Burning Building Research Articles

Whistle-Blower Narratives: The Experience of Choiceless Choice

C. Fred Alford Whistle-Blower Narratives: The Experience of Choiceless Choice ONE MIGHT ARGUE THAT THE VERY CONCEPT OF A CHOICELESS CHOICE disqualifies the action undertaken as ethical.' Ethical choices are by their very nature the result of willful choice, even if they are not always the result of rational reflection—as when, for example, someone runs into a burning building to save a child’s life. By the end of this essay, I hope you will be convinced that dividing the world in this way is not useful. Not only because the way one lives so as to find oneself in a position of choiceless choice is itself an ethical act, but also because the person one is so as to be placed in a position of choiceless choice is already an ethical fact. More im portant than judging these ethical actors, however, is understanding the people they became. Listening to their stories is the best way to do this. I have sought to understand the whistle-blower, one who speaks out against illegal or unethical practices in the organization where he or she works. Most whistle-blowers are fired (though it is adm ittedly difficult to m easure these things).1 Theirs is an act of considerable consequence, especially w hen one considers that am ong fired whistle­ blowers, m ost will lose their homes and ultimately, their marriages. A m ajority will turn to alcohol or drugs for some period during their long journey (Miethe, 1999: 58, 78-79; Rothschild and Miethe, 1996: 15-16; Glazer and Glazer, 1989: 206-207; Alford, 2001:19-21).2 W hile I devoted considerable time to interviewing whistle-blow­ ers, a majority was spent attending a whistle-blowers support group, social research Vol 74 : No 1 : Spring 2007 223 listening to whistle-blowers tell their tales. In addition, I stayed several days and nights at a retreat on a farm for stressed-out whistle-blowers. The farm had been purchased by a retired psychologist w ith a large clientele of whistle-blowers (not the best way to get rich in the m ental health field) who had graciously opened his farmhouse door to almost any whistle-blower who needed a place to get away for a few days (or even longer in several cases). Stories heard there for the third or fourth tim e at three in the m orning took on a whole new dimension as some of the defensive walls came tum bling down—not just for the teller of the tale, but for the listener as well. There is something terrifying about the experience ofwhistle-blowing; Daniel Ellsberg, the Vietnam-era whistle­ blower, compares the em otional experience to that of a space-walking astronaut who has cut his lifeline to the m other ship (Alford, 2001: 5). Because I spent m ost o f my tim e listening to whistle-blowers talk w ith each other, mine is a narrative analysis: an account of the struc­ ture of whistle-blowers’ stories. To be sure, some of these stories they told to me, but m ost I first heard whistle-blowers tell to each other. The structure of the whistle-blower support group, or perhaps I should say its ethos, was for the m embers to go around the table telling their stories. Since I attended the support group for over six m onths, and since many of the attendees were regulars, this m eant I heard m any of the same stories again and again. That turned out to be a boon, as it was only after the third or fourth hearing that I began to get the point. There is another reason I em ploy narrative analysis. Much of my previous research has involved bringing psychoanalysis to bear on social theory. I originally thought I would do this w ith the whistle-blow­ ers, uncovering the depth psychological sources of their acts. Soon, however, I came to recognize that asking these m en and wom en about their childhoods, or interpreting their stories about being crushed by organized power in psychoanalytic term s, would be embarrassing to me, and an insult to them . Instead, I...

The Effect of a Speech Discrimination Task on Navigation in a Virtual Environment

If the input from the visual system is unavailable (e.g., damage to the optic nerves or smoke in a burning building), navigating and avoiding obstacles becomes very challenging. It is therefore desirable to develop a navigation aide for use where visual input has become unavailable. There is a small body of research concerning such navigation aides and their efficacy. However, many issues that may have serious human factors repercussions for such a system are unexplored. This study was conducted in order to examine the effect of an attentionally demanding distractor task on wayfinding performance with an audio only navigation aide, in this case the System for Wearable Audio Navigation (SWAN). A difficult secondary speech task reduced efficiency in navigation, as users switched attentional resources to the speech task. Practical applications are discussed.

Bound for Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow America, L.A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present

To many, the idea of “black Los Angeles” conjures a set of disturbing images of burning buildings, drive-by shootings, and police brutality. Two recent monographs, however, challenge these violent stereotypes, illuminating the history of a restless and diverse black community in twentieth-century Los Angeles. Bound for Freedom, by Douglas Flamming, excavates the “local and concrete” history of black Los Angeles before World War II, recounting the effort to escape a deeply segregated and impoverished South after Reconstruction (Flamming, p. 1). Flamming conveys the profound sense of optimism that black southerners brought to Los Angeles and the conceptual dichotomy between southern tyranny and western freedom. Though Los Angeles was not the racial paradise that many sought, it did provide a “half free” environment that enabled the creation of a vital community that anchored black newcomers to the rapidly developing region (ibid., p. 13). Carefully analyzing a meticulous collection of census and municipal records, oral histories, letters, and newspapers, Flamming writes the history of black Los Angeles by focusing on the struggles of individuals and groups who sought equal opportunity in the far Southwest. Chapters relate the efforts to secure housing and employment, to buy and sell property, to establish businesses, newspapers, and churches, to elect black representatives, to support civil rights organizations such as the Afro-American Council and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (naacp), and to challenge white prejudice in the city's public and private spaces. The book also features, rather prominently, the noteworthy individu-als—those known as race men and race wom-en—who established themselves as community leaders: newspaper publishers such as Leon Washington, elected officials such as Fred Roberts and Augustus Hawkins, entrepreneurs such as John Somerville, and labor organizers such as Clarence Johnson. The story of the tireless Charlotta Bass, longtime editor of the California Eagle who eventually won a vice presidential nomination on the 1952 Progressive party ticket, opens and closes Flamming's narrative.

Wislawa Szymborska’nın Şiiri

This article aims to introduce the ironic view of the world of W.S., the most famous living woman poet of Poland who was crowned with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996, by ten poems chosen from her books. These poems are woven with the expressions used in daily conversations. But the tone of her narration does not make them ordinary. Instead, it arouses a confidence for the poet and for her clear language. In the poems which mention the relations between people or a photo album or a funeral or the people who were falling from the burning buildings in September 11, Szymborska writes the different possibilities of the reality. So, who are the heroes of these poems? The ones who are not sure of who they are but conscious of their existence. According to the poet, the human being is an extraordinary creature who is able to do everything. But most of the time, a creature who is confused, fluttering with the problem of existence and asking questions.

Eating Smoke: Fire in Urban America, 1800-1950 (review)

Reviewed by: Eating Smoke: Fire in Urban America, 1800–1950 Daniel Winer (bio) Eating Smoke: Fire in Urban America, 1800–1950. By Mark Tebeau. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Pp. xi+425. $49.95. Well before the development of effective breathing apparatus, firefighters in American cities adopted the tactic of fighting fires "from the inside." Instead of only playing water on exterior walls or through windows, they would enter burning buildings to "ventilate" them (allowing built-up smoke and heated gases to escape), apply water to the seat of the fire, and try to rescue those trapped inside. Even with protective masks and clothing, this practice was, and remains, difficult and dangerous, and the willingness to endure such conditions—to "eat smoke"—brought increased attention to firefighters as a special breed of men. In Eating Smoke, Mark Tebeau presents two parallel narratives: the first examines how and why American firefighters adopted (or resisted) new tactics, equipment, and organizational innovations, and, in the process, created new roles and identities for themselves and in the eyes of their public audiences. In the second, Tebeau examines the strategies developed by fire insurance underwriters to maintain solvency and achieve profitability, and how their efforts complemented—and at times conflicted with—the efforts of municipalities and firefighters to suppress urban fires. Underlying the relationship between firefighters and underwriters was the contrast in how each group perceived fire risks: to firefighters these risks were physical; to underwriters, they were economic. Both narratives are based on Tebeau's comparative study of firefighting in Saint Louis and Philadelphia; two major fire underwriters, Aetna and the Insurance Company of North America; and, to a lesser extent, the National [End Page 672] Board of Fire Engineers and the National Board of Fire Underwriters, professional and trade associations that emerged in the late nineteenth century. Tebeau argues that "the creation of municipal fire departments reveals how public safety, the expansion of city governments, and the process of urbanization were each shaped by attitudes about manhood and technology," and that by the mid-nineteenth century American firefighters embodied both working-class character traits of "rough-hewn manliness" and middle-class values of professionalism, prudence, and rationality (pp. 127, 296). Tension between class notions of masculinity was evident, for example, in the image of the firefighter as a heroic figure. Even as firefighters promoted safety, they were aware that without danger and potential loss of life there could be no martyrs and only lesser heroes. Tebeau chronicles the transformation of fire protection from a community-based responsibility to the specialized domain of firefighters, examining in particular the role of gender and class in the adoption of new technologies such as the fire-hose system and steam fire engines, and the professionalization of firefighting. Concurrently, underwriters were engaged in turning urban fire hazards into an economic commodity. A key problem for underwriters was estimating the true long-term costs of the insurance policies they sold. At first, they tried basing premiums on the construction of buildings to be insured and the character or "moral hazard" of the insuree; later, they used "mortality tables" of past instances of fire damage. Only in the 1850s did underwriters start to take an actuarial approach to assessing fire risks and develop sophisticated mapping techniques that included such factors as the use of buildings and their proximity to other fire hazards, to engine houses, and to water supplies. Not until the early twentieth century did underwriters significantly embrace fire prevention as a business strategy. Masculinity was no less important to underwriters and policyholders than to firefighters, but its meaning derived from middle-class conceptions of manhood. For example, Tebeau shows how companies like Aetna moved away from price competition, which posed a serious threat to the stability of fire insurance generally, and created sales strategies in which safety became a "consumer product" and "customers did not just purchase protection against fire, they bought the knowledge that they were behaving as prudent middle-class men" (p. 101). Eating Smoke invites both criticism and praise. It is frequently repetitious, contextualizes at every turn, overplays the roles of firefighting and underwriting in determining social order in American cities, and overstates the...

NONINVASIVE FIREGROUND ASSESSMENT OF CARBOXYHEMOGLOBIN LEVELS IN FIREFIGHTERS

Objectives. Carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) levels can be estimated by chemical analysis of exhaled alveolar breath. Such noninvasive measurement could be used on the fireground to screen both firefighters (FFs) andvictims. The purpose of this study was to assess the feasibility of using a hand-held carbon monoxide (CO) monitoring device to screen for CO toxicity in FFs under field conditions. Methods. Informed consent was obtained from all participants. Using a hand-held breath CO detection device, COHb readings were collected at baseline, andthen as FFs exited burning buildings after performing interior fire attack andoverhaul with self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) during live-fire training. Ambient CO levels were occasionally measured in interior areas where the FFs were working to assess the degree of CO exposure. Results. Baseline COHb readings of 64 FFs ranged from 0% to 3% (mean 1%, median 1%). One hundred eighty-four COHb readings were collected during training exercises. The mean andmedian COHb levels were 1%. The maximum value in a FF wearing SCBA was 3%; values of 14%, 5%, and4% were measured in instructors who were not properly wearing SCBA. Ambient CO readings during fire attack ranged from 75 to 1,290 ppm, andthe ambient CO reading for overhaul ranged from 0 to 130 ppm. When the device was used for interior CO monitoring, washout time limited its utility for COHb monitoring in FFs. Conclusions. A hand-held CO monitoring device adapted for estimation of COHb levels by exhaled breath analysis can feasibly be deployed on the fireground to assess CO exposure in FFs.

Could olfactory displays improve data visualization?

Smell (olfaction) can be critical to our daily living - for example, smelling smoke from a fire in time to leave a burning building - but it is seldom used in data visualizations or virtual reality (VR) systems. Could olfaction displays (devices that output scented air) augment data visualization, that is, communicate information relevant to many fields? Perhaps incorporating underutilized modalities such as haptics (touch), olfaction, and gustation (taste) as data visualization aids is the next logical step to optimizing human information processing. It seems reasonable that adding the sense of smell to a virtual environment (VE) would enhance the environment's presence or "realness". Attempts have been made to include olfactory displays in VEs (for example, John Cater's Deep Immersion Virtual Environment Laboratory at the Southwest Research Institute), but most have been unsuccessful. One reason is the lack of a standard to represent and playback smells. Olfactory effects could play a crucial role in certain training environments, such as those for fire fighters and medical personnel. Current VEs include advanced visual and audio outputs, but smell is either very limited or absent. Very few studies focus on this subject, with most discussing ambient (whole-room and long-duration) rather than specific (localized and short-duration) odors, which are relevant to data visualization and VR.

Firefighters most at risk from burning buildings

Firefighters most at risk from burning buildings

Robot and Sensor Networks for First Responders

The need to collect, integrate, and communicate information effectively in emergency response scenarios exceeds the state of the art in information technology. This emergency response problem provides an interesting and important test bed for studying networks of distributed mobile robots and sensors. Here, we describe the component technologies required to deploy a networked-robot system that can augment human firefighters and first responders, significantly enhancing their firefighting capabilities. In a burning building at a firefighting training facility, we deployed a network of stationary Mote sensors, mobile robots with cameras, and stationary radio tags to test their ability to guide firefighters to targets and warn them of potential dangers. Our long-term vision is a physical network that can sense, move, compute, and reason, letting network users (firefighters and first responders) Google for physical information - that is, information about the location and properties of physical objects in the real world.

Eating smoke: fire in urban America, 1800-1950

During the period of America's swiftest industrialization and urban growth, fire struck fear in the hearts of city dwellers as did no other calamity. Before the Civil War, sweeping blazes destroyed more than 200 million in property in the nation's largest cities. Between 1871 and 1906, conflagrations left Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, and San Francisco in ruins. Into the twentieth century, this dynamic hazard intensified as cities grew taller and more populous, confounding those who battled it. Firefighters' death-defying feats captured the popular imagination but too often failed to provide more than symbolic protection. Hundreds of fire insurance companies went bankrupt because they could not adequately deal with the effects of even smaller blazes. Firefighters and fire insurers created a physical and cultural infrastructure whose legacy-in the form of heroic firefighters, insurance policies, building standards, and fire hydrants-lives on in the urban built environment. In Eating Smoke, Mark Tebeau shows how the changing practices of firefighters and fire insurers shaped the built landscape of American cities, the growth of municipal institutions, and the experience of urban life. Drawing on a wealth of fire department and insurance company archives, he contrasts the invention of a heroic culture of firefighters with the rational organizational strategies by fire underwriters. Recognizing the complexity of shifting urban environments and constantly experimenting with tools and tactics, firefighters fought fire ever more aggressively-eating smoke when they ventured deep into burning buildings or when they scaled ladders to perform harrowing rescues. In sharp contrast to the manly valor of firefighters, insurers argued that the risk was quantifiable, measurable, and predictable. Underwriters managed hazard with statistics, maps, and trade associations, and they eventually agitated for building codes and other reforms, which cities throughout the nation implemented in the twentieth century. Although they remained icons of heroism, firefighters' cultural and institutional authority slowly diminished. Americans had begun to imagine fire risk as an economic abstraction. By comparing the simple skills employed by firefighters-climbing ladders and manipulating hoses-with the mundane technologies-maps and accounting charts-of insurers, the author demonstrates that the daily routines of both groups were instrumental in making intense urban and industrial expansion a less precarious endeavor.

‘Heaven helps those who help themselves’: the realities of disaster planning

In February 2003 The National Trust, in conjunction with the Cornwall Fire Service, staged an emergency exercise that fully tested our disaster plan. Our aim was to assess, in real time, all our active and reactive measures during a night‐time alarm activation and with no personnel on site. Some significant conclusions were drawn from the exercise. First, ‘intelligent’ fire systems and electronic interfaces can, and do, aid the salvage operation. Second, reactive operations can be reliable without a predetermination of roles. However, the most important conclusion remains that without the co‐operation and support of the fire service in all stages of planning the chances of successfully salvaging collections from a burning building are minimal.

Fort Limhi: The Mormon Adventure in Oregon Territory, 1855-1858 by David L. Bigler

Fort Limhi: TheMormon Adventure in Oregon Territory,1855-1858 By David L. Bigler Arthur H. Clark, Spokane, Wash., 2003. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 376 pages. $39.50 cloth. Reviewed by Thomas G. Alexander Brigham Young University,Provo, Utah In 1855, as part of Brigham Young's design to proselytize among theAmerican Indi ans, a party of settler-missionaries traveled intoOregon Territory.They settled among the Shoshones, Bannocks, and Nez Perces on the Lemhi River. Building Fort Limhi, they suc cessfullyproselytized among the Indians until February 25,1858, when a forceof Shoshones and Bannocks raided the settlement.These Numics stole virtually all the settlers'horses and cattle, killing two men andwounding fiveothers in the process. The attack led to the abandonment of the settlement. In thisfirst-classbook, David L. Bigler provides a narrative and documents on the activities of the settlers,their relationship with theNative Americans, and the reasons for the abandonment. When theMormons first arrived, they established good relations with the Indians. Those relations deteriorated for a number of reasons. The settlers separated themselves by building a fortand cultivating crops. They re fused to engage in conjugal relationswith the Indians until Brigham Young told them to do so.The Indians regularlyfished the streamas the salmon returned to spawn.The settlersirkedthe Indians by commercializing the fishing.Most significantly,relyingon their interpretationof theBook ofMormon, the settlersexpected the three tribes to share a common culture. In fact, the tribesdistrusted each other; and, inparticu lar,theShoshone and Bannock tribescontended with theNez Perce. The raid seems to have followed, in part, from Mormon assistance to a starvingband of Nez Perce. After theyhad eaten, theNez Perces stole a largeherdfrom the Numics inretaliation for previous rustling. Succeeding events are a bit unclear. Nevertheless, testimony from Ti o-von-du-ah, a Lemhi Shoshone, supports the Mormon belief that a mountain man named John W. Powell incited the Indians. It isalso pos sible thatB.F. Ficklin, a government contractor purchasing cattle for theU.S. Army,may have assisted Powell. Although such attacks presented problems forEuro-Americans throughout the West, this event could not have happened at aworse time. Charges leveled by federal officeholders led government officials in Washington, D.C., to conclude thatthe Mormons had rebelled against the government. President James Buchanan dispatched an armyof twenty-five hundredmen under Col. Albert Sidney Johnston to escort a new governor toUtah,marking thebeginning of the UtahWar of 1857-1858. While theyengaged in active resistance against thearmy,the Mormons sought also places of refuge.Young examined a number ofpossibilities ? including theSalmon River Country, theBeaverhead Valley ofMon tana, and the White Mountains ofNevada ? as potential redoubts. Additional events thwarted theMormon plans to defend themselves or seek another redoubt. Young failed to cement alliances with the Shoshones, Utes, and Goshutes. Instead of helping the Mormons, in 1857a number ofUtes had assisted IndianAgent Garland Hurt. Shortly afterthe attack on Fort Limhi, rumors surfaced thatBen Simonds, aDelaware Indianmountain man, had mustered 250 Shoshones fromLittle Soldier's band tooppose the Mormons. Concur Reviews 327 rently, Goshutes inRush Valley southwestof Salt Lake City began to raid the settlers'herds. Bigler may well be right in his belief that "Brigham Young's decision to evacuate the northern settlements and send his followers, men, women, and children, streaming south like refugeesfleeing before an invading armywas a direct consequence of the Indian raid on theOr egon settlement" (p.277).Nevertheless, as Bigler notes, as early asAugust 1857 Young had begun to plan a policy of evacuating settlements and burning buildings, inspiredbyRussian tacticsat Sebastopol during theCrimeanWar. Early inthe war, Young had recalled settlersfrom southern California, Carson Valley, and Fort Bridger. The attack on Fort Limhi and deteriorating relationships with nearby Indians reduced the Mormons' alternatives. ByMarch 1858,the Mormons were left with littlechoice but to accept Col. Thomas L. Kane's offer to negotiate terms favorable to them. Kane succeeded in spite of Colonel Johnston's misgivings, because Governor Alfred Cumming accepted theMormons' good faith.Whether the subsequent move south to Utah County resulted from their fear of a recurrence of the abuse andmurder theyhad sufferedin Missouri and Illinois or from an effortto publicize their plight, theMormons leftnorthern Utah and Johnston's armymarched through a deserted Salt Lake City. InFortLimhi...

Lessons learned from the activation of a disaster plan: 9/11.

As there is little information in literature about response of orthopaedic surgeons during a civilian disaster 1,2, response to actual disasters 1-4 must be reviewed to prepare for future events. Effective disaster management can occur only when realistic planning has been done before such an event 5,6. This paper reviews response of NYU-Hospital for Joint Diseases Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Bellevue Hospital Center on September 11, 2001. Bellevue Hospital Center is an urban level-I trauma center located in New York City approximately three miles from World Trade Center. On September 11, 2001, our institution's disaster plan was activated. Although other departments had regularly participated in disaster drills, our department had not, even though a large number of musculoskeletal injuries should be anticipated on basis of experience from past disasters 1,7-9. In fact, majority of operations performed after civilian terrorist attacks have been for treatment of soft-tissue (67%) and skeletal injuries (10.9%) 9,10. A total of 194 patients were triaged, evaluated, and treated at Bellevue Hospital within initial twenty-four hours. Ninety patients were seen within first five hours, and seventy-nine more were seen by midnight of that first day. The majority of patients were the walking wounded, who had been able to walk out of buildings or immediate surrounding area. On basis of reports in media, only five individuals were extricated from rubble after buildings had collapsed and three of them were brought to Bellevue Hospital. After second building was struck, all internal and external landlines as well as cellular telephones were inoperative. Thus, although we could see burning buildings from …

DETERMINATION OF PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSES OF FEMALE FIRE FIGHTERS TO WORK IN THE HEAT

There are no published studies on the responses of female fire fighters during two work bouts in the heat. The length of time a fire fighter works in a burning building depends on the air supply duration. The fire fighter then exits the building and is allowed to rehydrate and recover. After about fifteen minutes he/she reenters the fire and continues to work. PURPOSE This study determined the physiological responses of female fire fighters to two similar bouts of work in a 40°C environment at 50% of their VO2max. Peak heart rates (HR), rectal temperatures (Trec), and rate of perceived exertion (RPE) were compared between two work bouts separated by a standard recovery period. METHODS Seven female fire fighters walked for 20 minutes while dressed in complete fire fighting ensemble at 50% of their VO2max in a 40°C environment. After the first work bout (WB1), subjects removed their clothing, rehydrated and rested in front of a fan until their Trec returned to 0.5°C above pre-exercise levels. Then they completed a second work bout (WB2) similar to WB1. The recovery after WB2 was also monitored. HR, Trec, and oxygen consumption were measured throughout the experimental period. RESULTS The differences in Trec, HR and RPE between WB1 and WB2 were significantly higher during WB2: HR1=151.3 ± 16.6 bpm vs. HR2=161.6 ± 12.3 bpm, (p = 0.008), Trec1=37.79 ± 0.18°C vs. Trec2=38.16 ± 0.22°C, (p = 0.003) and RPE1=11.96 ± 1.2 vs. RPE2=12.37 ± 1.4, (p = 0.026). CONCLUSION Despite the rest between the two work bouts, WB2 was significantly more physiologically stressful than WB1. Consequently, the second recovery period was significantly longer than the first recovery period (duration1=12.03 ± 5.3 min vs. duration2=17.86 ± 6.8 min, p = 0.021). Supported by the Las Vegas Fire Union, Local 1285; Las Vegas Fire and Rescue Department; UNLV Graduate Student Association.

Varieties of Imagination and Nothingness in the Global Village

One of the most remarkable things about the events of September 11th is the extent and degree of their aestheticization. Had the weather in New York on that day been overcast we would have seen the muted television images of a silver passenger plane blended into grey clouds. The plane would have penetrated a building rising out of a skyline absorbed in a neutral horizon. Smoke would have melted into a pallid background. The scene would have been horrible, but not horribly sublime. Had the objectives of the attack been only the Pentagon and, apparently, the White House, we would have been left with visions of the partial destruction of centres of military and political might, their buildings close to the earth and televised as enlarged versions of what we often see in the ordinary course of the daily news: burning buildings. But in New York on September 1 11th the morning sky was a clear expanse of blue. A contrasting band of smoke flowed from the first tower that was struck. And then we saw a plane slice into the other tower as a knife goes into a stick of butter. Against a background of innocent baby blue, black energy poured out of the tall, erect, light grey geometric modernity of the towers. Then after a time they fell into themselves and there was nothing left against the horizon where they had stood except the perfection of the sky itself. Photographs taken near the site caught the tottering facades of the towers that remained standing in the smoke and dust of ground zero. They were horribly beautiful, almost Frank Gehry-like in dishevelled modernity although some saw them as a Gothic cathedral standing amidst ruins. Creating September 11th David Wellbery (2002) of the University of Chicago has described the role of symbols in pragmatic thought and latterly in the work of the German sociological theorist, Niklas Luhmann (2000), as binders of time. Time is a domain of basal improbability, an empty ongoing flow where nothing (nothing) is certain (except death). Nevertheless something (some-thing) can be precipitated in time, something can happen. An improbable episode fills time, an unlikely this transpires rather than any of the other possible but improbable that's. Congealed in memory, the symbolic trace of what happened is raw material for reason, desire and action as future presents that flow into present futures The normal, probable chaos of the present yields to an improbable vector of action whose meaning is found with reference to the symbol. An ongoing something reduces the improbability of something happening in time. Time is contingently bound. The effort to bind time with the symbols of art in the wake of September 11th was almost as remarkable and singular as the events themselves. Horrible beauty found in the perfection of concerted action transmuted into the unforgettable visuals of TV seemed to demand and call forth the symbols of artistic imagination. There was a flood of them. Reporting from New York City for The Globe and Mail, Simon Haupt wrote: Immediately after Sept. 11, thousands of people in this city and around the world set out to capture the meaning of those events through artistic expression. In the intervening months, thousands more have joined the effort, resulting in what may turn out to be the largest creative response in history to a single day's event. Poetry, prose, dance, architecture, photography, soundscapes, TV, popular music, theatre, comic books, film, painting and sculpture: They have all grappled with the attacks and their aftermath, in the process provoking questions about the meaning of art, its practical usefulness, and the legitimacy of artistic aspirations by non-artists (Haupt 2002, R1). How likely is it that this outpouring will produce anything that will bind the time of the public in a definitive and long-lasting way? In other words will there be any great art produced by the immediate rush to aesthetic action? …

PIV Measurements Of Flow Structures Created By A Pulsating Flame Spread Over 1-propanol

An opening in a fully developed burning room is the main path of a fire spreading from floor to floor and to an adjacent building. Even though the issue of fire spread to an adjacent building has been incorporated in fire safety engineering design guidelines, a performance-based design provides an alternative and accurate method to optimize the distance between the burning building facade and an adjacent building. This situation was simulated by performing a series of small–scale experiments having a facade wall with flames and an opposite parallel wall representing an adjacent building in order to investigate the physics of the flame behaviour and measure the heat fluxes between two walls. The outcome of this research provides unique information for engineering design for separation distances between adjacent buildings. A new length scale, 3 l , representing the length after which the flames turn from horizontal to vertical was developed in this research. The significance of this length scale has been verified by the experimental results for flame heights and heat fluxes and by observations. A similarity correlation for flame heights between the two parallel walls were developed in this research. Similarity correlations for radiative heat fluxes on facade walls were developed by dividing the data into two groups. One is for the distance between two walls being larger than length scale 3 l , the other is for the distance being less or equal to length scale 3 l .

News stories need human drama, not dry data

“If it bleeds, it leads” is a catchy and convenient criticism of a certain segment of American journalism. But in our dismissal of it as a foundation for newsgathering and storytelling, we should not forget that the audience (and journalists) are human beings. And human beings have an innate desire to be told and to tell dramatic stories. I am at a loss to name a single operatic work that treats coronary artery disease as its subject, although I can name several where murder, incest, and assassination play a key part in the story. Check your own instinct for storytelling by asking yourself this: If driving home from work, you passed a burning building, would you wait to tell your spouse about it until you first explained the number of people who died that day from some form of neoplastic disease? Journalism is not run by a scientific formula. There is no “treatment algorithm” to guide decision making in the newsroom. Decisions about a story being newsworthy come from the head, the heart, and the gut. The notion that the results of that decision making should parallel morbidity and mortality statistics in the area is a peculiar one. We report on the newsworthy death of a patient with the West Nile virus south of the Mason-Dixon line, but according to McArthur and colleagues' logic, we should instead be reporting on the ravages of diabetes because so many more people succumb to the latter than to the former. Similarly, journalism will likely focus on the “story” of 4 particular hijackings, the collapse of the World Trade Center, and an attack on the Pentagon far out of proportion to the relative weight of the 7,000 deaths. Why? Because sometimes we have to tell stories that resonate someplace other than the epidemiologist's spreadsheet. There is much in McArthur and associates' study for newspeople to take away and consider. Chief among the lessons is the criticism of television's penchant for telling stories that are sometimes only visually compelling over stories that are important for their content alone. It is a hard lesson for television to learn. And it calls the managers of television newsrooms to be genuine leaders. The audience is prepared to listen to a story of importance—even in the absence of dramatic video; indeed, many millions of people get their news from their radios each day. The authors rightly point to the matter of the public's poor medical literacy and to the issue of who is responsible for improving it. Journalists, I believe, have a role in communicating medical information to the public, but the responsibility for this education rests squarely on the shoulders of the medical community. Physicians and other health care professionals should be talking to journalists about issues of importance, becoming their sources of medical information. They should invite news directors (and their deputies) to seminars. Raise these issues with them. The medical professions are the ones who can educate the media about the importance of sound medical reporting.

Amid Chaos, Air Force Major Finds Her Role

Amid Chaos, Air Force Major Finds Her Role

CHARACTERIZATION OF VOLATILE ORGANIC COMPOUNDS IN SMOKE AT MUNICIPAL STRUCTURAL FIRES

The objective of this study was to characterize volatile organic compounds (VOCs) found at municipal structural fires in order to identify sources of long-term health risks to firefighters, which may be contributing factors in heart disease and cancer. Firefighters collected air into evacuated Summa canisters inside burning buildings at nine municipal structural fires under conditions where they judged that at least some firefighters might remove their self-contained breathing apparatus masks. Volatile organic compounds were identified and quantified for 144 target compounds using cryogenic preconcentration and gas chromatography/mass spectral detection (GC/MSD) methodology operating in selected ion monitoring mode. Samples were also analyzed in SCAN mode and examined for the appearance of substances that were not present in the instrument standard calibration mixture. The spectra of municipal structural fires were surprisingly similar and remarkable for their simplicity, which was largely due to the dominating presence of benzene along with toluene and naphthalene. Propene and 1,3-butadiene were found in all of the fires, and styrene and other alkyl-substituted benzene compounds were frequently identified. Similar "fingerprints" of the same 14 substances (propene, benzene, xylenes, 1-butene/2-methylpropene, toluene, propane, 1,2-butadiene, 2-methylbutane, ethylbenzene, naphthalene, styrene, cyclopentene, 1-methylcyclopentene, isopropylbenzene) previously identified at experimental fires burning various solid combustible materials were also found at municipal structural fires, accounting for 76.8% of the total VOCs measured. Statistically significant positive correlations were found between increasing levels of benzene and levels of propene, the xylenes, toluene, 1-butene/2-methylpropene, 1,3-butadiene, and naphthalene. Given the toxicity/carcinogenicity of those VOCs that were found in the highest concentrations, particularly benzene, 1,3-butadiene, and styrene, further investigation of VOC exposures of firefighters is warranted. Benzene, or its metabolic product s-phenylmercapturic acid in urine, was identified as a suitable chemical marker for firefighter exposure to combustion products.

“Because I Want It”

How can an agent's desire or will give him reasons for acting? Not long ago, this might have seemed a silly question, since it was widely believed that all reasons for acting are based in the agent's desires. The interesting question, it seemed, was not how what an agent wants could give him reasons, but how anything else could. In recent years, however, this earlier orthodoxy has increasingly appeared wrongheaded as a growing number of philosophers have come to stress the action-guiding role of reasons in deliberation from the agent's point of view. What a deliberating agent has in view is rarely his own will or desires as such, even if taking something as a reason is intimately tied to desire. Someone who wants to escape a burning building does not evaluate her options by considering which is likeliest to realize what she wants or wills. She is focused, rather, on her desire's object: getting out alive. The fact that a successful route would realize something she wants is apt to strike her as beside the point or, at best, as a trivial bonus.