eBestMagazine

A timeline of San Francisco Oil Spill

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

• 06:31 AM: The Cosco Busan, a China COSCO Holdings, the 65,131-ton, an 810-foot-long container ship, left the Port of Oakland and travel through dense fog.
• 08:30 AM: The ship struck into a fender around a support tower of Bay Bridge. The incident did not damage the bridge and traffic continued to flow.
• 08:31 AM: Cosco Busan Capt. John Cota notified the Coast Guard. He observed a sheen in the water and reported to VTS (Costa Guard Vessel Traffic Service) that there was an oil spill. Successor pilot reported to other federal and state agencies who monitor spills.
• 09:03 AM: Coast Guard dispatched its vessels.
  
• Early Coast Guard reports had described the leak as 3-feet (1-metre) wide and only 140 gallons had spilled from the vessel.
• 04:00 PM: Yet up until 4 p.m., officials apparently believed only 140 gallons of oil had leaked.
• 09:00 PM: Officials learned that the spill was 58,000 gallons of heavy duty bunker fuel and publicly announced.
  
• 11:00 PM: The Coast Guard said 200 people were working on the cleanup and, as of Wednesday night, had recovered about 8,000 gallons of the oil.
• Four picturesque beaches on both sides of the landmark Golden Gate Bridge — Baker, Fort Point, China, and Crissy Field — were closed.
• California Department of Fish, said workers had found six dead birds and 26 others alive slicked with oil.

“If it’s only 3 feet away from the edge of the ship, there are oil absorbent pads that you can use, and it should be easily cleaned up,” Wil Bruhns, supervising engineer of San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board said.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

• The Coast Guard said 200 people were working on the cleanup and had recovered about 9,500 gallons of the oil. Yet the pace of cleanup slowed as tides spread the fuel over a larger area.
• The Coast Guard said it had found 19 dead birds and 73 living birds slicked with oil. Many beaches around San Francisco remained closed.

“It doesn’t tend to break down very quickly,” Gerald Graham, on scene commander said. “It’s cheap, and it’s dirty. If the wind happens to blow it out into a channel or bay, it could spread, and then you could have miles of shoreline that could be affected.”

Friday, November 9, 2007

• California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared the oil spill in San Francisco Bay an emergency.
• The Coast Guard said it had found 19 dead birds and 73 living birds slicked with oil. Many beaches around San Francisco remained closed.
• Weekend triathlon, Tri-California event in San Francisco, canceled the water portion because of the spill.
• 73 live, oiled birds are being rehabilitated
• There have been 19 confirmed deceased birds reported
• 11 skimmers are currently deployed on the water
• 10 wildlife recovery teams are on the beaches with additional teams joining Friday afternoon
• Over 9,500 gallons of fuel oil have been recovered as of Thursday night.
• Over 18,000 feet of boom has been placed around the area to soak up and corral the oil
• More than 200 people from over 19 federal, state, and local agencies are involved with the response efforts. Beginning tomorrow there will be an additional 200 trained responders to supplement the initial response team.

The public is reminded that they should avoid areas and wildlife that are oiled, as untrained persons may cause further damage, while attempting to assist.

Popularity: 18% [?]

San Francisco Bay Oil Spill continued to spread, coating some of most beautiful coastline.

An oil spill from a container ship in San Francisco Bay continued to spread today, coating some of the state’s most storied coastline and imperiling hundreds of shorebirds as concerns lingered about the U.S. Coast Guard response as well as the checkered history of the vessel’s pilot.

Coast Guard officials apologized during a morning press conference for delays in notifying Bay Area authorities about the full extent of the spill from the 810-foot Cosco Busan.

The ship leaked 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel, a thick and oily substance that is difficult to clean up, after it rammed the base of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in dense fog about 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, November 7, 2007.

Coast Guard officers initially said 140 gallons of the viscous fuel had oozed out, and then failed to update local officials or the public for more than 12 hours as the extent of the disaster grew.

Rear Adm. Craig Bone, the Coast Guard’s top officer in California and other Western states, said the delay was “unacceptable” but defended the emergency response as an appropriately aggressive effort.

The initial cleanup crew — a quick-strike response team manning a skimmer boat that vacuums oil residue off the water — arrived at the spill site within 90 minutes of the accident, authorities said. By Thursday morning, when the fog had lifted so authorities could get a flight up to survey the extent of the slick, 11 skimmer boats had been dispatched by a private contractor hired for the cleanup.

“You always put out everything you can because you can always fall back,” Bone said.

Although the oil slick remains largely inside the bay, tidal action and winds have spread the spill outside the Golden Gate and up the Marin County coastline, as far as Muir Beach.

Wildlife authorities said the number of birds caught in the sticky spill continues to climb, with 73 taken in for treatment and 19 found dead. Those numbers, authorities say, are likely to grow into the hundreds over the coming days. Scores of wildlife experts and volunteers are combing the shorelines for oil-blackened birds.

Meanwhile, the investigation into the cause of the shipping accident continued as new details emerged about the veteran harbor captain who was piloting the vessel.

Capt. John Cota, 59, has been a master mariner for more than a quarter century. But since the early 1990s he has been investigated for four separate incidents, and last year was reprimanded for running a ship aground, the San Francisco Chronicle reported today.

Coast Guard investigators said Cota and the crew of the Cosco Busan were tested for alcohol after the accident, and the results were negative. Drug test results were not yet available.

Technorati Tags: San Francisco, Oil Spill

Popularity: 11% [?]

Video: Funny cigarette TV commercial with Ferrari.

Technorati Tags: Ferrari, Funny, Humor

Popularity: 8% [?]

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is suing renowned architect Frank Gehry, alleging serious design flaws in the $300 million Stata Center.

Stata Center Photo by jonas_k

The school asserts that the center, completed in spring 2004, has persistent leaks, drainage problems and mold growing on its brick exterior. It says accumulations of snow and ice have fallen dangerously from window boxes and other areas of its roofs, blocking emergency exits and causing damage.

The suit says MIT paid Los Angeles-based Gehry Partners $15 million to design the Stata Center, which cost $300 million to build. It houses labs, offices, classrooms and meeting rooms.

“Gehry breached its duties by providing deficient design services and drawings,” according to the suit, which also names New Jersey-based Beacon Skanska Construction Co., now known as Skanska USA Building Inc. The suit, filed Oct. 31, seeks unspecified damages.

An executive at Skanska’s Boston office said Gehry ignored warnings from Skanska and a consulting company before construction that there were flaws in the design. “This is not a construction issue, never has been,” said Paul Hewins, executive vice president and area general manager of Skanska USA.

Who is Frank Gehry?

Frank Owen Gehry (1929) is a Pritzker Prize winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.

His best known works include the titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, Dancing House in Prague, Czech Republic, and his private residence in Santa Monica, California, which jump-started his career, lifting it from the status of “paper architecture” before receiving major commissions in later years.

Frank Gehry House, Santa Monica by Greg Headley

The Dancing House by Purple Cloud

Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, by bohemiangrassi

Popularity: 100% [?]

Crater of Diamonds State Park, Arkansas : Chad Johnson nearly threw away his largest find ever, 4.38 carat, tea-colored diamond.

Chad Johnson has found about 80 diamonds at Crater of Diamonds State Park, but on Monday he nearly threw away his largest find yet. A cube-shaped rock plucked out of his sifters turned out to be a 4.38-carat, tea-colored diamond.

Johnson, 36, made the dig Saturday at the park and left his equipment in a locker. When he came back Monday morning, he made the discovery.

Crater of Diamonds State Park, which opened in 1972, is the world’s only diamond-producing site open to the public, and visitors can keep the gems they unearth. The largest diamond found at the park was the 16.37-carat Amarillo Starlight, a white diamond found in 1975.

Johnson’s find is the second-largest diamond uncovered at the park this year. In June, a Louisiana man found a 4.8-carat stone. More than 700 diamonds have been found there this year.

Since moving to Arkansas from Iowa in February, Johnson said, he was living off money made by selling diamonds. He only recently took a job at a convenience store, partly because he “got tired of selling diamonds to make ends meet.”

Park officials declined to speculate how much money Johnson could get for the diamond. Johnson suggested he expects much more than what he is used to getting.

“If someone offers me that much money, it’s theirs,” Johnson said.

Where is Crater of Diamonds State Park?

The Crater of Diamonds State Park is an Arkansas State Park located near Murfreesboro in Pike County, Arkansas, USA containing the only diamond producing site in the world open to the public.

View Larger Map

Crater of Diamonds State Park
209 State Park Road
Murfreesboro, AR 71958
(870) 285-3113

Official Crater of Diamonds State Park web site: www.craterofdiamondsstatepark.com

Popularity: 7% [?]

Indian Girl born with 8 limbs undergoes operations to remove extra limbs and organs from parasitic twin

A 2-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs was responding well Tuesday to the early stages of extensive surgery to remove the excess limbs, organs and other body parts of her “parasitic twin,” the lead surgeon said.

Lakshmi’s twin stopped developing in their mother’s womb. As the surviving fetus, Lakshmi absorbed the limbs, kidneys and other body parts of the undeveloped fetus. Her rare condition is called isciopagus.

The complications for Lakshmi’s surgery are myriad: the two spines are merged, she has four kidneys, entangled nerves, two stomach cavities and two chest cavities. She cannot stand up or walk. It’s an extremely rare and difficult procedure.

A team of neurosurgeons has separated the fused spines, and will next try to remove the extra limbs, then the rest of her “parasitic twin,” said Dr. Sharan Patil, the orthopedic surgeon heading the operation. The surgery began early Tuesday.

“The child has been responding very well,” Patil told reporters outside Sparsh Hospital in the southern city of Bangalore where Lakshmi is undergoing surgery, several hours into the surgery.

Patil warned that the surgeries would “take many, many hours on a continuous basis” - up to 40 hours - and involved 30 surgeons.

Before the operation began, he said there was a 20-25 percent chance Lakshmi would die during the operation.

“It’s a big team effort of a lot of skilled surgeons who will be putting their heart and soul into solving the problem of Lakshmi,” Patil said.

It wasn’t immediately clear if doctors expected her to ever be able to stand or walk - before the surgery, her limbs were severely atrophied.

Lakshmi is named for the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, and some in her poor village in the north Indian state of Bihar highly revere the little girl, her father, Shambhu, said.

“Everybody considers her a goddess at our village,” said Shambhu, who goes by one name.

He said the family feared people would try to make money from her and, after an unsuccessful attempt by a circus to buy her, they had kept her in hiding.

Dr. Patil Mamatha said the hospital’s foundation was paying for the surgeries because her family could not afford the medical bills.

Technorati Tags: Girl with 8 limbs, lakshmi surgery

Popularity: 97% [?]

High-fat Atkins diet can cause long-term damage to blood vessels, as well as some of the inflammation linked with heart and artery disease.

In contrast, low-fat regimens such as the South Beach and Ornish diets lowered cholesterol and appeared to benefit artery function.

“It really is the Atkins diet that is the worst,” Dr. Michael Miller, director of preventive cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.

“The Atkins diet caused the LDL levels to go up by about 7 percent, whereas in the Ornish and South Beach diets … they went down 7 to 10 percent.” Low density lipoprotein or LDL is the “bad” cholesterol that clogs blood vessels.

Various researchers have tested the benefits of the popular diets and reached wildly differing conclusions. Miller designed what he said was a unique approach — to see how people fared once they stopped losing weight on any of the diets.

Studies show that people usually lose weight rapidly on any diet if they follow it properly and the weight loss itself can cause cholesterol to plummet.

“When you lose weight everything looks good but after a while you plateau and you hit a maintenance stage,” said Miller, who presented his findings to a meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Florida.

His team studied 18 people, each of whom completed a full month on each of the three diets. They were carefully monitored to ensure that they did not lose weight.

The Atkins diet was set to deliver 50 percent of calories as fat, the South Beach was 30 percent fat and the Ornish diet, designed by nutritionist Dr. Dean Ornish, was 10 percent fat.

The researchers used ultrasound scans to measure the flexibility and dilation of blood vessels and measured proteins in the blood that can indicate inflammation.

“Some markers of inflammation were increased by as much as 30 to 40 percent during the Atkins phase, whereas during the South Beach and Ornish phases, the markers either were stable or went down, some by as much as 15 to 20 percent,” Miller said.

Most studies have shown that diets that stress vegetables, low-fat sources of protein such as beans and legumes, and whole grains provide the best long-term weight loss. Many low-fat diets allow processed carbohydrates such as white flour, which have also been shown to be unhealthy, experts agree.

“We don’t recommend the Atkins diet,” Miller said. “Why not start out with a diet that will be healthier for you in the long run after weight loss?”

Technorati Tags: Atkins Diet, South Beach diet

Popularity: 5% [?]

Economic Factors at stake in the Writers Guild of America Strike against the film and television industry.

The Writers Guild of America strike against the film and television industry has idled the union’s 12,000 members and will throw some TV programs into immediate reruns, starting with some sitcoms and late-night talk shows.

The last major Hollywood strike was in 1988, when a 22-week walkout by the WGA delayed the start of that year’s fall television season and cost the entertainment industry an estimated $500 million.

Here are some economic factors at stake in the current labor dispute.

• Economists estimate a strike of the same duration as the 1988 walkout would result in at least $1 billion in losses.
• The U.S. film and television industry employs more than 200,000 people from actors and directors to hairstylists, electricians, truck drivers and clerks.
• The motion picture and TV industry generates $30 billion in annual economic activity for Los Angeles County alone.
• The writers’ demand for increased “residual” fees they earn on the reuse of their work in the form of Internet downloads. The union seeks 2.5 percent of gross revenues, the studios are offering 1.5 percent on just 20 percent of gross revenues as the same formula already applies for DVD residuals.
• The U.S. download-to-own market for movies and TV episodes — a small but growing chunk of entertainment revenues is expected to be $315 million this year and nearly $1.2 billion by 2011.
• The WGA has dropped its demand for higher residuals on DVD sales and rentals, which generated $24.4 billion last year.

Payments of all residuals to screenwriters are more than $100 million a year, according to industry figures. The union says such payments account for as much as half the income earned by “middle-class” writers who make up the bulk of the WGA’s membership.

Official WGA west web site: www.wga.org

Technorati Tags: WGA, Writers Strike

Popularity: 5% [?]