On 12 July 2013, a train crashed in Brétigny railway station, in Brétigny-sur-Orge. Bretigny is in Île-de-France and is near Paris. The train was a service from Paris to Limoges. Six people are confirmed dead, 30 are injured, eight of them in a critical state. Of the six dead, two were killed in the railway station, two are from Limoges, and two from Étampes. 385 passengers were on board at the time of the crash. The crash occurred at 17:14 local time, 22 minutes after the train left Austerlitz station at 16:53. If the train had been on schedule, it would have arrived in Limoges at 20:05. The trains and platforms at Brétigny were very busy as it was the Friday before the Bastille Day holiday weekend.
The train was not supposed to stop at the station. According to the first reports, the train crashed at high speed and split in two pieces after the third and fourth cars derailed. The crash caused the back four carts to crash into the station platforms. The accident is the most serious rail crash that has happened in France since the 1988 Gare de Lyon rail accident in which 56 people were killed.
The French Land Transport Accident Investigation Bureau (BEA-TT) has announced a search into the accident. SNCF released its findings on 13 July. The company reported that the derailment seemed to have been caused by a track failure. According to SNCF, a steel fishplate connecting two rails had come loose from the station at a set of points, and had become stuck in a track switch. The third and fourth carts came off track when their wheels went over the steel plate. When the problem with the switch became known, SNCF had people check the several thousand such switches on the network.
The track has been severely damaged on a length of about . Repairing the track means that the railway station will be closed for all traffic for several days. This also affects Gare d'Austerlitz in Paris, as most trains starting from there take this route.
Several people reported that the firefighters and rescuers were aggressed, when they arrived, and that stones were thown. Police had to be called to secure the area. The same report also speaks about a group of youngsters pillaging and stealing from the passengers of the train. Jean-François Riffaud, the director of the Red Cross later declared, that the teams were able to work without being aggressed. On 13 July, a police source was quoted as saying that police forces had projectiles thrown at them, but that these were isolated cases, and that no stones had been used.
Jack plane
A jack plane is the most commonly used general purpose plane. It is about long.
The blade is slightly curved for quick removal of material on rough work. It is also used in oblique planning.
Lund Cathedral
The Lund Cathedral () is the Lutheran cathedral in Lund, Scania, Sweden. It is the seat of the Bishop of Lund of the Church of Sweden.
Biodegradation
Biodegradation is a chemical process in which materials are dissolved by bacteria or other biological elements. If a material is "biodegradable", it means that it can be consumed by microorganisms and turned into compounds that are natural. It is an important process in ecology and waste management. Items that are biodegradable are considered environmentally friendly because they can turn back into elements found in nature.
Organic materials, such as those that come from plants and animals, can be degraded aerobically (with oxygen) or anaerobically (without oxygen). Some artificial or inorganic materials can also be biodegraded. It is possible to identify specific microorganisms that are able to biodegrade these materials.
In nature, different materials biodegrade at different speeds. Most microorganisms that help biodegradation need light, heat, water and oxygen.
Albert
The name Albert is a masculine given name. It comes from the Germanic words "adal" and "beraht", meaning "bright" and "noble". The Spanish version of this name is Alberto. This name has been used for many famous people, including Albert Finney and scientist Albert Einstein. As "Alberto", this name has been used for Atlantic cyclones every six years since 1982.
Genetically modified organism
A genetically modified organism (GMO) is an organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques.
Organisms that have been genetically modified include micro-organisms such as bacteria and yeast, insects, plants, fish, and mammals. GMOs are the source of genetically modified foods, and are also widely used in scientific research and to produce goods other than food.
Although Maxam and Gilbert published their chemical sequencing method two years after the ground-breaking paper of Sanger and Coulson on plus-minus sequencing, Maxam–Gilbert sequencing rapidly became more popular, since purified DNA could be used directly, while the initial Sanger method required that each read start be cloned for production of single-stranded DNA. However, with the improvement of the chain-termination method (see below), Maxam-Gilbert sequencing has fallen out of favour due to its technical complexity prohibiting its use in standard molecular biology kits, extensive use of hazardous chemicals, and difficulties with scale-up.
The first genetically modified black, blue and red rose made in the lab.
Fortune Head
Fortune Head is a headland about from the town of Fortune on the Burin Peninsula, southeastern Newfoundland.
A thick section of rock along its cliffs is the Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP). It represents the boundary between the Precambrian era and the Cambrian period, 541 million years ago. Because of its accessibility (easy to get at) and many fossils, Fortune Head was selected in 1992 over similar rock sections in Siberia, Russia, and Meischucum, China.
Fortune Head was given full ecological reserve status in 1992 after its selection as the global stratotype. The reserve is in size. The Fortune Head lighthouse also acts as a visitors center.
The Burin Peninsula is part of the Avalon Zone of the Appalachian Orogen, a late Precambrian episode of mountain-building. The stratigraphy is not uniform throughout the region, however. The sediments were probably deposited in shoreline environments along the former Iapetus Ocean.
The global stratotype at Fortune Head is made up of sandstones, siltstones, and limestones. Some of these rocks have mud cracks and stromatolites, suggesting that deposition occurred in tidal or, at deepest, continental shelf environments.
The boundary between the Precambrian and Cambrian is marked by the presence of trace fossils of "Treptichnus pedum", one of the earliest animals. "Treptichnus" is known only by its distinctive burrow pattern, which can be seen at Fortune Head.
Fortune Head records the beginning of a period of increasing biological diversity known as the "Cambrian explosion". It has a number of other Cambrian and Precambrian fossils, including early shell fossils, vendotaenid algae, soft-bodied megafossils, and microfossils. Below "Treptichnus", the stratotype at Fortune Head includes traces of the arthropod "Monomorphichnus". More complex fossils appear later.
Chemical nomenclature
A chemical nomenclature is a set of rules for creating a system of names ("nomenclature") for chemicals. This is done so that everyone uses the same name for a chemical. The system used most often around the world today is the one created and developed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).