- Lawyer of student who tracks Taylor Swift’s private jet says his client is ‘not going to buckle’ Good Morning America
- Taylor Swift’s private jet tracker Jack Sweeney defends posts USA TODAY
- Student tracking Taylor Swift jet pushes back on threatened legal action: ‘Look what you made me do’ The Hill
- Man Tracking Taylor Swift’s Private Jets Fires Back at Letter From Her Lawyer: ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ Parade Magazine
- College student who shares flight information for Taylor Swift’s jet responds to her lawyers’ cease-and-desist: “Look What You Made Me Do” CBS News
Tag Archives: Buckle
Consumers are starting to buckle for the first time in decades: Fmr. Walmart U.S. CEO Bill Simon – CNBC Television
- Consumers are starting to buckle for the first time in decades: Fmr. Walmart U.S. CEO Bill Simon CNBC Television
- Consumers starting to buckle for first time in a decade, former Walmart U.S. CEO Bill Simon warns CNBC
- American consumers are taking their foot off the spending pedal as bargain prices become rarer, former Walmart U.S. CEO says Fortune
- Ex-Walmart CEO issues dire retail warning and says shoppers have major ‘reason to pause’ for the first tim… The US Sun
- Consumers are starting to buckle for the first time in decade: Fmr. Walmart U.S. CEO Bill Simon CNBC
Buckle up for more ‘turbulence’ in the housing market, BofA says—it’s a housing recession, 1980s-style – Yahoo Finance
- Buckle up for more ‘turbulence’ in the housing market, BofA says—it’s a housing recession, 1980s-style Yahoo Finance
- The average long-term US mortgage rate surges to 7.49%, its highest level since December 2000 KSL News
- Hiring Is Rising Along With Rates. Are They on a Collision Course? The New York Times
- Mortgage Interest Rates Today, October 7, 2023 | After Spiking Earlier This Week, Rates Finally Steady Business Insider
- Homebuyers hit the brakes, ‘smothering’ the mortgage marketplace OCRegister
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Why do Britain’s roads melt and its rails buckle in heat? | Infrastructure
Extreme temperatures have led to widespread problems and disruption on Britain’s railways, with trains running at slow speeds and main lines closed. Airport runways and some roads have also shown they can be susceptible to heat.
Railways
Steel rails expand and tend to buckle in the heat – whatever the climate. According to Network Rail, railways worldwide are designed to operate within a 45C range, according to the local conditions. In the UK, steel rails are “pre-stressed” to summer temperatures of 27C, whereas in countries with hotter climates, rails are pre-stressed to higher temperatures.
Sleepers and ballast must keep the rails in place in the British winter and summer. When the temperature hits 40C, rails can reach 60C and expand and buckle. A train travelling fast over rails can hasten that process through the heat caused by friction, and could be in more danger should buckling occur – hence the widespread speed restrictions.
The overhead wires on electrified routes also expand and sag in the heat, and contract in cold weather. Engineers have solutions, with the tension automatically mitigated by a pulley system. But eventually the counterweights hit the ground and wires sag – making them more likely to be tangled in a pantograph, the device on top of the train that draws power from the lines.
Roads
Motorways and strategic roads are built with modified asphalt surfaces that – so far – should not start melting, being resilient past 60C, or an equivalent air temperature of 40C, according to National Highways. However, basic asphalt materials used on local roads – the vast majority – can start to soften at temperatures of 50C. At that point, Prof Xiangming Zhou, head of civil & environmental engineering at Brunel University, says: “The road can get soft and greasy, and it is difficult for cars to brake.” This is why councils have put gritting lorries, more usually employed in icy weather, on standby to coat roads in sand and dust. Tarmac and asphalt are cheaper and less abrasive to tyres than some materials, he says, but as they are black they tend to heat more quickly in baking sun.
About 4% of Britain’s roads are built from concrete, which is more popular abroad for highways and motorways and can be more resilient, but is not immune to problems of extreme temperatures, as the closure of the A14 shows. The dual carriageway near Cambridge had been built with asphalt over old concrete slabs that expanded and buckled in the heat, creating a bump sufficient to close the road overnight for emergency repairs.
Rick Green, of the Asphalt Industry Alliance, says that for a road to cope with all temperatures is a “a significant challenge for design engineers”. In extremely high temperatures the surface “doesn’t melt, but the bitumen in it can soften”, “heightening the risk of deformation”.
Airport runways
Again, some can be concrete – but Luton’s asphalt was the problem once temperatures soared into the mid-30s, says Zhou. In the airport’s words, “high surface temperatures caused a small section to lift” – a buckle in the runway that engineers fixed within hours, but that still caused major disruption to passengers. Whereas local roads are often shaded by trees and houses, runways are fully exposed and under further heat stress from aircraft landing and taking off. Repairs and maintenance are frequent.
Heathrow, which was even hotter than Luton on Monday, also had a runway issue last week, when overnight repair work did not finish in time for planes to land. However, it has two runways and was not forced to stop operations.
So what is the solution?
Network Rail is already spending hundreds of millions of pounds annually on climate change mitigation. Most of it, however, is to counteract erosion or damage through rainfall or storms. Future infrastructure could be gauged to a warmer climate – but then it could be more prone to failure and cracking in cold winter weather when rails contract. Some track materials, such as concrete sleepers, are more resilient at broader ranges of temperature and conditions – and significantly more expensive.
Rails are already painted white in critical spots to combat heat. Countries with extremes of weather carry out much wider seasonal adjustments to track, which is time consuming and costly. Air-conditioning was not a standard feature of older trains still running. Resilience will become an economic and political choice – and it may be that a few days of outages for heat each year is seen as preferable to the bill for modifications.
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Buckle Up for Xbox’s Big Gamescom Show – Unlocked 506
Xbox announces its big Gamescom event. We make our predictions for what we think we’re going to see, along with what we think we might not see at this particular event. Plus: our highlights from the second Xbox Twitch indie showcase, Dead Space’s maybe-earlier-than-expected release date, what we want from Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s new South Park game, what Mass Effect: Legendary Edition’s strong sales mean for Mass Effect 4, and more!
Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our new YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 download of this week’s episode. For more awesome content, check out our Halo Infinite Flight performance preview, which does a deep-dive tech analysis on the still-in-development slice of Halo Infinite multiplayer:
Oh, and you can be featured on Unlocked by tweeting us a video Loot Box question! Tweet your question and tag Ryan at @DMC_Ryan!
For more next-gen coverage, make sure to check out our Xbox Series X review, our Xbox Series S review, and our PS5 review.
Global supply chains buckle as virus variant and disasters strike
LONDON/BEIJING, July 23 (Reuters) – A new worldwide wave of COVID-19. Natural disasters in China and Germany. A cyber attack targeting key South African ports.
Events have conspired to drive global supply chains towards breaking point, threatening the fragile flow of raw materials, parts and consumer goods, according to companies, economists and shipping specialists.
The Delta variant of the coronavirus has devastated parts of Asia and prompted many nations to cut off land access for sailors. That’s left captains unable to rotate weary crews and about 100,000 seafarers stranded at sea beyond their stints in a flashback to 2020 and the height of lockdowns.
“We’re no longer on the cusp of a second crew change crisis, we’re in one,” Guy Platten, secretary general of the International Chamber of Shipping, told Reuters.
“This is a perilous moment for global supply chains.”
Given ships transport around 90% of the world’s trade, the crew crisis is disrupting the supply of everything from oil and iron ore to food and electronics.
German container line Hapag Lloyd (HLAG.DE) described the situation as “extremely challenging”.
“Vessel capacity is very tight, empty containers are scarce and the operational situation at certain ports and terminals is not really improving,” it said. “We expect this to last probably into the fourth quarter – but it is very difficult to predict.”
Meanwhile, deadly floods in economic giants China and Germany have further ruptured global supply lines that had yet to recover from the first wave of the pandemic, compromising trillions of dollars of economic activity that rely on them.
The Chinese flooding is curtailing the transport of coal from mining regions such as Inner Mongolia and Shanxi, the state planner says, just as power plants need fuel to meet peak summer demand.
In Germany, road transportation of goods has slowed significantly. In the week of July 11, as the disaster unfolded, the volume of late shipments rose by 15% from the week before, according to data from supply-chain tracking platform FourKites.
Nick Klein, VP for sales and marketing in the Midwest with Taiwan freight and logistics company OEC Group, said companies were scrambling to free goods stacked up in Asia and in U.S. ports due to a confluence of crises.
“It’s not going to clear up until March,” Klein said.
MORE PAIN FOR AUTOMAKERS
Manufacturing industries are reeling.
Automakers, for example, are again being forced to stop production because of disruptions caused by COVID-19 outbreaks. Toyota Motor Corp said this week it had to halt operations at plants in Thailand and Japan because they couldn’t get parts.
Stellantis temporarily suspended production at a factory in the U.K. because a large number of workers had to isolate to halt the spread of the virus.
The industry has already been hit hard by a global shortage of semiconductors this year, mainly from Asian suppliers. Earlier this year, the auto industry consensus was that the chip supply crunch would ease in the second half of 2021 – but now some senior executives say it will continue into 2022.
An executive at a South Korea auto parts maker, which supplies Ford, Chrysler and Rivian, said raw materials costs for steel which was used in all their products had surged partly due to higher freight costs.
“When factoring in rising steel and shipping prices, it is costing about 10% more for us to make our products,” the executive told Reuters, declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.
“Although we are trying to keep our costs low, it has been very challenging. It’s just not rising raw materials costs, but also container shipping prices have skyrocketed.”
Europe’s biggest home appliances maker, Electrolux (ELUXb.ST), warned this week of worsening component supply problems, which have hampered production. Domino’s Pizza (DPZ.N) said the supply-chain disruptions were affecting the delivery of equipment needed to build stores.
U.S. AND CHINA STRUGGLE
Buckling supply chains are hitting the United States and China, the world’s economic motors that together account for more 40% of global economic output. This could lead to a slowdown in the global economy, along with rising prices for all manner of goods and raw materials.
U.S. data out Friday dovetailed with a growing view that growth will slow in the last half of the year after a booming second quarter fueled by early success in vaccination efforts.
“Short-term capacity issues remain a concern, constraining output in many manufacturing and service sector companies while simultaneously pushing prices higher as demand exceeds supply,” said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at IHS Markit.
The firm’s “flash” reading of U.S. activity slid to a four-month low this month as businesses battle shortages of raw materials and labor, which are fanning inflation. read more
It’s an unwelcome conundrum for the U.S. Federal Reserve, which meets next week just six weeks after dropping its reference to the coronavirus as a weight on the economy. read more
The Delta variant, already forcing other central banks to consider retooling their policies, is fanning a new rise in U.S. cases, and inflation is running well above expectations.
‘WE NEED TO SUPPLY STORES’
Ports across the globe are suffering the kinds of logjams not seen in decades, according to industry players.
The China Port and Harbour Association said on Wednesday that freight capacity continued to be tight.
“Southeast Asia, India and other regions’ manufacturing industry are impacted by a rebound of the epidemic, prompting some orders to flow to China,” it added.
Union Pacific (UNP.N), one of two major railroad operators that carry freight from U.S. West Coast ports inland, imposed a seven-day suspension of cargo shipments last weekend, including consumer goods, to a Chicago hub where trucks pick up the goods.
The effort, which aims to ease “significant congestion” in Chicago, will put pressure on ports in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland and Tacoma, specialists said.
A cyber attack hit South African container ports in Cape Town and Durban this week, adding further disruptions at the terminals. read more
If all that were not enough, in Britain the official health app has told hundreds of thousands of workers to isolate following contact with someone with COVID-19 – leading to supermarkets warning of a short supply and some petrol stations closing.
Richard Walker, managing director of supermarket group Iceland Foods, turned to Twitter to urge people not to panic buy.
“We need to be able to supply stores, stock shelves and deliver food,” he wrote.
Additional reporting by Anna Ringstrom in Stockholm, Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles, Hilary Russ in New York, Joe White in Detroit, Lucia Mutikani and Howard Schneider in Washington and Heekyong Yang in Seoul;
Editing by Simon Webb, Dan Burns and Pravin Char
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Planetary Shields Will Buckle Under Furious Stellar Winds From Their Dying Stars – Nearly Impossible for Life To Survive
When the Sun evolves to become a red giant star, the Earth may be swallowed by our star’s atmosphere, and with a much more unstable solar wind, even the resilient and protective magnetospheres of the giant outer planets may be stripped away. Credit: MSFC / NASA
Any life identified on planets orbiting white dwarf stars almost certainly evolved after the star’s death, says a new study led by the University of Warwick that reveals the consequences of the intense and furious stellar winds that will batter a planet as its star is dying. The research is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and lead author Dr. Dimitri Veras presented it today (July 21, 2021) at the online National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2021).
The research provides new insight for astronomers searching for signs of life around these dead stars by examining the impact that their winds will have on orbiting planets during the star’s transition to the white dwarf stage. The study concludes that it is nearly impossible for life to survive cataclysmic stellar evolution unless the planet has an intensely strong magnetic field — or magnetosphere — that can shield it from the worst effects.
In the case of Earth, solar wind particles can erode the protective layers of the atmosphere that shield humans from harmful ultraviolet radiation. The terrestrial magnetosphere acts like a shield to divert those particles away through its magnetic field. Not all planets have a magnetosphere, but Earth’s is generated by its iron core, which rotates like a dynamo to create its magnetic field.
“We know that the solar wind in the past eroded the Martian atmosphere, which, unlike Earth, does not have a large-scale magnetosphere. What we were not expecting to find is that the solar wind in the future could be as damaging even to those planets that are protected by a magnetic field”, says Dr Aline Vidotto of Trinity College Dublin, the co-author of the study.
All stars eventually run out of available hydrogen that fuels the nuclear fusion in their cores. In the Sun the core will then contract and heat up, driving an enormous expansion of the outer atmosphere of the star into a ‘red giant’. The Sun will then stretch to a diameter of tens of millions of kilometers, swallowing the inner planets, possibly including the Earth. At the same time the loss of mass in the star means it has a weaker gravitational pull, so the remaining planets move further away.
During the red giant phase, the solar wind will be far stronger than today, and it will fluctuate dramatically. Veras and Vidotto modeled the winds from 11 different types of stars, with masses ranging from one to seven times the mass of our Sun.
Their model demonstrated how the density and speed of the stellar wind, combined with an expanding planetary orbit, conspires to alternatively shrink and expand the magnetosphere of a planet over time. For any planet to maintain its magnetosphere throughout all stages of stellar evolution, its magnetic field needs to be at least one hundred times stronger than Jupiter’s current magnetic field.
The process of stellar evolution also results in a shift in a star’s habitable zone, which is the distance that would allow a planet to be the right temperature to support liquid water. In our solar system, the habitable zone would move from about 150 million km from the Sun — where Earth is currently positioned — up to 6 billion km, or beyond Neptune. Although an orbiting planet would also change position during the giant branch phases, the scientists found that the habitable zone moves outward more quickly than the planet, posing additional challenges to any existing life hoping to survive the process.
Eventually, the red giant sheds its entire outer atmosphere, leaving behind the dense hot white dwarf remnant. These do not emit stellar winds, so once the star reaches this stage the danger to surviving planets has passed.
Dr. Veras said: “This study demonstrates the difficulty of a planet maintaining its protective magnetosphere throughout the entirety of the giant branch phases of stellar evolution.”
“One conclusion is that life on a planet in the habitable zone around a white dwarf would almost certainly develop during the white dwarf phase unless that life was able to withstand multiple extreme and sudden changes in its environment.”
Future missions like the James Webb Space Telescope due to be launched later this year should reveal more about planets that orbit white dwarf stars, including whether planets within their habitable zones show biomarkers that indicate the presence of life, so the study provides valuable context to any potential discoveries.
So far no terrestrial planet that could support life around a white dwarf has been found, but two known gas giants are close enough to their star’s habitable zone to suggest that such a planet could exist. These planets likely moved in closer to the white dwarf as a result of interactions with other planets further out.
Dr. Veras adds: “These examples show that giant planets can approach very close to the habitable zone. The habitable zone for a white dwarf is very close to the star because they emit much less light than a Sun-like star. However, white dwarfs are also very steady stars as they have no winds. A planet that’s parked in the white dwarf habitable zone could remain there for billions of years, allowing time for life to develop provided that the conditions are suitable.”
Meeting: Royal Astronomical Society National Astronomy Meeting