RICHMOND, Calif. (AP) -- Chevron Corp. says it has completed repairs at an area of its Richmond refinery that was damaged last year in a fire.
The Contra Costa Times reports (http://bit.ly/XXWLpG ) that production will not begin in the repaired crude unit until final regulatory approvals are given, which could be by the end of June.
The refinery was damaged by the August fire that sent a towering plume of black smoke into the air. Thousands of nearby residents complained of respiratory issues after the blaze.
The company received a nearly $1 million fine from state workplace safety regulators, who said Chevron didn't heed its own scientists' advice to replace the old, corroded pipe that failed and caused the fire.
Sean Comey, a company spokesman, says the company is improving safety and oversight.
Have you been feeling a bit like a UK-based Goldilocks? The Galaxy Note II's too small, the Note 10.1 a trifle too big, but the Note 8 looks just right? Well, today's your lucky day, as the mid-sized tablet has officially launched in the Queen's dominion. The WiFi-only, 16GB model will set you back £339 (approximately $516), and at the moment, you'll only find it at the Samsung Experience Store in Westfield Stratford City. It'll be available elsewhere shortly, and it's probably worth waiting -- from April 15th for a limited time, buyers will get a few extras: a £20 voucher for the Samsung Learning Hub, a two-month subscription to The Times, free access to the Samsung Music Hub for a month, and a couple of games and AVG Anti-Virus Pro gratis. If tethering ain't your bag but you need data on the go, a gent from the Westfield store told us the 3G version is on its way, but couldn't give us a firm arrival date. It's our duty to warn you Westfield is a crowded nightmare at the best of times, and the arrival of a new Samsung tablet ain't gonna help that.
Nearly half of all Americans use some variety of stone products, such as stacked stone or even brick, to try to?improve the atmosphere of their residences. There?s no question that these products are effective in enabling the individual to enjoy some kind of stone wall look; unfortunately they do not offer any long lasting solution or provide the saving that faux stone offers.
Imitation faux stone sheets
Decorating With Faux Stone.
For many decades our culture was used to having a member of the household do most the house work or light construction without having to pay an outside contractor. In-house construction and repairs used to be a very normal skill a household used to have. It was passed from one generation to another. Today, for many reasons, most homeowners tend to hire a general contractor for various types of construction and even small home improvement projects.
The costs of employing a contractor today are often higher that what homeowners can afford. This is why some companies have come up with faux stone in order to provide a way of bypassing the need to hire external help. With panels of faux stone a homeowner on a budget or anyone who doesn?t want to deal with costly labor can simply apply the panels on any surface on their own. They can pick the perfect product for their decoration preferences without having to wait for samples or design drawings.
Ordering And Delivery Process.
Another reason why faux stone is taking over cast stone, stone veneer and the cultured type in general is fact that anyone can order the material from the comfort of their desk and avoid paying high shipping costs deriving from the weight of traditional stone, brick and rocks.
Faux panels are approximately 9 pounds each and even with very large orders you can see a considerable saving. Some advanced web sites have a panel calculator as well as a shipping preview button. Beware of sites that do not quote you shipping costs. In the past we have found companies that billed their customers once the material was delivered.
Commercial Application
Commercial And Residential Applications.
We have customers who switched from old style stones to faux stone have told us that they have no more interest in using products like cast stone or real rocks again. The ease of installation makes this product incredibly appealing to businesses. The biggest users of faux stone panels are display manufacturers. They love these panels because they help to reduce set up time at trade shows. When using real stone it is impossible to screw the material in place and remove it when the show is over. This is only possible with high density resins faux panels.
So, the things to keep in mind when trying to make stone installation easy and affordable are these points. Come back often and take a look at our catalog to choose the style and color that goes with your design.
We've all generally come to accept the fact that, in using iMessage, our correspondence runs the very real risk of being eternally damned to the iCloud ether. But at least now, we know we're not suffering alone; a document obtained by CNET has revealed that the DEA has also been whining about their inability to access iMessages—but their problem is encryption. More »
Late into Night, the collaborative LP from alt-country chanteuse Tift Merritt and classical pianist Simone Dinnerstein, the piano line of the traditional "I Will Give My Love an Apple" hangs ominously in the air, each note decaying into the next. Merritt enters solemnly, her voice handling the words like an Appalachian murder ballad. Though the 14 tracks of Night consume nearly an hour, these 106 seconds are its most affecting and revelatory, largely because they illustrate an artistic conversation between these two musicians. Even when she's writing sad songs, Merritt has a tendency to sing like she's chipper; here, however, her foreboding tone is magnetic, a ghost beckoning with the sweetest song. Dinnerstein's ability to stretch both time and tune here suggest that she is playing off the charts, relying more on personal feeling than proper form.
What's more, Dinnerstein allows that trickle of notes to bleed into the next track, the worried but hopeful Merritt original "Colors." Merritt's voice and guitar are characteristically buoyant, but Dinnerstein's playing underlines the self-doubt embedded in these verses. Eventually, they both perk up, gliding through the song's back half with a newly awakened mutual assurance.
Dinnerstein and Merritt started working together after the singer interviewed the instrumentalist for a magazine years ago; they debuted their duo project in 2011 at Duke University before recording this material last summer during an extended session at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York. The best songs find them connecting as equals, as on the graceful opener "Only in Songs" and their remarkably fluid take on "Dido's Lament."
Unfortunately, that's not a consistent quality. Though Night collects several marvelous moments, they do sometimes get subsumed by the project's weight of self-importance. Merritt and Dinnerstein both take solo turns, for instance, with Merritt handling "Wayfaring Stranger" and one of her own and Dinnerstein taking on Leonard Cohen variations and a Bach prelude. Charitably, those breaks in the collaboration confirm the talents of both parties; alternately, they simply take too much space on an album that could benefit from a modicum of economy.
Still, at its best, Night doubles with gorgeous and surprising material, a testament to Merritt's growth since she debuted in the smallest Triangle rock clubs as a gal with a guitar.
Label: Sony Classical
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Measuring ultrasound for better treatment of muscle injuriesPublic release date: 3-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: David Lewis david@proofcommunication.com 07-890-678-102 National Physical Laboratory
A new tool developed at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the UK's National Measurement Institute, could help improve the quality of ultrasound treatment for soft tissue injuries such as muscle strains and ligament damage.
Ultrasound - high-frequency sound waves is used in physiotherapy to accelerate healing of tissue injuries. Ideally, the sound waves should be applied uniformly to the treatment site, but it is well-known that this does not happen in practice. This can affect quality of treatment and even cause damage.
NPL has developed a way to quickly map the intensity and distribution of ultrasound, allowing treatment heads to be used to administer the treatment more effectively. It will alert physiotherapists to sharp "hot-spots", allowing them to move the head to smooth the intensity or reject it where it could cause more harm than good. It also has potential for manufacturers, who could quickly test the effect that changes in design have on the intensity distribution.
During treatment, piezoelectric-based treatment heads convert electrical energy to mechanical energy, creating the vibrations needed to produce the ultrasound waves. These are transmitted into the target tissue with the aid of a thin layer of coupling gel.
The treatment heads actually vibrate in a complex pattern, in part due to the fact that they are highly resonant devices. This leads to variations in acoustic pressure and acoustic intensity over the area being treated, resulting in 'hot-spots', which can cause excessive heating and even damage to the tissue. Without carrying out the complex and time-consuming process of mapping the acoustic field, it is very difficult to tell exactly where the acoustic energy is going.
NPL scientists have come up with a solution to this problem by developing a simple tool to help visualise the distribution and intensity of the acoustic energy. The method works by using crystals that are thermochromic, meaning that they lose their colour when heated up above a specific trigger temperature. Importantly, the effect is reversible; the crystals regain their original colour on cooling.
The tool consists of two-layers. The bottom layer is made up of the thermochromic crystals embedded in a polyurethane rubber matrix which absorbs sound. The top layer is colourless and is used to trap the heat within the tile. The tile heat produced by the acoustic energy is quickly and evenly trapped, and the crystals turn white as they reach the trigger temperature. This then produces a pattern on the tile which represents the temperature distribution generated by the treatment head, which in turn relates to the spatial distribution of the acoustic intensity. The pattern can be clearly visible within seconds of exposure to the ultrasound.
Bajram Zeqiri, an NPL Science Fellow who led the project, describes how you would test an ultrasound treatment head with the tiles:
"In clinical practice the new 'imager' tiles would be used in much the same way you would treat a patient: by applying coupling gel to the treatment head, coupling it to the tile, switching on for typically 10 seconds, and then removing and observing the resulting image."
This means that the tiles can be used to quickly check for treatment head damage, asymmetric beam-patterns or 'hot-spots', and more simply to confirm whether the devices are actually working at all. The ability to gain relatively complex information from a simple and cost-effective device, in such a short period of time, should help improve the quality of physiotherapy ultrasound treatments.
###
More on NPL's work in Acoustics http://www.npl.co.uk/science-technology/acoustics/
More on NPL's work in Healthcare http://www.npl.co.uk/commercial-services/sectors/healthcare/
For more information please contact Bajram Zeqiri http://www.npl.co.uk/people/bajram-zeqiri
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
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.
Measuring ultrasound for better treatment of muscle injuriesPublic release date: 3-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: David Lewis david@proofcommunication.com 07-890-678-102 National Physical Laboratory
A new tool developed at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the UK's National Measurement Institute, could help improve the quality of ultrasound treatment for soft tissue injuries such as muscle strains and ligament damage.
Ultrasound - high-frequency sound waves is used in physiotherapy to accelerate healing of tissue injuries. Ideally, the sound waves should be applied uniformly to the treatment site, but it is well-known that this does not happen in practice. This can affect quality of treatment and even cause damage.
NPL has developed a way to quickly map the intensity and distribution of ultrasound, allowing treatment heads to be used to administer the treatment more effectively. It will alert physiotherapists to sharp "hot-spots", allowing them to move the head to smooth the intensity or reject it where it could cause more harm than good. It also has potential for manufacturers, who could quickly test the effect that changes in design have on the intensity distribution.
During treatment, piezoelectric-based treatment heads convert electrical energy to mechanical energy, creating the vibrations needed to produce the ultrasound waves. These are transmitted into the target tissue with the aid of a thin layer of coupling gel.
The treatment heads actually vibrate in a complex pattern, in part due to the fact that they are highly resonant devices. This leads to variations in acoustic pressure and acoustic intensity over the area being treated, resulting in 'hot-spots', which can cause excessive heating and even damage to the tissue. Without carrying out the complex and time-consuming process of mapping the acoustic field, it is very difficult to tell exactly where the acoustic energy is going.
NPL scientists have come up with a solution to this problem by developing a simple tool to help visualise the distribution and intensity of the acoustic energy. The method works by using crystals that are thermochromic, meaning that they lose their colour when heated up above a specific trigger temperature. Importantly, the effect is reversible; the crystals regain their original colour on cooling.
The tool consists of two-layers. The bottom layer is made up of the thermochromic crystals embedded in a polyurethane rubber matrix which absorbs sound. The top layer is colourless and is used to trap the heat within the tile. The tile heat produced by the acoustic energy is quickly and evenly trapped, and the crystals turn white as they reach the trigger temperature. This then produces a pattern on the tile which represents the temperature distribution generated by the treatment head, which in turn relates to the spatial distribution of the acoustic intensity. The pattern can be clearly visible within seconds of exposure to the ultrasound.
Bajram Zeqiri, an NPL Science Fellow who led the project, describes how you would test an ultrasound treatment head with the tiles:
"In clinical practice the new 'imager' tiles would be used in much the same way you would treat a patient: by applying coupling gel to the treatment head, coupling it to the tile, switching on for typically 10 seconds, and then removing and observing the resulting image."
This means that the tiles can be used to quickly check for treatment head damage, asymmetric beam-patterns or 'hot-spots', and more simply to confirm whether the devices are actually working at all. The ability to gain relatively complex information from a simple and cost-effective device, in such a short period of time, should help improve the quality of physiotherapy ultrasound treatments.
###
More on NPL's work in Acoustics http://www.npl.co.uk/science-technology/acoustics/
More on NPL's work in Healthcare http://www.npl.co.uk/commercial-services/sectors/healthcare/
For more information please contact Bajram Zeqiri http://www.npl.co.uk/people/bajram-zeqiri
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
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.
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Public release date: 3-Apr-2013
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