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Safety analysis.

So I asked Mark what he thought about what I mentioned in my last post, the analysis of that 2007 chemical plant explosion in Florida (summary here; full report including awe-inspiring post-explosion photos is  here).  Bottom line, the owners of that plant -- T2 Laboratories of Jacksonville, Florida -- were seriously, severely, fatally negligent (one, the engineer, paid for it with his life, plus the lives of three employees).  

But we concluded that the board recommendations for increased "reactive hazard awareness education" in the undergraduate chemical engineering curriculum miss the point entirely.  Even had the chemist-owner and the chemical-engineer-owner had specific undergraduate training in runaway reactions or in failed cooling systems, I doubt it would have made a difference.

Why do I think so?  Because they didn't follow the recommendations of their own hired consultants, and they didn't make reasonable modifications after experience taught them that their desired reaction had the potential to run out of control.  Clearly the root cause wasn't a knowledge problem, but an attitude problem and a company culture problem.  In fact, the reason they didn't know about the runaway reaction was BECAUSE they ignored a consultant's recommendation.

Consider the following facts gleaned from the report:

• "One of T2's design consultants identified the need to perform a hazard and operability study [HAZOP]... CSB found no evidence that T2 ever performed the HAZOP."
• "The runaway reaction on December 19, 2007 was not the first unexpected exothermic reaction that T2 experienced; three of the first 10... batches resulted in unexpected exotherms [that is, they got hotter than they were supposed to].... T2 did not repeat batch recipes to isolate the problem."  
• "As demand grew, T2 increased batch size and frequency with no additional documented hazard analysis"... and indeed with no other changes to the process.  Scale-up IS something that is included in the standard engineering curriculum and the engineer-owner knew better.
• T2 submitted the reports required by the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, but they left off required information about the chemical they were manufacturing.
• "T2 hired a consultant to analyze regulatory programs that might apply... The consultant informed T2 that it must develop a hazard communication program, which should include employee training, chemical labeling, and provision of MSDSs... The consultant listed other OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] requirements ... the consultant recommended that T2 hire an additional consultant with OSHA expertise... There is no documentation that T2 further addressed potential OSHA requirements."

Because of this evidence, I conclude that it's bulls#!t that the root cause is, as identified by the board, that T2 did not recognize the runaway reaction hazard.  Equally bulls#!t, the idea that adding reaction hazard analysis to undergraduate education would have fixed the problem.  The root cause here was, in my opinion, a corner-cutting culture in which T2 didn't follow the advice of the experts it hired to tell it how to build a safe process --- especially, omitting the HAZOP analysis.  The owners weren't ignorant because their professors omitted to teach them about runaway reactions; the owners were ignorant because they were to cheap to pay for HAZOP analysis they knew they were supposed to have.

* * *

The problem isn't that all undergraduates should receive formal reactive hazard analysis training.  The problem is that all engineers should follow the recommendations of  the experts who HAVE received formal hazard analysis training -- hazard analysis of all kinds, from the hazards of specific chemical reactions to ordinary workplace hazards.  If we need more undergraduate training -- and quite possibly we do -- it should be as general as possible, an attempt to inculcate an expectation of a culture of safety and general hazard awareness in every newly minted engineer, so that we're all always looking for ways to make the workplace safer for everyone.

UPDATE.  Mark pointed out something I didn't catch:  their cooling system was guaranteed to foul and occlude, because it constantly boiled municipal water and vented steam, thereby concentrating minerals inside the system.  According to the report, the owners never did any preventative maintenance, and it was indeed a failure in the cooling system that precipitated (no pun intended) the accident.  

 Now I know that fouling of heat transfer equipment is something that was covered in my undergraduate chemical engineering education!  Could it be that more undergraduate technical education is not the answer?

Bad directions.

So when a chunk of local infrastructure is so poorly designed that it annoys thousands of people every year, but it's been that way for so long that many locals are used to it, is it a waste of taxpayer money to improve the design, or not?

It depends on whether the design improvement actually solves the problem. 

Based on the number of comments on the Star Tribune story, apparently the hottest topic in the Twin Cities isn't the Minnesota Senate race, but airport signage.  And apparently most of my fellow citizens are of the opinion that if you get lost on the way to the airport because of confusing signs, it's your own damn fault. 

A little background for the out-of-towners.

We have one major airport here in the Twin Cities, the Minneapolis-St.Paul International Airport, with one three-letter airport code, MSP.   That airport has two terminals.

1. What everyone calls the "Main Terminal," but which is really named the Charles A. Lindbergh Terminal, and which is served by all but a few airlines.
2. The "Humphrey Terminal," i.e., the Hubert H. Humphrey Terminal, which is served by AirTran, JetAmerica, IcelandAir, Southwest, Sun Country, and several charter lines including Aeroméxico.

So far this is not unusual for a mid-sized American city:  one airport, two terminals, check.  Here is the unusual part.  The two terminals are not accessed by the same exit on the highway.   You can take the train from one terminal to the other, but it isn't a trivial operation -- we're not talking about a little airport peoplemover, I mean you can take the light-rail line from one stop to the next.  Let's just say that if you arrived at the wrong terminal with not much time to spare, you might well miss your plane.   (Below:  Google Map taking you from Humphrey to Lindbergh in nine minutes, not counting time spent in parking garages or figuring out you're in the wrong terminal.)

View Larger Map

Okay, so, here's where the signage comes into play.  Most cities I've been to with multiple terminals work like this.  You take the (only) exit from the highway that goes to the airport.  Once you're on the airport grounds, airport signs direct you to the correct terminal, usually by the airline you're flying.  Northwest flies out of here, USAirways out of here, etc. etc. etc.  Most cities, the key piece of information you need as you drive to the airport is what airline.  You can just sort of assume that this will get you to the right building.

Not so here.  As you're driving to the airport you are greeted with signs that tell you to take this exit for the Humphrey Terminal and that exit for the Lindbergh terminal.  No mention of airlines, charter vs. scheduled flights, domestic vs. international, or any such useful information.  Leaving you, perhaps a hapless non-Minnesotan, to guess whom Minnesotans hold in high enough regard to honor with the MAIN terminal name, and whom Minnesotans hold in, oh,  a sort of small auxiliary regard.  The erstwhile politician, or the famous aviator?   And wait a minute, if you're on a kind of a small airline anyway, are you even sure you belong in the main terminal?

OK, so the airports commission just voted $2.2 million to improve the signs by referring to the terminals as "1" and "2" (maybe that's a little laughable, but I think this is an improvement, at least if Lindbergh "Main" becomes "1" since at least the ordinal numbers imply a primary and a secondary terminal) and, more importantly, signs that tell drivers where to go for which airline.

Let's leave aside the possibility that the sum is exorbitant.  I do not have enough information to know whether $2.2 million is a good deal for the signage.  I haven't the foggiest idea how much highway signs cost, and none of the news articles have offered any useful context (how much does MNDOT spend on signage per year statewide, for instance?) I'll just take them at their word here.

So... the hostility in the comments on the article towards the improved signage is mind-blowing to me.  "If you're too stupid to find your way to the airport, you're too stupid to fly."  (Hey, maybe we should just eliminate all road signage while we're at it.)  Or "They should just put up one sign for international, one fo""r domestic."  (Huh?  International and domestic flights take off and land from both terminals.)  Or "Everybody knows you should find out which terminal you're going to ahead of time." (Not necessary in most American cities.)  Or, my favorite, "We don't need signs --how hard is it to read what's written on your ticket?"  (What is this artifact, this ticket you speak of?)

Anyway, I for one am glad they're fixing it, if only because it annoys me every time I drive by the signs.  I do hope they don't spend more on the signs than they need to, but matching the exits to the airlines strikes me as the minimum adequate signage.  Look, it would have been nice if they had done it right in the first place and not had to spend the money this year, but when government screws up I think we should expect them to fix it.   I'm glad there are so many people annoyed by government money-wasting, but the money-wasting happened long ago when they made the spectacularly bad signage from the highway.

So, the nature study book for this year is...

 In a previous post I wrote about my philosophy for teaching nature study to elementary-school kids, and promised to mention the book I'm going to use next year with Oscar.  Here it is: Messing Around with Baking Chemistry by Bernie Zubrowski, from the Children's Museum Activity Book series.  (Little, Brown, and Co., 1981; ISBN 0-316-98878-2)

 There are a lot of books about "kitchen chemistry" out there, and most of them don't really fit my style.  This one, however, is a little bit different.

The usual problem with many of these books of demonstrations -- I do not call them "experiments" -- is that they are all about being impressive, and only superficially treat the deeper reasons why the material works.  A particular handicap is that the level of chemistry knowledge which elementary-school-age children might actually be able to assimilate -- inorganic solution chemistry -- is not readily available in the home kitchen, and most of the solutions that change colors or do otherwise interesting things are, um, toxic.  So the kitchen chemistry books play with baking soda and vinegar and call the one a base and the other an acid, and demonstrate that acids and bases combine to give off carbon dioxide.  Also that this is how volcanoes work.  Um.  No.  

For good reason, introductory chemistry courses in formal study -- high school and college -- do not begin with sodium bicarbonate, but instead begin with inorganic hydroxides.   Nor do they begin with acetic acid, but instead with inorganic acids.  They are simpler systems that readily demonstrate basic principles of stoichiometry. (You try to demonstrate Dalton's law of Multiple Proportions in your kitchen when your reaction evolves a gas.)  

Because this tendency in kids' science books irritates me so much, I never thought I'd use one that relies heavily on baking soda and vinegar.  Well, I spoke too soon.   This one's pretty good.  

For one thing, it doesn't pretend to teach the fundamentals of chemistry.  Instead, what it's teaching are the fundamentals of laboratory practice:  as I wrote in my earlier post, "developing skills of safely handling, carefully observing, accurately describing, faithfully reporting, and logically analyzing."   And I think with a little bit of emphasis on my part it can also teach that "we can learn from our experiences and make predictions about the future, and when our predictions are wrong we have still learned something" -- this is no less than the fundamental postulate underlying all of natural science.

For another thing, it is honest about its limitations.  Zubrowski writes in the introduction, "What this book is about is how to investigate the chemistry of cake and bread making."  Indeed, "how to investigate" -- not "This book will teach you all about the chemistry of cakes" or "this book will teach you why cakes and bread rise" or "this book will teach fundamental concepts of chemistry."  

No, what it does it encourage kids to begin with recipes, change them, and observe the differences in the results.  This is different from most of the activities in kids' kitchen chemistry books -- it's not just a demonstration ("Drop some food coloring in a jar of warm water and a jar of cold water and see what happens!  If you did it right, you'll see that the color spread faster in the warm water!"), it's actually an experiment.   If I require the child to keep a laboratory notebook and run parallel experiments with "control" cakes, then he'll really be doing a real experiment -- much like my soaked-flour-in-the-bread-machine series I wrote about earlier.

The experiments in cake-baking are followed by activities that demonstrate the effects of mixing various liquids with baking powder, and the author does not commit the error of calling these  activities "experiments."  He writes, "If you play with baking powder by itself you will find that it does some very curious things..."  and suggests that the child keep a record of his observations.  To introduce an activity in which the baking powder is mixed with soap water, he writes:  "Now here is something special to try that will show you what happens to the baking powder when it is added to the cake batter."  The explanation:  "The foam, especially in the sudsy water, is similar to what happens in cake batter. The water in the milk in the batter reacts with the baking powder to make small bubbles.  In the sudsy water, air is trapped by detergent film.  In the cake the combination of flour, eggs, and milk forms a sticky dough that traps the bubbles as they are formed."  

This is accurate, unpretentious, and uncondescending writing for children about science (and about cooking).  Compare this to the language in, say, The Everything Kids' Science Experiments Book by Tom Robinson:

Question:  What makes things fizzy? 

 In this experiment, you will produce different combinations of mixtures that react to form fizzy solutions.  You'll start with a baking soda/vinegar mixture and then move on to produce your own safe-to-drink, though not particularly tasty, lemon soda.

Science concept:  Certain materials, when brought into contact with other materials, react in a way that forms bubbles.  Acids and bases often combine to form carbon dioxide, which, as a gas, is what makes carbonated soda fizzy.  You'll be experimenting with several common ingredients to determine which react in this way.

The last statement is an out-and-out lie, and the thing about acids and bases "often" combining to form carbon dioxide is... well... misleading at best.  Not to mention implying that this is how soda drinks are carbonated.  Oh, by the way, one of the "reactions" is dropping a lump of dry ice into some water, which illustrates a physical (not chemical) change.  

Back to Zubrowski.  Because he has kids making small cakes (6 Tbsp of flour in each one), we can use that to discuss the concept of scale-up.  Because he has kids comparing recipes that have been altered by one change at a time, we can discuss experimental design and controls.  There are several activities where mixtures of different quantities are compared, so the importance of measurement and careful replication is demonstrated.  Different brands of baking powder are compared:  since these will, of course, have different prices, there's a nod to economics and to variations in quality control from different suppliers, which Dad-the-process-engineer is really going to appreciate.   A suggestion that the child try making a baking soda cake with orange juice leads me to think the child ought to be able to design his own recipe based on what he's learned from the previous experiments.

  Gas collection systems begin with crude balloons-on-bottles but progress to the child's building a gas generator and a collection system in which the volume of gas can actually be measured.  (Here's where I'm going to go the extra mile and get some lab equipment -- no need to bore holes in rubber balls stuck in the necks of jars when I have access to online retailers that will sell me value-priced two-hole stoppers and Erlenmeyer flasks).  The child is encouraged to try several activities that demonstrate the properties of the gas.  "Experiments?"  No!  Zubrowski writes, "Just what is this gas?  Is it plain old air or does it have special properties?... One of the jobs of a chemist is to find out about things like this.  Scientists have developed all sorts of tests for substances to find out exactly what they are.  Here are some you can try." He goes on to tell how the child can demonstrate that the gas doesn't support combustion, is heavier than air -- a chance to explain molecular mass! -- and dissolves in water to form an acidic solution).  And then, rather than claiming that all these tests prove it's carbon dioxide, he warns the reader "You would need to do other tests to establish this fully..."  (Guess what.  I can buy saturated lime water online.  Problem solved.)

Why does the language matter so much to me?  It reminds me a little bit about my philosophy towards child discipline. With discipline responses, the most important thing to me isn't whether a given technique, or way of explaining things, "works" (appears to give immediate results).  I obviously don't want to choose things that turn out NOT to work, but not just anything that appears to "work" will do.  Ultimately, I choose techniques and language that I am comfortable using:  language and actions that communicate the truth, namely,  that the child is a human person deserving of respect while learning, AND that I as his parent have a real, natural, and just authority over him, AND that I expect him to learn to comport himself more and more as he gains experience and maturity.  If I can't find something that meets both those criteria (truth and effectiveness), I'm going to do my best to try to come up with one, and in the meantime I err on the side of truth over apparent effectiveness.  Because I believe that the truth IS effective, even if it seems to take longer than, say, duct-taping a kid's mouth shut.

For the same reason, I need to use books that use language I can stand to hear.  Language that isn't dumbed down so much that it no longer accurately describes what's physically going on.

So... even though Exploding Color Changing Slime may appear to get kids interested in science, really it only demonstrates that kids are interested in exploding color changing slime.  Which is not representative of "science."  I'd rather introduce children to what workaday science really means:   observation, measurement, recording, communicating, repeating and repeating and repeating, calculating, predicting, testing.  It is not, perhaps, as impressive; it perhaps will not produce wide-eyed wonder, at least not right away.  But it is true, and I think there is a special kind of quiet fascination that some children can find in the thought:  I can do this.  I can discover this.  I can measure this.  I can find it out for myself.  It takes longer to develop, but I think it will stick.

Labor and mind.

Nice post from Kate at Peace and Pekoe about manual labor and the mind.

It seems reasonable enough that there must be some real differences in cognitive development between the person who interacts with physical puzzles and products every day vs. those who only think and read and write and interact primarily with computers, pencil and paper. I see traits in my carpenter husband that seem organically connected with his trade, as though being a craftsman is a character trait like being introverted or optimistic, and I've learned to recognize some of these traits in other tradespeople as well - not that I find it easy to describe what exactly those traits are, without being guilty of over-generalization or romanticism. It's more a mode of being, thinking and doing, I think. In any case, I appreciate it and often envy it and I wonder sometimes whether anyone else has noticed this - this imprint one's work seems to make on one's soul - or whether I am alone in this.

Oh yeah, I've noticed it -- I'm married to a process engineer, a very hands-on, problem-solving sort of person who loves his job and comes home dirty.  I like to think I share a little bit of that mode of thinking, even though I always had a much more theoretical bent.

Don't forget that there's another class of work that I'm sure changes your cognition -- the kind where you work intimately with other people, and have to learn to navigate other people's flaws and talents, their immaturities and their gifts.  The kind where you teach others, and others teach you, if you're open to it.  Mothering is just such a life, but interpersonal interactions are central to lots of paid work too.  One can be good at it or bad at it.  And if you are getting better at it, it must be because your mind is making new connections, because you are learning.

I find that living and working at home alongside my learning and growing children has been both a laboratory of "physical puzzles and projects" -- and a laboratory for understanding human relationships in a way I never did before.  You might say I am learning how to manipulate people (smile) or you might say I am learning to motivate them.  In any case it is a laboratory of love, too.

Safety shower.

Organic chemist Derek Lowe writes about two recent laboratory deaths, including one in which using the safety shower might have made a difference.

Whenever I read about safety showers that were or weren't used, I always wonder whether the shower had a curtain around it.  Are people more likely to use it in an emergency if there's some semblance of privacy?  I think they would.  

"Don't be silly, Erin," you may be thinking, "what dummy is going to think twice about using the safety shower if they've just poured acid all over himself?"

The guy I shared a hood with in college organic chemistry lab, for one person.    He spilled a test tube full of sulfuric acid on his jeans.  The  safety shower was right next to us, yet somehow he felt more comfortable running down the hall to the men's room to take his jeans off.  

Then, of course, he was trapped there with no pants until some other guy in the class happened to walk in.  I was, of course, not there, but I can imagine the conversation:

PANTSLESS DUDE:  Psst!  Hey you!

OTHER DUDE:  Uh, do you need some help?

PANTSLESS DUDE:  Um, can you get me a pair of scissors? 

Because he did come back to class to finish his reaction, wearing a pair of jeans that was half boot-cut and half short-shorts.  

He wasn't a dummy exactly, although he got a lot of ribbing for this afterward, as he should have; but he was also very lucky, because that could have ended quite poorly for him.

Also while I was an undergraduate, I interned at a chemical plant in the South that shall go un-named.  When I arrived, the hot gossip topic was a female technician (it's relevant, hang on) who had recently been released from the hospital into a new, desk-centered job.  (The other techs wouldn't work with her anymore, they were so mad at her for ruining the long string of days with no lost-time incidents, so nobody was going to get the safety bonus that had been only days away.)  

What'd happened?  She'd gotten sprayed all over by a leaking tank.  The safety shower was literally steps away -- as were several male co-workers.  She climbed down out of the scaffolding and ran back to the women's locker room to shower.  The lengthy exposure seriously injured her; likely it would have been a minor incident had she stepped into the shower and removed her clothes.  

But, you know, "don't strip in front of your co-workers" is a hard taboo for some folks to get past.

Yes, yes, the thing both of these people should have done is forget modesty, hit the shower, and save their skins.  But... safety managers have a job too, and if there's anything that is part of the job of managing safety, it's taking human nature into account.

107.8.

The first measurement below my target.

Yes, it's necessary.  My target weight range is between 106.8 and 109.2;  as I've said, I want my weight to fluctuate around 108, not above it.   My 5-day running average still has not reached 108, though.

Weight-maintenance experts -- see Thin For Life by Anne Fletcher and Refuse to Regain by Barbara Berkeley -- recommend setting an upper maintenance limit (Berkeley calls it the Scream Weight) a few pounds above your target; if you see that number on the scale, you must act immediately to reverse the gain.

Mark, who occasionally has to design process controls for a living, took a look at the normal variation in my weight measurements and based on his statistical analysis, suggested a whole set of triggers.  I am supposed to immediately start weight loss mode if I see:

Rule 1.  One scale reading above 111.6 

Rule 2.  Two out of three consecutive readings above 110.4

Rule 3.  Four out of five consecutive readings above 109.2

Rule 4.  Seven in a row above the target of 108

By the way, the rules are symmetrical.  I'm also supposed to enter "weight gain" mode -- whatever THAT looks like -- if I have one scale reading below 104.4, or two out of three below 105.6, and so on.  I am not too worried about this happening, but you never know.  So there you go, everyone who is worried I will become anorexic.  I have a plan to avoid that, just in case.

This method wouldn't work in my house.

Sippican Cottage moves a big box into his basement:

Do you know how to move heavy things? I see all sorts of educated people that can't fathom how people built the pyramids. They'll believe aliens did it, but not regular people. When you become far removed from everyday things, you'll believe anything but the truth. Construction workers don't watch Mythbusters.

If I told you you had to move that 439 pound box down a flight of stairs, could you do it? Here's what's at your disposal: A thirteen year old boy, his mom, and whatever you have laying around. Easy. By the way; you're in a hurry, because the item is made from cast iron, and it's going to rain. And you can't drop it -- it's precision machinery.

Nice job.   Our stairs have a 180-degree turn halfway down, which is at least part of the reason why Mark's table saw lives in the garage.

Feeling safe vs. being safe.

Megan McArdle points to an interesting article about a Dutch traffic engineer, famous for removing traffic signs and thereby increasing safety.  Both Megan's post and the article are very much worth reading.  (Bonus new material provided by me:  Here's the Google satellite view of the intersection described in detail in the article.)

View Larger Map

I had never thought of it before, but the original article points out, and Megan highlights, a key piece of information:   In some cases, making people feel less safe will make them safer in reality.  Traffic engineering, apparently, is one of these cases.  Encouraging people to be alert and attentive encourages safe driving.  And apparently, we make people feel less safe -- and encourage them to pay attention -- not when we plaster warnings, signs, and markings everywhere, but rather when we take them away.   (There's an argument, of course, that this effect lasts only as long as it takes for people to get comfortable in the new environment.  Not sure about the data for that one.)

Other times, to feel safer is to be safer -- that is, feelings of safety can contribute to actual safety.  One can imagine many situations in which calmness -- a product of feeling safe -- helps you avoid mistakes.  Another situation that comes to mind is childbirth; being relaxed and in a place where one feels secure helps the flow of hormones that loosen and open up the body.

The main lesson to take away?  Feeling safe and being safe are separate issues -- not necessarily correlated or anti-correlated (is that a word?  Oh well, you know what I meant.)  And if a population is going to make rational decisions about safety regulations, it has to be able to step outside itself a bit, look at how it "feels" about regulations objectively, and consider what reality is created by those perceptions.

My husband is turning green.

Even as we speak (er... you know what I mean) he is in the garage designing and executing a wooden-slat-based, or possibly dowel-based, clothesline substitute to be installed in our attic.

I've been bugging him about putting a clothesline of some sort in our back yard since we moved into this house, but he has so far rejected all my suggestions, mostly because he seems to think that the children will try to pull downward on said clothesline and by doing so exert a sideways force much greater than their weight on the fence post, or door jamb, or whatever, meaning that an enormous torque would be applied to said fence post or door jamb (trigonometry is involved), and that said torque would quickly result in expensive property damage and a big mess to clean up.  

What he says makes sense, in a mathematical way I mean, but I can't help thinking that I'm sure I've seen some houses around that, you know, had this destructive equipment just out there in their yard.  Maybe they had really put the time and effort into reinforcing their fence posts and door jambs.

Anyway, Mark went to a presentation at work a couple of weeks ago in which the speaker suggested that the single device that the typical household could use and doesn't which would yield the best return on investment, in terms of energy and dollar savings, is a clothesline.  Somehow this got through in a way that my "Can't you think of a way I can hang up a clothesline?" has not, and he is already in the process of Building a Better Clothesline.  A moment ago he passed through the living room carrying a long board.  Just now he is passing in the other direction carrying an extension cord and wearing a dust mask and, I believe, ear protection.

I'm thinking he's looking to halve or quarter that ROI.

Some national coverage.

Popular Mechanics covers the I-35W bridge collapse and findings, briefly.

You know, PM is a pretty good magazine.  After my seven-year-old started reading last year, I started looking for magazines to subscribe to, you know, stuff with text and interesting pictures that could be lying around waiting to be picked up and looked at.  I thought PM might fit the bill:  interesting for the adults in the house, not too high a reading level, and possibly having material that would be good for a mechanically-inclined kid to flip through.

Then I bought a paper copy and saw the ads in the back.

Um.  NO.   They are not, how you say, family friendly.  (Much like the Skiing Magazine that I can't seem to convince Mark to cancel, only because we got it when the other, good skiing magazine went out of business and transferred our account, prepaid for like the next ten years)

I've had some other suggestions (Smithsonian; National Geographic) but have dropped the project in the meantime...