MIT has some cool new energy experiments running in Portugal. Apparently they harness ocean wave energy by getting the water to push a lever that compresses air.
Changing the volume of the airspace within the OWC chamber allows for different wave frequencies and intensities to be optimized. When extended to a larger chamber, a wider range of wavelengths produce the best effect. Researchers are currently working on identifying the most efficient chamber sizes for the various wave types.
Placing these devices, called the oscillating water column (OWC), in lighthouses and breakwaters makes perfect sense.
The drive is missing from the Archives facility in College Park, Md., a Washington suburb. The drive was lost between October 2008 and March 2009 and contained 1 terabyte of data — enough material to fill millions of books.
A Republican committee aide who was at the inspector general’s briefing said the Archives had been converting the Clinton administration information to a digital records system when the hard drive went missing.
The aide, who was not authorized to be quoted by name, said the hard drive was left on a shelf and unused for an uncertain period of time. When the employee tried to resume work, the hard drive was missing.
Did it go something like this? “Oh, I’ll just set this 1TB drive with the personal identity information of top officials and sensitive logs over here on this open shelf for a while and go work on other things…”. Not exactly the sort of risk calculation you would expect in the National Archives. Maybe they do not have a high rate of technology theft, but even so the person using the drive knew the value of the contents. I bet they still keep valuable papers under strict lock and environmental controls.
I often wonder why the lights are left on all night in office buildings in America. It seems like a colossal waste of energy. The cost should be offset by more intelligent detection and control systems, which have many uses beyond simple energy savings, as demonstrated here by Wroclaw University of Technology students in Poland:
Instead of fireworks displays, which are so 17th century, the cities could come alive with annual building light shows. Buildings could also give emergency messages, or be used to indicate temperature and weather change. The energy being burned every hour of every night could be put to so many more uses. The technology is ready:
According to the police, a lab technician with the Swiss National Center for Influenza in Geneva had travelled to Zurich to collect eight ampoules, five of which were filled with the H1N1 swine flu virus. The samples were to be used to develop a test for swine flu infections.
The containers were hermetically sealed and cooled with dry ice. However, it seems the dry ice was not packed correctly and it melted during the journey. The gas coming from the containers then built up too much pressure and the ampoules exploded, as the train was pulling into a station.
Throughout our careers as scientific glassblowers, we have witnessed several incidents involving cryogens that have caused injury to personnel. By sharing these experiences, it is our hope that we will all have a greater understanding and respect for cryogenic liquids.
The obvious solution in this case would be a pressure alarm requirement for containers, especially those with dry ice that are known to have explosive risks.
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
