Tuesday, 31 October 2023
Monday, 16 October 2023
Salvage Workers Begin Pumping Fuel from Italian Shipwreck
The operation to extract 2,400 tonnes of fuel from 15 tanks is expected to take 28 days, weather permitting. It may then take seven to 10 months to refloat the vessel.
Salvage workers Sunday began pumping fuel from the shipwrecked Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia, a day ahead of schedule, officials said.
Operations began at around 5:00 pm (1600 GMT) on the wreck off the Tuscan island of Giglio to remove fuel from seven of the massive ship's tanks, with conditions calm.
VIDEO ANALYSIS: Concordia Captain: 'OK, Whatever' as Ship Teeters
The Costa Concordia ran aground on January 13 with a total of 4,229 people on board, an accident that cost the lives of 32 people. The bodies of 15 of those lost have still to be recovered.
Civil protection officials had said earlier they would start the pumping operations on Monday, after severe cold weather required them to revise their schedule, but final preparations were completed over the weekend.
Dutch company Smit, working with the Italian firm Neri, is handling the operation, which will involve extracting 2,400 tonnes of fuel still inside the vessel to avoid what officials say would be an environmental disaster if it leaked into the sea.
NEWS: Concordia Wreck at Risk of Collapse, Spilling
They plan to complete the operation in 28 days, working around the clock to empty a total of 15 tanks, so long as weather conditions permit, the civil protection authority said.
Only once that operation is completed can work begin to refloat the vessel, an operation that experts say will take at least seven months and possibly as many as 10.
The Costa Concordia ran aground just a few dozen meters (yards) from the port of the island of Giglio, which lies off Italy's Tuscan coast and from where ferries run to the mainland.
Pierluigi Foschi, the chief executive of Costa Crociere, owners of the cruise liner, visited the tiny island of Giglio, which has 800 inhabitants, on Thursday.
He told local people they would have a concrete plan by the middle of March on getting the vessel out of their waters and promised to everything he could to minimize the impact on the local tourist industry.
PHOTOS: The Concordia: Recounting a Disaster
Thursday, 9 February 2023
Elephant Seals Swimming Deeper as Waters Warm
Elephant seals are in it deep due to climate change ... deep in the ocean, that is. Elephant seals from Marion Island in the southwest Indian Ocean are swimming farther beneath the surface as their prey also moves into cooler, deeper waters.
"This prey is moving down to greater depths, presumably due to the increasing water temperatures, and this is forcing the seals to follow them," explained Horst Bornemann from the Alfred Wegener Institute, in a press release.
Bornemann and colleagues from the Mammal Research Institute fit more than 30 southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) with satellite transmitters. The transmitters are glued like beanies to the seals' heads. They measure dive depth, water temperature, and salinity on every dive, then beam that information to the marine biologists via satellite.
The results show that the seals dive deeper in warmer water.
"We therefore assume that the animals will find less prey in warmer water masses," explained Joachim Plötz, another biologist from the Alfred Wegener Institute involved in the study, in a press release.
Diving deeper means the seals have less time to feed, since they can only hold their breath for so long.
BLOG: Elephant Seals Moved Fast With Climate Change
The next step of the study will be to prove that the seals are indeed feeding at greater depths. A follow-up study will fit the seals with a sensor that will record when they open their mouths.
The biologists noted that the Marion Island seals already live near the northern end of southern elephant seal territory. Further warming could put their survival on the island in jeopardy, though the massive marine mammals are listed as of Least Concern to the IUCN.
BLOG: Feminist Elephant Seals Take to the Water
Male elephant seals are up to six times larger than females and rule over large harems of females. But some females have found a way to strike a blow for aquatic feminists by mating out at sea, where the sexes are on more equal terms, reported Discovery News.
IMAGES:
Southern Elephant Seal on Macquarie Island. (Credit: Mbz1, Wikimedia Commons).
An elephant seal with a sensor on its head. (Credit: Joachim Plötz, Alfred Wegener Institute).
After placing the sensor on the animal's head, the biologists measure its body size. (Credit: Joachim Plötz, Alfred Wegener Institute).
Friday, 4 November 2022
Why Can't Women Serve at the Front?
The military still excludes women from 238,000 positions. Many barriers remain to women in the military, including traditional attitudes about women fighting and dying at war. Even though female soldiers are supposed to be excluded from combat, many women report engaging in combat-like activities.
The Defense Department recently announced new policies that ease restrictions on jobs women can do in the military, opening up more than 14,000 positions to women and allowing them closer than ever to the front lines.
But embedded in that news was a long list of positions that are still closed to women, including infantry branch officers and members of special operation missions. That has caused some people to wonder: What's holding the government back from offering true equality to women in the armed forces?
The official reason for sustained gender roles is that "there are practical barriers," said DOD spokeswoman Eillen Lainez, "which if not approached in a deliberate manner, could adversely impact the health of our service members and degrade mission accomplishment."
PHOTOS: Women Leaders From Cleopatra to Merkel
History, too, may play a role, say researchers who cite conservative views that date back to the Revolutionary War. Traditional attitudes make many people both uncomfortable with the idea of women fighting and unable to handle the image of mothers coming home in body bags.
There are also concerns that women will interfere with group bonding and cohesion – the same arguments that long interfered with the integration of African Americans and gay people into the military.
But on the ground, according to anecdotal reports, women at war are already doing many more combat-like activities than their job descriptions imply, making it hard for them to get the recognition they deserve or to advance to top-level positions. As women continue to push for more equality (as they have been for more than a century), it may be only a matter of time before they are officially allowed to do everything that male soldiers do – and finally get acknowledged for it.
"I would say there are fewer and fewer areas in which women are not participating," said Laura Browder, professor of American Studies at the University of Richmond in Virginia, and author of "When Janey Comes Marching Home: Stories of American Women at War." "Congress is full of conservatives who don't like the idea of women in combat, but I do think that sooner or later the laws are going to catch up to reality. And the reality is that women are in combat."
Early in our nation's history, women participated in war officially only as nurses. Then came World War II, said historian Kara Dixon Vuic, author of "Officer, Nurse, Woman: the Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War." With the nation's great need for bodies to help, women served for the first time as soldiers. They didn't fight, but they fixed trucks and tanks, ferried planes and performed all sorts of other important jobs that had been previously closed off to them.
When the war ended, though, most of the women who had served were cast out of the armed forces by the DOD, which set 3 percent as the maximum percentage of women allowed in the military. That rule held until the end of the Vietnam war, when the draft ended and an all-volunteer army took over.
In the late 70s and early 80s, the U.S. military began to make an active effort to recruit women and open more positions to them. Today, the proportion of women in military branches ranges from fewer than 7 percent in the Marine Corps to 13 percent in the active Army and 24 percent in the Army reserves. As many as 14 percent of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have been female, Browder said.
Over the years, women have taken on new roles and responsibilities. But there have always been restrictions and gender-specific treatment. During World War II, Vuic said, female soldiers were taught to wear girdles, high heels and makeup that matched their uniforms. Since the 1990s, policies have focused more on prohibiting women from positions that involve direct ground combat, physically demanding tasks and lack of privacy.
NEWS: Women Feel More Pain
Since the nature of war has grown far more complex than the old-fashioned battlefield structure, the government has decided to allow women to belong to units that are engaging in direct ground combat. With the new rules, women can now be artillery mechanics, intelligence officers, field surgeons and more. Still, when it comes to fighting up-close in major battles, women are left out.
Even though the government is emphasizing the 14,000 new jobs that are opening up, Major General Gary Patton, principal director for military personnel policy, said in a press conference this week that there are still about 238,000 positions that exclude women across all armed forces. The list includes artillerymen, cavalry, tank crewmen, special forces, submarine and special warfare positions.
Those remaining barriers may be doing female soldiers a major disservice, Browder said. For her most recent book, she interviewed more than 50 women who had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many reported having experiences that could easily be considered combat.
Browder interviewed a number of women who were blown up by IEDs, for example. She met one female soldier who worked as an explosive-sniffing dog handler and found out months into her deployment that she was pregnant. And she talked extensively with a sergeant named Paigh Bumgarner, who was in a convoy that got ambushed by an explosive-filled vehicle. Bumgarner ordered that the vehicle be taken out and saved the lives of many of her friends.
"You can't tell me that's not combat," Browder said.
Bumgarner originally contacted Browder after the sergeant saw the historian mentioned in a newspaper article, which also quoted someone else saying that women don't belong in combat.
"She was so angry," Browder said, "saying that other person was dead wrong and that women need to be acknowledged as being in combat because they're out there putting their lives on the line."
"Women are getting recognized more in terms of winning medals," she added. "But women really need to have the fact that they are engaging in combat acknowledged so they can keep moving up the ladder."
Monday, 2 May 2022
Friday, 12 November 2021
EU Airlines Carbon Tax Stirs Resentment
Airlines flying into Europe must pay for 15 percent of the polluting rights accorded to them in 2012. Countries can avoid the tax by developing plans to reduce harmful emissions. Cathay Pacific CEO and Singapore Airlines CEO criticized the plan at the Singapore Airshow, one of Asia's largest aviation trade fairs.
World aviation bosses warned on Monday of a potential trade war over a carbon tax imposed by the European Union, which expressed readiness to compromise while insisting on its environmental agenda.
In a conference on the eve of the Singapore Airshow, one of Asia's largest aviation trade fairs, representatives of the airline and plane manufacturing sectors expressed concern over a potential political and economic standoff.
ANALYSIS: Controversy Over EU Airport Carbon Credits
"I have to say I'm really worried, also as a manufacturer, about the consequences," said Airbus Chief Executive Thomas Enders.
"I have seen the position in China, in Russia, in the US, in India, and what started as a scheme to present a solution for the environment has become a source of potential trade conflict," he added.
The EU imposed its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) on airlines flying into the continent on January 1 despite opposition from over two dozen countries including India, Russia, China and the United States.
The EU says the scheme was designed to reduce carbon emissions blamed for climate change, and will help the 27-nation bloc achieve its goal of cutting emissions by 20 percent by 2020.
PHOTOS: Eruption of Iceland's Grimsvotn Volcano
China, the world's fastest-growing aviation market, has barred its airlines from complying with the requirement.
EU transport commissioner Siim Kallas, who also spoke at the Singapore conference, said Europe was committed to reducing carbon emissions.
"We don't have enough reasons or ground to suspend the legislation," he said at the forum.
But he added that Europe was "sincere" in expressing readiness to achieve a "multilateral solution" through the UN airline watchdog, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).
Speaking later to reporters, Kallas said it was difficult to predict the likely fallout if China and other countries refused to comply with the ETS.
"We don't know what exactly are they concretely planning to do," he said.
"I think that to avoid trade war is really very important for us, we are ready to compromise but the question is to which extent."
Tony Tyler, director-general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents airlines, warned the Singapore forum that "aviation can ill-afford to be caught in an escalating political or trade conflict over the EU-ETS."
ANALYSIS: France to Boast World's Biggest Tidal Energy Farm
While Europe deserves credit for being at the forefront of efforts to reduce emissions, Tyler said "non-European governments see this extra-territorial tax collection as an attack on their sovereignty, and they are taking action."
Singapore Airlines CEO Goh Choon Phong said that "we are objecting to the principle of how it is being applied, that it is applied to flights outside of Europe, to airspace outside Europe."
John Slosar, CEO of Cathay Pacific of Hong Kong, said that "when people go it alone whether for good reasons or bad, troubles come and difficulties arise."
Airlines opposed to the system say it would cost the industry 17.5 billion euros ($23.2 billion) over eight years.
But the head of the European Low Fares Airline Association said last week that the United States and other opponents should work harder to develop their own plans to reduce harmful emissions to gain exemptions from the tax.
The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, argues that the cost for airlines is manageable, estimating that the scheme could prompt carriers to add between four and 24 euros ($5 to $32) to the price of a round-trip long-haul flight.
Some 655 million people flew within Europe last year.
The EU launched the ETS in 2005 in a bid to reduce carbon emissions of power stations and industrial plants.
It decided to include airlines, held responsible for three percent of global emissions, in the absence of a global agreement to cap aviation emissions.
Under the EU scheme, airlines will have to pay for 15 percent of the polluting rights accorded to them in 2012, the figure then rising to 18 percent between 2013 and 2020.
Wednesday, 31 March 2021
On the Hunt for Black Holes
The NuSTAR X-ray telescope is scheduled to launch on March 14. The telescope will look at X-rays coming from black holes, supernova and other high-energy objects. The telescope complements existing telescopes that image lower energy X-rays.
A new X-ray telescope being prepared for launch will be able to ferret out hiding places of black holes by peering into the dusty centers of distant galaxies.
The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, is the first space observatory to focus on what is known as "hard X-rays" -- the type used in dental X-rays to see inside teeth.
Objects that give off this type of radiation are among the most active and violent in the universe, including galaxy clusters, supernova explosions, high-temperature gas and regions where particles are being accelerated close to the speed of light.
NEWS: Black Holes May Turboboost Super-Civilizations
"There's a whole variety of phenomenon from very extreme neutron stars to remnants of old stellar explosions we haven't discovered yet," lead scientist Fiona Harrison, with the California Institute of Technology, told Discovery News.
One of the telescope's first jobs will be to conduct a sky survey, which will give astronomers an idea about how galaxies formed. They are also eager to study supernova -- the exploded remains of giant stars -- to look for the telltale chemical fingerprints of radioactive titanium.
"Different models of how a supernova explosion happens imply very different observables of how the titanium would be distributed, both spatially and in velocity. With these observations we'll get a better idea of the physics of supernova explosions," NuSTAR project scientist Daniel Stern, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told Discovery News.
Supernovas are an important measuring stick for determining the universe's rate of expansion. Because astronomers believe they give off basically the same amount of light, measuring their brightness has been used to determine how distant they are, much like how a standard 100-watt light bulb appears dimmer if it is farther away.
"Cosmologically, we'd like to understand supernova a little bit better since we're giving Nobel Prizes using them as cosmologically probes," Stern said.
Studying high-energy X rays, which can pass through obscuring gas and dust, also should reveal the locations of black holes.
"We're pretty sure that every big galaxy has a super-massive black hole in its center and the models predict that most of the ones that are actively accreting material and get very bright are being hidden by gas and dust around them," Stern said.
NEWS: Hungry Black Hole Snacking on Asteroids?
NuSTAR will be able to pin down how many black holes are hidden, how big they are and where they are located.
Another target of study is the sun. Hard X-rays coming from micro-flares could help resolve a long-standing mystery of how the sun's corona gets heated to 1 million degrees.
NuSTAR complements NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory and Europe's XMM-Newton telescope, both of which image the X-ray sky in lower energy wavelengths.
"There won't be these beautiful pictures like what Hubble takes, but for an X-ray astronomers they will be because they'll be much sharper than anyone has ever done before," Stern said.
NuSTAR will be put into a low-Earth, near-equatorial orbit by an air-launched Pegasus rocket flying from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Launch is targeted for March 14.
The telescope consists of two sets of 133 concentric shells of mirrors, made from flexible glass, such as what is used in laptop computer screens. Because X-rays need a large area to focus, NuSTAR has a 33-foot mast that will unfold after launch.
The mission is expected to last at least two years.
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