…Help Organize Galaxies, DeLorean Back in the Future, Space Station’s POV of Hurricane Dean and MORE!

Before we get into “Light Friday” today, I have to point out that the recent bridge collapse in Minnesota that killed at least 13 people and injured about 100 is absolutely tragic. And while I do not wish for the reason to be due to a materials, design or engineering error, I will be truly and genuinely angry if the reason turns out to be — and I don’t mean to be crude here, nor am I making light of this — pigeon crap.

The Associated Press reports:

Inspectors began documenting the buildup of pigeon dung on the span near downtown Minneapolis two decades ago. Experts say the corrosive guano deposited all over the Interstate 35W span’s framework helped the steel beams rust faster.

What the —-?!

Chemist Neal Langerman, an officer with the health and safety division of the American Chemical Society, tells AP that pigeon droppings contain ammonia and acids, and:

If the dung isn’t washed away, it dries out and turns into a concentrated salt. When water gets in and combines with the salt and ammonia, it creates small electrochemical reactions that rust the steel underneath.

In a 1987-1989 report, inspectors wrote, “There is a coating of pigeon dung on steel with nest and heavy buildup on the inside hollow box sections.” In ’96, screens were installed over openings in the bridge’s beams to keep pigeons from nesting there, but that didn’t prevent the building of droppings elsewhere.

SOX Gets the Star Treatment
There’s apparently a studio movie, Sarbane’s-Oxley, awaiting wide release. The tagline: “What happens when you mix a little corporate misconduct with a lot of misconduct of your own? …Mistresses, Mergers & Mayhem!”

Check out the movie trailer:

And Hoofy & Boo’s spoof news report on Sarbox…

And a Gilbert & Sullivan parody about it (set to “Modern Major General”)…

Did you know about this? A whole genre of humor (the movie’s a drama?) centered around the corporate law? Because we had no clue.

Fatal Flaw in Pentagon Purchasing
A small parts supplier collected about $20.5 million over six years from the Pentagon for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to an Army base in Texas, according to United States officials.

The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Iraq and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to an Air Force base in Florida, Bloomberg News reports Pentagon records as showing.

The twin-sister owners of a South Carolina distributor exploited a flaw in an automated Defense Department purchasing system: “bills for shipping to combat areas or U.S. bases that were labeled ‘priority’ were usually paid automatically,” Bloomberg reports a Pentagon investigator as having said.

And that, dear IMT readers, is why the buyer-supplier relationship is so important.

Chicken Isn’t Always Healthier
The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has no idea how mercury and glass shards got into a bag of chicken fingers and then into the mouths of children. But hey, is that any reason to stop sales of the product? Apparently not.

AP (via Forbes) reports:

A bag of Fast Fixin’ frozen chicken strips purchased by a family from a Lancaster County grocery store contained mercury and glass shards, but tests on other bags from the same lot found nothing, state officials said Wednesday. As a result, the state Department of Agriculture is taking no action to stop the sale of the product, except to continue testing bags from the same lot, a spokesman said.

Two spokespeople with the Department of Environmental Protection said they have not figured out how the chicken strips became contaminated.

Oh, Dear Lord, It’s Back!
Its doors aflutter like a phoenix’s wings as it rises from the ashes, decades after its flopping premier, the small automotive firm DeLorean Motor plans to resume limited production of its gull-wing-door auto.

AP yet again:

A quarter-century after DeLorean Motor Co. began making its glitzy, $25,000 two-seater — an operation that collapsed after two years — [mechanic and entrepreneur Stephen] Wynne’s small automotive outfit plans to bring the vehicle back into limited production at a 40,000-square-foot factory in [Humble, Texas].

Credit: DeLorean Motor Co.

Despite DMC’s flop, the car has gained notoriety largely as the time machine Michael J. Fox drove in the 1980s blockbuster Back to the Future trilogy. The trilogy’s enduring popularity on cable TV has exposed countless viewers — and potential customers — to a souped-up version of the DeLorean, AP notes.

The creation of renowned automotive engineer John DeLorean, DMC made fewer than 9,000 DeLorean cars, distinctive for their gull-wing doors, stainless-steel exterior and rear-engine design. The new handmade cars will feature about 80 percent original parts, and the other 20 percent will be new, supplier-made parts from companies such as Valeo SA and the Bosch Group, according to DeLorean VP James Espey.

AP reports:

Enhancements to the new cars will include an improved stainless-steel frame, a stronger but lighter fiberglass underbody and electronics upgraded from the disastrous systems in the early DeLoreans. A peppier engine — the original cars’ 135 horsepower was a downer for performance enthusiasts — will be available as an option.

I’m gonna break it down ’80s style: AWESOME!

The one limiting factor is the doors. The company has enough for about 500 cars.

Rocket-Powered Mecha-Arm
A group of mechanical engineers in my hometown have built a mechanical arm that “outperforms traditional battery-powered prosthetics the old-fashioned way: by strapping on a couple rocket motors.”

The arm, which the Vanderbilt University team built for DARPA’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009 program, relies on a modified miniature version of the same rocket motors the space shuttle uses to reposition itself in space: hydrogen peroxide is burned in the presence of a catalyst to produce pure steam, which is then used to move the arm.

According to Engadget:

Unlike the batteries in traditional arms, which die quickly, a small canister of hydrogen peroxide concealed in the arm can last up to 18 hours, and provides about the same power and functionality of a human arm.

Even cooler is the method the arm deals with waste heat and steam: as with a regular arm, it is able to filter up through a permeable skin, producing “sweat” — the same amount of perspiration you’d get on a warm summer day, according to the team.

Credit: Vanderbilt University, via Engadget

Check out the video.

Weekend Homework Assignment: Help Organize Galaxies
A group of scientists are looking for Internet volunteers to take part in what they claim will be the largest galactic census ever compiled.

Now, the act of classifying a galaxy isn’t necessarily difficult. The trouble is there is a lot of them. Scientifically speaking, the universe is ginormous, and computer programs, according to The Register, “can’t hold a standard candle to the human eye for reliable star system classification.”

So some scientists developed GalaxyZoo. The Web site seeks would-be astronomers to help sort through a collection of one million photographs of galaxies snapped by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey at New Mexico’s Apache Point Observatory.

Volunteers are prompted to help classify galaxies as either elliptical or spiral — and when applicable — whether they are spinning clockwise or counterclockwise. The task should help astronomers further understand the structure of the universe.

Hurricane Dean as Seen From the Space Station
The crew members aboard the space station took a short break Saturday to get a look at Hurricane Dean, which associated death tolls total 28, from their vantage point. Even from space, the storm impressed the crew with its size.

Have a nice weekend, folks.