gINT Software announced that they now offer timed licenses to their popular gINT Logs and gINT Professional geotechnical and geological log software. This is essentially like leasing the software for a fixed amount of time using a USB key. More after the break.
Earlier this month, there was a massive slope failure on the "Sea to Sky" highway in British Columbia. It is interesting to note that this same area had a large rockslide in 1965, and a photo of this failure is featured on the cover of the classic text, Rock Slope Engineering by Hoek and Bray. The media played up the aspect that this highway is one of the only ways to access the site of the 2010 Winter Olympic games hosted by Vancouver.
The composite image above shows the book cover and the recent rockslide event (Photo credit: Erik Eberhardt of the University of British Columbia by way of Dave’s Landslide Blog). Dave has done a fabulous job collecting photos, facts and links from around the web. In a follow up post, he added some additional photos and discussion. I recently came across an article that described how the highway originally was slated to have a tunnel bypassing the slide, but that the price tag of $200 million (CAN?) for a 1-km stretch killed the project.
There have been a number of reports on the flooding in Supai Canyon, near the Grand Canyon this past weekend. I think the best description of the event and the subsequent rescues was from the AZ211 website which I found by way of the Arizona Geology Blog (quoted after the break). The flood was impressive. I hope the areas near Havassu Falls and Mooney Falls were not too heavily damaged. I was fortunate enough to hike and camp that location back in College, the travertine is just amazing and makes the water so green. Mooney Falls and the area downstream are particularly breathtaking. [Photo credit: National Parks Service]
Many reports I’ve seen attribute the flood the result of the failure of the Redlands Dam. But again, the Arizona Geology Blog quotes the National Park Service as saying that the dam is a minor one meant to create a pond for livestock and wasn’t a significant factor in the flooding. The latest reports I saw was that 11 hikers who were missing were located today (by way of Geology.com)
According to Silicon Valley’s MercuryNews.com, a [very lucky] worker suffered minor injuries when the crane he was opperating toppled down an embankment. The accident apparently occured on a CALTRANS project as the crane was lifting a 10,000-lb pile when a "wood retaining wall" gave way. It sounds like they were constructing a soldier pile lagging wall with steel h-pile soldiers and wood lagging. (Photo by Donna Jones/Sentinel)
According to an email I received about 2 days ago, three Springer Journals will have free online access for the next 30 days. One is Hydrogeology Journal, the other two journals are…
I wrote this post for my personal blog, but I thought a few people might get a kick out of it here. It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years! Read on for my fuzzy recollections.
The new Dallas Cowboy’s stadium in Arlington, Texas has gently curving steel arches to form a retractable roof. Using rack-and-pinion system to pull the panels uphill, the system is different than most previous retractable roof systems according to the Cover Story by Nadine M. Post (no relation!) in the July 14, 2008 edition of ENR. Of course the thing that interested me was the foundations that support the two 1,225-ft long steel arches. More after the break. (Photo copyright ENR and Manhattan Construction)
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Geology.com pointed out a very nice PDF version of a Power Point presentation by the North Carolina Geologic Survey on their landslide hazard mapping efforts in western North Carolina. The presentation was dated August 1 of last year. The NCGS also has their landslide mapping products available for download, and those so inclined can download the GIS data sets as well. (Photo by NCGS)
On Tuesday July 8, Jerry DiMaggio, P.E. was confirmed as the Implementation Manager for the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP2) at the National Academies. He will be retiring from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Office of Bridge Technology, where he is the Principal Bridge Engineer – Geotechnical and National Program Manager (essentially the top dog geotechnical engineer in the country for surface transportation). He is an internationally recognized figure in geotechnical engineering and geo-construction. Read on for more details.
Ingrain, Inc. has just announced the acquisition of a NanoXCT Imaging device to be used in conjunction with their reservoir modeling capabilities to provide geoscientists an unprecedented look at the pore properties of rock samples, even oil sands. From their press release:
The 3-D NanoXCT imaging device, which is the first of its kind to be used outside of the microchip industry and some of the synchrotron beams in the country, is capable of focusing an X-ray source onto an extremely small region of interest within a rock sample — as small as 20-60 microns. The best resolution of the new device is 0.05 microns (50 nanometers) or 1/1000th of the diameter of a strand of human hair.
Click through for the links to the press release and the company website which has some nice 3D animations of oil displacing water in rock pores. The image below is a screen capture from one of those animations. (All screen captures property of Ingrain, Inc.)
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