So You Think You Can Destroy (hurricane storms) Evidence With Fire
No commentsBy Rachel Yoshida
Criminals will go to almost any lengths to cover their tracks when they commit a crime that will send them to jail. Starting a fire deliberately will send them to jail also, but sometimes the act they committed will be worse than a fire. People have been using fire to destroy evidence and cover up crimes for hundreds of years or longer and probably at the top of the list is murder.
These days some criminals have learned the hard way that using fire to cover up a crime might not be as easy as it used to be. There have been so many new techniques developed to bring the truth straight out of the ashes. It should make any law breaker afraid of relying on a fire to get away with anything.
In the first place, a criminal will sometimes use some sort of accelerant to start the fire and it is easy for fire investigators to spot this today. They might also use a lighter or matches, but when they use accelerants to start the fire it is a more reliable way to ensure the fire will burn longer and hotter than using other methods. Trained dogs can be used to sniff out accelerants like gasoline, charcoal starter, or other flammable liquids that a criminal might use.
Murderers make the mistake of thinking that a fire can destroy a human body to the point that it can not be identified, but dental records or any trace of DNA can still be use for identification. A murderer might also think that a fire will cover up the cause of a death, but that is not necessarily true either. If there is any usable remains left, many times a coroner will be able to find the cause of death especially if a poison or sever trauma to the body was used.
So actually, when it comes to using fires to cover up crimes today, there is a very good possibility that someone will still be caught and prosecuted for their crime. It is no sure bet that a fire will destroy all evidence that can the guilt of someone or the actual facts of a case. If someone wants to get away with something, they might want to look for an alternative to setting fire to the scene because it is no where near as reliable as it once was.
Rachel Yoshida is a writer of many topics, visit some of her sites, like
Water Damage Restoration and Chicago Water Damage Restoration.
Brain Stimulation for Athlete Performance
By Robert Webb
Neurotechnology describes the field of technology used to manipulate and measure brain processes. In the future, will athletes increasingly begin to neurotechnology methods to get an edge over their competition? Athletes may be able to use non-invasive brain stimulation to alter their brain functioning for a beneficial effect. Already scientists have used a brain stimulation method called transcranial direct current stimulation tDCS (a non-invasive way to electrically stimulate the brain) to reduce the fatigue associated with exercise.
Transcranial direct current stimulation uses a small amount of electricity to stimulate the brain. It can be used on a person while they are wide awake and conscious. Neuromuscular fatigue is defined as the exercise dependent decrease in a person’s ability of thier muscle fibres to generate some force. Researchers discovered that anodal tDCS (that can activate localized brain areas) was able to decrease the subject’s fatigue related muscle pain. The scientists also found that anodal tDCS was able to improve the endurance time by modulating directly the brain’s excitabiliy. It was able to increase motivation, decrease fatigue related muscle pain and finally improving muscle coupling.
Another neurotechnology method to manipulate the brain is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Transcranial magnetic stimulation uses electromagnetism to stimulate specific areas of the brain. In the past it has been used to improve the working memory deficits that are associated with sleep deprivation. Working memory is a person’s general concentration and ability to store/manipulate information. So this transcranial magnetic stimulation in theory might be able improve an athletes concentration when they are fatigued. Transcranial magnetic stimulation could also be used to enhance a person’s regular concentration as well.
Deep transcranial magnetic stimulation can reach deeper into the brain than conventional TMS. Deep TMS may be able to non-invasively stimulate the reward related regions of the brain. Doing this type of brain manipulation may actually enable researchers to artificially induce a stimulant or euphoric like effect in an athlete by selectively activating specific brain regions. This type of effect would be beneficial for a long term endurance type of sport where a huge boost in mood is necessary for having an optimal performance. Deep TMS may also be used to target a variety of different regions to improve specific performance tasks.
The banned substance list that goes along with the recent olympic games does not actually have any mention about using non-invasive brain stimulation. However both transcranial direct current stimulation or transcranial magnetic stimulation may eventually find increasing use by certain athletes in the future. Right now, it still may be a little too early to actually assess how useful these new types of neurtechnologies would be for athlete’s performance.
As for cheating, using these neurotechnologies would be almost impossible to detect. Their wouldn’t be any drug tests that could detect when a person had undergone this type of treatment. The on and only plausible method of detecting this type of brain manipulation might be from a brain scan. So using neurotechnology could be a very effective way of brain doping while at the same time sidestepping negative penalties from a regulatory body. Using these types of brain stimulation methods for athletes is all speculative of course, and it is currently unclear if any of these types of brain manipulation would actually have enough of an effect on performance to be worthwhile.
Read my neurotechnology blog brain lesions and also
brain stem injury and finally
brain injury concussion for more information about neuroscience and neurotechnology.
The Troll A - A Record Breaking Gas Platform
By Patrick Omari
Rising out of the North Sea where it takes a lashing from some of the roughest waters on the planet, the Troll A platform is one of the largest and most complex engineering projects in the world and, when it was towed into place in 1996, became the largest structure ever to be made and stands in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest offshore gas platform.
For any fan of engineering feats, the Troll A platform is something to admire. Even from afar it’s scale is jaw-dropping. This natural gas platform in the Troll gas field has an overall height of 472 metres. Put into context; that’s 148 metres taller than the Eiffel Tower and some sixty metres taller than the Word Trade Centre stood before it was destroyed. The construction involved 100,000 tonnes of steel - enough for 15 Eiffel Towers - and 245,000m3 of concrete, that’s the equivalent of 215,000 foundations for usual houses.
Of its 472 metres, the platform stands 303 metres below the surface of the sea. As each of the four legs of the platform are subjected to huge amounts of pressure - especially at the bottom - the construction method had to ensure that the concrete would be flawless, if it wasn’t the consequences would be disastrous. Accordingly, the legs are made up of over 1 metre-thick steel reinforced slip-formed concrete. This means that the concrete was formed in one continuous pour to mean there was no seams or cracks and each of the legs is a mathematically joined composite of conical cylinders flaring out to larger dimensions at the top and bottom.
Each of the Troll A’s mammoth-like legs are joined by a reinforced concrete box interconnecting the legs. This “chord shortener” serves as vital a purpose as the thickness and reinforcement of the concrete. As the Troll A is constantly hit by waves of varying size and force it’s structure is subjected to resonance. Sustained exposure to a certain resonance can crumble even the thickest of structures, as evinced by the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington in 1940. The concrete box that connects the Troll A’s legs dampens out the resonances by returning the legs’ natural frequencies.
A structure worthy of admiration, the Troll A was built by Norwegian contractors with work commencing on the base in July 1991. The deck was constructed separately and were joined in 1995 when the base was partially submerged - the only way to get the deck atop the giant legs. In an operation that took seven days, the platform was towed more than 200 kilometers out to the Troll field before being fixed to the sea floor with each leg using a group of 40 metre tall vacuum-anchors to keep it in place.
The purpose of all this awe-inspiring engineering? Natural gas. The gas rises through 40 wells to be exported through a series of pipes at over 2,000 miles-per-hour. That’s a lot of gas at a high speed from a structure that weighs 656,000 tons with new gas compressors scheduled to further increase production volume from Troll A.
atrick is an expert travel researcher and writer currently researching Manchester Airport Parking, Manchester Airport Hotels and Manchester Airparks
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Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 11:50 am and is filed under science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
