Japan's new TV tower becomes world's tallest

The "Tokyo Sky Tree" tower. Japan can boast 

the world's tallest free-standing television 

tower as of Tuesday, when the under-construction 

Tokyo Sky Tree rose to a height 

of 601 metres (1,971 feet).

TOKYO (AFP) - – Japan can boast the world's tallest free-standing television tower as of Tuesday, when the under-construction Tokyo Sky Tree rose to a height of 601 metres (1,971 feet).

The steel structure eclipsed China's 600-metre Canton Tower, which opened in Guangzhou in September -- although both are shorter than the world's tallest building, Dubai's 828-metre Burj Khalifa skyscraper.

The Tokyo Sky Tree rose to 601 metres at 1:29 pm (0429 GMT), when workers lifted part of its antenna section into place, said Tobu Railway, the main investor in the 65-billion-yen (790-million-dollar) project.

Already a popular landmark in eastern Tokyo, the broadcast tower is scheduled to reach its top height of 634 metres this month and be completed by the end of the year.

"We are delighted to see the tower become the world number one," said Tobu Railway spokesman Shota Mitsui. "But we still have more work to do, and we will continue enforcing safety first in completing the project."

To keep the structure safe during Japan's frequent earthquakes, the tower boasts a cutting-edge anti-seismic design, including pilings that fan out underground like the branches of a tree.

The tower consists of two parts, an outer steel frame and an inner shaft of reinforced concrete, which can move separately to cancel out their seismic energies -- a design idea borrowed from ancient Japanese pagodas.

A year ago, the tower surpassed the current television and radio transmission tower -- the 333-metre red-and-white Tokyo Tower, a symbol of Japan's post-war "economic miracle" -- as the country's tallest structure.

In early 2012, after Japanese television networks switch entirely to digital transmissions, Tokyo Sky Tree will take over television broadcasts to beam signals across the city's ever-rising skyline.

With two observation decks, the tower aims to attract an average 2.7 million visitors every year, Mitsui said.

He added that some 25 million people a year are expected to use commercial facilities inside the tower compound, including 300 shops and restaurants as well as an aquarium, a planetarium and a dome theatre.

Tigers could be extinct within 12 years: WWF

A captive Sumatran tiger roams through its enclosure
at Jakarta's Ragunan Zoo. Tigers could become
extinct within 12 years but a top level meeting in
Russia next month could help reverse the decline,
according to the WWF nature conservation body.
(AFP/File/Romeo Gacad) 

Thu Oct 21, 12:07 pm ET

STOCKHOLM (AFP) – Tigers could become extinct within 12 years but a top level meeting in Russia next month could help reverse the decline, nature conservation body WWF said on Thursday.

"The worse scenario is that the tiger could be gone when the next year of the tiger comes along, in 12 years," said Ola Jennersten, head of the international nature conservation programme at WWF Sweden.

The organisation is leading a global campaign to attempt to double the number of tigers by 2022, when the next Chinese calendar year of the tiger comes around.

WWF said that in the last century, illegal hunting, a shrinking habitat and the trade of tiger parts used in oriental medicine had sent the number of the big cats worldwide plunging 97 percent to around just 3,200 tigers today.

"Despite the gloomy figures, the situation is more hopeful than ever," Jennersten said, praising a political initiative of 13 'tiger states' and different bodies set to meet in Russia on November 21-24 in a bid to halt possible extinction of the species.

"This will be achieved through increased political involvement, focus on the tiger landscapes that have the greatest chance of long term retention of the tiger, and increased control of tiger trade," he said.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who in the past years has made a big show of his love for nature, publicly kissing animals and engaging in a string of stunts involving wildlife including tigers, is expected to attend the summit in Saint Petersburg.

WWF said some 1,800 tigers live in India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh, 450 live in Sumatra, 400 in Malaysia, 350 are spread throughout southeast Asia and around 450 live in the wild in Russia.

Expansive Hoover Dam Bridge Opens

The 1,900-foot-long structure is the seventh highest bridge in the world.

Sun Oct 17, 2010 11:45 AM ET 
Content provided by Steve Friess, AFP

America's greatest technological achievement,
the Hoover Dam, now has a soaring
companion piece, a massive looming bridge
held up by the longest arch in the Western
Hemisphere. Wikimedia Commons

THE GIST

• The bridge cost $240 million to build and involved 1,200 laborers and 300 engineers.
• The Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge is now the seventh highest in the world.

America's greatest technological achievement, the Hoover Dam, now has a soaring companion piece, a massive looming bridge held up by the longest arch in the Western Hemisphere.

The Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, which opened this month and connects the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada, spans the vast chasm 890 feet above the Colorado River that is controlled by the dam.

The striking 1,900-foot-long structure, which reroutes traffic off of the two-lane road atop the dam, will improve traffic in the region and help protect the dam from terrorist threats, officials said.

It is the seventh highest bridge in the world, behind four in China, one in Papua New Guinea and one in Colorado.

"The Hoover Dam is the greatest civil engineering achievement in America's history," said bypass bridge project manager Dave Zanatell with the Federal Highway Administration.

"Our goal was not to outdo or outshine it. Our goal was to, in a respectful way, do something that would be great for our generation and that would stand besides Hoover Dam in a respectful and quality way that would become a part of Hoover's legacy."

The $240 million bridge was built in five years by 1,200 laborers and 300 engineers.

It could not have arrived at a better moment for a nation and region whose psyche has been pummeled by a prolonged, devastating recession.

Just as the Hoover Dam was built in the heart of the Great Depression and was seen as an example of the nation's can-do spirit, some hope this project can provide some uplift.

The dam and bridge are "two engineering wonders constructed at times when our country was looking at itself and wondering what the future held," said Colleen Dwyer of the Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the dam.

"We're looking at what can be done even at these worst of times to make these wonderful structures come to be, to create something new and different which enables America to keep moving ahead. That's the parallel."

The bridge's dimensions are staggering: at 1,050 feet, its support arch is the longest arch in the Western Hemisphere, holding up a roadway that leans on 300-foot-long concrete pillars, some of the tallest in the world.

It contains 16 million pounds of steel, 30,000 cubic yards of concrete and two million feet of cable.

The idea of the bridge originated in the 1960s because the top of the Hoover Dam has been a narrow two-lane road that is the fastest route from Arizona to Las Vegas and then the Pacific Northwest and Canada.

Access to the dam from each direction is a treacherously winding route, but massive semi-trucks and passenger vehicles shared and navigated it for decades.

During the day, when thousands of tourists flock to the dam from Las Vegas, about 30 miles away, the interaction between traffic and pedestrians has been resulted in three times as many accidents as on a normal road, Zanatell said.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the federal government feared a terrorist with a truck bomb could attack the dam, potentially flooding the region and disrupting water and power supplies to several states.

Semi-trucks were banned from bridge, forced to take route to Las Vegas that is more than 40 miles longer.

In addition to driving on it, tourists will be able to park in a designated lot on the Nevada side and climb stairs to walk the bridge, which has a sidewalk on the side facing the dam.

The retaining wall is 54 inches high, so pedestrians can snap photos from a spectacular vantage point.

"It makes me feel good as an American," said Jerry Couden, a residential general contractor from Milford, Conn., who, like millions of Vegas tourists each year, made the 30 miles drive southeast.

"Look what we did then (building the dam) and now look at what this is. It's a tremendous feat. It is cool to see."

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Source: http://news.discovery.com/tech/zooms/hoover-dam-bridge.html

World's longest tunnel breaks down Swiss Alpine barrier

AFP - Saturday, October 16

Photo by Agence France Presse

SEDRUN, Switzerland (AFP) - – A giant drilling machine punched its way through a final section of Alpine rock on Friday to complete the world's longest tunnel, after 15 years of sometimes lethal construction work.

In a stage-managed breakthrough, attended by some 200 dignitaries, 30 kilometres (20 miles) inside the tunnel and broadcast live on Swiss television, engineers from both sides shook hands after the bore had pummeled through the final 1.5 metres (five feet) of rock.

"Here, in the heart of the Swiss Alps, one of the biggest environmental projects on the continent has become reality," said Swiss Transport Minister Moritz Leuenberger.

Tunnel workers paid tribute to their colleagues who had died on the construction site with a minute's silence as the names of the eight victims were read out during an emotional ceremony for the breakthrough.

"Workers, thank you, thank you, thank you. We have not only built a tunnel, we have written history," said Luzi Gruber of the construction company Implenia.

The 57-kilometre (35.4-mile) high-speed rail link, which will open in 2017, will form the lynchpin of a new rail network between northern and southeastern Europe and help ease congestion and pollution in the Swiss Alps.

It is the third tunnel to be built through the snowbound St. Gotthard area but it is much the longest and three kilometres longer than a rail link between two Japanese islands, the current record holder at 53.8 kilometres.

"The myth of the Gotthard has been broken for a third time. Our forefathers struggled from the Middle Ages onwards to make this mountain passable," Peter Fueglistaler, director of the Federal Transport office, told journalists gathered for the final breakthrough.

Passengers will ultimately be able to speed from the Italian city of Milan to Zurich in less than three hours and further north into Germany, cutting the journey time by an hour.

Once completed, around 300 trains should be able to speed through the Gotthard's twin tubes every day, at up to 250 kilometres per hour (155 mph) for passenger trains.

The 9.8-billion Swiss franc (7.0-billion euro, 9.8-billion dollar) tunnel, which is 9.5 metres in diameter, is also the fruit of strong popular environmental concern about pollution in the Swiss Alps.

Switzerland nonetheless struggled to convince sceptical European neighbours to support the ambitious and costly transalpine rail plans. But Swiss voters helped force the issue in 1994 by supporting a ban on heavy trucks driving across the Alps -- including the expanding flow of transiting EU goods traffic.

A nationwide poll published on Wednesday suggested that sentiment is undimmed, with two thirds supporting a ban on truck traffic through the Gotthard road tunnel and moving it on to rail.

But a senior Swiss official warned the full benefit of the rail tunnel can only be realised if Germany and Italy complete complementary infrastructure.

"For a noticeable amount of freight to be shifted from road to rail, our neighbouring countries Germany and Italy will have to fulfill their contractual obligation to extend access routes," said Peter Fueglistaler, director of the government's Federal Transport Office.

In recent years, Austria, France and Italy have set in motion two similar rail tunnel projects through the eastern and western Alps, which are both planned to exceed 50 kilometres in length in the 2020s.

Apart from the economic and environmental implications, the spotlight was on more than 2,000 tunnel workers, especially following the rescue of Chile's trapped miners.

The builders, who have blasted and bored through 13 million cubic metres (460 million cubic feet) of rock, were feted at a celebration just above the breakthrough point in the mist-bound village of Sedrun.

As the two tunnels became one, tunnelers unfurled a Swiss flag to a thunder of applause.

One of the first to make it through, Hubert Baer, told the crowd: "It's a wonderful feeling, it's an honour to have participated in the construction of the longest rail tunnel in the world."

Scene: Santa Barbara stands watch over world's longest tunnel


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Source: http://ph.news.yahoo.com/afp/20101016/tts-switzerland-transport-tunnel-rail-en-c1b2fc3.html