Monday - September 19, 2005

ARRRRH! Grog From Cans Sucks!

What’s in Those Cans Besides Beer?
(NOTRE DAME MAGAZINE)

It can now be revealed why bottled beer and beer from a tap tastes different from beer in a can. Be forewarned: if you’re a six-pack enthusiast, you’re not going to like the explanation. When you sip a can of your favorite brew, you are savoring not only fermented grain and hops but just a hint of the same preservative that kept the frog you dissected in 10th-grade biology class lily-pad fresh: formaldehyde. What is formaldehyde doing in beer? The same thing it’s doing in pop and other food and drink packaged in steel and aluminum cans: killing bacteria. But not the bacteria in the drink, the bacteria that attacks a lubricant used in the manufacture of the can.

Notre Dame’s Steven R. Schmid, associate professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, is an expert in tribology — the study of friction, wear and the lubrication — applied to manufacturing and machine design. The co-author of two textbooks, Fundamentals of Machine Elements and Manufacturing Engineering and Technology (considered the bible of manufacturing engineering), Schmid has conducted extensive research on the manufacturing processes used in the production of beverage and other kinds of cans.

Schmid explains that back in the 1940s, when brewers and other beverage makers began putting drinks in steel (and, later, aluminum) cans, the can makers added formaldehyde to a milk-like mixture of 95 percent water and 5 percent oil that’s employed in the can manufacturing process. The mixture, called an emulsion, bathes the can material and the can-shaping tooling, cooling and lubricating both. Additives in the oil part are certain bacteria’s favorite food. But if the bacteria eat the emulsion, it won’t work as a lubricant anymore. So can makers add a biocide to the emulsion to kill the bacteria.

Before a can is filled and the top attached, this emulsion is rinsed off, but a small residue of the oil-water mixture is inevitably left behind, including trace amounts of the biocide. The amounts remaining are not enough to be a health hazard, but they are enough to taste, and the first biocide used back in the 1940s was formaldehyde. In the decades since, can makers have devised new formulas for emulsions, always with an eye toward making them more effective, more environmentally friendly and less costly. But because formaldehyde was in the original recipe, people got used to their canned Budweiser or whatever having a hint of the famous preservative’s flavor. For this reason, Schmid says, every new emulsion formula since then has had to be made to taste like formaldehyde, “or else people aren’t going to accept it.” Extensive tests are run to make sure the lubricant and additives taste like formaldehyde.

“It’s not that it tastes okay. It’s just what people are used to tasting,” he says. (Miller Genuine Draft and similar brews, Schmid says, use biocides that have no flavor.) The formaldehyde flavor legacy is one little-known aspect of can-making. Another involves the smooth coating applied to the inside of cans. The rinse cycle that attempts to wash off the emulsion also aims to remove particulate metal debris that forms on the metal’s surface during the bending and shaping of a can. Like the emulsion, some of the microscopic debris always remains after rinsing. Unlike the emulsion, it can be dangerous to swallow.

To keep powdered metal out of a can’s contents, Schmid says, manufacturers spray-coat the inside with a polymer dissolved in a solvent. When the can is heated, the solvent boils away, leaving only the protective polymer coating. The coating not only plasters any microscopic debris to the can wall and away from the food, it keeps the food from interacting with can material, an especially important consideration with steel cans.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/19/2005 at 11:36 AM   
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   Thursday - September 15, 2005

You’ve Got Mail!

On top of all that spam dropping into your e-mail Inbox this week you could soon be getting e-mail messages from .... your car ....

OnStar’s Newest System Delivers Mail From Your Car
(USA TODAY)

In its quest to make cars more like futuristic computer Hal 9000, OnStar, General Motors’ in-car telecommunications system, now will give owners e-mail updates from their vehicles reporting problems or reminding about maintenance needs, officials said Tuesday. OnStar officials promise that, unlike the famous computer from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, the diagnostics e-mail won’t complain if drivers choose to ignore its advice. Nor will ignoring the e-mail risk voiding the warranty. Rather, the e-mails are another way for OnStar to get in touch with its subscribers, and, officials hope, persuade them to keep the service.

A study by J.D. Power and Associates found that consumers would pay $200 a year for a service that could tell them how their car is performing. OnStar is offering it for free for a year. The service will tell car owners how long they have until they need to change the oil, whether the air bags are working, how the anti-lock braking system is operating and when the car is due for maintenance. It detects whether a car needs an oil change through a computer system that judges how the engine is working.

It will work on any OnStar-equipped vehicle from the 2004 model year on. OnStar will be standard equipment on all GM cars and trucks by the end of 2007. Customers with OnStar-equipped vehicles get one free year of service, and then pay $17 a month for a basic safety subscription and $35 for a plan that enables drivers to ask for directions or make restaurant reservations.

OnStar is a satellite connection between a vehicle and a center in Detroit that can monitor such information as where a car is or whether air bags have deployed. Customers can get doors unlocked remotely or directions to the nearest gas station. Currently, fewer than 70% of customers sign up to pay for the service. OnStar would like to increase that number. It hopes added features will do that.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/15/2005 at 06:47 AM   
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   Thursday - September 01, 2005

First-Hand Account

This is remarkable.  There is an ISP in New Orleans that is still running.  Their “crisis manager”, who is ex-military, is holed up in the building with an unspecified number of people, supplies and weapons to ensure the data center is running and secure.  This is his journal.  There is also a live streaming webcam here.

This is an excerpt from yesterday:

Ok, we went down to the ground floors to lock down the building tight since a couple of people holed up with us took off. While we were down there we surveyed a huge area of the CBD.

Flooding in the CBD: Poydras is flooded from near the west side of the Superdome down to Baronne street. All of the side streets are flooded too down that way. Baronne is the last flooded street as you head to the river. Poydras is clear from Baronne to the river.

There is no water that we could see from Poydras to the interstate starting at Baronne and going all the way to the river. Headed toward Canal St. from Poydras, I saw no flooding at all from just past Baronne to the river. That’s a huge area of the CBD without water on the streets. That’s way better than the warnings we got.

Looting: The police are looting. This has been confirmed by several independent sources. Some of the looting might be “legitimate” in as much as that word has any meaning in this context. They have broken into ATMs and safes: confirmed. We have eyewitnesses to this. They have taken dozens of SUVs from dealerships ostensibly for official use. They have also looted gun stores and pawn shops for all the small arms, supposedly to prevent “criminals” from doing so. But who knows their true intentions. We have an inside source in the NOPD who says that command and control is in chaos. He reports that command lapses more than 24 hours between check-ins, and that most of the force are “like deer in the headlights.” NOPD already had a reputation for corruption, but I am telling you now that the people we’ve been talking to say they are not recognizing the NOPD as a legitimate authority anymore, since cops have been seen looting in Walmarts and forcing people out of stores so they could back up SUVs and loot them. Don’t shoot the messenger....

Personal: Securing a 27 floor high rise with no elevator support is not fun. I am totally worn out. I am gonna chill for an hour, eat dinner, then perform maintenance. But never fear, Outpost Crystal and Team SOTI have knuckled down and will never quit. Never. We are prepared to go all the way to see this thing through.

Thanks again for all the support and love. One day this will all be over and ancient history, but I’ll never forget the kindness of strangers. Keep the less fortunate people in your thoughts and prayers.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/01/2005 at 11:23 AM   
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Hurricanes: Here Comes The Science

Global warming, my aching butt! Hurricanes come in thirty year cycles and we’re just in the middle of the current peak. In ten years, it will taper off. No one knows why. It just happens. Period. Now put away your tinfoil-global-warming hat.

(US NEWS)—Measured by the dollar value of the damage they caused, 2004 was the worst hurricane season on record, and the 10 most costly hurricanes to hit the U.S. mainland have all occurred since 1992. But only one of those makes the list of the 10 strongest hurricanes in American history. Much of the increased damage, it turns out, is a result of booming coastal development rather than worsening storms.

But that doesn’t change the fact that there has been a steep uptick in the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic over the past decade. From 1970 to 1994, there were an average of 8.6 tropical storms, 5 hurricanes, and 1.5 major hurricanes per year in the Atlantic; from 1995 onward, those numbers have jumped to 13.6 storms, 7.8 hurricanes, and 3.8 major hurricanes.

Most scientists agree that the increased frequencies are part of a natural cycle. For all the destructive power of a fully formed hurricane, a nascent tropical cyclone is a fairly fussy thing, requiring just the right conditions in the sea and the air to develop. No one is quite sure why, but every two or three decades, the tropical Atlantic seems to swing back and forth between conditions that favor hurricane development–warm surface temperatures that give the storms more energy, for example–and conditions that tend to impede them, such as strong crosswinds that disrupt the forming cyclones. We’ve been in a hurricane-friendly period since about 1995, and there’s no telling whether we’re halfway through it, or only a third.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/01/2005 at 08:24 AM   
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   Wednesday - August 31, 2005

Junk Science?

Trying to write about something other than the devestation to the south.

John Stossel writes this morning about the government’s love of control, especially realted to scientific reports and recommendations.

When I was a kid, my mother thought spinach was the healthiest food in the world because it contained so much iron. Getting enough iron was a big deal then because we didn’t have “iron-fortified” bread. It turns out that spinach is an OK source of iron but no better than pizza, pistachio nuts or dried peaches. The spinach-iron myth grew out of a simple mathematical miscalculation: A researcher accidentally moved a decimal point one space, so he thought spinach had 10 times more iron than it did. The press reported it, and I had to eat spinach.

I love spinach, especially spinach casserole, but I have always thought it was a source for high iron.

The federal anti-salt bureaucracy launched expensive public service announcements that warn Americans to cut back on salt. The ads intoned, ominously, “You eat more than 20 times the salt your body needs.”

Eat “no more than 2,400 milligrams a day,” said Dr. Jeffrey Cutler, the official behind the government’s anti-salt campaign.

I feel sorry for you if you follow your government’s recommendations. A maximum of 2,400 milligrams a day makes for a miserable diet. Three dill pickles put you over the limit.

Problem is, Dr. Cutler has no basis for this arbitrary recommendation except that it gets him on TV to talk about it.

“I can’t imagine how they came up with that number. I mean, there isn’t a single bit of evidence that suggests 2,400 milligrams is better than 2,100 or 3,700,” said Dr. Michael Alderman, who headed the American Society of Hypertension, America’s biggest organization of specialists in high blood pressure. He says some people should cut back on salt, but for most people, it’s pointless. Some studies have found that those who ate the least salt were four times more likely to have heart attacks.

We report, you decide.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/31/2005 at 07:21 AM   
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   Tuesday - August 30, 2005

Did You Know ….?

This and other modern conveniences, including geostationary satellites, cell-phones and tasers, were all “invented" by science-fiction authors ....

The modern waterbed was created by Charles Hall in 1968, while he was design student at San Francisco State University in California. Hall originally wanted to make an innovative chair. His first prototype was a vinyl bag with 300 pounds of cornstarch, but the result was uncomfortable. He next attempted to fill it with Jell-O, but this too was a failure. Ultimately, he abandoned working on a chair, and settled on perfecting a bed. He succeeded. His timing could not have been more perfect: the Sexual Revolution was under way, and Hall’s waterbed became enormously popular, making it one of the most notable icons of the 1970s. However, because a waterbed is described in the novel Stranger in a Strange Land… by Robert A. Heinlein, which was first published in 1961, Hall was unable to obtain a patent on his creation.

Heinlein described the mechanical details of the waterbed in Stranger in a Strange Land, which is where the rest of the world learned about it. But what’s more interesting, and less known, is why he came up with the idea: Heinlein, a man of chronically poor health, was trying to create the perfect hospital bed.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/30/2005 at 05:26 AM   
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   Sunday - August 21, 2005

NASA Will Give It Another Try

The space shuttle Discovery returned to Kennedy Space Center a few minutes ago atop a 747. NASA announced that it will launch another shuttle mission in March, 2006 and Discovery will be the vehicle for STS-121 ....

The Space Shuttle orbiter Discovery has successfully landed at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., today. Discovery, left Barksdale AFB, La., at about 7:20 a.m. EDT and arrived at Kennedy’s Shuttle Landing Facility at 10:00 a.m. EDT. Brevard County residents were able to see the shuttle riding atop the modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft as it circled for a landing.

NASA announced that the next Space Shuttle mission, STS-121, is now targeted for March 2006. This will be the second test flight to the International Space Station in the Shuttle Return to Flight series. NASA Administrator Mike Griffin and Associate Administrator for Space Operations William Gerstenmaeir made the announcement at a briefing on August 18th.

“We are giving ourselves what we hope is plenty of time to evaluate where we are,” said Administrator Griffin. “We don’t see the tasks remaining before us being as difficult as the path behind us.”

A pair of “Tiger Teams” continues to investigate the External Tank foam loss during Discovery’s launch on July 26. Gerstenmaier says the teams have identified the major areas of concern and are making good progress on dealing with the problems.

Discovery will be used for STS-121 instead of Atlantis, putting NASA in a better position for future missions to the Space Station. Atlantis will fly the following mission, STS-115, carrying Space Station truss segments which are too heavy to be carried by Discovery. By changing the lineup, the program won’t have to fly back to back missions with Atlantis, as was previously scheduled.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/21/2005 at 09:39 AM   
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   Wednesday - August 17, 2005

Must Fill Out Requisition Form

Interactive 3D Display: Its Here!

Originally mentioned at Gizmodo as a prototype in 2003, IO2 Technology has just completed the production unit and provided the details behind the revolutionary HelioDisplay which produces interactive 3D dsiplays in thin air (via lasers) from common sources.

The HelioDisplay technology page lists some of its remarkable features:

Inputs from most regular sources: PC,TV, DVD, HDTV, Video game consoles

Projects a 22″ to 42″ (depending on model) diagonal image that floats above the device

It is interactive, like a virtual touch screen: a hand or finger can act as a mouse

Although the HelioDisplay uses lasers, the images are not holographic

Possible uses for this product include advertising, entertainment facilities, design prototyping, teleconferencing etc.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/17/2005 at 02:10 PM   
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   Tuesday - August 09, 2005

Touchdown!

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/09/2005 at 11:36 AM   
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   Monday - August 08, 2005

Star Trek: The Next Generation

NASA is already working on the Shuttle’s replacement ....

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/08/2005 at 11:41 AM   
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Congress Screws Up Technology

You may all have heard that Daylight Savings Time (DST) will be extended by a month in the Fall and another month in the Spring. The bill is set to be signed by President Bush this week. What you may not know is it is going to screw up everything from computers to VCR’s to DVR’s to cell phones in the spring of 2007. Why? They are all hard-coded with DST start and stop dates. It’s going to be a freaking mess in March of 2007 ....

NEW YORK (AP)—When daylight-saving time starts earlier than usual in the United States come 2007, your VCR or DVD recorder could start recording shows an hour late. Cell phone companies could give you an extra hour of free weekend calls, and people who depend on online calendars may find themselves late for appointments. An energy bill President Bush is to sign Monday would start daylight time three weeks earlier and end it a week later as an energy-saving measure. And that has technologists worried about software and gadgets that now compensate for daylight time based on a schedule unchanged since 1987.

“It is unfortunately going to add a little bit of complexity to consumers,” said Reid Sullivan, vice president of the entertainment group at Panasonic Consumer Electronics Co. “In some cases, depending on the product, they may have to manually increase or decrease the time.”

The upcoming transition evokes memories of Y2K, the Year 2000 rollover that forced programmers to adjust software and other systems that, relying on two digits for the year, never took the 21st century into account.

“It wouldn’t be a society-wide catastrophe, but there would be a problem if nothing’s done about it or we try to move too quickly,” said Dave Thewlis, executive director of a group that promotes standards for calendar software.

Newer VCRs and DVD recorders have built-in calendars to automatically adjust for daylight time. Users would have to override them, switching to “manual” to ensure shows continue to record correctly. Computers with Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating systems would need to obtain updates. Though most affected applications would likely be taken care of by the Microsoft fix, calendar systems will need to be checked to ensure that appointments already entered get properly adjusted.

Some electric utilities have advanced meters to adjust rates based on peak and non-peak hours, and studies would be required to determine if any modifications are needed. The telecommunications industry, meanwhile, must ensure that its clocks are properly adjusted to bill customers properly. Adding to the complications is the fact that many computer programs now treat U.S. and Canadian time zones as the same. If Canada doesn’t adopt the new dates, too, Windows, calendars and other software would have to learn additional zones.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/08/2005 at 08:07 AM   
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   Sunday - August 07, 2005

Suds Trivia

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/07/2005 at 11:42 AM   
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   Monday - August 01, 2005

Nature’s Delicate Balance

OK, gang! Here’s the latest scoop on the cycle of nature in a nutshell: (1) every spring and summer, large amounts of fresh water enter the Gulf Of Mexico from spring melts and rains, (2) this causes algae blooms which create dead zones in the Gulf, fish avoid these areas and they become lifeless, (3) the only cure for these dead zones is .... hurricanes, which stir up the waters and keep things mixed up in the Gulf. And here you thought hurricanes were just an evil plot by Muslims in Africa or caused by global warming. Silly humans! Mother Nature knows what she’s doing ....

NEW ORLEANS (AP)—The dead zone off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas is nearly the size of Connecticut and much larger than federal researchers had predicted earlier this year, according to a new survey. An annual weeklong cruise led by researchers with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium found an area of low-oxygen measuring 4,564 square miles and extending from the Mississippi River to the Texas border. On average, the dead zone has measured about 4,800 square miles since 1985.

The dead zone, also known as hypoxia, forms each spring and summer as fresh water enters the Gulf of Mexico and causes large algae blooms. The algae die and sink to the bottom of the Gulf, where they decompose, using up oxygen in the deeper, saltier water. Fish avoid the low-oxygen water, and bottom-living organisms are killed. The dead zone could in the long-term affect the overall health of the Gulf’s marine species, said Nancy Rabalais, a leading hypoxia researcher with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. She said researchers are studying how the dead zone affects the growth and reproduction of marine species. The dead zone could grow much larger this year—perhaps as large as 6,200 square miles—if major storms do not stir up the Gulf in the coming months, Rabalais said.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/01/2005 at 08:40 PM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Science-Technology •  
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   Sunday - July 31, 2005

Martian Hockey

This image from the European Space Agency’s probe “Mars Express” shows a patch of ice sitting on the floor of a crater at the North Pole. No word yet from the NHL on talks to form a new hockey team on Mars. It seems the Martian hockey players are on strike, demanding more pay and cool uniforms like their Earth counterparts who are still unsure whether they will play this year too. Developing ....

Posted by The Skipper     on 07/31/2005 at 05:46 AM   
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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