent of the world's electrical output has been a grail for the agricultural chemical industry. Now, that goal may be on the horizon, thanks to a technique devised by Hamers and his colleagues and published today (June 30, 2013) in the journal Nature Methods.
Like many chemical reactions, reducing nitrogen to ammonia is a product of catalysis, where the catalytic agent used in the traditional energy-intensive reduction process is iron. The iron, combined with high temperature and high pressure, accelerates the reaction rate for converting nitrogen to ammonia by lowering the activation barrier that otherwise keeps nitrogen, one of the most ubiquitous gases on the planet, intact.
"The nitrogen molecule is one of the happiest molecules around," notes Hamers. "It is incredibly stable. It doesn't do anything."
One of the big obstacles, according to Hamers, is that nitrogen binds poorly to catalytic materials like iron.
Hamers and his team, including Di Zhu, Linghong Zhang and Rose E. Ruther, all of UW-Madison, turned to synthetic industrial diamond a cheap, gritty, versatile material as a potential new catalyst for the reduction process. Diamond, the Wisconsin team found, can facilitate the reduction of nitrogen to ammonia under ambient temperatures and pressures.
Like all chemical reactions, the reduction of nitrogen to ammonia involves moving electrons from one molecule to another. Using hydrogen-coated diamond illuminated by deep ultraviolet light, the Wisconsin team was able to induce a ready stream of electrons into water, which served as a reactant liquid that reduced nitrogen to ammonia under temperature and pressure conditions far more efficient than those required by traditional industrial methods.
"From a chemist's standpoint, nothing is more efficient than electrons in water," says Hamers, whose work is funded by the National Science Foundation. With the diamond catalyst, "the electrons are unconfined. They flow like lemmings to the sea."
While the method was demonstrated in the context of reducing nitrogen to a valuable agricultural product, the new diamond-centric approach is exciting, Hamers argues, because it can potentially fit a wide range of processes that require catalysis. "This is truly a different way of thinking about inducing reactions that may have more efficiency and applicability. We're doing this with diamond grit. It is infinitely reusable."
The technique devised by Hamers and his colleagues, he notes, still has kinks that need to be worked out to make it a viable alternative to traditional methods. The use of deep ultraviolet light, for example, is a limiting factor. Inducing reactions with visible light is a goal that would enhance the promise of the new technique for applications such as antipollution technology.
###
Contact:
Terry Devitt
608-262-8282 trdevitt@wisc.edu
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Robert J. Hamers rjhamers@wisc.edu 608-262-6371 University of Wisconsin-Madison
MADISON -- In the world, there are a lot of small molecules people would like to get rid of, or at least convert to something useful, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison chemist Robert J. Hamers.
Think carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas most responsible for far-reaching effects on global climate. Nitrogen is another ubiquitous small-molecule gas that can be transformed into the valuable agricultural fertilizer ammonia. Plants perform the chemical reduction of atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia as a matter of course, but for humans to do that in an industrial setting, a necessity for modern agriculture, requires subjecting nitrogen to massive amounts of energy under high pressure.
"The current process for reducing nitrogen to ammonia is done under extreme conditions," explains Hamers, a UW-Madison professor of chemistry. "There is an enormous barrier you have to overcome to get your final product."
Breaching that barrier more efficiently and reducing the huge amounts of energy used to convert nitrogen to ammonia by some estimates 10 percent of the world's electrical output has been a grail for the agricultural chemical industry. Now, that goal may be on the horizon, thanks to a technique devised by Hamers and his colleagues and published today (June 30, 2013) in the journal Nature Methods.
Like many chemical reactions, reducing nitrogen to ammonia is a product of catalysis, where the catalytic agent used in the traditional energy-intensive reduction process is iron. The iron, combined with high temperature and high pressure, accelerates the reaction rate for converting nitrogen to ammonia by lowering the activation barrier that otherwise keeps nitrogen, one of the most ubiquitous gases on the planet, intact.
"The nitrogen molecule is one of the happiest molecules around," notes Hamers. "It is incredibly stable. It doesn't do anything."
One of the big obstacles, according to Hamers, is that nitrogen binds poorly to catalytic materials like iron.
Hamers and his team, including Di Zhu, Linghong Zhang and Rose E. Ruther, all of UW-Madison, turned to synthetic industrial diamond a cheap, gritty, versatile material as a potential new catalyst for the reduction process. Diamond, the Wisconsin team found, can facilitate the reduction of nitrogen to ammonia under ambient temperatures and pressures.
Like all chemical reactions, the reduction of nitrogen to ammonia involves moving electrons from one molecule to another. Using hydrogen-coated diamond illuminated by deep ultraviolet light, the Wisconsin team was able to induce a ready stream of electrons into water, which served as a reactant liquid that reduced nitrogen to ammonia under temperature and pressure conditions far more efficient than those required by traditional industrial methods.
"From a chemist's standpoint, nothing is more efficient than electrons in water," says Hamers, whose work is funded by the National Science Foundation. With the diamond catalyst, "the electrons are unconfined. They flow like lemmings to the sea."
While the method was demonstrated in the context of reducing nitrogen to a valuable agricultural product, the new diamond-centric approach is exciting, Hamers argues, because it can potentially fit a wide range of processes that require catalysis. "This is truly a different way of thinking about inducing reactions that may have more efficiency and applicability. We're doing this with diamond grit. It is infinitely reusable."
The technique devised by Hamers and his colleagues, he notes, still has kinks that need to be worked out to make it a viable alternative to traditional methods. The use of deep ultraviolet light, for example, is a limiting factor. Inducing reactions with visible light is a goal that would enhance the promise of the new technique for applications such as antipollution technology.
###
Contact:
Terry Devitt
608-262-8282 trdevitt@wisc.edu
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
The other day I went to the Apple Store to pick up my computer and I felt like a celebrity. The person assigned to help me ran over and asked enthusiastically if I was Lily Newman. I nodded and immediately assumed that he recognized my name from Gizmodo and was about to tell me how quippy and brilliant I am. Because that totally happens to me all the time. Instead he produced my laptop, grinned at me, and said, "This laptop had so much wrong with it. It's ridiculous!" Soooo, yeah. My computer had been randomly freezing for awhile, but I didn't know it was on the verge of becoming an incredibly expensive pile of garbage.
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Public release date: 30-Jun-2013
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