Material defects part of factors causing MRT breakdown

A "rare confluence of factors" led to the major MRT disruptions on Dec 15 and 17 last year and this included critical material defects, train operator SMRT Trains told the Committee of Inquiry (COI) yesterday.

In its opening statement presented by Senior Counsel Cavinder Bull, SMRT said that the immediate cause of the two incidents, where stalled trains affected 210,000 commuters over two days, was the rail claws dislodging. The claws secure the electrified third rail, which supplies power to the trains and are part of the third rail support assembly that includes a fastener and insulator.

Mr Bull said that other factors include the location of the incidents, the type of claws at the incident sectors, higher vibration levels and higher upward forces on the current collector devices (CCDs), which include the current collector shoes of the trains that make contact with the bottom of the third rail.

"The convergence of these factors triggered a chain of consecutive dislodgment of claws holding the third rail," he explained.

At the start of the COI, the Attorney-General's Chambers said that dropped claws were not unusual as SMRT had reported such accounts between 2006 and 2011. What was unusual, said Second Solicitor-General Lionel Yee in his opening statement, was the multiple claw and incident failure.

SMRT's investigations by its vibration experts and its Internal Investigation Team - whom Mr Bull emphasised consisted of many who were independent of SMRT management - showed that the dislodgment of two adjacent claws at each incident site caused the third rail to sag towards the track bed.Learn all about solarpanel.

"The sagging was then aggravated by the next passing train," he said. When the CCD shoes of this next train encountered the sag, "it was as if it hit an obstacle".

"This horizontal force caused the CCD assembly casing to crack diagonally,Find the cheapest chickencoop online through and buy the best hen houses and chook pens in Australia." said Mr Bull, adding that other factors could have contributed to the dislodgment of further claws. These were vibration caused by the trains travelling at almost full speed of 80 km/h, and a sagged third rail that had become flexible, as it was no longer supported by its full complement of claws.

In addition, a report by experts from TUV SUD states that the main cause of the Dec 15 incident was a defective fastener and defective insulators on the claw assembly.

"The crack on the fastener was a result of its non-uniform structure, casting defects and residual stresses inside the material," said Mr Bull, adding that thermal plastic contamination of the insulator's raw material caused the cracking. "It appears that these material defects pointed out by TUV SUD may be manufacturing defects," he said.We offer the best ventilationsystem,Aeroscout rtls provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking.

LTA does not dispute that the sagging of the power conductor rail damaged the CCD and caused the breakdown in train services, said Senior Counsel Andrew Yeo of Allen & Gledhill. The authority's review of SMRT's maintenance regime has also found it "generally comprehensive and satisfactory".

"Nevertheless, a select number of areas have been identified as requiring improvement and/or further review, in the interests of minimising the risk of further disruptions," said Mr Yeo.

In SMRT's opening statement, the point was made that the LTA is in charge of the design of the infrastructure, while SMRT merely operates the trains.

Mr Bull emphasised "SMRT's intent is not to shirk its responsibilities" but the LTA is the owner of the rail infrastructure as well as the regulator, while SMRT has to comply with maintenance,If you have a kidneystone, replacement and renewal standards set by LTA.

Mr Bull stressed the distinction between the two parties' responsibilities even as Mr Yee called the inquiry a "fact-finding COI" aimed at problem-solving, with no determination of guilt or liability.

Chip ahoy! Are RFID credit cards secure?

Ask any of the estimated 9 million Americans who become victims of identity theft each year: getting billed for someone else's credit card charges stinks.

Enter the "radio frequency identification" (RFID) credit card. Designed to provide extra layers of security against identity theft, an RFID card transmits credit card information through radio waves from a chip embedded in the card..

If you're using a card with an RFID chip, and your merchant has a compatible card reader, you don't have to swipe your card when making a transaction. You merely hold your card within one to four inches of the card scanner. This practice raises questions as to how safe the technology is and whether you should protect your RFID card with a special wallet or card sleeve. Here's the skinny on RFID credit cards.

Available through credit card companies including Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, RFID cards eliminate certain security hazards posed by traditional cards, but could make you vulnerable to others. According to Denis G. Kelly, author of "The Official Identity Theft Prevention Handbook" and chairman of the Identity Ambassador Commission in Seattle, the security benefits of the RFID cards are threefold: limited card exposure, data encryption and new authentication codes.

A side benefit: RFID cards also help speed the checkout process. "RFID technology tends to cut the overall transaction time in half," says Kelly.

Because the technology doesn't require card holders to physically remove the card from their wallet, Kelly adds that RFID can eliminate the need for waiters, retail clerks, and all other salespeople to handle your card. That creepy guy lurking behind you at the grocery store? He won't get a chance to see your credit card info because you'll never have to take your card out.

The new technology causes some to worry that it's now easier to steal RFID credit card information. Because your RFID card allows you to transact without pulling out the card itself, critics argue that identity thieves could swipe your credit information simply by placing an RFID scanner nearby.

Jay Foley, executive director of the Identity Theft Resource Center in San Diego, is quick to admit that thieves could get your card info remotely through a scanner, but adds that they probably wouldn't be able to use it. Unlike magnetic stripe cards, RFID credit cards encrypt a card holder's information. To access a consumer's account, thieves not only have to scan the card, they also have to break the card issuer's encryption.

RFID cards also create a new authentication code for each transaction. If an identity thief nabs info by physically skimming a traditional credit card, he or she can use that information as many times as they like, racking up purchase after purchase until the card gets reported. If all they have is the information from your RFID chip, they can only make one purchase with that authentication code.

"If someone captures your card , the most they can use it is one transaction," Foley explains.

But of course, the encryption and authentication code only helps you if your card information is swiped remotely from an unauthorized scanner. If a thief physically nabs your RFID card, they can still use the magnetic stripe all over town until you alert the authorities.

Red Cross urges fire safety after responding to recent Winfield fire

The American Red Cross Midway-Kansas Chapter is urging families to be cautious when using space heaters and other heating sources and to make a plan in case of a home fire.

The safety alert comes after Red Cross volunteers responded to a house fire at 517 E. 15th Ave. at 4:54 a.m. on Friday that affected four people. It appeared the fire started around a heating unit in the attic, but according to the Winfield Fire Department, an exact cause of the fire is still undetermined. Red Cross responders helped the family recover by providing things like food, shelter, clothing and stuffed animals for children.

“We’re deeply saddened for those who’ve been affected,” said Bev Morlan, American Red Cross Midway-Kansas Chapter regional executive director.

“As we continue to provide support for those who need us, we also encourage others to take action to minimize the risk of a home fire.”

Heat sources such as space heaters, fireplaces or wood and coal stoves can pose a fire hazard. To reduce the risk of heating-related fires, the Red Cross recommends keeping anything that can burn — such as paper, bedding or furniture — at least three feet away from heating equipment and fireplaces and to never leave these unattended.

“Unfortunately, during the holidays, it is typical to see an increase in house fires because of colder temperatures,” said James Williams, American Red Cross Midway-Kansas Chapter Public Relations manager.

The Red Cross recommends the following steps to help protect your home and loved ones from a fire:

All heaters need space. Keep all things that can burn (paper, matches, bedding, furniture, clothing, carpets, and rugs) at least three feet away from heating equipment.

Never leave a fire in the fireplace unattended, and use a glass or metal fire screen to keep fire and embers in the fireplace.

Never use a cooking range or oven to heat your home.

Turn off portable space heaters every time you leave the room or go to sleep.

Have wood and coal stoves, fireplaces, and chimneys inspected annually by a professional, and cleaned if necessary.

If you must use a space heater, place it on a level, hard and nonflammable surface (such as ceramic tile floor), not on rugs, or carpets or near bedding or drapes. Plug power cords directly into outlets and never into an extension cord.

Red Cross volunteers on the scene were members of the chapter’s Disaster Action Team, a group of specially trained volunteers who respond to the scene of a local disaster when called upon at any time of the day or night. Last year, Red Cross responded to 186 fires in south-central Kansas.

Daily Deals Evolve, New Competitors Emerge

Consider it the daily-deal gold rush. First, there was Groupon's much-anticipated IPO in early November, which valued the market leader at $12.7 billion. Now its top competitor, LivingSocial, is reportedly set to close another big round of funding that would put its valuation at around $6 billion. While such nods of approval from Wall Street may offer some validation to Groupon, LivingSocial and the hundreds of imitators their business models have spawned, on Main Street, small-business owners still have their doubts.

"These deal sites call up and claim their service is different from Groupon, but they're pretty much all the same," says Mike Scotese, an owner of Grey Lodge Pub in Philadelphia. Scotese started receiving regular pitches from daily-deal companies about two years ago. These days, they call at least once a week, offering to design and distribute a coupon for the pub's food in exchange for a cut of the sales it brings in. "'No thanks,' I tell them. We're guaranteed to lose money on sales to customers we'll probably never see again."

Many local merchants agree. And that's created an opening for savvy startups looking not to imitate the model, but to innovate.

With the Groupon model, to actually boost a business's bottom line, the thinking goes, daily deals need to attract at least one of two types of customers: Those who spend more than a coupon's face value and those who return after redeeming the deal. But recent research reveals that group-buying services often fail to serve up either kind of customer.

In June, a survey by a Rice University professor polled 324 business owners who ran a daily-deal promotion between August 2009 and March 2011. Fifty-five percent of them made money on the deals, while less than a third lost money. Yet more than half of the surveyed merchants did not express enthusiasm about running one again. And 65 percent of the restaurant and bar owners reported that they were done with daily deals entirely. The main reason: Only 35.9 percent of coupon-wielding customers spent more than a deal's value, and just 19.9 percent of customers returned for a full-price purchase.

Such stats raise "red flags" that indicate a "structural weakness in the daily deal business model," concluded the study's author, Utpal Dholakia, who has published several studies with similar results over the past two years.

"Beginning in 2009 and 2010, merchants were just hopping on the bandwagon and running daily deals without really thinking through what they were doing," Dholakia says. "Now, business owners are becoming smarter about how they run daily deals."

So, too, are the entrepreneurs operating daily-deal sites. A new crop of deal sites now link services to customers' credit and debit cards, allowing operators to track previously untraceable data that reveal which types of deals generate the most repeat behavior.

Some, like Seth Priebatsch, think they may have even cracked the code to the customer loyalty conundrum at the heart of business owners' beef with Groupon and its clones.

In March, Priebatsch, the founder and CEO of location-based startup SCVNGR, launched LevelUp, a daily-deals site that let merchants serve up three increasingly better deals at their location in the hopes of encouraging repeat business. "It worked -- but not well enough," Priebatsch admits, "so we evolved it into something better."

In July, Priebatsch launched a new version of LevelUp. The current iteration is a free rewards service that links to a customers' credit or debit card and works through their phone. Merchants use it to give customers a small discount on their first buy, then reward repeat customers with instant credit toward each future purchase, all through register scanning equipment that costs the merchant nothing to install, then $55/month after a three-month trial.

So far, Priebatsch says he's seen LevelUp customers return to participating businesses 45 percent of the time. He noted that Groupon-wielding buyers, in comparison, only return around 1 percent of the time. (Groupon, which is still in its post-IPO "quiet period," declined to comment on this story, but has since launched its own rewards program with undisclosed results.)

LevelUp users also spend on average 5.8 times the face value of the deals they receive, according to Priebatsch. That stat, plus another datapoint LevelUp collected, may calm some merchants' concerns over offering deals that don't expire: The average LevelUp merchant gives users 17 percent off their merchandise, compared to the much larger discount that Groupon often requires of the merchants it works with.

So far, LevelUp has launched in four different cities: New York, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco. It has signed up around 600 merchants and roughly 100,000 users.

That pales in comparison to the 45,665 businesses that worked with Groupon in the first half of 2011, and its more than 140 million users worldwide, or LivingSocial's 46 million users. But such discrepancies may start to mean less, as the perception continues to spread among merchants that it's not how many users you reach, but the rate at which you can convert them into regular customers or get them to spend beyond a deal's value.

"Groupon's model is all about marketing," says Jon Carder, the founder of MOGL, another rewards service that launched this April and targets only restaurants and bars. "They're out to just deliver you a ton of new customers, typically at a loss. Our primary goal is to take a restaurant's existing customer base and get them to come back more frequently and spend more money when they do."

To do that, MOGL offers three separate incentives to customers -- cash back in the amount of 10 percent of each purchase, deposited into a customer's bank account at the end of each month; a food donation to a local charity each time a customer spends at least $20; and a monthly jackpot, typically ranging from $25 to $500, which goes to the MOGL user who spends the most at a location in any given month.

To simultaneously reap the three rewards, customers just link any credit or debit card to MOGL and then use that card to pay for a meal at a participating restaurant in one of the three West Coast cities where the service is currently available. MOGL takes a 15 percent cut of users' spending from restaurants, with 10 percent going back to each customer in the form of cash back, 4 percent going to MOGL, and 1 percent going toward the monthly jackpot.

"We've designed something that's working exceptionally well," says Carder, citing a study that the company conducted on 89 participating restaurants and 2,000 users in the network. "We compared those MOGL customers to the restaurants' typical customers, and our users spent about 71 percent more."

Some experts say the variations on rewards programs are a definite improvement over the original daily deals that existed last year, in part because they're better for the merchant.

"But a key issue still remains," claims Rice University's Dholakia. "At the heart of these marketing activities are discount and specifically price promotions. You're basically giving the customer some financial incentive to buy from you, whether it's on the first occasion or the third occasion. Everything about good marketing practice says that is not a good thing to do all the time. You don’t want to give people money basically to keep them coming back to you. They should come back to you because they inherently value or have some kind of emotional attachment to your product."

Low-Tech Fraud Continues To Daunt Card Issuers

Credit-card issuers have spent billions of dollars to stop data thieves cold in their tracks by strengthening their information-technology systems and developing programs that can flag bogus transactions as they occur.

Despite the investments, lenders remain daunted by one of the oldest tricks in fraudsters' playbooks: card skimming.

Skimming involves stripping account information from a credit card using man-made devices that thieves can attach to gas-pump terminals, automated teller machines and retailers' check-out systems. Fraudsters use this information to make purchases online and produce counterfeit cards for spending at brick-and-mortar merchants.

"There's no sophistication about card skimmers," said George Peabody, director of the emerging technologies advisory service at Mercator Advisory Group. "It's an inexpensive item and anybody can do it."

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. on Friday said 28 people were indicted in connection with a fraud operation that involved waiters at several high-end restaurants using hand-held skimmers to steal customers' account information. The crimes ensnared at least 50 customers of American Express Co. and occurred from April 2010 through this month.

Such incidents reinforce the need for banks to do more to involve their customers in fraud-fighting efforts, analysts said.

Officials investigating the New York fraud ring said the alleged thieves were able to pull of the heist because the victims were well-to-do clients with high credit lines. The perpetrators used stolen cardholder information to buy watches, handbags and other luxury goods — items the victims presumably could have purchased themselves — that they resold.

With banks, "there's been a belief that ... we don't want to talk to the consumer about security because we don't want to scare the consumer," said Phil Blank, managing director of security, risk and fraud at Javelin Strategy and Research. However, research Javelin has done suggests that consumers want to be actively involved in managing their accounts through alerts that notify a customer when transactions occur.

While more banks have invested in this technology, few have aggressively promoted the services, Blank said. Such services could help customers and their banks more quickly stop fraud like that which occurred in the New York incident by making customers aware when transactions and other activities occur.

The financial value of identity fraud, which includes credit-card fraud, fell 34% in 2010, to $37 billion, according to Javelin. However, the mean costs to an individual consumer affected by identify fraud actually rose more than 60%, to $631, reflecting that fact that certain types of fraud have taken longer to detect, requiring more time to resolve, Blank said.

An American Express spokeswoman declined to discuss specifics of the New York case but wrote in an email that the company has "sophisticated monitoring systems and controls in place to detect fraudulent activity."

Federal law limits customer liability from credit-card fraud to $50, though many banks have zero-liability policies in place to cover consumers.

American Express cardholders are not liable for fraudulent charges on their cards, the spokeswoman wrote.

Consumer anger mounts over debit card charges

Rachel Paul was a Regions Bank customer since moving to Nashville eight years ago. But when the Alabama-based bank recently announced monthly debit card fees, she decided to close her accounts there and switch to another bank.

“I mostly use my credit card or raw cash to buy things, so when I heard about the fees, I thought that was enough,” the 41-year-old Paul said.

Regions, SunTrust and First Tennessee banks are among the first in Middle Tennessee to unveil monthly checking account fees as regulations threaten to slice bank profits from debit cards.

Some customers are responding by switching primary banks to avoid fee increases on their accounts, which start this month or with October bank statements.

SunTrust Bank will charge a $5-a-month fee for debit card purchases, and Regions Bank will charge a $4-a-month fee for debit card purchases (ATM withdrawals and deposits are still free).

“I have always learned to budget. The new fees would have made this more difficult,” said Drew Hollowell, 30, who recently closed his Regions checking account, opting for one at the smaller Avenue Bank.

Paul and Hollowell likely will be joined by other once-loyal bank customers turning to banks with no debit-card fees to escape the additional cost of routine purchases, financial analysts say.

High-net-worth customers may be insulated from the new fees. Regions, for example, offers a checking account that carries no debit card fees but requires an average monthly balance of $5,000 or more.

Still, some believe small and community banks are poised to scoop up many disenchanted customers.

Fee changes are the result of last year’s Dodd-Frank financial overhaul legislation, which, in part, halved the amount merchants pay banks per debit card swipe.

Regions, with the largest market share in Nashville, has estimated the fee caps will cost them about $170 million annually.

First Tennessee Bank, a major competitor, has introduced a monthly debit card transaction fee for some of their checking account products, which charges customers a few cents per swipe up to $3.

“I was upset that I signed up for a free checking account and then found out it’s not going to be free anymore,” Barnes said. “I don’t want to be throwing away $5 a month; $60 a year is a lot to me right now.”

Though the new federal regulations will benefit merchants, McBride doesn’t expect the savings to trickle down to consumers.

“This is what retail lobbying groups have spent millions of dollars to change. This is going straight to the bottom line,” he said.

Banks with assets of less than $10 billion get a pass on the new merchant fee caps, which means smaller institutions and credit unions won’t be scrambling to recover lost revenue, or face pressure to alter fee structures on accounts.

However, it remains to be seen how merchants will handle debit cards from the smaller institutions, since it will cost retailers nearly double what it would to swipe a card from a bigger bank.

Grumpy Old Fan | Lincoln's log: lessons from Legacies

There's a weird little sequence in the middle of DC Universe: Legacies #3 when the

narration's timeline goes all hazy and oblique, in order to move the story from

sometime in the Eisenhower/Kennedy years right into the "X years ago" of modern

continuity. Because Legacies tracks some sixty-five years of costumed crimefighting,

this sequence bridges the gap between the Justice Society's retirement and

Superman's debut.

"Hazy and oblique" are also good words for describing DC's approach to long-term

continuity. The history of the DC Universe is well-settled up to the early 1950s,

but past then it becomes elastic. This is something we've come to expect: fudging

the calendar keeps our heroes both as experienced and as youthful as they need to

be. However, each passing year also widens the gap between the end of the Golden Age

(early ‘50s) and the beginning of the Silver (thought to be 12-15 years ago).

Through reader-identification character Paul Lincoln,* DCUL's writer (and longtime

DC favorite) Len Wein aims to put a human face on all those four-color adventures.

That sounds like the premise of 1994′s Marvels and its spiritual descendant Astro

City. Really, though, any halfway-entertaining super-survey needs a narrator with a

recognizable point of view. Even 1986′s History of the DC Universe, which was

basically a series of George Pérez pinups arranged in chronological order, took its

florid prose ostensibly from Harbinger's meditations on the nature of heroism.

Here, then, is our Mr. Lincoln, would-be juvenile delinquent turned Metropolis cop,

whose life is changed after an encounter with the Golden Age Atom and Sandman. Over

the course of ten issues, Paul goes from street kid to nursing home, marrying his

childhood sweetheart and becoming a father along the way, all the while constantly

and steadfastly affirming his faith in DC's costumed crusaders. As a protagonist,

Paul makes a decent narrator; but Paul isn't exactly DCUL's main problem. It's

almost as if Wein isn't confident in Paul's ability to carry the narrative, so Paul

is constantly distracted by various superheroic milestones. Moreover, either Paul is

a classic Unreliable Narrator, or Wein and company are doing some serious rewriting

of established DC continuity.