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I know it's been done to death but this is really good:
Seven towns in Germany have special post offices dedicated to answering children's Christmas letters, which letter writers see as a chance to undermine seasonal greed and instill joy and hope.
As Christmas approaches, children long for things: cars, laptops,?dolls, electric trains. The airwaves are bombarded with news of Christmas sales barometers. A stressed-out society rushes to consumption.
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But in Germany, children still write to the Christkind?("Christ Child"), or to Santa Claus, in the hundreds of thousands ? yearning not for only gifts, but for a bit of comfort and joy.?
Since the beginning of the Advent season in late November, close to?75,000 children have written to the "Christmas Post Office" of Himmelstadt?("Heaven's City"). The tiny Bavarian?village of 17,500 is one of seven towns with special post offices dedicated to?receiving and answering letters with children's Christmas wishes.?
"I write a letter. I sign it 'Your Christkind,' and I give the?children a piece of advice. I send them a little angel, a drawing, a?poem," says Rosemarie Schotte, who, for more than 20 years, has been in?charge of the Christmas post office in Himmelstadt, working with 30 village volunteers to?answer every?single letter.
"We want to bring back the spirit of Christmas, which is a?celebration of love, not necessarily big presents," says Schotte. "One has to?look within one self, to remember how good you have it in life, be?grateful to have a family."
The letter-writing tradition all started decades ago when a letter?addressed to the Christkind ended up in Himmselstadt.?Postal workers, not knowing what to do with it, just answered it. The?following year, a few more children wrote. Over the years, what had?been a few isolated letters turned into a flood.?
In 1965, Germany's first "Christmas post office" opened in Lower Saxony's?Himmelsth?r, or Heaven's Door. Six other post offices?in places with names associated with Christmas popped up, including Engelskirchen ("Angels' Church"), Himmelpfort ("Heaven's Gate") and Himmelpforten ("Heaven's Gates").
The letters addressed to Father Christmas, who is known in?Germany as Saint Nicholas, end up in one of two places: Nikolausdorf?("Nicholas village") in Lower Saxony or St. Nikolaus in Saarland.?
The tradition is an effort to counter the encroachment of?consumption on the spirit of Christmas. Schotte says part of the?idea is is to get families closer together, by encouraging parents to?write with their children.
So far, children from 70 countries have written to the Christkind in?Himmelsfarhrt. This year, for the first time, children from?Mongolia and Vietnam wrote.
Christmas' wishes come in all forms and colors.?Children don't just want?iPods and laptops. In their letters, they?share a bit of their lives, and of their yearnings to have it better.
"We get to read about just about everything," Schotte says. "The children pour their hearts out."?Mostly, they talk about things like their parents fighting, illnesses, and separations. "We try to comfort them, to make them trust life?again," she says.?
Schotte will answer each letter with a personal note, sometimes a poem or a drawing.?She tries to?transmit her own childhood traditions of candles, the advent?crown, eating a few Christmas cookies, the family getting closer to?each other.?She wants to bring togetherness back into the lives of the children's?families.
''When things aren't working in small circles, how can you?expect them to work out in bigger circles? In politics, in the wider?world?" she says.
There is always a reason to keep on writing. Schotte received a candy bar with one letter. "Dear Christ Child," the?child wrote, "I am sending you this so (you) can get energy back when?you give me my presents."
Washington loses wild shootout against Baylor in Alamo Bowl
by Associated Press
KREM.com
Posted on December 29, 2011 at 10:16 PM
SAN ANTONIO ?-- Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III didn't dazzle but Baylor still pulled out a thrilling Alamo Bowl victory in the highest-scoring bowl game in history, beating Washington 67-56 in a record-smashing shootout Thursday night.
If this was RG3's last showcase before the NFL, it was a gripping goodbye to watch. One of the nation's most electrifying players was upstaged by an even more dazzling game that shattering the previous record for points in regulation set in the 2001 GMAC Bowl.
? ?
Griffin had an unremarkable night, throwing just one touchdown pass and running for another. But Terrance Ganaway starred ably in his place, rushing for 200 yards and five touchdowns.
? ?
His last was a 43-yard run with 2:28 left to seal the win for No. 15 Baylor (10-3).
Janelle Lynch's exhibition at the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University is based on her book, Los Jardines de Mexico, published by Radius Books in 2011. The exhibit is comprised of color images made with a large format camera of various gardens in Mexico City. Janelle Lynch has garnered international recognition over the last decade for her large format photographs of the urban and rural landscape. Widely exhibited, her work is in several public and private collections including the George Eastman House Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Newark Museum, the Fundacion Vila Casas, Barcelona, and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Salta, Argentina. Artist's Talk: Thursday, December 1, 5:30 pm Reception: Thursday, December 1, 6:30 pm PRC Gallery, 832 Commonwealth Ave., Boston Gallery Hours Tuesday through Friday: 10 am - 5 pm Saturday: noon - 4 pm Sunday & Monday: Closed
URL
http://www.prcboston.org/exhibit_lynch.htm
Starts
10:00am on Tuesday, November 29th 2011
End Time
5:00pm
Recurs
on every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday each week until Sat Jan. 28th, 2012
For women with advanced cases of ovarian cancer, the drug Avastin adds about four months to the time it takes for the cancer to worsen, according to a new report.
Patients treated with Avastin in addition to chemotherapy had about 14 months before their advanced ovarian cancer progressed, compared to about 10 months for those in the study who were ?treated with chemotherapy and a placebo.
An early analysis of the trial's results was presented in June 2010 at the meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology; the complete report from the trial appears today (Dec. 28) in the New England Journal of Medicine.
This was the third clinical trial to show that adding Avastin to standard chemotherapy treatments extends the time before ovarian cancers progress, said Dr. Carol Aghajanian, chief of gynecologic medical oncology service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
"This is good news for women with ovarian cancer," said Aghajanian, who was not involved in the new study.
The European Commission approved Avastin as a treatment for ovarian cancer this month, but it is unclear whether the drug will be approved to treat this cancer in the United States, Aghajanian said. The Food and Drug Administration will be looking at the data.
The drug, made by pharmaceutical company Genentech, is designed to inhibit the growth of blood vessels that feed a tumor. It is currently approved to treat certain types of colon, lung, kidney and brain cancers, while the FDA recently disallowed its use for breast cancer.
Preventing cancer from worsening
The new report is based on 1,873 ovarian cancer patients who had been assigned at random to three groups. One received chemotherapy treatments along with a placebo; one received Avastin (generically known as bevacizumab) along with chemotherapy at the start of their treatment, then received only chemotherapy for the rest of their treatment; the third group received Avastin along with chemotherapy for the entirety of their treatment. The patients did not know which treatment they were receiving; neither did the doctors treating them.
The researchers measured the blood levels of a marker called CA-125 to determine whether the patients' cancers were progressing. CA-125 levels are a very early marker of worsening cancer, Aghajanian said. Levels of CA-125 begin to rise before a growing cancer is visible on a CT scan.
"They used a very conservative method of measuring progression, so we can be certain that it's meaningful," Aghajanian said.
Whether Avastin could extend patients' lives is a tricky question to try to answer with studies, Aghajanian said. At the end of this trial, for example, the patients and their doctors were told whether they had received Avastin or the placebo treatment, and it was entirely possible that those who had been on the placebo then received Avastin, she explained. Such a crossover in treatments after a study's conclusion would make it difficult to later determine whether patients who received a drug during a trial lived longer.?
Avastin and breast cancer
There are important differences between the studies of Avastin as a treatment for breast cancer and the studies of its use for ovarian cancer, Aghajanian said.
In November the FDA revoked its approval of Avastin to treat breast cancer because studies showed that breast cancer patients treated with it did not live any longer, and faced significant risks of severe side effects such as small holes developing in the intestines. The drug had been cleared by the FDA in February 2008 under an "accelerated approval" process based on promising early studies, allowing Avastin to be used for breast cancer patients while Genentech did further research.
"There was not a consistent benefit seen in the breast cancer studies," Aghajanian said. By contrast, three studies of the drug's use in ovarian cancer showed a consistent benefit.
The safety of the drug as seen in the new study "was reassuring," Aghajanian said, as was the finding that patients taking the drug reported no difference in their quality of life from patients receiving the placebo.
The rate of patients who developed gastrointestinal perforations was twice as high among those who received Avastin as among those who received a placebo, but the rate was still under 3 percent.
Elevated blood pressure was seen in more patients who received Avastin throughout the study than in those who received the drug only at the beginning or not at all.
Pass it on: A third study has found the drug Avastin can delay the worsening of advanced ovarian cancer.
This story was provided by MyHealthNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily on Twitter @MyHealth_MHND. Find us on Facebook.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel opposes the bill on recognition of the "Armenian genocide"
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel has opposed the bill on recognition of "the Armenian genocide" proposed to be discussed in the Knesset. Commenting this project, the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel has warned that in
Baku, December 26 (AzerTAc). The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel has opposed the bill on recognition of "the Armenian genocide" proposed to be discussed in the Knesset. Commenting this project, the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel has warned that in the present situation this step can pose very serious threat to relations with Turkey: "Our present relations with Turkey are very fragile. It is impossible to be beyond. Otherwise it can cause serious strategic consequences". Earlier the attempts to recognize the "Armenian genocide" didn`t pass in Israel. The bills presented to the Committee of foreign affairs and defense, have been rejected.
The University of Oregon is a public university located in Eugene, Oregon. The university was founded in 1876, graduating its first class two years later. The University of Oregon is one of 60 members of the Association of American Universities. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Oregon as a "high research activity" university. Former Oregon Attorney General David B. Frohnmayer is the president of the university. The UO receives much of its funding from the UO Foundation, an independent not-for-profit organization.
Canada is at the top of a list of 10 developed nations when it comes to the health of our real estate market, but activity is expected to cool here too, according to a new report from Scotiabank. The report into global real estate trends says the slow pace of the global economic recovery, intensifying sovereign debt worries, high unemployment and weak consumer confidence are all putting pressure on the global market???????????????..Full Article: Source
CAIRO?? The United States said it was worried by violence in Egypt and urged the army rulers to respect human rights Monday as security forces wielding batons and firing tear gas fought with protesters demanding an end to military rule for a fourth day.
Egypt's Health Ministry said Monday that at least three more protesters had been killed in clashes with army soldiers in central Cairo, bringing the four-day death toll to at least 14.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also condemned excessive use of force by security forces in Cairo protests that have widened a rift among Egyptians over the role of the army and cast a shadow over the country's first free election in decades.
Ban "is highly alarmed by the excessive use of force employed by the security forces against protesters, and calls for the transitional authorities to act with restraint and uphold human rights, including the right to peaceful protest," Al-Jazeera English quoted his office saying in a statement.
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Updated 26 minutes ago
12/19/2011 12:43:57 PM +00:00
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Police and soldiers using batons drove stone-throwing protesters out of Cairo's Tahrir Square, hub of the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February, late Sunday but by dawn they had trickled back into the square. Security forces took up positions again behind barricades in nearby streets.
Protester had fled down sidestreets, away from sensitive areas where parliament, the cabinet offices and Interior Ministry are located. Security forces used tear gas in nearby streets to drive protesters away.
Story: Violence flares in Tahrir Square after Egypt's army tries to crush protest
The violence broke out just after the second stage of a six-week election for Egypt's new parliament that starts the slow countdown to the army's return to barracks. The military has pledged to hand power to an elected president by July.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was "deeply concerned" about the violence and urged the security forces "to respect and protect the universal rights of all Egyptians."
In a statement to a nation which has received billions of dollars in U.S. military and other aid, she also called on protesters "to refrain from acts of violence."
Many Egyptians want to focus on building democratic institutions, not street activism, but have nevertheless been shocked by the tactics of security forces in and around Tahrir that have killed at least 14 people and wounded hundreds.
Video: After year of turmoil, Arab Spring still churning (on this page)
Soldiers in riot gear have been filmed beating protesters with batons even after they have fallen to the ground. A Reuters picture showed two policemen dragging a woman lying on the street by the shirt, exposing her underwear.
Protesters said they had seized four soldiers who had been part of formations who launched a charge in the early hours.
"We quickly got the four into vehicles and drove them away from the square, otherwise they would have been beaten to a pulp by angry protesters who experienced the army's vicious attacks," said Sayyid Abu Ella, speaking by telephone from Tahrir.
Late on Sunday, protesters had hurled petrol bombs at lines of security forces and chanted "Down with Tantawi" a reference to Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi who heads the army council and was Mubarak's defence minister.
Overshadowing elections
The violence has overshadowed a staggered parliamentary election that is set to give Islamists the biggest bloc.
The West, which long looked to strongmen in the region like Mubarak to keep a lid on Islamists, have watched warily as Islamist parties swept elections in Morocco, Tunisia and now Egypt.
A hard core of activists have camped in Tahrir since a protest against army rule on Nov. 18 that was sparked by the army-backed cabinet's proposals to permanently shield the military from civilian oversight in the new constitution.
Who's in charge? Mixed signals from Egypt's rulers
Tough police and army tactics combined with hot-headed youths bent on keeping up pressure also sparked a flare-up last month that killed 42 people.
A small group of activists approached protesters hurling stones on Sunday and called on them to stop, but they refused, citing the deaths of 10 people as a reason not to "negotiate".
Other activists handed over to the army people they said were making Molotov cocktails.
The violence has deepened the frustration of many ordinary Egyptians, who want an end to months of unrest that has left the economy in tatters.
"There are people who wait for any problem and seek to amplify it ... The clashes won't stop. There are street children who found shelter in Tahrir," said Ali el-Nubi, a postal worker, adding the army should have managed the transition better.
The Health Ministry said on Sunday that 10 people had been killed in the violence since Friday and 505 injured, of whom 384 had been taken to hospital.
The latest bloodshed began after the second round of voting last week for parliament's lower house. The staggered election began on Nov. 28 and will end with a run-off vote on Jan. 11.
The Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties repressed in the 30-year Mubarak era have emerged as strong front-runners.
Reuters, The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.
The festivities continued when we found ourselves in Washington in the ?80s. Christopher came each year for Christmas lunch with his first wife, Eleni, and their two children. Henry Fairlie, the British writer who worked for the New Republic, was also a regular guest. As the beverages flowed, Henry, a generation older, would roll a political hand grenade down the table, aimed at Christopher. The explosive forces then released inevitably found their way into print, in some fashion or another. On one such occasion, when the topic was the Spanish Civil War, Christopher claimed Henry had written this or that unacceptable thing about the Republican side in front of witnesses, prompting my wife, Eleanor Randolph, who is Southern, to admonish Christopher, saying Christmas lunch was "off the record." The Fairlie-Hitchens confrontations, vicious though they were to behold, never lasted long, and at Henry's 60th birthday, Christopher gave a stunning recitation of limericks that lasted 45 minutes. Eleanor immediately forgave him everything, well, almost everything. Goodbye, comrade, and thanks for those moments.
If anyone's got the time, could I get a name I can shoot a PM every now and then to get help?
I could show some posts of mine and they could be checked out for any problems, take a look and see on a couple of my latest RP's and see how they are, etc, that sort of thing. I want to know my flaws, and try to improve upon them.
You might think you've found a clever way to get them to learn, but kids see right through educational board games. And while some do a good job at hiding their true nature, c-Jump—which teaches programming concepts—does not. More »
Kim Jong-un, center, son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il (not pictured) visits Mokran Video Company in Pyongyang in this official KCNA news agency photo showing the heir apparent's slicked-back, high-sided haircut, which is a fashion hit in Pyongyang.
By Reuters
North Korean heir-apparent Kim Jong-un's slicked-back, high-sided haircut is a fashion hit in Pyongyang where young men are apparently queueing up for a similar cut.
Kim, believed to be in his late 20s and known as the "Young General," is packaged to look like his late grandfather, the secretive state's founder, Kim Il-sung.
The chubby youngest son of the current leader, Kim Jong-il, slicks his hair back at the top, and has it trimmed to the scalp to about an inch above the ears.
Completing the Kim Il-sung look, which experts say is designed to help win over the public's support for dynastic succession, the young Kim wears dark Mao-style suits.
The young Kim's haircut is dubbed a "youth" or "ambition" hairstyle in North Korea, South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper has reported.
Earlier this week, North Korean state news agency KCNA quoted barber An Su-gil as saying the short-cut, medium-cut and square-cut hairstyles are now popular among young men.
North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun wrote in September that neat and short hair for young people makes them "captivating."
"A young man with (an) ambitious high sided haircut looks so sobering and stylish," the paper added.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency said that North Korean young men prefer short hairstyle for sanitary reasons, not just because they want to look neat and ambitious.
Kim Jong-un emerged as the reclusive North's leader-in-waiting last year when he was named a four-star general and given a prominent post within the ruling party.
This year he has regularly been photographed alongside his father during visits by foreign officials.
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Sometimes investing can be boring?, so how about spicing it up by a friendly competition against the Money Pros Index Fund Challenge members?
Money Pros Index Fund Challenge
PICK 3 STOCKS you think will perform the best in 2012
SIGN-UP on the Money Pros Index Fund Challenge?registration form?- before thefirst trading day of 2012!
FOLLOW your progress, and see if you can make the leaderboard
This will be the 1st year of the challenge so it should be both a fun and interesting experience!!!
Some unique features of the challenge are that the stocks prices are updated at least daily.? So you can check to see how your picks are performing.? The picks performance should be accurate as of that day?s prices (give or take 20 minutes).
Since this is the first year of the challenge the look and feel may change throughout the year for the better.
?
Why Participate?
Bragging rights!? Most, if not all of the members dabble in stocks and other investments.? Would it be cool to outrank the members in the index?
Potential exposure to interesting?new stocks.? Most of the picks should be interesting to say the least.
It?s a great way to track the performance of your three favorite stocks throughout the year.? Since once the picks are in, they are frozen.
Be a Charter member of the program.? While we?re still working out all of the final details, we may have a hall of fame record of who placed first for the year.
Cool place to visit!? It?ll be dynamic, so make sure you sign up!
We hope you join and enjoy the challenge, I?m sure we will.
Triceratops, with its three large horns and great ruffled headdress, seems distinctive enough, but at one time paleontologists had named more than a dozen different species of the rhinoceros-like dinosaur.
These have been condensed into three recognized species in the Triceratops genus, but some researchers believe that number should be lower still: They suggest there is just one Triceratops, of whom the size and shape of its skull and head ornaments changed as it matured.
"It's important to understand how different dinosaurs grew," study researcher John Scannella, of Montana State University, told LiveScience in an email. "We are learning that many of them underwent considerable transformations throughout development, which leaves the potential for many different-looking growth stages that may be misinterpreted as many different-looking species of dinosaur."
The three species in question are: Triceratops, the classic three-horned, clown-ruffled dinosaur; Nedoceratops hatcheri, which the researchers suggest is an intermediate stage, but is only represented by a single fossil; and Torosaurus latus, which seems to be much larger than Triceratops and of which there are about a half dozen good-quality specimens. In the growth-stage scenario, Torosaurus would be the "old man" of the group.
Not everyone fully agrees with the remodeling, particularly Andrew Farke, a researcher from the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in California. "I agree with them on many points? It's just the interpretation that I disagree with," he said, referring to the reserachers' conclusion that the different species are just different growth stages of the same species.
The "holy" trinity
One of the main differences among the three skulls is a set of large holes in the crown of Torosaurus. These holes are much smaller in Nedoceratops and in Triceratops they seem to be absent, though a close examination by Scanella showed evidence of the beginnings of these holes in some Triceratops.
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"By cutting up the frills of many Triceratops and examining thin slices under the microscope, it is possible to actually see how the skull changed shape throughout growth," Scannella wrote in an email to LiveScience. "We can actually see incipient holes developing in specimens with solid frills."
The researchers also explained other differences in shape between the skulls, including extra spikes around the edges of the crown in Torosaurus. The researchers believe that these bony protrusions on Triceratops split in two later in life, as the animal matured, appearing more like Torosaurus.
This hasn't been seen in other dinosaurs with similar morphologies, Farke said. "Looking at the growth cycle of other horned dinosaurs, there's no evidence that this number changes as they grow," he said. "The scales don't double in number, they just get bigger."
Tri-Triceratops
Supporting this theory is the lack of juvenile Torosaurus specimens, some researchers say. The fossils discovered seem to fit a normal population curve: few young, few old, but many middle-age animals, as one would expect if you were to take a cross section of a living population, said Robert Sullivan, a researcher from the State Museum of Pennsylvania, who wasn't involved in the study.
Spencer Lucas, another researcher who wasn't involved in the study, from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, said more samples are needed to prove that these skulls all come from the same species, especially for the less-represented fossils.
"[Scanella] may be right and it is a good idea. It's forcing people to really look at the variation and the differences in anatomy in the different dinosaur fossils," Lucas said. "But he still lacks the silver bullet." A group of samples from the same "bone bed" containing individuals of all different ages would do the trick, Lucas said.
Most of these Triceratops, Torosaurus and Nedoceratops fossils do come from the same area (the Northwestern United States) and the same time frame ? one that covers only about 2-million-to-3-million years ? according to Sullivan.
"It's a really important study, I really think they are on to something, I still have a little problem accepting that Torosaurusis separate, but that's my own point of view," Sullivan said. "I'm more inclined to agree with them that Torosaurus is probably an old-age Triceratops. A lot of people don't want to give up a notion of a separate animal, though."
The study was published Dec. 14 in the journal PLoS ONE.
You can follow LiveScience staff writer Jennifer Welsh on Twitter @microbelover. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.
Industry, regulators should take 'system safety' approach to offshore drilling in aftermath of Deepwater Horizon accident, says new reportPublic release date: 14-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Molly Galvin news@nas.edu 202-334-2138 National Academy of Sciences
WASHINGTON To reduce the risk of another accident as catastrophic as the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, a new report from the National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council says, companies involved in offshore drilling should take a "system safety" approach to anticipating and managing possible dangers at every level of operation -- from ensuring the integrity of wells to designing blowout preventers that function "under all foreseeable conditions." In addition, an enhanced regulatory approach should combine strong industry safety goals with mandatory oversight at critical points during drilling operations.
The report says the lack of effective safety management among the companies involved in the Macondo Well-Deepwater Horizon disaster is evident in the multiple flawed decisions that led to the blowout and explosion, which killed 11 workers and produced the biggest accidental oil spill in U.S. history. Regulators also failed to exercise effective oversight.
"The need to maintain domestic sources of oil is great, but so is the need to protect the lives of those who work in the offshore drilling industry as well as protect the viability of the Gulf of Mexico region," said Donald C. Winter, former secretary of the Navy, professor of engineering practice at the University of Michigan, and chair of the committee that wrote the report. "Industry and regulators need to include a factual assessment of all the risks in deepwater drilling operations in their decisions and make the overall safety of the many complex systems involved a top priority."
Despite challenging geological conditions, alternative techniques and processes were available that could have been used to prepare the exploratory Macondo well safely for "temporary abandonment" -- sealing it until the necessary infrastructure could be installed to support hydrocarbon production, the report says. In addition, several signs of an impending blowout were missed by management and crew, resulting in a failure to take action in a timely manner. And despite numerous past warnings of potential failures of blowout preventer (BOP) systems, both industry and regulators had a "misplaced trust" in the ability of these systems to act as fail-safe mechanisms in the event of a well blowout.
BOP systems commonly in use -- including the system used by the Deepwater Horizon -- are neither designed nor tested to operate in the dynamic conditions that occurred during the accident. BOP systems should be redesigned, rigorously tested, and maintained to operate reliably, the report says. Proper training in the use of these systems in the event of an emergency is also essential. And while BOP systems are being improved, industry should ensure timely access to demonstrated capping and containment systems that can be rapidly deployed during a future blowout.
Operating companies should have ultimate responsibility and accountability for well integrity, the report says, because only they possess the ability to view all aspects of well design and operation. The drilling contractor should be held responsible and accountable for the operation and safety of the offshore equipment. Both industry and regulators should significantly expand the formal education and training of personnel engaged in offshore drilling to ensure that they can properly implement system safety. Guidelines should be established so that well designs incorporate protection against the various credible risks associated with the drilling and abandonment process. In addition, cemented and mechanical barriers designed to contain the flow of hydrocarbons in wells should be tested to make sure they are effective, and those tests should be subject to independent, near real-time review by a competent authority.
The U.S. Department of the Interior's recent establishment of a Safety and Environmental Management Systems (SEMS) program -- which requires companies to demonstrate procedures for meeting explicit goals related to health, safety, and environmental protection -- is a "good first step" toward an enhanced regulatory approach. Regulators should identify and enforce safety-critical points that warrant explicit regulatory review and approval before operations can proceed.
Offshore drilling operations are currently governed by a number of agencies, sometimes with overlapping authorities. The U.S. should make a single government agency responsible for integrating system safety for all offshore drilling activities. Reporting of safety-related incidents should be improved to enable anonymous input, and corporations should investigate all such reports and disseminate lessons learned to personnel and the industry as a whole.
###
The study was sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Interior. The National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council make up the National Academies. They are private, nonprofit institutions that provide science, technology, and health policy advice under a congressional charter. The Research Council is the principal operating agency of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. For more information, visit http://national-academies.org. A committee roster follows.
Contacts:
William Skane, Executive Director
Molly Galvin, Senior Media Relations Officer
Shaquanna Shields, Media Relations Assistant
Office of News and Public Information
202-334-2138; e-mail news@nas.edu
Additional resources: Project Website
Pre-publication copies of Macando Well-Deepwater Horizon Blowout: Lessons for Improving Offshore Drilling Safety are available from the National Academies Press; tel. 202-334-3313 or 1-800-624-6242 or on the Internet at http://www.nap.edu. Reporters may obtain a copy from the Office of News and Public Information (contacts listed above).
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
and
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING
Committee on the Analysis of Causes of the Deepwater Horizon Explosion, Fire, and Oil Spill to Identify Measures to Prevent Similar Accidents in the Future
Donald C. Winter (chair) *
Former Secretary of the Navy, and
Professor of Engineering Practice
Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor
Paul M. Bommer
Senior Lecturer
Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering
University of Texas
Austin
Chryssostomos Chryssostomidis
Doherty Professor of Ocean Science and Engineering
Department of Ocean Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge
David E. Daniel*
President
University of Texas
Dallas
Thomas J. Eccles
Rear Admiral, and
Chief Engineer and Deputy Commander for Naval Systems Engineering
U.S. Navy
Washington, D.C.
Edmund P. Giambastiani Jr.
Private Consultant and retired U.S. Navy Admiral
Warwick, Md.
David A. Hofmann
Professor of Organizational Behavior
Kenan-Flager Business School
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill
Roger L. McCarthy*
Private Engineering Consultant
Palo Alto, Calif.
Najmedin Meshkati
Professor of Engineering
Viterbi School of Engineering
University of Southern California
Los Angeles
Keith K. Millheim* (resigned Nov. 2011)
Director and Owner
Strategic Worldwide LLC
The Woodlands, Texas
Elisabeth Pat-Cornell*
Burt and Deedee McMurty Professor
Department of Management Science and Engineering
Stanford University
Stanford, Calif.
Robert F. Sawyer*
Class of 1935 Professor of Energy Emeritus
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of California
Berkeley
Jocelyn E. Scott
Chief Engineer and Vice President of Engineering, Facilities,
and Real Estate
DuPont
Wilmington, Del.
Arnold F. Stancell*
Turner Professor of Chemical Engineering Emeritus
Georgia Institute of Technology, and
Vice President of Mobil Oil (retired)
Greenwich, Conn.
Mark D. Zoback*
Benjamin M. Page Professor of Earth Science, and
Professor
Department of Geophysics
Stanford University
Stanford, Calif.
STAFF
Raymond A. Wassel
Study Director
* Member, National Academy of Engineering
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Industry, regulators should take 'system safety' approach to offshore drilling in aftermath of Deepwater Horizon accident, says new reportPublic release date: 14-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Molly Galvin news@nas.edu 202-334-2138 National Academy of Sciences
WASHINGTON To reduce the risk of another accident as catastrophic as the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, a new report from the National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council says, companies involved in offshore drilling should take a "system safety" approach to anticipating and managing possible dangers at every level of operation -- from ensuring the integrity of wells to designing blowout preventers that function "under all foreseeable conditions." In addition, an enhanced regulatory approach should combine strong industry safety goals with mandatory oversight at critical points during drilling operations.
The report says the lack of effective safety management among the companies involved in the Macondo Well-Deepwater Horizon disaster is evident in the multiple flawed decisions that led to the blowout and explosion, which killed 11 workers and produced the biggest accidental oil spill in U.S. history. Regulators also failed to exercise effective oversight.
"The need to maintain domestic sources of oil is great, but so is the need to protect the lives of those who work in the offshore drilling industry as well as protect the viability of the Gulf of Mexico region," said Donald C. Winter, former secretary of the Navy, professor of engineering practice at the University of Michigan, and chair of the committee that wrote the report. "Industry and regulators need to include a factual assessment of all the risks in deepwater drilling operations in their decisions and make the overall safety of the many complex systems involved a top priority."
Despite challenging geological conditions, alternative techniques and processes were available that could have been used to prepare the exploratory Macondo well safely for "temporary abandonment" -- sealing it until the necessary infrastructure could be installed to support hydrocarbon production, the report says. In addition, several signs of an impending blowout were missed by management and crew, resulting in a failure to take action in a timely manner. And despite numerous past warnings of potential failures of blowout preventer (BOP) systems, both industry and regulators had a "misplaced trust" in the ability of these systems to act as fail-safe mechanisms in the event of a well blowout.
BOP systems commonly in use -- including the system used by the Deepwater Horizon -- are neither designed nor tested to operate in the dynamic conditions that occurred during the accident. BOP systems should be redesigned, rigorously tested, and maintained to operate reliably, the report says. Proper training in the use of these systems in the event of an emergency is also essential. And while BOP systems are being improved, industry should ensure timely access to demonstrated capping and containment systems that can be rapidly deployed during a future blowout.
Operating companies should have ultimate responsibility and accountability for well integrity, the report says, because only they possess the ability to view all aspects of well design and operation. The drilling contractor should be held responsible and accountable for the operation and safety of the offshore equipment. Both industry and regulators should significantly expand the formal education and training of personnel engaged in offshore drilling to ensure that they can properly implement system safety. Guidelines should be established so that well designs incorporate protection against the various credible risks associated with the drilling and abandonment process. In addition, cemented and mechanical barriers designed to contain the flow of hydrocarbons in wells should be tested to make sure they are effective, and those tests should be subject to independent, near real-time review by a competent authority.
The U.S. Department of the Interior's recent establishment of a Safety and Environmental Management Systems (SEMS) program -- which requires companies to demonstrate procedures for meeting explicit goals related to health, safety, and environmental protection -- is a "good first step" toward an enhanced regulatory approach. Regulators should identify and enforce safety-critical points that warrant explicit regulatory review and approval before operations can proceed.
Offshore drilling operations are currently governed by a number of agencies, sometimes with overlapping authorities. The U.S. should make a single government agency responsible for integrating system safety for all offshore drilling activities. Reporting of safety-related incidents should be improved to enable anonymous input, and corporations should investigate all such reports and disseminate lessons learned to personnel and the industry as a whole.
###
The study was sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Interior. The National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council make up the National Academies. They are private, nonprofit institutions that provide science, technology, and health policy advice under a congressional charter. The Research Council is the principal operating agency of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. For more information, visit http://national-academies.org. A committee roster follows.
Contacts:
William Skane, Executive Director
Molly Galvin, Senior Media Relations Officer
Shaquanna Shields, Media Relations Assistant
Office of News and Public Information
202-334-2138; e-mail news@nas.edu
Additional resources: Project Website
Pre-publication copies of Macando Well-Deepwater Horizon Blowout: Lessons for Improving Offshore Drilling Safety are available from the National Academies Press; tel. 202-334-3313 or 1-800-624-6242 or on the Internet at http://www.nap.edu. Reporters may obtain a copy from the Office of News and Public Information (contacts listed above).
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
and
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING
Committee on the Analysis of Causes of the Deepwater Horizon Explosion, Fire, and Oil Spill to Identify Measures to Prevent Similar Accidents in the Future
Donald C. Winter (chair) *
Former Secretary of the Navy, and
Professor of Engineering Practice
Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor
Paul M. Bommer
Senior Lecturer
Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering
University of Texas
Austin
Chryssostomos Chryssostomidis
Doherty Professor of Ocean Science and Engineering
Department of Ocean Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge
David E. Daniel*
President
University of Texas
Dallas
Thomas J. Eccles
Rear Admiral, and
Chief Engineer and Deputy Commander for Naval Systems Engineering
U.S. Navy
Washington, D.C.
Edmund P. Giambastiani Jr.
Private Consultant and retired U.S. Navy Admiral
Warwick, Md.
David A. Hofmann
Professor of Organizational Behavior
Kenan-Flager Business School
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill
Roger L. McCarthy*
Private Engineering Consultant
Palo Alto, Calif.
Najmedin Meshkati
Professor of Engineering
Viterbi School of Engineering
University of Southern California
Los Angeles
Keith K. Millheim* (resigned Nov. 2011)
Director and Owner
Strategic Worldwide LLC
The Woodlands, Texas
Elisabeth Pat-Cornell*
Burt and Deedee McMurty Professor
Department of Management Science and Engineering
Stanford University
Stanford, Calif.
Robert F. Sawyer*
Class of 1935 Professor of Energy Emeritus
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of California
Berkeley
Jocelyn E. Scott
Chief Engineer and Vice President of Engineering, Facilities,
and Real Estate
DuPont
Wilmington, Del.
Arnold F. Stancell*
Turner Professor of Chemical Engineering Emeritus
Georgia Institute of Technology, and
Vice President of Mobil Oil (retired)
Greenwich, Conn.
Mark D. Zoback*
Benjamin M. Page Professor of Earth Science, and
Professor
Department of Geophysics
Stanford University
Stanford, Calif.
STAFF
Raymond A. Wassel
Study Director
* Member, National Academy of Engineering
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Even as government officials around the world are beginning to investigate the Carrier IQ software installed on millions of smartphones, a security researcher is saying that claims the company had been improperly collecting personal data are "erroneous." Dan Rosenberg of Virtual Security Research, who says he has no professional ties to Carrier IQ, wrote that the reaction to the software contains a lot of "misinformation."
In a posting Monday on his security research blog, It's Bugs All the Way Down, Rosenberg said Carrier IQ "is a piece of software installed on phones that accepts pieces of information known as metrics."
Some 'Important Conclusions'
Rosenberg said that the software decides if a submitted metric is "interesting," based on the current profile on the device. The profile determines the relevance by assessing whether the information assesses a given aspect of phone service, such as reception or battery life. The software's determination of relevance also determines if the metric is sent to the carrier or not, in order to evaluate, say, dropped calls.
After a detailed analysis of Carrier IQ on a Samsung Epic 4G Touch, Rosenberg wrote that he reached a "number of important conclusions."
For one thing, he said, he found that the Carrier IQ software on the phone could not record textual content from SMS messages, Web pages, or e-mail, even if that carrier wanted the information, because there is no metric for it.
He found that the software can record dialer buttons, and speculated that carriers already have legal access to that data. But, Rosenberg said, the Carrier IQ application on the Epic 4G Touch cannot record non-dialer keystrokes, such as inputting a text message. However, the software can record GPS location data "in some situations," and can record URLs that are visited.
Although Carrier IQ is citing Rosenberg's investigation to support its position that user confidentiality is not being violated, his posting does not let them off the hook completely. He notes that, for instance, metrics are determined by carriers, consumers should be able to opt out of any sort of data collection, and "there needs to be third-party oversight on what data is collected to prevent abuse."
Lawsuits, Investigations
The controversy exploded recently after Connecticut-based security researcher Trevor Eckhart posted a video that he said showed the Carrier IQ software, pre-installed on as many as 140 million Android, BlackBerry, and Nokia smartphones, sending text messages, searches, and other user actions to the carrier without the user's knowledge or consent. Eckhart said that "every button you press in the dialer" is sent even before a call is made, and even when the owner is using Wi-Fi and not the carrier's network.
In the furor that has erupted, some observers have suggested that federal wiretap laws may have been violated. But Mountain View, Calif.-based Carrier IQ has denied Eckhart's charges.
In a statement on its Web site, the company said that, while there is a "great deal of information available to the Carrier IQ software inside the handset, our software does not record, store or transmit the content of SMS messages, e-mail, photographs, audio or video." As examples, the company said that its software knows that a SMS was sent accurately, but it does not record or transmit its content.
Several class-actions lawsuits against Carrier IQ, phone makers and carriers have been filed in the U.S. Privacy regulators in various countries, including Germany, the U.K., and France, are looking into possible violations, and, in the U.S., Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., has sent letters to Carrier IQ, Sprint Nextel, AT&T, HTC, Samsung, and Sprint to find out exactly what data is being collected and how it is being used.
Sprint, for one, has replied that the data is being used to "analyze network performance" and that the software does not and cannot "look at the contents of messages."
In this Nov. 29, 2011, photo, World War II Navy veteran Clarence Pfundheller poses at his Greenfield, Iowa, apartment with a photo of himself taken during basic training in 1939. Now 91, Pfundheller will be returning to Pearl Harbor on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011, for the 70th anniversary ceremony honoring those lost in the Dec. 7, 1941 attack that brought the United States into World War II. Accompanying him will be fellow survivors, other World War II veterans, and a handful of college students to hear their stories. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
In this Nov. 29, 2011, photo, World War II Navy veteran Clarence Pfundheller poses at his Greenfield, Iowa, apartment with a photo of himself taken during basic training in 1939. Now 91, Pfundheller will be returning to Pearl Harbor on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011, for the 70th anniversary ceremony honoring those lost in the Dec. 7, 1941 attack that brought the United States into World War II. Accompanying him will be fellow survivors, other World War II veterans, and a handful of college students to hear their stories. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
This Nov. 29, 2011, photo taken in in Greenfield, Iowa, shows a page of photos showing World War II Navy veteran Clarence Pfundheller taken in November of 1941. Now 91, Pfundheller will be returning to Pearl Harbor on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011, for the 70th anniversary ceremony honoring those lost in the Dec. 7, 1941 attack that brought the United States into World War II. Accompanying him will be fellow survivors, other World War II veterans, and a handful of college students to hear their stories. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
In this Nov. 29, 2011, photo, World War II Navy veteran Clarence Pfundheller is reflected in the Adair County Veterans Memorial, featuring his name, in Greenfield, Iowa. Now 91, Pfundheller will be returning to Pearl Harbor on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011, for the 70th anniversary ceremony honoring those lost in the Dec. 7, 1941 attack that brought the United States into World War II. Accompanying him will be fellow survivors, other World War II veterans, and a handful of college students to hear their stories. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
HONOLULU (AP) ? Clarence Pfundheller was standing in front of his locker on the USS Maryland when a fellow sailor told him they were being bombed by Japanese planes.
"We never did call him a liar but he could stretch the truth pretty good," Pfundheller said. "But once you seen him, you knew he wasn't lying."
The 21-year-old Iowa native ran up to the deck that Sunday morning to man a five-inch anti-aircraft gun. Seventy years later, he remembers struggling to shoot low-flying Japanese planes as smoke from burning oil billowed through the air.
"This was the worst thing about it ? yeah, your eyes ? it bothered you. It bothered your throat too, because there was so much of that black smoke rolling around that a lot of times you could hardly see," he said.
Now 91, Pfundheller will be returning to Pearl Harbor on Wednesday for the 70th anniversary ceremony honoring those lost in the Dec. 7, 1941 attack that brought the United States into World War II.
Accompanying him will be fellow survivors, other World War II veterans, and a handful of college students eager to hear their stories. The student and veteran group will be among 3,000 people attending a ceremony the Navy and the National Park Service hoist jointly each year at a site overlooking where the USS Arizona sank in the attack.
The College of the Ozarks program aims to preserve the stories of veterans ? something that's becoming increasingly urgent for Pearl Harbor survivors as the youngest are in their late 80s.
Pfundheller said he enlisted in the Navy in 1939 because he kept hearing there was going to be a war and he wanted to know what to do when the fighting started. By the time Japanese fighter planes and torpedo bombers invaded the skies above Hawaii, he was well-trained.
Even so, the scene was utterly chaotic.
Commanders hadn't expected Japan to strike from the air, so Pfundheller's anti-aircraft ammunition was locked away in a gun locker. Then, when he gained access to the 3-foot-long, 75-pound shells, Pfundheller said the Japanese planes were flying too close for him to take aim.
"You could see them pumping their fists and laughing at you," he said.
The Maryland's crew scrambled to prevent their battleship from going down with the USS Oklahoma, which rolled over after being hit by multiple torpedoes.
"We had to cut her lines tied up to us because it was pulling us away," he said.
Altogether, 2,390 Americans lost their lives in the attack. Twelve ships sank or were beached, and nine were damaged. The U.S. lost 164 aircraft. On the Japanese side, 64 people died, five ships sank, and 29 planes were destroyed.
After the war, Pfundfeller returned to Iowa where he worked as a district feed salesman and became an elementary school custodian. He now lives in Greenfield just 12 miles from Bridgewater, the town where he was raised.
Many veterans didn't talk much about their experiences after World War II, and Pfundheller's own children didn't hear what he went through until he began sharing his stories at schools and libraries.
"People in the Midwest where I lived ? why, you just went back, got your job and went to work and nobody asked anything," he said.
Today, efforts are under way to make sure stories like his are handed down to younger generations.
Pfundheller and four other World War II veterans are traveling to Hawaii with 10 students from the College of the Ozarks, a Christian school in Branson, Mo. After Hawaii, the group will travel to Japan to visit Okinawa, where the U.S. and Japan fought a brutal battle in the last few months of the war, and Hiroshima, where the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb.
Heather Isringhausen, a 21-year-old senior who will be one of Pfundheller's two student escorts, said she wanted to join the trip in part because she's never been able to get her grandfather to tell her about his experiences serving in World War II.
She wants to know what the veterans were thinking at the time, and what life was like in the 1940s.
"If most of the veterans are anything like my grandpa, they probably haven't talked much about it," Isringhausen said. "Once they're gone, all we'll have left are history books and movies and different tales that people have been told and written down."
Guy Piper, who was brushing his teeth in his barracks on Ford Island when the attack began, said he was honored to go on the trip. He said programs like this make "us older people feel good."
The sailor who served in World War II and the Korean War said he would share with the students his hope that younger generations won't have war.
"When you see young men like I saw on Dec. 7 ? a bunch of blood ? it just stays with you. You can't get rid of it. That's what war is about. Just plain hell," he said. "I'd like people to stop and think about staying away from wars."
Daniel Martinez, the National Park Service's chief historian for Pearl Harbor, said the program fits in with the theme of this year's events: how the legacy of Pearl Harbor will be carried on by future generations. But he lamented more survivors aren't alive to tell their stories.
"It's a little sad because it's coming a little late," he said. "I wish it could have happened at the 50th anniversary when there were so many of them around."
In a reminder of how many are passing on, the ashes of two survivors who died after living until their 90s will be interred within their sunken battleships this week.
Navy and National Park Service divers on Tuesday will lower Lee Soucy's cremated remains into the USS Utah, which rolled over and sank next to Ford Island after being hit by a torpedo. Soucy died last year at the age of 90 in Plainview, Texas. He'll be joining some 50 men who perished when the ship sank and eight survivors whose ashes were interred there after their deaths decades later.
On Wednesday, divers will place Vernon Olsen's ashes in the USS Arizona, where many of the sailors and Marines who served on the ship are still entombed. The Arizona lost 1,117 crew members during the attack. Olsen was one of the 334 who survived. Olsen died in Port Charlotte, Fla. in April at the age of 91.
Dec. 7 events in Hawaii this year will feature a parade. Marching bands, military families, and dignitaries are expected to walk along Waikiki's main drag, Kalakaua Avenue. Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, who received the Medal of Honor for his actions as a soldier in Italy in 1945, will be grand marshal.
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