Sandblasting: A Danger That Is Commonly Overlooked in the Oil Industry Work in the oilfields can be a dangerous prospect. From falling debris to explosions, oil industry workers face a range of threats on an almost daily basis. Yet, considering the potential for catastrophe in the world of the oil industry, smaller scale, less obvious dangers can easily go ignored. Sandblasting is a process that is usually part of a bigger project, like cleaning or refurbishing. As such, workers engaged in sandblasting are not always afforded adequate protection. Because of such oversights, ...

Psychological Evaluations: A Cornerstone of Florida Child Custody Cases In family law cases, the central focus in all child custody and parenting decisions is the best interests of the child. Ideally, parents should consult with one another and reach those decisions together. But it is not always clear what, exactly, is best for a child. What if the parents can't agree? Generally, if the parties to a divorce agree to child custody arrangements, the court will likely approve those arrangements and enter an order ratifying the parties' agreement. However, if the parents ...

Worker Injured at Massachusetts Plant The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recently cited a Lancaster, Massachusetts packaging company for an incident late last year that cost a man his life. On November 7, 2011, a 29-year-old worker at Horn Packaging Corporation was operating a corrugated box-making machine when he became entangled in the machine's moving parts. According to investigators, the machine's drive shaft had no safety guard and once the worker became ensnared in the machine it was impossible to reverse. Sadly, ...

Commercial Vehicle Hours-of-Service Regulations Hours-of-Service (HOS) regulations are the regulations that limit the amount of time a commercial truck driver can be on the road and the amount of time and frequency of mandatory rest periods in between travel. The idea behind HOS is to set forth mandatory minimum regulations for interstate commercial drivers in effort to curb dangerous situations where fatigue has caused accidents across the country and here in Massachusetts. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, a division of the Department of Transportation ...

Fatigued Surgical Residents May Increase Risk of Surgical Errors Modern surgical techniques have enabled doctors to successfully treat conditions that would once have been life-threatening. But for all their skill, surgeons are human and they do make mistakes. Unfortunately, a new study indicates that some surgical mistakes occur due to circumstances that may be preventable. According to a small study conducted at two Boston area hospitals, surgeons in training are often tired enough to significantly increase their risk of making errors in the operating room. Researchers ...

Ricky Schroder Film Production Suit Shows Need for Experienced Counsel Disputes over creative motion-picture production rights are an unfortunate, yet common reality throughout the entertainment industry, with stories in television shows like Entourage and Episodes being classic examples of art imitating life. In yet another real-life drama, actor Ricky Schroder, of NYPD Blue fame, has filed a lawsuit against producers Jack and Joseph Nasser and their production companies in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging that they tried to extort him for money after he backed ...

The June deaths of two young boys and a recent high-profile accident that rendered Usher's stepson brain-dead serve as sober reminders to keep safety in mind on the lake this summer. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently compared Lake Lanier to the "wild west," noting that the lake draws crowds, alcohol and inexperienced boaters. Last year the lake saw 28 boating accidents that resulted in injuries or involved alcohol. With no license requirements for boaters in Georgia, some boat operators don't know all the rules - or what to do if they end up on a dangerous ...

SS Choice introduces the 7's Hybrid E Cigarette Kit for smokers who want some muscle in their e cigarette. The kit is designed for power smokers who need a kit that can stand up to a heavy smoker without needing to recharge on a regular basis. The kit boasts two 650mAh batteries that produce 1,000 plus puffs on a single charge and new patent pending technology that includes an e liquid "Diffuser" for easy refilling, a cone adapter for 7's micro cartomizers, and "Power Smart" protection circuits to protect you super charged battery system from overcharging. Unlike ...

The current range of supported platforms for Gamercize includes Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC is planned to be extended in 2013 to support OUYA. Gamercize enables gaming through the player exercising, pausing the gameplay if the user stops moving. This principle of Gamercize is unique in exergaming as the game is the focus with exercise playing an enabling rather than integrated role. This patented concept allows Gamercize to support all traditional video games, without modification, to provide an immersive and sustainable exercise experience. The Gamercize focus ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – University of Maryland Chemistry Professor John Fourkas and his research group have developed new materials and nanofabrication techniques for building miniaturized versions of components needed for medical diagnostics, sensors and other applications. These miniaturized components -- many impossible to make with conventional techniques -- would allow for rapid analysis at lower cost and with small sample volumes. Fourkas and his team have created materials that allow the simultaneous 3D manipulation of microscopic objects using optical tweezers ...

July 13, 2012, Shenzhen, China - An international team, led by Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Science, and BGI, the world's largest genomics organization, has completed the genomic sequence and analysis of salt cress (Thellungiella salsuginea), a wild salt-tolerant plant. The salt cress genome serves as a useful tool for exploring mechanisms of adaptive evolution and sheds new lights on understanding the genetic characteristics underlying plant abiotic stress tolerance. The study was published online in PNAS. (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/07/05/1209954109.abstract?sid=548ade97-58d5-4c0a-a1e4-e1a43a9c9c21). Salt ...

Rat poison used on illegal marijuana farms may be sickening and killing the fisher, a rare forest carnivore that makes its home in some of the most remote areas of California, according to a team of researchers led by University of California, Davis, veterinary scientists. Researchers discovered commercial rodenticide in dead fishers in Humboldt County near Redwood National Park and in the southern Sierra Nevada in and around Yosemite National Park. The study, published July 13 in the journal PLoS ONE, says illegal marijuana farms are a likely source. Some marijuana growers ...

Rebuilding global fisheries would make them five times more valuable while improving ecology, according to a new University of British Columbia study, published today in the online journal PLoS ONE. By reducing the size of the global fishing fleet, eliminating harmful government subsidies, and putting in place effective management systems, global fisheries would be worth US$54 billion each year, rather than losing US$13 billion per year. "Global fisheries are not living up to their economic potential in part because governments keep them afloat by subsidizing unprofitable ...

The mystery of the origin of matter seems to have been solved. At the middle of last week, CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, announced the discovery of a new particle that could be the long sought-after Higgs boson. The particle has a mass of about 126 gigaelectron volts (GeV), roughly that of 126 protons. "Almost half a century has passed since the existence of the Higgs boson was first postulated and now it seems that we at last have the evidence we have been looking for. What we have found perfectly fits the predicted parameters of the Higgs ...

Los Angeles (July 13 2012). Nuclear weapons testing may at first glance appear to have little connection with climate change research. But key Cold War research laboratories and the science used to track radioactivity and model nuclear bomb blasts have today been repurposed by climate scientists. The full story appears in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published by SAGE. In his article for the July-August issue of the Bulletin, "Entangled histories: Climate science and nuclear weapons research," University of Michigan historian Paul Edwards notes that climate ...

This press release is available in German. Computer simulations have become an indispensable part of the modern design process. Standard finite element technology, however, requires designers to carry out a time-consuming and often error-prone mesh generation step that transfers the computer-aided design (CAD) model into the simulation model. Dominik Schillinger has created a novel simulation concept that enables direct integration of the CAD geometry into the finite element analysis, completely circumventing any mesh generation. The applicability of this technology ...

Many people these days feel a sense of "time famine"—never having enough minutes and hours to do everything. We all know that our objective amount of time can't be increased (there are only 24 hours in a day), but a new study suggests that volunteering our limited time—giving it away— may actually increase our sense of unhurried leisure. Across four different experiments, researchers found that people's subjective sense of having time, called 'time affluence,' can be increased: compared with wasting time, spending time on oneself, and even gaining a windfall of 'free' ...

A new study by the University of Chicago Crime Lab, in partnership with the Chicago Public Schools and local nonprofits Youth Guidance and World Sport Chicago, provides rigorous scientific evidence that a violence reduction program succeeded in creating a sizable decline in violent crime arrests among youth who participated in group counseling and mentoring. The Crime Lab study—by far the largest of its kind ever conducted—is unique in that it was structured like a randomized clinical trial of the sort regularly used to generate "gold standard" evidence in the medical ...

Policy makers need to be cautious in setting new 'low-carbon' standards for greenhouse gas emissions for oil sands-derived fuels as well as fuels from conventional crude oils University of Calgary and University of Toronto researchers say in a paper published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. The researchers, using for the first time confidential data from actual oil sands operations, did a 'well-to-wheel' lifecycle analysis of greenhouse gas emissions from transportation fuels produced by Alberta oil sands operations compared with conventional crude ...

Bethesda, MD—University of North Carolina scientists have uncovered a new strategy that may one day help people with cystic fibrosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder better clear the thick and sticky mucus that clogs their lungs and leads to life-threatening infections. In a new report appearing online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), researchers show that the "SPLUNC1" protein and its derivative peptides may be able to help thin this thick mucus by affecting the epithelial sodium channel (ENaC). Not only does this research have implications for cystic ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – A new study by University of North Carolina School of Medicine researchers found that 31 percent of children identified as at risk for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) at 12 months received a confirmed diagnosis of ASD by age 3 years. In addition, 85 percent of the children found to be at risk for ASD based on results from the First Year Inventory (FYI), a 63-item questionnaire filled out by their parents, had some other developmental disability or concern by age three, said Grace Baranek, PhD, senior author of the study and an autism researcher with ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Barrels and cones dot an open field in Saline, Mich., forming an obstacle course for a modified vehicle. A driver remotely steers the vehicle through the course from a nearby location as a researcher looks on. Occasionally, the researcher instructs the driver to keep the wheel straight — a trajectory that appears to put the vehicle on a collision course with a barrel. Despite the driver's actions, the vehicle steers itself around the obstacle, transitioning control back to the driver once the danger has passed. The key to the maneuver is a new semiautonomous ...

WASHINGTON — It is "imperative" that the U.S. build a large-animal biocontainment laboratory to protect animal and public health, says a new report by the National Research Council. Two options that could meet long-term needs include the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) facility as currently designed, or a scaled-back version tied to a distributed laboratory network. Until such a facility opens that is authorized to work with highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease, the Plum Island Animal Disease Center located off Long Island should remain in operation ...

PASADENA, Calif.—Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have developed a new type of amplifier for boosting electrical signals. The device can be used for everything from studying stars, galaxies, and black holes to exploring the quantum world and developing quantum computers. "This amplifier will redefine what it is possible to measure," says Jonas Zmuidzinas, Caltech's Merle Kingsley Professor of Physics, the chief technologist at JPL, and a member of the research team. An amplifier is a device that ...

Many patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) share a mutation in a gene called IDH. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published this week in the journal Leukemia & Lymphoma shows that this IDH mutation may be the first domino in a chain that leads to a more aggressive form of the disease. "In fact, it's not IDH itself that causes the problem," says Dan Pollyea, MD, MS, investigator at the CU Cancer Center and assistant professor of hematologic oncology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Rather, the mutation in IDH leads to exponentially higher ...