Experts in Chile Fear Catastrophe as 300

Quakes Hit in One Week

BY ALEXANDER SMITH

hile's northern coast has been hit by more than 300 earthquakes in the past week
in what seismologists warned Tuesday could be the precursor to a long-overdue
disaster. Most of these quakes have been too small to be felt on land, but people
living near the city of Iquique have experienced the rumbling of up to a dozen tremors
per day.
Experts analyzing this flood of data are worried the increased seismic activity could be a
sign the region is about to experience its first devastating quake in 137 years. The last
event, a magnitude-8.5 quake in 187 7, killed thousands of people and created a deadly
tsunami that reached Hawaii and Japan.
"It is very unusual activity and we are trying to find out what is causing it," said Mario
Pardo, deputy head of the seismology center at the University of Chile
"We usually get around 10 earthquakes per day in this area [many of them very small],
but now we have been getting up to 100 per day," he told NBC News via telephone from
the country's capital Tuesday.
Pardo told NBC News that seismologists are particularly concerned about this cluster of
quakes because press reports following the 1877 event said there was a similar "swarm"
of tremors beforehand.
"We have been waiting for a big one in this area for some time - this is a place where we
are expecting an earthquake of over 8.5 magnitude," he said.
Paulina Gonzalez, an expert at the University of Santiago, backed up this analysis. "The
latest string of quakes is noteworthy because the last one happened in this seismic zone
more than 130 years ago. It's a zone where quakes should happen more often, and they
havent in a very long time," she told The Associated Press
Chile is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, with its 2,500-mile coastline
tracing where the Nazca tectonic plate meets the South American plate.
In 1960 it was hit by the largest earthquake ever recorded: The Valdivia earthquake, also
known as the Great Chilean Earthquake, was a catastrophic magnitude-9.5 event that
killed up to 6,000 people and created an 80-foot tsunami that reached as far as Hong
Kong.
But this, along with a magnitude-8.8 earthquake in 2010, hit much farther south than the
region affected by the current cluster. The major worry for northern Chile is that the 1877
quake created what is known as a seismic gap - a fault line likely to produce
earthquakes because it has been quiet for some time.

Consider This Your Reminder To Wash Your

Cutting Boards After Preparing Poultry
BY AMANDA L. CHAN
A new study in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology shows the
presence of multi-drug resistant E. coli on a small percentage of cutting boards collected
from hospitals and households and about half of gloves used in hospital kitchens, all of
which were used to handle poultry.
For the study, researchers from University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland, examined 154
cutting boards from the University Hospital and 144 cutting boards from private homes
after they were used in the preparation of meat (and before being cleaned), including
poultry, beef and veal, pork, fish and lamb. Sixty-four of the 154 cutting boards from the
hospital were used to prepare poultry, while 62 of the 144 cutting boards from the private
homes were used to prepare poultry. They also examined 20 gloves that were used by
hospital kitchen employees after being used to handle poultry.
The researchers tested all the cutting boards and gloves for E. coli bacteria that produce
extended-spectrum beta-lactamases (ESBL-producing E. coli), which is multi-drug
resistant.
None of the cutting boards used to handle non-poultry meats tested positive for ESBLproducing E. coli, but 6.5 percent of the hospital cutting boards used to prepare poultry
and 3.5 percent of the home cutting boards used to prepare poultry tested positive for
the bacteria. In addition, half of the gloves examined in the study tested positive for
ESBL-producing E. coli. The presence of ESBL-producing bacteria did not seem to be
linked with the country of origin of the meat.
"Our study provides evidence that kitchen equipment and hands can easily become
contaminated with ESBL-producing E. coli after processing of raw poultry, revealing an
important potential source for ongoing transmission in both hospital kitchens and private
household settings," the researchers wrote in the study. "These findings emphasize
hand hygiene not only after handling raw poultry but also after contact with cutting
boards used for poultry preparation."
Poultry is not the only source of bacteria that can cause food poisoning; a recent study
from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers showed that leafy greens
and spinach are actually the biggest source of food poisoning. (So make sure to wash
cutting boards after using them to prepare produce, too!)
For more information on how long common bacteria and viruses can last on surfaces,
check out this infographic.

Coffee Linked With Lower Liver

Cancer Risk
BY AMANDA L. CHAN
Your daily coffee habit could protect you from developing the most common kind of liver
cancer, a new study suggests.
And the more coffee you drink a day, the lower the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma,
according to researchers from the University of Southern California Norris
Comprehensive Cancer Center.
"Now we can add HCC [hepatocellular carcinoma] to the list of medical ailments, such
as Parkinsons disease, type 2 diabetes, and stroke, that may be prevented by coffee
intake," study researcher V. Wendy Setiawan, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the
Department of Preventive Medicine at the university, said in a statement. "Daily coffee
consumption should be encouraged in individuals who are at high risk for HCC."
The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for
Cancer Research; because they have yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal,
they should be considered preliminary.
The study included 179,890 men and women of varying races, including Japanese
Americans, African Americans, Latinos, Native Hawaiians and Caucasians. Researchers
followed them for up to 18 years and kept track of their coffee consumption and other
lifestyle factors.
Eventually, 498 of the participants developed hepatocellular carcinoma. Researchers
found a dose-dependent relationship between development of the cancer and
consumption of coffee. Specifically, people who drank one to three cups of coffee each
day had a 29 percent lower risk of developing hepatocellular carcinoma, compared with
people who drank fewer than six cups of coffee a week. And people who drank four or
more cups of coffee a day had a 42 percent lower risk.
This isn't the first time coffee-drinking has been associated with a decreased liver cancer
risk. A review published last year in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and
Hepatology, that included 16 studies published from 1996 and 2012, showed that
hepatocellular carcinoma risk decreased 40 percent with coffee consumption, with the
risk going down to 50 percent with consumption of three cups of coffee each day

Energy Management in The Cloud

BY Dr. NORBERT ASCHENBRENNER

iemens is enabling smaller municipal utility companies to market energy from

renewable sources through the cloud. The solution's main element is a cloudbased energy management system that combines distributed electricity producers
into a virtual power plant. It allows small-scale producers to participate in the electricity
market just like big power stations. As a result, distributed producers can trade electricity
on energy exchanges or offer lucrative controlling power for increased earnings. In most
cases, it doesn't pay off for small and medium-size municipal utilities and energy
suppliers to invest in their own energy management systems. Siemens has solved this
problem with a Web-based service that is derived from a compact version of its
Decentralized Energy Management System (DEMS). The new system is currently being
tested at RWE and will be offered beginning in the early summer of 2014.
Germany currently has about 800 municipal utility companies. Some of them, such as
Stadtwerke Mnchen, already operate a virtual power plant. The technology's key
element is an energy management system that networks electricity producers (i.e. wind
farms, solar parks, biogas facilities) as well as energy storage devices and individual
consumers. This network operates like a large, controllable power station. It can sell
electricity on the energy exchange when the conditions are favorable, and also take part
in the market for controlling power. To do this, the market participants provide power
reserves, which the network operator can call up in order to keep supply and demand
always in balance. This makes it possible to offset one of the generators dropping out or
a sudden fall in demand. Virtual power plants also allow producers of energy from
renewable sources to offer this service.
To enable smaller municipal utilities to access these markets, Siemens is offering all of
the DEMS functions that make it possible to combine and control decentralized power
stations as a cloud-based service. These functions include facility capacity forecasts,
power plant control systems, and a Web portal where the operators of the decentralized
energy generation units can notify the virtual power station whether their facilities are
available. The various energy suppliers don't have to invest in the hardware, skilled
personnel, and other elements of a separate energy management system. Siemens
offers a high IT security standard and adapts the functions to any changes in the energy
economy or regulatory framework that might occur. Municipal utilities also benefit from
the fact that they no longer have to directly concern themselves with the complex
processes on energy exchanges. The electricity is marketed through the virtual power
plant, which is already part of the energy market.
Due to their ability to combine and control decentralized energy producers, virtual power
stations are a key technology for future smart grids. They also help green electricity to
be directly marketed, as recommended by the amendment to Germany's Renewable
Energy Sources Act in 2012. The cloud-based service for virtual power stations helps to

increase the amount of directly marketed energy by giving smaller electricity suppliers
access to the energy exchanges.

Paris Bans Half of All Cars from Its

Roads but Electric Vehicles
are Exempt

BY ANTHONY INGRAM

azardous levels of pollution have caused authorities in Paris to enact its first
car ban since 1997. The French capital will ban all vehicles on alternate odd
and even license plates today and tomorrow in an effort to reduce the output of
polluting particles in the air following a run of warm, windless days that have trapped
pollution in the city.
However, drivers of electric and hybrid vehicles will be exempt from the restrictions,
reports The Independent, as are taxis, buses, emergency vehicles, and cars carrying
three or more people. All French license plates end in a two-digit number. This number
will be used to determine which cars are allowed through the city each day. A similar
system has previously been used in China to curb its own pollution problems.
As pollution levels climb above 80 micrograms of particulates per cubic meter, Parisian
pollution problems are being blamed on the high number of diesel vehicles on French
roads.
High levels of particulate matter are blamed for various respiratory diseases, while
higher oxides of nitrogen are a primary cause of smog. Fear of voter reprisal has seen
successive governments shy away from increasing diesel taxes, as two thirds of cars on
French roads use the fuel.
Parisian officials previously raised the idea of banning classic vehicles from the citys
roads as a way of reducing levels of pollution. Such a ban would remove some of
Frances most iconic vehicles from the capitals streets and anger classic car fans,
whose vehicles make up only three percent of traffic in the city.
In 2010, Paris trialed a ban of gas-guzzling SUVs, hoping to reduce pollution and
greenhouse gas outputs. The latest ban is sure to be unpopular with the citys residents,
though some bus and underground public transportation services are offering free transit
for the days of the ban in an effort to help keep cars off the road.

But as traffic levels increase, the French capitals ban on polluting vehicles is unlikely to
be its last and could be adopted by other cities facing similar challenges in future.