PV installation at Applied Materials, Inc., Austin Texas, 2008. Image by Larry D. Moore via Wikimedia Commons.
Larry D. Moore gallery on WikiMedia Commons (including many images not related to energy).
Apart from its beauty – we suspect there’s more to this PV panel design than an attractive layout. An image of the array, comprised of a larger number of similarly or identically constructed setups, can be found after the jump.
Marketplace reported last night that “Massachusetts has launched a program that 
lets home and business owners who generate their own power sell it back to the electric compan” at retail prices, increasing the incentives for the installation of solar and wind energy-producing equipment, and additional incentives for conservation (i.e. additional conservation, which brings net consumption towards zero brings a household closer not just to a zero bill, but payment from utility companies).
Program pays top dollar for extra power, reported by Mitchell Hartman. From the transcript:
[Massachusetts] State Energy Secretary Ian Bowles.
IAN BOWLES: Starting now, if you own solar panels on your home, or you have a small-scale wind turbine, and you want to sell extra power back to the grid, you’ll now be able to do that at a very advantageous rate.
California will do the same thing starting in January and lots of other states are working on similar programs. Massachusetts now leads the pack, because it’s making utilities pay retail rates for the electricity customers generate.
TERRY TAMMINEN: So it really encourages you to become a renewable energy entrepreneur.
California energy consultant Terry Tamminen says these policies encourage alternatives to fossil fuels. But can a bunch of windmills and rooftop solar panels really make a difference?
TAMMINEN: Boston may not be noted for its sunshine, but neither is Germany, and yet Germany is the second-largest user and producer of solar energy in the world.
For years, Germany has been paying customers a premium for the renewable power they generate. Tamminen says that’s largely why it’s jumped ahead.
Mitchell Hartman, Program pays top dollar for extra power.
Via Marketplace, a production of American Public Media.
Brain Trauma Foundation logo
The Brain Trauma Foundation, and its BTF Learning Portal, which provides continuing education for medical professionals, are an excellent resource for anyone concerned with preventing and treating head injuries.The BTF Learning Portal’s courses are CME-accredited in most, if not all, states. To their credit, BTF courses seem to be priced so as to permit them to continue their work rather than, as is sometimes the case, a revenue stream which can lead a non profit off-course, we we’ve seen in other cases.The BTF research led to treatment guidelines for TBI. According to the CDC, the CDC analysis
found that that if the BTF guidelines were used more routinely, there would be a 50% decrease in deaths, improved quality of life and a savings of $288 million a year in medical and rehabilitation costs.
According to the study, “Using a Cost-Benefit Analysis to Estimate Outcomes of a Clinical Treatment Guideline: Testing the Brain Trauma Foundation Guidelines for the Treatment of Severe Traumatic Brain Injury,” just published in the December issue of the Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care, when the BTF guidelines are followed, the proportion of patients with good outcomes increased substantially from 35% to 66%, and the proportion of patients with poor outcomes decreased from 34% to 19%.
Link to BTF press release. (We’ll update this shortly with a direct link to the CDC statement).
A :”sand table” – as opposed to a sandbox which is elevated,but whose purpose is primarily play – is a flexible modeling area used for planning, briefing, annd the visualization of elevation data.
See:Wikipedia entry for “Sand Table:
This excellent page – “Sand Table Showroom,” which was created by the NWCG Wildland Fire Leadership Development Program, which is, in turn, a program of the National Wildlife Coordinating Group. ((The Wild Fire Leadership Development Program which is described as follows on the “Program Page” under the heading “Program Components”:
This program is sponsored by the participating agencies of the National Wildfire Coordinating Group. The program components were developed by adapting “best practices” from a number of organizations that operate in high tempo work environments including the U.S. Marine Corps University; the Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management at the University of Pennsylvania; the U.S. Air Force Human Factors Research Lab; the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command; the N.A.S.A. Astronaut Development Center; the National Fire Academy; and various commercial aviation Crew Resource Management programs.
I don’t know if this is an unnecessarily unwieldy bureaucratic setup – but if they’re cooperating across agency lines, creating curricula, standards and providing training, all in all, that’s a good thing.
We hope to return to this subject – the structure and funding and control of the fire and other responder services in the United States – and to compare it to other countries, particularly Germany – our back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that Germany has 5-6 tims the number of fire fighters per capita as does the United States.))
For the moment, let’s tour the “Sand Table Showroom.”
The sand tables shown here are primarily used as a platform for delivering Tactical Decision Games. It is important to remember that sand tables can also be used to present briefings, conduct AARs, and teach topography map interpretation. You can build a table as elaborate as a fine piece of furniture or as basic as a hole in the ground filled with sand. All serve the same purpose. Keep it simple and build the table that best suits your facilitation needs. Basic considerations are: mobility requirements, exposure to weather, storage needs, and scale of landscape to be shown. Rule of thumb – the larger the table, the more terrain that can be shown, but the less mobile the table.
Alternate design 1
On The Media, aka OTM, WNYC’s award-winning journalism monitoring journal, reports that television’s coverage of “medical breakthroughs” is, alas, somewhat deficient.
M&M candy in blue, green and other hues
OTM’s awards include a Peabody and a Murrow; see
Bob Garfield, in Prognosis Negative, reports that television coverage of “medical breakthroughs” is. alas, somewhat deficient.
Blue M&M’s may cure paralysis! That’s just one claim made recently in a health segment on network TV. For more than three years, HealthNewsReview.org editor Gary Schwitzer has been methodically reviewing TV health news claims for accuracy and responsibility. But no more; he’s found the vast majority of TV consumer health reports sickening.
At the risk of seeming insufficiently cynical, I’m not sure that I understand the change in accounts from the initial (female officer, wounded, shoots shooter) to later (both wounded officer and second officer shoot, second officer’s shots may have been what dropped him). Maybe Sgt. Munley didn’t know that Sgt. Todd arrived on the scene. We’re talking about a live gun battle, not a choreographed scene in an action movie. Things happen real fast. One second you’re doing nothing out of the ordinary, the next second you’re shot. In the case of Sgts Munley and Todd, one second they arrived on the scene, the next second they were shot at, the next second they were running. Hasan allegedly chased and shot Munley, she shot back, Todd showed up from around a corner, shot at Hasan. See
James C. McKinley’s careful account in the The New York Times , Second Officer Says He Brought Fort Hood Gunman Down – NYTimes.com.
…. the initial story of how she and the accused gunman went down in an exchange of gunfire now appears to be inaccurate.
Another officer, Senior Sgt. Mark Todd, 42, said in an interview Thursday that he fired the shots that brought down the gunman after Sergeant Munley was seriously wounded. A witness confirmed Sergeant Todd’s account.
In the interview, Sergeant Todd said he and Sergeant Munley had pulled up to the scene in separate cars at the same time. He said they began running up a small hill toward the building that held the processing center where unarmed soldiers reported for check-ups and vaccinations before deployment. The gunman was already outside, Sergeant Todd recalled.
Via Inhabitat: NASA Unveils Chemical-Sniffing Device for the iPhone:
Chemical-sniffing ipod - image via Inhabitat
NASA’s cheap, low-power device senses chemicals with help from a “sample jet” and a silicon-based sensing chip that has 16 nanosensors. Once detection data is confirmed, the phone can send it on to any other device — or the government — via Wi-Fi.
There are a number of uses for the chemical sensor: it could provide early information on a chemical attack, confirm suspicions of methane emissions from local factories, or just give users information about the chemicals present in their everyday environments.
The chemical sniffer isn’t NASA’s first foray into iPhone apps. The agency recently debuted an app that aggregates and sends recent information, pictures, and video from NASA to the user’s phone. Here’s hoping NASA continues to deliver educational and useful apps to our cell phones!
Via Popular Science
Via TheStandard.Net, By Loretta Park (Standard-Examiner Davis Bureau), (click here for article)
South Davis Metro Fire Agency Deputy Chief Jeff Bassett said the explosion occurred because a pipe carrying hydrogen and diesel overfilled and sent some of the product onto the ground, where it pooled. It found an ignition source, a furnace, which caused the explosion.
This is what economists in the Neoclassical school call an “externality.” The costs of the disaster are borne by the citizens, not the oil company or the refinery. These costs actually add to the GDP. Economists in the Ecological school, at for example the Gund Institute at University of Vermont or the students in the Marlboro College MBA in Managing for Sustainability, argue we should use the Genuine Progress Indicator, GPI, not Gross Domestic Product, GDP (defined here and described here.)
From WikiNews: Burst pipe probed in Utah refinery blast as questions asked over safety
See also Damage To Homes From Refinery Blast Larger Than First Thought viamid-Utah Radio News;
OSHA Levies a Record Fine against Oil Giant BP from OMBWatch.
This in the immediate aftermath of OSHA’s record-setting proposed fine of $86.7 USD against BP for for a 2005 explosion which killed 15 workers and injured 170. See Steven Greenhouse, The New York Times, October 30, 2009, Record OSHA Fine Against BP
Over Texas Refinery Explosion.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administrationannounced the largest fine in its history on Friday, $87 million in penalties against the oil giant BP for failing to correct safety problems identified after a 2005 explosion that killed 15 workers at its Texas City, Tex. refinery.
We take the liberty of reproducing Greenhouse’s excellent piece in full:
Record OSHA Fine Against BP Over Texas Refinery Explosion, by Steven Greenhouse, New York Times, October 30, 2009.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced the largest fine in its history on Friday, $87 million in penalties against the oil giant BP for failing to correct safety problems identified after a 2005 explosion that killed 15 workers at its Texas City, Tex. refinery.
A series of investigations attributed the March 23, 2005, explosion to overzealous cost-cutting on safety, undue production pressures, antiquated equipment and fatigued employees — some who worked 12 hours a day for 29 straight days
The fine is more than four times the size of any previous OSHA sanction.
Federal officials said the penalty was the result of BP’s failure to comply in hundreds of instances with a 2005 agreement to fix safety hazards at the refinery, the nation’s third-largest.
According to documents obtained by The New York Times, OSHA issued 271 notifications to BP for failing to correct hazards at the Texas City refinery over the four-year period since the explosion. As a result, OSHA, which is part of the Labor Department, is issuing fines of $56.7 million. In addition, OSHA also identified 439 “willful and egregious” violations of industry-accepted safety controls at the refinery. Those violations will lead to $30.7 million in additional fines.
Contacted Thursday night after federal officials disclosed the OSHA citations to The New York Times, BP said it was disappointed.
“We continue to believe we are in full compliance with the settlement agreement, and we look forward to demonstrating that before the review commission” which has the power to modify OSHA penalties, BP said in a statement.
BP said the penalties related to a previously announced disagreement with OSHA as to whether BP was complying with the 2005 settlement agreement.
“While we strongly disagree with their conclusions, we will continue to work with the agency to resolve our differences,” the company said, voicing dismay that OSHA was announcing the fines before the review commission had given the matter full consideration.
BP added that it takes its “responsibilities extremely seriously and we believe our efforts to improve process safety performance have been among the most strenuous and comprehensive that the refining industry has ever seen.”
BP says that since the explosion it has spent more than $1 billion to upgrade production and improve safety at the refinery.
A series of investigations attributed the March 23, 2005, explosion to overzealous cost-cutting on safety, undue production pressures, antiquated equipment and fatigued employees — some who worked 12 hours a day for 29 straight days.
The explosion was caused by a broken gauge and flammable hydrocarbons that were overflowing from an octane processing tower, which lacked a flare system to burn off volatile vapors. Those escaping vapors were ignited by the backfire of a nearby truck.
In addition to killing 15 people, the explosion injured 170 workers and obliterated 13 employee trailers and damaged 13 others, some as far as 300 yards away. The Texas City facility is capable of refining 475,000 barrels of crude a day and is located on a 1,200-acre site some 35 miles southeast of Houston.
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has repeatedly said that “there’s a new sheriff in town,” signaling that she would take a more aggressive approach in enforcing wage and labor laws, after what she said was lax enforcement under President George W. Bush.
But one department official said that the record penalties assessed against BP were not an effort to send a signal to industry, but a straightforward move that punished a company with a long record of moving slowly to address safety problems.
In the 30 years before the 2005 explosion, there were 23 deaths at the Texas City refinery.
One Labor Department official said BP was likely to seek to have the fines reduced by appealing them, first to the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission and then perhaps in federal court.
Federal officials say they expect BP to dispute that the company was required to do all that OSHA said and that it had failed to meet the deadline to remedy problems.
Six months after the explosion, BP entered into a settlement with OSHA in which it agreed to pay a $21.3 million fine, then the largest in OSHA history.
The previously highest fine was an $11.5 million penalty ordered in 1991 against the Angus Chemical Company and IMC Fertilizer Group, operators of a Louisiana fertilizer plant where an explosion killed eight workers and injured 120.
As part of the settlement, BP also promised to commission an independent audit and to take actions to eliminate potential hazards found in the audit, which was conducted by the AcuTech Consulting Group.
One Labor Department official voiced dismay that BP had four years to correct the problems identified after the settlement, yet OSHA still found hundreds of violations.
BP has already pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the explosion and agreed to pay $50 million, the largest criminal fine ever assessed against a company for Clean Air Act violations. Those violations included failing to maintain the safe startup of processing units and the mechanical integrity of the refinery
Since the explosion, BP has settled more than 4,000 civil claims, paid from a $2.1 billion fund it set aside to resolve claims.
mudvillegazette.com – 5/9/2009
Navy Captures Surprised Pirates
—
SOMEWHERE OFF THE SOMALI COAST : The pirates on board the two skiffs must have thought they had an easy target – but they were in for an unpleasant surprise. Their prey was actually a U.S. Navy vessel, transiting northward to join other U.S. Navy and coalition ships operating in the area. …
via Navy Captures Surprised Pirates – John Lewis, Somali, Congress.
Microscopes & Lab Equipment. at eGeneralMEdical.com –
good prices – it appears –
BAGGU. – sturdy bags which fold into minuteness; not designed for hauling large loads over long distances; but kept within a go-bag – an easy way to have a reserve carrying capacity.
We’ve only bought the one – and so haven’t subjected it to a testing-the-limits regimen.But ours has been holding up well..
Typhoon Mirinae on 28 October. Speed 98 mph, gusts up to 121 mph. Via NOAA's OSEI program
Alertnet advises Mirinae is likely to hit the Philippines on 30 October.
Further information available at Tropical Storm Risk, [http://tropicalstormrisk.com]
See also:
Additional information/images via Earth Snapshot:
Philippines sends relief teams in path of typhoon Reuters, on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:02:27 -0700
Emergency and rescue teams were also sent to areas directly in the path of Typhoon Mirinae, including major rice-producing provinces north of Manila, …
has this report by Sholnn Freeman on the Northwest Pilots who missed their destination by about 150 miles. The plane was also out of contact (that is, not responding to radio hails for over an hour. Northwest pilots say they were distracted by laptops. Interestingly, the pilots don’t allege fatigue as a factor; they claim
Aviation safety experts described the mishap as “stunning.”
to have been having a conversation about new scheduling rules and referring to their laptops.
Co-pilot Richard Cole of Salem, Ore., told National
Transportation Safety Board investigators that he was giving instructions about monthly crew scheduling procedures to the plane’s captain, Timothy Cheney of Gig Harbor, Wash. The NTSB said each pilot used the computers during the discussion. Northwest’s merger with Delta Air Lines last year has led to numerous policy changes for pilots.“There is no reason that pilots not impaired by fatigue or other problems should allow themselves to become this distracted,” said Bill Voss, president of the nonprofit Flight Safety Foundation. “I think they are probably telling the truth, because you would not have been able to make up a better lie.”
WaPo, Northwest pilots say they were distracted by laptops
, Sholnn Freeman.