PLANE PLUNGES

The scariest moments
in air travel in 2012

December 19, 2012 Melanie Verran Yahoo! New Zealand

If you’re already a bit jittery when it comes to flying, stop reading here.

The year 2012 has been one of the safest on record for airlines – but there have still been plenty of terrifying incidents at 30,000 ft.

Plane plunges have to be one of the worst nightmares – and last month 30 people were injured in “10 seconds of terror” when an airliner plunged 1000 metres over the Atlantic.

The plane hit turbulence right as NEOS Air cabin crew were serving meals and plates went flying – along with anyone who wasn’t buckled in.

A similar incident happened on a United Airlines flight to London in July when itdropped 20,000 ft over the Atlantic and had to divert to Canada.

A “mechanical problem in the engine” was blamed for that one.

It was another mechanical failure that caused a four-hour 'vomitorium' on one flight in June when it lurched wildly from side to side.

The flight, that had been heading to New York, had to circle near Las Vegas for four hours to burn enough fuel to be able to land safely.

"The plane turned into a vomitorium. For five hours. And, after all that, I'm still in Vegas," Sarah Elizabeth Cupp wrote on Twitter.

But the passengers on an Emirates flight from Sydney to Dubai last month had an even more terrifying experience when they saw flames shooting from one engineafter it exploded.

The airline said it was an “engine fault”, but Auckland John Fothergill said flames lit up the entire cabin of the A380.

An Emirates Airbus A-380.  Photo / Getty

"You'd have to say there were two or three-metre flames.”

In June, footage emerged of a plane landing so violent it bent the aircraft's fuselage.

The All Nippon Airways plane bounced as it touched down, and the video shows the fuselage bent close to its wings and what appears to be ripples in the aluminium.

The discovery of the door of a Boeing 767 was also concerning when it plummeted to the ground in a Washington suburb – but even more worrying was that it wasn’t immediately clear which plane it had come from.

From Yahoo News

Peter’s Piece

It’s little wonder that some people are afraid to fly. Inaccurate and over-dramatic reporting will scare more people than airlines ever could.

‘Plane plunges’ are great for selling newspapers, but the term throws little real light on the reality of an incident.

The reporting of the ‘vomitorium’ incident simply doesn’t add up. Why would an aircraft carry so much fuel that it would have to stay airborne long enough to reach its intended destination in order to be light enough to land?

There was real peril in the skies when 

the pioneers in this book took to wings

Now available as an e-book from Smashwords.com

The United Airlines flight that dropped 20,000ft over the Atlantic because of a fault in the engine would lead people to believe that UA flies the Atlantic with single-engine aircraft.

Then we have the case of the plummeting door and the increased concern because it was unclear which plane had lost it. Well, perhaps that was because all the aircraft in the region were flying normally and short of all pilots doing a wing-walk up there, there may be no way of knowing which plane it belonged to.

Modern airliners have many doors of varying sizes in many locations on the fuselage, wings and engines, and only a few of them are critical to the safety of a flight. A falling door could be of some concern to people on the ground and I wouldn’t recommend standing in the way of a plummeting door for the purpose of getting a free ear-piercing.

PASSWORD PERILS

Password Strength:
How Strong Is Your Password?

TECHNOLOGY | By Richard Darell

Internet security has always been a continuously evolving issue we’ve all had to deal with at one point or another. There are new and stronger security measures created on a daily basis, and yet they keep being overridden by crackers all over the world. This is usually not due to the security strength of the server or the code on it. It usually comes down to the user and what password he or she has chosen for the account. You might start to wonder how clever people think they are when they choose passwords like “123456” and “password” and think it’s a good decision. The thing is, your password strength is only as hard to crack as it is for you to remember. The harder it is to remember, the harder it will be to crack. It’s as simple as that.

There is a significant password strength increase when you go from 5 to 6 characters in your password. And when you hit 9 characters (upper case password), it will take a computer approximately 178 years to crack it. That should be enough time to spend on whatever you want to do on the Internet, wouldn’t you think? So, if you are one of those people who is sporting a somewhat weak (according to this infographic) password on your different online services, it’s a good time to change them all.

Password strength comes down to creativity. Family members, keyboard patterns and swipes are infinitely out of the question. These are the first words a cracker tries, and you would be surprised if you knew how many people set their password strength to an almost playful challenge for a cracker. An infographic from SecurityCoverage(design by Space Chimp Media) showcases data from a few of the largest password breaches in the history of the Internet. The interesting thing is that out of the 30 million accounts that were cracked on RockYou.com, an insane 290,731 people had the password “123456.” My head spun out of orbit over that.

Do yourself a huge favor and take a gander at your password farm and see if you can’t extend them to 9 characters (and to include upper case letters and symbols), and you could probably give crackers a headache for at least 178 years or so. Make sure your password strength is up to par with the level of personal information you have submitted to your online services. You will definitely save yourself a lot of time and sorrow by taking ten minutes to up your password strength and look through them all every once in a while. Once again remember, your password strength is only as good as it is hard to remember the password itself . . . .

From Bit Rebels

Peter’s Piece

There is lots of misinformation about passwords. Consider this:

You should have a separate password everything that you do on the internet including bank accounts, work emails, private emails, website, blog, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Pinit, Redit, Delicious, Amazon, Ebay, Paypal, stock exchange, Stumbleupon, all government sites requiring a login, and an endless list of other places you may have to remember a password for.

Forget password worries

Relax with a good book

 

Now available as an e-book from Smashwords.com

HAPPY READING

Then we are told that we must never write our passwords down anywhere and we should commit them to memory and change them every month. This could be a reason why otherwise intelligent people resort to 123456. These people have real logic. Next month they can change to 7891011. Personally, I prefer 101102103. No hacker would ever break that one.

Some advisers would have you walking down the street mumbling incomprehensible passwords under your breath as you try to commit them to memory before it’s time to change them all again.

But seriously, some of this advice should not be taken too seriously. If you have a strong password there should be no need to change it on a schedule. If your bank account password has been broken your money will be stolen within minutes rather than at the end of the month and you will certainly need to change your password immediately anytime you think it may have been compromised.

Care must always be taken on sites like Facebook that display personal information. The big don’ts here are don’t display your full name, full date of birth, phone number or street address. If your name is William John Smith you should consider being just Bill Smith. Friends looking for you will know from checking your profile if you are the right Smith.

Never display information on a public site that you have registered somewhere as a security question. Likewise, if your parents are prominent people, or their families have lived in the same district for several generations, don’t use your mother’s maiden name as a security question.

DEATH PENALTY

Taiwan condemned over executions

Taiwan has executed six death row inmates, the first use of the death penalty this year.

Campaigning human rights group Amnesty International has condemned the move as "cold-blooded killing".

The deputy justice minister said the brutality of the men's crimes meant there was no reason to show mercy.

The executions were carried out in three separate prisons - two in the central city of Taichung and two in the south of the island.

"How can the government credibly claim it wants to see an end to the death penalty when it continues to conduct such actions," said Amnesty International's Roseann Rife in a statement.

"It is abhorrent to justify taking someone's life because prisons are overcrowded or the public's alleged support for the death penalty."

Popular support

All six of the men had been convicted of murder.

The BBC's Cindy Sui, in Taipei, says the executions come at a time of inflamed public debate about the death penalty following the death of a boy in a video arcade.

In Wuhan, China a convicted drug smuggler had only minutes to live
when this photo was taken. She was executed by firing squad in 2003. 

Local media reported the 29-year-old suspect had said he would get life in prison at most "even if he were to kill two or three".

He also reportedly said he would get free room and board in prison.

The reports led to public calls for all of those on death row to be executed.

A spokeswoman for the ministry of justice said that the executions had been carried out on a Friday evening to avoid a strong public reaction.

Though religious and human rights groups oppose capital punishment, most victims' families are in favor, and surveys suggest that most of the population also support the death penalty.

The ministry said it has the obligation to carry out the law until there is public consensus on abolishing the death penalty.

According to the state-run Central News Agency, there are a total of 55 death row inmates following the executions.

Taiwan executed five prisoners in March 2011 and four in April 2010.

The 2010 executions were the first after a hiatus that had lasted since 2005, when it adopted an informal moratorium on the death penalty.

BBC News

Peter’s Piece

The politicians of Taiwan should ignore popular local opinion when it goes against the principles of the United Nations Charter.

Murder is the ultimate crime whether committed by an individual or a state.

Perhaps people who actively campaign for the death penalty should themselves be tried for incitement to murder.

AMERICA AND GUNS

Mass School Shootings: A History

This April 28, 1999 file photo shows an unidentified woman with 15 crosses posted on a hill above Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. on April 28, 1999 in remembrance of the 15 people who died during a school shooting on April 20. (Eric Gay/AP Photo)

By LAUREN EFFRON (@LEffron831)

Dec. 14, 2012

As the numbers of the dead from a Newtown, Conn., elementary school shooting climbed into the double digits, it's hard not to remember that we have been here before.

The Sandy Hook elementary school shooting is the deadliest at a high school or grade school in the history of the country, but it is far from the first. Several mass school shootings have speckled our recent history.

LIVE UPDATES: Newtown, Conn., School Shooting

Thirteen years ago, the small community of Littleton, Colo., was rocked by a massacre at Columbine High School. Gunmen Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, walked into their school on April 20, 1999, and opened fire, killing 12 of their classmates and a teacher, and injuring 21 more, before turning their firearms on themselves.

At the time, it was dubbed the most deadly school shooting in American history, and it changed the way many communities across the country thought about school safety.

But then the nation was once again rocked to its core when a gunmen went on a terrorizing rampage at Virginia Tech, almost a decade later.

On April 16, 2007, Virginai Tech senior Seung-Hui Cho unleashed a rampage on the college campus, shooting and killing 32 students, and wounding 17 more people. More than a year before the massacre, in December 2005, a district court in Montgomery County, Va., deemed Cho "mentally ill" and "an imminent danger to self and others."

The aftermath of the Virginia Tech shooting prompted Congress and President George W. Bush to sign the first major change to U.S. gun laws in more than 10 years -- it expanded the federal background check database -- and overhauled how the way many campuses handled crime and security alerts.

Before these rampages, there were multiple other fatal school shootings. The death toll wasn't as high, but the violence was just as great.

This year, on Feb. 27, T.J. Lane, 18, allegedly entered Chardon High School in Ohio with a .22 caliber handgun and a knife. He shot four students in the cafeteria and one in the hallway before walking out, leaving three dead. Police detained him within a mile of the school. He remains in custody and is expected to stand trial for the shootings in January.

On Oct. 2, 2006, a gunman took about a dozen girls hostage, killing at least three of them, at a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County, police said. The shooter was among the dead when police arrived.

On March 21, 2005, 16-year-old Jeff Weise shot and killed five classmates, a teacher and an unarmed guard at a high school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota, where about 5,000 Native Americans live, before taking his own life. Weise had killed his grandfather and his grandfather's companion before heading to school that day.

Between 1997 and 1998, there were three school shootings within a few months of one another.

On May 21, 1998, two teenagers were killed and more than 20 people were hurt when 15-year-old Kip Kinkel opened fire at a Thurtson High School in Springfield, Ore., after killing his parents. Kinkel was sentenced to nearly 112 years in prison.

On March 24, 1998, two boys, ages 11 and 13, fired on their Jonesboro, Ark., middle school from nearby woods after pulling the fire alarm, killing four girls and a teacher, and wounding 10 others. Both boys were later convicted of murder and were incarcerated until they turned 21.

On Dec. 1, 1997, three students were killed and five wounded at Heath High School in West Paducah, Ky. Michael Carneal, 14, and a freshman, later pleaded guilty but mentally ill to murder charges and is serving life in prison. He is eligible for parole in 2023.

One of the most iconic school shootings in American history remains at Kent State Univeristy in Ohio. On May 4, 1970, Ohio National Guard troops opened fire to quell an anti-Vietnam War demonstration, killing four students and wounding nine others. The shooting became known as the May 4 Massacre

ABC News

Peter’s Piece

America must be almost unique in the world with its attitude about guns.

Elsewhere, logic dictates that carrying a gun for personal protection does not make one safer. It will only heighten the risk of dying of gunshot wounds.

But in spite of this a majority of Americans are in love with guns, and gun laws will not change until a clear majority of Americans campaign for radical change.

HOW TO SAVE FUEL

Path of least resistance:
Aero trailers gaining traction

Jack Roberts|November 14, 2012

Old concepts of good truck and trailer design are being replaced

Aerodynamic tractors have been a growing part of the heavy-duty truck market for decades. With much of the tractor aero gains already carved out from years of wind-tunnel testing and refined engineering, attention now has swung to trailers. MinStar, a long-haul dry van fleet running out of Eagan, Minn., began experimenting with aerodynamic tractors when fuel was still less than $1 a gallon. It wasn’t until last year that MinStar began working with trailer aerodynamics.

“We had some classic models in our fleet a few years ago,” says Mitch Miller, MinStar president. “But we stay away from them now entirely because of the cost of fuel.”

The carrier’s primary focus now is on closing the gap between the cab and the trailer with adjustable fifth wheels and cab extenders, while also using tank fairings and trailer skirts.

“Based on our own testing, a full aerodynamic tractor-trailer combination gets ¾ of a mile per gallon better fuel economy than a non-aerodynamic rig,” Miller says. “We feel that aerodynamics allow us to operate a fuel-efficient vehicle for $800 a month less than for a non-aerodynamic model.”

“When diesel fuel prices drop to less than $3 a gallon, there is not much interest in paying for an aerodynamic improvement that will take six years to pay for itself,” says Dave McKenna, director of powertrain sales and marketing at Mack Trucks. “But at approximately $4 per gallon, there are a lot of ‘aero-religious’ converts.”

The other driving force for more aerodynamic tractor-trailers is environmental concern for lower emissions. That’s why California and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have been pushing aero equipment aggressively.

“Already many millions of dollars have been earmarked by the U.S. Department of Energy to help the cause,” says Sean Graham, president of Freight Wing, an aerodynamic trailer component designer and manufacturer involved in DOE’s effort. “Our goal is to realize a 15 percent improvement in fuel economy over trailers without fairings.”

That’s a 6 percent improvement over what is commercially available now through Freight Wing’s side skirt and gap fairing. “This would come from a combination of side skirts, gap fairings that streamline turbulence between the tractor and trailer, and fairings at the end of the trailer,” Graham says. “We’re well on course to make this happen.”

Drag increases exponentially with speed. “Even with all available aerodynamic gains, a sharp increase in road speed can easily negate any net fuel economy gains,” McKenna says. “Our research shows that an average road speed of 62 to 65 miles per hour with a full array of aerodynamic components at work is the best of both worlds in terms of productivity and fuel economy.”

One reason for the attention on trailer aerodynamics is that all components of a vehicle’s design interact with each other. Optimizing the tractor, trailer and driver as a complete system of mutually supporting elements is essential, says Rick Mihelic, manager of vehicle performance and engineering analysis for Peterbilt.

“Enhancing synergy between leading-edge areas like the crown, windshield edges, mirrors and bumper with downstream effects on the tractor and trailer will yield optimal performance gains,” Mihelic says.

“We’re already seeing this in current designs as OEMs and third parties work to provide components that further integrate combination vehicles,” says Frank Bio, product manager for Volvo Trucks. In redesigning a truck for optimum aerodynamics, Volvo looks at all exterior components and how they interact together – all the way to the trailer. “The entire truck works as a system, so a change to one component can affect how air flows around another,” Bio says.

Trailer-tails are tough and designed to fold away quickly and easily
before docking and can reduce drag by up to 5% on the highway.

It’s hard to imagine a less aerodynamic structure than a 53-foot long box with no rounded edges. Making matters worse with a trailer’s aerodynamics is the gap between it and the tractor, says T.J. Reed, director of product marketing for Freightliner Trucks.

“Wind moving around even the most aerodynamic tractor gets sucked into this gap and creates a tremendous amount of turbulence and drag,” Reed says. “Even crosswinds can add to the drag created in this area. That’s why you need to reduce as much friction and turbulence as possible.” Peterbilt has added scoops on its raised roofs to push air over the trailer “because that transition of air between tractor and trailer is so critical to good aerodynamic performance,” he says.

Air also gets sucked in and under the trailer, creating still more drag and turbulence. “You’ve no doubt seen more and more trailers equipped with side skirts to improve aerodynamics and fuel efficiency,” says Graham. Freight Wing has invested heavily in third-party tests that show fuel improvements of up to 7 percent on trailers equipped with side skirts versus trailers without.

“We’ve found that fleets typically report 4 to 6 percent fuel economy improvements, depending upon their application and driving environment,” Graham says. “Most fleets see a return on investment for a skirt-equipped trailer at about 50,000 miles.”

E-books by Peter Blakeborough

The final challenge with trailer aerodynamics is due to the vacuum created by its tall squared-off rear as the trailer moves at high speed. Because nature abhors a vacuum, air flowing on all four sides of the trailer immediately curls inward to fill this void, creating more drag.

Trailer tail devices can minimize that effect. Babur Ozden, chief marketing officer for ATDynamics, says his company’s TrailerTail fins create a funnel effect, preventing air from attempting to fill the low-pressure area, thereby decreasing drag.

TrailerTails deliver 6.6 percent fuel savings at 65 mph, according to third-party SAE Type II J1321 testing, Ozden says. Improved trailer aerodynamics also increases trailer stability due to reduced turbulence at the vehicle’s rear – and thus reduces tire wear and driver fatigue – and improves safety through reduced spray in wet weather, he says.

http://www.overdriveonline.com/path-of-least-resistance-aero-trailers-gaining-traction/

Peter’s Piece

Truck and trailer designers should be talking with aircraft designers to learn about real aerodynamics.

For many years there has been a belief that streamlining the tractor unit is all important in reducing drag and fuel consumption. But it is the back end shape that is most important and anyone who doubts this statement should take a look at both ends of a jumbo jet.

The Boeing 747 has one of the best high lift/low drag ratios of any airliner
and a 747 was able to stay airborne  for almost 30 minutes after volcanic
ash stopped all four engines. When partial power was regained the
aircraft still had more than 10,000 feet of air under it.  Boeing designers
regarded the rear of the fuselage as more important than the
front for reducing drag.

On all sub-sonic aircraft the blunt end comes first and the streamlined end follows behind. This is because the leading end of the fuselage, or the leading edge of the wing, is able to send an advance signal of its approach through the air and the airflow then divides with little resistance. Only on supersonic aircraft is it necessary to have a needle-shaped fuselage and knife-edged wings to cut through the air because the sound is no longer able to travel in advance.

With so little resistance caused by the front of an aircraft, or truck, that leaves the rear-end as the main cause of high fuel consumption.

One of the basics of aerodynamics is that a square box in a wind tunnel will produce 70% of its drag from the rear surface because the airflow must curl around to compensate for the decreased air pressure on that surface.

Drag created by the top, sides and underneath of a tractor-trailer is also more important than the front. Having a fully enclosed underside will not only reduce drag and fuel consumption, but will also lower maintenance costs and noise levels. The undersides of tractors and trailers at present seem to be a case of out of sight, out of mind.

The trailer-tails mentioned above while claiming to reduce fuel consumption by up to 7% are a rather clumsy attempt to address a major problem. A better back-end could result from tapering, inflatable anti-drag bags, which could be quickly deflated and stowed prior to docking. 

The fuel savings from such devices could be many times the 7% already claimed.

Most drivers and fleet operators understand that a small increase in speed will result in a large increase in fuel consumption. This fact has little to do with engine efficiency and more to do with air resistance. To understand just how critical air resistance is it must be remembered that when velocity is doubled air resistance goes up four-fold.

Cars, buses and trucks would be much more efficient, aerodynamically, if they were turned turned around and run backwards.

FROM NEW ZEALAND BY TRUCK

The Undie 500 – from the
pages of Highway America

For the next two days the journey continued through beautiful Appalachian country to Elkton, Maryland, and a Petro truckstop a little over an hour from the drop-off. I parked on the end of a long line of trucks, went for dinner and came back to read a book while music filled the air from the truck radio. When it was time for bed I pulled the blinds around the windscreen and side windows and stripped off to my underpants.

Suddenly there was a loud bang and the truck rocked on its suspension. Earthquake, I immediately thought. Then I heard a scraping noise as a semi trailer was dragged around the front of my tractor. I ripped the blinds open in time to see the culprit drive slowly away looking for a parking space. With visions of Carlos having me fired for having yet another accident I leapt down to the pavement in my bare feet and underpants and ran after the errant driver.

My Undie 500 lasted barely a hundred yards by which time the turban-headed young driver was most apologetic. It was his first day on the road and he was still getting accustomed to the size of the rig and the amount of space needed to turn. In Maryland the police are required to attend all accidents involving trucks and we exchanged details while we waited for them. An hour later an officer arrived, looked at both trucks (I had my clothes on again by then), took our details and departed.

My encounter with the police was better than that of a CalArk driver called Mike. When he got lost in Chicago he stopped a cop and asked for directions.

‘Follow me,’ the cop said obligingly.

They twisted and turned through narrow streets and alleyways for what seemed an age until they finally arrived at a police station where Mike was fined $990 for driving on streets where trucks were prohibited.

As the traffic flow pushed Old Bluey (my truck) along the New Jersey Turnpike at sixty-five miles an hour I watched the big signs flash passed overhead; Willingboro, Trenton, East Brunswick, Sayreville. The number of lanes increased along with the traffic volume and the number of interchanges. I was getting close to the turnpike extension and I needed to stay alert. The Perth Amboy sign flashed by and Carteret, Linden and Elizabeth appeared quickly. The exit for Newark Liberty International Airport slipped by and I changed lanes to line up for the turnpike extension at Exit 14. Suddenly just a few yards away parallel to the turnpike a big jet was taking off from Runway 4 Right at Newark while others waited to line up and the sky around buzzed with jets circling to land.

I looked ahead for the Jersey City sign as thousands of cars and trucks sped towards the heart of the great New York metropolis like minnows into the jaws of a whale. I lined up beneath the sign and followed the ramp through a ninety degree right turn. The Manhattan skyline, the Twin Towers and the Statue of Liberty came into view across the Hudson River as I looked ahead for Exit 14A. I shifted right again trying to recall the precise directions. I needed to go to the toll gates and up another ramp to Route 169 South and turn onto New Hook Road at the second light and proceed to Avenue J and the Exxon plant.

After carefully making all the correct turns to connect with Route 169 South I was dismayed to be confronted with a sign indicating that I was on Route 440 instead. Where the hell did that come from? I asked myself as I slowed and looked for somewhere to park while seeking assistance from the locals. There was a gap between the two carriageways but no free space on the sides so I stopped on the median and ran across the opposite carriageway to an office building that seemed to be just inches from the traffic flow.

‘I’m looking for New Hook Road,’ I told one of the workers.

‘Just keep right on down the one-sixty-nine. It’s about a mile on the left.’

‘How do I get to the one-sixty-nine?’

He looked at me as though I really was the dummy that I was beginning to feel like. Then he looked across at my idling truck in the middle of the busy dual carriageway and back at me again.

‘You’re on the one-sixty-nine, buddy. Are you Australian?’

‘No. I’m a Kiwi from New Zealand.’

He looked at me again as his expression changed to one of incredibility.

‘You come all the way from New Zealand in a truck?’

‘Not quite,’ I replied pointing to a jetliner blasting across the heavens from Newark. ‘I came on one of those. I picked up the truck in Little Rock.’

‘Little Rock, Arkansas.’ He still seemed uncertain about whether to believe me. ‘You know Bill Clinton?’

For a moment I was stunned by the thought that Little Rock could be thought of as so little that everyone living there could be a personal friend of everyone else including the former Governor and President.

‘Well, no. I guess I’m one of the few people who have never actually met him. But thanks for your help, mate. I think I’d better move my truck.’

For an e-book copy of Peter Blakeborough's Highway America go to: Smashwords.com