Washington — OSHA will soon be able to issue certifications in support of T and U nonimmigrant status visas, a move the agency contends will aid in some workplace safety investigations.

Washington — OSHA conducted fewer fatality investigations this past fiscal year than in FY 2023, and recorded fewer deaths involving trench collapses and falls – two hazards on which the agency has focused its enforcement resources.

Washington — Chemical facilities should be confirming that equipment can function within the safe operating limits documented in process safety guidance while ensuring quality during all situations – including emergencies, the Chemical Safety Board says.

Washington — A long-standing Chemical Safety Board concern is no more: The agency has cleared its backlog of open investigations and incident reports.

Washington — The Chemical Safety Board is “very determined” to avoid an investigation backlog similar to the one it recently cleared, board Chair Steve Owens said during the agency’s first public business meeting of 2024.

Washington — The National Transportation Safety Board has issued a series of recommendations to several entities in a new report on the Feb. 3, 2023, train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

Washington — Night or shift workers who don’t get sufficient rest may be unfit to reliably gauge their own fatigue level because of a diminished ability to detect “when their performance is declining.”

Children's Geographies; 04/01/2024
(AN 178088140); ISSN: 14733285
Academic Search Premier

Gateway Church in Texas has removed multiple elders as the result of a four-month investigation into allegations the church's founder, Robert Morris, sexually abused a minor female for years beginning when she was 12 during the 1980s. 

A Texas public insurance adjuster accused of stealing more than $268,000 in insurance claims from multiple victims has been indicted by a grand jury in Kimble County.

Following an investigation by the State Fire Marshal’s Office (SFMO), a Jasper County grand jury indicted a fire safety equipment installer on two counts of tampering with a government document.

Texas Workers' Compensation Commissioner Jeff Nelson has announced the appointment of Dan LaBruyere as DWC's new Deputy Commissioner for Compliance and Investigations, which includes Audits and Investigations, Enforcement, the Fraud Unit, and the Fraud Prosecution Unit.

Barry Jay Glenn, the founder and CEO of Houston-based Salvasen Health, surrendered to authorities in Harris County Tuesday. Glenn is facing charges of unauthorized insurance for collecting premiums and selling health plans without a license or authorization from the Texas Department of Insurance (TDI).

A Luling individual is facing three criminal felony charges after a State Fire Marshal’s Office (SFMO) investigation of a fire at a local business led to the discovery of contraband on the scene.

Insurance fraud investigations class

Insurance fraud investigations class

Insurance fraud investigations class

Insurance fraud investigations class

[Politics] :
The opposition will submit a revised version of its bill mandating a special prosecutor to investigate allegations against first lady Kim Keon-hee, limiting the scope of the probe in an apparent effort to win votes from the ruling party when the bill returns to parliament for a revote after an expected ...

[more...]

[Inter-Korea] :
North Korea has reiterated its accusation that the South Korean military flew a drone over Pyongyang earlier this month, claiming it took off from South Korea’s Baengnyeong Island in the Yellow Sea.  In a report on Monday, the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency(KCNA) said the country’s ...

[more...]

BGS launches project to enhance value of ground investigation data  Ground Engineering

This study presents the first theoretical predictions of the phase transitions, elastic properties, and thermal behavior of AuMTe2 (M = Ga, In) chalcopyrite compounds. Using density functional theory and the quasi-harmonic Debye model, key mechanical and thermodynamic properties are analyzed, offering insights valuable for future experimental validation.

A plug-flow fixed-bed cell for synchrotron powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) and X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) idoneous for the study of heterogeneous catalysts at high temperature, pressure and under gas flow is designed, constructed and demonstrated. The operating conditions up to 1000°C and 50 bar are ensured by a set of mass flow controllers, pressure regulators and two infra-red lamps that constitute a robust and ultra-fast heating and cooling method. The performance of the system and cell for carbon dioxide hydrogenation reactions under specified temperatures, gas flows and pressures is demonstrated both for PXRD and XAFS at the P02.1 (PXRD) and the P64 (XAFS) beamlines of the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY).

The results of a study of the structural and reflective characteristics of short-period multilayer X-ray mirrors based on Mo/B4C at wavelengths 1.54 Å, 9.89 Å and 17.59 Å are presented. The period of the samples varied in the range 8–35 Å. The average widths of the interfaces were ∼3.5 and 2.2 Å at one and the other boundaries, with a tendency for weak growth with any decrease in the period. The interlayer roughness was ∼1 Å. The research results indicate promising prospects for the use of multilayer Mo/B4C mirrors for synchrotron applications.

Structural biology experiments benefit significantly from state-of-the-art synchrotron data collection. One can acquire macromolecular crystallography (MX) diffraction data on large-area photon-counting pixel-array detectors at framing rates exceeding 1000 frames per second, using 200 Gbps network connectivity, or higher when available. In extreme cases this represents a raw data throughput of about 25 GB s−1, which is nearly impossible to deliver at reasonable cost without compression. Our field has used lossless compression for decades to make such data collection manageable. Many MX beamlines are now fitted with DECTRIS Eiger detectors, all of which are delivered with optimized compression algorithms by default, and they perform well with current framing rates and typical diffraction data. However, better lossless compression algorithms have been developed and are now available to the research community. Here one of the latest and most promising lossless compression algorithms is investigated on a variety of diffraction data like those routinely acquired at state-of-the-art MX beamlines.

Catalase is an antioxidant enzyme that breaks down hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) into molecular oxygen and water. In all monofunctional catalases the pathway that H2O2 takes to the catalytic centre is via the `main channel'. However, the structure of this channel differs in large-subunit and small-subunit catalases. In large-subunit catalases the channel is 15 Å longer and consists of two distinct parts, including a hydrophobic lower region near the heme and a hydrophilic upper region where multiple H2O2 routes are possible. Conserved glutamic acid and threonine residues are located near the intersection of these two regions. Mutations of these two residues in the Scytalidium thermophilum catalase had no significant effect on catalase activity. However, the secondary phenol oxidase activity was markedly altered, with kcat and kcat/Km values that were significantly increased in the five variants E484A, E484I, T188D, T188I and T188F. These variants also showed a lower affinity for inhibitors of oxidase activity than the wild-type enzyme and a higher affinity for phenolic substrates. Oxidation of heme b to heme d did not occur in most of the studied variants. Structural changes in solvent-chain integrity and channel architecture were also observed. In summary, modification of the main-channel gate glutamic acid and threonine residues has a greater influence on the secondary activity of the catalase enzyme, and the oxidation of heme b to heme d is predominantly inhibited by their conversion to aliphatic and aromatic residues.

In recent decades, sustained theoretical and software developments have clearly established that representation analysis and magnetic symmetry groups are complementary concepts that should be used together in the investigation and description of magnetic structures. Historically, they were considered alternative approaches, but currently, magnetic space groups and magnetic superspace groups can be routinely used together with representation analysis, aided by state-of-the-art software tools. After exploring the historical antagonism between these two approaches, we emphasize the significant advancements made in understanding and formally describing magnetic structures by embracing their combined use.

Single crystals of tricadmium orthophosphate, Cd3(PO4)2, have been synthesized successfully by the hydro­thermal route, while its powder form was obtained by a solid-solid process. The corresponding crystal structure was determined using X-ray diffraction data in the monoclinic space group P21/n. The crystal structure consists of Cd2O8 or Cd2O10 dimers linked together by PO4 tetra­hedra through sharing vertices or edges. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to investigate the morphology and to confirm the chemical composition of the synthesized powder. Infrared analysis corroborates the presence of isolated phosphate tetra­hedrons in the structure. UV–Visible studies showed an absorbance peak at 289 nm and a band gap energy of 3.85 eV, as determined by the Kubelka–Munk model.

X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) is a promising technique for determining structural information from sensitive biological samples, but high-accuracy X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) requires corrections of systematic errors in experimental data. Low-temperature XAS and room-temperature X-ray absorption spectro-electrochemical (XAS-EC) measurements of N-truncated amyloid-β samples were collected and corrected for systematic effects such as dead time, detector efficiencies, monochromator glitches, self-absorption, radiation damage and noise at higher wavenumber (k). A new protocol was developed using extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) data analysis for monitoring radiation damage in real time and post-analysis. The reliability of the structural determinations and consistency were validated using the XAS measurement experimental uncertainty. The correction of detector pixel efficiencies improved the fitting χ2 by 12%. An improvement of about 2.5% of the structural fitting was obtained after dead-time corrections. Normalization allowed the elimination of 90% of the monochromator glitches. The remaining glitches were manually removed. The dispersion of spectra due to self-absorption was corrected. Standard errors of experimental measurements were propagated from pointwise variance of the spectra after systematic corrections. Calculated uncertainties were used in structural refinements for obtaining precise and reliable values of structural parameters including atomic bond lengths and thermal parameters. This has permitted hypothesis testing.

Good morning. I am Dr. Alice Gast and I am here today with Dr. David Relman as the chair and vice chair of the Committee on the Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI’s Investigation of the 2001 Bacillus anthracis Mailings.

Conducting clinical investigations of mitochondrial replacement techniques (MRT) in humans is ethically permissible as long as significant conditions and principles are met, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

At the spring 2017 meeting of the CHR, Professor José Torero—the John L. Bryan Chair in Fire Protection Engineering and Director of the Center for Disaster Resilience at the University of Maryland—spoke to members about his efforts to help protect human rights through the investigation of several high-profile fires.

Centering science instruction around investigation and design can improve learning in middle and high schools and help students make sense of phenomena in the world around them.

One of New York man's employees died after a fall from an improperly secured roof.

A 27-year-old rigger suffered fatal injuries after falling approximately 30 stories.

Preliminary agency data show a decrease in fatalities the agency is mandated to investigate, including significant reductions in fatal injuries from trench collapses and falls.

Phase III clinical trials

Award-Winning Author Announces True Paranormal Book Now Available as Kindle Pre-order, Publishes Jan 1, 2025

Greg Kading is lauded for his work as a homicide investigator, founder of On Sight Inc., and author of "Murder Rap"

The claims professional is the decision maker with respect to compensability of any claimed injury, and with respect to the benefits that are to be voluntarily paid. These decisions will…

The U.S. Department of Labor reported an 11% reduction in workplace fatality investigations in the most recent fiscal year. The 826 worker deaths investigated during the fiscal year that ended June…

Beyond protein lists: AI-assisted interpretation of proteomic investigations in the context of evolving scientific knowledge  Nature.com

“Local broadcasters carry the mantel of investigative journalism, shining a light on government corruption, questioning those in power and ensuring consumers have a powerful voice to fight back against injustice. It is concerning that some public officials – typically those whose actions have been called into question – would ask the federal government to step in and censor broadcasters in violation of the First Amendment. The Federal Communications Commission must reject such unconstitutional attacks on free speech. It is a slippery slope, and one that our nation’s founders clearly sought to prevent.”

The Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee heard from the Economy Department’s Permanent Secretary as he resumed his evidence and answered further questions about the Non-domestic Renewable Heat Initiative Scheme which could potentially cost the public purse approximately £1.18 billion over 20 years.