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Sunday, January 13, 2013

The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a review Friday into the design and manufacture of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, following five incidents in five days involving the aircraft and two Japanese airlines.

On Monday, an electrical fire broke out aboard a Japan Airlines 787 at Boston’s Logan International Airport, when a battery pack which powers the auxiliary power unit, for when the plane is on the ground, caught fire. The fire was discovered by maintenance workers after passengers and crew disembarked following their flight from Tokyo’s Narita Airport.

The next day, a separate Japan Airlines 787, also at Logan International Airport, heading to Tokyo, suffered a fuel leak that spilled around 40 gallons, which was spotted by the crew of the aircraft taxiing behind them. “That Japan Air may know it, but they’ve got fuel or something spilling out the outboard left wing. Quite a bit,” said the pilot of aircraft behind them on local air traffic control frequencies.

Wednesday, in Japan, an All Nippon Airways 787, the launch customer for the aircraft, cancelled a flight after a brake problem was reported.

Earlier Friday, two All Nippon Airways suffered separate incidents in Japan. An oil leak was noticed in the engine after one aircraft had landed in Miyazaki, coming from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. Another flight, flying between Haneda Airport and Matsuyama said the pilot’s side window in the cockpit suffered a crack.

The FAA in a statement said “In light of a series of recent events, the FAA will conduct a comprehensive review of the Boeing 787 critical systems, including the design, manufacture and assembly.” Further adding, “The purpose of the review is to validate the work conducted during the certification process and further ensure that the aircraft meets the FAA’s high level of safety.”

According to the statement, “The review will also examine how the electrical and mechanical systems interact with each other.” The Boeing 787 relies more on electrical, as opposed to mechanical, systems than past aircraft from the manufacturer including having electronics operate hydraulic pumps and using electric brakes. Large portions of the plane’s structure use lightweight carbon fiber composite instead of more traditional metal airframe.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said, “The safety of the traveling public is our top priority […] This review will help us look at the root causes and do everything we can to safeguard against similar events in the future.”

“We are confident that the aircraft is safe. But we need to have a complete understanding of what is happening,” said newly sworn-in FAA Administrator Michael P. Huerta. “We are conducting the review to further ensure that the aircraft meets our high safety standards.”

Boeing released a statement saying, “[The company] is confident in the design and performance of the 787. It is a safe and efficient airplane. The airplane has logged 50,000 hours of flight and there are more than 150 flights occurring daily.”

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

The Walt Disney Company has finalized a US$7.4 billion deal to acquire its long-time partner Pixar in an all stock buy-out. The deal will make Steve Jobs, current Pixar and Apple CEO, Disney’s largest shareholder with about 7% (valued at over $3.5 billion) and a member of the board of directors.

The merger was speculated all day Tuesday on the stock market and the announcement came just after trading closed for the day. Terms of the merger include Pixar’s John Lasseter becoming Disney’s new chief creative officer in charge of animation at the combined Disney-Pixar Animation Studios, as well as principal creative advisor at Walt Disney Imagineering, the unit of the company responsible for research and development of Disney theme parks worldwide.

Jobs purchased what became Pixar for $10 million in 1986 from George Lucas’s computer animation division at Lucasfilm. Toy Story, its first feature film, came a decade later, and began a long string of animation hits, including Finding Nemo. Such successes proved to be increasingly elusive for Disney to manage on its own. The partnership between the two studios had become shaky in recent years, as former Disney head Michael Eisner clashed with Jobs over the renewal terms of their agreement. In 2003, prior to his dismissal from Disney, Eisner infuriated Pixar’s creative team by predicting Finding Nemo would be a failure. Steve Jobs broke off negotiations in January 2004, having told one executive previously, “I don’t see how the relationship can continue as long as Eisner is there.”

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Sun Microsystems released version 3.0 of its free and open source (FOSS) office suite Openoffice.org on Monday. It has been reported that the new version comes with a number of performance enhancements and new features. Openoffice.org 3.0 now claims to work out of the box in Mac OS X as a native Aqua application.

News sources report the official download servers of OpenOffice.org crashed soon after the release due to heavy downloads. Downloads are however available from a number of mirror sites.

Openoffice.org 3.0 suite includes spreadsheet, word processor, equation editor, presentation tool, relational database and vector drawing software. Full interoperability is available for Microsoft Office 98/XP formats, but offers read only support for OOXML file formats. This version supports the new ODF 1.2 document format. The software is available for many platforms including Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac, as well as in multiple languages.

Users report OpenOffice.org 3.0 has introduced a new graphical and text-based hybrid equation editor, a mail merge wizard, improved label templates and better interface for outlining. Solver, a spreadsheet add-on for combinatorial optimization problems is included in this version.

Other enhancements highlighted by enthusiasts include collaborative options that allow multiple users to edit documents at the same time and improved drawing and charting tools. OpenOffice.org 3.0 can now display multiple pages during editing and workbooks up to 1024 columns in each spreadsheet.

The download size of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is 163 MB for Mac and requires OS X Tiger or later and an Intel Mac. The installer for Windows is about 145 MB in size.

“As government after government, enterprise after enterprise adopt the Open Document Format, they frequently adopt OpenOffice.org and love it. With 3.0, the application is more interoperable with MS Office, more capable, more extensible. It frees the desktop from vendor lock-in,” claimed Louis Suárez-Potts, community manager of OpenOffice.org.

Sunday, July 24, 2005

A new explosive detonated on Sunday near the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt police said. It was reportedly carried by a man from a tourist bazaar. The man allegedly was carrying the bomb in a sack. It might accidentally have exploded in the area of Kufr Tuhurmus. No other injuries were reported except to the bomber himself, Sami Gamal Ahmad, who was too badly injured to be questioned. The man may have been taking the explosive to the tourist area of Kerdassa, where souvenir shops are located in a bazaar near the pyramids, said an official.

Egyptian security forces have detained 70 suspects in a sweep to find the perpetrators in Saturday’s early morning bombings that killed 88 and left hundreds injured.

The police investigation of the bombings has targeted a smaller number of people than the October 2004 roundup that followed attacks in the Sinai resorts of Tabas and Ras Shitan. 3,000 people were detained for questioning in those bombings. According to Canadian CTV, 200 of those people are believed to still be in custody.

A massive manhunt was undertaken in the Sinai Peninsula to identity whether it was foreigners who executed the attack. One security official speaking on the condition of anonymity told an Al Jazeera reporter that the bombers “did not appear to be locals.” But the New York Times reported that Bedouin leaders were arriving at the local police headquarters, possibly over concerns that many of the suspects picked up in the prior bombing in the region were, by human rights group accounts, Bedouin.

Among the dead, officials said victims included British, Russian, Dutch, Kuwaitis, Saudis, Qataris, Czech Republic, U.S., and native Egyptians. Sixty were identified as Egyptians, and at least eight were foreigners.

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said, “The whole world is getting very disturbed. The frequency [of attacks] seems to be mounting.” Badawi chairs the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Resort hotels are being abandoned by tourists. At the nearest international airport, hundreds are reported trying to get flights out.

Three bombs erupted in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh just after 1am. At the Ghazala Gardens hotel, work is underway to clear the destroyed reception lobby where emergency teams have gavin up the search for survivors. A car with 660 pounds of explosives drove into the hotel’s driveway and detonated in an apparent suicide attack.

The day of the bombings is marked as an Egyptian national holiday that commemorates the bloodless coup by a group of army officers that brought them to power after deposing King Farouk in 1952. Egypt has been the victim of 15 tourist attacks since October 1992.

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Friday, August 19, 2005The Australian Federal Government has revealed today that it is going to give A$21 million (US $15.76 million) as compensation to approximately 600 former RAAF maintenance workers, who where exposed to highly toxic chemicals while working on the fuel tanks of the nation’s F-111 fleet.

Under the government’s proposal, depending on the amount of exposure, a worker can expect to receive between A$10,000 and A$40,000 (US $7,500 – $30,000) to help cope with the side effects. The aircraft maintenance program started in the 1970s and was suspended in the late 1990s when the former workers started to show signs of medical problems ranging from memory loss to neurological problems.

The F-111 Deseal/Reseal Support Group responded to the government’s package with anger. The Group’s president Ian Fraser said “A$40,000 for a ruined life is simply not enough … We’ve already got people who have died, who are dying, people who have lost their homes.”

He went on to describe that his group, which supports the workers and contractors who where based at Amberley Air Base, was “at war” with Veterans’ Affairs Minister De-Anne Kelly.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Almost half of all Australian primary school children are mild to moderately iodine deficient, researchers say. A new study documenting iodine nutritional status in Australian schoolchildren has revealed many are not getting enough iodine – which can lead to mental and growth retardation. The report’s authors say iodine deficiency is “the sleeper health issue in Australia”, and potentially a very serious one.

The results of the Australian National Iodine Nutrition Study published in the Medical Journal of Australia this week, revealed that children in mainland Australia are borderline iodine deficient. The report has prompted calls for all edible salt to be iodised. They say adding the mineral to salt is the simplest and most effective method of preventing iodine deficiency disorders.

A cross-sectional survey of 1709 schoolchildren – aged 8–10 years, from 88 schools – was carried out in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland, between July 2003 and December 2004. Tasmania was excluded from the study – where an voluntary iodine fortification program using iodised salt in bread, is ongoing.

The authors say the results confirm the existence of inadequate iodine intake in the Australian population. They call for “urgent implementation of mandatory iodisation of all edible salt in Australia.” Most iodine in food comes from seafood, milk and iodised salt.

Professor Cres Eastman, Director of the National Iodine Nutrition study, and Chairman of the Australian Centre for Control of Iodine Deficiency Disorders, says it is crucial that children and pregnant women in particular have an adequate intake of iodine. Iodine deficiency can lead to serious health problems including brain damage, stunted growth and deafness.

Professor Eastman says manufacturers could easily remedy the situation by using iodised salt in their products in line with the United States and most European countries. “I suspect they won’t do that on a voluntary basis, we’ve tried so far and haven’t succeeded, so we’ve convinced the Food Standards of Australia and New Zealand| that all salt should be iodised,” he said.

The report says the decline in iodine intake appears to be due to changes in the dairy industry, where chlorine-containing sanitisers have replaced iodine-containing sanitisers. Iodine released from these chemicals into milk has been the major source of dietary iodine in Australia for at least four decades, but is now declining. Another contributory factor has been the decreasing consumption of iodised salt used in foods. The report states that few if any food manufacturers use iodised salt in the preparation and manufacture of foods.

Professor Eastman says iodine is added to only 10 per cent of Australian salt in contravention of a World Health Organisation recommendation that all salt be iodised. He says authorities are reacting slowly to his urgent calls for mandatory iodised salt.

“The effects of iodine deficiency are dependent upon how severe it is and when it occurs. So if we go to the pregnant woman, she doesn’t get enough iodine, she won’t make enough thyroid hormone, and the foetus won’t get the amount of thyroid hormone it needs for adequate and proper development of the brain, so you’ll then see consequences being loss of IQ, learning difficulties, hearing difficulties and other neurological problems,” Professor Eastman said.

“If an infant’s not getting enough iodine… brain development won’t be completed and they won’t grow normally, and as you get older the problem will be that you will develop a goiter and your thyroid won’t function as well as it should, so that may have all sorts of pernicious effects upon normal function in life.”

More than two billion people around the world live in areas prone to iodine deficiency, and yet the problem is easily fixed. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends that every country should iodise all edible salt. The most well known effects of IDD are visible goiter and cretinism, a condition characterised by severe brain damage occurring in very early life. WHO say Iodine deficiency is the world’s most prevalent, yet easily preventable, cause of brain damage.

Professor Eastman said he is alarmed by what they found. “Pregnant women in Australia are getting about half as much as what they require on a daily basis. So that alarms me, because there’s quite serious potential for adverse effects and brain damage in the next generation of children born in this country,” he said. “If Iodine deficiency is serious you lose 15 IQ points, on average. There shouldn’t be anyone suffering from iodine deficiency in a developed country like Australia.”

Lydia Buchtmann for Food Standards Australia New Zealand, says they are looking at mandatory guidelines on iodine by the end of the year. She says the issue is complicated and will take time to get right. We need to “make sure there’s sufficient iodine added into the food supply, to help those people with a deficiency. But at the other end of the scale we’ve got to make sure the people who eat a lot of food – we all know the teenage boy who comes home from school and eats a whole loaf of bread – that those people don’t get too much and get overdose,” Ms Bauchtman said. “One of the reasons that iodine is going down is because people are taking that good healthy eating message and not adding salt during cooking.”

Senior researcher Mu Li, of the University of NSW’s school of public health, said “it is reasonable to assume that pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers are also iodine deficient, putting the next generation of children born in this country at risk of the neuropsychological consequences of iodine deficiency.”