Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/314122826?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Friday, June 21, 2013
Helicopter makers woo oil sector with speed and comfort
By Maria Sheahan
PARIS (Reuters) - Companies like Eurocopter
Oil companies already use helicopters to ferry workers to and from offshore rigs. These choppers may rack up 1,500 hours of flight time every year, much more than corporate or even military equivalents.
More than 62 million passengers flew to and from offshore installations in the British North Sea by helicopter between 1976 and 2012, according to the UK's Civil Aviation Authority.
Demand is likely to increase, with JP Morgan estimating investments in offshore oil drilling will grow by just over 8 percent a year on average through 2020. Mining operations also use helicopters extensively to reach sites.
"The oil and gas market is really where the opportunity seems to be right now," said Jean Lydon-Rodgers, president of GE Aviation's
In 2011, 70 percent of GE's rotorcraft engine sales were to U.S. and foreign military forces. By 2016, that figure will shrink to only 30 percent, with commercial uses and especially the oil and gas sector accounting for the rest.
"You're going to see this enormous shift," she said, adding overall sales would remain stable at about 800 engines a year.
Oil majors like BP
"Helicopters are critical to our operations here in the North Sea, and we use them to transport hundreds of offshore workers every week," a BP spokeswoman said.
Helicopter makers are reacting to the expected growth by launching new models tailored for the oil and gas sector.
Eurocopter, whose large EC225 is already a standard among offshore helicopter operators, asked some of its customers to provide input for the design of its new EC175, which it hopes to start delivering early next year.
"They said they spend so much time in the helicopter, they want, for instance, big windows and comfortable seats," Dominique Maudet, Eurocopter's executive vice-president of global business and services, said at the Paris Airshow.
"For that industry, the helicopter is a shuttle, it is like a bus," Maudet said.
INNOVATION
The oil and gas sector accounted for about 30 percent of Eurocopter's 2012 deliveries to the civil and "parapublic" sectors that include law enforcement and emergency medical services. Military makes up about half the firm's business.
Other demands of the oil and gas industry include flight speed, availability of services and spare parts, safety features and the ability to fly long ranges as oil rigs are increasingly set up in deep water far from shore.
"A lot of innovation is going on," said Tom Captain, global aerospace & defense sector leader, at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.
Eurocopter's X3 - or "X cubed" - high-speed helicopter could some day be a strong contender for oil and gas companies seeking faster travel. It can fly and descend at 50 percent higher speeds than conventional helicopters but has a cost of operation that is only 25 percent higher.
Its new EC175 will compete with Finmeccanica
Russian Helicopters has already won an order for seven KA-62s from an operator that services Petroleo Brasileiro, Brazil's state-run oil company, with an option for seven more.
"Our clear vision is that this helicopter will be in great demand in other regions of the world as well, such as the Far East," Chief Executive Dmitry Petrov said.
Russian Helicopters aims to boost its civil business's share of group sales to 50 percent in the medium term thanks to strong demand from the oil & gas industry, he said.
Another rival, United Technologies
Sikorsky hopes the deal can break Eurocopter's dominance of the lucrative and rapidly growing Chinese market for offshore helicopters.
The offshore business "has really been heating up for us in the last couple of years," said Sikorsky President Mick Maurer.
Eurocopter suffered a setback last year after two emergency North Sea ditchings rattled the oil sector's confidence in the EC225, or Superpuma, and grounded parts of the fleet. It has said the first of those helicopters should start flying again a few weeks from now.
(Additional reporting by Sarah Young, Alwyn Scott, Cyril Altmeyer and Andrea Shalal-Esa. Editing by Jane Merriman)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/helicopter-makers-woo-oil-sector-speed-comfort-174540043.html
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Autophaser improves sample analysis in areas such as cancer, Alzheimer's and oil spills
June 20, 2013 ? A new software package allows researchers to vastly improve the performance of one of the key tools used to analyse medical and environmental samples.
Autophaser, developed by the University of Warwick and Aberystwyth University, enables researchers to make use of significantly more data when using Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometers (FT-ICR MS).
FT-ICR is a powerful tool for identifying chemicals and biochemical components in complex mixtures and is used by scientists analysing substances across a wide range of sectors including medical, environmental, and commercial areas such as the petroleum industry.
The software, which is free for academic purposes, will allow much greater confidence in interpreting results. For commercial purposes, the software is available to licence from Warwick Ventures, the commercial arm of the University of Warwick.
The normal method of processing data from FT-ICR MS -- magnitude mode -- effectively ignores half of the information generated, so mass accuracy and resolution are not as high as they could be.
However Autophaser allows researchers to make use of this otherwise discarded data by converting FT-ICR MS results to absorption mode. This gives an improvement in spectral resolution of up to three times and a 41% improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio.
Using Autophaser, researchers will see more peaks in the spectrum, get better sequence coverage in proteins and have more confidence in peak assignments.
Dr David Kilgour of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick said: "Major decisions are made every day in commercial, medical, and environmental settings on the basis of FT-ICR MS so it's vital that researchers have access to the most accurate processing methods.
"Autophaser unleashes the full potential of this type of mass spectrometry and really pushes back the barriers to the kinds of problems it can tackle.
"By making this software available for free to academic researchers, we envisage its benefits will be felt across many biomedical areas, for example cancer, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's, the pharmaceutical and polymer industries, as well as in environmental analysis such as detecting pollution after oil spills."
Although the advantages of absorption mode FT-ICR MS have been known for nearly 40 years, the technique is still not widely used because a key mathematical hurdle presented a barrier.
The researchers at the University of Warwick and Aberystwyth University solved the problem using a kind of artificial intelligence known as a genetic algorithm.
The research behind the software was conducted by David Kilgour and Peter O'Connor at the University of Warwick and Mark Neal at Aberystwyth University; based on earlier work by Peter O'Connor and a student in his group, Yulin Qi.
Autophaser was recently presented at the American Society for Mass Spectrometry annual conference in the US.
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Three for iOS: Never Dress Inappropriately for the Weather Ever Again
Ugh, you'll say, another beautiful, gradient-hued, minimalist iOS weather app. Thanks?I've already got five. But Three is different, we promise. Sure you get just the basic weather info without tons of bells and whistles, but the one bell and/or whistle you do have is a phenomenal one. Three has made it so you'll never be caught chilly at night without the proper layers, because it tells you exactly what to wear.
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Thursday, June 20, 2013
After Pride Houston announced at a parade participation meeting that condoms cou...
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Thursday, May 9, 2013
GOP Benghazi probe stokes political controversy
FILE - In this Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012 file photo, a Libyan man investigates the inside of the U.S. Consulate after an attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, on the night of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2012, in Benghazi, Libya. Four members of Army special forces ready to head to Benghazi, Libya, after the deadly assault on the American diplomatic mission had ended were told not to go, according to a former top diplomat. Gregory Hicks also argued in an interview with Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that if the U.S. military had flown aircraft over the Benghazi facility after it came under siege it might have prevented the second attack on the CIA annex that killed two CIA security officers. (AP Photo/Mohammad Hannon, File)
FILE - In this Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012 file photo, a Libyan man investigates the inside of the U.S. Consulate after an attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, on the night of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2012, in Benghazi, Libya. Four members of Army special forces ready to head to Benghazi, Libya, after the deadly assault on the American diplomatic mission had ended were told not to go, according to a former top diplomat. Gregory Hicks also argued in an interview with Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that if the U.S. military had flown aircraft over the Benghazi facility after it came under siege it might have prevented the second attack on the CIA annex that killed two CIA security officers. (AP Photo/Mohammad Hannon, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? House Republicans insist the Obama administration is covering up information about last year's deadly assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, rejecting administration assurances to the contrary and stoking a controversy with implications for the 2016 presidential race.
Republicans on five House committees are pressing ahead with their own investigations despite an exhaustive independent review that blistered the State Department, more than 25,000 pages of documents sent to Congress and hours of testimony from former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Three State Department witnesses, including the former deputy chief in Libya, are scheduled to testify Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at a session certain to attract attention after recent disclosures from the panel's Republicans.
The hearing is the latest in a long-running and bitter dispute between the administration and congressional Republicans who have challenged the White House's actions before and after the Benghazi attack.
The scheduled witnesses were Mark Thompson, acting deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism; Gregory Hicks, the former deputy of mission in Libya; and Eric Nordstrom, a former regional security officer in Libya who testified before the panel in October.
On Sept. 11, 2012, two separate attacks hours apart on the U.S. facility in Benghazi killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. An independent panel led by former top diplomat Thomas Pickering and retired Gen. Mike Mullen concluded that management and leadership failures at the State Department led to "grossly" inadequate security at the mission. The panel's report singled out the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Bureau of Near East Affairs.
The report failed to placate GOP lawmakers, conservatives and outside groups, some of whom contend Benghazi is comparable to the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals and deserves a thorough examination. Two of the outside groups ? Special Operations Speaks and Special Ops OPSEC ? have been raising money on the issue.
The target of much of the conservative wrath is Clinton, a potential presidential candidate in 2016 who stepped down after four grueling years as the nation's top diplomat with sky-high approval ratings. In her last appearance on Capitol Hill in January, a defiant Clinton took responsibility for the department's missteps leading up to the assault while rejecting suggestions that the administration had tried to mislead the country about the attack.
She insisted that requests for more security at the diplomatic mission in Benghazi didn't reach her desk.
"I did not see these requests," she said. "They did not come to me. I did not approve them. I did not deny them."
Yet Republicans are pressing ahead, holding hearings and issuing an interim report that criticized her.
"It looks pretty clear that there was some catastrophic decision-making that in some way contributed to the death of those four Americans," said Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. "And that part I think is what the investigation will unfold."
The Oversight committee led by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is looking to its witnesses to "put forward information about Benghazi that the Obama administration has tried to suppress," said Frederick Hill, a spokesman for the panel.
Democrats see it differently.
"It's politics," said Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., a member of the Oversight panel.
"If it's a fair-minded question of what we could do better (on security), that would benefit us all. But if it's intended to embarrass the president or perhaps Hillary Clinton then it will be damaging no matter who the next secretary of state is or who the next president is," Welch added.
Last week in Missouri, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., another possible 2016 candidate, said Clinton's "dereliction of duty" in handling Libya should preclude her from holding office.
Committee Democrats argue that the investigation has become politicized, pointing to their exclusion from much of the inquiry. Two Democratic staffers participated in an April 11 interview with Hicks, but the panel's top Democrat said their efforts to find out about Thompson have been thwarted and they've been unable to talk to the witness.
"We have absolutely not one syllable about this guy. He's going to appear in the committee tomorrow, we know nothing about him," Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said Tuesday. "That's unprecedented."
Cummings and other Democrats were furious about the interim report from the committees, released last month, that said senior State Department officials, including Clinton, approved reductions in security at the facilities in Benghazi. The report cited an April 19, 2012, cable that Republicans said had Clinton's signature.
It's standard procedure that cables from the State Department in Washington go out under the secretary's authority and with her signature, or name, typed at the bottom, according to a five-page document put together by the State Department at the request of its senior leadership to rebut some of the claims about Benghazi.
Conservatives who are vital to the GOP in turning out the vote in midterm elections have pressured the party to act forcefully in investigating the Benghazi assault. In the House, more than 130 rank-and-file Republicans have signed onto a resolution calling for Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to create a special select committee to look into the attacks, seeing the latest GOP investigation as less than satisfactory.
___
Follow Donna Cassata at http://twitter.com/DonnaCassataAP
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