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Monday, February 25, 2013
A Magnetized Bull Nose Keyring Keeps Your Wandering Keys Captive
Safety on everyone's mind at Daytona 500
Daytona International Speedway president Joie Chitwood III speaks during a news conference before the start of the Daytona 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series auto race Sunday, Feb. 24, 2013, at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla. Several spectators were injured when a car crashed into the catch fence during the Nationwide Series auto race on Saturday sending debris into the grandstand. (AP Photo/Terry Renna)
Daytona International Speedway president Joie Chitwood III speaks during a news conference before the start of the Daytona 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series auto race Sunday, Feb. 24, 2013, at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla. Several spectators were injured when a car crashed into the catch fence during the Nationwide Series auto race on Saturday sending debris into the grandstand. (AP Photo/Terry Renna)
Emergency officials put out a fire from driver Kyle Larson's engine after his car hit the wall and safety fence along the front grandstands on the final lap of a NASCAR Nationwide Series auto race at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla., Saturday, Feb. 23, 2013. Larson's crash sent car parts and other debris flying into the stands injuring spectators. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
Injured spectators are treated after a crash at the conclusion of the NASCAR Nationwide Series auto race Saturday, Feb. 23, 2013, at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla. Driver Kyle Larson's car hit the safety fence sending car parts and other debris flying into the stands. (AP Photo/David Graham)
A wheel, tire and suspension parts sit in the stands after crash on the final lap of the NASCAR Nationwide Series auto race Saturday, Feb. 23, 2013, at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla. Several fans were injured when large chunks of debris sailed into the grandstands after a car flew into the fence. (AP Photo/David Graham)
Kyle Larson (32) goes airborne and into the catch fence in a multi-car crash involving Dale Earnhardt Jr. (88), Parker Kligerman (77), Justin Allgaier (31) and Brian Scott (2) during the final lap of the NASCAR Nationwide Series auto race at Daytona International Speedway, Saturday, Feb. 23, 2013, in Daytona Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) ? Raymond Gober parked his motorcycle outside Daytona International Speedway, climbed off and briefly considered bringing his helmet into the track.
"I was about to wear it in, but I knew everyone would be laughing at me," said Gober, a pastor from outside Atlanta.
Maybe not.
Safety was on everyone's mind before and during the Daytona 500 on Sunday, a day after a horrific wreck in a second-tier NASCAR series race hurled chunks of debris, including a heavy tire, into the stands and injured nearly 30 people.
With small spots of blood still soaked into the concrete seating area, the accident raised questions about the safety of fans at race tracks. Should fences be higher and sturdier? Should grandstands be farther from the track?
NASCAR has long been a big draw because of its thrilling speeds, tight-knit racing, frantic finishes and the ability to get so close to the action.
That proximity comes with some risk.
And after Saturday's 12-car melee on the final lap of the Nationwide Series opener, some questioned whether that risk outweighed the reward.
"These are the best seats in the house, but they're also dangerous," Gober said.
Gober was one of thousands of fans who returned to Daytona less than 24 hours after Kyle Larson's car flew into the fence, crumbled into pieces and sprayed parts at spectators.
Early in the 500-mile "Great American Race," a nine-car wreck took out several top contenders.
Three-time NASCAR champion Tony Stewart and 2007 race winner Kevin Harvick were knocked out.
The wreck started when Kasey Kahne let off the gas to slow as they neared the first turn at Daytona International Speedway ? not too far from Saturday's near-disaster. Kyle Busch tried to do the same, but couldn't avoid contact.
Busch sent Kahne spinning across the track. Juan Pablo Montoya, 2010 race winner Jamie McMurray and defending series champion Brad Keselowski also were involved.
Thankfully, the wrecking cars stayed on the track. Things would be considerably different had they done the same Saturday.
"You don't have time to react, but I just remember thinking, 'This is gonna hurt,'" said Steve Bradford, of Dade City. "We were showered with debris."
Gober picked up a bolt that landed next to his left foot and plans to take it home as a souvenir from a crash that could have considerably worse.
He and Bradford have been coming to races at Daytona for years, always seeking out scalped tickets so they can get ultra-close to the cars zooming by at 200 mph.
Now, though?
"Needless to say, we won't be here next year," Bradford said ? meaning the seats, not the race.
He pointed at the upper level.
"Next year, we'll be up there," he said.
Not everyone felt the same way.
John and Andrea Crawford, of Streetsboro, Ohio, love sitting a few rows up. They were there Saturday and back again Sunday, just like so many in that seating section.
The area had rubber marks on seats hit by the tire. Several fans pointed out a chair bent backward, the spot one man was sitting when he got pummeled by the 60-pound tire and wheel.
"I'm not nervous," Andrea Crawford said. "It doesn't happen that much."
When Rick Barasso arrived at his seats, he noticed a few reporters and some tire marks. He asked what was going on and then couldn't stop smiling as he waved his friends over and shared details with them.
"These should be good seats," he said. "I mean, what are the chances?"
Maybe small, but there's little doubt the latest fallout could prompt NASCAR and track officials to consider changes ? at Daytona and elsewhere.
Daytona has plans to remodel the grandstands. Track President Joie Chitwood said Saturday's wreck could prompt sturdier fences or stands farther from the action.
"It's tough to connect the two right now in terms of a potential redevelopment and what occurred," Chitwood said. "We were prepared yesterday, had emergency medical respond. As we learn from this, you bet: If there are things that we can incorporate into the future, whether it's the current property now or any other redevelopment, we will.
"The key is sitting down with NASCAR, finding out the things that happened and how we deal with them."
Daytona reexamined its fencing and ended up replacing the entire thing following Carl Edwards' scary crash at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama in 2009. Edwards' car sailed into the fence and spewed debris into the stands.
"We've made improvements since then," Chitwood said. "I think that's the key: that we learn from this and figure out what else we need to do."
Three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Johnny Rutherford said Sunday that things should be done across auto racing. It was just 16 months ago that IndyCar driver Dan Wheldon was killed when his car crashed into a fence at Las Vegas.
"Maybe we need a double fence, one behind the other, with maybe a space in between to do something to stop this," Rutherford said. "There's a lot of things. I'm sure NASCAR and the IndyCar series are looking at everything to make it safer. What happened yesterday was a terrible thing.
"The drivers, we accept that. That's part of the game. We have to roll the dice and move on. But you don't want to involve the fans."
Chitwood said any fans who felt uncomfortable with their up-close seating for the Daytona 500 could exchange their tickets for spots elsewhere.
"If fans are unhappy with their seating location or if they have any incidents, we would relocate them," Chitwood said. "So we'll treat that area like we do every other area of the grandstand. If a fan is not comfortable where they're sitting, we make every accommodation we can."
Few fans seemed willing to relocate.
"Real NASCAR fans ain't scared," said Zeb Daniels, who was attending his fifth Daytona 500 with his daughter. "If we see anything coming to the fence, we'll hit the floor and pray."
So why take a chance?
"We come for the thrill, the excitement," Daniels said. "We can feel the heat, the tire rubber in our eyes."
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Friday, February 8, 2013
Tragedy for dinosaurs, opportunity for mammals, us
This 2012 artist?s rendering provided by the American Museum of Natural History shows a hypothetical placental mammal ancestor, a small, insect-eating animal. A study released Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013 details the family tree of mammals that have lengthy gestations before birth. It goes back to this shrewish critter slightly bigger than a mouse with a nasty set of teeth. And it first popped in the world a little more than 65 million years ago - just after the cosmic crash which is theorized to have caused the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs. (AP Photo/American Museum of Natural History, Carl Buell)
This 2012 artist?s rendering provided by the American Museum of Natural History shows a hypothetical placental mammal ancestor, a small, insect-eating animal. A study released Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013 details the family tree of mammals that have lengthy gestations before birth. It goes back to this shrewish critter slightly bigger than a mouse with a nasty set of teeth. And it first popped in the world a little more than 65 million years ago - just after the cosmic crash which is theorized to have caused the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs. (AP Photo/American Museum of Natural History, Carl Buell)
This 2012 artist?s rendering provided by the American Museum of Natural History shows a hypothetical placental mammal ancestor, a small, insect-eating animal. A study released Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013 details the family tree of mammals that have lengthy gestations before birth. It goes back to this shrewish critter slightly bigger than a mouse with a nasty set of teeth. And it first popped in the world a little more than 65 million years ago - just after the cosmic crash which is theorized to have caused the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs. (AP Photo/American Museum of Natural History, Carl Buell)
This undated image provided by the American Museum of Natural History shows a shrew-sized Cretaceous-age animal, Ukhaatherium nessovi, which is one of the many mammals used in a mammal tree-of-life study released Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013. The fossil was discovered in 1994 in the Gobi Desert by the Mongolian Academy and the American Museum of Natural History. A team led by Maureen O'Leary of Stony Brook University looked at 4,541 different characteristics of mammals still around and extinct and traced their DNA and their physical features back until it seemed there was a common - and hypothetical - ancestor. They never named the hypothetical creature, not even nicknamed it, but they had an expert draw it based on the features they're pretty sure it had. (AP Photo/American Museum of Natural History, S. Goldberg, M. Novacek)
In this July 6, 2012 photo provided by Courtney Sprain, Paul Renne collects a volcanic ash sample from a coal bed in Montana, within a few centimeters of the dinosaur extinction layer. Two studies published Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013 in the journal Science better explain the Earth-shaking consequences of a catastrophic cosmic collision 66 million years ago when a comet or asteroid smashed into the Gulf of Mexico. The crash seemed to end the reign of the dinosaurs, according to a study by led Renne. And it gave way to the age of mammals that probably started with a cute squirrel like critter and eventually led to us, a second study said. (AP Photo/Courtney Sprain)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? New research pinpoints how the torch passed from one dominant creature on Earth to another, from the brutish dinosaur to the crafty mammal.
Two studies published Thursday in the journal Science better explain the Earth-shaking consequences of a catastrophic cosmic collision 66 million years ago when a comet or asteroid smashed into the Gulf of Mexico.
The crash seemed to end the reign of the dinosaurs. And it gave way to the age of mammals that probably started with a cute squirrel-like critter and eventually led to us, the researchers report.
"I think it's fair to say, without the dinosaurs having gone extinct, we would not be here," said Paul Renne, director of the Berkeley Geochronology Center, who led the research on the dinosaurs and cosmic crash. The dinosaurs' disappearance "essentially releases the little timid mammals to become the big guys."
Renne demonstrated how the timing of the cosmic crash exquisitely matches the disappearance of the slow-footed dinosaurs of Jurassic Park fame. His findings provide more evidence for the theory that an extraterrestrial crash was most responsible for the extinction of dinosaurs.
Scientists have long thought that there were 200,000 years between the big crash and the end of the dinosaurs, but Renne's more detailed examination of fossils and soil at Hell Creek in northeast Montana puts the two events within 32,000 years of each other. That strengthens the case for the space crash as the "straw that broke the camel's back" and killed off the dinosaurs, said Renne.
He said other environmental factors, such as a changing climate from volcanic eruptions, also had made life harder for the dinosaurs, but that the big final dagger was the giant collision that caused a now-filled crater more than 100 miles wide at Chicxulub, on the coast of the Yucatan peninsula.
"The asteroid really rang the bell of the planet," said Smithsonian Natural History Museum Director Kirk Johnson, who wasn't part of either study, but praised them both. Together they showed how that one event "had a profound impact on the nature of organisms that live on this planet."
Dinosaurs are a distinct grouping of species, some of which evolved into birds. Scientists don't know how long it took for the large non-avian kinds like Tyrannosaurus Rex to die off.
The second study painstakingly details the family tree of the most predominant type of mammal, those that give birth after a long gestation period. The researchers propose that the first such mammal was a shrewish critter slightly bigger than a mouse with a nasty set of teeth. And it first popped in the world a little more than 65 million years ago ? just after that cosmic crash.
When an asteroid or comet hits Earth and kills off the dinosaurs, it's both a tragedy and an opportunity, said Maureen O'Leary of Stony Brook University and lead author of the mammal study: "In some sense, we are a product of that opportunity."
O'Leary's team looked at 4,541 different characteristics of mammals still around and extinct and traced their DNA and their physical features back until it seemed there was a common ? and hypothetical ? ancestor.
"This isn't something that is just a guess; this is something that is a result of the analysis," O'Leary said. "This thing had a long furry tail. It had a white underbelly and it had brown eyes."
It was smaller than a rat, but bigger than a mouse and likely ate insects.
That first mammal evolved over the years into all sorts of different types, eventually including bats, whales, elephants and primates like us.
"Boy, did a lot happen in about 200,000 years," said study co-author Michael Novacek, curator of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Unlike the slow-witted dinosaurs, which weren't known for their ability to adapt, mammals in general are more intelligent and can adapt well, O'Leary said.
Scientists examining ancient plants had already estimated that just before the dinosaurs died off world temperatures plunged by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit, causing a loss of many species. Then when the asteroid or comet hit, material spewed into Earth's atmosphere causing temperatures to spike, before dropping again.
Princeton University scientist Gerta Keller, who has been one of the most vocal critics of the impact theory, said the new work still doesn't resolve her doubts. She notes it only looks at soil in Montana.
Renne said there are no impact records anywhere else that are different from what he found in Montana.
___
Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears
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