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Saturday, April 30, 2005

The British Food Standards Agency (FSA) has announced a recall of foods containing banned dyes which increase the risk of cancer. The food products were sold at the Tesco, Waitrose, and Somerfield supermarkets.

A Bristol company called “Barts Spices” found the illegal Para Red substance in their Barts Ground Paprika, which was sold in 48g and 46g jars with a “Co-op” label. The batch codes on the affected products are 5032 and 5089 (expiration Dec 2007), and 5075 (expiration February 2007).

Tesco also found that their 130g package of BBQ rice cakes (expiration November and December 2005) contained both Para Red and Sudan I.

“It would be very prudent to assume that it could be a genotoxic carcinogen,” FSA scientific advisers told reporters.

“As a company committed to supplying only the very finest quality food ingredients, we took the immediate decision to withdraw our ground paprika spice from all outlets selling the product and advertised a product recall in the national press,” a Barts Spices spokesman said in a statement.

Sudan I is only authorized for industrial use to colorize petroleum products, such as shoe polish. Para Red and Sudan I are banned under the British Colours in Food Regulations of 1995.

Britain last went through a major food recall in February, when Worcester Sauce was found to contain chili powder dyed with Sudan 1.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Wind storms swept across a large part of Texas on Wednesday, leaving property damaged and many homes without power.

Downed lamposts and trees were reported in multiple locales. One media source reported overturned playground equipment in the city of Rockwall. Winds up to 40 miles-per-hour (mph) were reported over much of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Approximately 9,500 people within Tarrant and Dallas counties were without electrical power as late as Thursday afternoon.

Late Wednesday evening, the National Weather Service reported winds at Dallas Love Field up to 66 mph. The city of Edgewood recorded wind speeds up to 70 mph during the storm; three homes, two barns and two business buildings sustained damage. A home in Chandler was damaged when a tree was toppled during the storm (see photo at left).

Dust from as far away as west Texas covered vehicles and other property early Thursday morning in the eastern part of the state. A car wash manager in Tyler told media his business cleaned about three hundred cars on Thursday, busier than usual even for holiday season.

Friday, April 24, 2009

According to Mexican health officials, an epidemic of swine flu has killed at least 68 people and infected a further one thousand inside the country.

Mexican health minister José Ángel Córdova said that the casualty rate appeared to be slowing down, and that there would be no plans to block off Mexican borders. “We’re dealing with a new flu virus that constitutes a respiratory epidemic that so far is controllable,” Córdova stated. He said that the disease had mutated from pigs and was transferred to humans at some point.

Museums and schools for seven million students near Mexico’s capital were closed down in an effort to curb the epidemic, and the government has encouraged people with symptoms of the disease to take leave from work.

The outbreak has spread north to the United States, and US health authorities have reported that eight people were diagnosed with swine flu in Texas and California. However, these people have recovered.

“We are worried. We don’t know if this will lead to the next pandemic, but we will be monitoring it and taking it seriously,” said Dr. Richard Besser, the acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr. Besser suggested “containment is not very likely” in a telephone briefing on Friday.

Tests conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) found that the virus from a dozen patients was genetically similar to a new outbreak of swine flu, designated as H1N1.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Preparations are underway ahead of the 2013 IPC Alpine Skiing World Championship, with a flag exchange taking place Tuesday, volunteer recruitment ongoing, USParalympics unveiling a new uniform for their team, skiers like the United States’s Jon Lujan actively training for the event and other skiers competing in preparation for the Championships in a World Cup event Wednesday.

Tuesday in La Molina, Spain, the president of Governmental Railways of Catalonia, Enric Ticó, and the mayor of Alp, Ramon Moliner, were gifted with flags by representatives of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and Catalan Government at a ceremony in Colet Museum of Barcelona at one of the first official events ahead of the 2013 IPC Alpine Skiing World Championship, which starts next week. As of Wednesday, event organisers were still seeking volunteers to assist with running the Championship. The opening ceremonies are scheduled for next Tuesday.

Entering the event, skiers had the opportunity to qualify through eight World Cup events held with only two disciplines on the program, Giant Slalom and Slalom. The first four were held in Sestriere, Italy, with the most recent four all being held in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Standing female French skier Marie Bochet has won six World Cups ahead of the World Championships and is considered by event organizers as a favorite in the standing group. Russian standing skier Alexey Bugaev is also considered a favorite by organisers as he won two Slalom and one Giant Slalom World Cup competition. In the women’s sit-ski, German Anna Schaffelhuber is considered the favorite having prepared for the Championships by winning five of the eight World Cup events. On the men’s sit-ski side, Japanese Takeshi Suzuki and Swiss Christoph Kunz both earned three World Cup victories in the lead up to this competition. In the women’s visually impaired group, Slovak Henrieta Farkasova will enter the competition with five World Cup victories. On the men’s side, Spanish Jon Santacana is favored to win with three Giant Slalom and one Slalom victory during this year’s World Cup events in the lead up to the World Championships.

British Combined Services Disabled Ski Team coach Mark Scorgie has noted that this year’s European ski season has been problematic with weather interfering with most competitions. Poor weather conditions continued Wednesday Rogla IPC Alpine World Cup, with the first Giant Slalom run canceled because of high winds.

The World Championships includes over 270 skiers, guides, coaches and support personnel from 28 countries including Spain, France, Australia, Ukraine, Netherlands, Croatia, Finland, Switzerland, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Turkey, Belgium, Norway, Russia, Britain, Germany, Italy, Canada, Slovakia, Czech Republic, United States, Austria, New Zealand, Sweden, Hungary, and South Africa..

The Spanish team includes blind skier Jon Santacana and his guide Miguel Galindo, and blind skier Gabriel Gorce and his guide Arnau Ferrer. Both vision-impaired skiers are scheduled to compete in the Downhill, Super G, Super Combined, Giant Slalom, and Slalom competitions. Also on the Spanish team are LW2 classified standing skier Úrsula Pueyo, LW12-1 classified sit skier Óscar Espallargas, and LW10-1 classified sit skier Nathalie Carpanedo who qualified as a wildcard entry. Pueyo, Espallargas, and Carpanedo are all scheduled to compete in the Slalom and Giant Slalom competitions. Accompanying the team are to be coaches Javier Gutierrez, Jordi Carbonell, and Andres Gomez, medical staff including Pablo Marquez and Josep Barrachina, and technical staffer Josep Bort.

The United States team consists of Seattle, Washington-based vision-impaired skier Mark Bathum and his Colorado Springs-based guide Jessica Smith; Park City, Utah-based vision-impaired skier Danelle Umstead and guide Rob Umstead; retired Army and Clarksville, Tennessee-based Heath Calhoun; Brooklyn, New York-based Ralph Green; Colorado Springs-based Allison Jones; Palmer, Alaska-based Andrew Kurka; Burlington, Vermont-based Stephen Lawler; retired Marine and Littleton, Colorado-based Jon Lujan; Farmington, New Mexico-based Alana Nichols; Wenham, Massachusetts-based Laurie Stephens; Park City, Utah-based Stephani Victor; Franconia, New Hampshire-based Tyler Walker; and retired Coast Guard and Campton, New Hampshire-based Chris Devlin-Young.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

The available information about the phosphorous cloud following the railway accident in the Ukraine last Monday is becoming more and more cryptic.

The political involvement of most media and other factors are causing contradictions among official sources that are making press work extremely hard. Moreover, no one is permitted to enter the accident location. The site of the accident was closed to visitors following the injury of three TV journalists who got too close.

Sunday, November 28, 2004

A more efficient way to produce useable hydrogen has been demonstrated by researchers. It uses very high-temperature electrolysis to separate hydrogen from water, so that hydrogen may be used for energy production.

Electrolysis is one method by which laboratories and factories produce hydrogen. An electrical current is passed through water, breaking it down into hydrogen and oxygen gas, which are then collected above the water reservoir.

Researchers in Salt Lake City, Utah, at Ceramtech Incorporated, in collaboration with workers at The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory report that when water is superheated to 800 degrees Celsius, far less electricity is required to produce the same volume of hydrogen. The researchers envision that future nuclear fission plants could be used both to heat the water as part of their cooling system, and generate the needed electricity.

Concerns have been raised regarding the safety of such arrangements, however. Jeremy Desterhoft, an independent consultant on nuclear energy safety, warns the “elevated levels of radiation required to sufficiently lower the atomic separation point is beyond the current capabilities of any recent cooler.” He does not believe that economically viable cooling technology will be available for at least four to six more years.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

An internal Wikimedia communiqué was leaked over the weekend. Like many e-mails, the document is a chain of forwards, replies, and attachments. The attached Portable Document Format (PDF) file was from a PowerPoint presentation, entitled “Wikimedia Foundation: Past, Present, and Future”. The presentation is watermarked confidential, do not distribute, and details the Foundation’s recent financial, technical, and traffic history, outlines near-term forecasts for all three, and makes suggestions for slightly longer horizons as well. By itself the document led to several inter-connected news stories.