Category Archives: Life Extension

Karratha Gas Plant, North West Shelf Project

The Federal Government is showing signs of taking a more interventionist role in ensuring the life of the North West Shelf LNG project is extended, according to a research report.

The report by resources consultants Wood Mackenzie said the Government was motivated by an NWS life extension being worth up to $US48 billion in additional taxes.

Industry regulator the National Offshore Petroleum Titles Administrator had written to resource owners in North West waters requesting more information about the viability of prolonging the project, the report said.

There are signs the Government is becoming more proactive in the sector, and has leverage under the retention lease system to push developments forward, a summary said.

There are now real drivers pushing for the projects life extension, and conditions are unlikely to get more favourable than what we have now.

The three-decade-old NWS needs new sources of gas in the 2020s to keep its five production train Karratha Gas Plant going.

Wood Mackenzie said a life extension development should be able to take advantage of lower costs during the construction phase and a tightening energy market once production began.

It said a new industry focus on costs and margins had made resource owners more open to sharing third party infrastructure.

NWS operator Woodside Petroleums preferred option for the Browse joint venture it leads is to pipe the gas to Karratha.

While citing Browse as the leading candidate, other developments the report identified as potential suppliers were the ExxonMobil-led Scarborough field and the Chevron-led Clio and Acme fields and undeveloped Greater Gorgon fields.

Woodside in May said the NWS partners had agreed on a proposed toll for resource owners to process gas through the Karratha plant.

Read this article:

Government prods producers on extending NWS - The West Australian

TheRecord.com

BWXT Canada lands $48M add-on to Bruce Power deal TheRecord.com Refurbishment of the steam generators will extend the life of six of the reactors in the Bruce B Unit 6 reactor. "BWXT values its contributions to Bruce Power's Life Extension Program, which is critical to ensuring the supply of low-cost, clean and ...

Read more:

BWXT Canada lands $48M add-on to Bruce Power deal - TheRecord.com

It's Aubrey Plaza's 33rd birthday, and she's curled up on a couch in a deafeningly quiet, concrete-walled room at the Line hotel in Koreatown. She hugs her knees to her chest. Her T-shirt features a hyper-realistic image of Nicolas Cage's face, and I can just see his toothy, maniacal smile peeking out from between her legs it's unnerving. Her hands fidget, knotting and unknotting a black string attached to a Santa Muerte charm. The actor hit stardom with her sardonic slacker character April on the NBC show Parks and Recreation and, like many TV stars on long-running shows, she has found it difficult to escape her monster creation. With a recent succession of mold-smashing projects Legion, The Little Hours and Ingrid Goes West she's about to leave April behind. But who will she become?

"If Andy Kaufman is alive, he should come and find me," Plaza tells me.

Kaufman is one of Plaza's greatest influences. The comic actor died from cancer in 1984 but he melted so deeply into his myriad personas that there are people who still believe he is alive and simply playing a long con on his suffering audiences. If you've only ever seen Plaza on the uplifting comedy Parks & Rec, the Kaufman reference may not immediately resonate for you. But to friends and colleagues, she is a Loki trickster who revels in absurdity.

"She's not just playing at being Andy Kaufman," Plaza's Legion director, Noah Hawley, tells me over the phone. "She is Andy Kaufman."

He shares the story of their first meeting: Plaza shows up 30 minutes late, on crutches, and immediately opens up about her quest to be a director on Parks and Recreation and her disappointment that they denied her the chance while letting the men direct.

"I said, 'That is wrong. They should have let you direct,' but then she said, 'Oh no, I just made that up. I didn't want to direct.'" Hawley sounds simultaneously exasperated and impressed when he speaks of Plaza. "There's a sense she's always testing you I didn't even know if she really needed those crutches." She did, but that's another story.

On Legion, a show about a young mutant who's hospitalized for schizophrenia but realizes he may actually have powers (it exists in the X-Men universe), Plaza plays Lenny. She's a projection of the Shadow King, a psychic mutant who is a kind of gender-fluid parasite who possesses the bodies of others. Essentially, Plaza is playing up to four different characters all of whom have varied mannerisms and speech patterns in the same scene. Her performances are as unpredictable from take to take as the multiple characters she plays: Will she embody a power-hungry therapist, or will she break into a sexy, Fosse-style song-and-dance number?

Aubrey Plaza plays the complex Lenny in FX series Legion.

Courtesy FX

"With her, you never quite know what's going to happen, and that's really for me very exciting," her co-star Dan Stevens says. "She's always kind of looking for the mischievous choice in the scene," which is hell on continuity folks and editors charged with making sure she picks up the coffee cup the same way in every take that never happens. But Stevens and Hawley say Plaza's spontaneity precisely fits the show's tone.

"I needed someone who could be anything and everything in any moment," Hawley explains to me. "There's a sort of slippery quality this character has, very fast-talking. Part of this character's dance is about manipulating people and tricking them, and yet I really wanted her to be likable."

Plaza's had a lot of practice being abrasive but likable most of the characters she plays fall into this category, from the diehard party girl of Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates to Depressed Debbie in Whit Stillman's Damsels in Distress and perpetually annoyed Julie Powers in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. But Hawley's casting of Plaza (and changing the character from male to female for her) has begun a small avalanche of projects that could finally leave her Parks & Rec charter behind and let Plaza become whoever she wants.

The Little Hours, a heartfelt nunsploitation period piece from Plaza's longtime romantic partner and creative collaborator, Jeff Baena, opened in June to rave reviews. Plaza not only stars in the film alongside Alison Brie and Kate Micucci but also earns her first producing credit.

"A lot of time you see actors getting producer credits, it's just a vanity title for them," Baena says. He describes watching Plaza naturally morph into the nurturing attitude of a producer, even using her day off to take actor Paul Reiser on a Tuscany tour producers have to keep everyone on set happy. "Whatever she does, she takes it seriously. Ultimately, I think she's going to be a filmmaker with that heightened sensitivity."

Plaza describes that "sensitivity" as a manifestation of her tendency to "please" people, which is a double-edged sword: Acting and producing require a person to be highly attuned to others' needs, but what happens if you can't turn that off?

"I'm such a people pleaser that my natural reaction in interviews and things is to give people what they want. It's like I'm a robot," Plaza says. "'Oh, these people want me to say something weird or mean or sarcastic, so I just do that. That'll make them happy.' I'm just now getting better at feeling more comfortable in my own skin, but it can be hard when people are projecting ideas onto you at full speed, constantly."

But Plaza absolutely emphasizes that she knows her life is not achingly difficult. As a young artist who got cast on a popular network series simply by showing up to an informal meeting in shorts and a T-shirt to talk about the meaning of life and suggest that, hey, maybe a character could be a droll slacker, Plaza sometimes can't even believe that they let her on television back then. And if ever she were to get a big head, she says, her real family and her TV family were there to slap her back down to Earth.

"Nick Offerman knew every single person on set's name, [he] was the most generous man to be working with, and if I would have a bad day and be annoyed or acting like a brat or whatever, he would be the first one to say, 'Just remember we're on network television, and our lives are spectacular,'" Plaza says, offering an ace Offerman impression. "And I'd be like, 'Of course! Thank you. Fucking of course our lives are spectacular!'"

Aubrey Plaza in The Little Hours with Dave Franco

Courtesy Gunpowder & Sky Distribution

Still, this doesn't mean the road ahead to reinvent herself from past characters will be necessarily easy, but it seems the secret key to doing so is to expand her role as a producer. After The Little Hours, she read director Matt Spicer and David Branson Smith's script for the Instagram-stalker tragicomedy Ingrid Goes West and saw something special there. "I knew what it could be, and I wanted to make that happen the script is never the final product," she says. Spicer agrees that Plaza's biggest role in production was pushing for "curve ball" casting choices, like O'Shea Jackson Jr., who most famously portrayed his father, Ice Cube, in Straight Outta Compton, as her character's nerdy but confident love interest.

"[The part] was written for a kind of dorky stoner dude, but I recognized that the chemistry I would have with O'Shea would be really different from something you usually see," Plaza explains. She'd met the rapper-turned-actor at a party and relentlessly waved the script in his face until he committed to the project. "I thought if we could capture that on camera, it would just make the movie that much deeper."

Plaza may be a trickster and comedic actor but she craves depth, and those things aren't mutually exclusive. Her entire life has been dictated by the motto: "Take it as far as it can go." The "it" could be anything a character, a bit, a basketball team because whatever Plaza does, it's gonna be sincere, even if it's just sincerely weird.

Along "Cult House Road," deep in the forest on the Delaware-Pennsylvania border, the skeletal trees lining the pavement angle outward, away from the road and their sun source. Through an overgrown path, there is a burned-out abandoned cabin, which is said to have hosted Satanic rituals, pagan animal sacrifices or DuPont incest weddings, depending on whom you ask. Something about this place seems wrong, even if you can't put your finger on exactly why. This is where M. Night Shyamalan shot The Village. It's also where Aubrey Plaza's mother, Bernadette, would drive her late at night on impromptu road trips with her cousins.

"We'd drive down Cult House Road, and she'd turn the lights off, and we'd all be screaming. My mom is kind of mysterious. She would always do weird things with us," Plaza says, taking a moment to think. "Maybe that's why I'm into witches."

Plaza was raised Catholic and attended an all-girls school in Wilmington, Delaware, with her two sisters. "The power of three is real," she says. She loved The Craft and doing silly spells, but she was also a teacher's pet (damn that need to please!) and class president. In true Plaza fashion, she took her presidential campaign as far as it could go, actually convincing a staffer from Republican senator Bill Roth's office to help her.

"He showed up at my school and was flyering and helping me with my posters, and I remember he helped me set up this archway with balloons at 6 a.m., so everyone who showed up that day had to walk through this thing to get into the door." Plaza shrugs. "Really bizarre. I was just a kid. But he helped me win."

What people most often miss about Plaza's sense of humor is that she doesn't enjoy "mean" comedy. Yes, she is deadpan, once showed up to a national TV interview wearing vampire teeth for no reason, and bewildered ESPN viewers with her re-creation of The Decision to announce that she was trading herself from her infamous Pistol Shrimps basketball team to the Spice Squirrels, but she insists she was never what you'd call a "bad" kid. She was and is a "thrill seeker."

In high school, she and her friend Neil Casey (Inside Amy Schumer, Ghostbusters) would stand on the side of the highway, dress in costume and toss a beach ball back and forth, simply to boggle passers-by. Plaza thinks her fascination with absurdity stemmed from growing up in such a conservative area. "It was satisfying to do something weird for weird's sake, with no purpose, to make people stop and laugh."

Her natural trajectory was comedy and New York. She graduated from NYU and went to work as an NBC page around the time that Amy Poehler was staffed on Saturday Night Live. "I like to think that I walked by her wearing an astronaut costume while she was making up lies to a group of tourists," Poehler wrote to me in an email.

By the time Plaza got an audition for Judd Apatow's Funny People in Los Angeles, Poehler had gone West herself and was prepping to lead her own sitcom with the creators of The Office. Plaza got that informal meeting set up with the Parks folks and quickly thereafter got the casting phone call that would change her life. Los Angeles became her home. And the Parks cast and crew became her new weirdo family.

"Leslie Knope was supposed to be April Ludgate's mentor, and so our first couple of seasons felt like that [in real life]," Poehler says. "But Aubrey Plaza, the person, is an old soul. Very wise. Always watching."

Plaza calls Poehler and Rashida Jones her "big sisters" and gushes about every co-star when asked. For a young woman who'd grown up in a tight-knit family with her two real-life sisters, landing in this supportive cast was something of a godsend.

"Looking back, I am blown away still by just that group of people being in one room doing comedy together, and everyone was a genuinely nice and lovable person," Plaza says. Then she picks up her phone that's been buzzing off and on for the duration of our interview. She holds it up to me and scrolls through an endless series of text messages just fast enough that I can't make out any single one. "Literally this morning, I got a text from every single person. We're on a mass texting chain, that whole cast, and someone will write on it at least every other day, and it's been years. I could show you hundreds of hours of texting. Aziz [Ansari] just sent me a ridiculous picture of him for my birthday. Everyone was commenting while we've been talking."

This adorable text chain feels every bit the real-life extension of the TV show. A large part of the appeal of Parks when it aired, and still today, is its earnestness and the feeling of joy amid darkness it evoked, which Plaza attributes to how pleasant things were behind the scene and how Poehler ran her set.

"I think most people at No. 1 on the call sheet, like Amy is, it's really hard for them to keep things in perspective," Plaza says. "It's easy to take on that No. 1 status and just have your ego take over, and Amy was just so always conscious of the vibe on set, and the idea of gratitude, and respect, but also having fun."

As Plaza has stepped into that No. 1 spot herself, she's tried to take to heart what she's learned from her mentors. But the problem with being a talented character actor zig-zagging from persona to persona with no stop in sight is that the self becomes malleable. "My biggest fear is that I lose myself," she says. Nowhere is that challenge more evident than in the endless press junkets and interviews she does to promote her projects. Seeing how fascinated people are with her personal life is deeply uncomfortable for her. People want to know who her celebrity BFF is, and Plaza has no desire to share yet still feels obliged to entertain. She's the kind of person who makes acquaintances easily but keeps her real friends close she still calls her old high school pals on the phone to chat.

Even this interview brings a certain amount of discomfort to Plaza, which makes me want to apologize for even asking any personal questions do I really need to know her favorite saint? (It's Bernadette, obviously.) She's uneasy with too much attention and especially wary of social media. "It's not real. It's just all in your head, so there's something kind of scary about it. I'm having all these interactions in my head. Physically, I'm just sitting in a chair."

But with all this in mind, it is absolutely no wonder that Plaza was drawn to her most recent project, Ingrid Goes West. The film taps into these fears she has about sharing personal information. Ironically, the actress delivers her most intimate, raw performance yet. Watching this film feels as if you finally know her. But, really, who the hell is Aubrey Plaza?

Actor Chris Pratt may know the real Aubrey Plaza.

"Aubrey is a survivor and alchemist. Her on-screen (and off-screen) personas are equal parts defense mechanism and performance art. She's tough and surprisingly complicated. The very best parts of her are yet to be discovered by audiences and most people. She would deny it, but beneath her signature eye rolls (and accessible to only the luckiest people in her life) is softness, kindness, pathos, creativity and vulnerability."

That's the heartbreakingly sweet assessment Pratt sent via email about his longtime Parks and Recreation co-star. And Pratt's right, because "most people" never will know Plaza. But audiences are now about to see a few new sides to her.

Aubrey Plaza in Ingrid Goes West

Courtesy Neon Distribution

In Ingrid Goes West, Plaza plays a bereft woman with a bag of cash she inherited from her recently deceased mother. Her woeful social ineptitude renders her helpless, unable to reach out to others without becoming too attached to them; think Single White Female "lite" in the age of Instagram. Ingrid stumbles onto the candid photos of lifestyle influencer Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen) and maneuvers her way into the stranger's life, forging a "friendship."

"I think the movie could have easily veered into the direction of being an indictment on social media, but I wanted it to be rooted in a human story about human connection," Plaza says. "It's about someone who really wants to have a connection, and they feel lonely and misunderstood, and that's a universal feeling for human beings."

Though Plaza jokes the trailers for the film suggest it is "a crazy, nonstop laugh express train to nowhere," viewers likely will be shocked by how emotional the story gets, or, rather, how emotional Plaza gets. Ingrid walks a tightrope of anxiety, juggling lies; when they catch up to her, her denial and subsequent breakdown turns this comedy into a tearjerker. The success of this film hinges on Plaza's ability to sell drama. And she does.

"There were times when she was in an emotional scene, and we did 20, 25 takes, and she would want to do more," Ingriddirector Matt Spicer says. "I know a lot of people see her as [Parks & Rec's] April Ludgate, but I hope the takeaway from this film is that she's a real-deal actress."

Being a producer on Ingrid, Plaza was forced to watch herself in the dailies, poring over the footage. She says she never watches her own movies or interviews, so this was a little circle of hell for her, but she realized that through watching herself on screen, she was able to overcome her insecurities and simply judge a take on whether it accomplished a goal, not on whether she succeeded or failed. Spicer says she was a dream producer a person who can deliver the impossible again and again, on and off the set.

"Making good movies is sooo hard. That should be the title of this article," Plaza laughs. But however difficult it is, Plaza seems energized by having creative control over her own projects. She tells me that she's never been in a place to be picky. Every role she takes is for a reason. ("Did I think Dirty Grandpa was going to be the best movie in the world? No. But you're telling me I've got a shot to play Robert De Niro's love interest? I'm in.") But more than anything, Plaza is excited to age; she's tired of playing a 20-year-old.

"In Dirty Grandpa, I played a college senior, and I was 30," she says. "I've always thought, 'God, when I'm in my 40s, I think I'm going to get some meaty parts.' But everyone is so obsessed with youth, so every movie is about 19-year-olds. I used to watch movies that had adults who were wearing blazers and high heels and going to work and dropping off their kid. Where did those characters go?"

Today, on Aubrey Plaza's 33rd birthday, she tells me she wants to bring the adult woman back into style. She wants to make action films. She wants to make funny films. She wants to revive the screwball romantic comedies of the 1980s, like her personal favorite, Romancing the Stone, maybe with Chris Pratt. (She cites Michael Douglas as another inspiration for producing that film when no one else wanted to make it.) She wants to be and do everything yet, she tells me, if she ends up like Adam Sandler's character in Funny People "where I'm all alone and lost all my personal relationships" well, it's not worth it.

Next up for her is a bizarro comedy called An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn, from Greasy Strangler director Jim Hosking. The script was so out-there that her agents had put it in their trash pile before she told them she thought it was genius. It's impossible to nail down exactly what Plaza will think or what she will like. Or who she is.

At the end of our interview, she gives me a hug. She's been candid and forthright with me in this brutalist hotel room for an hour and a half, and I'm surprised by how normal it all seemed.

An hour later, I'm at home, listening to my recording of our conversation, when I hear myself leave Plaza's hotel room momentarily. I left the recorder on while I was gone. Before I can speed through what I expected to be ambient sounds of shuffling, I hear a demonic voice growl coming from the recorder. "Satan-Satan-Satan-Satan!" it yelled. It was Plaza pulling another trick. Then I hear her deadpan voice emerge from the recorder again: "Hello? Hello? ... Huh, wow, that was weird."

Yes, Aubrey. Yes, it was.

More here:

Why Aubrey Plaza Is a Modern-Day Andy Kaufman - L.A. Weekly

A sleeping brain can form fresh memories, according to a team of neuroscientists.The researchers played complex sounds to people while they were sleeping, and afterward the sleepers could recognizethose sounds when they wereawake.

The idea that humans canlearn while asleep, a concept sometimes called hypnopedia, has a long and odd history. It hit a particularly strange note in 1927, when New York inventor A. B. Saliger debuted thePsycho-phone. He billed the device as anautomatic suggestion machine. The Psycho-phone was a phonograph connected to a clock. It playedwax cylinder records, which Saliger made and sold.The records hadnames like Life Extension, Normal Weight orMating. That last one went: I desire a mate. I radiate love My conversation is interesting. My company is delightful. I have a strong sex appeal.

Thousands of sleepers bought the devices, Saligertold theNew Yorkerin 1933. (Those included Hollywood actors,he said, though he declined to name names.) Despite his enthusiasm for the machine Saligerhimself dozed off to Inspiration and Health the device was a bust.

But the idea that we can learn while unconscious holds more meritthan gizmos namedPsycho-phone suggest. In the new study, published Tuesday in the journalNature Communications, neuroscientistsdemonstrated that it is possible to teach acoustic lessons to sleeping people.

We proved that you can learn during sleep, which has been a topic debated for years, said Thomas Andrillon, an author of the study and a neuroscientist at PSL Research University in Paris.Just don't expect Andrillon's experiments to make anyonefluent in French.

Researchersin the 1950s dismantled hypnopedia's more outlandish claims. Sleepers cannot wake up with brains filled withnew meaning or facts, Rand Corp. researchers reported in 1956. Instead, test subjectswho listened to trivia at night woke up with non-recall. (Still, the Psycho-phone spirit endures, at least in the app store, where hypnopedia software claims to promoteforeign languages, material wealth andmartial artsmastery.)

Yet success is possible, if you're not trying to learn dictionary definitions or kung fu. In recent years, scientists have trained sleepers to make subconscious associations. In a 2014 study, Israeli neuroscientists had 66 people smell cigarette smoke coupled with foul odorswhile they were asleep. The test subjects avoided smoking for two weeks after theexperiment.

In the new research, Andrillon and his colleagues moved beyondassociation into pattern learning. While a group of20 subjects was sleeping, the neuroscientists played clips of white noise. Most of the audio was purely random, Andrillon said. There is no predictability. But there were patterns occasionally embedded within the complex noise: sequences of a single clip of white noise, 200 milliseconds long, repeated five times.

The subjects remembered the patterns. The lack ofmeaning worked in their favor; sleepers can neither focus on what they're hearing nor make explicit connections, the scientist said. This is why nocturnal language tapes don't quite work thebrain needs to register sound and semantics.But memorizing acoustic patterns like white noise happens automatically. The sleeping brain is including a lot of information that is happening outside, Andrillon said, and processing it to quite an impressive degree of complexity.

Once the sleepersawoke, the scientists played back the white-noise recordings. The researchers asked the test subjects to identify patterns within the noise. It's not an easy task,Andrillon said, and one that you or I would struggle with. Unless you happened to rememberthe repetitions from a previous night's sleep. The test subjects successfullydetected the patterns far better than random chance would predict.

What's more, the scientists discovered that memories of white-noise pattern formed only during certain sleep stages. When the authors played the sounds during REM and light sleep, the test subjects could remember the pattern the next morning. Duringthe deeper non-REM sleep, playing the recording hampered recall. Patternspresented during non-REM sleep led to worse performance,as if there were a negative form of learning, Andrillon said.

This marked the first time that researchers had evidence for the sleep stages involved in the formation of completely new memories, said Jan Born, a neuroscientist at the Universityof Tbingen in Germany, who was not involved with the study.

In Andrillon's view, the experiment helps to reconcile two competing theories about the role of sleep in new memories: In one idea,our sleeping brains replay memories from our waking lives. Asthey're played back, the memories consolidate and grow stronger, written more firmly into our synapses. In the other hypothesis, sleep instead cuts away at older, weaker memories. But the ones that remain stand out, like lonely trees in a field.

The study indicates that the sleeping brain can do both,Andrillon said. They might simply occur at separatemoments in the sleep cycle, strengthening fresh memories followed by culling.

A separate team of neuroscientists had suspected that the two hypotheses might be complementary. But until now they did not have any explicit experimental support. It is a delight to see these results, since we proposed already, quite a few years ago, that the different sleep stages may have a different impact on memory, said Lisa Genzel,aneuroscientist atRadboud University in the Netherlands. And here they are the first to provide direct evidence for this idea.

Not all neuroscientists were so convinced. Born, an early proponent of the idea that sleep strengthens andconsolidates memories, said this study showed what happens when we form memories while asleep. The average memorya recollection from a waking experience might not work in the same way, he said. I would be skeptical about inferring from this type of approach to what happens during normal sleep.

Andrillon acknowledged the limitations ofthis research, including thatthe scientists did not directly measure synapses. We interpret our results in the light of cellular mechanisms, he said, meaning strengthening or weakening of synapses, that we could not directly measure, since they require invasive recording methods that cannot be applied in humans.

When asked whether understanding the roles of sleep cycles and memory could lead to future sleep-hacks, a la thePsycho-phone,Andrillonsaid, We are in the big unknown. But, he noted, sleep is not just about memory. Trying to hijack the recommended seven-plus hours of sleep could disrupt normal brain function. Which is to say, even if you could learn French while asleep, it mightultimately do more harm than good. I would be very cautious about the interest in this kind of learning, he said, whether this is detrimental to the other functions of sleeping.

Read more:

Climate change is keeping Americans awake at night. Literally.

Meet the scientist who dreams of fixing your sleep

Dear Science: How do I stop snoring?

Excerpt from:

Your brain can form new memories while you are asleep ... - Washington Post

Local utility companies are addressing the dangers of electricity safety following the death of a Lubbock teen who was reportedly electrocuted while attempting to charge her phone while bathing in her fathers Lovington, New Mexico, home.

For Wes Reeves, spokesman for Xcel Energy, the death was a tragic reminder of how cautious people should be around electricity.

I think what happens is we get in a hurry, and we dont stop to think about things when were at home. We think about safety out on the road, and we think about safety at work, but at home were often very lax about it.

One of the dangers he spoke about was the use of extension cords.

At about 12:24 a.m. on July 9, police responded to a report of an unresponsive juvenile female in the 800 block of West Avenue H in Lovington.

Life-saving measures were provided at the scene, during hospital transport and at the hospital. However, the girl was pronounced dead at Nor-Lea Hospital a short while later.

Sharing her story

Soon, the family of 14-year-old Madison Coe reached out to the community in an effort to help save lives by sharing her story.

Spreading the message, Coes family gave police permission to release a photo of her last text message in which she wrote:

When you use (an) extension cord so you can plug your phone in while youre in the bath.

Above the message is a photo of a charger plugged into an extension cord resting on top of a towel.

Lovington police released a statement in which they reported Coe used a Samsung S6 Edge phone while taking a bath.

The phone was connected to its respective charger cord, which was connected to an extension cord plugged into a non-GFCI, non-grounded bathroom wall outlet.

While the child took precautions to keep the connection of the cords dry, the report states, it is believed she was not aware of a significant area of fraying to the extension cord.

According to the release, Coe came in contact with the frayed area while she was in the bath, but the phone was never immersed.

Cord safety

With extension cords being a part of our daily lives, Reeves said, it is important to check them regularly and toss them out if they are damaged.

In addition to checking for frayed and nicked cords, Reeves said, make sure the extension cord is not covered, overloaded and used as permanent wiring. He also warns any electrical device plugged into the wall should never be around water.

There is a lot of safety built into these cords and these chargers, he said. but anytime you have water anywhere near these devices, youre putting yourself at risk. So its best to stay away from charging phones or anything like that in the bathroom.

Lynn Simmons, spokeswoman for South Plains Electric Cooperative, said to remember is that electricity and water do not mix.

Whether you have wet hands and are plugging something in, Simmons said, or turning a light switch on, that is never a good idea. And definitely anything that is plugged into a wall should be kept away from sinks, tubs, swimming pools, any mud puddles, any source of water. Because if that device being plugged in comes in contact with that water it will create that circuit for that electricity, and then thats where the danger lies whether its just a shock or a fatality it can be anywhere in between there.

Reeves said a rule of thumb in his own household is to steer clear of using appliances in the bathroom.

With kids and all of these electrical devices, Simmons said, the parents just need to stop, take a moment, explain to kids about plugging and unplugging, and the idea of keeping devices away from water. Whether its got a good cord or a bad cord, that still couldve been a really bad situation even if the power cord had been good, if (Coe) wouldve dropped that phone into the tub with her. It couldve had the same bad outcome. Parents just need to remember to take time to educate their kids on that.

Electrocutions

In the case of Madison Coe, the cause of death was confirmed as electrocution, and according to officials with the Lovington Police Department, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission were assisting them with the investigation.

According to the agencys website, the most recent records have statistics on electrocutions from 2002 through 2009: About 88 consumer-product associated electrocutions involving individuals ages 1 through 19 years old.

In addition to those statistics, the SPEC website states each year there are about 300 electrocutions; 12,000 shock and burn injuries and 150,000 fires.

Those numbers are electricity-related cases that occurred within homes, as another danger lies in overloading outlets.

Looking at extension cords and surge protectors as pieces of equipment, Simmons said, it is important to see if the cords capacity fits the job.

While it may be OK to plug a lamp into a smaller cord, Reeves said, it is not a good idea to plug heavier equipment into the cord, and overloading extension cords or surge protectors can cause the wiring to melt.

You want to be really careful with that, she said. A lot of people use surge protectors, and I think they think theyre safe because theyre called a surge protector, but you need to be very careful not plugging too much into one outlet. (If something should go wrong) hopefully your system will trip a breaker and prevent any kind of problems, but you can start fires, you can be injured by a shock or worse if youre not careful around outlets and plugging too many items into a single outlet.

Whats GFCI?

As stated in the news release, the outlet in the bathroom was a non-ground, non-GFCI wall outlet.

How do you know if an outlet has a GFCI?

According to the Xcel energy website, there should be a red and black test and reset button on the face of the outlet.

The website states GFCI, or ground fault circuit interrupter, automatically shuts off power to the outlet to protect from fires or users from shock. And they should be installed in outlets near water sources such as outdoor areas, garages, laundry room, kitchens and bathrooms.

If your home is in need of updated or additional outlets, Reeves said, contact a licensed electrician.

If possible, he said, if you need some sort of change in your home, have an electrician come in and put another outlet in your home where you need it.

For more information on electrical safety, visit spec.coop or xcelenergy.com.

View original post here:

Last text sent by Lubbock girl electrocuted in bathtub showed extension cord, towel - Amarillo.com

FAIRBANKS What did it cost you last time you went to the doctor or dentist? I mean before insurance, Medicare or Medicaid kicked in to bring down the cost. And that may have been just for a routine checkup or work/school annual physical. What if you needed treatment for lung cancer?

The National Cancer Institute reports the cost for the initial treatment of lung cancer in 2010 was $60,553 for women and $60,885 for men. Subsequent annual continued treatment was $8,130 and $7,591 respectively. The problem with this cancer is not only treatment expenditures, but also of survival. According to the America Cancer Society, most lung cancers have spread widely and are in advanced stages when they are first found.

But what if a simple test could alert you to the presence of the second leading cause of lung cancer radon? Certified professionals will give you a detailed hourly average of radon levels in your home with sophisticated machinery for a couple hundred dollars.

You also can test the radon levels in your home with a readily available test kit containing activated charcoal, which is no different than what is used in common shoe deodorizers. The kit will give you an overall average of what the concentration of radon gas is in your home duringa 48-hour period. Though the lab fee varies, the kits generally cost around $15 to $20. Kits that include the analysis are available from extension district offices or by ordering one at 1-877-520-5211.

And then what? If you have radon in your home, what would the cost be to fix it? If it means merely filling in cracks in your cement floor or wall, you have some sweat equity and possibly $25 in patch materials. If you have a crawl space without secure covering, you may run into a solid day and possibly $100 of materials, with the possibility of a sore back from leaning over.

If you invested either of those, and then spend a couple more hundred dollars to get a furnace repair man to balance your furnace and heat recovery ventilator (HRV) and are still experiencing high radon levels, you can put in a PVC pipe chimney. This will evacuate the radon by depressurizing the soil under the floor. That will cost you as much as$4,000 locally to have it professionally installed. Or you could buy 4-inch PVC pipe, rent a pile driver and spend $150 for a fan for a total around $600. You may then throw in a $125 monitor to make sure it works continually.

If you are building a new house and havent put in the foundation yet, you might have PVC or ABS piping put in under plastic sheeting and the cement slab for around $1,000-$1,500. Given the scattered uranium throughout the state, it will be all the more important for contractors to utilize radon-resistant construction so that from the get-go, there is not only protective vapor barrier secured on the ground but also semipermeable membrane material such as Bituthene adhered to pony walls before backfilling soils.

Remember, no matter where you are living, the only way youll know whether you have a radioactive radon problem is to test for it.

Art Nash is the energy specialist for the UAF Cooperative Extension Service. Contact him at 474-6366 or by email at alnashjr@alaska.edu.

Read this article:

Test your home for radon to save money, your life - Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

The Doppler radar located in Blacksburg, Virginia was shut down August 1st for a nation wide project called the Service Life Extension Program, or SLEP.

The WSR-88D or NEXRAD radars were built with a service life of 20 years. The program started over 20 years ago and the purpose of the SLEP program is to bring the radar up to date with the newest technology. This upgrade would extend the life of the radar into the 2030s.

After installation of the new hardware and software, engineers ran test on the radar before placing it into operation and found a larger problem -- a cracked bearing on the main gear that moves the radar. The unit was immediately turned off.

To repair the bearing and the bull gear the entire dome and 28 foot radar dish will need to be removed. This will require a 6 person team and heavy equipment to make the repairs. The team is currently doing the same repair in Ohio and will make their way to Blacksburg next week. The work is schedule to be complete by August 30.

In the meantime, multiple radar sites can cover our area and will be unnoticeable to app or website users. The NWS can attempt to run the radar in a time of need is a tornadic storm or a tropical system were to impact the region before the engineering team starts the repair work.

View post:

Local Doppler radar down through end of August - WDBJ7

Special report The makers of high-tech hardware have subverted green manufacturing standards to line their pockets while making their products look more environmentally responsible.

A report released last week by Repair.org, an organization that advocates for the right to repair technology products, says electronic device manufacturers control standards organizations like the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and use that control to shape rules for their benefit rather than the benefit of the environment.

"[M]embers of the IT industry have co-opted standards for their own benefit, warping them into a tool that drives sales at the expense of the environment," said Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of Repair.org, in a statement.

The report, "Electronic Standards Are In Need Of Repair," says that while governmental organizations and advocacy groups have pushed for reuse, repair, and refurbishment of technology products as a way to prolong product lifecycles and reduce electronic waste, the IT industry has bent environmental guidelines to align with wasteful manufacturing practices.

"Unfortunately, manufacturers have consistently opposed stronger reuse and repair criteria," the report says. "And though manufacturers often claim they design for durability, no durability criteria is included in US electronics standards. As a result, green standards have systematically failed to incorporate strong policies that would enable repair, reuse, and product life extension for electronics."

The report points to the UL 110 standard for cellphones that's now part of EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool), a registry for evaluating IT product sustainability.

UL 110 has an ease-of-disassembly requirement.

"But the criterion was written in such a way that Samsung is claiming its Galaxy S8 a phone that is heavily glued together meets the requirements set forth in the criterion," the report says.

So Samsung's S8 received a "Gold" rating in the EPEAT registry without actually being easy to disassemble. It's a bit like going to the Olympics and getting a gold medal just for showing up.

Apple's 2012 MacBook Pro with Retina display offers another example. Despite shipping with a proprietary SSD, non-upgradeable RAM, and a glued-down lithium-ion battery, the report says, the device still received an EPEAT "Gold" rating.

"When criticized for the Retinas inclusion on the registry, EPEAT said that its product verification committee had determined that products were upgradeable if they had an externally accessible port which all laptops have," the report explains.

Apple and the IEEE did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In a phone interview with The Register, report author Mark Shaffer, an environmental consultant who used to manage Dell's environmental programs, said, "The goal of the report is to shed more light on repair practices and the green standards world as a whole, and how the manufactures have full control over that."

Sponsored: The Joy and Pain of Buying IT - Have Your Say

Excerpt from:

Tech giants warp eco standards to greenwash electronics, rake in cash - The Register

Floyd is a horticulturist with Texas AgriLife Extension Service. He can be reached at 498-4071 in Ector County or 686-4700 in Midland County or by email at Jeff.Floyd@ag.tamu.edu

Floyd is an Agri-Life Extension agent for Ector and Midland counties. To learn more, call the Ector County Extension office at 432-498-4072, or the Midland County Extension office at 432-686-4700, or email jeff.floyd@ag.tamu.edu.

Posted: Sunday, August 6, 2017 3:00 am

GARDENING: Grass is greener after a storm By Jeff Floyd Odessa American

What is it about thunderstorms that make the green in plants pop? The answer is nitrogen. Only a minuscule fraction of soil is made up of nitrogen while the atmosphere contains a whopping seventy-eight percent of the stuff.

Unfortunately, like the mythological Tantalus whose eternal punishment included standing in a pool of water from which he couldnt sip, plants have absolutely no access to atmospheric nitrogen; at least not in its standard dinitrogen form.

Plants only take up ionic forms of nitrogen from the soil. Plants are autotrophs, meaning they feed themselves. One way they do this is by using special cellular machines to connect nitrogen ions with other elements inside the plant body, building life-giving proteins. Nearly all metabolic processes carried out by plants require nitrogen rich proteins. Rain carries nitrogen compounds. However, energy is required to convert atmospheric nitrogen into a structure that plants can take advantage of.

Theres enough energy in a typical lightning bolt to keep your smartphone glowing for nearly seven-hundred years. Lightening is essentially static electricity with just a tad more power than a freshly laundered faux cashmere blouse. Lightening breaks up atmospheric nitrogen allowing it to hitch a ride back to earth within raindrops. Once in the soil, plants can snatch up dissolved nitrogen pretty quickly.

So its not your imagination; your lawn really is greener after a thunderstorm. However, soil microbes use nitrogen too. Depending on conditions, microbes convert nitrogen into the atmospheric gas from whence it came. This is part of the reason plants return to their normal appearance not long after things dry up.

You cant see it, smell it or taste nitrogen, but you can learn more about how plants use it by calling the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension office at 498-4071 or email jeff.floyd@ag.tamu.edu.

Posted in Gardening on Sunday, August 6, 2017 3:00 am. | Tags: Texas A&m Agrilife Extension Office, Jeff Floyd, Pecans, Pruning, Prune, Soft Landscape Materials, Landscape, Gardening, Gardener, Food, Integra, Repeat Applications, West Texas

Continue reading here:

GARDENING: Grass is greener after a storm - Odessa American

Reprinted with the kind permission of Life Extension.

July 26 2017.An article published on June 30, 2017 inApplied and Environmental Microbiologydescribes a role for cranberries in promoting the growth of beneficial intestinal bacteria. A carbohydrate that occurs in the fruit appears to function as a prebiotic: a nondigestible compound that nourishes probiotic microorganisms.

We're basically eating for two, commented lead researcher David Sela, who is a nutritional microbiologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. These gut bacteria are extremely significant to us, they really are very important. Our food makes a difference for us as well as the beneficial microbes that we carry around with us."

A lot of plant cell walls are indigestible, and indeed we cannot digest the special sugars found in cranberry cell walls called xyloglucans, Dr Sela explained. "But when we eat cranberries, the xyloglucans make their way into our intestines where beneficial bacteria can break them down into useful molecules and compounds."

For their study, Dr Sela and colleagues tested the effects of isolated xyloglucans on the probioticBifidobacterium longum.Theyfound a change in fermentative endproducts secreted byB. longumsubsequent to administration of xyloglycans, indicating metabolism of the prebiotic.

"With probiotics, we are taking extra doses of beneficial bacteria that may or may not help ourgut health," Dr Sela stated. "But with prebiotics, we already know that we have the beneficial guys in our guts, so let's feed them! Let's give them more nutrients and things that they like. They make molecules and compounds that help us, or they make it to help some of the hundreds of other kinds of beneficial members of the community. They are consuming things we can't digest, or they are helping other beneficial microbes that we find it hard to introduce as probiotics, or their presence can help keep pathogens away."

Originally posted here:

Cranberries may benefit gut bacteria - ProHealth