Washington — Facilities that produce or handle hazardous chemicals should prepare written procedures and establish policies for evaluating simultaneous operations to ensure “robust safe work practices,” the Chemical Safety Board says.

Washington — Facilities that handle flammable gases and other hazardous materials should ensure their workers and supervisors undergo process safety management and emergency response training, the Chemical Safety Board says.

Washington — The Chemical Safety Board says it’s on track to clear its investigation backlog by the end of the year, with a growing staff focused on “moving the CSB forward.”

Washington — A pair of House Democrats are requesting a Department of Labor investigation into potential risks of child labor and occupational safety and health violations in youth workforce programs.

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.

In Episode 32, the S+H editorial team dives into the October issue’s feature story on how to help reduce the stigma around workers’ mental health. The team also discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced changes in safety training.

Experts say employers need to make workers’ mental health as high of a priority as physical health. A big step in that process: confronting the stigma that often accompanies mental health disorders.

Washington — NIOSH is encouraging health care industry employers to craft mental health-related communications in a way that helps reduce the stigma around seeking support.

Rockville, MD — Mental health is “just as important for your safety as that harness or anything else that you’re wearing,” Mechanical Contractors Association of America member Ricky Reams says in a new video.

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.”

FDA has initiated an onsite inspection at the Austrofoods facility located in Ecuador.

Bedner Growers, Inc., of Boynton Beach, Fla., and Thomas Produce Company, of Boca Raton, Fla., are the likely sources of this outbreak, however these growers do not account for all the illnesses in the outbreak.

Jim Olson, NTCA's assistant executive director since 2008, has been awarded the association's Ring of Honor for his exceptional leadership and 40-year dedication to the tile industry. Olson will receive the prestigious recognition at the Total Solutions Plus Awards Luncheon in Boston on October 28.

Children's Geographies; 08/01/2023
(AN 167303419); ISSN: 14733285
Academic Search Premier

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

Children's Geographies; 10/01/2024
(AN 180134754); ISSN: 14733285
Academic Search Premier

The post Exploratory Studies to Investigate Mechanisms of HIV infection, Replication, Latency, and/or Pathogenesis in the Context of Substance Use Disorders (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) [Letter of Intent Due Date: July 14] was curated by information for practice.

Investigators say they believe a Wisconsin kayaker missing since mid-August faked his death before fleeing to Europe. 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is investigating allegations that workers were instructed to avoid homes displaying signs supporting Donald Trump during hurricane relief efforts in Florida. The guidance, reportedly issued by a FEMA supervisor, left Trump-supporting residents without aid, prompting criticism from Gov. Ron DeSantis.

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.

Un ajustador de seguros público de Texas acusado de robar más de $268,000 en reclamaciones de seguros a múltiples víctimas ha sido acusado por un gran jurado del condado Kimble.

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.

Tras una investigación de la Oficina del jefe estatal de bomberos (State Fire Marshal’s Office, SFMO, por su nombre y siglas en inglés), un gran jurado del condado Jasper acusó a un instalador de equipos de seguridad contra incendios de dos cargos de manipulación de un documento gubernamental.

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).

Barry Jay Glenn, fundador y director ejecutivo de Salvasen Health, radicada en Houston, se entregó el martes a las autoridades del condado Harris. Glenn se enfrenta a cargos de seguro no autorizado por cobrar primas y vender planes de salud sin licencia, ni la autorización del Departamento de Seguros de Texas (Texas Department of Insurance, TDI, por su nombre y siglas en inglés).

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.

Un individuo de Luling se enfrenta a tres cargos de delito grave después de que una investigación de la Oficina del Jefe Estatal de Bomberos (State Fire Marshal’s Office, SFMO, por su nombre y siglas en inglés) sobre un incendio en un negocio local llevó al descubrimiento de contrabando.

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.

Small-angle-scattering tensor tomography is a technique for studying anisotropic nanostructures of millimetre-sized samples in a volume-resolved manner. It requires the acquisition of data through repeated tomographic rotations about an axis which is subjected to a series of tilts. The tilt that can be achieved with a typical setup is geometrically constrained, which leads to limits in the set of directions from which the different parts of the reciprocal space map can be probed. Here, we characterize the impact of this limitation on reconstructions in terms of the missing wedge problem of tomography, by treating the problem of tensor tomography as the reconstruction of a three-dimensional field of functions on the unit sphere, represented by a grid of Gaussian radial basis functions. We then devise an acquisition scheme to obtain complete data by remounting the sample, which we apply to a sample of human trabecular bone. Performing tensor tomographic reconstructions of limited data sets as well as the complete data set, we further investigate and validate the missing wedge problem by investigating reconstruction errors due to data incompleteness across both real and reciprocal space. Finally, we carry out an analysis of orientations and derived scalar quantities, to quantify the impact of this missing wedge problem on a typical tensor tomographic analysis. We conclude that the effects of data incompleteness are consistent with the predicted impact of the missing wedge problem, and that the impact on tensor tomographic analysis is appreciable but limited, especially if precautions are taken. In particular, there is only limited impact on the means and relative anisotropies of the reconstructed reciprocal space maps.

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.