WASHINGTON: One of the strongest earthquakes to strike the US east coast in decades rattled offices Tuesday in downtown Washington and caused anxious evacuations from skyscrapers as far away as New York.
The Pentagon, the US Capitol and monuments in the nation’s capital were all evacuated after the 5.9-magnitude quake, which was shallow with its epicenter only 0.1 miles (kilometers) underground.
There were no immediate reports of injuries, but the temblor also hit as emergency officials warned of a possible strike on the east coast of Hurricane Irene, which was roaring through the Atlantic.
The North Anna nuclear power plant near the epicenter of the earthquake at Lake Anna, Virginia automatically shut down without incident and no damage was apparent, a spokesman for Dominion Power said.
“We did lose on-site power, but all the diesel generators are up and running,” Dominion spokesman Richard Zuercher said 30 minutes after the quake. “Everything appears to be operating just fine.”
Seismologists from the US Geological Survey said the epicenter was 27 miles (47 kilometers) from Charlottesville, Virginia, and 87 miles (139 kilometers) from Washington, where Reagan National Airport also ordered some evacuations.
In Washington, a national park helicopter was seen circling the Washington Monument, inspecting the towering landmark for cracks.
Only minor damage was reported in Washington as the quake shook plaster from walls and, according to a CNN report, knocked damaged pinnacles from the National Cathedral.
The cathedral said on its website that it was closed pending an investigation of damage.
The US Geological Survey said the earthquake was the largest in the state of Virginia since May 1897, when a 5.9 quake struck in Giles County, near the western edge of the state.
“This is one of the largest earthquakes on the east coast in quite a while, in many decades at least,” USGS spokeswoman Lucy Jones told CNN. “It’s not unprecedented. But it’s one of the largest we’ve had there.”
The quake was felt as far away as Martha’s Vineyard, around 500 miles (800 kilometers) away, off the coast of Massachusetts, where President Barack Obama was playing golf during his vacation. And some reported feeling the impact in locations as distant as Toronto to the north, and Atlanta to the south.
In New York, thousands of people poured onto the streets as evacuation procedures put into place after September 11 attacks were activated.
Police in New York herded people toward local parks away from tall buildings as precautionary checks were started.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance had just started speaking at a press conference about the sensational Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case when the building started shaking.
Fatima Richardson, 28, who was sitting on the steps of courthouse on her lunch break said: “You could see the building moving. I was just freaking out.”
The Pentagon, the world’s biggest office building located across the Potomac from the capital, ordered a brief evacuation, which was carried out calmly. Several hundred people streamed out of the building and officials said there was no damage other than a ruptured water line.
11.30 AM: Carpool partner makes me wait for 20 minutes now. We are going to be late for the project meeting. Both of us were up till 4.00am playing Angry Birds but still we need to be on time.
After an exchange of colourful words, I ask my carpool partner why is he so dressed up. He’s wearing the same tie and shirt that he wore at a colleague’s valima last Saturday. I’m wearing the same jeans I’ve been wearing the whole week and a Bon Jovi T-shirt.
12.00 PM: Breakfast and then deciding music list for the day since I’m the official DJ of the design firm. Carpool partner is deeply embarrassed. He doesn’t want anyone to know that he thought the client meeting was today. Now everyone’s asking, “So how was the interview?”
12.30 PM: Meeting begins on the best project of my life, I’ve even been dreaming about it. It’s the website of the all-time popular music show that is on air these days. For this project everyone sits late because no one wants to miss even a second of the discussions going on.
2.00 PM: I scribble on my notepad that I need to add on my CV that I am the team leader of this project which means I am responsible for designing, planning user experience, coding and content management.
2.40 PM: Right now I’m trying to remove the bugs that were on the web pages of the first episode. After I am done with that I have to start working on uploading the new content. I get to see the episodes before anyone does so it is like a 007 job! I have been sworn to secrecy, but of course I make sure to brag about it to my non-designer friends.
3.35 PM: Chatter boxes all around me, but I try to focus on my work — a problem I need to resolve ASAP. The files sizes are heavy which means it takes a lot of time to download them, and that means there will be a lot of load on the server.
If I compress the files too much it will compromise the sound quality and that would be unfair to the customers and the client, especially since the client is giving out the content free-of-cost to the public.
3.51 PM: Carpool partner informs me that there is a client on the phone. It’s the fire-breathing dragon-ladies; I’d rather talk to those credit-card recovery guys than this annoying pair. “Yeh sahi nahi lag raha hai” (It isn’t according to their standards).
4.10: While talking to one of the dragon ladies I accidentally knock over the Pepsi bottle on to my T-shirt. Now Bon Jovi and I are a sticky mess. I try washing it off but now there’s a round wet patch on my stomach area.
I feel like even more of an idiot when the pretty girl who recently joined comes over to ask me about a CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) syntax. In between dabbing my T-shirt with tissues and trying to recall the syntax I scare her off. “Great going”, snickers carpool partner. I hate him!
Key skills required to be a Front-end, User Interface Web Designer:
Having bought you the first images of the Pendulum movement, we can now share with you the very first photos of the TAG Heuer Grand Carrera Pendulum and its secret- this watch does not have a hairspring to regulate the movement- instead, it uses magnets.
This explains why TAG Heuer have joined forces with Tesla, because Telsa is not only the name of a car company, but also the name of the units of magnetic force- so a nice tie-in.
The Pendulum concept started about four years ago and is still in concept form- expect it to take a while for the technology to be ready for production, just as was the case with the Monaco V4 movement.
The case is PVD-coated and weighs in at an impressive 47mm- so much for watches getting smaller! The movement of the pendulum looks fantastic and there is a see-through window on the pendulum so that you can see the workings.
One of the key challenges with the design was ensuring the linear response from the regulator- this is relatively simple with a hair spring, but as you’d know when you put two magnets together, the magnetic pull does not increase in a linear fashion, but exponentially.
TAG Heuer have released a brief video to explain more about the movement:
The first-ever mechanical movement without hairspring
Press release TAG Heuer, the leading pioneer of Swiss watchmaking innovation since 1860, reinvents the heart of the mechanical movement
Developed and constructed in-house by TAG Heuer A major watchmaking innovation!
During its 150 years at the forefront of the Swiss avant-garde, TAG Heuer has written some of the most important chapters in the history of mechanical watchmaking — from the oscillating pinion patented in 1887 to the groundbreaking 1/100th-of-a-second precision of the Calibre 360 chronograph in 2005.
Technological advancements like this point to one underlying truth: TAG Heuer does not innovate for innovation’s sake. The brand’s passion for the avant-garde is an essential element of its DNA and history, and the driving force of its R&D strategy.
TAG Heuer R&D objectives in the 3rd millennium: to progressively re-invent the three elementary principles of watchmaking — energy, transmission and regulation
Like most machines, a mechanical watch movement involves four basic operations: energy is generated, stored, transmitted and regulated. For centuries, these constants of mechanical watchmaking have been performed by three complementary blocks: a power storage system with cylindrical barrel, a transmission system with pinions and gears, and a regulation system with balance wheel, spiral hairspring and escapement.
With the TAG Heuer Monaco V4 Concept Watch, TAG Heuer substituted the traditional pinion and gear transmission with a belt-driven mechanical transmission. An award-winning BaselWorld concept watch in 2004, the Monaco V4 became a commercial reality at the end of 2009, when it was successfully launched in limited edition of 150 “Haute Horlogerie” pieces.
Now, to mark its 150th anniversary, TAG Heuer proudly introduces the TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept, the first-ever mechanical movement without hairspring.
TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept: a radical “out of the box” rethink of mechanical time regulation design and performance
Since the creation of the Galileo-inspired hairspring by Christiaan Huygens in 1675, the regulating organ of all mechanical watches has been based on a balance wheel and spiral-shaped torsion hairspring system. A coiled strip of fine metal alloy, the hairspring provides the torque necessary for the balance wheel to oscillate and regulate its frequency. Over the centuries, it has been significantly modified and improved. Charles-Edouard Guillaume (1861-1938), the son of a Swiss watchmaker, discovered new alloys (Invar and Elinvar) that significantly reduced the metal spring’s thermal sensitivity. Guillaume won the Nobel Prize for Physics for this invention in 1920.
With the challenge of temperature diminished by Guillaume’s alloys, the spiral hairspring regulation system came to dominate mechanical movement design. However, the mechanical hairspring has three serious design limitations: a mass that makes it sensitive to gravity and deforms its geometry; a material that makes it sensitive to thermal expansion; and a divergence between its geometric centre and its centre of mass. These may cause isochronal issues that can be technically and physically improved but never completely eliminated.
Overcoming the design limitations inherent in the traditional regulation system by eliminating the need for a spiral hairspring was the first challenge TAG Heuer set for itself. The second was keeping the movement 100% mechanical: conventional watchmaking wisdom has always held that a mechanical watch without spiral hairspring would necessarily require another energy source for its regulation.
In the TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept, the traditional hairspring is replaced by an “invisible” or virtual spring derived from magnets. The complete device forms a harmonic oscillator. The magnetic field, generated by means of 4 high-performance magnets and controlled in 3D through complex geometric calculations, provides the linear restoring torque necessary for the alternative oscillations of the balance wheel. The oscillating period of the TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept is resistant to changes from perturbing forces, which is what makes it an exceptionally good timekeeping device. The movement built with this revolutionary oscillator is fully mechanical and does not contain any electronics or driven actuators. The magnets generate a constant field over decades.
TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept, the world’s first oscillator in a mechanical movement without hairspring, beats at 43,200/hour (6 Hertz) — making it a superlative representative of TAG Heuer’s unique mastery of high frequencies and ultimate precision. It requires no additional components and is based on physical magnetic properties. It gets its name from an earlier Huygens creation — the pendulum clock of 1657.
TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept: A potent new technical milestone in mechanical movements
The TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept not only overturns 3 centuries of conventional watchmaking tradition, it also represents in and of itself an enormous technological leap forward. In a classical spiral hairspring system, the effect of gravity due to mass is a dominant issue. With the TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept, the problem no longer even exists. There is no loss of amplitude and the movement’s frequency can be modulated on a very large spectrum of frequency without overburdening the power supply. The result is a significant increase in precision (division of time) and performance (frequency accuracy and stability).
The TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept is the first-ever magnetic oscillator without hairspring capable of providing a restoring torque comparable to that of a hairspring: the basic principle of the Swiss anchor escapement is therefore unchanged, but the absence of mass and therefore inertia allows for much larger frequencies. Theoretical precision is significantly higher as it is possible to oscillate at small angles (the elementary principle of oscillator accuracy) without altering the return torque and, especially important, without causing geometric deformations.
TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept Project: 5 years of R&D effort
The TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept project involved in-house TAG Heuer R&D engineers and watchmakers working in an extensive research partnership with microsystems research experts at the Integrated Actuators Laboratory (LAI), part of the Microtechnics Institute of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL).
Starting from scratch has required advanced digital simulation coupled with physical analysis (mechanics, magnetism and thermal behaviour). It took TAG Heuer’s R&D team 3 years of intensive digital 3D simulation research to precisely orient the TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept’s virtual magnetic spring.
An old adversary still remains: the magnets are sensitive to temperature. The challenge facing TAG Heuer now is to discover the magnetic equivalent of invar-elinvar: to, in a sense, add Charles Edouard Guillaume’s accomplishments to those of Christiaan Huygens. Once addressed, the TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept will no longer be a concept but a new milestone in mechanical regulator technology. As with the V4, this may take years, but TAG Heuer is committed to taking on the challenge and pursuing the epic Pendulum adventure.
TAG Heuer does not claim that the Pendulum Concept will take the place of traditional, high-quality Swiss hairsprings in mainstream mechanical movements, but rather offer a “Haute Horlogerie” alternative, which could lead to high-end limited editions in the future, as was the case with the Monaco V4’s movement transmission innovations.
TAG Heuer Grand Carrera Pendulum Concept: a breakthrough movement housed inside a motor sports-inspired icon of premium luxury
The Grand Carrera is the utmost prestigious incarnation of TAG Heuer’s unrivalled motor racing heritage and passion for avant-garde design and technology. Launched in 2007 and inspired by modern GT cars, the series was an instant success, widely acclaimed by watch and motor-sports enthusiasts for its effortless, at-a-glance readability and superlative aesthetics.
The design of the TAG Heuer Grand Carrera Pendulum Concept is faithful to the exclusive luxury codes of the Grand Carrera: polished and angled edges, curved and facetted horns on both sides of black titanium covered steel case. The special dial aperture at 9 o’clock allows to admire the beating heart of TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept’s avant-garde movement.
Inside and out, this is a superlative timepiece, a noble extension of the Grand Carrera collection and a worthy showcase of a breakthrough advancement in watchmaking technology.
The TAG Heuer Grand Carrera Pendulum Concept opens a promising new era in watchmaking, with potentially powerful new movements precise to ever-smaller fractions of time. The effect on future watches and chronographs design and function may be huge — and TAG Heuer once again leads the way even though it will take years before it will become a commercial realty. Patents have been filed and are pending.
1. The lack of originality. Just because the name Apple worked, it doesn’t mean you can cash in on the whole fruit thing. You’ve only encouraged mobile manufacturer to come up with more silly names. I really don’t want to own a phone called a Mango, Lychee, or Banana. Imagine telling someone that your Banana isn’t working — crazy and wrong on so many levels!
2. The mad addiction to the flashing red light. Why isn’t it flashing? Is my phone okay? Did I break it? Is the network faulty? Was I offensive on my BB status? Do my friends like me? They must hate me. That must be the only reason why no one has bbm’ed, messaged, emailed or called me in 96 seconds.
3. The unending conversations on BBM. When MSN conversations would get boring, you could simply pretend that your internet was crap, there was a bijlee breakdown or your dad needed the computer. But with BBM, there no way to casually end a conversation with a boring person.
4. The horribly slow browser. It reminds me of the days when an entire orchestra played before your internet started.
5. If you dare to watch a video on BB, be prepared to spare 1 complete hour to watching the 5 minute video on YouTube.
6. Blackberry isn’t smart and intuitive. More so, out of all the smart phones, the Blackberry seems to have ADD, severe dyslexia and is a retarded counterpart in its class.
7. The tantric trackball and trackpad. What seems fun at first quickly becomes annoyingly painful to use. Plus, if you ruin the trackpad (which I have once), you can search from Saddar to Defence, no one will be able to fix or replace it.
8. How quickly the battery becomes “too low for radio use”. What is THAT supposed to even mean? So while I’m charging the stupid thing, shouldn’t it allow me to make some calls? Why all this ‘leave-me-alone-to-recharge-myself’ drama?
9. The ridiculously long startup process. There is no SMART phone in this day and age which takes as long as a Blackberry to initialise and start up.
10. The hype surrounding it. No no, they should call it the hypeberry! All those stories about your instant addiction to BB, your growing love for 24/7 communication and your world changing once you get a BB couldn’t be farther from the truth.
The company was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda in 1937 as a spinoff from his father's company Toyota Industries to create automobiles. Three years earlier, in 1934, while still a department of Toyota Industries, it created its first product, the Type A engine, and, in 1936, its first passenger car, the Toyota AA. Toyota Motor Corporation group companies are Toyota (including the Scion brand), Lexus, Daihatsuand Hino Motors,[6] along with several "non-automotive" companies.[7] TMC is part of the Toyota Group, one of the largest conglomerates in the world.
In predominantly Chinese-speaking countries or regions using traditional Chinese characters, e.g. Hong Kong and Taiwan, Toyota is known as "豊田".[9] In predominantly Chinese speaking countries using simplified Chinese characters (e.g. China), Toyota is known as "丰田"[10](pronounced as "Fēngtián" in Mandarin Chinese ). These are the same characters as the founding family's name "Toyoda" in Japanese, which translate to "fertile rice paddies" in the Chinese language as well.
Suzuki Motor Corporation is a Japanese multinational corporation headquartered inHamamatsu, Japan that specializes in manufacturing compact automobiles and 4x4 vehicles, a full range of motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), outboard marine engines, wheelchairs and a variety of other small internal combustion engines. Suzuki is Japan's 4th largest automobile manufacturer after Toyota, Nissan, Honda and the 9th largest automobile manufacturer in the world by production volume,[5]employs over 45,000 people, has 35 main production facilities in 23 countries and 133 distributors in 192 countries.[citation needed] According to statistics from the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA), Suzuki is Japan's second-largest manufacturer of small cars and trucks.
