Short Takes – 6-21-23

Physicists split bits of sound using quantum mechanics. ScienceNews.org article. Geeky stuff. Pull quote: “Cleland and his team managed the feat with an acoustic beam splitter, a device that allows about half of an impinging torrent of phonons to pass through while the rest get reflected back. But when just one phonon at a time meets the beam splitter, that phonon enters a special quantum state where it goes both ways at once. The simultaneously reflected and transmitted phonon interacts with itself, in a process known as interference, to change where it ultimately ends up.”

Hazardous Materials: Information Collection Activities. Federal Register PHMSA 30-day ICR Notice. Comment deadline – July 21^st, 2023. Renewing the following ICR’s (internal document links):

Hazardous Materials Incident Reports (2137–0039),

Cargo Tank Motor Vehicles in Liquefied Compressed Gas Service (2137–0595), and

Inspection and Testing of Meter Provers (2137–0620),

Teamsters strike with UPS could snarl commerce as labor flexes muscle. TheHill.com article. Pull quote: ““If it was just one union rattling its saber and trying to make demands, that’s one thing. But if you’re having Starbucks, Amazon, Apple and all these major companies starting to unionize now, a lot of these pretty substantial bargaining demands become more realistic, especially with all these logistical dilemmas people are having,” he said.”

Proposed rule requires railroads to notify first responders in 10-mile radius of derailments. TheHill.com article. Draft NPRM (HM-263). Pull quote: “Large railroads already have an app, AskRail, so firefighters could look up what the cargo of each train carries — but the smaller railroads do not have an app like that. This new rule would apply to nearly 600 railroads across the country.” May be in Federal Register next week, but it has not yet been sent to OMB (maybe not necessary).