Crafts
Friday, March 19, 2004
Scalia won't recuse himself from Cheney case
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia refused Thursday to recuse himself from an upcoming case involving Vice President Dick Cheney, with whom he recently hunted and dined.
"I do not believe my impartiality can reasonably be questioned," Scalia said in a 21-page memorandum, rejecting suggestions of an appearance of a conflict of interest.
"If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court Justice can be bought so cheap, the Nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined," he wrote.
Cheney's office had no immediate response.
In the detailed memo, Scalia cited legal precedent and offered personal observations about the controversy.
He dismissed a call from the environmental group Sierra Club that he recuse himself because a January hunting trip he and Cheney took together gave the "appearance of impropriety."
That trip came three weeks after the high court agreed to hear a case over whether the White House had to turn over documents relating to the energy task force Cheney headed in 2001.
Under judicial rules, Supreme Court justices, unlike other judges, have the power to decide whether to remove themselves from cases. The justices have wide discretion since their decisions cannot be appealed.
Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont was one of two Democratic lawmakers to call on Scalia to recuse himself. The other was Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.
"Instead of strengthening public confidence in our court system, Justice Scalia's decision risks undermining it," Leahy said in a statement.
"Such near-sightedness on a matter so basic to public trust in the independent judiciary is as puzzling to the American people as it is harmful to the court. For other courts, the reason to recuse under such circumstances would be self-evident."
Federal laws dictate judges or justices should remove themselves from cases if questions arise about their fairness or impartiality.
Scalia concluded friendship alone did not meet that standard. "My recusal is required if ... my impartiality might reasonably be questioned," he said.
"Why would that result follow from my being in a sizable group of persons, in a hunting camp with the vice president, where I never hunted with him in the same blind or had other opportunity for private conversation?"
Scalia said that he did not remember being alone with Cheney and that they never discussed the case.
"The only possibility [for recusal] is that it would suggest I am a friend of his. But while friendship is a ground for recusal of a Justice, where the personal fortune or the personal freedom is at issue, it has traditionally not been a ground for recusal where official action is at issue, no matter how important the official action was."
Scalia and Cheney also had a private dinner with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Maryland's Eastern Shore in November, when the Supreme Court was considering Cheney's appeal.
Scalia said he was worried a recusal in this case would lead to calls by journalists and others "to suggest improprieties and demand recusals, for other inappropriate (and increasingly silly) reasons."
The justice also suggested he was being held to a legal double standard. Scalia noted an attorney for the Sierra Club had invited him to speak at Stanford Law School, where the lawyer teaches, two days before the environmental group filed a brief in the case.
"I saw nothing amiss in that friendly letter and invitation," Scalia wrote. "I surely would have thought otherwise if I had applied the standards urged in the present motion."
Cheney is fighting a federal court's order that he release internal files of the energy task force he headed for the Bush administration. A lawsuit alleges he made improper contacts with energy industry lobbyists when developing government policy.
Cheney's task force met throughout in 2001 and developed a report recommending opening up more federal land to oil, natural gas and coal development.
The White House has argued the courts and Congress have no business making inquiries, even limited ones, into the decision-making power of federal agencies and offices. Cheney has said executive power needs to be increased in such confidentiality cases.
A lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a private watchdog group, and the Sierra Club seeks to gather records related to the task force.
Attorneys for the groups have said they want to know whether lobbyists for the energy industry privately helped craft the U.S. government's long-term energy policy.
Arguments in the case will be heard next month, with a ruling expected by late June.
Thursday, March 11, 2004
High-tech sonar to help search for water taxi victims
BALTIMORE, Maryland -- Recovery teams returned to Baltimore Harbor's frigid waters Monday with state-of-the-art sonar to help in their search for three people still missing from a weekend water taxi accident.
The 36-foot Seaport Taxi pontoon boat capsized Saturday afternoon in a sudden storm, driven by 50 mph winds across the Inner Harbor. Twenty-two people were rescued from the accident, but one woman later died.
Fire Chief William Goodwin said a manufacturer provided the high-tech equipment, but it did not arrive until after darkness and choppy water forced an end to the search Sunday night.
"The water's about 36 degrees; there's zero visibility, so each diver gets about 15 to 20 minutes bottom time," Goodwin said. "That seems to be the most time-consuming effort, switching the divers because of the cold."
He said that the department's older sonar had given some good indications Sunday and that teams hoped the new equipment would narrow their search area in the harbor's shipping channel, where depths are about 50 feet.
"We have three people out there that we have to bring home, and that's what we're committed to doing," the chief said.
Recovery teams are looking for a 6-year-old boy, a 26-year-old man and a 26-year-old woman. Five people remain hospitalized; two -- an 8-year-old girl and a 30-year-old woman -- are in critical condition.
Fast-acting rescuers -- including reservists from the nearby Naval Reserve Center -- pulled 22 of the 25 people aboard the boat from the water. A 60-year-old woman who was rescued later died.
James Bond, spokesman for Living Classrooms, the nonprofit organization that operates Seaport Taxi, commended what he called "the heroic efforts" of reservists, police, firefighters and the Coast Guard.
"They did some amazing things and saved a lot of lives," he said, adding that Seaport Taxi was not operating Monday in deference to the victims' families and would decide on a day-to-day basis about operations.
NTSB looking at weather as a factor
Earlier Monday, National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Ellen Engleman Conners said that the board's investigation would cover a wide array of issues, including the weather conditions and human factors.
"In this accident, we're really focusing ... [on] the weather, the operation of the vessel, the safety education that would have been given to passengers," she said.
"We're going to look at the captain's discretion and decisions that he made, the owner-operators' decisions to operate under such weather conditions. We're looking at the vessel itself to ensure hull integrity, systems that were in place, the steering and propulsion were mechanically sound."
But she said the key focus would be on weather and safety, particularly what safety education the passengers would have received before their trip began.
Conners said a small craft advisory was issued Saturday afternoon, when the squall raced across the harbor with 50 mph winds, flipping the boat into the chilly waters.
She said investigators had not completed the timeline of the accident and couldn't say if the advisory was issued before or after the boat left a stop at Fort McHenry for the next one at Fells Point.
"We also knew there was communication between the owner-operators and all of their vessels as well as with this particular captain," she said. "They were in the process of trying to return to a safe area."
The boat was certified to give 30-minute tours around several points of interest and was on one of its regular loops around the harbor when the accident occurred. It was required to carry one life jacket per person aboard, but their use was not required.
NTSB investigators Sunday interviewed the captain, the boat's mate, two passengers and the owner and operator of the boat, Conners said.
The boat's captain voluntarily gave investigators blood and urine samples, which will be used for standard procedure toxicology studies, she said.
Bond said Living Classrooms occasionally allows teenagers to serve as mates on the taxis to learn the position but that the mate on the boat was "a man in his 40s who is a licensed captain."
"Our guys did the best they could with this storm that came out of nowhere," Bond said.
The vessel was righted Sunday afternoon and towed to a dock where it will be lifted from the water for an inspection of its hull, steering and propulsion systems, Conners said. A preliminary inspection of the steering indicated it was normal, she said.
Five other vessels operated by Seaport Taxi also will be inspected, Conners said.
Goodwin said the water taxis on Baltimore Harbor have an excellent safety record, ferrying about 70,000 people per year for at least a decade with no accidents until this one.
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Aerial robotics at UA Engineering students build craft they will enter in international competition
A UA club is building aircraft that can see and think and - members hope - win an international competition this summer.
The University of Arizona Aerial Robotics Club gathered Saturday at the Tucson International Modelplex Park, west of the Tucson Mountains, to show what its airplanes can do, but weather conditions and technical difficulties intervened.
"There were too many problems with the equipment," said Keith Brock, team president and aerospace engineering senior. "Too many things were telling us not to fly."
The club will head to Fort Benning, Ga., in July to compete in the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems' International Aerial Robotics Competition.
Last year, when the club entered the competition for the first time, eight members scored second place in the overall competition, said Jessica Dooley, an aerospace engineering senior.
"We focused all our energy in completing level one," Dooley said of the four-level competition, which draws teams from as far as China and Germany.
Its aircraft had to fly on its own - without team help - for 3 kilometers, or 1.8 miles. The team also won best technical presentation, best technical paper and most innovative design last year, she said.
This summer, the team will be attempting level two.
The plane, again flying on its own, must find a specific building in an urban setting, based on a symbol somewhere on it, and detect points of entry, such as windows or doors.
If the airplane runs into a problem, it must be able to figure out what to do.
Level three requires the aircraft to enter the building or send in a vehicle that will capture images of what is inside.
Once all three levels are completed, the team must be able to complete them all again together. The team that competes all the levels in the fastest time wins.
Brock said he doesn't expect any team to win the prize this year. His team, with about 14 active members, is just looking to complete level two successfully.
Each year the prize grows by $10,000. So far no one has won the grand prize, bringing this year's pot to $40,000.
Even if they win the grand prize, the team members do not get the money, Dooley said.
"It just goes back to the club," she said. "We would buy more equipment."
One aircraft can cost anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000, making sponsor support crucial to the success of the team.
The UA's team has a budget of about $30,000, compared with the $4 million budget of last year's level two winner, Georgia Tech, Brock said.
Local supporters include Raytheon, Advanced Ceramics Research and Lockheed Martin. Raytheon has donated about $10,000, Brock said.
Raytheon employee Jon Leonard was at the model park Saturday to see the club's work.
"We are very interested in their technology," Leonard said of the team's designs and execution of tasks. "These students are the best and brightest of what the university has created. They are exactly what Raytheon likes."
First-time competitor Derek Miller said he is in the club for the fun and the experience.
"You learn so much more doing this than you would in any classroom," the aerospace engineering freshman said.
Thursday, February 26, 2004
Intel Crafts Fiber Optic Silicon Chip
Intel has developed a way to move light through silicon at gigahertz speeds that could boost the bandwidth of servers and PCs with photonic connections, the company says.
Huge Speed Boost
In an article published in the current of Nature magazine, Intel details its work on a silicon photonics modulator that uses light to emit steams of data much the way today's chips use electricity. The chipmaker built a modulator that runs at 1GHz, far faster than the previous limit of around 20MHz, says Victor Krutul, Intel's senior manager of silicon photonics strategy.
The modulator essentially acts like a shutter that intermittently blocks a light beam, turning it off and on, Krutul says. The resulting on and off pulses of light correspond to the digital "0s" and "1s" that make up a stream of computer data, he says.
Optical devices are mostly used in large-scale deployments such as underseas cable due to the expense of constructing and maintaining such a link, Krutul says. They can carry far greater amounts of bandwidth than copper wires, and cause less interference, but are extremely expensive for anything but a few specific uses because of the exotic materials required to build the optical equipment, he adds.
Cheaper, Faster Chips
By bringing optical technology into silicon, Intel can reduce the cost per modulator, much the way it has reduced the cost per transistor of its processors, Krutul says. The company can also reduce the size of these optical devices to the point where they can be used in servers, and eventually PCs, he says.
But those days are still off in the future. Intel will have to increase the speed of the modulator to 10GHz before it is practical for server backplanes, Krutul adds. He doubts that will happen before the end of the decade.
When it does happen, optical connections could increase the speed of server connections and decrease the complexity of maintaining a network. Optical connections can take advantage of a technique known as multiplexing, where a number of different optical signals with different wavelengths can be sent down the same cable, Krutul says. This could help greatly reduce the maze of cables pouring out of the back of a conventional server rack, he says.
Intel will discuss the breakthrough in more detail during its Intel Developer Forum next week, where it usually provides attendees with a glimpse of some technologies such as photonic modulators that are seven to ten years away from entering the real world.
