According to the FCC, a pandemic occurs when “a novel strain of a virus appears that causes readily transmissible illness or which most of the population lacks immunity”. The most common kind of pandemic is influenza that happens with little to no warning and spreads geographically at a rapid pace that can last for 3 months.  The scariest part of pandemics is that even the leading health and disease control specialists have no way of knowing when the next pandemic will strike and what variant strain could form. Strains can form and mutate into new “knots” that no one can predict.

During pandemics up to 40% of the nation’s workforce would be absent due to precautionary/quarantine efforts.  This can cause major communication losses , where the ability to communicate via phone, text, or email could be disrupted. This could have a cataclysmic effect on our daily operations resulting in looting/stealing, highly increased crime, physical harm to others, and an anarchy infused society.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has the pressure of dealing with catastrophes of this sort. On their website, they have a section providing information about pandemic flu specifically. This week they had a blog designated to the correlation between what they do, and the blockbuster movie “Contagion” that I recently saw in theaters. Heroic scientists battling imminent life and death situations are not just part of a movie plot; it is real life. The real stories of CDC disease detectives are just as exciting and imperative as in the movie. Contagion really created an intelligent and realistic portrayal of pandemic circumstances.

Movie star legends portrayed government response to pandemic in the movie Contagion. Controversy will always be a role when there is a major health crisis, and blogger journalist (Jude Law) dug deep into issues and secrecies of governmental decisions. He said that CDC officials and the White House were “in bed” with pharmaceutical companies while developing a vaccine to prevent again the strain of virus, and that money and power overrode the need to save millions of lives. He thought that they were holding out the truth of other natural ways of vaccination and prevention in order to gain money from pharmaceutical moguls. In the movie his blog caused a worldwide uproar, which is a definite possiibility to happen in real life in the social media and internet guided society that we live in today. Other countries in the movie looked at the United States as holding out on them when a vaccine was created and they even held a prominent scientist hostage in order to obtain vaccination from the power houses of the world.

The CDC and worldwide disease investigators are on call 24/7 in times of need. This movie was eye opening in the way that human’s primal instincts for survival really take focus. Matt Damon played a man who lost his wife and child and was immune to the disease. His sole purpose was to provide for the daughter he had left. He never reverted to crime or physicality to survive, and stayed away for the anarchy that was developing all around him. Lawrence Fishbourne who portrayed the Dr. Ellis Cheever, a disease control specialist for the CDC, is working to help the greater good, but takes care of his family and close friends first by even giving up a vaccination for himself. We all take for granted the people that are working constantly to protect us, and it goes to show that we may not trust all that the government does, but it times of disparity, they are all we have to rely on.

Figuring out the cause and next move of a pandemic and its strain is like trying to complete a puzzle where the last piece constantly changes. Scientists need live samples to test and trial and error is really the only way we have for developing prevention. At the end of the movie, Contagion, it showcased how a bat dropping infected food into a pig’s den was the start of a worldwide pandemic. It only takes one small thing, but it has enough power to keep us and our top specialists doing guesswork.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sYSyuuLk5g (Contagion trailer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9Xu4JMd3Oo (history of pandemics; CBC news)

sources: http://www.cdcfoundation.org/content/how-cdc-saves-lives-controlling-real-global-disease-

http://transition.fcc.gov/pshs/emergency-information/pandemics.html

http://www.pandemicflu.gov/news/cdc_response_to_contagion.html

Warner Brother’s “Contagion” 2011.

Demand Response programs can benefit our current energy woes immensely. They give consumers the capability of trimming down our electrical usage at peak hours during the day, during times when electricity prices are high, and also during an emergency so that a blackout does not occur.

Demand in this response method is when you flip on any electrical switch in your home or business, electricity travels in an instant to that hub and gives your appliance energy. Demand response can help to decrease this demand load and apply energy conservation. Brownouts and rolling blackouts happen when electrical grids malfunction or there is a supply-demand component discrepancy. The 2003 NYC blackout alone resulted in $750 million lost in revenue.

The energy industry is looking to demand response as a hopeful applicable fix to infrastructure. The futures is in the automated direct response systems that detect demand loading problems and automatically redirect power inflow in specific areas that gets rids of the chance of overloading or power failure.

Business owners are now seeing demand response as an investment incentive where companies like PG&E allow them to limit their facility’s energy use during peak times in demand.  These incentives include peak day pricing and SmartAc applications where business owners save money on energy and also increase their sustainability in accordance to social and ethical responsibility.

Major steps in this direction can make demand response a commonality. The Demand Response and Smart Grid Coalition (DRSG) is the major trade association right now that provides smart meters and smart grid technologies that work hand in hand with demand response programs. DRSG has been educating our policymakers and government associations, as well as getting their information out to the media and financial stakeholders in the market. Associations like this can help to modernize the entire way we use electricity and promote energy conservation to a myriad of consumers.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/demand-response1.htm

http://www.pge.com/demandresponse/

http://www.drsgcoalition.org/

During this process, I was able to find how human error correlates with the accuracy of computer systems. We had to carefully construct the robot, piece by piece which took patience and attention to detail.  After pieces started coming together, the robot assembly became easier. After the robot was assembled we had to link USB cables to the allotted areas on the robot and to the computer; the whole process went smoothly from there. We first measured the circumference of the wheel diameter in centimeters which came to 5.5 cm. We had to convert that measurement into meters so we took 5.5cm x 3.14 / 100% to get .1727 (m). We needed an accurate circumference of the wheel so that all other measurements correleated correctly. After this step we made sure that all settings were correct in LegoMindstorm. For each experiment trial that we did, we used 1 second for our time allotted for the robot to travel.

After this we started off with a power measurement of 75. At that measurement, we ourselves by using the ruler got .58 (m) whereas the LabView software got .577. In this measurement, we were very close to the computer and the margin of error was small. At the next power speed of 50, we kept the time at 1 second and phsycially measured with the ruler at .36 whereas the labview software obtained .374. This was a little bit far off from the actual measurement because our robot hit a tiny bump where the desks are together which is definitely a reason for human error. Our third trial, we manipulated the speed to 25 and we physically measured .18 and the LegoMindstorm came out with a .169 measurement.

After reviewing the error just on paper, I calculated the human error  for each segment. I took the difference of the physical measurement from the ruler and the computer calculated number over half of the sum of those two numbers. For example for the 75 speed it would be .58-.57/[ .58+.57/2 ] = 0.0051 % error which is very small for the first trial and was around the same for the other amounts which showcases that there is human error present and that technology can give a more precise answer, but we can get close to that as well.

Fukushima nuclear disaster blog

After the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in March of 2011, the Fukushima nuclear power plant endured a series of equipment failures, meltdowns, and the release of harmful radioactive materials. It is the largest of the 2011 Japanese nuclear accidents since the Chernobyl disaster over 25 years ago. In the accident, all external power sources had been lost which reacted in the cooling water to all 3 reactors in the plant failing. Hydrogen started being generated because of the chemical reactions occurring between fueling rods and the rising flood waters which caused massive explosions to the reactor buildings themselves and left a disarray of damage. The International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) put this disaster at a 7, which is the highest rank.

Dealing with the tainted water after this catastrophe was and is a huge struggle. Immediately following the event, the first act was to put water into the reactors and nuclear fuel pools to cool down the incredibly hot fuel.  TEPCO went through several failed plans of action in dealing with this disaster. They tried to construct a purification system that would separate the radioactive materials from the contaminated water so that they could use it to cool down the reactors. Leaks in the hoses used to transfer the water and malfunctions in the purification process slowed down this entire process and over 30 mishaps have occurred up until August in recovery efforts. Lack of preparation is a huge constitute to this horrific event, and is an awful lesson to be learned for the future.

A professor, Yoichi Enokida, at Nagoya University states that the “lack of objective views of the operation rate of the newly adopted nuclear waste removal system has only contributed to everyone’s rising distrust of nuclear power as a way of generating electricity.” From this disaster up to 1/7 of Fukushima may be polluted, and further implications will not be known until they show their disastrous colors in the future.

Since the six month ordeal, over 100,000 residents within 10+ miles of the plant have been evacuated. Rescue workers are exhausting their resources to try and recover the cloud of radio activity that swept over the surrounding areas. Radiation levels in the immediate area have diminished but not a substantial amount. Animals and cattle are roaming wild suffering from the elements, and Fukushima looks like a ghost town. Time may heal some of the elements, but the radioactivity seeping into the soil proves to be a detrimental problem for generations to come.

Video of the blast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7crIPPhmVI

Explanation of the hydrogen explosion:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgo24tTyC_c

Image explaining devastation from tsunami: http://images.scribblelive.com/2011/3/17/2b61cf86-26b7-498c-96aa-e5ad2a684d0a_500.gif

Image: http://www.google.com/imgres?q=fukushima+explosion&hl=en&sa=X&gbv=2&tbas=0&biw=1600&bih=799&tbm=isch&tbnid=c3xfyTk9N7UjPM:&imgrefurl=http://www.sovereignindependent.com/%3Fp%3D15831&docid=sJe0FJdWPyGt9M&w=284&h=177&ei=oStyTqCBFILt0gGW45jzCQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=578&vpy=162&dur=3010&hovh=141&hovw=227&tx=142&ty=78&page=1&tbnh=107&tbnw=179&start=0&ndsp=36&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110910p2a00m0na008000c.html (source)