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One of the craziest tornado videos ever out of Nebraska 😱pic.twitter.com/pq0CVf9qrv
— Old Row (@OldRowOfficial) April 26, 2024
This video was taken by my friend in Nebraska. Those tornadoes were unreal. Thankfully, I’ve only seen maybe – couple up close. Does anyone know if there are places to donate money/supplies/food to the people who were hurt by this tornado? pic.twitter.com/OV50zpn8sI
— Reese🇺🇸🐊 (@reeseonable) April 27, 2024
Incredible footage of the massive tornadoes that ripped across Nebraska and Iowa yesterday.pic.twitter.com/nGJHuYjadf
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) April 28, 2024
We collaborate closely with the IEEE Education & Healthcare Facilities Committee which meets 4 times monthly in European and American time zones. Risk managers, electrical safety inspectors, facility managers and others are welcomed to click into those teleconferences also. We expect that concepts and recommendations this paper will find their way into future revisions of US and international electrical safety codes and standards. There is nothing stopping education facility managers from applying the findings immediately.
Electrical Safety of Academic Laboratories | 2019-PSEC-0204
Presented at the 55th IEEE Industrial Applications Society I&CPS Technical Conference | Calgary, Alberta Canada | May 6-9, 2019
Ω
Rodolfo Araneo, University of Rome “La Sapienza” | rodolfo.araneo@ieee.org
Payman Dehghanian, George Washington University | payman@gwu.edu
Massimo Mitolo, Irvine Valley College | mitolo@ieee.org
Abstract. Academic laboratories should be a safe environment in which one can teach, learn, and conduct research. Sharing a common principle, the prevention of potential accidents and imminent injuries is a fundamental goal of laboratory environments. In addition, academic laboratories are attributed the exceptional responsibility to instill in students the culture of the safety, the basis of risk assessment, and of the exemplification of the prudent practice around energized objects. Undergraduate laboratory assignments may normally be framed based upon the repetition of established experiments and procedures, whereas, academic research laboratories may involve new methodologies and/or apparatus, for which the hazards may not be completely known to the faculty and student researchers. Yet, the academic laboratory should be an environment free of electrical hazards for both routine experiments and research endeavors, and faculty should offer practical inputs and safety-driven insights to academic administration to achieve such a paramount objective. In this paper, the authors discuss the challenges to the electrical safety in modern academic laboratories, where users may be exposed to harmful touch voltages.
I. INTRODUCTION
A. Electricity and Human Vulnerabilities
B. Electrical Hazards in Academic Laboratories
II. ELECTRICAL SEPARATION
III. SAFETY IN ACADEMIC LABORATORIES WITH VARIABLE FREQUENCY DRIVES
IV. ELECTRICAL SAFETY IN ACADEMIC LIGHTING LABORATORIES
V. ACADEMIC RESEARCH LABORATORIES
A. Basic Rules of Engagement
B. Unidirectional Impulse Currents
VI. HAZARDS IN LABORATORIES DUE TO ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD EXPOSURE
VII. WARNING SIGNS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PERCEPTION OF DANGER
VIII. CONCLUSION
Safety is the most important practice in an academic laboratory as “safety and productivity are on the same team”. Electrical measurement and electrically-powered equipment of various brands and models are common in both teaching and research laboratories, highlighting the need to maintaining them continuously in an electrically-safe status. Annual reports on the occurrence of electrical hazards (i.e. shocks and injuries) in academic laboratory environments primarily discover the (i) lack of knowledge on using the electrical equipment, (ii) careless use of the energized electric facilities, and (iii) faulty electrical equipment or cords. The above does call for the establishment of safety-driven codes, instructions, and trainings for the academic personnel working with or near such devices for teaching, learning, experiments, and research. This paper provided background information on the concept of electrical safety in the academic laboratories, presented the safety challenges of modern academic laboratories, and offered solutions on how enhance the lab environment and research personnel safety awareness to avoid and control electrical hazards.
Issue: [19-129]
Category: Electrical, Facility Asset Management, Fire Safety, International
Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Rodolfo Araneo, Payman Dehghanian, Jim Harvey, Massimo Mitolo, Joe Tedesco
Related IEEE Research:
Strengthening and Upgrading of Laboratory Safety Management Based on Computer Risk Identification
Critical Study on the feasiblity of Smart Laboratory Coats
Clean Environment Tools Design For Smart Campus Laboratory Through a Global Pandemic
Design of Laboratory Fire Safety Monitoring System
2024 GROUP A PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE I-CODES
When is it ever NOT storm season somewhere in the United States; with several hundred schools, colleges and universities in the path of them? Hurricanes also spawn tornadoes. This title sets the standard of care for safety, resilience and recovery when education community structures are used for shelter and recovery. The most recently published edition of the joint work results of the International Code Council and the ASCE Structural Engineering Institute SEI-7 is linked below:
2020 ICC/NSSA 500 Standard for the Design and Construction of Storm Shelters.
Given the historic tornados in the American Midwest this weekend, its relevance is plain. From the project prospectus:
The objective of this Standard is to provide technical design and performance criteria that will facilitate and promote the design, construction, and installation of safe, reliable, and economical storm shelters to protect the public. It is intended that this Standard be used by design professionals; storm shelter designers, manufacturers, and constructors; building officials; and emergency management personnel and government officials to ensure that storm shelters provide a consistently high level of protection to the sheltered public.
This project runs roughly in tandem with the ASCE Structural Engineering Institute SEI-17 which has recently updated its content management system and presented challenges to anyone who attempts to find the content where it used to be before the website overhaul. In the intervening time, we direct stakeholders to the link to actual text (above) and remind education facility managers and their architectural/engineering consultants that the ICC Code Development process is open to everyone.
The ICC receives public response to proposed changes to titles in its catalog at the link below:
2024/2025/2026 ICC CODE DEVELOPMENT SCHEDULE
You are encouraged to communicate with Kimberly Paarlberg (kpaarlberg@iccsafe.org) for detailed, up to the moment information. When the content is curated by ICC staff it is made available at the link below:
We maintain this title on the agenda of our periodic Disaster colloquia which approach this title from the point of view of education community facility managers who collaborate with structual engineers, architects and emergency management functionaries.. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting, open to everyone.
Readings:
FEMA: Highlights of ICC 500-2020
ICC 500-2020 Standard and Commentary: ICC/NSSA Design and Construction of Storm Shelters
Students presenting posters on how to be prepared for natural disasters and emergencies #onedistrictoneteam #D59learns @CCSD59 @D59Byrd pic.twitter.com/NOsa3ekkTD
— Mrs. Darga (@MrsDarga) September 19, 2023
All fifty United States have their own “signature” disaster with which to reckon; some more than others. California has earthquakes, Florida has hurricanes, Missouri has floods; and so on, Life and property loss are preventable; but losses will persist because technical solutions notwithstanding, culture determines human behavior. It is impossible to be alive and safe.
FM Global is one of several organizations that curate privately developed consensus products that set the standard of care for many industries; education communities among them. These standards contribute to the reduction in the risk of property loss due to fire, weather conditions, and failure of electrical or mechanical equipment. They incorporate nearly 200 years of property loss experience, research and engineering results, as well as input from consensus standards committees, equipment manufacturers and others.
If you want FMGlobal as your insurance carrier, or to supplement your organization’s self-insurance program, then you will likely be assigned an FMGlobal conformity professional.
A scan of its list data sheets indicate a number of noteworthy updates of documents establishing minimum requirements for safety technologies common in education facilities:
Technical Reports Supporting Code Change
Note that the bulk of the safety concepts in the foregoing titles incorporate by reference the safety concepts that cross our radar every day FM Global provides direct access to the full span of its documents at this link:
FM GLOBAL PROPERTY LOSS PREVENTION DATA SHEETS
Note FM Global updates its standards every three months:
To respond to calls for public consultation you will need to set up (free) access credentials.
We keep FMGlobal titles — and the literature of other property insurers involved in standards setting — on the standing agenda of our Risk, Snow and Prometheus colloquia. See our CALENDAR for the next meeting.
Issue: [Various]
Category: Risk, Facility Asset Management
More
Deloitte University: Innovation in Insurance
University of Pennsylvania demonstrates the critical importance of sprinklers in dormitories
Syracuse University presents an eclectic mix of risk management challenges
Representative force majeure clauses.
Example 1: Basic Force Majeure Clause
“Neither party shall be liable for any failure or delay in performance of its obligations under this agreement due to events beyond its reasonable control, including but not limited to acts of God, war, terrorism, civil commotion, labor strikes, and natural disasters. The affected party shall promptly notify the other party of the force majeure event and take reasonable steps to mitigate its impact on performance. During the continuance of such events, the obligations of the affected party shall be suspended, and the time for performance shall be extended.”
Example 2: Detailed Force Majeure Clause
“In the event that either party is unable to perform its obligations under this agreement due to a force majeure event, the affected party shall promptly notify the other party in writing, specifying the nature and anticipated duration of the force majeure event. Force majeure events shall include, but are not limited to, acts of God, strikes, lockouts, government action or inaction, war, terrorism, epidemics, and natural disasters. The affected party shall use reasonable efforts to overcome or mitigate the effects of the force majeure event. If the force majeure event continues for a period of [specified duration], either party may terminate this agreement by providing written notice to the other party.”
“The only thing worse than religion is lack of religion”
A conversation with Bjorn Lomborg, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, the president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and one of the foremost climate experts in the world today. His new book — “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet” — is an argument for treating climate as a serious problem but not an extinction-level event requiring such severe and drastic steps as rewiring a large part of the culture and the economy.
Starting soon! https://t.co/JL03EIEMqo pic.twitter.com/Ttpp4TA8jr
— Wendy Bohon, PhD 🌏 (@DrWendyRocks) December 28, 2023
Readings
Brookings: Michael Crichton and Global Warming
The alarmist reddening of weather maps is a perfect visualisation of how 5th generational warfare works. We’re dealing with an information war and the battlefield is our mind. @RWMaloneMD pic.twitter.com/nTBv5yhYbS
— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) May 23, 2023
"Nothing has driven the standards of brass bands across the whole world like competition."
New "Contesting" episode of The Brass Band Podcast: Archive Edition, out now! #BrassBand pic.twitter.com/10ZqONFZ1D
— Brass Bands England (@BrassBandsEng) July 18, 2024
Alexis de Tocqueville was born in Paris and came from a prominent lineage, with his father serving as a royalist prefect under the Bourbon restoration.
In 1831, at the age of twenty-five, Alexis de Tocqueville made his fateful journey to America, where he observed the thrilling reality of a functioning democracy. From that moment onward, the French aristocrat would dedicate his life as a writer and politician to ending despotism in his country and bringing it into a new age.
Quotes from Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America”:
John Marshall students to run coffee shop
“There’s a new coffee shop in Cleveland, and it’s in John Marshall High School. The “Lawyers Café” serves lattes, healthy fruit smoothies, and Rising Star coffee, and it’s completely student-run. While they brew up the drinks as baristas and handle the budgets on the finance team, all of the scholars are getting hands-on job skills and learning what it takes to run their own small business.”
American Enterprise Institute: One Nation, Under Lawyers
President George H. Bush’s prescient warning to graduates about the destabilizing dangers of “political correctness” to the American experiment in a constitutional republic. Escalated by the presidencies of Barack Obama and Joseph Biden; accelerated by multinational social media conglomerates, free speech — globally — remains challenged and threatens the return to the tribalism that doomed ancient civilizations. Higher education in America will have the heaviest hand in this transformation.
“Ironically, on the 200th anniversary of our Bill of Rights, we find free speech under assault throughout the United States, including on some college campuses. The notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land. And although the movement arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism and hatred, it replaces old prejudice with new ones. It declares certain topics off-limits, certain expression off-limits, even certain gestures off-limits.”
New #CLE coffee shop! Grand opening of student-run Lawyers Cafe at John Marshall @RisingStarCoffe @CLEMetroSchools pic.twitter.com/0YUNiGbaGs
— Shannon Kantner (@ShannonKantner) April 13, 2016
Readings
New update alert! The 2022 update to the Trademark Assignment Dataset is now available online. Find 1.29 million trademark assignments, involving 2.28 million unique trademark properties issued by the USPTO between March 1952 and January 2023: https://t.co/njrDAbSpwB pic.twitter.com/GkAXrHoQ9T
— USPTO (@uspto) July 13, 2023
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