Titanis Prehistoric Bird Facts and Figures

To many avid horror fans, Titanis will be familiar as the predatory bird in James Robert Smiths best-selling novel The Flock. This prehistoric bird could certainly wreak its share of mayhem: at eight feet tall and 300 pounds (give or take a few inches and pounds for possible sexually dimorphic differences between males and females), the early Pleistocene Titanis closely resembled its theropod dinosaur forebears that went extinct 60 million years before, especially considering  its puny arms, massive head and beak, fully bipedal posture, and long-taloned, grasping hands. Hunting and Survival Stats Like other so-called terror birds, Titanis had a particularly gruesome hunting style. This long-legged prehistoric bird easily outran the smaller mammals, lizards and birds of its North American ecosystem, at which point it would grasp its hapless prey in its long, wingless, taloned hands, convey it to its heavy beak, bash it repeatedly on the ground until it was dead, and then (assuming it was small enough) swallow it whole, perhaps spitting out the bones and fur. In fact, Titanis was so well-adapted overall that some paleontologists believe this bird managed to survive up to the very end of the Pleistocene epoch; however, convincing fossil evidence for this has yet to be discovered. Not the Scariest Prehistoric Bird As scary as it was, Titanis wasnt the most dangerous carnivorous bird of prehistoric times, and not as deserving of the epithet titanic as the truly enormous Elephant Bird and Giant Moa. In fact, Titanis was merely a late North American descendant of a family of South American meat-eaters, the phorusrachids (typified by Phorusrhacos and Kelenken, both also classified as terror birds), which attained comparable sizes. By the early Pleistocene epoch, about two million years ago, Titanis had managed to penetrate from its ancestral South American habitat to as far north as Texas and southern Florida, the latter of which is The Flocks modern-day setting.

Wealth Inequality in the US with Sociological Viewpoints...

What is wealth inequality? â€Å"It is the difference between individuals or populations in the distribution of assets, wealth or income.† [1] In sociology, the term is social stratification and refers to â€Å"a system of structured social inequality† [2] where the inequality might be in power, resources, social standing/class or perceived worth. In the US, where a class system exist, (as opposed to caste or estate system) your place in the class system can be determined by your personal achievements. However, the economic and social class that an individual is born into is a big indicator of the class they will end up in as an adult. [3] What are the effects of this wealth inequality in the US and what causes it as well as some possible solutions†¦show more content†¦Conflict theorist have an opposing view, that the inequality seen in society is a result of domination and coercion where those with power, wealth and prestige exploit those without to maintain t heir standings. They believe that that every person and class are fighting over a limited number of resources and each is competing for an advantage. Wealth inequality is unfair because the elites, those in control of â€Å"societal resources† use those resources to perpetuate their own standing by shaping the belief system of society, controlling the distribution of resources, and blocking the mobility and opportunities of the poor. Because the wealth inequality is inherently unfair, conflict theorist argue that the disadvantaged in society should be given support by redirecting the â€Å"societal resources† to those in need. [9] The sociological views of functionalist and conflict theorist on stratification and economic inequality have had profound impact on the current economic discussion. In the past, economist have argued that wealth inequality is essential for â€Å"economic strength and social stability. [5] That wealth inequality â€Å"is needed to reward hard work, talent and innovation†. 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In Field Flow Lines Of Oil Fields Environmental Sciences Essay Free Essays

As oil Fieldss mature, smaller â€Å" in-field † flow-lines used alternatively of big diameter bole pipes. The little diameter grapevines normally installed by reel-lay techniques. In this technique the grapevine to be laid is manufactured in a uninterrupted length on board of the pipelaying vas and so spooled onto a big reel. We will write a custom essay sample on In Field Flow Lines Of Oil Fields Environmental Sciences Essay or any similar topic only for you Order Now During the pipelaying procedure the grapevine is normally straightened and passed over an inclined incline. Tensioners and/or clinchs are used for keeping the antecedently launched ( Joop Rodenburg et Al. Patent application rubric: Marine Pipelaying System and Method for Installing an Offshore Pipeline That Includes One or More Accessories ) . This method normally used in little diameter but requires thicker walled pipe to avoid local buckling during bending and unbending procedure ( M.F. Bransby et a l. ) . Offshore grapevines are buried beneath the ocean floor for protection against angling activity icebergs scouring and to supply on bottom stableness and bettering thermic insularity of the grapevine system. There is extended usage of little diameter, stiff steel grapevines within the seaward oil and gas industries to transport trade goods from their point of recovery to the shore ( or to other installings ) . Burial of these grapevines beneath the ocean floor is necessary for safety, operational and environmental concerns, e.g. bar of harm from angling vass, iceberg protection, on bottom stableness and betterment of the thermic belongingss of the grapevine system. Since grapevines are laid in remote and potentially hostile environments, frequently at great H2O deepness, the cost of puting and keeping the grapevine can be highly high, in footings of the existent work required, equipment mobilisation times and costs, and reduced end product. Therefore, offshore inhumed grapevines must be constructed as rapidly and expeditiously as possible, whilst keeping the highest degree of certainty against failure for the continuance of their usage. To accomplish high flow rates in grapevines, the gas or oil must be kept at high temperature and force per unit area. Normally, these grapevines are laid with close zero axial tonss, at the ambient temperature. On warming, the grapevine will see important axial strain, which is resisted by seabed clash so that compressive forces addition in the pipe. These compressive forces are on occasion big plenty to bring on perpendicular upheaval ( upheaval buckling ) of trenched lines, with the pipe emerging from the dirt or going significantly distorted, so that its ability to defy farther burden is compromised. Upheaval clasping may go on on start-up or as a progressive turbulence clasping during operation. These phenomena are due to cyclic conditions brought approximately by chilling and heating due to line breaks, which bit by bit ‘ratchet ‘ the pipe upwards, or from initial ballad imperfectness ( or a combination of the two ) . The dirt above the grapevine and the floaty weigh t provide opposition to this uplift force and the embedment deepness must be sufficient to forestall the perpendicular pipe motion from happening ( see Figure 1 ) . Among legion reported instances of upheaval buckling, the 17 kilometer long â€Å" Rolf A † to â€Å" Gorm E † grapevine in North Sea could be mentioned which has been reported ab initio in July 1986 one-year study and subsequently in September 1986 as a comprehensive out of straightness study ( M.F. Bransby et a l. ) . Impinging and burial is typically achieved by specialized H2O jetting, plowing and cutting equipment. Knowledge of the in situ mechanical belongingss ( before and following impinging operation ) of these dirts is highly of import for the design of inhumed grapevine systems ; burial techniques can bring forth considerable perturbation to the construction of seabed deposits, taking to alterations in their behavior. Perturbation of the ocean floor in the locality of the trench depends on the dirt type and province, and the manner of operation of the trencher. Ploughed soft and stiff clay backfill is lumpy in nature with big balls of integral clay, making the heterogenous construction supplying a macro construction. Stiff clay is believed to be hydraulicly fractured and really soft or silty clay is liquefied. The exact behaviour between these two extremes is non clear yet. Homogeneity of the subsequent backfill will besides be a map of clip to commissioning of the grapevine ( Cathie et al.2005 â€Å" Frontiers in Offshore Geotechnics: ISFOG 2005 – Gourvenec A ; Cassidy ( explosive detection systems ) A © 2005 Taylor A ; Francis Group, London, ISBN 0 415 39063 Ten † ) . The surfaces of the clay balls will be remoulded and soften due to exposure to free H2O during plowing. The nothingnesss between the balls will be filled with H2O, slurry and sand fractions if present. This double porousness stuff will consolidate much faster than a homogenous stuff consisting of purely integral stuff and a suited theoretical account for ca rry oning analysis of the consolidation procedure is that proposed by Yang and Tan ( 2005 ) and Wilson et al.1982. ( Yang, L.-A. , Tang. S.-A. A ; Leung, C.-F. ( 2002 ) . Geotechnicque 52, No. 10, 713-725 ) ( R.K. Wilson and E.C. Aifantis, On the theory of consolidation with dual porousness – II, Int J Eng Sci 20 ( 1982 ) , pp. 1009-10035. ) Of peculiar concern to industry are trenches that have been H2O jetted in soft powdered silt and clay dirts, due to the potency for important alterations in construction and the associated uncertainness of the trench backfill belongingss around the grapevine. A remotely operated tracked ‘trencher ‘ is driven over the ocean floor. The trencher has a series of noses mounted in frontward confronting jet-legs, which penetrate the ocean floor below. Water is pumped out of these jets at high force per unit area to destruct the construction of the clay, so the grapevine will drop into it. During jetting, the construction of the seabed dirt is likely to be broken down and may liquefy wholly, particularly where the initial undrained shear strength is less than 10 kPa or where there is a important per centum of silt. Hence undrained analyses are more appropriate in this instance. It is besides possible that some integral balls of clay could stay ( although these may be capable to some remoulding ) and these can increase the strength of the ensuing backfill. Determining the grade of liquefaction or hydraulic break and the conditions under which these phenomena occur is an country of ongoing research. In peculiar, the province of the backfill and strength addition will lend well as to whether drained or undrained conditions occur during upheaval clasping events due to the different drainage features of slurried and ‘lumpy ‘ backfill ( ref ***is it Cathie et al. , 2005? ) . Likewise, the resulting clip dependant backfill behaviour following jetting will be different ; both soil provinces will consolidate and derive strength bit by bit, but this will happen much faster in the ‘lumpy ‘ backfill ( ref *** is it Cathie et al. , 2005? ) . This is peculiarly important in dirts with a high per centum of clay where the consolidation procedure can take many months, particularly after full liquefaction. Due to recent involvement in the country of upheaval buckling, a figure of analytical and numerical theoretical accounts have been developed to foretell the perpendicular opposition to shriek motion provided by the dirt and grapevine system. These theoretical accounts incorporate assorted false failure mechanisms for the behavior of the soil-pipeline system during upwards gesture through the trench backfill. The theoretical accounts are preponderantly flat strain ( 2D ) representations that assume dirt distortion and failure surfaces that either extend to the seabed surface ( shallow ) or are to the full contained within the backfill stuff ( deep ) . The uplift capacity of the soil-pipeline system will depend on the geometry of this deforming system, the mobilised shear strengths and organic structure weights, the comparative rate of burden and the potency for withdrawal of the dirt to happen behind the pipe during upheaval. Scope of the thesis Despite the aforesaid organic structure of research bing in the literature, much confusion still exists as to the appropriate design parametric quantities and failure mechanisms involved for different instances. Existing design attacks assumes that deep failure does non happen for the trench deepnesss and grapevine geometries that are found in the field, nevertheless jumping malleability solutions based on the upheaval of strip ground tackles suggest that this may non needfully be the instance ( Merifield et al, 2001 ) .This research presents both numerical finite component survey and experimental survey that examines the opposition of slurried clayey dirts against upheaval buckling of inhumed grapevines. It has been conducted to measure the current state-of-the-art, to supply counsel for the design of inhumed grapevines for backfill dirts in this province and to clear up some of the facets of uncertainness in this subject. How to cite In Field Flow Lines Of Oil Fields Environmental Sciences Essay, Essay examples

The Threats of Cyber Crime free essay sample

The hackers that were once just bored 13year olds holed up in their bedrooms, playing with computers and testing their abilities are now cyber criminals, using their college learned computer skills to steal millions of dollars. What once made everyone fear for their email accounts, MySpace and Facebook pages, have now upgraded to cyber terrorism and it only takes a click of a mouse. Cyber-crime doesn’t only affect businesses; it can also destroy our personal lives. Cyber-crime is a crime committed online. Sometimes it can be stealing someone’s username and password to an Internet site. One friend might think it’s funny to try and login on another friend’s website and upload incriminating photos or videos of them. It could also be a group of people who find each other through chat rooms, who plan on hacking into the CIA’s database. Two hacker groups that have been in the news lately, Anonymous and LulzSec, have recently hacked into 77 police databases in the United States. Once hacked, they released all the information of anyone who has filed a complaint to the police. This also included anyone who wanted to stay anonymous and credit card information they found on file. The reason these groups committed such cyber-crime was because the FBI has been conducting investigations on the members of these groups. They released a statement with the leaked data stating they felt no sympathy for what they’ve done (Swaine, 2011). These hacker groups can be a very dangerous sort. During the riots in Britain, a conservative member of Parliament had death threats emailed to her children. This occurred because she urged social networks to be taken down while the riots continued. It’s assumed that the hacker groups Anonymous and LulzSec ent them, but they haven’t claimed any responsibility for them as of yet (Brit MP says hackers threatened her kids, 2011). Investigators are skeptical thought because these groups have yet to make any death threats. Cyber-crime is now an underground economy pulling in a $100 billion dollars annually, worldwide. In this day and age, internet merchants are becoming more and more popular. There was a time when seein g the UPS man drop a package off was exciting. It meant a family member sent a present or that something special came. Now people are getting packages every day instead of going to the mall or local shopping center. Society today is even able to order all household groceries online. But in order to do so, a lot of times people have to pay for what they order through Paypal. com. PayPal. com cited a report by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission that showed losses to cyber-crime totaled at $63 million in 2010. (Internet Crime Caution Alarm Over $63m Cyber Sting, 2011) The definition of cyber-terrorism is the use of computer network tools to shut down critical national infrastructures (such as energy, transportation, government operations) or to coerce or intimidate a government or civilian population. The premise of cyber terrorism is that as nations and critical infrastructure became more dependent on computer networks for their operation, new vulnerabilities are created (Lewis, 2002) When doing a Google search of cyber-crime, 10. 4 million webpages came up (Coleman, 2011). The bigger the businesses that are hacked, the more mainstream cyber-crime becomes. The most threatening part of cyber-crime above all else, is that it funds terrorism. Al Qaeda’s Chief Cyber Terrorist was arrested in his London loft with the data of 30,000 credit cards, all of which he was using to fund his operations (Coleman, 2011). Cyber-crime has become the most threatening crime in so many ways, because it can be linked in one way or another to other crimes. And worst of all, society isn’t even in a position to defend itself against it yet. An article published in the Wall Street Journal quoted the Pentagon stating â€Å"If a cyber-attack produces the death, damage, destruction or high-level disruption that a traditional military attack would cause, then it would be a candidate for a use of force consideration, which could merit retaliation. (Pentagon: Cyber Attacks Can Count As Act Of War, 2011) There have been recent attacks on the Pentagons computer systems, which has created urgency for a better approach to keep the hackers out. There have been reports stating that the United States Government plans to spend $13. 3 billion by 2015 to defend against cyber-crime. In the fall of 2010 the International Cyber Security Protection Alliance (ICSPA) was formed. They are a global not-for-profit organization â€Å"established to channel funding, expertise and assistance directly to assist law enforcement cyber-crime units in both domestic and international markets. (Coleman, 2011) In April of 2011, Sony Online Entertainment was hacked. The attack and intrusion could end up costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars. When the company announced they had been hacked, share prices dropped 30 percent. â€Å"It seems no fraud monitoring services are currently being offered: this may be a sign that Sony is not yet confident what accounts the hacker gained access to, and so is not willing to offer such a service to 70 million + users until they know who has been affected, when such a service could cost over $100m† said Matthew Norris, e-risk and privacy expert at specialist insurer Hiscox. (FOi: Future amp; Options Intelligence, 2011) One of the best ways to protect from cyber-crime at home is to make sure the wireless Internet is protected with a password so it’s †Å"secure†. Anyone can hack into a home network using a cell phone device or PDA and confiscate all the email passwords and bank account information of their victims. There have also been suggestions of using at least one capital letter in your password or a mix of letters and numbers. Also, don’t use anything that someone might be able to guess, such as a birthday, anniversary date, children’s names, etc. In the world of E-Commerce, protecting client’s information is critical to a business’s success. Fraud filters can be put in place, as well as insuring the company is P. C. I. (Payment Card Industry) compliant. To become P. C. I compliant, the E-Commerce company cannot retain client credit card data such as credit card number, expiration date or ccv code. In place of this, the company can use tokenization practices. Tokenization practices assign the credit card information to a specific token so that instead of handing over the full credit card information, a token is applied to the client’s credit card information. At the point of sale, the token is passed over to the payment processor; the payment is applied and given back to the merchant. A token has no defined value, in place of the true data that does have value. That way if a system is hacked, the tokens are taken, not the actual data. Some people might say that political crime or financial crime is the most threatening, for obvious reasons. Political crime effects our government and financial crimes can destroy our economy. Currency counterfeiting and money laundering are both big issues when it comes to financial crimes. But in researching the effects of financial crime, it comes right back to cyber-crime with data fraud and spam. With the increasing technology, committing a financial crime will also be considered committing a cyber-crime because the Internet is used for everything from purchases, to storing consumer’s information. Political crime on the other hand, can still be committed as an act in itself. Espionage, treason or any other act committed against the government or state doesn’t have to be done through the Internet. Terrorism, as the 10 year anniversary of September 11th approaches, is also a very devastating political crime. It took the lives of thousands of people. It destroyed families who lost loved ones; and it destroyed the people who survived. Yes it made history, but it destroyed a landmark, it started the onslaught of the recession the United States is suffering from currently. Besides the thousands of people that were killed onsite that day, the â€Å"War against Terrorism† has taken thousands of soldier’s lives who were defending their country. Political crime comes in at a very close second, if not at a tie, for the most threatening crime. Cyber crime can also be committed when a cell phone with wireless internet is used to engage in unlawful sexual acts. In the case United States v. Kramer, the defendant pled guilty to transporting a minor across interstate commerce with the intent to commit criminal sexual activity. The defendant’s cell phone was used to make phone calls and send text messages to the victim. Statute 18 U. S. C. S.  § 1030(e)(1) was broad enough to allow the U. S. District Court of the Western District of Missouri to sufficiently show how the defendants cell phone could be considered a â€Å"computer† because it had internet access. Kramer appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court, but the judgment of the district court was affirmed (United States v. Kramer, 2011). Statute 18 U. S. C. S.  § 1030(e)(1) states whoever intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access and thereby contains information contained in a financial record of a financial institution, information from any department or agency of the United States, or information from any protected computer is committing fraud. The punishment for committing these acts can be a fine or imprisonment for no more than 5 years. In Phoenix, Arizona; the father of a 14 year old girl found text messages on her cell phone from a 20 year old man. The text messages that were sent were inappropriate messages about sex, and the victim admitted that the suspect also inappropriately touched her months back. If those text messages hadn’t been noticed, these crimes committed against a minor would have gone unnoticed. The suspect, Ethan Cook, was booked at the County Jail on three counts of child molestation, four counts of sexual abuse and one count of luring a minor for sexual exploitation (Fishman, 2010). The new technology that society uses makes everything so much more convenient, but, in the wrong hands can also create even more danger. Children at the age of 5 are given cell phones to appease them in public and at home. Parents used to worry about parental controls on the computers their children were using, because the dangers lurked in chat rooms and unwanted email. Now these children of the same age have personal cell phones to do all the social networking they want, with no cares in the world. Cyber-crime takes place with the spam mail in an email account, or a politician or celebrity’s risque photos posted all over the internet without consent. It affects the kids in high school who trust the wrong people with the wrong secrets or even gossip in the workplace. Too much time spent surfing around for email newsletters can often lead to strange emails from people claiming to be priests from other countries, or claims for large sums of money. They ask for the personal information of their victim and sometimes even lead them out to whatever country the scam is coming from. Then they take all of their victims’ money and leave them stranded. Cyber crime is committed when a computer is used to search for child pornography or a cell phone with internet capabilities is used to sexually harass another person. When a person accesses a business’s computer without authorization, or when a death threat is emailed. The possibilities of cyber-crime are endless and no matter how cyber crime is used, it always ends up hurting someone. References 18 U. S. C. S.  § 1030(e)(1)