The fire that killed five people at a Connecticut home early Christmas morning occurred after a homeowner's friend placed a bag filled with fireplace ash in a room reserved for shoes and coats. The home had no working smoke detectors.
Fire experts on Wednesday said that homeowners with fireplaces must be extra careful when disposing of hot fireplace ash because ash can ignite a fire if left next to a flammable surface. It's easy to assume that removed fireplace ash is no longer flammable when in fact it is.
"Just because you don't see embers glowing in the ashes, you don't know how much heat those ashes are holding," said Robert Palumbo, fire chief for Hemlock Farms Fire Company in Pike County.
Palumbo said that it takes 72 hours for ashes to fully cool and for the threat of their potentially starting a fire to be neutralized. He said fireplace ash should be placed in a metal container with a lid. After that's done, the container should be placed a safe distance away from the home.
"We've been to too many fires where people place a bag of ashes right on their porch, and then the next thing you know the wind kicks up , and then the whole porch is on fire," Palumbo said.
Ira Rosenblum, who owns A Sweeping Beauty Chimney Professionals in East Stroudsburg, said that gauging the temperature of ashes can be tricky because ash is a good insulator. If you put your hand over a pile of ashes you've removed from a fireplace and you feel no heat, it could still contain glowing embers.
If you leave hot ashes in the fireplace, make sure there's a metal screen or glass partition in place, fire officials said. And, of course, make sure you have working smoke detectors, they advised.
Winter is when most house fires occur in America, according to United States Fire Administration. About 40 percent of all fires in the U.S. between 2007 and 2009 were fireplace-related, the fire administration said.
About 192,700 of yearly residential fires spread beyond the source, and 6 percent of those fires are caused by hot embers or ashes, the Fire Safety Administration says.
And 15 percent of multiple-fatality fires are caused by unintentional or careless actions, the agency says. There are about 250 multiple-fatality fires in the U.S. each year, resulting in an estimated 825 deaths and 200 injuries.
In Stamford, fire officials say they believe Michael Borcina left a bag of hot fireplace ashes near the back of the house between 3 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. The fire that killed his friend's three children and their two grandparents was reported just after 4:40 a.m. Borcina and the mother, Madonna Badger, escaped the blaze after failed attempts to rescue her daughters.
Badger's three daughters, 10-year-old Lily and 7-year-old twins Grace and Sarah, and her parents, Lomer and Pauline Johnson, died amid frantic rescue attempts by Borcina, Badger and local firefighters.
2011年12月28日星期三
Visually Stunning, Incredibly Tough Find Out What Devices Have It.
'Smart' windows are expected to play a significant role in energy-efficient homes, ideally by generating energy themselves (see "Energy-generating smart window") but at least by allowing light in and keeping the heat out (in hot summers) or in (in cold winters).
Vanadium dioxide (VO2) has long been recognized as a a material of significant technological interest for optics and electronics and a promising candidate for making 'smart' windows: it can transition from a transparent semiconductive state at low temperatures, allowing infrared radiation through, to an opaque metallic state at high temperatures, while still allowing visible light to get through. VO2 is best known in the materials world for its speedy and abrupt phase transition that essentially transforms the material from a metal to an insulator. The phase change takes place at about 68 degrees Celsius.
So far, VO2 hasn't been considered to be particularly suited for large-scale practical smart-window applications due to its low luminous transmittance and solar modulating ability. Strategies to improve these properties, for instance through doping or composites, have resulted in trade-offs between the luminous transmittance and thermochromic properties.
Researchers in China have now developed a process that can prepare VO2 thin-films with a controllable polymorph and morphology (including grain size and porosity). Their results show that with increased porosity and decreased optical constants the performance of the VO2 films is enhanced, leading to a higher transmittance of visible light and improved solar modulating ability.
"The traditional methods for the preparation of VO2 thin films are gas-phase reactions, such as sputtering or chemical vapor deposition," Yanfeng Gao, a professor at the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SICCAS), explains to Nanowerk. "These methods can grow VO2 with fine controlled thickness and homogeneity, however, low visible transmittance due to intrinsic absorption of VO2 and unacceptable solar energy modulation ability pose significant drawbacks. There are only very few reports on the chemical deposition of VO2 films using – for example – sol-gel process, but the quality of film is still not satisfactory. We are aiming to develop a process that can finally commercialize VO2. We selected our method to control the crystalline phase and morphology, and also optical properties."
To prepare their nanoporous thermochromic VO2 films with low optical constants and tunable thicknesses, the team used a polymer-assisted deposition technique, resulting in single-layered VO2 films.
"When we measured the spectral transmittance and reflectance of our VO2 films, we found that by increasing their porosity we could increase their solar modulating ability without decreasing the luminous transmittance," says Gao. "Another interesting phenomenon that we found is that the changes in luminous transmittance across the metal-insulator transitions (MIT) are thickness dependent. For thin-films, the visible transmittance at 20°C is generally lower than that at 90°C and, vice versa. However, the visible transmittance at 20°C for our 100 nm thick films exceeds that at 90°C."
Experimenting with various thicknesses, the team found that the optimized thickness for films prepared by their technique to balance luminous transmittance and solar modulating ability is 100 nm. As Gao points out, a single-layer film of this thickness shows comparable luminous transmittance and solar modulating ability values to those of five-layered TiO2/VO2/TiO2/VO2/TiO2 films with optically optimized structures.
"The change of the optical constants of VO2 across the MIT can effectively modulate the infrared transmittance and shift the position of the reflectance valley at 20°C, leading to a significant enhancement of the infrared modulating ability at a certain wavelength," says Gao.
Vanadium dioxide (VO2) has long been recognized as a a material of significant technological interest for optics and electronics and a promising candidate for making 'smart' windows: it can transition from a transparent semiconductive state at low temperatures, allowing infrared radiation through, to an opaque metallic state at high temperatures, while still allowing visible light to get through. VO2 is best known in the materials world for its speedy and abrupt phase transition that essentially transforms the material from a metal to an insulator. The phase change takes place at about 68 degrees Celsius.
So far, VO2 hasn't been considered to be particularly suited for large-scale practical smart-window applications due to its low luminous transmittance and solar modulating ability. Strategies to improve these properties, for instance through doping or composites, have resulted in trade-offs between the luminous transmittance and thermochromic properties.
Researchers in China have now developed a process that can prepare VO2 thin-films with a controllable polymorph and morphology (including grain size and porosity). Their results show that with increased porosity and decreased optical constants the performance of the VO2 films is enhanced, leading to a higher transmittance of visible light and improved solar modulating ability.
"The traditional methods for the preparation of VO2 thin films are gas-phase reactions, such as sputtering or chemical vapor deposition," Yanfeng Gao, a professor at the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SICCAS), explains to Nanowerk. "These methods can grow VO2 with fine controlled thickness and homogeneity, however, low visible transmittance due to intrinsic absorption of VO2 and unacceptable solar energy modulation ability pose significant drawbacks. There are only very few reports on the chemical deposition of VO2 films using – for example – sol-gel process, but the quality of film is still not satisfactory. We are aiming to develop a process that can finally commercialize VO2. We selected our method to control the crystalline phase and morphology, and also optical properties."
To prepare their nanoporous thermochromic VO2 films with low optical constants and tunable thicknesses, the team used a polymer-assisted deposition technique, resulting in single-layered VO2 films.
"When we measured the spectral transmittance and reflectance of our VO2 films, we found that by increasing their porosity we could increase their solar modulating ability without decreasing the luminous transmittance," says Gao. "Another interesting phenomenon that we found is that the changes in luminous transmittance across the metal-insulator transitions (MIT) are thickness dependent. For thin-films, the visible transmittance at 20°C is generally lower than that at 90°C and, vice versa. However, the visible transmittance at 20°C for our 100 nm thick films exceeds that at 90°C."
Experimenting with various thicknesses, the team found that the optimized thickness for films prepared by their technique to balance luminous transmittance and solar modulating ability is 100 nm. As Gao points out, a single-layer film of this thickness shows comparable luminous transmittance and solar modulating ability values to those of five-layered TiO2/VO2/TiO2/VO2/TiO2 films with optically optimized structures.
"The change of the optical constants of VO2 across the MIT can effectively modulate the infrared transmittance and shift the position of the reflectance valley at 20°C, leading to a significant enhancement of the infrared modulating ability at a certain wavelength," says Gao.
2011年12月27日星期二
Vigilance Bureau resumes cash-for-vote scam probe
The development has come after The Pioneer published a report on December 22 regarding delay in investigation into the case. The Vigilance Bureau has summoned the other five accused persons. One of the accused, Teklal Mahto, has passed away.
“After repeated requests, the complainants in the cash-for-vote scam have come up and have given their statements. They have also shown us the place where the sting operation was done,” said IG (Vigilance) M V Rao. He also added that earlier these people were reluctant to come because of security reasons.
Six legislators, Teklal Mahto, Umashankar Akela, Simon Marandi, Yogendra Sao, Sawna Lakra and Rajesh Ranjan were caught on camera in a sting operation conducted by the Kobra Post in association with CNN-IBN.
Talking about the scam in Jharkhand Public Service Commission, Rao said in a 200 hundred page report submitted to the Government the department has clearly outlined the irregularities committed during the second JPSC exam. He also said he recommended the dismissal of most of the candidates as they had exercised the fraudulent means to pass the examination.
Rao also revealed that the department had to go through more than 3 lakh answer sheets to come to the conclusion. Besides, 90,000 copies were sent to Forensic Science Laboratory, Ahmedabad. Rao also alleged some JPSC officials were not cooperating with the Vigilance Bureau.
“It was a hectic exercise. Only then have we reached a conclusion. As it is a case related to the administrative officers, you have to be doubly sure before pointing fingers at somebody,” said Rao.
He said bureau will now take it for granted that the evidences have been destroyed and will lodge a case against these persons.
Three charge-sheets have been filed as the accused have been categorised in three parts - office bearers of JPSC, who are already in jail, professors and members of interview boards and thirdly the beneficiaries or the candidates.
Rao also disclosed that Vigilance Bureau has succeeded in completing investigations in some of the cases which were pending for several years, such as Electric Insulator Factory Scam of 1983 in which three people have been chargesheeted and final reports have been submitted in favour of three persons. The bureau has also disposed off sixteen cases relating to the medicine scam of year ranging 2004-2005 and only two cases relating to this are pending now.
Enquiry related to the equipment purchase scam in the 34th National Games is still on and twelve firms have been marked which had supplied equipments in the National Games. “It will take three more months to investigate the case,” said Rao.
Reviewing the achievements in the year 2011, Rao said that out of 100 pending cases, 64 have been disposed off while out of 117 pending enquiries, 53 enquiries have been completed. Rao also said that despite an acute shortage of officers and staffs in the Bureau they had tried to do their best and will continue doing so in the future.
“After repeated requests, the complainants in the cash-for-vote scam have come up and have given their statements. They have also shown us the place where the sting operation was done,” said IG (Vigilance) M V Rao. He also added that earlier these people were reluctant to come because of security reasons.
Six legislators, Teklal Mahto, Umashankar Akela, Simon Marandi, Yogendra Sao, Sawna Lakra and Rajesh Ranjan were caught on camera in a sting operation conducted by the Kobra Post in association with CNN-IBN.
Talking about the scam in Jharkhand Public Service Commission, Rao said in a 200 hundred page report submitted to the Government the department has clearly outlined the irregularities committed during the second JPSC exam. He also said he recommended the dismissal of most of the candidates as they had exercised the fraudulent means to pass the examination.
Rao also revealed that the department had to go through more than 3 lakh answer sheets to come to the conclusion. Besides, 90,000 copies were sent to Forensic Science Laboratory, Ahmedabad. Rao also alleged some JPSC officials were not cooperating with the Vigilance Bureau.
“It was a hectic exercise. Only then have we reached a conclusion. As it is a case related to the administrative officers, you have to be doubly sure before pointing fingers at somebody,” said Rao.
He said bureau will now take it for granted that the evidences have been destroyed and will lodge a case against these persons.
Three charge-sheets have been filed as the accused have been categorised in three parts - office bearers of JPSC, who are already in jail, professors and members of interview boards and thirdly the beneficiaries or the candidates.
Rao also disclosed that Vigilance Bureau has succeeded in completing investigations in some of the cases which were pending for several years, such as Electric Insulator Factory Scam of 1983 in which three people have been chargesheeted and final reports have been submitted in favour of three persons. The bureau has also disposed off sixteen cases relating to the medicine scam of year ranging 2004-2005 and only two cases relating to this are pending now.
Enquiry related to the equipment purchase scam in the 34th National Games is still on and twelve firms have been marked which had supplied equipments in the National Games. “It will take three more months to investigate the case,” said Rao.
Reviewing the achievements in the year 2011, Rao said that out of 100 pending cases, 64 have been disposed off while out of 117 pending enquiries, 53 enquiries have been completed. Rao also said that despite an acute shortage of officers and staffs in the Bureau they had tried to do their best and will continue doing so in the future.
2011年12月26日星期一
OmniGuide’s Flexible Lasers Make Surgeries Safer
Rather than use scissors as per traditional technique, he operated with a flexible laser scalpel that a small manufacturer called OmniGuide had started selling earlier that year. It enabled Michaelides to avoid touching the inner ear’s delicate bones, which could cause more damage and more hearing loss. “It’s very accurate because you can place the tip of the instrument exactly where you want, change angles, and deliver precise amounts of cutting energy and coagulation throughout the middle ear,” says Michaelides. “The bottom line is that it is very precise and safe.”
Operating with flexible lasers isn’t new—surgeons have been using versions powered by carbon dioxide since the 1980s. Compared with a metal scalpel, carbon dioxide laser cuts are shallower, which means patients experience less postoperative pain, heal more quickly, and scar less. OmniGuide’s laser is one of the first to use optical fiber to guide its beam; previous versions used hollow metal tubes. The fiber permits even more precision, says OmniGuide founder Yoel Fink, making tricky procedures in challenging areas of the body safer.
OmniGuide, which has $80 million in venture capital investment, is one of a handful of companies that make flexible optical lasers. While competitors such as LuxarCare market mostly to small medical offices and veterinarians, OmniGuide, a 130-employee Cambridge (Mass.) manufacturer, has been gaining traction at hospitals across the U.S. So far, surgeons in about 500 hospitals are using OmniGuide's devices to perform about 1,400 surgeries a month—mostly for surgeries above the neck.
Now the company, which Fink expects will generate $21 million to $22 million in 2011 revenue, up from $18 million in 2010, is expanding its factory and developing a new line of laser fibers for procedures to treat disorders such as fibroids and other gynecological disorders.
Dr. Sharyn Lewin, a gynecologist specializing in oncology at Columbia University Medical Center, has used OmniGuide’s system to treat growths from papilloma virus and sees potential advantages for other procedures, such as endometriosis. “It’s a little more flexible for getting into smaller crevices,” says Lewin, comparing it with a traditional carbon dioxide laser. “It’s more precise, and there’s less tissue trauma. It’s easy to use and appears to be quite safe.”
Laser surgery isn’t without hazards. Accidents can happen if, for example, the laser beam touches a patient's sterile coverings or if oxygen and anesthetic gases build up while a surgeon is operating on the patient’s airway, says Michaelides. “But these instances are rare. It’s not a dangerous tool any more than a scalpel is, and surgeons are trained to use both to minimize risk.”
OmniGuide’s laser scalpel, which attaches to a small machine typically mounted on a rolling stand in an operating room, costs about $80,000, including two years of service. The laser, controlled by the doctor holding the fiber, acts as a scalpel to cut tissue close to the fiber’s tip. The fibers, which are designed to be used during a surgery and then thrown away, cost $500 to $1,500, depending on the procedure. "We try to be as [clinically] specific as we can," says Fink. "It's important because we want to do value pricing ... obviously the amount a patient or insurance agency will pay to restore hearing is less than to remove cancer from your brain."
Worldwide sales for surgical lasers will be $1.3 billion this year, up from $96 million in 2000, according to a 2010 report on medical laser systems by market research firm Global Industry Analysts.
Fink’s invention was sparked by a 1996 challenge by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to scientists to design a highly reflective mirror. Then-graduate student Fink’s winning structure reflected objects from all angles, what he calls a “perfect mirror.” Fink’s mirror worked on differently shaped surfaces—flat, cubic, tubular. He reasoned that alternating rings of the chemical linings—an insulator and a semiconductor—would transmit the light through a hollow glass fiber. Because the laser beam could be controlled with the fiber’s tip, he envisioned, it would enable surgeons to reach difficult nooks and crannies more easily.
Fink, who holds a PhD in materials science from MIT, returned to academia this fall to run MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics, passing the reins at OmniGuide to Chief Executive Scott Flora, formerly a division president at surgical products maker Covidien. Fink’s lab is looking for other applications for his fibers, using funding from the U.S. Army to research material that images surroundings and garments that capture information from the body such as blood flow, temperature, and calories burned. And he envisions clothing woven of fibers that recharge cell phones, as well as chameleon-like apparel that changes color when the wearer leaves work. “Material will become a high-tech object, or the object of high-tech,” says Fink.
Operating with flexible lasers isn’t new—surgeons have been using versions powered by carbon dioxide since the 1980s. Compared with a metal scalpel, carbon dioxide laser cuts are shallower, which means patients experience less postoperative pain, heal more quickly, and scar less. OmniGuide’s laser is one of the first to use optical fiber to guide its beam; previous versions used hollow metal tubes. The fiber permits even more precision, says OmniGuide founder Yoel Fink, making tricky procedures in challenging areas of the body safer.
OmniGuide, which has $80 million in venture capital investment, is one of a handful of companies that make flexible optical lasers. While competitors such as LuxarCare market mostly to small medical offices and veterinarians, OmniGuide, a 130-employee Cambridge (Mass.) manufacturer, has been gaining traction at hospitals across the U.S. So far, surgeons in about 500 hospitals are using OmniGuide's devices to perform about 1,400 surgeries a month—mostly for surgeries above the neck.
Now the company, which Fink expects will generate $21 million to $22 million in 2011 revenue, up from $18 million in 2010, is expanding its factory and developing a new line of laser fibers for procedures to treat disorders such as fibroids and other gynecological disorders.
Dr. Sharyn Lewin, a gynecologist specializing in oncology at Columbia University Medical Center, has used OmniGuide’s system to treat growths from papilloma virus and sees potential advantages for other procedures, such as endometriosis. “It’s a little more flexible for getting into smaller crevices,” says Lewin, comparing it with a traditional carbon dioxide laser. “It’s more precise, and there’s less tissue trauma. It’s easy to use and appears to be quite safe.”
Laser surgery isn’t without hazards. Accidents can happen if, for example, the laser beam touches a patient's sterile coverings or if oxygen and anesthetic gases build up while a surgeon is operating on the patient’s airway, says Michaelides. “But these instances are rare. It’s not a dangerous tool any more than a scalpel is, and surgeons are trained to use both to minimize risk.”
OmniGuide’s laser scalpel, which attaches to a small machine typically mounted on a rolling stand in an operating room, costs about $80,000, including two years of service. The laser, controlled by the doctor holding the fiber, acts as a scalpel to cut tissue close to the fiber’s tip. The fibers, which are designed to be used during a surgery and then thrown away, cost $500 to $1,500, depending on the procedure. "We try to be as [clinically] specific as we can," says Fink. "It's important because we want to do value pricing ... obviously the amount a patient or insurance agency will pay to restore hearing is less than to remove cancer from your brain."
Worldwide sales for surgical lasers will be $1.3 billion this year, up from $96 million in 2000, according to a 2010 report on medical laser systems by market research firm Global Industry Analysts.
Fink’s invention was sparked by a 1996 challenge by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to scientists to design a highly reflective mirror. Then-graduate student Fink’s winning structure reflected objects from all angles, what he calls a “perfect mirror.” Fink’s mirror worked on differently shaped surfaces—flat, cubic, tubular. He reasoned that alternating rings of the chemical linings—an insulator and a semiconductor—would transmit the light through a hollow glass fiber. Because the laser beam could be controlled with the fiber’s tip, he envisioned, it would enable surgeons to reach difficult nooks and crannies more easily.
Fink, who holds a PhD in materials science from MIT, returned to academia this fall to run MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics, passing the reins at OmniGuide to Chief Executive Scott Flora, formerly a division president at surgical products maker Covidien. Fink’s lab is looking for other applications for his fibers, using funding from the U.S. Army to research material that images surroundings and garments that capture information from the body such as blood flow, temperature, and calories burned. And he envisions clothing woven of fibers that recharge cell phones, as well as chameleon-like apparel that changes color when the wearer leaves work. “Material will become a high-tech object, or the object of high-tech,” says Fink.
2011年12月25日星期日
The Darkest Hour is the best worst movie of the year
Alien invasion flick The Darkest Hour, released this morning, is like a bad holiday fruitcake that somebody tried to spruce up with a zillion lumps of neon-colored, soggy jellybean guts. Put another way, this movie is what you get when you add the plot of Skyline to the creature effects of The Happening. It is truly the greatest bad monster movie of 2011.
Two guys, one of whom is played by Emile Hirsch, fly into Moscow to sell some people in suits on their real-time mobile travel social nightlife youth software, called something like MySquareDoppler, which is variously described as a "blog" and an "app." When they arrive at their business meeting, they discover that some Swedish guy they were working with on the intertubes has stolen their app blog social thing and is making the pitch to the Russian investors on his own.
"OMG WTF BBQ!" the guy who isn't Emile Hirsch says.
"You should have made me sign an NDA!" retorts Swedish intertube guy.
"You mean a Non Douchebag Agreement?" Hirsch snarks in one of the film's many "clever quip" moments.
And then a bunch of people yell in Russian and suddenly we're in a nightclub and Hirsch and not-Hirsch are drinking and hitting on some women who know them from MySquareDoppler.
Which is around the time a bunch of lens flares fall from the sky and start menacing everybody with their invisibleness, which has the property of reducing anybody who touches it to glowing specks that are super cheap to render in Photoshop. Our gang of social mobile app developers, including Swedish guy, have to make their way across a foreign city with the two women while dodging the invisible monsters! The only hint that the monsters are around is that they juice up all electrical devices - including lights, cell phones, car alarms, whatever - so that their presences are announced by flickering lights and other spooky shit.
I should note that the "we had no money and therefore made invisible monsters" thing isn't quite as bad as you might think. The idea of tracking aliens indirectly with handfuls of lightbulbs is pretty cool, and there are some amazing scenes of the shredded Mocow: planes have plowed into malls, tankers have shattered bridges, and the aliens are vaporizing buildings spectacularly in order to extract minerals or tap into our geothermal heat or maybe mine for holiday fruitcakes.
When it comes to plot and dialogue, however, all this creative conceptual design is wasted. Scenes are so hastily edited that we actually see characters run through exactly the same place twice in the opening alien attack sequence. And, inevitably, the aliens' powers change dramatically from scene to scene as the plot requires. At first they reduce everything they touch to dust. Then it turns out they have to lasso people with poorly-aimed lightning ropes first. Also they can't see through glass for some reason, and they can't seem to run or fly even though they flew down to Earth.
Eventually our band of mobile social app losers randomly stumbles across several other survivors, one of whom is a mad scientist living in a Faraday cage who has developed microwave guns to "disrupt the alien shields." Because - wait, whut? They aren't electrical aliens? Nope - they actually just have electrical SHIELDS, which we can disrupt and then "shoot with good Russian bullets," as another resistance guy says. Also, Faraday cages are the magical weapon humans can use against the aliens because the aliens can't see inside them - but the humans can use radios and cell phones inside them to communicate with each other. The mad scientist has even wrapped his adorable orange cat in a bunch of wires (a feline Faraday cage?) to make him invisible to the aliens.
OK, time out for a moment of nerd snarkage. The whole Faraday cage bit pissed me off. I was willing to give you the "glass as shield" defense because, hell, glass is an insulator. (Sadly, nobody thought of dressing Emile Hirsch in a rubber fetish suit to make him invisible because hey - rubber is an insulator too!) But people - the whole point of a Faraday cage is that most electrical signals cannot penetrate it. That means signals can't come in, and they can't come out. You cannot use radio or mobile phones inside them. Sigh.
Anyway, my OCD Faraday cage issues are like screaming about a grease fire during a mega volcano eruption. There were so many inconsistencies in this flick that it seemed like the whole crew had decided to embrace the credo that Hirsch and not-Hirsch espouse early on: "Every culture has alcohol and religion. That's why I drink religiously!" See what I mean about the writing in this flick? Pure gold.
Two guys, one of whom is played by Emile Hirsch, fly into Moscow to sell some people in suits on their real-time mobile travel social nightlife youth software, called something like MySquareDoppler, which is variously described as a "blog" and an "app." When they arrive at their business meeting, they discover that some Swedish guy they were working with on the intertubes has stolen their app blog social thing and is making the pitch to the Russian investors on his own.
"OMG WTF BBQ!" the guy who isn't Emile Hirsch says.
"You should have made me sign an NDA!" retorts Swedish intertube guy.
"You mean a Non Douchebag Agreement?" Hirsch snarks in one of the film's many "clever quip" moments.
And then a bunch of people yell in Russian and suddenly we're in a nightclub and Hirsch and not-Hirsch are drinking and hitting on some women who know them from MySquareDoppler.
Which is around the time a bunch of lens flares fall from the sky and start menacing everybody with their invisibleness, which has the property of reducing anybody who touches it to glowing specks that are super cheap to render in Photoshop. Our gang of social mobile app developers, including Swedish guy, have to make their way across a foreign city with the two women while dodging the invisible monsters! The only hint that the monsters are around is that they juice up all electrical devices - including lights, cell phones, car alarms, whatever - so that their presences are announced by flickering lights and other spooky shit.
I should note that the "we had no money and therefore made invisible monsters" thing isn't quite as bad as you might think. The idea of tracking aliens indirectly with handfuls of lightbulbs is pretty cool, and there are some amazing scenes of the shredded Mocow: planes have plowed into malls, tankers have shattered bridges, and the aliens are vaporizing buildings spectacularly in order to extract minerals or tap into our geothermal heat or maybe mine for holiday fruitcakes.
When it comes to plot and dialogue, however, all this creative conceptual design is wasted. Scenes are so hastily edited that we actually see characters run through exactly the same place twice in the opening alien attack sequence. And, inevitably, the aliens' powers change dramatically from scene to scene as the plot requires. At first they reduce everything they touch to dust. Then it turns out they have to lasso people with poorly-aimed lightning ropes first. Also they can't see through glass for some reason, and they can't seem to run or fly even though they flew down to Earth.
Eventually our band of mobile social app losers randomly stumbles across several other survivors, one of whom is a mad scientist living in a Faraday cage who has developed microwave guns to "disrupt the alien shields." Because - wait, whut? They aren't electrical aliens? Nope - they actually just have electrical SHIELDS, which we can disrupt and then "shoot with good Russian bullets," as another resistance guy says. Also, Faraday cages are the magical weapon humans can use against the aliens because the aliens can't see inside them - but the humans can use radios and cell phones inside them to communicate with each other. The mad scientist has even wrapped his adorable orange cat in a bunch of wires (a feline Faraday cage?) to make him invisible to the aliens.
OK, time out for a moment of nerd snarkage. The whole Faraday cage bit pissed me off. I was willing to give you the "glass as shield" defense because, hell, glass is an insulator. (Sadly, nobody thought of dressing Emile Hirsch in a rubber fetish suit to make him invisible because hey - rubber is an insulator too!) But people - the whole point of a Faraday cage is that most electrical signals cannot penetrate it. That means signals can't come in, and they can't come out. You cannot use radio or mobile phones inside them. Sigh.
Anyway, my OCD Faraday cage issues are like screaming about a grease fire during a mega volcano eruption. There were so many inconsistencies in this flick that it seemed like the whole crew had decided to embrace the credo that Hirsch and not-Hirsch espouse early on: "Every culture has alcohol and religion. That's why I drink religiously!" See what I mean about the writing in this flick? Pure gold.
2011年12月22日星期四
COP17 inspires local mechanic to complete eco-friendly geyser
A LOCAL mechanic’s idea to manufacture a bio eco-friendly geyser was motivated by the load shedding which began in 2008, but the 17th Conference of Parties (COP17) inspired him to complete his project.
Prithy (Batchu) Bhekarie, owner of RVN Motors workshop in Raven Street in the city centre said: “I was annoyed every time while watching television and enjoying whatever programme was on, when the lights would go out without any warning.
“During that time the television would show a warning about saving electricity by switching off geysers and other electrical appliances.
“That is when it hit me that as an experienced mechanic who has been running his workshop for 14 years I can contribute towards saving energy by creating a bio-eco friendly geyser which would be cost effective and also benefit indigent households,” said Bhekarie.
He said at R3,50 a day he manages to have hot water by using a bio-gel to heat the geyser.
“I am in the process of producing a bio-gel that would burn for longer, in collaboration with producers of environment-friendly gel. This can be used inside the house because it does not produce smoke,” he said.
Bhekarie said he is still trying to finalise patent rights for his Trisuv Econo-geyser. “I actually named it after my two sons,” he said.
He is determined to make this a household name as an appliance that is used by restaurants, workshops and those who do not have electricity, as well as those who want to save on electricity bills at the end of the month.
“My aim was to create accessible hot water for the people living in the rural areas and those living in RDP housing who cannot afford electrical geysers,” he said.
He said this was his contribution to help the government ease the electricity load and to reduce carbon footprints while people enjoy hot water.
“I have manufactured a 50 litre geyser, which can be used during cold days by applying bio-gel and during hot days by using installed solar energy to heat water and save the bio gel,” said Bhekarie.
Bhekarie said it takes just 30 minutes to heat the water.
“This works like a tea flask, when you put hot water in today, it would still be hot tomorrow because of the special insulator that I have put inside the geyser,” he said.
Prithy (Batchu) Bhekarie, owner of RVN Motors workshop in Raven Street in the city centre said: “I was annoyed every time while watching television and enjoying whatever programme was on, when the lights would go out without any warning.
“During that time the television would show a warning about saving electricity by switching off geysers and other electrical appliances.
“That is when it hit me that as an experienced mechanic who has been running his workshop for 14 years I can contribute towards saving energy by creating a bio-eco friendly geyser which would be cost effective and also benefit indigent households,” said Bhekarie.
He said at R3,50 a day he manages to have hot water by using a bio-gel to heat the geyser.
“I am in the process of producing a bio-gel that would burn for longer, in collaboration with producers of environment-friendly gel. This can be used inside the house because it does not produce smoke,” he said.
Bhekarie said he is still trying to finalise patent rights for his Trisuv Econo-geyser. “I actually named it after my two sons,” he said.
He is determined to make this a household name as an appliance that is used by restaurants, workshops and those who do not have electricity, as well as those who want to save on electricity bills at the end of the month.
“My aim was to create accessible hot water for the people living in the rural areas and those living in RDP housing who cannot afford electrical geysers,” he said.
He said this was his contribution to help the government ease the electricity load and to reduce carbon footprints while people enjoy hot water.
“I have manufactured a 50 litre geyser, which can be used during cold days by applying bio-gel and during hot days by using installed solar energy to heat water and save the bio gel,” said Bhekarie.
Bhekarie said it takes just 30 minutes to heat the water.
“This works like a tea flask, when you put hot water in today, it would still be hot tomorrow because of the special insulator that I have put inside the geyser,” he said.
2011年12月21日星期三
Soitec dedicates San Diego North American HQ and manufacturing plant
Soitec of Bernin, France, which makes engineered substrates including silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers (as well as III-V epiwafers through its Picogiga International division), has dedicated its new North American solar headquarters and manufacturing plant in San Diego, CA at a ceremony on 16 December.
Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr, provided remarks at the event. Also participating were San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders, San Diego Gas & Electric Company (SDG&E) chairman & CEO Jessie J. Knight Jr and commissioner Timothy Simon of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), as well as governmental officials and more than 300 community and business leaders.
The factory is located in San Diego to supply more than 300MW in solar projects that will provide electricity to SDG&E. All power purchase agreements (PPAs) have been approved by the CPUC. The new factory will enable a manufacturing capacity of 200MW of Soitec’s fifth generation of Concentrix concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) modules, with the opportunity for future expansion to double the capacity to 400MW per year.
Soitec says that its efficient, durable CPV systems have enabled it to plan for more than 300MW in utility-scale solar power plant projects throughout the Southwest USA, including 155MW in PPAs with SDG&E, approved by the CPUC in November. Also approved on 15 December was a power purchase agreement for up to 150MW for the Imperial Solar Energy Center West project, which is being developed by Tenaska Solar Ventures LLC (an affiliate of independent energy firm Tenaska) also using Soitec’s CPV technology. Tenaska’s CEO Jerry Crouse also attended the San Diego dedication event.
“SDG&E has signed more contracts using CPV technology than any other utility in the world,” reckons Knight. “At the time we began our talks with Soitec, we realized we had a unique opportunity to negotiate not only a good contract for solar energy at prices that competed head-to-head with other technologies, but also to solidify an agreement that would bear fruit for years to come in new local jobs and overall economic benefits,” he adds. “From a reliability and grid stability perspective, this technology is far superior to other typical ground-mounted arrays.”
Soitec has CPV installations on four continents around the world. The firm claims that the technology demonstrates unique cost competitiveness compared to other solar technologies, due largely to its higher production yields at peak times and lower construction and maintenance costs. In addition, its abilities to operate without cooling water, to withstand hot ambient temperatures and to accommodate the dual use of land with minimal environmental impact make it suitable for use throughout the desert southwest USA.
Soitec employs a distributed manufacturing model that locates CPV module factories close to its customers, with the aim of to providing the most efficient and environmentally beneficial power. The distribution model also calls for a large percentage of local content and local job generation.
“Soitec’s new facility will create hundreds of well-paying jobs and build on San Diego’s growing reputation as one of the world’s leading clean-technology clusters,” comments Sanders. “San Diego’s collaborative business community will continue to work with Soitec to ensure the company’s success and prosperity,” he adds.
“The expansion of clean energy businesses is a direct result of legislation mandating that one-third of California’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2020,” notes Governor Brown.
Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr, provided remarks at the event. Also participating were San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders, San Diego Gas & Electric Company (SDG&E) chairman & CEO Jessie J. Knight Jr and commissioner Timothy Simon of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), as well as governmental officials and more than 300 community and business leaders.
The factory is located in San Diego to supply more than 300MW in solar projects that will provide electricity to SDG&E. All power purchase agreements (PPAs) have been approved by the CPUC. The new factory will enable a manufacturing capacity of 200MW of Soitec’s fifth generation of Concentrix concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) modules, with the opportunity for future expansion to double the capacity to 400MW per year.
Soitec says that its efficient, durable CPV systems have enabled it to plan for more than 300MW in utility-scale solar power plant projects throughout the Southwest USA, including 155MW in PPAs with SDG&E, approved by the CPUC in November. Also approved on 15 December was a power purchase agreement for up to 150MW for the Imperial Solar Energy Center West project, which is being developed by Tenaska Solar Ventures LLC (an affiliate of independent energy firm Tenaska) also using Soitec’s CPV technology. Tenaska’s CEO Jerry Crouse also attended the San Diego dedication event.
“SDG&E has signed more contracts using CPV technology than any other utility in the world,” reckons Knight. “At the time we began our talks with Soitec, we realized we had a unique opportunity to negotiate not only a good contract for solar energy at prices that competed head-to-head with other technologies, but also to solidify an agreement that would bear fruit for years to come in new local jobs and overall economic benefits,” he adds. “From a reliability and grid stability perspective, this technology is far superior to other typical ground-mounted arrays.”
Soitec has CPV installations on four continents around the world. The firm claims that the technology demonstrates unique cost competitiveness compared to other solar technologies, due largely to its higher production yields at peak times and lower construction and maintenance costs. In addition, its abilities to operate without cooling water, to withstand hot ambient temperatures and to accommodate the dual use of land with minimal environmental impact make it suitable for use throughout the desert southwest USA.
Soitec employs a distributed manufacturing model that locates CPV module factories close to its customers, with the aim of to providing the most efficient and environmentally beneficial power. The distribution model also calls for a large percentage of local content and local job generation.
“Soitec’s new facility will create hundreds of well-paying jobs and build on San Diego’s growing reputation as one of the world’s leading clean-technology clusters,” comments Sanders. “San Diego’s collaborative business community will continue to work with Soitec to ensure the company’s success and prosperity,” he adds.
“The expansion of clean energy businesses is a direct result of legislation mandating that one-third of California’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2020,” notes Governor Brown.
2011年12月20日星期二
Metal undergoes novel transition under extreme pressure
Iron oxide was subjected to conditions similar to those at the depth where the Earth's innermost two layers meet.
At 1,650C and 690,000 times sea-level pressure, the metal changed the degree to which it conducted electricity.
But, as the team outlined in Physical Review Letters, the metal's structure was surprisingly unchanged.
The finding could have implications for our as-yet incomplete understanding of how the Earth's interior gives rise to the planet's magnetic field.
While many transitions are known in materials as they undergo nature's extraordinary pressures and temperatures, such changes in fundamental properties are most often accompanied by a change in structure.
These can be the ways that atoms are arranged in a crystal pattern, or even in the arrangement of subatomic particles that surround atomic nuclei.
A team at the Carnegie Institution for Science subjected the material to pressures up to 1.4 million times atmospheric pressure at sea level, and temperatures up to 2,200C.
They found that it pulls off the trick of changing its electrical properties without any shifting of shape - it can be an insulator or conductor depending just on temperature and pressure.
Combined with computer simulations of just what was going on with the material's electrons, the group claim that the results show a new type of metallisation.
"At high temperatures, the atoms in iron oxide crystals are arranged with the same structure as common table salt," said Ronald Cohen, a co-author of the study. "Just like table salt, iron oxide at ambient conditions is a good insulator—it does not conduct electricity."
"Our new results show, instead, that iron oxide metallises without any change in structure and that combined temperature and pressure are required. Furthermore, our theory shows that the way the electrons behave to make it metallic is different from other materials that become metallic."
A mixture of magnesium and iron oxide makes up much of the Earth's mantle - the solid layer just outside the planet's liquid outer core. The fact that iron oxide behaves as a metal means it will electrically link the core and mantle, affecting the way the magnetic field makes its way to the Earth's surface and beyond.
At 1,650C and 690,000 times sea-level pressure, the metal changed the degree to which it conducted electricity.
But, as the team outlined in Physical Review Letters, the metal's structure was surprisingly unchanged.
The finding could have implications for our as-yet incomplete understanding of how the Earth's interior gives rise to the planet's magnetic field.
While many transitions are known in materials as they undergo nature's extraordinary pressures and temperatures, such changes in fundamental properties are most often accompanied by a change in structure.
These can be the ways that atoms are arranged in a crystal pattern, or even in the arrangement of subatomic particles that surround atomic nuclei.
A team at the Carnegie Institution for Science subjected the material to pressures up to 1.4 million times atmospheric pressure at sea level, and temperatures up to 2,200C.
They found that it pulls off the trick of changing its electrical properties without any shifting of shape - it can be an insulator or conductor depending just on temperature and pressure.
Combined with computer simulations of just what was going on with the material's electrons, the group claim that the results show a new type of metallisation.
"At high temperatures, the atoms in iron oxide crystals are arranged with the same structure as common table salt," said Ronald Cohen, a co-author of the study. "Just like table salt, iron oxide at ambient conditions is a good insulator—it does not conduct electricity."
"Our new results show, instead, that iron oxide metallises without any change in structure and that combined temperature and pressure are required. Furthermore, our theory shows that the way the electrons behave to make it metallic is different from other materials that become metallic."
A mixture of magnesium and iron oxide makes up much of the Earth's mantle - the solid layer just outside the planet's liquid outer core. The fact that iron oxide behaves as a metal means it will electrically link the core and mantle, affecting the way the magnetic field makes its way to the Earth's surface and beyond.
2011年12月19日星期一
A new kind of metal in the deep Earth
The crushing pressures and intense temperatures in Earth's deep interior squeeze atoms and electrons so closely together that they interact very differently. With depth materials change. New experiments and supercomputer computations discovered that iron oxide undergoes a new kind of transition under deep Earth conditions. Iron oxide, FeO, is a component of the second most abundant mineral at Earth's lower mantle, ferropericlase. The finding, published in an upcoming issue of Physical Review Letters, could alter our understanding of deep Earth dynamics and the behavior of the protective magnetic field, which shields our planet from harmful cosmic rays.
Ferropericlase contains both magnesium and iron oxide. To imitate the extreme conditions in the lab, the team including coauthor Ronald Cohen of Carnegie's Geophysical Laboratory, studied the electrical conductivity of iron oxide to pressures and temperatures up to 1.4 million times atmospheric pressure and 4000°F—on par with conditions at the core-mantle boundary. They also used a new computational method that uses only fundamental physics to model the complex many-body interactions among electrons. The theory and experiments both predict a new kind of metallization in FeO.
Compounds typically undergo structural, chemical, electronic, and other changes under these extremes. Contrary to previous thought, the iron oxide went from an insulating (non-electrical conducting) state to become a highly conducting metal at 690,000 atmospheres and 3000°F, but without a change to its structure. Previous studies had assumed that metallization in FeO was associated with a change in its crystal structure. This result means that iron oxide can be both an insulator and a metal depending on temperature and pressure conditions.
"At high temperatures, the atoms in iron oxide crystals are arranged with the same structure as common table salt, NaCl," explained Cohen. "Just like table salt, FeO at ambient conditions is a good insulator—it does not conduct electricity. Older measurements showed metallization in FeO at high pressures and temperatures, but it was thought that a new crystal structure formed. Our new results show, instead, that FeO metallizes without any change in structure and that combined temperature and pressure are required. Furthermore, our theory shows that the way the electrons behave to make it metallic is different from other materials that become metallic."
"The results imply that iron oxide is conducting in the whole range of its stability in Earth's lower mantle." Cohen continues, "The metallic phase will enhance the electromagnetic interaction between the liquid core and lower mantle. This has implications for Earth's magnetic field, which is generated in the outer core. It will change the way the magnetic field is propagated to Earth's surface, because it provides magnetomechanical coupling between the Earth's mantle and core."
"The fact that one mineral has properties that differ so completely—depending on its composition and where it is within the Earth—is a major discovery," concluded Geophysical Laboratory director Russell Hemley.
Ferropericlase contains both magnesium and iron oxide. To imitate the extreme conditions in the lab, the team including coauthor Ronald Cohen of Carnegie's Geophysical Laboratory, studied the electrical conductivity of iron oxide to pressures and temperatures up to 1.4 million times atmospheric pressure and 4000°F—on par with conditions at the core-mantle boundary. They also used a new computational method that uses only fundamental physics to model the complex many-body interactions among electrons. The theory and experiments both predict a new kind of metallization in FeO.
Compounds typically undergo structural, chemical, electronic, and other changes under these extremes. Contrary to previous thought, the iron oxide went from an insulating (non-electrical conducting) state to become a highly conducting metal at 690,000 atmospheres and 3000°F, but without a change to its structure. Previous studies had assumed that metallization in FeO was associated with a change in its crystal structure. This result means that iron oxide can be both an insulator and a metal depending on temperature and pressure conditions.
"At high temperatures, the atoms in iron oxide crystals are arranged with the same structure as common table salt, NaCl," explained Cohen. "Just like table salt, FeO at ambient conditions is a good insulator—it does not conduct electricity. Older measurements showed metallization in FeO at high pressures and temperatures, but it was thought that a new crystal structure formed. Our new results show, instead, that FeO metallizes without any change in structure and that combined temperature and pressure are required. Furthermore, our theory shows that the way the electrons behave to make it metallic is different from other materials that become metallic."
"The results imply that iron oxide is conducting in the whole range of its stability in Earth's lower mantle." Cohen continues, "The metallic phase will enhance the electromagnetic interaction between the liquid core and lower mantle. This has implications for Earth's magnetic field, which is generated in the outer core. It will change the way the magnetic field is propagated to Earth's surface, because it provides magnetomechanical coupling between the Earth's mantle and core."
"The fact that one mineral has properties that differ so completely—depending on its composition and where it is within the Earth—is a major discovery," concluded Geophysical Laboratory director Russell Hemley.
2011年12月18日星期日
HEA responds to Soldotna, Cohoe outages
A large section of the Soldotna was without power Sunday morning. The outage started at 7:25 a.m. and impacted 2,317 homes and businesses. Homer Electric crews responded to the Corral Street area of Soldotna where they found a broken insulator on a power pole. The crew made repairs and had the power back on at 9:17 a.m.
HEA crews also responded to the South Cohoe Loop area for an outage that started at 5:30 a.m. and is impacting 94. Crews made repairs after finding a tree on the power line and wire on the ground. Power was restored to the South Cohoe Loop area at 11:40 a.m.
As a safety reminder, HEA would like to remind homeowners who own generators to make sure they are taking proper precautions. If operated incorrectly, the generator can send power back on to the electric system and cause serious injury or death to linemen working on the power line.
It is very important that a transfer switch exists between the generator and the HEA system. The transfer switch must be equipped with a visual open ensuring that the generator is not back feeding into the HEA system. Make sure that you have properly installed your generator and if you have any questions, please contact a qualified electrician before operating the generator.
HEA also reminds people to stay away from any downed power line. The lines are very dangerous and can cause serious injury or death if contact is made.
HEA crews also responded to the South Cohoe Loop area for an outage that started at 5:30 a.m. and is impacting 94. Crews made repairs after finding a tree on the power line and wire on the ground. Power was restored to the South Cohoe Loop area at 11:40 a.m.
As a safety reminder, HEA would like to remind homeowners who own generators to make sure they are taking proper precautions. If operated incorrectly, the generator can send power back on to the electric system and cause serious injury or death to linemen working on the power line.
It is very important that a transfer switch exists between the generator and the HEA system. The transfer switch must be equipped with a visual open ensuring that the generator is not back feeding into the HEA system. Make sure that you have properly installed your generator and if you have any questions, please contact a qualified electrician before operating the generator.
HEA also reminds people to stay away from any downed power line. The lines are very dangerous and can cause serious injury or death if contact is made.
2011年12月15日星期四
Shellac and the Female Lac Bug
This forum is usually about high-tech wood coatings.
But from time to time, I will discuss something that is tried and true and, perhaps, not so high tech. Shellac is definitely a low-tech product. It is the secretion of the female Lac bug (Kerrialacca) found in India and Thailand. It takes approximately 100,000 bugs to create 500 grams of shellac flakes.
There must be a lot of these little ladies doing their thing because shellac is still a widely used product. It functions as a primer, tannin sealer, odor sealer, insulator, and a clear wood finish. Though not terribly robust as a clear finish, none the less, it is not dissolved by anything other than ethyl alcohol.Beware of manufacturing dates when found in liquid form.Liquid shellac has a shelf life. That’s why it is so often sold in dry flakes.Liquid versions only lasts about a year. Thereafter, it remains tacky. Also, look for the 100% de-waxed version.
Let’s change gears for a moment and talk about water-borne clear finishes.
The facts of life about water-borne technology include some things that are different from solvent-borne clear coatings. Finishers are well aware that water-bornes “wet the wood” differently.
The “look” is not the same and, in some cases, inferior to what a solvent lacquer will give.
Also, some water-bornes have a bluish-white appearance even when totally cured. Thirdly, tannins are an issue with water-borne technology since they are miscible in water and tend to migrate up through the coating…even after drying. Usually this is not an issue with a clear but it certainly can be with a pigmented coating. Tannins can show up days later.
I had the opportunity to do an experiment with some Sapele.
A customer wanted some help with a door he was submitting for approval and I agreed to spray it for him. I wanted to check out what shellac would do to enhance wetted color so I grabbed a piece of Sapele and sprayed a coat on half the sample. (see the attached photo) I was really surprised at what the shellac did to the color of the wood. It was as though I had stained the board. The richness was significantly increased.
On the other hand, when my client brought in his door to be sprayed, his was of highly ribboned Sapele. Much lighter in color than my sample, his did not change as dramatically. Therefore, this effect may be selective and will require you to experiment. It may be that shellac adds something to darker woods only. But the effect was really appealing! The board in the picture has 3 coats of pre-cat clear over the shellac. The total dry mils of pre-cat is approximately 5.
Change gears again. M.L. Campbell makes a tannin-blocking primer for use under its pigmented coatings. It is a wonderful product. It sands like a dream. Its secret sauce is a high-tech resin that bonds with the tannins and holds onto them. It is not a shellac-based primer.
My grandpa always said that you could definitely trust a guy who wore both a belt and suspenders. He’d never let you down, he used to say.
Here’s my point. If you are making a paint-grade project out of a wood with a known reputation for tannin bleed, I’d heed his advice and spray one coat of shellac, scuff, then use the MLC primer. Then, you’re as sure as you can be not to lose your pants on that job.
As I said, tannin bleed often doesn’t show up for several days. By then, some of us will have the project installed. This is a call-back that you definitely don’t want to have! The fix for tannin bleed is NOT fun!
But from time to time, I will discuss something that is tried and true and, perhaps, not so high tech. Shellac is definitely a low-tech product. It is the secretion of the female Lac bug (Kerrialacca) found in India and Thailand. It takes approximately 100,000 bugs to create 500 grams of shellac flakes.
There must be a lot of these little ladies doing their thing because shellac is still a widely used product. It functions as a primer, tannin sealer, odor sealer, insulator, and a clear wood finish. Though not terribly robust as a clear finish, none the less, it is not dissolved by anything other than ethyl alcohol.Beware of manufacturing dates when found in liquid form.Liquid shellac has a shelf life. That’s why it is so often sold in dry flakes.Liquid versions only lasts about a year. Thereafter, it remains tacky. Also, look for the 100% de-waxed version.
Let’s change gears for a moment and talk about water-borne clear finishes.
The facts of life about water-borne technology include some things that are different from solvent-borne clear coatings. Finishers are well aware that water-bornes “wet the wood” differently.
The “look” is not the same and, in some cases, inferior to what a solvent lacquer will give.
Also, some water-bornes have a bluish-white appearance even when totally cured. Thirdly, tannins are an issue with water-borne technology since they are miscible in water and tend to migrate up through the coating…even after drying. Usually this is not an issue with a clear but it certainly can be with a pigmented coating. Tannins can show up days later.
I had the opportunity to do an experiment with some Sapele.
A customer wanted some help with a door he was submitting for approval and I agreed to spray it for him. I wanted to check out what shellac would do to enhance wetted color so I grabbed a piece of Sapele and sprayed a coat on half the sample. (see the attached photo) I was really surprised at what the shellac did to the color of the wood. It was as though I had stained the board. The richness was significantly increased.
On the other hand, when my client brought in his door to be sprayed, his was of highly ribboned Sapele. Much lighter in color than my sample, his did not change as dramatically. Therefore, this effect may be selective and will require you to experiment. It may be that shellac adds something to darker woods only. But the effect was really appealing! The board in the picture has 3 coats of pre-cat clear over the shellac. The total dry mils of pre-cat is approximately 5.
Change gears again. M.L. Campbell makes a tannin-blocking primer for use under its pigmented coatings. It is a wonderful product. It sands like a dream. Its secret sauce is a high-tech resin that bonds with the tannins and holds onto them. It is not a shellac-based primer.
My grandpa always said that you could definitely trust a guy who wore both a belt and suspenders. He’d never let you down, he used to say.
Here’s my point. If you are making a paint-grade project out of a wood with a known reputation for tannin bleed, I’d heed his advice and spray one coat of shellac, scuff, then use the MLC primer. Then, you’re as sure as you can be not to lose your pants on that job.
As I said, tannin bleed often doesn’t show up for several days. By then, some of us will have the project installed. This is a call-back that you definitely don’t want to have! The fix for tannin bleed is NOT fun!
2011年12月14日星期三
When leaving home is the only way out
EVERY culture has its own spectre of hardship, says economist Alan Barrett. For Germans, it is the hyper-inflation of the Weimar Republic and its destruction of families' hard-earned savings. For the English, it is the rationing during and after World War II, which left some in that generation still prone to hoarding every time headlines cause alarm. For the Irish, it is landlessness.
Their folk memory turns on the stories of the potato famine of the 1840s, when starving people were evicted from their homes by English landlords and died by the roadsides with grass stains around their mouths.
Even today, says Professor Barrett, of Trinity College, Dublin, "in the social collective consciousness, losing your property and eviction are the worst things that can possibly happen."
This has led to a national preoccupation with property ownership, agrees Professor Piaras Mac Einri of Cork University, "We have an obsession with land. Owning your own land is the biggest thing you can do.''
Which partly explains what has happened with traditionally frugal, hard-working Ireland. In the 15 years to 2008 the country boomed, proclaimed as "the Celtic Tiger". On a surge of prosperity and optimism, and turbo-charged by low interest rates, Ireland spent billions building roads, luxury hotels, golf courses, and a gleaming, futuristic, 600 million (A$783 million) international airport, T2. The Irish also borrowed heavily to buy into a feverish local property market.
Barrett, who is on secondment from Ireland's Economic and Social Research Institute, says: "If you asked anybody what was the big benefit of the Celtic Tiger, I think a lot of people would have answered that for the first time ever, if you were born in Ireland you could assume that you could live and work in Ireland for the rest of your life."
But the Celtic Tiger is now a mewing kitten. Last month marked the first anniversary of Ireland's humiliating bailout by the troika of the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund, without which it would be bankrupt. Ireland has also just suffered its fourth consecutive austerity budget, this time one that provides an "adjustment" of
3.8 billion through increased taxes and slashed spending. It follows cuts of 4 billion last year.
The Irish are talking about unemployment tripling to 14.5 per cent with 450,000 now jobless, about the way houses have lost half their value and about the big cuts to salaries and social services that make life harder. But there is another painful Irish spectre that is not getting as much airplay - forced emigration.
Emma and Eoin Monaghan are typical of those hardest hit by the crash. They have regretfully decided that they must leave the country if they and their children are to have a future. He is 35 and works as a thermal insulator; she is 29 and works part-time as a make-up artist. They have two children, five-year-old Jamie and baby Maleah, nine months, and live in a Celtic Tiger-era housing estate at Donabate, on the edge of Dublin.
They did what they thought was the responsible thing and bought a house before they had children, at a time when prices were rising fast, because they feared they might not get into the market at all if they dithered.
"The day we actually bought, there was a big queue," Emma says. "They said if you didn't bring your deposit within 24 hours you would lose your place. We were so frightened that we wouldn't even get on the property ladder."
They were conservative, for the time; they took a mortgage of 100 per cent, when all around them people were borrowing even more than that to add on a car, or a renovation. Between 1998 and 2008, Irish banks borrowed 300 billion to fund loans for property speculation, which amounted to 2 times the country's gross domestic product.
Their folk memory turns on the stories of the potato famine of the 1840s, when starving people were evicted from their homes by English landlords and died by the roadsides with grass stains around their mouths.
Even today, says Professor Barrett, of Trinity College, Dublin, "in the social collective consciousness, losing your property and eviction are the worst things that can possibly happen."
This has led to a national preoccupation with property ownership, agrees Professor Piaras Mac Einri of Cork University, "We have an obsession with land. Owning your own land is the biggest thing you can do.''
Which partly explains what has happened with traditionally frugal, hard-working Ireland. In the 15 years to 2008 the country boomed, proclaimed as "the Celtic Tiger". On a surge of prosperity and optimism, and turbo-charged by low interest rates, Ireland spent billions building roads, luxury hotels, golf courses, and a gleaming, futuristic, 600 million (A$783 million) international airport, T2. The Irish also borrowed heavily to buy into a feverish local property market.
Barrett, who is on secondment from Ireland's Economic and Social Research Institute, says: "If you asked anybody what was the big benefit of the Celtic Tiger, I think a lot of people would have answered that for the first time ever, if you were born in Ireland you could assume that you could live and work in Ireland for the rest of your life."
But the Celtic Tiger is now a mewing kitten. Last month marked the first anniversary of Ireland's humiliating bailout by the troika of the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund, without which it would be bankrupt. Ireland has also just suffered its fourth consecutive austerity budget, this time one that provides an "adjustment" of
3.8 billion through increased taxes and slashed spending. It follows cuts of 4 billion last year.
The Irish are talking about unemployment tripling to 14.5 per cent with 450,000 now jobless, about the way houses have lost half their value and about the big cuts to salaries and social services that make life harder. But there is another painful Irish spectre that is not getting as much airplay - forced emigration.
Emma and Eoin Monaghan are typical of those hardest hit by the crash. They have regretfully decided that they must leave the country if they and their children are to have a future. He is 35 and works as a thermal insulator; she is 29 and works part-time as a make-up artist. They have two children, five-year-old Jamie and baby Maleah, nine months, and live in a Celtic Tiger-era housing estate at Donabate, on the edge of Dublin.
They did what they thought was the responsible thing and bought a house before they had children, at a time when prices were rising fast, because they feared they might not get into the market at all if they dithered.
"The day we actually bought, there was a big queue," Emma says. "They said if you didn't bring your deposit within 24 hours you would lose your place. We were so frightened that we wouldn't even get on the property ladder."
They were conservative, for the time; they took a mortgage of 100 per cent, when all around them people were borrowing even more than that to add on a car, or a renovation. Between 1998 and 2008, Irish banks borrowed 300 billion to fund loans for property speculation, which amounted to 2 times the country's gross domestic product.
2011年12月13日星期二
Anchorage blown away by extreme weather
On the edge of what other city in North America can you get knocked flat by hurricane-force winds in a blizzard roaring up the suburban neighborhood street you've boldly started down in an effort to find out what caused the power outage?
And where else in the country would they knock on the door of a neighbor to tell him the high-voltage lines carrying power across the valley have been torn completely off the pole next to his house, leading him to look at you and ask, "You'll do anything for a cheap thrill, won't you?'' And then laugh as another gust hit, and his house shook, and the adjacent power line whipped around like it was going to crack?
But then Brian Roberts had been through this a few times before.
He noted that only a week earlier, the hurricane-force winds that rolled across the Anchorage Hillside tore a separate insulator loose from the same power pole and left the line bouncing and swaying in the wind. Chugach Electric Association (CEA) came out to fix it a few days later, he said. It was a different line from the one that tore an insulator out of the cross bar this time. That line then hit another, caused a whole lot of sparks, and kicked out a breaker.
Neighbor Richard Murphy got a spectacular light show. Shortly after the power went out, he called by cell phone from the only corner of his house that has decent cell coverage to offer a situation report. Daughter Katie was by then sitting at the dining room table studying for her GRE, a requirement for admittance to some post-graduate universities, by the light of a headlamp. It was time to fire up the trusty, old Coleman lantern.
Everyone in Anchorage should own a Coleman lantern or some equivalent, as this is a city vulnerable to power outages either by wind or earthquake.
Rogers and his girlfriend had candles lit when I dropped in. On up the hill, Murphy had an old-fashioned kerosene lantern burning. We sat in his kitchen enjoying it's glow for a while, sipping a nice Pinot Noir, enjoying some crackers and cheese, and feeling the whole house shake in the big gusts. It would go on like that for hours.
Afterward, everyone would compare notes on the power of the wind. This is something of a neighborhood sport. A week earlier, Tim Kelley had registered 105 mph on his anemometer. He reported another neighbor closer to the Potter Creek ravine had 107 mph. My wind gauge said 100 mph. The semi-official report from the National Weather Service, recorded at yet another home in the neighborhood, was 97 mph.
When I met neighbor Mark Shasby, the interim director of Alaska Climate Science Center, out hiking on a neighborhood trail, he wondered if the big blows might be linked to the warming off the ocean. Storms generate significantly more energy over warm water than cold.
And where else in the country would they knock on the door of a neighbor to tell him the high-voltage lines carrying power across the valley have been torn completely off the pole next to his house, leading him to look at you and ask, "You'll do anything for a cheap thrill, won't you?'' And then laugh as another gust hit, and his house shook, and the adjacent power line whipped around like it was going to crack?
But then Brian Roberts had been through this a few times before.
He noted that only a week earlier, the hurricane-force winds that rolled across the Anchorage Hillside tore a separate insulator loose from the same power pole and left the line bouncing and swaying in the wind. Chugach Electric Association (CEA) came out to fix it a few days later, he said. It was a different line from the one that tore an insulator out of the cross bar this time. That line then hit another, caused a whole lot of sparks, and kicked out a breaker.
Neighbor Richard Murphy got a spectacular light show. Shortly after the power went out, he called by cell phone from the only corner of his house that has decent cell coverage to offer a situation report. Daughter Katie was by then sitting at the dining room table studying for her GRE, a requirement for admittance to some post-graduate universities, by the light of a headlamp. It was time to fire up the trusty, old Coleman lantern.
Everyone in Anchorage should own a Coleman lantern or some equivalent, as this is a city vulnerable to power outages either by wind or earthquake.
Rogers and his girlfriend had candles lit when I dropped in. On up the hill, Murphy had an old-fashioned kerosene lantern burning. We sat in his kitchen enjoying it's glow for a while, sipping a nice Pinot Noir, enjoying some crackers and cheese, and feeling the whole house shake in the big gusts. It would go on like that for hours.
Afterward, everyone would compare notes on the power of the wind. This is something of a neighborhood sport. A week earlier, Tim Kelley had registered 105 mph on his anemometer. He reported another neighbor closer to the Potter Creek ravine had 107 mph. My wind gauge said 100 mph. The semi-official report from the National Weather Service, recorded at yet another home in the neighborhood, was 97 mph.
When I met neighbor Mark Shasby, the interim director of Alaska Climate Science Center, out hiking on a neighborhood trail, he wondered if the big blows might be linked to the warming off the ocean. Storms generate significantly more energy over warm water than cold.
2011年12月12日星期一
New '3-D' Transistors Promising Future Chips
Researchers from Purdue and Harvard universities have created a new type of transistor made from a material that could replace silicon and have a 3-D structure instead of conventional flat computer chips.
The approach could enable engineers to build faster, more compact and efficient integrated circuits and lighter laptops that generate less heat than today's. The transistors contain tiny nanowires made not of silicon, like conventional transistors, but from a material called indium-gallium-arsenide.
The device was created using a so-called "top-down" method, which is akin to industrial processes to precisely etch and position components in transistors. Because the approach is compatible with conventional manufacturing processes, it is promising for adoption by industry, said Peide "Peter" Ye, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue.
A new generation of silicon computer chips, due to debut in 2012, will contain transistors having a vertical structure instead of a conventional flat design. However, because silicon has a limited "electron mobility" -- how fast electrons flow - other materials will likely be needed soon to continue advancing transistors with this 3-D approach, Ye said.
Indium-gallium-arsenide is among several promising semiconductors being studied to replace silicon. Such semiconductors are called III-V materials because they combine elements from the third and fifth groups of the periodic table.
"Industry and academia are racing to develop transistors from the III-V materials," Ye said. "Here, we have made the world's first 3-D gate-all-around transistor on much higher-mobility material than silicon, the indium-gallium-arsenide."
Findings will be detailed in a paper to be presented during the International Electron Devices Meeting in Washington, D.C. The work is led by Purdue doctoral student Jiangjiang Gu; Harvard doctoral student Yiqun Liu; Roy Gordon, Harvard's Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Chemistry; and Ye.
Transistors contain critical components called gates, which enable the devices to switch on and off and to direct the flow of electrical current. In today's chips, the length of these gates is about 45 nanometers, or billionths of a meter. However, in 2012 industry will introduce silicon-based 3-D transistors having a gate length of 22 nanometers.
"Next year if you buy a computer it will have the 22-nanometer gate length and 3-D silicon transistors," Ye said.
The 3-D design is critical because the 22-nanometer gate lengths will not work in a flat design.
"Once you shrink gate lengths down to 22 nanometers on silicon you have to do more complicated structure design," Ye said. "The ideal gate is a necklike, gate-all-around structure so that the gate surrounds the transistor on all sides."
The nanowires are coated with a "dielectric," which acts as a gate. Engineers are working to develop transistors that use even smaller gate lengths, 14 nanometers, by 2015.
However, further size reductions beyond 14 nanometers and additional performance improvements are likely not possible using silicon, meaning new designs and materials will be needed to continue progress, Ye said.
"Nanowires made of III-V alloys will get us to the 10 nanometer range," he said.
The new findings confirmed that the device made using a III-V material has the potential to conduct electrons five times faster than silicon.
Creating smaller transistors also will require finding a new type of insulating layer essential for the devices to switch off. As gate lengths shrink smaller than 14 nanometers, the silicon dioxide insulator used in conventional transistors fails to perform properly and is said to "leak" electrical charge.
One potential solution to this leaking problem is to replace silicon dioxide with materials that have a higher insulating value, or "dielectric constant," such as hafnium dioxide or aluminum oxide.
In the new work, the researchers applied a dielectric coating made of aluminum oxide using a method called atomic layer deposition. Because atomic layer deposition is commonly used in industry, the new design may represent a practical solution to the coming limits of conventional silicon transistors.
Using atomic layer deposition might enable engineers to design transistors having thinner oxide and metal layers for the gates, possibly consuming far less electricity than silicon devices.
"A thinner dielectric layer means speed goes up and voltage requirements go down," Ye said.
The work is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Semiconductor Research Corp. and is based at the Birck Nanotechnology Center in Purdue's Discovery Park. The latest research is similar to, but fundamentally different from, research reported by Ye's group in 2009. That work involved a design called a finFET, for fin field-effect transistor, which uses a finlike structure instead of the conventional flat design. The new design uses nanowires instead of the fin design.
The approach could enable engineers to build faster, more compact and efficient integrated circuits and lighter laptops that generate less heat than today's. The transistors contain tiny nanowires made not of silicon, like conventional transistors, but from a material called indium-gallium-arsenide.
The device was created using a so-called "top-down" method, which is akin to industrial processes to precisely etch and position components in transistors. Because the approach is compatible with conventional manufacturing processes, it is promising for adoption by industry, said Peide "Peter" Ye, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue.
A new generation of silicon computer chips, due to debut in 2012, will contain transistors having a vertical structure instead of a conventional flat design. However, because silicon has a limited "electron mobility" -- how fast electrons flow - other materials will likely be needed soon to continue advancing transistors with this 3-D approach, Ye said.
Indium-gallium-arsenide is among several promising semiconductors being studied to replace silicon. Such semiconductors are called III-V materials because they combine elements from the third and fifth groups of the periodic table.
"Industry and academia are racing to develop transistors from the III-V materials," Ye said. "Here, we have made the world's first 3-D gate-all-around transistor on much higher-mobility material than silicon, the indium-gallium-arsenide."
Findings will be detailed in a paper to be presented during the International Electron Devices Meeting in Washington, D.C. The work is led by Purdue doctoral student Jiangjiang Gu; Harvard doctoral student Yiqun Liu; Roy Gordon, Harvard's Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Chemistry; and Ye.
Transistors contain critical components called gates, which enable the devices to switch on and off and to direct the flow of electrical current. In today's chips, the length of these gates is about 45 nanometers, or billionths of a meter. However, in 2012 industry will introduce silicon-based 3-D transistors having a gate length of 22 nanometers.
"Next year if you buy a computer it will have the 22-nanometer gate length and 3-D silicon transistors," Ye said.
The 3-D design is critical because the 22-nanometer gate lengths will not work in a flat design.
"Once you shrink gate lengths down to 22 nanometers on silicon you have to do more complicated structure design," Ye said. "The ideal gate is a necklike, gate-all-around structure so that the gate surrounds the transistor on all sides."
The nanowires are coated with a "dielectric," which acts as a gate. Engineers are working to develop transistors that use even smaller gate lengths, 14 nanometers, by 2015.
However, further size reductions beyond 14 nanometers and additional performance improvements are likely not possible using silicon, meaning new designs and materials will be needed to continue progress, Ye said.
"Nanowires made of III-V alloys will get us to the 10 nanometer range," he said.
The new findings confirmed that the device made using a III-V material has the potential to conduct electrons five times faster than silicon.
Creating smaller transistors also will require finding a new type of insulating layer essential for the devices to switch off. As gate lengths shrink smaller than 14 nanometers, the silicon dioxide insulator used in conventional transistors fails to perform properly and is said to "leak" electrical charge.
One potential solution to this leaking problem is to replace silicon dioxide with materials that have a higher insulating value, or "dielectric constant," such as hafnium dioxide or aluminum oxide.
In the new work, the researchers applied a dielectric coating made of aluminum oxide using a method called atomic layer deposition. Because atomic layer deposition is commonly used in industry, the new design may represent a practical solution to the coming limits of conventional silicon transistors.
Using atomic layer deposition might enable engineers to design transistors having thinner oxide and metal layers for the gates, possibly consuming far less electricity than silicon devices.
"A thinner dielectric layer means speed goes up and voltage requirements go down," Ye said.
The work is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Semiconductor Research Corp. and is based at the Birck Nanotechnology Center in Purdue's Discovery Park. The latest research is similar to, but fundamentally different from, research reported by Ye's group in 2009. That work involved a design called a finFET, for fin field-effect transistor, which uses a finlike structure instead of the conventional flat design. The new design uses nanowires instead of the fin design.
2011年12月11日星期日
Winter weather wonder wears
I’ve already mentioned my disdain for classic thick winter jackets. Unless you cruise along at walking pace, riding simply generates too much heat for most of them to cope with.
The Rapha replaces those silly, bulky monstrosities with a wonderfully tailored, fuzzy thermal jersey. The fabric used has more of an emphasis on keeping heat in than wind or water out, though the surface is moderately wind resistant. And because it’s cut like a jersey, it doesn’t flap or bulge. You feel faster and sleeker in the Winter Jersey than in a jacket, but you’re just as warm.
The material isn’t very stretchy, so pay close attention to fit. The medium I’ve been using fits around my torso very well, but the arms could be just a tad longer to prevent gaps in between sleeve and glove.
Fit is great in the riding position, and looks quite silly when off the bike. The high front slides up to your belly button when standing, and the long tail drops down to your thighs. Bend over on the saddle and everything sorts itself out perfectly, though. An elastic drawstring keeps the bottom in place.
Styling is quintessential Rapha — you either love it or you hate it. I like the understated logos and classic lines, personally.
The two enormous pockets are great for stashing food for a long ride, or other layers to be put on later.
Have I mentioned this thing is WARM? I took it out on Wednesday just as the cold snap here in Boulder broke (temps went from 2 to 27) with only a thin base layer underneath and thin vest over top (see next page) and was perfectly comfortable. The Winter Jersey works down to about 35 on its own (with a base layer… always wear a base layer!) and well below that with another shell or vest over top.
Two under-arm mesh vents can be opened up, which, combined with the mesh-backed pockets, allow for comfy riding up to about 50-55 or so. They’re not quite pit-zips — instead, Rapha has moved them forward a bit to catch more air when in the riding position. This makes them even more effective.
The Rapha replaces those silly, bulky monstrosities with a wonderfully tailored, fuzzy thermal jersey. The fabric used has more of an emphasis on keeping heat in than wind or water out, though the surface is moderately wind resistant. And because it’s cut like a jersey, it doesn’t flap or bulge. You feel faster and sleeker in the Winter Jersey than in a jacket, but you’re just as warm.
The material isn’t very stretchy, so pay close attention to fit. The medium I’ve been using fits around my torso very well, but the arms could be just a tad longer to prevent gaps in between sleeve and glove.
Fit is great in the riding position, and looks quite silly when off the bike. The high front slides up to your belly button when standing, and the long tail drops down to your thighs. Bend over on the saddle and everything sorts itself out perfectly, though. An elastic drawstring keeps the bottom in place.
Styling is quintessential Rapha — you either love it or you hate it. I like the understated logos and classic lines, personally.
The two enormous pockets are great for stashing food for a long ride, or other layers to be put on later.
Have I mentioned this thing is WARM? I took it out on Wednesday just as the cold snap here in Boulder broke (temps went from 2 to 27) with only a thin base layer underneath and thin vest over top (see next page) and was perfectly comfortable. The Winter Jersey works down to about 35 on its own (with a base layer… always wear a base layer!) and well below that with another shell or vest over top.
Two under-arm mesh vents can be opened up, which, combined with the mesh-backed pockets, allow for comfy riding up to about 50-55 or so. They’re not quite pit-zips — instead, Rapha has moved them forward a bit to catch more air when in the riding position. This makes them even more effective.
2011年12月8日星期四
FDSOI less 'risk' than FinFETs, says SOI body
The SOI Industry Consortium, and industry body for proponents for silicon-on-insulator manufacturing, reckons it's got fresh evidence in favor of using the fully-depleted version of its technology FDSOI instead of the FinFET style of manufacturing favored by Intel.
The consortium said that collaborative research recently completed by STMicroelectronics, IBM, ARM, Globalfoundries and other semiconductor companies had confirmed equivalent performance to FinFETs at 28-nm and 20-nm nodes but with a simpler manufacturing process.
The joint research was performed by using an FD-SOI process to fabricate 28nm chips. Test results on these chips were in line with predictions from computer-based models previously developed to benchmark FD-SOI device performance, confirming the models' reliability, the consortium said.
"Not only do the benchmarking results show that FD-SOI can deliver the power and performance of FinFET as early as the 28-nm and 20-nm technology nodes, but FD-SOI's ability to accommodate planar architectures presents much lower manufacturing risk than FinFET," said Horacio Mendez, executive director of the SOI Industry Consortium.
"This makes FD-SOI an easy-to-implement solution for cost-sensitive applications that require high performance and low power consumption in standby and active modes, including mobile electronics such as smart phones and tablet computers."
The simulations, which are now believed to hold true, show the feasability of running all digital device designs, including SRAMs, at Vdd voltages down to 0.6-V, the consortium said.
The SOI Industry Consortium did not address directly the issue of its starting cost disadvantage, from the use of SOI wafer. But said that a study published in July 2011 had showed that the cost of fabricating 20-nm SOC devices on FD-SOI wafers will be comparable to using planar bulk transistors - and more economical than using FinFETs.
Nor did the SOI Industry Consortium pass any comment on the process technology being proposed by SuVolta Inc. (Los Gatos, Calif.) which is claimed to have many of the same planar benefits of FDSOI without the expense of starting with SOI wafers.
Back in May 2011 Intel released details of its 22-nm process called 1270 that uses FinFETs. The first wafers were due to come out of the D1D research fab in Oregon with volume production due to start at the F32 fab in Arizona in the second half of 2011.
The consortium said that collaborative research recently completed by STMicroelectronics, IBM, ARM, Globalfoundries and other semiconductor companies had confirmed equivalent performance to FinFETs at 28-nm and 20-nm nodes but with a simpler manufacturing process.
The joint research was performed by using an FD-SOI process to fabricate 28nm chips. Test results on these chips were in line with predictions from computer-based models previously developed to benchmark FD-SOI device performance, confirming the models' reliability, the consortium said.
"Not only do the benchmarking results show that FD-SOI can deliver the power and performance of FinFET as early as the 28-nm and 20-nm technology nodes, but FD-SOI's ability to accommodate planar architectures presents much lower manufacturing risk than FinFET," said Horacio Mendez, executive director of the SOI Industry Consortium.
"This makes FD-SOI an easy-to-implement solution for cost-sensitive applications that require high performance and low power consumption in standby and active modes, including mobile electronics such as smart phones and tablet computers."
The simulations, which are now believed to hold true, show the feasability of running all digital device designs, including SRAMs, at Vdd voltages down to 0.6-V, the consortium said.
The SOI Industry Consortium did not address directly the issue of its starting cost disadvantage, from the use of SOI wafer. But said that a study published in July 2011 had showed that the cost of fabricating 20-nm SOC devices on FD-SOI wafers will be comparable to using planar bulk transistors - and more economical than using FinFETs.
Nor did the SOI Industry Consortium pass any comment on the process technology being proposed by SuVolta Inc. (Los Gatos, Calif.) which is claimed to have many of the same planar benefits of FDSOI without the expense of starting with SOI wafers.
Back in May 2011 Intel released details of its 22-nm process called 1270 that uses FinFETs. The first wafers were due to come out of the D1D research fab in Oregon with volume production due to start at the F32 fab in Arizona in the second half of 2011.
2011年12月7日星期三
Research offers new pathway of multiple sclerosis
Working together, researchers at Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic have for the first time examined early multiple sclerosis (MS) brain lesions in the cerebral cortex. These lesions are thought to be critical to MS progression and the researchers found that the lesions are distinctly different than previously speculated, giving clues to better disease management.
The long-accepted theory has been that MS begins in the myelin on the inner layers of the brain, also known as white matter. However, the findings of this collaborative study show the opposite -- that the disease likely can move from the outer (cortical) layers of the brain toward the white matter, offering new insight into the progression of MS.
"For patients, the key idea of this research is that we have discovered an entirely new concept of how MS may start," said Richard Ransohoff, M.D., Director of the Neuroinflammation Research Center of the Department of Neurosciences at Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute, who co-led the study. "This research shows that a non-inflammatory form of MS is much less likely, and the prevailing research path has been going in the right direction."
While the causes of MS remain undetermined, it is thought to be a disease in which the body's immune system attacks and destroys its own myelin, a fatty insulator of the crucial nerve fibers that are responsible for communication between different sections of the brain.
However, in autopsy tissues of MS patients, lesions in the cerebral cortex show demyelination without inflammation, raising a challenging issue: if cortical lesions form entirely without inflammation, then cortical demyelination would not be explainable by current theories of MS nor treatable by current MS therapies.
The present study, published in the December 8 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, was a collaborative effort by Dr. Ransohoff, also a staff neurologist at the Mellen Center for Multiple Sclerosis Treatment and Research at Cleveland Clinic's Neurological Institute, and by Claudia Lucchinetti, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic's Department of Neurology.
The study involved examination of 563 brain biopsies resulting in the diagnosis of inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system, with 138 being determined to have sufficient cortex for study. Of these, 77 cases provided long-term follow-up data, with 58 cases (75 percent) going on to develop verified MS. The vast majority of biopsies were performed at community hospitals with the brain tissue being sent to the Mayo Clinic for neuropathological consultation services. Dr. Lucchinetti leads the National MS Society's MS Lesion project housed at the Mayo Clinic. This study was funded in part by that project as well as the National Institutes of Health.
MRI neuroimaging studies in early multiple sclerosis can't detect cortical lesions but have revealed cortical abnormalities, suggesting that the cortex may be damaged near the time of disease onset. The current research shows that the cortex harbors inflammatory lesions accounting for MRI indicators of damage.
"The next step in this research is to study the lesions to uncover new molecular targets for treatment. We also need to push forward to develop imaging techniques to view these cortical lesions," said Dr. Lucchinetti. "In that way, effects of treatment can more easily be measured."
The long-accepted theory has been that MS begins in the myelin on the inner layers of the brain, also known as white matter. However, the findings of this collaborative study show the opposite -- that the disease likely can move from the outer (cortical) layers of the brain toward the white matter, offering new insight into the progression of MS.
"For patients, the key idea of this research is that we have discovered an entirely new concept of how MS may start," said Richard Ransohoff, M.D., Director of the Neuroinflammation Research Center of the Department of Neurosciences at Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute, who co-led the study. "This research shows that a non-inflammatory form of MS is much less likely, and the prevailing research path has been going in the right direction."
While the causes of MS remain undetermined, it is thought to be a disease in which the body's immune system attacks and destroys its own myelin, a fatty insulator of the crucial nerve fibers that are responsible for communication between different sections of the brain.
However, in autopsy tissues of MS patients, lesions in the cerebral cortex show demyelination without inflammation, raising a challenging issue: if cortical lesions form entirely without inflammation, then cortical demyelination would not be explainable by current theories of MS nor treatable by current MS therapies.
The present study, published in the December 8 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, was a collaborative effort by Dr. Ransohoff, also a staff neurologist at the Mellen Center for Multiple Sclerosis Treatment and Research at Cleveland Clinic's Neurological Institute, and by Claudia Lucchinetti, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic's Department of Neurology.
The study involved examination of 563 brain biopsies resulting in the diagnosis of inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system, with 138 being determined to have sufficient cortex for study. Of these, 77 cases provided long-term follow-up data, with 58 cases (75 percent) going on to develop verified MS. The vast majority of biopsies were performed at community hospitals with the brain tissue being sent to the Mayo Clinic for neuropathological consultation services. Dr. Lucchinetti leads the National MS Society's MS Lesion project housed at the Mayo Clinic. This study was funded in part by that project as well as the National Institutes of Health.
MRI neuroimaging studies in early multiple sclerosis can't detect cortical lesions but have revealed cortical abnormalities, suggesting that the cortex may be damaged near the time of disease onset. The current research shows that the cortex harbors inflammatory lesions accounting for MRI indicators of damage.
"The next step in this research is to study the lesions to uncover new molecular targets for treatment. We also need to push forward to develop imaging techniques to view these cortical lesions," said Dr. Lucchinetti. "In that way, effects of treatment can more easily be measured."
2011年12月6日星期二
Homeless in San Diego Hit Hard by Cold Weather
With nighttime temperatures dipping into the 40s, the city of San Diego's winter shelter for homeless adults is in need of blankets, the head of the organization that runs the facility said Monday.
The chilly weather is expected to continue through the week, according to the National Weather Service.
The shelter, in a large tent at 16th and Newton avenues in Barrio Logan, accommodates 220 people and staff, and has to turn away 50 to 60 others nightly, said Bob McElroy, CEO of the Alpha Project.
Those who don't make it into the shelter are given blankets or plastic sheeting, which works as an insulator, McElroy said. He also said staff exchanges dry blankets for wet ones.
"We're really lacking in blankets," McElroy said.
The blankets and plastic are also given out at the Neil Good Day Center on 17th Street, and volunteers roam the streets looking for people in need of warmth.
"We're just trying to keep people alive," McElroy said.
He said women are not turned away from the shelter. Because of the recent cold snap, the female population there has climbed from an average of about 50 per night to 65, he said.
The tent is usually much warmer than the outside air, he said.
The NWS forecast calls for low temperatures in the low 40s through Saturday morning in downtown San Diego, where nighttime conditions are usually warmer than the rest of the county. Lows through the week will be in the 30s in the inland valleys the rest of the week, according to the NWS.
The chilly weather is expected to continue through the week, according to the National Weather Service.
The shelter, in a large tent at 16th and Newton avenues in Barrio Logan, accommodates 220 people and staff, and has to turn away 50 to 60 others nightly, said Bob McElroy, CEO of the Alpha Project.
Those who don't make it into the shelter are given blankets or plastic sheeting, which works as an insulator, McElroy said. He also said staff exchanges dry blankets for wet ones.
"We're really lacking in blankets," McElroy said.
The blankets and plastic are also given out at the Neil Good Day Center on 17th Street, and volunteers roam the streets looking for people in need of warmth.
"We're just trying to keep people alive," McElroy said.
He said women are not turned away from the shelter. Because of the recent cold snap, the female population there has climbed from an average of about 50 per night to 65, he said.
The tent is usually much warmer than the outside air, he said.
The NWS forecast calls for low temperatures in the low 40s through Saturday morning in downtown San Diego, where nighttime conditions are usually warmer than the rest of the county. Lows through the week will be in the 30s in the inland valleys the rest of the week, according to the NWS.
2011年12月5日星期一
Superconducting Qubits Are Getting Serious
Bigger is better. Rather interestingly, this mantra appears true for superconducting quantum bits (qubits), which are considered one of the most attractive physical realizations of quantum logic elements for quantum information processing. Reporting in Physical Review Letters, Hanhee Paik, at Yale University, and colleagues demonstrate a novel implementation of a superconducting qubit with dimensions of up to almost 1 millimeter (about a factor of 10–100 larger than typically used), exhibiting some of the longest coherence times measured to date . The results carry with them several important messages. First, the results do not just shed light on which decoherence mechanisms play a limiting role for superconducting qubits, but they also show one that does not: Small Josephson junctions apparently do not pose any limit at this stage in the game—contrary to many expectations. Second, superconducting qubits can now be made with coherence times that approach what is necessary for fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Superconducting qubits are made of inductors, capacitors, and Josephson junctions (JJ) , where a JJ consists of a thin layer of insulator between superconducting electrodes. A quantum circuit consisting only of inductors and capacitors gives rise to parabolic energy potentials exhibiting equally spaced energy levels, which are not practical for qubits. The JJ provides the necessary nonlinearity to the system, leading to nonparabolic energy potentials with unequally spaced energy levels such that two out of several energy levels, serving as the qubit states |0 and |1, can be isolated. The first demonstration of such a qubit in 1999 showed coherent oscillations with coherence times on the order of about 1 nanosecond (ns) , more than skeptics had anticipated but far too short for fault tolerant quantum computing, which would require coherence times of at least several tens of microseconds, as discussed a bit later. In the years since, various research groups discovered and reduced the impact of numerous decoherence mechanisms, all of which helped increase coherence times to be reliably near 1–5 microseconds (s) (see, for example, Refs. and references therein). This represents a factor of over 1000 improvement in just 10 years! This progress is also illustrated in Fig.
One of the significant contributors to decoherence is dielectric loss [7]. It has been suspected that dielectric loss at device interfaces (metal/air, metal/substrate) plays a limiting role. Because the interface thickness stays constant even as the overall device is physically made larger the impact of the surface loss can be reduced. The recent work at Yale University [1] takes this to the extreme, where the team fabricated a shunting capacitor 10–100 times physically larger than conventionally used. In order to prevent such a large qubit from radiating energy away like an antenna, which would lead to decoherence, it is placed inside a three-dimensional waveguide cavity. Typically, the qubit interacts with the lowest frequency mode of the cavity, which is necessary to manipulate and read out the qubit. A three-dimensional waveguide cavity also has a well-defined, reduced electromagnetic mode density in frequency compared with two-dimensional resonators on a chip, which have generally been used thus far for superconducting qubits. This helps reduce unwanted coupling to higher modes, which could reduce decoherence times. The resulting device now exhibits energy relaxation times of up to T1=60s and dephasing times T2=20s, which is yet another factor of 20–60 improvement in coherence times over state-of-the-art.
To what extent any particular loss mechanism has been reduced the most is not clear. The fact is that this implementation of superconducting qubits gives reliable long-lived qubits. The implications that arise from this work are deep and profound. The results show that coherence times of superconducting qubits are not limited by losses in the ultrasmall JJ, at least up to about 60s. It is speculated that even the current limit is not due to the JJ but likely other sources of decoherence that will need to be understood. Finally, measured coherence times are now getting close to reaching what is necessary for fault tolerant quantum computing using recently developed quantum error correction schemes [8], assuming realistic two-qubit interaction times near 30–100ns. Of course, the goal is to exceed the threshold to reduce the overhead associated with error correction. By how much is still a question that needs more concrete answers. But even if the field must exceed this number by a factor of 10 or even 100, this does not appear so scary. Recall that the latest result is an improvement over the first results from 1999 by a factor of about 60,000!
Superconducting qubits are made of inductors, capacitors, and Josephson junctions (JJ) , where a JJ consists of a thin layer of insulator between superconducting electrodes. A quantum circuit consisting only of inductors and capacitors gives rise to parabolic energy potentials exhibiting equally spaced energy levels, which are not practical for qubits. The JJ provides the necessary nonlinearity to the system, leading to nonparabolic energy potentials with unequally spaced energy levels such that two out of several energy levels, serving as the qubit states |0 and |1, can be isolated. The first demonstration of such a qubit in 1999 showed coherent oscillations with coherence times on the order of about 1 nanosecond (ns) , more than skeptics had anticipated but far too short for fault tolerant quantum computing, which would require coherence times of at least several tens of microseconds, as discussed a bit later. In the years since, various research groups discovered and reduced the impact of numerous decoherence mechanisms, all of which helped increase coherence times to be reliably near 1–5 microseconds (s) (see, for example, Refs. and references therein). This represents a factor of over 1000 improvement in just 10 years! This progress is also illustrated in Fig.
One of the significant contributors to decoherence is dielectric loss [7]. It has been suspected that dielectric loss at device interfaces (metal/air, metal/substrate) plays a limiting role. Because the interface thickness stays constant even as the overall device is physically made larger the impact of the surface loss can be reduced. The recent work at Yale University [1] takes this to the extreme, where the team fabricated a shunting capacitor 10–100 times physically larger than conventionally used. In order to prevent such a large qubit from radiating energy away like an antenna, which would lead to decoherence, it is placed inside a three-dimensional waveguide cavity. Typically, the qubit interacts with the lowest frequency mode of the cavity, which is necessary to manipulate and read out the qubit. A three-dimensional waveguide cavity also has a well-defined, reduced electromagnetic mode density in frequency compared with two-dimensional resonators on a chip, which have generally been used thus far for superconducting qubits. This helps reduce unwanted coupling to higher modes, which could reduce decoherence times. The resulting device now exhibits energy relaxation times of up to T1=60s and dephasing times T2=20s, which is yet another factor of 20–60 improvement in coherence times over state-of-the-art.
To what extent any particular loss mechanism has been reduced the most is not clear. The fact is that this implementation of superconducting qubits gives reliable long-lived qubits. The implications that arise from this work are deep and profound. The results show that coherence times of superconducting qubits are not limited by losses in the ultrasmall JJ, at least up to about 60s. It is speculated that even the current limit is not due to the JJ but likely other sources of decoherence that will need to be understood. Finally, measured coherence times are now getting close to reaching what is necessary for fault tolerant quantum computing using recently developed quantum error correction schemes [8], assuming realistic two-qubit interaction times near 30–100ns. Of course, the goal is to exceed the threshold to reduce the overhead associated with error correction. By how much is still a question that needs more concrete answers. But even if the field must exceed this number by a factor of 10 or even 100, this does not appear so scary. Recall that the latest result is an improvement over the first results from 1999 by a factor of about 60,000!
2011年12月4日星期日
Winter’s Intellectual Blizzard
Today the snow came to Minnesota. The neighborhood is full of people with shovels, snow blowers, and other winter apparatus who must clear the snow from roads, driveways, and sidewalks. The first snow is usually welcomed; it virtually guarantees a “White Christmas” and serves as a beautiful sound insulator. A meteorological calmness settles in. Outside activities, while enjoyed by many people, keep most of us inside for most of the time. With the change in daylight savings time, it gets dark very early and the days grow shorter and colder. We northerners are “cooped up” inside for several months.
We can watch television for five months, hang out in bars, or we can turn to intellectual pursuits such as reading, writing, and (yes) thinking. In places like Minnesota, Wisconsin, the Dakotas, and Michigan, for those of us who don’t spend a lot of time before the television, winter is the season for intellectual activity. Hence, I’ve coined the term “Intellectual Blizzard” for the increased intellectual activity that occurs from December through March.
I don’t have any proof that intellectual activity is positively correlated to the weather cycle, but I’ve got some anecdotal evidence that I’ve noticed as a college professor.
1. A lot less partying goes on in college towns when cold weather comes early in the fall.
2. A lot more partying goes on in college towns when spring comes unusually early.
3. Students are much more distracted prior to major exams when the weather is warm.
4. During the dead of winter students appear more lethargic, but are less distracted from studies.
When winter comes to Winona I try to find activities that keep me outside, but it isn’t long before I’m in the chair reading academic material or even a good novel. There must be thousands like me in this state. Hopefully some great wisdom will come as a result of our brain-busting efforts!
We can watch television for five months, hang out in bars, or we can turn to intellectual pursuits such as reading, writing, and (yes) thinking. In places like Minnesota, Wisconsin, the Dakotas, and Michigan, for those of us who don’t spend a lot of time before the television, winter is the season for intellectual activity. Hence, I’ve coined the term “Intellectual Blizzard” for the increased intellectual activity that occurs from December through March.
I don’t have any proof that intellectual activity is positively correlated to the weather cycle, but I’ve got some anecdotal evidence that I’ve noticed as a college professor.
1. A lot less partying goes on in college towns when cold weather comes early in the fall.
2. A lot more partying goes on in college towns when spring comes unusually early.
3. Students are much more distracted prior to major exams when the weather is warm.
4. During the dead of winter students appear more lethargic, but are less distracted from studies.
When winter comes to Winona I try to find activities that keep me outside, but it isn’t long before I’m in the chair reading academic material or even a good novel. There must be thousands like me in this state. Hopefully some great wisdom will come as a result of our brain-busting efforts!
2011年12月1日星期四
Building a better world
A growing number of environmentally conscientious homeowners are renovating their houses to save energy and cash. Cheng Anqi reports.
While Jack Frost has been knocking at Beijingers' doors for weeks, Du Xiangsi sends him packing. This has been made possible by the aluminum corridor Du has constructed in front of his house's main entrance. "It protects my family from cold in winter and heat in summer," he says. "It works better than an air conditioner." He can even turn off his storage heater on sunny days. Du is among the growing ranks of "green builders", who believe the value of apartments should be judged less by size and interior design than by energy efficiency. The 60-year-old lives in an old dazayuan, or tenement courtyard, in Xicheng district. His neighborhood comprises a dozen ramshackle homes with poor heating and insulation.
"Even the heater offers little protection from cold in winter," Du says. "It's a waste of energy."
He explains he used to dread receiving his heating bill until the NGO Friends of Nature included his among the 21 homes that underwent energy-saving renovations though the organization's Good Houses Save Energy project.
Du's corridor acts as an "insulator", Tsinghua University's professor of energy saving technology and project consultant Qiu Jizhe says.
The house's south-facing windows can warm it until sundown.
"So the house's interior heat is retained in winter while the summer's heat moves around the corridor to flow out the open windows and keep the inner rooms cool," Qiu says.
Weatherizing makes the house comfier. It blocks drafts and creates a more uniform temperature inside, Qiu says.
Friends of Nature assistant director Zhang Hehe adds, "We want our trial households to have diverse income levels and situations."
There are incentives to using less electricity, other than protecting Mother Earth, Qiu explains.
"Saving energy directly translates into saving money," he says.
Buildings consume up to 30 percent of the country's energy supply, Ministry of Construction figures show. Most of that goes to heating and cooling.
"Most people want energy-efficient homes but don't know where to start," Qiu says.
Energy efficient lighting is a bright start, he explains. Customers should start by thinking about brightness and color, and then decide between compact florescent light bulbs (CFLs) or light-emitting diodes (LEDs), Qiu explains.
LED bulbs cost from 50 yuan to 300 yuan but last up to 30 years, Qiu says.
Wang Yuan recently replaced five traditional incandescent bulbs with LEDs. The 29-year-old had paid about 15 yuan ($2.3) a month for 200-watt bulbs. But the 60-watt LEDs enabled her to reduce her electricity bill to 5.4 yuan a month.
"LEDs are expensive," Wang says. "I hope prices will drop as more products enter the market."
Other items that are helping homeowners like Kong Qingling save money and energy include "green switches". These are power strips that operate on a timer that shuts off power to appliances - especially "energy vampires", which are items like water heaters that suck power even when turned off.
"The energy a TV uses when it's on standby is simply wasted," Kong says. "A green switch allows you to save a lot of energy without unplugging anything."
Kong filters bursts of dirty air shot into her apartment by the trains that traverse Haidian district's Sidaokou stop across from her apartment with 30 potted plants.
She has considered buying an air purifier.
"But if nature can help freshen air, why not use it?" she says.
"Gardenia can contribute visual appeal to a room, and its fragrance can bring clarity of mind."
Magazine editor Luo Huixin finds joy in tending the vegetable garden she cultivates on her balcony.
The hydroponic setup has produced its third batch of green beans. A timer-operated system drips a nutrient solution through tubes to each plant. Excess is collected in a reservoir for reuse.
Buying goods certified as produced in an ecologically friendly way plays a vital role, Beijing Biechu Space Design Studio engineer Guan Huilong says.
"People like internationally certified furniture but don't realize it creates vast amounts of carbon dioxide as it's transported by air and train," Guan says.
"Buying products made with local materials and labor reduces pollution and prices."
This is advice Li Xiaolin took to heart when redecorating her home according to a low-carbon plan.
She had her old traditional Chinese cabinet polished and repaired rather than buy a new one, she says.
"It has become the living room's centerpiece," she says.
"All of our guests praise it and ask where we bought it."
While Jack Frost has been knocking at Beijingers' doors for weeks, Du Xiangsi sends him packing. This has been made possible by the aluminum corridor Du has constructed in front of his house's main entrance. "It protects my family from cold in winter and heat in summer," he says. "It works better than an air conditioner." He can even turn off his storage heater on sunny days. Du is among the growing ranks of "green builders", who believe the value of apartments should be judged less by size and interior design than by energy efficiency. The 60-year-old lives in an old dazayuan, or tenement courtyard, in Xicheng district. His neighborhood comprises a dozen ramshackle homes with poor heating and insulation.
"Even the heater offers little protection from cold in winter," Du says. "It's a waste of energy."
He explains he used to dread receiving his heating bill until the NGO Friends of Nature included his among the 21 homes that underwent energy-saving renovations though the organization's Good Houses Save Energy project.
Du's corridor acts as an "insulator", Tsinghua University's professor of energy saving technology and project consultant Qiu Jizhe says.
The house's south-facing windows can warm it until sundown.
"So the house's interior heat is retained in winter while the summer's heat moves around the corridor to flow out the open windows and keep the inner rooms cool," Qiu says.
Weatherizing makes the house comfier. It blocks drafts and creates a more uniform temperature inside, Qiu says.
Friends of Nature assistant director Zhang Hehe adds, "We want our trial households to have diverse income levels and situations."
There are incentives to using less electricity, other than protecting Mother Earth, Qiu explains.
"Saving energy directly translates into saving money," he says.
Buildings consume up to 30 percent of the country's energy supply, Ministry of Construction figures show. Most of that goes to heating and cooling.
"Most people want energy-efficient homes but don't know where to start," Qiu says.
Energy efficient lighting is a bright start, he explains. Customers should start by thinking about brightness and color, and then decide between compact florescent light bulbs (CFLs) or light-emitting diodes (LEDs), Qiu explains.
LED bulbs cost from 50 yuan to 300 yuan but last up to 30 years, Qiu says.
Wang Yuan recently replaced five traditional incandescent bulbs with LEDs. The 29-year-old had paid about 15 yuan ($2.3) a month for 200-watt bulbs. But the 60-watt LEDs enabled her to reduce her electricity bill to 5.4 yuan a month.
"LEDs are expensive," Wang says. "I hope prices will drop as more products enter the market."
Other items that are helping homeowners like Kong Qingling save money and energy include "green switches". These are power strips that operate on a timer that shuts off power to appliances - especially "energy vampires", which are items like water heaters that suck power even when turned off.
"The energy a TV uses when it's on standby is simply wasted," Kong says. "A green switch allows you to save a lot of energy without unplugging anything."
Kong filters bursts of dirty air shot into her apartment by the trains that traverse Haidian district's Sidaokou stop across from her apartment with 30 potted plants.
She has considered buying an air purifier.
"But if nature can help freshen air, why not use it?" she says.
"Gardenia can contribute visual appeal to a room, and its fragrance can bring clarity of mind."
Magazine editor Luo Huixin finds joy in tending the vegetable garden she cultivates on her balcony.
The hydroponic setup has produced its third batch of green beans. A timer-operated system drips a nutrient solution through tubes to each plant. Excess is collected in a reservoir for reuse.
Buying goods certified as produced in an ecologically friendly way plays a vital role, Beijing Biechu Space Design Studio engineer Guan Huilong says.
"People like internationally certified furniture but don't realize it creates vast amounts of carbon dioxide as it's transported by air and train," Guan says.
"Buying products made with local materials and labor reduces pollution and prices."
This is advice Li Xiaolin took to heart when redecorating her home according to a low-carbon plan.
She had her old traditional Chinese cabinet polished and repaired rather than buy a new one, she says.
"It has become the living room's centerpiece," she says.
"All of our guests praise it and ask where we bought it."
2011年11月30日星期三
Artist donates painting to historical society
Holly Lawrence, a native of Cedartown who has lived in New York City for the past 32 years, returned on Thanksgiving Day to visit relatives and make a special gift to the community.
She presented the Polk County Historical Society with an oil painting of the fountain which presently adorns the garden of that organization. “Cedartown was an important part of my life and I want to reestablish that bond,” Lawrence said.
Calling it her favorite landmark, Lawrence painted the fountain at the age of 12 when it was located in Peeks Park.
“From my vantage point as a child, I considered the fountain to be the grand aristocrat of the park with its own ornate swirls and regal presence. I studied the structure intensely, circling around it and imagining far away palaces and castles that I longed to visit some day. I was so happy to find out that the Historical Society had given the fountain a permanent home,” she continued.
Lawrence began her interest in art at the age of six while attending Benedict School in Cedartown. She credits local artists Margret (Peg) Whipple and Reba York with her inspiration and early training. She was a frequent competitor in 4-H Club arts and crafts contests as well as the annual Cedar Valley Arts Festival.
Lawrence continued her art studies at Floyd Junior College before leaving for New York to earn her Bachelor of Arts in English at Marymount Manhattan College and a Master of Arts from Columbia University in New York City. She has also studied at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, California.
In addition to her career in art, Lawrence is an avid traveler. She has visited almost every continent and loves to find beautiful fountains around the world.
Lawrence’s painting can be viewed at the Polk County Historical Society Museum from 1:30 to 4 p.m. on Wednesdays.
She presented the Polk County Historical Society with an oil painting of the fountain which presently adorns the garden of that organization. “Cedartown was an important part of my life and I want to reestablish that bond,” Lawrence said.
Calling it her favorite landmark, Lawrence painted the fountain at the age of 12 when it was located in Peeks Park.
“From my vantage point as a child, I considered the fountain to be the grand aristocrat of the park with its own ornate swirls and regal presence. I studied the structure intensely, circling around it and imagining far away palaces and castles that I longed to visit some day. I was so happy to find out that the Historical Society had given the fountain a permanent home,” she continued.
Lawrence began her interest in art at the age of six while attending Benedict School in Cedartown. She credits local artists Margret (Peg) Whipple and Reba York with her inspiration and early training. She was a frequent competitor in 4-H Club arts and crafts contests as well as the annual Cedar Valley Arts Festival.
Lawrence continued her art studies at Floyd Junior College before leaving for New York to earn her Bachelor of Arts in English at Marymount Manhattan College and a Master of Arts from Columbia University in New York City. She has also studied at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, California.
In addition to her career in art, Lawrence is an avid traveler. She has visited almost every continent and loves to find beautiful fountains around the world.
Lawrence’s painting can be viewed at the Polk County Historical Society Museum from 1:30 to 4 p.m. on Wednesdays.
2011年11月29日星期二
Local hills hold precious resource
They’re not the White Cliffs of Dover, but they’re close.
Call them the White Cliffs of Lompoc.
In the green hills south of Lompoc lie some of the world’s largest and purest deposits of a chalky substance called diatomaceous earth.
Every time you brush your teeth, paint the house, drink a glass of wine, have a glass of beer or fruit juice, swim in a swimming pool or take a prescription medication, diatomaceous earth is involved.
Also called diatomite, it is also used as an insulator.
While largely unknown to laymen, “Virtually everyone in first-world countries uses some diatomite every day or at least uses a product produced with the aid of diatomite,” geologist Robert Norris wrote in his book, “The Geology and Landscape of Santa Barbara County.”
Diatomaceous earth is made up of the fossil remains of microscopic marine plants related to algae called diatoms, which built up into layers and were uplifted by earthquakes or volcanic activity millions of years ago, forming the so-called White Hills. Refined by mills into powder, it is used by countless industries.
“It’s the same material as that found in the White Cliffs of Dover,” said Dennis Headrick, executive assistant at the Lompoc Valley Chamber of Commerce, a sturdy two-story building on South I Street that is built of diatomaceous earth.
When the building was constructed in 1892, “they didn’t know what to do with it so they made building material of it,” said Headrick. The builder “was ridiculed for building it.”
The material is also known informally as Chalk Rock. “You can pick it up and draw on the sidewalk with it,” he said.
Large deposits of the material were found in the 1880s on the Balaam family farm in Miguelito Canyon south of Lompoc, according to the Lompoc Valley Historical Society.
A son, Arthur Balaam, who had studied mineralogy in school, discovered that “the Old White Hills,” as his father called the area, held a flaky substance that could be used in lighting fires. Digging hunks of material by hand from the ground, he shipped it to a buyer in San Francisco.
The first commercial shipment of diatomaceous earth followed on May 12, 1893.
Production grew into a large-scale operation covering thousands of acres and employing hundreds of Lompoc residents. Housing communities once grew up around the facility, said Karen Paaske, president of the Historical Society, whose parents worked at the mine, acquired by the Johns Manville Corp in 1928.
“To find good quality stuff is really rare,” said Paaske. “It’s very unique to Lompoc.”
The mining facility, owned by the Celite Corp. since 1991, is on Miguelito Road two miles south of Lompoc.
Call them the White Cliffs of Lompoc.
In the green hills south of Lompoc lie some of the world’s largest and purest deposits of a chalky substance called diatomaceous earth.
Every time you brush your teeth, paint the house, drink a glass of wine, have a glass of beer or fruit juice, swim in a swimming pool or take a prescription medication, diatomaceous earth is involved.
Also called diatomite, it is also used as an insulator.
While largely unknown to laymen, “Virtually everyone in first-world countries uses some diatomite every day or at least uses a product produced with the aid of diatomite,” geologist Robert Norris wrote in his book, “The Geology and Landscape of Santa Barbara County.”
Diatomaceous earth is made up of the fossil remains of microscopic marine plants related to algae called diatoms, which built up into layers and were uplifted by earthquakes or volcanic activity millions of years ago, forming the so-called White Hills. Refined by mills into powder, it is used by countless industries.
“It’s the same material as that found in the White Cliffs of Dover,” said Dennis Headrick, executive assistant at the Lompoc Valley Chamber of Commerce, a sturdy two-story building on South I Street that is built of diatomaceous earth.
When the building was constructed in 1892, “they didn’t know what to do with it so they made building material of it,” said Headrick. The builder “was ridiculed for building it.”
The material is also known informally as Chalk Rock. “You can pick it up and draw on the sidewalk with it,” he said.
Large deposits of the material were found in the 1880s on the Balaam family farm in Miguelito Canyon south of Lompoc, according to the Lompoc Valley Historical Society.
A son, Arthur Balaam, who had studied mineralogy in school, discovered that “the Old White Hills,” as his father called the area, held a flaky substance that could be used in lighting fires. Digging hunks of material by hand from the ground, he shipped it to a buyer in San Francisco.
The first commercial shipment of diatomaceous earth followed on May 12, 1893.
Production grew into a large-scale operation covering thousands of acres and employing hundreds of Lompoc residents. Housing communities once grew up around the facility, said Karen Paaske, president of the Historical Society, whose parents worked at the mine, acquired by the Johns Manville Corp in 1928.
“To find good quality stuff is really rare,” said Paaske. “It’s very unique to Lompoc.”
The mining facility, owned by the Celite Corp. since 1991, is on Miguelito Road two miles south of Lompoc.
2011年11月28日星期一
Smart Windows To Let Heat In
When you think of high-tech gadgets that make us greener, you might picture solar panels or electric cars; windows may not seem as exciting. But buildings are responsible for 40 percent of the country's energy use, and researchers say they can lower that number by making windows smarter.
As someone who studies windows, Howdy Goudey isn't surprised that most of us find them a little boring.
"It's a pretty pedestrian object," he says. "You know, what's new to do with a window?"
But at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., windows are the focus of some cutting-edge research in nanocrystal technology.
For the most part, windows aren't good insulators. They leak heat in the winter and let heat in during the summer. Many homes still have single-pane windows, which were the name of the game during the post-World War II building boom.
But the country soon learned that insulation is necessary, as energy prices skyrocketed in the 1970s. Double-pane windows became common, and then came double-pane windows with invisible coatings, which are twice as efficient. Today, they make up more than half of windows sold. At a hardware store, these are labeled low-e windows, short for low emissivity.
Goudey demonstrates how the treated double-pane windows work with the help of heat lamps — the kind that diners use to keep food warm.
To simulate a hot summer day, he puts them behind two double-pane windows that look identical. In front of one window, it feels like standing in the sun. But standing in front of the other, low-e window is dramatically cooler, because it has an invisible layer of metal on the glass that acts as an insulator. The coating blocks heat from the sun while letting in light.
When sunlight shines through the untreated window, it provides both light and heat. Most of us want light coming in, but heat is the last thing we want on a hot summer day.
"If you have a few windows in a room with direct sun on them, it's equivalent to running a little space heater," Goudey explains.
But here's the problem: On a cold winter day, that extra heat from sun would be helpful.
"You'd actually like that solar energy to come in and help heat the space," Goudey says. "So that motivates the idea of a dynamic window."
At the lab's Molecular Foundry, Delia Milliron is developing a smart window that can change based on the weather with the help of nanocrystal technology.
"Nanocrystals are very small. That's why when we spread them out in a coating on the window, you don't see anything," Milliron says.
In one setting, the coating lets in both the light and heat from the sun, which is useful for colder days. But apply a small electric current — a couple of volts, Milliron says, or what you'd get from a normal battery — and that's enough to change the charge of the nanocrystals so they block heat from the sun, but not the light.
Milliron says that ideally these windows would be controlled by your heating and cooling system, meaning windows could make buildings more efficient instead of being the energy losers they've always been. All that lost energy costs money, says Stephen Selkowitz, head of building technologies at Berkeley Lab.
"It costs homeowners about $40 billion a year," he says. "And I'd rather have the $40 billion in my pocket [instead] of sending it out the window."
Selkowitz says smart windows could be widely available in as little as three years, but they won't be cheap — possibly costing twice as much as today's windows. The cost should come down as manufacturing ramps up. And one day, smart windows could be written into buildings codes, where the technology would have a much broader impact.
As someone who studies windows, Howdy Goudey isn't surprised that most of us find them a little boring.
"It's a pretty pedestrian object," he says. "You know, what's new to do with a window?"
But at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., windows are the focus of some cutting-edge research in nanocrystal technology.
For the most part, windows aren't good insulators. They leak heat in the winter and let heat in during the summer. Many homes still have single-pane windows, which were the name of the game during the post-World War II building boom.
But the country soon learned that insulation is necessary, as energy prices skyrocketed in the 1970s. Double-pane windows became common, and then came double-pane windows with invisible coatings, which are twice as efficient. Today, they make up more than half of windows sold. At a hardware store, these are labeled low-e windows, short for low emissivity.
Goudey demonstrates how the treated double-pane windows work with the help of heat lamps — the kind that diners use to keep food warm.
To simulate a hot summer day, he puts them behind two double-pane windows that look identical. In front of one window, it feels like standing in the sun. But standing in front of the other, low-e window is dramatically cooler, because it has an invisible layer of metal on the glass that acts as an insulator. The coating blocks heat from the sun while letting in light.
When sunlight shines through the untreated window, it provides both light and heat. Most of us want light coming in, but heat is the last thing we want on a hot summer day.
"If you have a few windows in a room with direct sun on them, it's equivalent to running a little space heater," Goudey explains.
But here's the problem: On a cold winter day, that extra heat from sun would be helpful.
"You'd actually like that solar energy to come in and help heat the space," Goudey says. "So that motivates the idea of a dynamic window."
At the lab's Molecular Foundry, Delia Milliron is developing a smart window that can change based on the weather with the help of nanocrystal technology.
"Nanocrystals are very small. That's why when we spread them out in a coating on the window, you don't see anything," Milliron says.
In one setting, the coating lets in both the light and heat from the sun, which is useful for colder days. But apply a small electric current — a couple of volts, Milliron says, or what you'd get from a normal battery — and that's enough to change the charge of the nanocrystals so they block heat from the sun, but not the light.
Milliron says that ideally these windows would be controlled by your heating and cooling system, meaning windows could make buildings more efficient instead of being the energy losers they've always been. All that lost energy costs money, says Stephen Selkowitz, head of building technologies at Berkeley Lab.
"It costs homeowners about $40 billion a year," he says. "And I'd rather have the $40 billion in my pocket [instead] of sending it out the window."
Selkowitz says smart windows could be widely available in as little as three years, but they won't be cheap — possibly costing twice as much as today's windows. The cost should come down as manufacturing ramps up. And one day, smart windows could be written into buildings codes, where the technology would have a much broader impact.
2011年11月27日星期日
Getting to know snow
Snow here in the High Country is a thing of beauty, covering the landscape in a peaceful white. It is as valuable now as gold was to the miners in this area and snow is actually a mineral! The definition of a mineral is: “A naturally occurring homogeneous solid, inorganically formed, with a definite chemical composition and an ordered atomic arrangement.”
Snow is beautiful as each snowflake is unique; a slice of a six-sided crystal and every snowflake, like a quartz crystal, is vibrant and vibrating. Snow crystals form in six-sided shapes because water molecules are made of one oxygen and two hydrogen molecules. As water begins to crystallize into ice, its hydrogen molecules hook together in ways that form six-sided crystals.
Snowflakes are agglomerates of many snow crystals. Most snowflakes are less than one-half inch across. Under certain conditions, usually requiring near-freezing temperatures, light winds and unstable, convective atmospheric conditions, much larger and irregular flakes can form. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the largest snowflake ever measured was 15 inches wide and 8 inches thick. This was observed and recorded in 1887 at Fort Keogh, Mont.
So what is snow? It is a form of precipitation within the Earth's atmosphere in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes that fall from clouds. Since snow is composed of small ice particles, it is a granular material. It has an open and therefore soft structure, unless packed by external pressure.
Snowfall tends to form within regions of upward motion of air around a type of low-pressure system. In mountainous areas, heavy snow is possible where upslope flow is maximized within windward sides of the terrain at elevation if the temperature is low enough.
Why is snow white? Visible sunlight is white and most natural materials absorb some sunlight which gives them their color. Snow, however, reflects most of the sunlight. The complex structure of snow crystals results in countless tiny surfaces from which visible light is efficiently reflected. What little sunlight is absorbed by snow is absorbed uniformly over the wavelengths of visible light, thus giving snow its white appearance.
The fluffiest, lowest density snows typically fall with light winds and temperatures near 15 degrees Fahrenheit. At colder temperatures, the crystal structure and size change. At very cold temperatures near 0 degrees Fahrenheit, crystals tend to be smaller so that they pack more closely together as they accumulate, producing snow that may be denser.
Fresh snow absorbs sound, lowering ambient noise over a landscape because the trapped air between snowflakes absorbs vibration. Walking across snowfall produces a squeaking sound at low temperatures.
A layer of snow is made up of ice grains with air in between the ice grains. Because the snow layer is mostly empty air space, when you step on a layer of snow you compress that layer a little or a lot, depending on how old the snow is. As the snow compresses, the ice grains rub against each other. This creates friction or resistance; the colder the temperature, the greater the friction between the grains of ice. The sudden squishing of the snow at lower temperatures produces the creaking sound. At warmer temperatures closer to melting, this friction is reduced to the point where the sliding of the grains against each other produces little or no noise.
In a snow pack with a significant temperature gradient, large six-sided, cup shaped “depth hoar crystals” form a loosely packed layer at the bottom. Many small non-hibernating mammals depend upon these loose snow crystals for easy construction of tunnels throughout the subnivean environment. This “sugar snow” can often be the weak and unstable layer that causes avalanche hazards.
Snow cover can protect crops from extreme cold. A blanket of snow keeps the ground evenly frozen, preventing frost heaves and protecting the plants from upheaval.
Each snowflake forms around a particle of dust, which is a tiny grain of soil containing a minute amount of minerals. The minerals in snow are absorbed into the soil, and when the ground thaws, they are taken up by the plants. Minerals provide structure and allow communication in cells, plants and animals.
The water content of snow is variable. Ten inches of fresh snow can contain as little as 0.10 inches of water or as much as 5 inches, depending on crystal structure, wind speed and temperature.
One major benefit of a good snow cover is that snow is an excellent insulator of the soil. Without snow, very cold temperatures can freeze the soil deeper and deeper. Generally, temperatures underneath a layer of snow increase about 2 degrees F for each inch of accumulation. Because the soil also gives off some heat, the temperature at the soil surface can be much warmer than the air temperature.
Most skiers are familiar with the many terms referring to snow or snow conditions: boilerplate, breakable crust, powder, champagne powder, corduroy, corn, hard pack, packed powder, moguls, cornice, glacier, flurries and avalanche just to name a few. The most magical moments on the mountain are a sunny morning after a fresh snowfall when sun shining on a few stray flakes in the air look like floating diamonds or stardust against a brilliant blue sky.
Snow is beautiful as each snowflake is unique; a slice of a six-sided crystal and every snowflake, like a quartz crystal, is vibrant and vibrating. Snow crystals form in six-sided shapes because water molecules are made of one oxygen and two hydrogen molecules. As water begins to crystallize into ice, its hydrogen molecules hook together in ways that form six-sided crystals.
Snowflakes are agglomerates of many snow crystals. Most snowflakes are less than one-half inch across. Under certain conditions, usually requiring near-freezing temperatures, light winds and unstable, convective atmospheric conditions, much larger and irregular flakes can form. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the largest snowflake ever measured was 15 inches wide and 8 inches thick. This was observed and recorded in 1887 at Fort Keogh, Mont.
So what is snow? It is a form of precipitation within the Earth's atmosphere in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes that fall from clouds. Since snow is composed of small ice particles, it is a granular material. It has an open and therefore soft structure, unless packed by external pressure.
Snowfall tends to form within regions of upward motion of air around a type of low-pressure system. In mountainous areas, heavy snow is possible where upslope flow is maximized within windward sides of the terrain at elevation if the temperature is low enough.
Why is snow white? Visible sunlight is white and most natural materials absorb some sunlight which gives them their color. Snow, however, reflects most of the sunlight. The complex structure of snow crystals results in countless tiny surfaces from which visible light is efficiently reflected. What little sunlight is absorbed by snow is absorbed uniformly over the wavelengths of visible light, thus giving snow its white appearance.
The fluffiest, lowest density snows typically fall with light winds and temperatures near 15 degrees Fahrenheit. At colder temperatures, the crystal structure and size change. At very cold temperatures near 0 degrees Fahrenheit, crystals tend to be smaller so that they pack more closely together as they accumulate, producing snow that may be denser.
Fresh snow absorbs sound, lowering ambient noise over a landscape because the trapped air between snowflakes absorbs vibration. Walking across snowfall produces a squeaking sound at low temperatures.
A layer of snow is made up of ice grains with air in between the ice grains. Because the snow layer is mostly empty air space, when you step on a layer of snow you compress that layer a little or a lot, depending on how old the snow is. As the snow compresses, the ice grains rub against each other. This creates friction or resistance; the colder the temperature, the greater the friction between the grains of ice. The sudden squishing of the snow at lower temperatures produces the creaking sound. At warmer temperatures closer to melting, this friction is reduced to the point where the sliding of the grains against each other produces little or no noise.
In a snow pack with a significant temperature gradient, large six-sided, cup shaped “depth hoar crystals” form a loosely packed layer at the bottom. Many small non-hibernating mammals depend upon these loose snow crystals for easy construction of tunnels throughout the subnivean environment. This “sugar snow” can often be the weak and unstable layer that causes avalanche hazards.
Snow cover can protect crops from extreme cold. A blanket of snow keeps the ground evenly frozen, preventing frost heaves and protecting the plants from upheaval.
Each snowflake forms around a particle of dust, which is a tiny grain of soil containing a minute amount of minerals. The minerals in snow are absorbed into the soil, and when the ground thaws, they are taken up by the plants. Minerals provide structure and allow communication in cells, plants and animals.
The water content of snow is variable. Ten inches of fresh snow can contain as little as 0.10 inches of water or as much as 5 inches, depending on crystal structure, wind speed and temperature.
One major benefit of a good snow cover is that snow is an excellent insulator of the soil. Without snow, very cold temperatures can freeze the soil deeper and deeper. Generally, temperatures underneath a layer of snow increase about 2 degrees F for each inch of accumulation. Because the soil also gives off some heat, the temperature at the soil surface can be much warmer than the air temperature.
Most skiers are familiar with the many terms referring to snow or snow conditions: boilerplate, breakable crust, powder, champagne powder, corduroy, corn, hard pack, packed powder, moguls, cornice, glacier, flurries and avalanche just to name a few. The most magical moments on the mountain are a sunny morning after a fresh snowfall when sun shining on a few stray flakes in the air look like floating diamonds or stardust against a brilliant blue sky.
2011年11月24日星期四
China’s Pacific Reach to Spur U.S. Spending on Anti-Sub Warfare
China’s naval expansion in the eastern Pacific is poised to accelerate U.S. investment in anti- submarine warfare equipment, according to Ultra Electronics Holdings Plc, the world’s biggest supplier of sonar detectors.
The Pentagon and its allies will focus spending on devices able to spot subs even in the noisiest shipping lanes as China’s naval build-up heightens tensions with neighboring nations and underscores the need to secure commercial shipping flows, Ultra Chief Executive Officer Rakesh Sharma said in an interview.
“Even with global defense cuts the sonar business is expanding,” Sharma said. “Mineral supplies and commodities, for example, are all transported by sea, so it’s becoming imperative to protect trade routes. Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, as well as the U.S., will all start investing in anti-submarine warfare as the possible threat from China grows.”
President Barack Obama said last week he’d station 2,500 marines in north Australia to boost security in vital sea lanes as the U.S. moves to blunt the naval influence of China, which will add 30 subs through 2020 out of 86 likely to be built for Asia-Pacific fleets, according to defense researcher IHS Jane’s.
Ultra’s latest technology employs multiple “sonobuoys” which are dropped from a ship or plane and return data from different angles and frequencies to determine whether an object is a submarine, a rock or a whale, Sharma said. Earlier versions couldn’t differentiate between organic and inorganic materials.
Greenford, England-based Ultra is developing sonars geared to Asia-Pacific operations at a unit in Indiana, the CEO said. Emitting more powerful acoustic pulses, they can spot submarine signatures in the most sound-polluted waters, including the Malacca Strait -- the main channel between the Pacific and Indian oceans -- and the South China Sea, where oil rights have led to standoffs between China, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Other gear is able to detect variations in temperature and salinity that can help hide even nearby vessels, Sharma said.
“Water is a very good insulator and when a submarine is sitting on the seabed not moving for days it’s very difficult to identify,” he said. “You could have a sub sitting 5 kilometers off your ship and never hear it, or one 20 kilometers away that you can easily detect. It isn’t related to the distance the sub is from you, but the way the sound is travelling.”
U.S. concern about Chinese capabilities began to increase in 2006, when a diesel-powered Song-class attack submarine surfaced undetected within torpedo range of a naval battle group led by the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, Sharma said.
China already has 60 submarines, including eight that are nuclear powered, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and has been conducting sea trials with its first carrier, a reconditioned former-Soviet vessel.
China’s military upgrades have also reduced the likelihood of a “peaceful resolution” to tensions with Taiwan, according to a draft of a report from the congressionally mandated U.S.- China Economic and Security Review Commission released last month.
The U.S. is a guarantor of Taiwan’s security, and has defense treaties with the Philippines and Thailand.
Japan and South Korea are also among nations looking at anti-submarine systems, said Simon Wezeman, a researcher for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s Arms Transfers Program, while Asia-Pacific nations will procure about 100 maritime-patrol planes and 100 marine helicopters this decade, most of them sonar-equipped, according to IHS Jane’s.
Malaysia and Vietnam have submarines on order, and Indonesia is in talks with Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding to buy three 1,400-ton vessels costing 1.2 trillion won ($1.1 billion).
Ultra is already supplying sonar systems for Australian air-warfare and anti-submarine destroyers being upgraded by Lockheed Martin Corp. and for Boeing Co. P8 Poseidon planes, slated for service entry with the U.S. Navy in 2013 and equipped with torpedoes, depth-charges and anti-ship missiles.
The U.K. company generated 68 million pounds ($107 million) of revenue from its sonar division in the first half, equal to 20 percent of the total, making the business the company’s second-biggest after defense communication and computer systems.
Other units supply equipment for warplanes and airliners, with 50 percent of revenue coming from North America.
American Lewis Nixon invented a sonar-like listening device in 1906, with the first patent for underwater echo-ranging filed in Britain in 1912, a month after the Titanic struck an iceberg that had been detected visually less than 40 seconds previously.
The Pentagon and its allies will focus spending on devices able to spot subs even in the noisiest shipping lanes as China’s naval build-up heightens tensions with neighboring nations and underscores the need to secure commercial shipping flows, Ultra Chief Executive Officer Rakesh Sharma said in an interview.
“Even with global defense cuts the sonar business is expanding,” Sharma said. “Mineral supplies and commodities, for example, are all transported by sea, so it’s becoming imperative to protect trade routes. Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, as well as the U.S., will all start investing in anti-submarine warfare as the possible threat from China grows.”
President Barack Obama said last week he’d station 2,500 marines in north Australia to boost security in vital sea lanes as the U.S. moves to blunt the naval influence of China, which will add 30 subs through 2020 out of 86 likely to be built for Asia-Pacific fleets, according to defense researcher IHS Jane’s.
Ultra’s latest technology employs multiple “sonobuoys” which are dropped from a ship or plane and return data from different angles and frequencies to determine whether an object is a submarine, a rock or a whale, Sharma said. Earlier versions couldn’t differentiate between organic and inorganic materials.
Greenford, England-based Ultra is developing sonars geared to Asia-Pacific operations at a unit in Indiana, the CEO said. Emitting more powerful acoustic pulses, they can spot submarine signatures in the most sound-polluted waters, including the Malacca Strait -- the main channel between the Pacific and Indian oceans -- and the South China Sea, where oil rights have led to standoffs between China, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Other gear is able to detect variations in temperature and salinity that can help hide even nearby vessels, Sharma said.
“Water is a very good insulator and when a submarine is sitting on the seabed not moving for days it’s very difficult to identify,” he said. “You could have a sub sitting 5 kilometers off your ship and never hear it, or one 20 kilometers away that you can easily detect. It isn’t related to the distance the sub is from you, but the way the sound is travelling.”
U.S. concern about Chinese capabilities began to increase in 2006, when a diesel-powered Song-class attack submarine surfaced undetected within torpedo range of a naval battle group led by the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, Sharma said.
China already has 60 submarines, including eight that are nuclear powered, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and has been conducting sea trials with its first carrier, a reconditioned former-Soviet vessel.
China’s military upgrades have also reduced the likelihood of a “peaceful resolution” to tensions with Taiwan, according to a draft of a report from the congressionally mandated U.S.- China Economic and Security Review Commission released last month.
The U.S. is a guarantor of Taiwan’s security, and has defense treaties with the Philippines and Thailand.
Japan and South Korea are also among nations looking at anti-submarine systems, said Simon Wezeman, a researcher for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s Arms Transfers Program, while Asia-Pacific nations will procure about 100 maritime-patrol planes and 100 marine helicopters this decade, most of them sonar-equipped, according to IHS Jane’s.
Malaysia and Vietnam have submarines on order, and Indonesia is in talks with Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding to buy three 1,400-ton vessels costing 1.2 trillion won ($1.1 billion).
Ultra is already supplying sonar systems for Australian air-warfare and anti-submarine destroyers being upgraded by Lockheed Martin Corp. and for Boeing Co. P8 Poseidon planes, slated for service entry with the U.S. Navy in 2013 and equipped with torpedoes, depth-charges and anti-ship missiles.
The U.K. company generated 68 million pounds ($107 million) of revenue from its sonar division in the first half, equal to 20 percent of the total, making the business the company’s second-biggest after defense communication and computer systems.
Other units supply equipment for warplanes and airliners, with 50 percent of revenue coming from North America.
American Lewis Nixon invented a sonar-like listening device in 1906, with the first patent for underwater echo-ranging filed in Britain in 1912, a month after the Titanic struck an iceberg that had been detected visually less than 40 seconds previously.
2011年11月23日星期三
Building eco-friendly homes from industrial waste
A South African coal-mining company is cleaning up its act by building cheap, eco-friendly housing using its industrial waste.
For some years AngloAmerican -- one of the world's largest mining firms -- has been purifying the water contaminated during its coal mining activities in the South African city of eMalahleni.
Now, AngloAmerican is mixing the waste by-product -- a mineral known as gypsum -- with cement to make energy-efficient bricks it uses to build houses there.
"We've built 62 houses so far," said Peter Gunther, AngloAmerican's head of sustainable development, and the driving force behind the initiative.
"Each home requires about eight tons of gypsum, but at present we're removing over 200 tons of it from the water every day."
Gypsum is a basic mineral compound of calcium and sulphur. The non-toxic mineral is soluble in water, but becomes harder and more adhesive the hotter and dryer it gets.
Because gypsum is malleable when wet, its most common commercial application to date is as the main ingredient for household plaster.
"Actually, there are 50 different uses for it -- from dental surgery to fireproofing doors," said Gunther.
"But there is a serious housing shortfall here, and we have so much gypsum, that once we decided we needed to do something with it, making a strong building material was the obvious choice."
And Gunther believes that his new bricks have significant advantages over the heavy cement ones typically used in the area: "The bricks are generally harder than traditional cement bricks, they're also better heat and sound insulators," he said.
But, most crucially for one of the fastest growing urban areas in South Africa, the gypsum bricks have a lower environmental impact.
"Because it (gypsum) is such a strong binding agent, we need much less cement to make (the bricks)," said Gunther.
According to figures from the Cement Sustainability Initiative, about 5% of all the world's man-made CO2 emissions stem from the chemical and combustion processes involved in cement production.
Most types of cement are made by heating limestone, a chemical process known as calcination which releases large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The industrial manufacture of cement also requires large quantities of fuel.
Gunther claims that his low-cement bricks save, on average, three tonnes of carbon dioxide for every home built.
Read related: 'Living' buildings could inhale city carbon emissions
In the city of eMalahleni -- a name that in Zulu literally means "place of coal" -- AngloAmerican aims to provide new homes for its entire local workforce, with 400 scheduled to be built in the next year.
"This is my first house ... this is my dream house, and I'm happy. It's not small. I feel free with my family," enthused Maria Mhlongo, whose husband works at one of AngloAmerican's coal mines in eMalahleni. The Mhlongo family was among the first to move into a gypsum-brick house after the company started building accommodation for its workers in 2010.
But can gypsum -- a product that AngloAmerican had been discarding as waste before last year -- really be such a wonder material?
Andrew Bloodworth is head of minerals at the British Geological Survey. He says that gypsum, "a relatively common mineral geologically," is indeed a great heat insulator and can be very strong -- but only as long as it stays dry.
"I've never heard of it being used to make bricks because it's water soluble -- that's why it's so good as a plaster agent," said Bloodworth. "I'd be interested to know how they've managed to get around that."
Gunther says that because the bricks are still partially composed of cement, they are fully water resistant.
"The brick mixture has been subjected to the most rigorous trials by the South African Bureau of Standards, and passed without any problems," he added.
Global carbon emissions from coal are second only to oil, according to the UN Environment Program, while other environmental factors such as air-pollution from coal dust and damage caused by mining also remain a serious problem.
Gunther acknowledges these issues, but says that coexistence between energy sources is necessary "for as long as the world is so much set up around running on coal.
"While we're still using it, the question is: What can we do to make it cleaner and even more useful? I think our approach goes some way to achieving that goal."
For some years AngloAmerican -- one of the world's largest mining firms -- has been purifying the water contaminated during its coal mining activities in the South African city of eMalahleni.
Now, AngloAmerican is mixing the waste by-product -- a mineral known as gypsum -- with cement to make energy-efficient bricks it uses to build houses there.
"We've built 62 houses so far," said Peter Gunther, AngloAmerican's head of sustainable development, and the driving force behind the initiative.
"Each home requires about eight tons of gypsum, but at present we're removing over 200 tons of it from the water every day."
Gypsum is a basic mineral compound of calcium and sulphur. The non-toxic mineral is soluble in water, but becomes harder and more adhesive the hotter and dryer it gets.
Because gypsum is malleable when wet, its most common commercial application to date is as the main ingredient for household plaster.
"Actually, there are 50 different uses for it -- from dental surgery to fireproofing doors," said Gunther.
"But there is a serious housing shortfall here, and we have so much gypsum, that once we decided we needed to do something with it, making a strong building material was the obvious choice."
And Gunther believes that his new bricks have significant advantages over the heavy cement ones typically used in the area: "The bricks are generally harder than traditional cement bricks, they're also better heat and sound insulators," he said.
But, most crucially for one of the fastest growing urban areas in South Africa, the gypsum bricks have a lower environmental impact.
"Because it (gypsum) is such a strong binding agent, we need much less cement to make (the bricks)," said Gunther.
According to figures from the Cement Sustainability Initiative, about 5% of all the world's man-made CO2 emissions stem from the chemical and combustion processes involved in cement production.
Most types of cement are made by heating limestone, a chemical process known as calcination which releases large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The industrial manufacture of cement also requires large quantities of fuel.
Gunther claims that his low-cement bricks save, on average, three tonnes of carbon dioxide for every home built.
Read related: 'Living' buildings could inhale city carbon emissions
In the city of eMalahleni -- a name that in Zulu literally means "place of coal" -- AngloAmerican aims to provide new homes for its entire local workforce, with 400 scheduled to be built in the next year.
"This is my first house ... this is my dream house, and I'm happy. It's not small. I feel free with my family," enthused Maria Mhlongo, whose husband works at one of AngloAmerican's coal mines in eMalahleni. The Mhlongo family was among the first to move into a gypsum-brick house after the company started building accommodation for its workers in 2010.
But can gypsum -- a product that AngloAmerican had been discarding as waste before last year -- really be such a wonder material?
Andrew Bloodworth is head of minerals at the British Geological Survey. He says that gypsum, "a relatively common mineral geologically," is indeed a great heat insulator and can be very strong -- but only as long as it stays dry.
"I've never heard of it being used to make bricks because it's water soluble -- that's why it's so good as a plaster agent," said Bloodworth. "I'd be interested to know how they've managed to get around that."
Gunther says that because the bricks are still partially composed of cement, they are fully water resistant.
"The brick mixture has been subjected to the most rigorous trials by the South African Bureau of Standards, and passed without any problems," he added.
Global carbon emissions from coal are second only to oil, according to the UN Environment Program, while other environmental factors such as air-pollution from coal dust and damage caused by mining also remain a serious problem.
Gunther acknowledges these issues, but says that coexistence between energy sources is necessary "for as long as the world is so much set up around running on coal.
"While we're still using it, the question is: What can we do to make it cleaner and even more useful? I think our approach goes some way to achieving that goal."
2011年11月22日星期二
Bubble, bubble, toil and success
It started with a simple concept: bubbles. But Central Middle School eighth-grader Carolyn Jons has turned that concept into a national-award-winning science project.
“My project was the effect of soap bubble size on insulative ability of foams,” said Jons.
First, she won the Eden Prairie School District Science Fair, then regionals, then state. Further awards were earned at the Minnesota Academy of Science State Science and Engineering Fair held in Bloomington in March. Jons eventually ended up qualifying out of 300 semi-finalists from around the country to be among the 30 finalists competing in the Broadcom Math, Applied Science, Technology and Engineering for Rising Stars middle school national science competition held in Washington, D.C. There, she scored among the top 10 and took home the Rising Star Award, which includes a trip to watch the Intel ISEF high school competition in Pittsburgh.
According to a news release, “She investigated whether bubbles would provide adequate insulation against heat loss in a bathtub or outdoor whirlpool. She developed an experiment to test the insulating capability of soap bubbles and to determine whether large or small bubbles were better insulators. She hypothesized that a layer of small bubbles would be a better insulator than a layer of large bubbles. Through her research, she confirmed that bubbles prevent heat loss, but found no significant difference in the insulating ability of small versus large bubbles.”
Jons has been participating in science fairs since she was in first grade, but this year knew her interests were soap bubbles and insulation.
While doing research on the subject, she found a website looking into how soap bubbles were providing insulation for a green-house in Canada, she said.
It made me wonder if soap bubbles could provide an affective means of insulation, and from there, her project began.
At the Broadcom event the focus is on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and teamwork. At the event, participants were broken up into teams and put to work on a number of problems. Judges weren’t so much looking to see teams get the perfect answer, but instead they wanted to watch their thinking process, noted Jons.
The teams had five different challenges, she said. One involved water purification. They were to determine what polluted a sam-ple of water. “There wasn’t very much detail and you had to go research facts on various pollutants,” said Jons.
Another project involved building a circuit. For another project, they built a suspension bridge. And finally, on the second day, they built a Rube Goldberg machine.
For Jons, science runs in the family.
“My dad’s a scientist so I didn’t really have a choice not to enjoy science,” she said.
So far she’s mostly done physics projects but this year’s science project has something to do with mold growth. She won’t reveal more details.
“My project was the effect of soap bubble size on insulative ability of foams,” said Jons.
First, she won the Eden Prairie School District Science Fair, then regionals, then state. Further awards were earned at the Minnesota Academy of Science State Science and Engineering Fair held in Bloomington in March. Jons eventually ended up qualifying out of 300 semi-finalists from around the country to be among the 30 finalists competing in the Broadcom Math, Applied Science, Technology and Engineering for Rising Stars middle school national science competition held in Washington, D.C. There, she scored among the top 10 and took home the Rising Star Award, which includes a trip to watch the Intel ISEF high school competition in Pittsburgh.
According to a news release, “She investigated whether bubbles would provide adequate insulation against heat loss in a bathtub or outdoor whirlpool. She developed an experiment to test the insulating capability of soap bubbles and to determine whether large or small bubbles were better insulators. She hypothesized that a layer of small bubbles would be a better insulator than a layer of large bubbles. Through her research, she confirmed that bubbles prevent heat loss, but found no significant difference in the insulating ability of small versus large bubbles.”
Jons has been participating in science fairs since she was in first grade, but this year knew her interests were soap bubbles and insulation.
While doing research on the subject, she found a website looking into how soap bubbles were providing insulation for a green-house in Canada, she said.
It made me wonder if soap bubbles could provide an affective means of insulation, and from there, her project began.
At the Broadcom event the focus is on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and teamwork. At the event, participants were broken up into teams and put to work on a number of problems. Judges weren’t so much looking to see teams get the perfect answer, but instead they wanted to watch their thinking process, noted Jons.
The teams had five different challenges, she said. One involved water purification. They were to determine what polluted a sam-ple of water. “There wasn’t very much detail and you had to go research facts on various pollutants,” said Jons.
Another project involved building a circuit. For another project, they built a suspension bridge. And finally, on the second day, they built a Rube Goldberg machine.
For Jons, science runs in the family.
“My dad’s a scientist so I didn’t really have a choice not to enjoy science,” she said.
So far she’s mostly done physics projects but this year’s science project has something to do with mold growth. She won’t reveal more details.
2011年11月21日星期一
Six low temperature records set in past week
The record cold snap that has gripped the Interior for the past week continued on Monday when a new record low temperature of 38 degrees below zero was recorded at Fairbanks International Airport early in the morning. The old record low was 35 below set back in 1904, the first year the National Weather Service began keeping records in Fairbanks.
It was the fifth straight day and the sixth out of the past seven days that a new record low temperature has been recorded at the airport. The last time so many consecutive temperature records were set at Fairbanks was during the record cold snap of September 1992.
The current cold snap began on Nov. 15 when the temperature dropped to 20 below. It has remained 20 below or colder since.
Monday marked a record seventh consecutive day with a low temperature of 35 below or colder at the airport. That has never happened before so early in the winter in Fairbanks. The old record was only two days in 1989.
Through Sunday, the high temperature had been 20 below or colder for five days in a row and there is a good chance it won’t get warmer than that today, which would make it six days in a row.
With an average temperature of 22.6 below, the week of Nov. 13-19 ranked second behind 1969 as the second-coldest week before Thanksgiving on record.
But the string of cold weather records looks like it will come to end on Tuesday. While temperatures will remain well below normal this week, they are expected to moderate slightly when a low pressure system now along the arctic coast descends south quickly into the Gulf of Alaska.
The air mass aloft will be colder than the air mass that has gripped the Interior for the past week but the push of cold air will be accompanied by clouds and areas of light snow or flurries. The clouds will act as an insulator and keep temperatures somewhat warmer than the past week. Temperatures much of this week are expected to be in the 10 to 25 below range, according to the National Weather Service.
“We’re expecting some cloud cover to come in, which will keep temperatures from being quite as cold for the rest of the week,” meteorologist Dan Hancock said.
Unlike the last few days, when temperatures in the hills were considerably warmer than the valley floor because of a low level inversion, there will likely be little difference in the temperatures this week between the hills and valleys.
“The air mass is going to be quite cold, not just at the surface but all the way up,” Hancock said.
It was the fifth straight day and the sixth out of the past seven days that a new record low temperature has been recorded at the airport. The last time so many consecutive temperature records were set at Fairbanks was during the record cold snap of September 1992.
The current cold snap began on Nov. 15 when the temperature dropped to 20 below. It has remained 20 below or colder since.
Monday marked a record seventh consecutive day with a low temperature of 35 below or colder at the airport. That has never happened before so early in the winter in Fairbanks. The old record was only two days in 1989.
Through Sunday, the high temperature had been 20 below or colder for five days in a row and there is a good chance it won’t get warmer than that today, which would make it six days in a row.
With an average temperature of 22.6 below, the week of Nov. 13-19 ranked second behind 1969 as the second-coldest week before Thanksgiving on record.
But the string of cold weather records looks like it will come to end on Tuesday. While temperatures will remain well below normal this week, they are expected to moderate slightly when a low pressure system now along the arctic coast descends south quickly into the Gulf of Alaska.
The air mass aloft will be colder than the air mass that has gripped the Interior for the past week but the push of cold air will be accompanied by clouds and areas of light snow or flurries. The clouds will act as an insulator and keep temperatures somewhat warmer than the past week. Temperatures much of this week are expected to be in the 10 to 25 below range, according to the National Weather Service.
“We’re expecting some cloud cover to come in, which will keep temperatures from being quite as cold for the rest of the week,” meteorologist Dan Hancock said.
Unlike the last few days, when temperatures in the hills were considerably warmer than the valley floor because of a low level inversion, there will likely be little difference in the temperatures this week between the hills and valleys.
“The air mass is going to be quite cold, not just at the surface but all the way up,” Hancock said.
2011年11月20日星期日
Sh1 billion query haunts Tanesco
Dar es Salaam. The Tanzania Electric Supply Company (Tanesco) is on a new test of credibility following allegations that it approved the use of substandard disc insulators in its high voltage power transmission lines despite disapproval by the public utility’s experts.The company endorsed the use of cap and pin porcelain insulators into its transmission networks worth about Sh1 billion procured against technical specifications. The procurement of the insulators that were rejected by Tanesco experts are said to pose a great danger to the transmission towers and the technical aspects of the transmission lines.
They were found, for instance, to have about 80 per cent weight increase for a single insulator, which experts said could have significant effects on loading of existing towers.
The Citizen has reliably learnt that an expert who inspected and verified the consignment and twice recommended that the 45,594 pieces of insulators were not fit for use in Tanesco’s transmission line networks, has since been transferred to Mwanza.
In August 2008, the company signed a Sh1 billion contract with M/s Anisha’s Ltd, a company that won the tender for the supply of the equipment. As per terms and conditions of supply, the supplier was required to submit prior to the shipment, a sample of insulator units for approval by Tanesco.
However, M/s Anisha’s unilaterally allegedly decided not to comply with technical specifications outlined in the bid document regarding inspection, testing and quality assurance.
According to two reports of Inspection and Acceptance of teams formed by Tanesco in June last year, factory acceptance testing of the consignment that requires the presence of witnesses from the client (Tanesco), was not done.
“The Inspection and Acceptance Committee is satisfied that the consignment of cap and pin porcelain disc insulators delivered by M/s Anisha’s Ltd are not fit for use in Tanesco transmission line networks,” reads part of the report by four Tanesco experts chaired by Engineer Brown Foi.
The team investigated whether the equipment met specification standards and whether they were fit for the intended use. “The anomalies observed are far beyond the specification and could have been avoided if the supplier had diligently adhered to the contract provisions,” said the report.
As per terms and conditions of supply, the supplier was required to submit prior shipment, a sample of the insulator units for approval by Tanesco. Many of the insulators randomly picked for verification were found to have sheared and cracked.
Following the findings, Tanesco’s managing director William Mhando wrote to M/s Anisha’s on June 29 last year, telling the company to collect the rejected insulators and replace them with new ones manufactured in accordance with Tanesco specifications and technical data provided in the contract agreement.
“The insulators delivered do not fit for use in our transmission lines and therefore Tanesco rejects the delivered insulators,” read part of the letter.
But in an interesting turn of events and highly questionable circumstances, as well as total disregard of recommendations by the firm’s own experts, Mr Mhando threw out their advice and formed a new team to re-inspect the insulators.
Mr Mhando’s team was chaired by Engineer Simon Kihiyo and drew members from Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS), Bureau for Industrial Cooperation (Bico) of the University of Dar es Salaam College of Engineering and Technology (CoET) and Tanesco. The committee, despite citing massive irregularities in the tendering procedures and shortcomings in the insulators, concluded that the insulators could be used in the Tanesco system.
“However, there is about 80 per cent weight increase for a single insulator and considering the number of units required up to 16 units for 220kV and 9 units for 132kV, this will have a significant effect on the loading of the existing towers.
“Therefore the committee recommends use of these insulators for replacement to be done only in transmission lines with 66kV lines and below. The insulators can be used in new transmission lines of higher voltages after incorporating weight in design,” the second team recommended.
One of the key findings of the team was that the weight of the insulators was far above the specified one. It recommended replacement of the existing insulators with new ones but be limited to transmission lines of up to 66kV, to avoid overload of existing tower structure.
“This fact may pose some difficulties, when it comes to the task of replacing a disc unit in a string insulator… However, as mentioned before that the tested porcelain disc insulator units satisfy the recommended compliances of power frequency overvoltage and mechanical failing load standards,” further reads the report signed by Dr Mighanda Manyahi of Bico.
Bico manager, Dr Alex Kyaruzi, however, said it should not be involved in any misapplication of its recommendation, which he says were only answers to what Tanesco requested.
“We were only asked to verify whether the supplied insulators were in accordance with specifications but not to decide on their use. There is no way we could say they were fit or not fit for use…. Eventually it is Tanesco who make decisions. We assume they have made due diligence of other considerations,” said Dr Kyaruzi.
Inquiries by The Citizen revealed the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) have carried out investigations regarding massive violation of public procurement rules on the tender.
The authority’s chief executive officer, Dr Ramadhani Mlinga, wrote to Tanesco in July 11, this year, and requested the company to submit all the documents regarding the procurement. PPRA declined to cooperate when this paper sought to know the findings of the investigations despite oral and written requests.
For nearly one month now, the authority’s Public Relations Officer, Ms Coleta Mnyamani’s answer has either been “the CEO who authorised the answers is on leave” or “I am not sure the information you’re seeking is for public consumption or not.”
They were found, for instance, to have about 80 per cent weight increase for a single insulator, which experts said could have significant effects on loading of existing towers.
The Citizen has reliably learnt that an expert who inspected and verified the consignment and twice recommended that the 45,594 pieces of insulators were not fit for use in Tanesco’s transmission line networks, has since been transferred to Mwanza.
In August 2008, the company signed a Sh1 billion contract with M/s Anisha’s Ltd, a company that won the tender for the supply of the equipment. As per terms and conditions of supply, the supplier was required to submit prior to the shipment, a sample of insulator units for approval by Tanesco.
However, M/s Anisha’s unilaterally allegedly decided not to comply with technical specifications outlined in the bid document regarding inspection, testing and quality assurance.
According to two reports of Inspection and Acceptance of teams formed by Tanesco in June last year, factory acceptance testing of the consignment that requires the presence of witnesses from the client (Tanesco), was not done.
“The Inspection and Acceptance Committee is satisfied that the consignment of cap and pin porcelain disc insulators delivered by M/s Anisha’s Ltd are not fit for use in Tanesco transmission line networks,” reads part of the report by four Tanesco experts chaired by Engineer Brown Foi.
The team investigated whether the equipment met specification standards and whether they were fit for the intended use. “The anomalies observed are far beyond the specification and could have been avoided if the supplier had diligently adhered to the contract provisions,” said the report.
As per terms and conditions of supply, the supplier was required to submit prior shipment, a sample of the insulator units for approval by Tanesco. Many of the insulators randomly picked for verification were found to have sheared and cracked.
Following the findings, Tanesco’s managing director William Mhando wrote to M/s Anisha’s on June 29 last year, telling the company to collect the rejected insulators and replace them with new ones manufactured in accordance with Tanesco specifications and technical data provided in the contract agreement.
“The insulators delivered do not fit for use in our transmission lines and therefore Tanesco rejects the delivered insulators,” read part of the letter.
But in an interesting turn of events and highly questionable circumstances, as well as total disregard of recommendations by the firm’s own experts, Mr Mhando threw out their advice and formed a new team to re-inspect the insulators.
Mr Mhando’s team was chaired by Engineer Simon Kihiyo and drew members from Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS), Bureau for Industrial Cooperation (Bico) of the University of Dar es Salaam College of Engineering and Technology (CoET) and Tanesco. The committee, despite citing massive irregularities in the tendering procedures and shortcomings in the insulators, concluded that the insulators could be used in the Tanesco system.
“However, there is about 80 per cent weight increase for a single insulator and considering the number of units required up to 16 units for 220kV and 9 units for 132kV, this will have a significant effect on the loading of the existing towers.
“Therefore the committee recommends use of these insulators for replacement to be done only in transmission lines with 66kV lines and below. The insulators can be used in new transmission lines of higher voltages after incorporating weight in design,” the second team recommended.
One of the key findings of the team was that the weight of the insulators was far above the specified one. It recommended replacement of the existing insulators with new ones but be limited to transmission lines of up to 66kV, to avoid overload of existing tower structure.
“This fact may pose some difficulties, when it comes to the task of replacing a disc unit in a string insulator… However, as mentioned before that the tested porcelain disc insulator units satisfy the recommended compliances of power frequency overvoltage and mechanical failing load standards,” further reads the report signed by Dr Mighanda Manyahi of Bico.
Bico manager, Dr Alex Kyaruzi, however, said it should not be involved in any misapplication of its recommendation, which he says were only answers to what Tanesco requested.
“We were only asked to verify whether the supplied insulators were in accordance with specifications but not to decide on their use. There is no way we could say they were fit or not fit for use…. Eventually it is Tanesco who make decisions. We assume they have made due diligence of other considerations,” said Dr Kyaruzi.
Inquiries by The Citizen revealed the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) have carried out investigations regarding massive violation of public procurement rules on the tender.
The authority’s chief executive officer, Dr Ramadhani Mlinga, wrote to Tanesco in July 11, this year, and requested the company to submit all the documents regarding the procurement. PPRA declined to cooperate when this paper sought to know the findings of the investigations despite oral and written requests.
For nearly one month now, the authority’s Public Relations Officer, Ms Coleta Mnyamani’s answer has either been “the CEO who authorised the answers is on leave” or “I am not sure the information you’re seeking is for public consumption or not.”
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