Oil rig blast prompts environmental concerns!

As hope dimmed for the lives of 11 crew members missing since a drilling rig exploded in flames in the Gulf of Mexico, authorities turned their focus to controlling an oil spill that could threaten the fragile ecosystem of the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts.

The Deepwater Horizon had burned violently for nearly two days until it sank Thursday morning. The fire's out, but as much as 336,000 gallons of crude oil a day could be rising from the sea floor 5,000 feet below, officials said.

"If it gets landward, it could be a disaster in the making," said Cynthia Sarthou, executive director for the environmental group Gulf Restoration Network.

BP PLC, which leased the rig and took the lead in the cleanup, said Friday it has "activated an extensive oil spill response," including using remotely operated vehicles to assess the subsea well and 32 vessels to mop up the spill.

BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward said the company will do "everything in our power to contain this oil spill and resolve the situation as rapidly, safely and effectively as possible." He says the company can call on more resources if needed.

Ed Overton, an LSU environmental sciences professor, said he expects some of the light crude oil to evaporate while much of it turns into a pasty mess called a "chocolate mousse" that ultimately breaks apart into "tar balls," small chunks of oily residue that can wash ashore.

"It's going to be a god-awful mess for a while," he said. "I'm not crying doomsday or saying the sky is falling, but that is the potential."

The Coast Guard early Friday was searching for the missing, but some family members said they had been told that officials assumed all were dead, though others were praying for a different outcome. Most of the crew — 111 members — were ashore, including 17 taken to hospitals. Four were in critical condition.

The accident shows that drilling is not safe, said Abe Powell, who heads Get Oil Out!, created after a 1969 platform accident off Santa Barbara, Calif., fouled miles of ocean and beaches with wildlife-killing goo and spawned the environmental movement.

"When oil companies say drilling is safe now and we won't allow any accidents ... we know that's not true," he said.

Weather forecasts indicate the spill was likely to stay well away from shore at least through the weekend, but if winds change it could come ashore more rapidly, said Doug Helton of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's office of response and restoration.

The Coast Guard, which was leading the investigation, hadn't given up the search early Friday for those missing from the rig, which went up in flames Tuesday night about 41 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River.

Four who made it off safely were still on a boat operating one of several underwater robots being used to assess whether the flow of oil could be shut off at a control valve on the sea floor, said Guy Cantwell, spokesman for rig owner Transocean Ltd.

Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said crews saw a 1-mile-by-5-mile rainbow sheen of what appeared to be a crude oil mix on the surface. There wasn't any evidence crude was coming out after the rig sank, she said, but officials weren't sure what was going on underwater.

At the worst-case figure of 336,000 gallons a day, it would take more than a month for the amount of crude oil spilled to equal the 11 million gallons spilled from the Exxon Valdez in Alaska's Prince William Sound.

A turn in winds and currents might send oil toward fragile coastal wetlands — nurseries for fish and shrimp and habitat for birds.

"As you get closer to shore, you get richer and richer marine habitats, and also get the potential for long-term exposure," Helton said.

Animals at sea will be briefly exposed to the oil when the slick passes over, but when it hits land, it sticks, he said.

To prevent that, the Marine Spill Response Corp., an energy industry cleanup consortium, brought seven skimmer boats to suck oily water from the surface, four planes that can scatter chemicals to disperse oil, and 500,000 feet — 94.6 miles — of containment boom.

Another 500,000 feet of boom were on the way, BP spokesman Tom Mueller.

"Right now we are over-responding with resources to manage the potential spill here," he said. "We will be well-prepared to manage whatever comes."

He said 6,000 feet, about 1.1 mile, of boom was in the water by Thursday evening.

While this was happening on the surface, robots tethered to ships nearly a mile above the sea floor sent back video of the damage so crews can decide whether a shutoff valve called a blowout preventer can be closed.

Authorities don't know whether the rig sank to the bottom — or, if it did, whether it hit the blowout preventer, Lt. Cdr. Cheri Ben-Iesau said.

"It didn't sink catastrophically. It kind of settled into the water" and may still have some buoyancy, she said.

If the valve is too badly damaged to cut off the flow of oil, a nearby rig a safe distance from the broken well will drill a new hole intersecting the one that blew wild. Then heavy fluid called "kill fluid" will be pumped in to plug it, said Scott D. Dean, a BP spokesman.

In addition to other environmental concerns, the well is in an area where a pod of sperm whales is known to feed, said Kim Amendola of NOAA. Sarthou said she was worried the activity around the well might disturb the whales.

Meanwhile, relatives of the missing waited for news.

Carolyn Kemp of Monterey, La., said her grandson, Roy Wyatt Kemp, 27, would have been on the drilling platform when it exploded.

"They're assuming all those men who were on the platform are dead," Kemp said. "That's the last we've heard."

Jed Kersey, of Leesville, La., said his 33-year-old son, John, had finished his shift on the rig floor and was sleeping. He said his son told him all 11 missing workers were on the rig floor at the time of the explosion.

"He said it was like a war zone," said Jed Kersey, a former offshore oil worker.

The family of Dewey Revette, a 48-year-old from southeast Mississippi, said he worked as a driller on the rig and had been with the company for 29 years.

"We're all just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring and hoping for good news. And praying about it," said Revette's 23-year-old daughter, Andrea Cochran.

Those who escaped did so mainly by getting on lifeboats that were lowered into the Gulf, said Adrian Rose, vice president of Transocean.

Weekly emergency drills seemed to help, he said, adding that workers apparently stuck together as they fled the blast.

"There are a number of uncorroborated stories, a lot of them really quite heroic stories, of how people looked after each other. There was very little panic," Rose said.

Family members of two missing workers filed separate lawsuits Thursday accusing Transocean and BP of negligence. Both companies declined to comment about legal action against them after the first suit was filed.

The U.S. Minerals Management Service, which regulates oil rigs, conducted three routine inspections of the Deepwater Horizon this year — in February, March and on April 1 — and found no violations, MMS spokeswoman Eileen Angelico said.

Associated Press Writer Noaki Schwartz reported from Los Angeles, Holbrook Mohr from Jackson, Miss., Mike Kunzelman, Cain Burdeau and Alan Sayre in Louisiana, Chris Kahn in New York and Sofia Mannos of AP Television News contributed to this report.

Old seawall dig opens window to past

Council is calling on the Coast’s budding Indiana Joneses to come and join a real live archaeological dig to unlock the secrets of the old Southport seawall.

Engineering Services Committee Chair and Divisional Councillor Dawn Crichlow said the University of Queensland had been engaged to expose a section of the old seawall on the foreshore.

“The old seawall was built progressively from the late 1800s through to 1901,” said Cr Crichlow.

“Since the 1960s, it has disappeared beneath landfill, except for a small section near the Gold Coast bridge and this is a great opportunity to be a part of unlocking our local history.”

The dig is a free community event held from 18-20 May 2009 as part of National Archaeology Week and provides an opportunity to participate in a real archaeological excavation.

Hockey

Hockey is any of a family of sports in which two teams struggle by trying to maneuver a ball, or a hard, surrounding disc called a puck, into the opponent's net or goal, using a hockey stick. Field hockey is played on nettle, natural grass, sand-based or water-based artificial turfs, with a small, hard ball. The game is popular among both males and females in many countries of the world, mostly in Europe, India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and South Asia. In most countries, the game is played between single-sex sides, even though it can be played by mixed-sex sides. In the United States and Canada it is played mostly by women.

Ball hockey is played in a gym using sticks and a ball, often a tennis ball with the hair removed.
There are early representations and reports of hockey-type games being played on ice in the Netherlands, and reports from Canada from the beginning of the nineteenth century, but the modern game was initially planned by students at McGill University, Montreal in 1875 who, by two years later, codified the first set of ice hockey rules and organized the first teams.

Communication

Communication is a process that allows organisms to exchange information by several methods. Communication requires that all parties understand a common language that is exchanged. There are auditory means, such as speaking or singing, and nonverbal, physical means, such as body language, sign language, paralanguage, touch, eye contact, or the use of writing.

Communication happens at many levels (even for one single action), in many different ways, and for most beings, as well as certain machines. Several, if not all, fields of study dedicate a portion of attention to communication, so when speaking about communication it is very important to be sure about what aspects of communication one is speaking about. Definitions of communication range widely, some recognizing that animals can communicate with each other as well as human beings, and some are narrower, only including human beings within the parameters of human symbolic interaction.

Nonetheless, communication is usually described along a few major dimensions:

1. Content (what type of things are communicated)
2. Source (by whom)
3. Form (in which form)
4. Channel (through which medium)
5. Destination/Receiver (to whom)
6. Purpose/Pragmatic aspect (with what kind of results).

Gear

A gear is a wheel with teeth around its circumference, the purpose of the teeth being to mesh with similar teeth on another mechanical device possibly another gear wheel so that force can be transmitted between the two strategies in a direction tangential to their surfaces. A non-toothed wheel can transmit some tangential force but will slip if the force is large; teeth put off slippage and permit the transmission of large forces.

A gear can mesh with any device having teeth friendly with the gear's teeth. Such devices include racks and other non-rotating policy; however, the most common condition is for a gear to be in mesh with another gear. In this case revolution of one of the gears necessarily causes the other gear to rotate. In this way, rotational motion can be transferred from one position to another. While gears are sometimes used simply for this reason to transmit rotation to another shaft perhaps their most significant feature is that, if the gears are of asymmetrical sizes, a mechanical advantage is also achieved, so that the rotational speed, and torque, of the second gear are dissimilar from that of the first. In this way, gears provide a means of increasing or decreasing a turning speed, or a torque.

Indicator

Dial indicators are instruments used to correctly measure a small distance. They may also be known as a Dial gauge, Dial Test Indicator, or as a clock. They are named so because the measurement results are displayed in a overstated way by means of a dial. They may be used to check the dissimilarity in tolerance during the check process of a machined part, measure the deflection of a beam or ring under laboratory conditions, as well as many other situations where a small measurement needs to be registered or indicated.

An economic indicator is a statistic concerning the economy. The lighting system of a motor vehicle consists of lighting and signaling procedure mounted or integrated to the front, sides and rear of the vehicle. The purpose of this system is to present illumination for the driver to operate the vehicle safely after dark, to increase the visibility of the vehicle, and to display information about the vehicle's presence, position, size, direction of travel, and driver's intentions concerning direction and speed of travel.

Software

Software, consisting of programs, enables a computer to perform specific tasks, as opposed to its physical components which can only do the responsibilities they are mechanically designed for. The term includes application software such as word processors which perform helpful tasks for users, system software such as operating systems, which interface with hardware to run the necessary services for user-interfaces and applications, and middleware which controls and co-ordinates distributed system.
Computer software has to be loaded into the computer's storage space (memory or RAM). Once the software is loaded, the computer is able to implement the software. Computers control by executing the computer program. This involves passing instructions from the application software, through the system software, to the hardware which finally receives the instruction as machine code. Each instruction causes the computer to carry out an operation moving data, transport out a computation, or altering the control flow of instructions.

Animals

Animals are a major group of generally motile, multicultural organisms that feed by consuming material from other living things. Their body plan becomes fixed as they develop, usually early on in their development as embryos, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on.

The word "animal" comes from the Latin word animal, of which animal is the plural, and is derived from anima, meaning vital breath or soul. In everyday colloquial usage, the word usually refers to non-human animals. The biological definition of the word refers to all members of the Kingdom Animalia. Therefore, when the word animal is used in a biological context, humans are included.

Fox

Fox is a name applied to any one of generally 27 species of small to medium-sized canids, with sharp skin and a shaggy tail or brush. By far the most common and prevalent species of fox is the red fox, although various species are found on almost every continent. The incidence of fox-like carnivores all over the globe has led to their emergence in the popular culture and folklore of many nations, tribes, and other enriching groups.

Most foxes live 2 to 3 years, but they can survive for up to 10 years or even longer in confinement. Foxes are generally smaller than other members of the family Canidae such as wolves, jackals, and domestic dogs. Fox-like features naturally include an acute muzzle and thick tail. Other physical characteristics vary according to their territory. For example, the fennec has large ears and short coat, whereas the Arctic fox has small ears and thick, insulating hair.

Another example is the red fox which has a typical auburn pelt, the tail normally ending with white marking. Unlike many canids, foxes are regularly not set animals. Typically, they are private, opportunistic feeders that hunt live prey. Using a pouncing technique practiced from an early age, they are usually able to kill their prey speedily. Foxes also gather a wide variety of other foods ranging from grasshoppers to fruit and berries.

Foxes are usually extremely wary of humans and are not kept as pets; however, the silver fox was productively domesticated in Russia after a 45 year selective propagation program. This selective breeding also resulted in physical and behavioural traits appearing that are recurrently seen in domestic cats, dogs, and other animals: pigmentation changes, floppy ears, and curly tails.

DVD

DVD (also known as "Digital Versatile Disc") is a popular ocular disc storage media format. Its main uses are video and data storeroom. Most DVDs are of the same dimensions as compact discs (CDs) but store more than six times as much records.

Variations of the term DVD often depict the way data is stored on the discs: DVD-ROM has data which can only be read and not written, DVD-R and DVD+R can be written once and then functions as a DVD-ROM, and DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, or DVD+RW holds data that can be erased and thus re-written multiple times. The wavelength used by standard DVD lasers is 650 nm.

DVD-Video and DVD-Audio discs correspondingly refer to properly formatted and structured video and audio content. Other types of DVDs, including those with video content, may be referred to as DVD-Data discs. The term "DVD" is commonly misused to refer to high definition ocular disc formats in general, such as Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD. As a result, the original DVD is sometimes called SD DVD.

Human Skull

In humans, the adult skull is normally made up of 22 bones. Except for the mandible, all of the bones of the skull are joined together by sutures, firm articulations permitting very little movement. Eight bones form the neurocranium (braincase)-including frontal, parietals, occipital, sphenoid, temporals and ethmoid-, a protecting jump surrounding the brain. Fourteen bones form the splanchnocranium, the bones supporting the face. Encased within the earthly bones are the six ear ossicles of the middle ears, though these are not part of the skull. The hyoid bone, supporting the tongue, is usually not considered as part of the skull either, as it does not articulate with any other bones. The skull is a defender of the brain.

The skull contains the sinus cavities, which are air-filled cavities lined with respiratory epithelium, which also lines the large airways. The exact functions of the sinuses are unclear; they may contribute to decreasing the weight of the skull with a minimal decrease in strength,or they may be important in improving the significance of the voice. In some animals, such as the elephant, the sinuses are extensive. The elephant skull needs to be very large, to form an attachment for muscles of the neck and trunk, but is also unexpectedly light; the comparatively small brain-case is surrounded by large sinuses which reduce the weight. The meninges are the three layers, or membranes, which surround the structures of the on edge system. They are known as the dura mater, the arachnoid mater and the pia mater. Other than being classified together, they have little in common with each other.

In humans, the anatomical position for the skull is the Frankfurt plane, where the lower margins of the orbits and the upper borders of the ear canals are all in a horizontal plane. This is the position where the question is standing and looking directly forward. For judgment, the skulls of other species, notably primates and hominids, may sometimes be studied in the Frankfurt plane. However, this does not always equate to a natural posture in life.

A Solar Cell

A solar cell or photovoltaic cell is a mechanism that converts solar energy into energy by the photovoltaic effect. Photovoltaics is the field of expertise and research related to the application of solar cells as solar energy. Sometimes the term solar cell is reserved for devices intended expressly to confine energy from sunlight, while the term photovoltaic cell is used when the source is undetermined.

Assemblies of cells are used to make solar modules, which may in turn be linked in photovoltaic arrays.

Solar cells have many applications. Individual cells are used for powering small devices such as electronic calculators. Photovoltaic arrays create a form of renewable electricity, particularly useful in situations where electrical power from the framework is unavailable such as in remote area power systems, Earth-orbiting satellites and space probes, remote radiotelephones and water pumping applications. Photovoltaic electricity is also increasingly deployed in grid-tied electrical systems.

India

India is a independent nation in Asia, or more distinctively, South Asia. It is the seventh largest country by geological area, the second most populous country, and the most populous democratic state in the world. Bound by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal on the east, India has a coastline of 7,517 kilometers (4,671 mi). It borders Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north-east; and Bangladesh and Burma to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Indonesia.

Home to the Indus dale development and a region of historic trade routes and huge empires, the Indian subcontinent was identified with its commercial and cultural wealth for much of its long history. Four major world religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism originated here, while Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam arrived in the first millennium CE and shaped the region's diverse culture. Increasingly annexed by the British East India Company from the early eighteenth century and colonised by the United Kingdom from the mid-nineteenth century, India became a modern nation-state in 1947 after a struggle for independence that was marked by widespread peaceful resistance.

India is the world's twelfth largest economy at market exchange rates and the third largest economy in purchasing rule. Economic reforms have distorted it into the second fastest growing large economy; however, it still suffers from high levels of poverty, illiteracy, starvation and environmental degradation. A pluralistic, multi-lingual, and multi-ethnic society, India is also home to a multiplicity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats.

Papaya

The papaya is a fruit of the tree. It is a small tree, the single stem growing from 5 to 10 m tall, with spirally set leaves confined to the top of the trunk, the lower trunk is obviously scarred where leaves and fruit were borne. The leaves are large, 50-70 cm width, deeply palmately lobed with 7 lobes. The tree is typically unbranched if unlopped. The flowers are similar in shape to the flowers of the Plumeria but are much slighter and wax like. They appear on the axils of the leaves, maturing into the large 15-45 cm long and 10-30 cm diameter fruit. The fruit is ripe when it feels soft and its skin has attained amber to orange hue. The fruit's taste is vaguely similar to pineapple and peach, although much milder without the tartness, creamier, and more fragrant, with a texture of a little over-ripened cantaloupe.

The primary use of the papaya is as an safe to eat fruit. The ripe fruit is generally eaten raw, without the skin or seeds. The unripe green fruit of papaya can be eaten ripe, usually in curries, salads and stews

Resistance

Electrical resistance is a compute of the degree to which an object opposes an electric current through it. The SI unit of electrical resistance is the ohm. Its reciprocal quantity is electrical conductance calculated in siemens. Electrical resistance shares some conceptual parallels with the mechanical notion of friction.

The resistance of an object determines the amount of current through the object for a known voltage across the object I=V/R, where R is the resistance of the object, measured in ohms, equivalent to J•s/C2, V is the voltage across the object, measured in volts, I is the current through the object, measured in amperes. In metals, the Fermi level lies in the conduction band giving rise to free transfer electrons. However, in semiconductors the position of the fermi level is within the band gap, closely half way between the conduction band minimum and valence band maximum for intrinsic semiconductors.

Banana

Banana is the common name used for herbaceous foliage of the genus Mesa, and is also the name given to the fruit of these plants. They are resident to the tropical region of Southeast Asia, the Malay Archipelago, and Australia. They are cultivated primarily for their fruit, and to a lesser level for the production of fiber and as ornamental plants. Because of their size and structure, banana plants are often wrong for trees. The main or upright growth is called a pseudo stem, which for some species can gain a height of up to 2–8 m, with leaves of up to 3.5 m in length. Each pseudo stem produces a single group of bananas, before dying and being replaced by a new pseudo stem.

Bananas are grown in 132 countries worldwide, additional than any other fruit crop. In popular culture and commerce, banana usually refers to soft, sweet dessert bananas that are usually eaten raw. The bananas from a collection of cultivars with firmer, starchier fruit are generally used in cooking rather than eaten raw. Bananas may also be dried up and ground into banana flour. Although the wild species have fruits with numerous large, hard seeds, virtually all culinary bananas have unplanted fruits. Bananas are classified any as dessert bananas or as green cooking bananas.

Business

In economics, a business is a legally-recognized organizational entity existing within an economically free country designed to sell goods and/or services to consumers, usually in an effort to generate profit.

In predominantly capitalist economies, where most businesses are privately owned, businesses are typically formed to earn profit and grow the personal wealth of their owners. The owners and operators of a business have as one of their main objectives the receipt or generation of a financial return in exchange for their work - that is, the expense of time and energy - and for their acceptance of risk-investing work and money without certainty of success. Notable exceptions to this rule include cooperative businesses and government institutions. This model of business functioning is opposed by socialists, who advocate either government, public, or worker ownership of most sizable businesses; and to a lesser extent by individuals advocating for a mixed economy of private and state-owned enterprises.

The etymology of business refers to the state of being busy in the context of the individual as well as the community or society. In other words, to be busy is to be doing commercially viable and profitable work. The term business has at least three usages, depending on the scope - the general usage, the singular usage to refer to a particular company or corporation, and the generalized usage to refer to a particular market sector, such as the record business, the computer business, or the business community-the community of suppliers of goods and services.

River

A river is a natural waterway that transits water through a setting from higher to lower elevations. A river may have its basis in a spring, lake, from damp, boggy landscapes where the soil is waterlogged, from glacial melt, or from surface runoff of precipitation. Almost each and every one river is joined by other rivers and streams termed tributaries the highest of which are known as headwaters. Water may also begin from groundwater sources. Throughout the course of the river, the total volume transported downstream will often be a combination of the free water flow together with a important contribution flowing through sub-surface rocks and gravels that underlie the river and its floodplain. For many rivers in large valleys, this unseen component of flow may greatly go above the visible flow.

From their source, all rivers flow downhill, typically terminating in the sea or in a lake, through a confluence. In arid areas rivers sometimes end by losing water to desertion. River water may also infiltrate into the soil or pervious rock, where it becomes groundwater. Excessive abstraction of water for use in commerce, irrigation, etc., can also cause a river to dry before success its natural terminus.

Women in ancient India

In ancient India, women were occupying a very important position with, in a superior top position to, man. By the Literary evidence suggests that kings and towns were destroyed because a single woman was wronged by the state. Sillapathigaram by Elango Adigal tells us Madurai, the capital of the Pandya Kings was burnt by kannaki because the king Pandyan Nedunchezhiyan mistakenly killed her husband on theft charges. And also The Ramayana by Valmiki' teaches us that Ravana and his entire family were wiped out because he abducted Sita. Mahabharata by Vyasa teaches us that all the Kauravas were killed because they humiliated Draupadi in public.

To implant such high ideals in humankind, Indian ancestors created a plethora of goddesses who enjoyed equal status with their husbands.
Now the Government also sponsored and passed a law that required all political parties to maintain a count of at least one-third of the total candidates in elections to be women. Anyway, it is horrifying to see that they happen. In the other hand, some wives are burnt because they did not bring enough "dowry. The women are victimized by powerful local political figures and their family; some women are abducted by rich youths with Impunity; and there are credible stories of female infanticide in rural India.

Festival

A festival is an occasion, generally staged by a local community, which centers on some exclusive portion of that community. Among several religions, a feast or festival is a place of celebrations in honour of God or gods. A feast and a festival are traditionally identical. However, the term "feast" has also entered regular worldly idiom as a synonym for every large or detailed meal. When used as in the significance of a festival, most frequently refers to a religious festival quite than a film or art festival.

There are several types of festivals in the world. Although a lot of have religious origins, others involve seasonal alteration or have some cultural impact. Also certain institutions celebrate their own festival to stain some important occasions in their history. These occasions might be the day these institutions were founded or any other event which they decide to celebrate occasionally, usually annually.

Festivals, of several types, provide to meet specific social needs and duties, as well as to provide entertainment. These times of celebration suggest a sense of belonging for religious, social, or geographical groups. Modern festivals that focus on cultural look for to notify members of their traditions. In past times, festivals were times when the aged shared stories and transferred certain information to the next generation. Historic feasts frequently provided a way for unity between families and for people to find mates. Choose anniversaries have annual festivals to commemorate previous significant occurrences.