Author Archive for Jon

Safety of Medical Helicopters; NYT coverage

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Jon
on July 5, 2008
in Aviation and Uncategorized
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Barry Meier wrote this excellent overview of the medical helicopter industry, which followed two excellent pieces by John Dougherty. From Meier’s piece:

The fatal collision Sunday between two medical helicopters in Arizona was the sixth crash involving the emergency helicopters since May, making the last two months one of the deadliest periods in the history of the fast-growing industry.Sixteen people have died this year in seven crashes, which involved eight helicopters, according to federal data. Thirteen of the deaths have come since May.

About 750 medical helicopters are operating in this country, about twice the number flying a decade ago. Medical helicopters were once operated mostly by hospitals, but in recent years private companies, including some that are publicly traded, have come to dominate the industry.

The chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, Mark Rosenker, said the agency was greatly concerned about the spate of crashes. The board began to investigate the industry after a rash of accidents in 2004 and 2005.

In a report in 2006, it found that operators had failed to develop comprehensive flight risk programs, and that pilots often did not have adequate information about bad weather they might have encountered or equipment to alert them to dangerous terrain.

The board called for stricter flight rules and improved accident-avoidance equipment, among other recommendations.

The Federal Aviation Administration accepted all of the board’s recommendations, Mr. Rosenker said, but has put only some of them into effect.

“The latest spate of accidents has given the board concern that the F.A.A. may not be moving as quickly as necessary,” Mr. Rosenker said in a telephone interview on Monday evening.

Medical Helicopter Crashes Stir Concern

And links to Mr. Dougherty’s pieces:Crashes of Medical Aircraft Examined , and 6 Killed and 3 Are Injured as Copters Collide. The Times doesn’t hyperlink Mr. Dougherty’s byline; perhaps this is the equivalent of being a “made man” in certain organizations with which we’re familiar.

Iran’s surprising non-punitive addiction treatment strategy

Published
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Jon
on July 5, 2008
in Iran and Pulic Health
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In a country so harsh about other matters of personal autonomy (sex, in particular) I found it surprising that Iran would have a progressive syringe exchange policy and and a fairly gentle drug regime. From Nazila Fathi’s June 27th piece in the Times, "Iran Fights Scourge of Addiction in Plain View, Stressing Treatment:"

More than a million Iranians are addicted to some form of opium, heroin or other opium derivative, according to the government, and some estimates run as high as 10 million.

In a country where the discussion of some social and cultural issues, like homosexuality, can be all but taboo, drug addiction has been widely acknowledged as a serious problem. It is talked about openly in schools and on television. Posters have encouraged people to think of addiction as a disease and to seek treatment.

Iran’s theocratic government has encouraged and financed a vast expansion in the number of drug treatment centers to help users confront their addictions and to combat the spread of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, through shared needles.

The center in central Tehran, which is called Congress 60 and is run by a private nonprofit agency, is one of 600 centers that provide drug treatment across the country with help from government money. An additional 1,250 centers offer methadone, free needles and other services for addicts who are not ready to quit, including food and treatment for H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted infections.

Iran’s government, trying to curb addiction’s huge social costs, has been more supportive of drug treatment than any other government in the Islamic world, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

It was not always this way. After the 1979 revolution, the government tried a more traditional approach: arresting drug users and putting them in jail.

But two decades later, it recognized that this approach had failed. A sharp increase in the crime rate and the number of people infected with H.I.V., both directly linked to a surge in narcotics use, persuaded the government to shift strategies.

"We have realized that an addict is a social reality," said Muhammad-Reza Jahani, the vice president for the Committee Combating Drugs, which coordinates the government’s efforts to fight drug addiction and trafficking. "We don’t want to fight addicts; we want to fight addiction. We need to manage addiction."

Apart from the observation that this is yet another piece of evidence that non-punitive approaches are more effective than "war on drugs" - it also suggest that the Iranian government is capable of changing course, rethinking problems - and thus perhaps - under the right circumstances - able to negotiate.

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NYTimes: Scrap metal has doubled in price

Published
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Jon
on July 4, 2008
in R3 (Reduce/Reuse/Recycle) and Recycling)
. 0 Comments

Ann Farmer, in the Times, ("In the Metal Recycling Business, It’s Loud, Dirty and Suddenly Lucrative") reports that the price of scrap metal has more than doubled in a year.

From Farmer’s piece dated June 27th:

Bob Rommeney steered his flatbed truck into a scrap-metal recycling plant in Brooklyn and unloaded two battered cars that had been wrecked days earlier at Riverhead Raceway on Long Island.

Within hours, the discarded vehicles would have their wheels removed, their fluids drained and their bodies crushed into 3-by-4-foot squares. Mr. Rommeney, 54, a retired city sanitation worker, would return home to Maspeth, Queens, about $400 richer.

“It’s worth it to come here and scrap the cars,” he said the other day, waiting his turn in the yard to drive his flatbed onto a large scale. There, workers compared its weight with what it weighed when it arrived at the yard, which is owned by A.R.C. Metal Recycling, to determine how much he should be paid. “Three years ago, I would have gotten about $50 a car,” Mr. Rommeney said. “The money went up.”

It is a very good time for anyone involved in the scrap-metal business. People who collect scrap metal and take it to recycling facilities are getting higher rates for their deliveries.

In turn, metal-recycling companies are selling more scrap metal, particularly to customers in China, India and other developing nations, who are paying record prices. A.R.C. Metal Recycling has recently been selling its scrap steel for close to $500 a ton, more than double the price it received a year ago.

“It’s booming, and it’s still growing,” said Michael Allocco, 24, the general manager of the A.R.C. recycling plant, one of 68 scrap metal processing firms licensed by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs. The number of these businesses has grown nearly 20 percent in three years.

But the increase in the price of scrap metal has led to a rise in the theft of metal products, particularly anything made of copper. Mr. Allocco said he is vigilant about trying to ensure that none of the metal that is brought to his plant was stolen.

“I don’t accept the shopping-cart guys,” he said, adding that the police had visited the plant with photographs of people suspected of stealing metal, asking if anyone had seen them.

Mr. Allocco takes precautions like photographing his customers and keeping their driver’s licenses on file. “I try to keep the place on the up and up.”

Mr. Allocco’s plant is located in an industrial part of the Greenpoint neighborhood, alongside Newtown Creek and across the street from a new sewage treatment plant, whose bulbous towers add to a surreal landscape. Allocco Recycling, a transfer station for dirt, concrete and other types of fill, was founded by Mr. Allocco’s father on the two-and-a-half-acre site 20 years ago.

A.R.C., which is open 24 hours, buys hundreds of tons of ferrous metal a day. A large portion of it is steel.

At the plant, some of the oversize metal is fed to a huge hydraulic shearer resembling a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Its mighty jaws rear up and rip bulky metal items to pieces.

The arm of a heavy-duty material handler also routinely sweeps across the yard. Its enormous clawlike grapples release squirming loads of twisted metal onto a pile that rises 40 feet while awaiting compacting.

The company also buys thousands of pounds of nonferrous metal daily, which is placed in a warehouse, where a mound of brass car radiators sits alongside a collection of sinks, stacks of aluminum window frames and buckets of copper wiring.

“Nonferrous is worth more,” said Bill Monteleone, A.R.C.’s director of sales. He explained how customers are paid based on the type of metal they sell and whether they have separated the metals.

“The more you fine-tune it, the more you separate, the more money you get,” said Kevin Westhall, 39, who runs a small business removing items from the homes of people who have died. He strips the insulation from old copper wiring and he pries the nonferrous metal out of washing machines.

Separating the metal is hard work, said Mr. Westhall, who makes as many as five trips a day to the recycling yard. “I walk around like a magnet,” he said. “Metal is always on my mind.”

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Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids housing displaced pets, helping to reunite owners and pets

Published
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Jon
on July 4, 2008
in Flooding and Pets
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Kirkwood Community College, particularly its veterinary science program, is sheltering hundreds of pets displaced by the floods. According to this story by Kathy Kaiser, of the Kirkwood News Service:

A dedicated team at Kirkwood Community College has taken in hundreds of pets rescued from the record flooding in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The Iowa Equestrian Center on the college campus has been transformed into an emergency animal shelter to assist the Cedar Rapids city facility overwhelmed by the flooding situations of mid-June 2008.

Black Labrador 54 - via Kirkwood News Service

Along with the hundreds of cats and dogs in the Kirkwood flood shelter you will see geckos, a green lizard, an iguana, a rabbit, a macaw, birds of all sizes and a cage full of rats.

There are some local “celebrities,” too: The dog rescued from a roof by firefighters, Sam the cat featured in the local newspaper. Others have stories that may never be told until and unless they are reunited with their human companions.

As the more than 370 animals arrived, they were evaluated by one of three teams consisting of a veterinarian, a vet technician and vet assistant. Kirkwood Animal Health Professor Anne Duffy estimates 85 percent have owners. The others have been separated from their families, were from the animal shelter or simply strays.

Some animals arrived with their families who lost everything and were heading for one of the local shelters set up in school gymnasiums and churches. After losing everything they owned in the floods, it was difficult to leave their pets.

Kirkwood also has a Community Training and Response Program, and its affiliations include AgTerror, a program whose purpose is to make agricultural targets less attractive to attackers, and more resilient in case of attack. Pretty cool for a community college.

Con Ed Urged to Improve Its Response to Gas Leaks/P.S.C. gently applies pressure to Con Edison

Published
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Jon
on July 4, 2008
in Con Edison, Firefighting, Regulation and Uncategorized
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Ken Belson of the Times reported in June that state investigators had “suggested … ways that Consolidated Edison and the New York City Fire Department can better coordinate their response to gas leaks.”

After a seven-month investigation, the Public Service Commission is recommending that the utility ask firefighters to remain until safe conditions are restored, improve the way information about gas leaks is shared and set parameters for ordering evacuations.

The Fire Department and Con Edison were criticized for how they handled the deadly explosion, at a house in Sunnyside, on Nov. 21. The Fire Department said it did nothing wrong when it left after checking a report of a gas odor because Con Edison officials had taken control of the situation. The utility said it acted appropriately because it did not have information suggesting that any of the people in the houses in the area were in danger.

A 69-year-old woman, Kunta Oza, who lived at 48-19 41st Street, died a day after being burned in the explosion.

Con Edison, which said it followed its established procedures for dealing with gas leaks on the day of the explosion, has since improved its protocols, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

“We’ve worked closely with the Fire Department with respect to improving procedures for responding to gas complaints, maintaining emergency personnel presence on site and coordinating evacuations when necessary,” said the spokesman, Michael Clendenin.

Con Edison has already implemented some of the “actions to improve safety” that were recommended by the Public Service Commission. On Wednesday, staff investigators discussed their findings from the explosion at a commission meeting in Albany. The investigation is complete, but the report has not yet been released.

But Kenneth P. Thompson, a lawyer who is representing Mrs. Oza’s family in a civil suit against Con Edison, said the investigators’ findings showed that “Con Ed was negligent and caused Mrs. Oza’s death.” The report, he said, includes details about rusted gas pipes.

“Con Ed had a duty to fix that pipe, and that it wasn’t on their priority list shows they were negligent,” Mr. Thompson said. Mrs. Oza’s family is seeking $100 million in damages from Con Edison.

Officials for Con Edison said the utility did not comment on pending lawsuits.

Councilman Eric N. Gioia, who represents Sunnyside, said the commission had ignored the destruction caused by the explosion and should penalize Con Edison. (The commission did not assess penalties as part of the investigation.)

“The Public Service Commission continues to confirm our worst fears that they are little more than a public shield for Con Ed’s behavior instead of being the watchdog they need to be,” Mr. Gioia said. “Whether it’s getting electrocuted, steam pipe explosions or this, at most, the Public Service Commission gives them a slap on the wrist.”

Con Ed Urged to Improve Its Response to Gas Leaks, June 19, 2008.

Interestingly, the Public Service Commission entitled its press release

GAS DISTRIBUTION COMPANIES IMPROVE SAFETY RECORD
-Effort Underway to Further Improve Safety Performance-

On the same day that it expanded the definition of “major” system failure so that it means a system failure for 10% or more of Con Ed’s customers a maximum fine of $10 million, and a maximum of three incidents per year. “PSC Redefines Major Outages for Con Edison.” Have three major incidents - and the fourth, fifth and sixth - and every later one - are on the house. - Con Ed admits to having 3.176 million customers (See Con Ed Fact Sheet here) - so the message here is - try to keep the system failures to 300,000 customers or less - but if things get very bad - you’ll never have to pay more than $30 million in fines.

This doesn’t seem like a particularly effective deterrent.

See also:

Queens Crap Blog coverage of Con Edison issue(s)

New York Sun coverage of Con Ed

Inhabitat: Solar Rickshaws in development

Published
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Jon
on July 2, 2008
in Solar
. 0 Comments

Robots designed for nuclear waste cleanup - Popular Mechanics

Published
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Jon
on July 1, 2008
in robotics
. 0 Comments

Michael Milstein reports in Popular Mechanics on four robotic systems being used to clean up waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State. Here’s one. Check out Milstein’s article for the rest.

Via PopularMechanics.com

Mosquito threat in Wisconsin - Futurismic

Published
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Jon
on July 1, 2008
in Flooding and Uncategorized
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Thanks to Futurismic for their post -

The Mosquitoes Are Coming! reports Futurismic, based in Wisconsin, where

the record rainfalls over the past month have become something of a concern. The biggest water-related concern Southeast Wisconsin - Milwaukee in specific - has had in the last 20 years is the cryptosporidium scare we had in 1993. Now, though, with nearly an entire summer’s worth of rain in just less than a week, we’re in trouble. Why? Mosquitoes.

The biggest hazard with mosquitoes in Wisconsin in the West Nile Virus. With large - and I’m talking football-field-sized - ponds all over the area, it’s prime breeding grounds for large quantities of mosquitoes that carry the virus. The National Health Administration and the CDC have warned of a possible outbreak. It’s one of those concerns that a people don’t really think about, and it carries potentially lethal outcomes.

Many people are rebuilding after the devastating floods, and this will only be an additional burden. It’s one of those times when it’s nice to be advanced enough in medicine to deal with such large-scale problems.

Continue reading ‘Mosquito threat in Wisconsin - Futurismic’

Patrick McGeehan, NYT: A Bikes-Only Parking Lot in Midtown?

Published
by
Jon
on July 1, 2008
in Transportation
. 0 Comments

Patrick McGeehan of the Times City Room Blog reports that

A few business executives have dreamed up a private-sector solution to the problem of secure bicycle parking in New York: the city’s first bikes-only parking lot. They have a space on West 33rd Street. All they need is a corporation willing to pay as much as $200,000 a year to sponsor it.

“We’re really looking for a big number to build something quite spectacular,” said Daniel A. Biederman, president of the 34th Street Partnership. “We want this to be the premier bike parking facility in the country.”

Already, the group has cleared one high hurdle: Stonehenge Management, a developer, has offered a 2,600-square-foot lot next to an apartment building it owns on the north side of 33rd Street between Eighth Avenue and Ninth Avenue, Mr. Biederman said.

The partnership, which is financed by businesses and property owners in a 31-block section of Midtown, has developed a preliminary design for the lot and has ordered up a prototype of the racks it would contain, Mr. Biederman said. At first, it would hold 100 bikes, with room to expand if there is more demand, he said.

A Bikes-Only Parking Lot in Midtown?

ChannelLock 6-in-1 emergency tool

Published
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Jon
on July 1, 2008
in Gear, extrication, go-bags and multitools
. 0 Comments

From the indispensable folks at Popular Mechanics. Seems worth having in a go-bag. Since we’re of the belief that “go” should be organized in groups, with great attention paid to weight - we’re reluctant to suggest one in every go bag - but one or two in every group seems sounds.

The six features are:

  • side-cutting electrician pliers. According to Popular Mechanics, “Cut into both its jaws is a heavy-duty cross hatching that grips with a vengeance.” That is, powerful pliers, and
  • wire-cutting capability
  • gas shut-off wrench - and on the same handle
  • a pry bar.
  • On the opposite handle, a spanner wrench and
  • a glass punch for breaking through car windows

Channellock 6-N-1 Rescue Tool from Popular Mechanics’ Best of the 2008 National Hardware Show. by Roy Berendsohn.

Power outage in Omaha; restoration expected to take a week

Published
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Jon
on June 29, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

According to the Associated Press, electricity is out for thousands in Omaha, Nebraska, and restoration of power is expected to take at least a week. Link via nola.com

E.U. countries discuss cross-border disaster relief

Published
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Jon
on June 29, 2008
in Best Practices and Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

According to the website Insignia of the German THW of the THW (Technische Hilfswerk, or “Federal Agency for Technical Relief”), a recent conference continued what appears to be an ongoing discussion about cross-border cooperation:

Cooperation among civil protection organisations in the European Union (EU) was one of the key topics at the “Desaster [sic] Management 2008″ symposium in Schweinfurt last weekend. Dr. Manfred Schmidt, Head of the Department for Crisis Management and Protection of the Population at the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, Dr. Peter Billing from the EU Monitoring and Information Centre (MIC), and THW representatives spoke about the integration of the THW into the EU ‘Community Mechanism’.

Using past intervention missions as examples, Dr. Billing from the Civil Protection Unit at the European Commission illustrated the quality of European cooperation. Dr. Schmidt, who is the departmental head at the Interior Ministry responsible for the THW, went into more detail in his talk about the German contribution to cross-border disaster relief: an important part of this is based on the competencies at the THW. Representatives of the THW management held two lectures on the topics “The THW within the European Community Mechanism” and “Training EU Experts”, explaining the THW’s international work to the congress participants.

Quality of European cooperation, from the THW English-language website.

One doesn’t get the sense that this is a controversial discussion. The THW has assisted other countries, including France, in recent years, and this year has had teams in Cyprus, Myanmar, and China. And it’s only one of a number of German disaster relief organizations.

According to the CIA World Factbook, Germany’s population will be 82.3 million as of July 2008. For that population, Germany has 1,383,730 firefighters, mostly volunteers. The THW - which can be an alternative to compulsory military service, has 800,000 active volunteers, and about 800 in full-time administrative roles. And their organizational scheme is:

The main type of THW unit (about two out of three) is one of two Bergungsgruppe (1st and 2nd Rescue Groups), equipped with heavy tools like hydraulic cutting devices, chain saws, and pneumatic hammers.

The Fachgruppen (Technical Units) include:

* Infrastruktur (Infrastructure),
* Räumen (Debris Clearance),
* Sprengen (Demolition/Blasting),
* Elektroversorgung (Electricity Supply),
* Beleuchtung (Illumination),
* Wasserschaden / Pumpen (Water Damage / Pumps),
* Wassergefahren (Water Hazards),
* Logistik (Logistics),
* Ölschaden (Oil Pollution),
* Trinkwasserversorgung (Water Supply and Treatment),
* Führung und Kommunikation (Command, Control and Communication), and
* Ortung (Search and Detection).

And that’s not all; they’ve got four rapid-deployment (six-hour) SAR teams ready for foreign assignments, and five foreign assignment water-purification teams.

During Katrina, 89 German volunteers came to the United States to assist in levee repair. Loren Cobb of The Quaker Economist published this 2005 piece on the curious lack of attention by United States domestic media.

Hub and Spoke Networks - why they’re insufficient for disaster preparedness

Published
by
Jon
on June 28, 2008
in Networks
. 0 Comments

Just read a remarkable piece on Network Weaving about hub-and-spoke networks. From Connected Customers:

[The author, Valdis Krebs, had discussed attending a professional conference at a hotel]. The only negative with the event was the conference hotel’s awful WiFi service — and their response to it.

Hotels are used to dealing with disconnected customers — hotel guests who do not know each other. They can tell these guests anything. Since most guests do not talk to each other, nothing is verified, no action is coordinated.  In terms of social network analysis: the hotel staff spans structural holes between the guests — occupying the power position in the network. Below is a network map of the situation. The centralized hotel staff are shown by the blue node in the middle, while hotel guests are represented by the green nodes. The green nodes only talk to the blue node and not to each other.

When INSNA arrived, the hotel guests were no longer disconnected — many people in INSNA know each other and after initial greetings started to talk.

The conversation soon went to the lack of connectivity in the hotel — no one could get a connection out of the hotel to the internet. Not only did everyone discover they were having the same bad experience, but they discovered they were receiving the same lie from the hotel staff — “everything is fine, no one else is complaining”. Being lied to made “being disconnected” all the more infuriating.

Soon “emergent clusters” of INSNA members went to the front desk as small groups and started demanding better service — after all we were being charged for WiFi. The front desk manager became overwhelmed by the coordinated action and soon went into hiding and refused to talk about the topic. A network illustration of the connected INSNA hotel guests looks different. Because the green nodes are talking to each other and coordinating a strategy, the big blue node is now more constrained in it’s response, and ability to act.

There are lots of differences between these two structures: the latter structure looks more like Paul Baran’s description of a resilient network: redundant, decentralized. The first structure is entirely vulnerable to attack of the central node - and, under the circumstances Krebs describes, was incapable both of self-diagnosis and self-repair.

My apologies for not having the Paul Baran citations at hand - perhaps I’ll get an update in later - but for the nonce, am happy to send interested readers to Network Weaving; the proprietors also run OrgNet, and make InFlow network analysis software.

I wonder, if we did a network analysis of survivors of, say Katrina, what connectedness characteristics matter.

Wired: Former White House Advisor: Hackers Didn’t Cause 2003 Blackout

Published
by
Jon
on June 27, 2008
in Energy
. 0 Comments

Kevin Poulsen at Threat Level has interviewed Paul Kurtz, at the time of the 2003 blackout the White House advisor on critical infrastructure security, who says the Chinese were not responsible for the 2003 blackout. Former White House Advisor: Hackers Didn’t Cause 2003 Blackout

Hungarian hybrid, planned for 2012 production, gets 150 mpg

Published
by
Jon
on June 24, 2008
in Hybrids and Transportation
. 0 Comments

Jorge Chapa, writing in Inhabitat, reports that the Hungarian prototype for the Antro Solo, production planned for 2012, gets 150 mpg, and here’s how:

  • The hybrid electric/fossil fuel engine, familiar now to most of us - which captures energy while braking, thus recharging the electric batteries;
  • an exceptionally light carbon composite frame;
  • solar panels on the roof which can provide power for a 15 - 25 km trip (the post doesn’t specify how long that charge takes);
  • The two passenger seats (it’s a three-seater) come with bicycle pedals, which can offset the car’s energy consumption;
  • So if it’s dark, the battery is exhausted, you and your passengers are exhausted, what’s the last option?

Trick question: two options - a dual-fuel petrol/ethanol engine. Sound like an easy fit for a “station car,” if there’s any light at all. TRANSPORTATION TUESDAY: Antro Solo gets 150mpg at Inhabitat, in turn via AutoFiends.

antrosolo.jpg


If this technology, and others like it, become competitive - whoever has developed it stands to make a lot of money - and contribute to a gradual drip-drip of oil company profits. (Today’s Times has a comment from a Saudi official, who articulated some anxiety that current price shock and anger might result in people remembering the current state of affairs, and reducing long-term demand for petroleum; we’ll try to post about this later - but - you read it here first - at least some of the Saudi leadership think’s we’re intelligent and adaptive. Flattery).