Monday, January 2, 2017

On Friday, Tyrus Wong, a Chinese-US painter who inspired the style of Disney animated film Bambi, died at home of natural causes in Sunland-Tujunga, Los Angeles, according to his daughter Kim Wong.

Born on October 25, 1910 in Guangdong province, China, Tyrus Wong left the country with his father at the age of nine under fake names “Look Tai Yow” and “Look Get”. Wong’s father taught him the art of calligraphy using water instead of ink on newspapers.

Wong used to work as a houseboy after school in Los Angeles earning half a dollar per day. Wong’s principal in junior high school helped arrange a scholarship in Otis Art Institute for his art skills. At Otis, Wong studied Western art and graduated in 1935. In 1934, a landscape of Wong’s appeared in an exhibition organised by the Art Institute of Chicago which also featured a Pablo Picasso etching, “Two Nudes”. For two years, from 1934 to 1936, he worked for the Works Progress Administration to create paintings for public buildings.

In 1938, Wong began work in the Disney animation studio as an in-betweener — creating hundreds of intermediate images for the appearance of motion. Walt Disney noticed his work. Wong’s forest paintings of deer strongly influenced the style of Bambi. Wong worked at Disney for only three years before he was sacked in 1941, following an employee’s strike in which Wong did not participate. Next year, Wong became a Warner Bros. concept artist, drawing storyboards and set designs for live-action films. Films he drew concept art for included The Sands of Iwo Jima, Rebel Without a Cause, and The Wild Bunch. After more than a quarter century at Warner Bros., Wong retired in 1968. Wong gained US citizenship in 1946.

Wong influenced animator Andreas Deja, the creator of Lilo from Lilo & Stitch and Jafar from Aladdin. Wong also worked as a janitor, designed greeting cards, and picked asparagus during the lows in his career.

Wong was named a Disney Legend in 2001. Wong is survived by three daughters and two grandchildren.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Today is the 39th observance of Earth Day in the northern hemisphere. Earth day is celebrated in Autumn on November 30 in the southern hemisphere. Senator Gaylord Nelson initiated the first Earth Day in April 1970 in the United States, and it is now celebrated by over 1 billion people in over 170 countries worldwide. Earth Day is the biggest environmental event which addresses issues and educates people on environmental awareness on a global scale.

This year, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will beam high-definition images to the NASA website and television. By doing so, NASA hopes to increase appreciation of global climate issues. There will also be a Washington exhibit relating to environmental issues viewed from space as well.

At the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center activities will focus on their slogan for Earth Day 2009, “Just One Drop … PRICELESS” and will demonstrate how the Environmental Control Life Support System operates as used on the International Space Staton (ISS).

Amongst the many festivals, WorldFest is a solar powered music celebration held in Los Angeles, California. Buenos Aires will also feature its second Earth Day event featuring a music festival as well.

“We are in a new era of energy innovation,” said Daniel Yergin at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) forum. Lithium-ion batteries are providing electric storage solutions for electric cars such as the Chevrolet Volt and the Dodge Circuit EV. Algae fuel is a new form of biofuel, but is still under development.

“Energy Smackdown” was a competitive household activity which compared energy usage between 60 separate households across three cities in or near Boston. The various competitors came up with a variety of innovative methods to cut their carbon footprint, installing solar electric panels, geothermal heat pumps, wind turbines, and using a caulking gun to seal the home from drafts.

“In the average home, 75 percent of the electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off.” is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) estimate.

Miami is installing a smart grid which will use individual household smart meters to allow energy consumers know via a web site, their exact home energy usage. “To me these are prudent and smart investments that will easily pay for themselves. It will show the nation how to address environmental, energy, and economic challenges all at the same time.” said Miami mayor Manny Diaz.

Cal Dooley, CEO of the American Chemistry Council ACC, says the plastic bag industry is prepared to spend US$50 million to revamp their manufacturing facilities and will collect 470 million pounds of recycled plastic every year to make plastic bags of 40% recycled content. The ACC is providing a donation to the Keep America Beautiful environmental organisation, both of whom endorse this new project. The Earth Day Network (EDN) and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) would like to see an end to the use of plastic bags, however. “We don’t want people to use disposable bags. We want people to use reusable bags,” says Darby Hoover of the NRDC.

Calgary researchers will begin field surveys to help save the “Northern Leopard Frog (Rana Pipiens). “Northern Leopard Frogs are threatened in Alberta, but endangered in British Columbia,” said Dr. Des Smith, Primary Investigator and Research Scientist with the Calgary Zoo’s Centre for Conservation Research. “It is essential to develop new monitoring techniques for Northern Leopard” said Breana McKnight, Field Team Leader and Endangered Species Researcher.

The traditional Earth day ceremony of planting trees is garnering further attention in Japan as Koichi Nakatani, the nation’s Tree Planting Father travels from Hokkaido to Okinawa.

Students can take part in an Earth Day photo contest sponsored by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies which will feature images and scientific student research for the environmental change depicted in each photo submitted.

“Earth Day should be about teaching about the environment every day,” said Sean Mille director of education for EDN, “We emphasize taking action for your classroom, school, district or community.” 25,000 schools across America made use of the environmental curriculum developed by the National Civic Education Project, the Green Schools Campaign and the Educator’s Network. Lesson plans are broad and varied and may focus on water pollution, recycling, composting, using chemistry to convert cafeteria left-overs into biodiesel or ethanol fuel or converting go-carts to operate on biodiesel or ethanol fuels in shop class.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

On Wednesday at 12:40 p.m. CET (UTC+1), Norwegian authorities were alerted to an oil spill in the Statfjord oil field. The spill originated from the oil platform “Statfjord A”, one of three platforms in the field, operated by StatoilHydro.

Kristin Hoffmann of Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (Petroleumtilsynet) told Dagens Nyheter: “This is the second largest in Norwegian history.” The amount of oil released into the sea is believed to be at least 3840 cubic metres, 25,000 barrels, or approximately 4,000 metric tons. This amount would rank the spill low on the list of oil spills.

“It is a significant amount and we are taking it seriously,” said Vegar Stokset, a spokesman for StatoilHydro, though he said the spill was “very far from land.”

The accident occurred in rough seas while tanker Navion Britannia was loading oil from a storage buoy, StatoilHydro said. Christian Sletner of the Norwegian Coastal Administration said, “StatoilHydro has a good preparedness plan, and a satisfactory system for handling this.” He added, “StatoilHydro is responsible for cleaning up. This is the ‘polluter pays’ principle.”

“The amount of damage could range from completely marginal to relatively large if substantial amounts reach land,” Sletner said. “The chances of it reaching land, at the moment, seem to be relatively small.”

No one was injured at the time of the accident and the platform will continue work as usual Thursday, said StatiolHydro Information Director Kai Nielsen. In a press release, StatiolHydro announced that four vessels are on their way to begin the clean-up, though they will have to wait for calmer seas to begin work.

Petroleum Safety Authority Norway said in a press release that it is demobilizing disaster teams and beginning to prepare for its investigation of the incident. It will also closely follow StatoilHydro’s clean-up.

Statfjord is 200 km (124 miles) off the coast of Norway, located to the east of Bergen. It is an oil and gas field in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea, though approximately 15% of it is in the United Kingdom’s waters. At peak production, it produces over 700,000 barrels of oil per day. The field is one of the largest known under-sea oil fields in the world.

Monday, September 2, 2013

Radiation at Japan’s damaged Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant yesterday spiked to lethal levels around a leaking tank. Today the national Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said contaminated water may be pumped into the sea.

Tanks holding contaminated water at the site continue to leak; operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) says up to 300 metric tons may have leaked from one tank alone. Radiation at that tank soared to 1,800 millisieverts per hour yesterday, a rate lethal to an exposed human in about four hours. Japanese law says nuclear workers cannot be exposed to more than 50 millisieverts in a year.

TEPCO says other locations at the plant have readings of 70–230 millisieverts per hour. Waste water totalling more than 300,000 tons has already been collected at the site; more is being stored at a rate of 400 tons per day. An unknown quantity of radioactive groundwater is flowing into the sea.

NRA boss Shinichi Tanaka told a press conference today that stored water may be pumped into the Pacific after treatment to reduce contamination to within legal limits. “I’m afraid that it is unavoidable to dump or release the water into the sea,” he said, adding “careless management” was being applied to the water by TEPCO.

TEPCO first noticed a leak at the now-deadly tank in July but said it was minor and the NRA gave it a level one “anomaly” rating on the seven-part international scale. Last week that was raised to “serious incident”, level three, after TEPCO said up to 300 tons of water had leaked. The exact amount is unknown as there is no gauge to measure levels inside the tank and TEPCO staff had said water levels in the tank had remained constant.

Last week levels under the tank, where lost water is thought to have seeped into the ground, stood at 100 millisieverts per hour, and another at the facility had a level of 70 millisieverts per hour. TEPCO found another leak yesterday in a pipe between coolant tanks. Highly radioactive material was dripping out, but TEPCO says the leak is now fixed. Monitoring at the site has been increased since the original leak’s discovery two weeks ago.

Around 1,000 tanks are used to store water from the power plant’s coolant system, which was contaminated when three reactors melted down after a tsunami in March 2011. Around 160,000 people were evacuated in the worst nuclear disaster since 1986. Tanaka said “The situation at Fukushima is changing everyday… The accident has yet to be settled down.”

The new radiation involves beta rays, TEPCO said, which can be stopped with a sheet of metal. Water treatment has extracted caesium from the tanks but other radioactive elements remain. TEPCO’s equipment to remove other contamination is out of action due to filter corrosion after a few months of operating, but the government has demanded it be returned to service this month.

None of the tanks have monitoring equipment and TEPCO’s initial procedure involved two employees manually checking each tank over a two-hour period. Since the tank was found to be leaking the total monitoring staff has increased from ten to 60, and patrols are carried out four times a day instead of twice a day.

Prosecutors brought criminal charges against TEPCO and government officials including then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan for their handling of the crisis formed after the tsunami. Daily newspaper Sankei Shimbun today claimed all charges, brought after local residents complained, were to be dropped. Sankei Shimbun suggests a formal announcement may come within days.

Kansai Electric Power today began shutting down one of only two reactors still generating power in Japan, reactor #3 at Oi Nuclear Power Plant, for mandatory inspection. The other, Oi’s reactor #4, is to be permanently switched off this month. When the accident began nuclear energy supplied a third of Japan’s power requirements, but in the aftermath of Fukushima the nation has switched to fossil fuels.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Solar Systems Pty Ltd, Hawthorn, Victoria, have announced an agreement with Boeing Australia Ltd for supply of Spectrolab solar cells. The agreement will result in the supply of 500,000 cells, capable of generating 11MW of electricity.

Spectrolab produces multi-junction solar cells, originally designed for powering satellites. The solar cells are three times more efficient than the cells used in typical domestic solar panels, and are capable of converting light energy to electrical energy with up to 34% efficiency according to NREL’s National Centre for Photovoltaics. Solar Systems utilise Spectrolab’s multi-junction solar cells to increase the output of their dish systems.

Solar Systems have already trialed the cells in one of their CS500 concentrating solar dishes installed at a solar power station in Hermannsburg, Central Australia, established to reduce the consumption of diesel in the remote community. Simply replacing the existing cells with the Spectrolab multi-junction solar cells increased output from 24kW to 34kW.

Solar Systems is planning to use the technology in a solar power station it will build in northern Victoria, with a capacity of 154MW.