Acute Exposure Guideline Levels for Selected Airborne Chemicals: Volume 12

Description

Extremely hazardous substances (EHSs) can be released accidentally as a result of chemical spills, industrial explosions, fires, or accidents involving railroad cars and trucks transporting EHSs. Workers and residents in communities surrounding industrial facilities where EHSs are manufactured, used, or stored and in communities along the nation's railways and highways are potentially at risk of being exposed to airborne EHSs during accidental releases or intentional releases by terrorists.

Using the 1993 and 2001 NRC guidelines reports, the National Advisory Committee - consisting of members from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, other federal and state governments, the chemical industry, academia, and other organizations form the private sector has developed Acute Exposure Guideline Levels (AEGL) for more than 270 EHSs.

In 1998, the EPA and DOD requested that the NRC independently reviewed the AEGLs developed by the NAC. In response to that request, the NRC organized within its Committee on Toxicology the Committee on Acute Exposure Guideline Levels, which prepared this report, Acute Exposure Guideline Levels for Selected Airborne Chemicals: Volume 12. This report explains the scientifically valid conclusions that are based on the data reviewed by NAC and consistent with the NRC guideline reports and provides comments and recommendations for how AEGL could be improved.

via feeds.nap.edu

A guidance for those working in the field.

The importance of water management to the smart city

This report originally appeared on GigaOM Pro (subscription required).

In the emerging vision for the smart city of tomorrow, we often hear about next generation smart grids, smarter buildings that manage themselves to conserve resources, and smart transportation systems that will lessen congestion.

In fact, Pike Research’s Eric Woods recent report for GigaOM Pro, “Key Technologies for the Future of the Smart City” (subscription required) estimated that the global market for smart city investments will reach $16 billion by 2020 with heavy growth in Europe and Asia-Pacific.

But we hear much less about smart water systems for the smart city, and the need to develop more efficient approaches to water as a resource. Part of this is basic developed world bias. A brief look at the U.N.’s freshwater availability map shows that nations with water stress (less than 1700 cubic meters per person per year) and water scarcity (less than a 1000) are mainly found in the Middle East, parts of Africa, China and Southeast Asia. Most of the developed world has been lucky enough to grow up in areas of relative water abundance.

Urbanization is accelerating, however, with a billion and half people expected to move to the city in the next 20 years, and McKinsey has predicted that by 2030 water consumption will increase by 40 percent. There have been signs of problems in international megacities like Mexico City where 5 million residents awoke to dry taps in 2009 and Mumbai where 5,000 tankers deliver 50 million liters of water each day, the precious resource going to the highest bidders. Even domestically, many continue to point out that with less than 15 inches of annual rainfall and its dependence on water from the Colorado River, where demand is expected to overwhelm supply in the next half century, Los Angeles’s water supply is risky.

One of the first implementations of smart water systems is smart water meters. A report last year pegged the European smart water meter market at 13 billion pounds by 2020, which is interesting given the fact that there are far fewer top down government mandates for smart water meter deployment than there have been for smart meters for the electricity grid. By 2030 Britain hopes to have all homes installed with smart water meters, which utilities use to identify leaks, create peak pricing mechanisms to incentivize conservation, and catch people who are violating water use restrictions. Designs are already circulating that sync water meters with iPads to give users up to the minute info on their water use, which could drive home to consumers the cost of watering that lawn.

Woods’s report for GigaOM Pro examined next generation greenfield communities like Masdar City in the United Arab Emerates (UAE). Masdar City use 54 percent less water than the average UAE city and Woods notes that the city is deploying diverse strategies from micro-irrigation to treated wastewater for landscaping to highly efficient water fittings. The goal is to get to 180 liters per day per person from the current norm of 550 liters per person per day in the UAE.

But in the developing world, where 1 billion of the 3 billion global urban dwellers live in slums with limited access to clean water and additional water management challenges brought on by climate change induced flooding and droughts, the solutions may be less technological. The solutions in the urban developing world revolve around limiting demand, reducing pollution to the water ecosystem, and preventing leakage from aging infrastructure. Though there is evidence that municipalities are starting to take the initiative, as the city of Mumbai has been working with global meter giant Itron to deploy advance water metering infrastructure. One of the issues is how expensive water has become for the urban poor. A slum dweller in Nairobi, Kenya pays 5 to 7 times more for a liter of water than the average North American.

For the first time in history more Chinese now live in cities than in rural areas with per capita income for Chinese city dwellers three times that of rural citizens. The economic drivers of urbanization will remain strong which means cities will have to get more intelligent in their management of water resources. And that goes for all cities, from Mumbai to LA.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The importance of water management to the smart city
• Key technologies for the smart city
• Ups and downs for cleantech in Q1

via feedproxy.google.com

Yingluck's government chooses to completely drain water to prevent flooding.

Death and Income tax are the only things certain in this world.

via asiancorrespondent.com

In Thailand's case, tax law hasn't been revised for over a decade. Flaws (in them) are used by wealthy people to avoid taxes.

CIOs Need New Manifesto

Los Angeles – Most 2012 IT projects initiated by the business will not directly support the top priorities of CEOs and boards of directors, according to Gartner Inc. VP and Research Fellow Ken McGee.

“No one believes 100 percent of the projects that IT works on that they get from the business are the kind that are measurable, that are auditable, that deliver financial benefit to the organization, and that is the crux of our message today,” said McGee. “... We believe most IT projects will not directly support the CEO or board of directors.”

To remain relevant in an era of flat budgets and growing business demands, McGee’s second-day keynote at Gartners’s Business Intelligence Summit in Los Angeles called for a “CIO manifesto” in order for chief information officers to match the quality of business-initiated projects to the work of IT.

Part of the requirement is to agree to align the priorities of the CEO to those of the CIO, McGee said. “Any survey we do with CEOs, they will tell you that the number one priority is growth … more specifically organic revenue growth.”

Where CEOs polled by Gartner prioritized the need to retain and enhance customers, attract and retrain skilled talent, attract new customers and create responsive organizations, CIOs prioritized IT management, strategic planning, business value of IT and IT organization design.

“Take a look at whatever [CEO or board of director directives] stand as the charter for this year’s priorities and then look at your 10 most heavily funded IT projects,” McGee said. “It will take you 20 minutes. See if you have a match. If you don’t, are you okay with this?”

The analyst then called up some gloomy statistics. 2012 will yield a flimsy one half of 1 percent budget growth for CIOs worldwide, though IT outsourcing budgets are growing much faster; worldwide CIO budgets have not grown more than 3 percent year over year for the last 11 years; and low budget growth is likely to continue for many years.

If you are not growing, McGee said, your perceived value is declining. “We [CIOs] have not created a level of trust with CEOs," said the analyst, "because they do not believe we are on the same page.”

Thus the CIO manifesto must state that, “a primary goal of IT shall be to create measurable and auditable financial benefits for the enterprise, period.”

McGee says CIOs need to have a direct conversation with the CEO and communicate that they understand growth is the CEO’s priority, and make projects transparent for their value. “We want to enter the war, therefore, will you give us the authority to decline any business-initiated request that does not yield a measurable financial gain? And then when the project is done, can the CFO parachute in and see if the promises made are the same as the promises met?"

Consistent with the manifesto is the goal of becoming a money-making CIO, said McGee, not the first observer to suggest that performance based compensation extend to IT like it does to sales, even though IT usually operates as a support or service function. Nonetheless, he called it "the most radical change in mission in the 50-year history of IT as a formal industry," adding, "we are seeing clients who are doing this."

Some of the measurement McGee calls for depends on an ability to quantify the monetary value of information use, a theme senior Gartner analysts like others have espoused. But in the conversation, there’s not much to lose, McGee concluded. “You can be the traditional IT organization responding to a call for help … that is not where this industry is headed.”

McGee works with CEOs, CFOs and CIOs and is starting to research chief marketing officers and is the primary author of the Gartner IT Scenario.

Jim Ericson is editorial director of  Information Management, a SourceMedia publication. You can reach him at Jim.Ericson@sourcemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @jimericson.

via information-management.com

Worth thinking about.

NGV Gas station in Thailand

Natural gas comprises many kinds of hydrocarbons gases. Their scientific names are methane (CH2), ethane (C2H6), propane (C3H8), butane (C4H10), nitrogen (N2), carbon dioxide (CO2) etc. The main one, methane, represents a content of more than 70 %. Before using, each will be separated. Apart from hydrocarbon, there are others like carbon dioxide (CO2), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), nitrogen (N2) and water (H2O). These gaseous compounds can be extracted through a process of refinery. Each separated gas can be used to produce many different kinds of products.

As for NGV (or CNG for vehicle), the amount of Open Service Stations are  469 stations across Thailand. ( at 6 MAR 2012 ) The location on google map

See the full gallery on Posterous

Mobile Sim Card for Tourist in New Zealand

If you happen to be travelling to NZ as a tourist, replacing local sim cards would be the cheapest option to communication and be online.

There are 3 vendors in NZ, including VODAFONE, Telecom NZ and recently 2Degrees. There are already several reviews on the first 2 vendors, this post will review only 2Degrees tourist sim package.

2 Degrees Tourist SIM is a SIM card offered for tourists coming to NZ and is sold through tourist and Duty Free stores including JR Duty Free. It offers standard rates for use in New Zealand (44 cents per minute to call other NZ mobiles, 22 cents per minute to call NZ landlines & 2degrees mobiles, 0 cents per text, 50 cents per MB of data). You can still purchase Value Packs using this SIM card. If you want a normal 2degrees SIM card, they're available from dairies, supermarkets, petrol stations and a number of retail outlets across NZ and cost $10.

The current $19 Combo packs is probably the best option recommended as it offers 30 min talk, 300 texts and 300MB National 3G data. The coverage area includes major cities and highway roads throughout NZ.

Another option I like about it is the ability to connect to facebook.com for free, so you can update your status, view your News Feed, like or comment on posts, send and reply to messages, or write on your friends' Wall absolutely free.

Be sure to keep up to date with their latest news on http://www.facebook.com/2degreesmobile.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Sugarsync, dropbox killer.

I use SugarSync to bring my files everywhere and share them easily. Join me for 5GB free and 500MB of bonus storage!
https://www.sugarsync.com/referral?rf=d43o8n9pcd7rd