My cousin Guillermo Cassinello Toscano was on the train that derailed in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, last week when it went around a bend at twice the speed limit. Cassinello heard a loud vibration and then a powerful bump and then found himself surrounded by bloody bodies in wagon number nine. Shaking, he escaped the wreckage through either a door or a hole in the train—he cannot recall—then sat amid the smoke and debris next to the track and began to cry. Seventy-nine passengers died. Continue reading Train of Thought Derailed: How an Accident Can Affect Your Brain
Category Archives: Outlets
Spanish High-Speed Train Crash Offers Safety-System Lessons
The driver of the high-speed train that derailed July 25 at a sharp curve in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, killing at least 80 passengers and injuring 130 more, told controllers he took the curve at around 190 kilometers per hour, despite an 80 kph speed limit. He survived the crash and is now under investigation by local authorities. Even if the driver turns out to have been responsible for speeding, rail passengers might wonder what else had to fail in the safety system to allow one man’s error to harm so many people. Continue reading Spanish High-Speed Train Crash Offers Safety-System Lessons
Five Dimensions Store More Data Than Three
An experimental computer memory format uses five dimensions to store data with a density that would allow more than 300 terabytes to be crammed onto a standard optical disc. But unlike an optical disc, which is made of plastic, the experimental media is quartz glass. Researchers have long been trying to use glass as a storage material because it is far more durable than existing plastics.
A team led by optoelectronics researcher Jingyu Zhang at the University of Southampton, in the U.K., has demonstrated that information can be stored in glass by changing its birefringence, a property related to how polarized light moves through the glass (PDF). Continue reading Five Dimensions Store More Data Than Three
Argentina cuts GM red tape
Argentina has streamlined its biotech crop regulatory framework to ensure neither red tape nor international trading partners’ policies hold up commercialization. The country, one of the first to embrace biotech crops, relied for two decades on a hodgepodge of agencies and rules to govern genetically modified (GM) crop commercialization (Nat. Biotechnol. 28, 393–395, 2010). A 2010 reform established a new Ministry for Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, which updated and consolidated rules in 2012. This spring, the Ministry packaged those rules in a single booklet for commercial and academic growers. Continue reading Argentina cuts GM red tape