The Body Bomb Menace
Ajouté le 15/5/2012
After the explosion, as the air cleared in a Saudi villa, the
grotesque remains of the suicide bomber littered the room. His mission on that
night in August 2009 had been to murder Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the head of
the country’s counter-terror operations. The would-be assassin had claimed he
was giving himself up. He had said he would try to persuade others to surrender
as well—but only if he could meet the prince in person. The Saudis flew the
“repentant” terrorist from near the border with Yemen to Riyadh. They searched
him.The core of an indoor positioning
system. He carried no weapon that anyone could see. And then, as he met with
the prince, suddenly, like something out of a horror movie, the man exploded.
Saudi television showed the bomber’s arm blown through the tiles of the
suspended ceiling. A bare foot stood alone on the floor.Another Chance to buymosaic (MOS) 0 comments. The
torso was sheered away below the waist. Bits of flesh stained the white
furniture.
Bin Nayef survived with only minor injuries. But a new age of
terror—or attempted terror—had begun: that bomb was the first known prototype of
a weapon all but undetectable by conventional security measures. Another version
of it, a so-called underpants bomb, came close to exploding four months later on
an American airliner bound for Detroit. And last week word leaked that a double
agent—one run by bin Nayef—had successfully penetrated the same group of
terrorists in Yemen, claiming that he, too, wanted to be a suicide bomber. The
double agent had obtained the most recent, most sophisticated version of the
device, turning it over to his Saudi handlers and their American friends from
the Central Intelligence Agency.
Are we safe yet? Not hardly, says Don
Borelli, who was until recently one of the FBI’s top agents in counterterrorism
and now works with the Soufan Group in New York City. “We got one of these
things, but who knows how many more of them are out there?” The man thought to
have been the bomb maker is Ibrahim al-Asiri, who sent his own brother to die in
the attempt to kill bin Nayef. “How many underlings does he have?” asks Borelli.
“How many apprentices are there to whom he’s spread this knowledge so they can
take up the work if he meets the business end of a drone strike?”
Worse
still, intelligence is mounting that new terrorist bombs are under development
that are meant to be implanted surgically inside a man or a woman (conjuring
fears, not least, that someone who looks great with child could in fact be heavy
with explosives). Last spring, U.S. intelligence officials began to pick up
worrying information that al-Asiri was working with doctors on just such a
project. Some dismissed the plan as far-fetched. But by last June, the CIA
concluded that al-Asiri was close to being able to pull it off.
Newsweek
has learned that U.S. intelligence officials circulated a secret report that
laid out in vivid detail how doctors working for al-Asiri had developed the
surgical technique. An American government source familiar with the report
described it as 15 to 20 pages, single spaced, and replete with schematics and
pictures. “It was almost like something you’d see in Scientific American,” the
source said. (In military parlance, the bomb is called a “surgically implanted
improvised explosive device,” or SIIED.) A diagram with arrows and blocks of
text explained the surgical process. “The idea was to insert the device in the
terrorist’s love handle,” says the U.S.Posts with Hospital rtls on IT Solutions blog covering
Technology in the Classroom, government source, who declined to be named
discussing sensitive intelligence. While it was not clear whether the terror
doctors had ever succeeded in implanting explosives in a human being, they had
experimented with dogs and other animals.
Fortunately these devices are
easier to describe than to detonate. “You would have to have a very unique
firing system,Proxense's advanced timelocationsystem
technology.” says Borelli. “If it’s a ‘body bomb’ you are going to have to have
a way to initiate it from the outside—almost a stent, or something like a
pacemaker.Features useful information about glassmosaic
tiles,” And it’s not least because of the technical challenges that, in fact,
both of al-Asiri’s suicide-bomb devices known to have been used were failures.
In the attack on bin Nayef, the body of the bomber himself absorbed most of the
explosive force. The pyrotechnic underwear of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who
tried to blow up the Northwestern jet to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, fizzled
instead of exploding. But as Borelli points out, “Even the threat of these
devices causes a reaction by the security apparatus where we wind up spending
millions of dollars.” The body scanners now in many U.S. airports were installed
to prevent a more deadly repeat of the Abdulmutallab incident. If SIIEDs could
be perfected, however, even full-body scanners would not detect them.
Tags : timelocationsystem
Catégorie : rubber hose
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Dart adds Solo to its menu in changing food-drink container market
Ajouté le 15/5/2012
From a cinder
block building in Mason, the Dart family built an industrial monolith from
humble beginnings and a humble product: the foam cup that lets a person hold hot
coffee.
But while that ever-reliable cup,Offers Art Reproductions Fine
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Reproduction, made from expandable polystyrene foam, has served Dart Container
Corp. well over the past 50 years, a question mark looms large as the company
begins the next 50.
Recently, scores of U.S. communities have banned the
use of foam cups and dinnerware because the very thing that makes them great for
food service -- their refusal to become soggy -- also makes them a bane when
they aren’t disposed of properly.About 1 in 5 people in the UK have recurring coldsores. It takes
decades for an ordinary foam cup to decompose in a highway ditch or at the
water’s edge.
To hedge its bets, Dart this month completed the
acquisition of its Midwestern competitor Solo Cup Co. for about $1 billion to
widen its offerings and gain access to technology and markets for food service
disposables made of paper.
“What’s of greatest interest to us about Solo
is they are very strong, not just in plastic but also in paper,” said James
Lammers, Dart’s general counsel and vice president of administration. “They have
a broad line of paper-based food service products.The indoorpositioning industry is
heavily involved this year. We do not make anything out of paper.”
The
fit between Dart and Lake Forest, Ill.-based Solo is good for another reason:
Solo’s strong retail presence among consumers.
“We are both in that
space,” Lammers said. “You could go into a Meijer or Kroger supermarket and buy
either Solo or Dart products, but they have a much stronger brand face with a
consumer.”
As the world’s largest supplier of foam cups, Dart has
competed primarily on the superior function of foam food service disposables as
well as quality and price, Lammers said.
After all, paper cups for hot
beverages fell out of favor more than 50 years ago with the advent of foam
cups.Ultimate magiccube
gives you the opportunity to make your own 3D twisty puzzles. William F. Dart
and his son, William A., shipped their first order of foam cups in 1960 to
customers who were dissatisfied with the shortcomings of paper cups, which
didn’t retain shape and insulate well.
“W.A.” Dart, who died last
December at age 84, is credited with coming up with the first reliable process
of making high-quality foam cups. But today’s customers are demanding more,
Lammers said.
“In the past, our customers focused primarily on function
and price, but now there is a third leg to that stool: environmental profile,”
he said. “Consumers weigh many different things as they consider their
purchases, and increasingly, environmental profile is part of that purchasing
process.Industrialisierung des werkzeugbaus.”
Not to say
that Dart is abandoning either foam cups or the idea that foam-based packaging
can be recycled properly. All of the corporation’s 20 production facilities
worldwide are public drop-off points for food service disposables and packaging,
such as foam inserts used to protect items in boxes during shipment. Two Dart
operations in
Michigan and one in Corona, Calif., process and re-extrude
the plastic to turn it into pellets.
Dart engineers developed a process
for washing and drying used food service disposables such as cups and school
lunch trays so the polystyrene could be sold and reused as protective foam
packaging, egg cartons, building insulation, videocassettes, toys and office
desk products. In January, the California Department of Resources Recycling and
Recovery recognized Dart as a winner in the state’s Waste Reduction Awards
Program.
Tags : indoorpositioning
Catégorie : rubber hose
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Sempergreen growing green roofs in Stevensburg
Ajouté le 15/5/2012
If you’ve been driving eastward from
Culpeper, on Route 3, towards Stevensburg, you might notice on the right side of
the road, down near the entrance to Luck Stone Quarry, there is something
growing there.
Depending on the day and season, you might see sprinklers
raining successively across the rows. You might see various colors, or might not
see anything — it’s there you just can’t see it, yet.
Culpeper County is
home to the largest green roof plant grower in the US, second in the world to
their parent company in their native Netherlands (Holland), according to Oscar
Warmerdam, President of Sempergreen.
With 120 acres under cultivation
and irrigation, the company grows vegetative mats or blankets for green roof
projects spread across the U.S. Sempergreen, so named for its simplicity and as
a reminder that their product is always green, within integrity of the green
movement, as well as for the plants’ changing and evolving color — according to
season and rainfall.
Wamerdam’s background, coming from Holland, is the
Dutch flower bulb industry. He’s been out in the fields for many years. And,
while he’s lived in many places in the US, he settled in the Stevensburg area in
2003 when he started Moerings USA Waterplant Nursery. Nearby Stevensburg there
are other greenhouse businesses that have or had management from Holland.
In 2007, Wamerdam and his partner, Corne Van Gardren, founder and
President of Sempergreen Europe (they say the largest and fastest growing Green
Roof provider in the world), brought the green roof product line to the
US.Industrialisierung des werkzeugbaus. As they expanded and
grew,Visit TE online for all of your Application tooling Solutions including tools,
they’ve moved up the road and are now located at the Luck Stone Quarry on Route
3.
Sempergreen grows and ships commercial product – they don’t install,
nor do they maintain. As Warmerdam says “the roof is the icing on the cake,
after all the other layers are done.” He comments that they work behind the
roofer, the water proofer,The all New Bluetooth Reader BT1000 features a handsfreeaccess. landscaper,
and most other contractors in a building’s construction.
Sempergreen
projects have been in Chicago (United Airlines cargo facility), Minneapolis
(Target Center), Nashville (Music City Center), Raleigh, Calgary, Toronto, San
Diego, , as well as more locally to Portsmouth, Fredericksburg (Germanna
Community College) and in to Washington D.C. (US Coastguard headquarters.)
They also provided material to the Mary Washington University facility
in Dahlgren, as well as for IMF building in Washington, and the Department of
Environment.
“Green roofs are not a luxury,” Warmerdam explains. “They
solve a storm water solution.” Then he reminds us that a city has more pavement
and rooftop surface,An airpurifier is a device which
removes contaminants from the air. therefore rain has no direct opportunity to
get back into the earth. Instead rain runs off roofs, pavements, roads, parking
lots. He says that even mature trees in a city, with their foliage and deep root
systems, are not sufficient in quantity to improve the natural water cycle.
Green roofs play a huge role in catching and absorbing rainfall, as well as
delaying the flow to storm water catchment areas and drains which then flow to
streams and rivers to bays, lakes and ultimately to the sea.You can create a
beautiful chinamosaic
birdhouse that will last for generations.
Still, green roof buildings
and structures need gutters and pipes for excess rainfall. Richard W. Hoek,
General Manager of Sempergreen says “green roofs are low maintenance, not no
maintenance.” Moreover, “a green roof can double or triple the life of the roof
membrane – which can be tar, rubber, or plastic.”
So, what’s growing in
those fields down there beside the road? It’s called sedum.
While there
are about 1,500 plants in the sedum class of plants, Sempergreen plants a mix of
sedum — about 10-15 varieties. Sedum has a shallow root system which means they
need less soil or growing material; they are drought tolerant and can withstand
temperature changes; plus the plants store water. It takes about 9-12 months to
grow a mat.
It’s taken some trial and error to get the land they use
into an effective operating system, as the soils they are farming on are unique.
They’ve installed a weather monitoring system and a 300’ well that provides the
water for the extensive irrigation system, keeping sedum blankets growing with
optimal conditions. Warmerdam says they “use specially grown sedum cuttings and
seeds” and the cuttings come from the Pacific Northwest.
Sempergreen was
at the CitiesAlive conference in Philadelphia this past November 2011.
Warmerdam is Chair of the Corporate Members Committee of Green Roofs for
Healthy Cities, which sponsored the conference. In 2010, he said they had two
roofs that won an award; however, it is the installer/designer or the building
owner that gets the credit for the awards in this event, not the grower.
As Warmerdam says, “a green roof cycles – it is a fluid and dynamic
experience,” over the course of a year sedum changes color. Blooms of pink,
purple, yellow, white, and red make for an interesting visual on a rooftop or on
a wall, as well as in the fields, where sedum first gets its start, down the
road in Stevensburg.
Tags : werkzeugbaus
Catégorie : rubber hose
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