People forget what powered the world they live in, with cell phones, air conditioners, lights and provided electric power to myriads of industries and transportation systems. The world was a coal-based power generation. Without it, people would not be enjoying the luxuries they now enjoy. People plug into a wall outlet and like magic, they can run an appliance.

Some people make decisions with no information, meaning that there is a high likelihood they will be wrong. With information, this probability can be shifted more towards the lower end of the spectrum. So, when does the decision need to be made? Can it wait a little so that more information is available before making the decision?

Over one of the companys engineers 50 years experience, the biggest disappointment they have witnessed is the loss of know-how due to people leaving or companies closing their doors. Technological advances have come and gone and yet it seems like the industry is constantly reinventing the wheel. How is this regained? The coal industry is highly competitive, which means that if technology and information is kept secret a miner can keep a competitive edge. The problem with this approach is that the technology may get lost, technology which includes computer programmes. Some companies invested in a staff of computer programmers that wrote all their software. As new computer platforms came along, the software was being constantly modified to adapt the software. Much of the mining software is now lost because it has not been kept up with new operating systems. Some of the old discarded software is better than preserved software available in the market today.

In the mining industry, advances have been made that will improve safety, for example underground ventilation or ground controls that can benefit everyone. The software that was developed could save lives and, if shared, would have the capability to benefit everyone. Some companies are spending more money on research and development than others. Contributing to these companies financially and redistributing technology that is safety related would help the world.

By using computer simulations, changing mining methods have been able to help turn a company that is losing millions of dollars into one which makes millions of dollars. In the 1970s, the US was landing men on the moon and thus space frontier was on everyones mind.

Deep underground in coal seams that were formed from compacted vegetation growing in swamps millions of years ago, underground surveyors were examining the locations of the mine faces so that the draftsman could generate maps. They drilled a 0.25 in. hole in the roof, hammered a wooden plug into the hole and then hammered in a metal spad with a hole in it, through a brass tag with a number on it. This number corresponded to a number on the map that the draftsman was generating, helping workers to locate underground mine development. They would hang a string with a plumb bob on it and shine their cap lamp behind it and the transit-man would tell them to tap the spad to the right or left to get the string at the correct alignment. The shift foreman would then use the same spad to hang a string and line up the entries underground.

One conventional mine that was surveyed by underground surveyors had coal that was 50 in. thick. Each coal face was cut at the bottom with a cutting machine, drilled, blasted and then cleaned up with coal loading machines. The coal was then hauled from the coal face to railcars using an electric shuttle car. After the area was cleaned up, a roof bolter would drill the entry roof and place anchor bolts to support the roof.

The second mine surveyed was using a large coal cutting machine called a boring machine.

The boring machine was very large and slow. It would cut 100 ft of coal before it could move to another location. The circular shape of the entry left by the borer had enough stability to support the roof until the roof bolter could get in and bolt the roof. However, due to the slow cutting, the boring machine dumped the coal on the ground behind the machine so that it could continue cutting. A low profile (scoop) loading machine was used to gather the coal and convey it into waiting shuttle cars.

The boring machine also presented multiple dangers and health and safety hazards. This is because the machine is blocked by the pile of coal and could not be moved to the next location until the coal behind it was cleaned up. In addition, the mine operator, loading machine operator and the shuttle-car operator were all working under unsupported roof.

In the 1970s, the Mine Health and Safety Act passed laws that required coal mines to improve safety. One of the new rules was that no man could go beyond unsupported roof. This law eliminated the use of boring machines and required that continuous mining machines be more mobile.

The third mine that was surveyed was using these new, safer ripper machines (Figure 2). The depth of cut was reduced to the distance between the tip of the cutting head to the protected cab that the operator sat in. The cutting head is very narrow so, although it was a more mobile machine, itrequired many slices into the coal to carve out an entry.

Later, a full-face continuous miner was introduced that allowed for one cut before moving on to the next cut. As the laws changed, operators had to adjust their operations in order to stay in business. Satellite bolters were added on the sides of the continuous miner to simultaneously allow forbolting to be done and the continuous miner to cut coal. A centre bolter was used to bolt the middle of the entry after the continuous miner was moved to the next location to cut. The satellite bolters placed the roof bolter operator in a dangerous location as they stood between the miningmachine and the ribs.

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcoal.com/special-reports/14052020/mind-the-digital-gap/

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Mind the Digital Gap - World Coal

ITS one of the more poignant couch experiences, during lockdown: watching expansive science fiction on your home screen, while the birds outside laugh at you for your single permitted walk a day. The futures bright, you mutter, one popcorn cluster at a time.

This despite most SF being dark and dystopian (thanks Hollywood for continuing to press the button on Project Fear). But the best ones at least put the promise of a better future on a knife edge.

Whatever the Powerful New Machine is, its forces can be turned either way, according to our ethics and awareness. I find it good to experience stories of momentous choice, in these straitened circumstances. Its a wee bit of defiance, however wilful.

Take the recent BBC2 series Devs (highly recommended). The show held out the near-term possibility of a completely transformed world. A fully-realised quantum computer, capable of unimaginably greater calculations than any silicon-based device, seems to be able to predict whats about to happen next.

Heres the intellectual drama: does this mean the near future, or a near future? Is it what we might predict would definitely happen next, if all the matter in the universe was calculable? Or is it what might happen in some parallel universes, which another interpretation of physics suggests are being infinitely produced, in every moment of quantum weirdness?

In Devs, all this infinity and certainty is tethered to the grubbiest, most faltering humans. Fathers are made mad by the mourning of their daughters; secret agents wrestle fatally on the floors of underground car parks; sentimental geeks fall, and then stay, awkwardly in love.

The series written and directed by wunderkind Alex Garland both wants to celebrate Silicon Valleys vaulting ambition, and measure it against the reality of us sweaty, needy bipeds. Its an SF trope that hasnt changed much since Mary Shelleys Frankenstein (and no less valuable for that).

But behind all of the narrative moves in Devs, theres an alluring dream still glimmering here. Human beings are always capable of shocking technological advances ones that can liberate us into potentially more easeful, creative, wiser existences. As the tumbleweed rolls down your corona-cleared street, and the TV credits roll, you start wondering. Imagine we could put such computational power at the service of crunching the data coming, in real time, from our biosphere?

It would be like the ultimate dashboard, showing us how to maintain a healthy balance between human activity and natural restoration, right down to the last gram of carbon. Wouldnt that turn us into Spaceship Earth, sailing sanely and sustainably through the cosmos? Wouldnt it be great to invent that? Im well aware that this reveals what might be called my accelerationist tendencies. Accelerationism is a school of thought which believes humans need to push our inventive, creative-destructive capacities as far as they can go. If so, we can break through to a new world of cost-free abundance.

Yet there are so many voices around me at the moment many of them womens who think these accelerationist tendencies are our key problem. Hasnt agri-business accelerated into virgin jungles, releasing an army of pathogens? Havent marketers accelerated their understanding of human motivation and susceptibility, so were trapped in their web of heedless consumption?

And although the experience of lockdown is very much shaped by inequality, dont we generally accept it implies a change of pace in our working and social lives? A brace of polls over the last few weeks would seem to back that up.

YouGov polls have had 54% saying I hope to change some things about my life as a result of this crisis, with only 9% wanting things returning to the way they were. They also record majorities for Universal Basic Income (51%), rent control (74%) and a jobs guarantee (72%).

Perhaps this explains the brutal rhetoric coming from the Westminster Government this week. It has been snarling about weaning citizens off their addiction to furlough payments (which casts us as either demanding infants, or dependant junkies).

The Tories may be suspecting that millions have appreciated being able to step off a relentless treadmill all that overwork in inessential jobs.

So maybe we make the best of radical technological innovation all those increases in doing more with less that it brings if we have already decided on a different pace and quality of life.

This decision might not just be based on some hippie-like revolution of values, spreading throughout the classes. It might also come from looking soberly at the statistics of modern history. In short, the lockdown has only revealed the slowdown that we are already on.

THIS is the intriguing argument from the geographer Danny Dorling. His new books full title is Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration and Why Its Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives.

With a forest of graphs, Dorling tries to show us that our major trends point to stagnation, not more explosive growth. GDP peaked in 1968; populations everywhere are headed for eventual decline. Even articles on Wikipedia are slowing in growth which is not the endlessly expanding story we expect from digital culture.

Pointing to the tractor, television and telephony or the fridge, the washing machine, air conditioning and the pill Dorling wants to argue a contrary case. These inventions were far more transformative experiences of tech innovation than anything were currently experiencing. Were heading for more than 60 years of computer use, 30-odd years of internet and mobile use. Have we really moved into a radically different life-experience, comparable to the removal of horses from our streets and fields, Dorling asks?

Imagine we accepted in the words of the Scottish wellbeing economist Katherine Trebeck that we have arrived. Where we recognise that human societies, with current tools at their disposal, can more than adequately meet their needs. This would mean abandoning the idea that current inequalities and polarities can always wait to be addressed, because a future that grows the pie will raise all boats.

This is why we always give the green light to the hyped-up adventurism of tech enterpreneurs, in the hope that theyll break through to a new source of wealth (the dream at the heart of Devs).

If you cease to take the exponential view, you start to distribute what you are able to produce more equitably in each society. Dorling identifies Japan and Finland as demographically ageing and shrinking societies, who are turning their supposed stagnations into stabler redistributions of wealth.

This is excellent, usefully counter-intuitive stuff. I especially like Dorlings prediction that, under slowdown, social and cultural innovation will come to the fore.

In 1950, your grandparents might have been able to imagine the combination of typewriter, TV and telephone that comprises todays smartphone. But could they have conceived it would be OK to be gay in the future? Or that young women would be graduating from university at a much higher rate than young men? says Dorling in a recent Prospect interview.

Our grandchildren may laugh at the bigotries of our current conventional behaviour, he suggests. If we get to have grandchildren, that is.

However, that last line triggers my main caveat to Dorlings thesis. Indeed, human beings may have to enact the biggest and fastest course-correction in their existences.

Accepting the news from Nature that were hitting some hard limits, that we must redesign our systems to stay within planetary boundaries, and that we are perfectly capable and tooled-up to do this its all a strong, empowering, challenging story, inviting the best from us.

But say we do manage to turn the supertanker of modernity around (irony intended). Do we really think that coming generations will lack curiosity, ingenuity and ambition, for what science and technology can do? Once we stabilise our world, could we become wise enough to really journey into AI and the human genome (while also glorying in and honouring all other forms of life on this planet)?

Scots have an extraordinary resource in the writings of Iain M Bankss The Culture novels. They work out how exploring such potentials might produce a rich and satisfying civilisation.

See what happens when you watch too much SF in lockdown?

Danny Dorlings Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration and Why Its Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives is on Yale, 18.99.

Devs is currently on BBC iPlayer.

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Lockdown really frees the mind to delve deep into thoughts of future - The National

When Wall Street analysts call Ford Motor Co.'s investor relations department these days, they're likely to be greeted by Henry Ford himself.

It's not the founder, of course, and it's not a recording of him either. It's Henry Ford III, the patriarch's great-great grandson, who at age 39 has been thrust into the crucial role of liaison between the faltering automaker and its anxious investors.

The III's ascent -- along with that of his cousin, the 32-year-old Alexandra Ford English, just named to the board of electric-truck maker Rivian Automotive Inc. -- marks a coming of age for the fifth generation of the Ford dynasty. For all but 20 of its almost 117 years of existence, Ford has been led by a family member. And while critics lay much of the blame for the company's current struggles on the Fords, the family sees Henry and Alexandra as their best hope of maintaining control for years to come.

"They've moving above the radar line now," Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, associate dean at the Yale School of Management, said of the automotive heirs. "This is what they were destined for when they entered the company. When we look at their dads, they're on the same trajectory, with at least one, if not both, ending up on the board."

The changes come as the company endures another existential crisis, with losses mounting and North American factories idle in the face of coronavirus shutdowns. But after Ford shareholders gathered for their virtual annual meeting Thursday, the founding family remains firmly in control, aided by a special class of stock that gives them 40% voting power.

The arrangement once again came under scrutiny at the annual meeting. A shareholder proposal to strip the family of its special class of stock and go to a one-share, one-vote arrangement garnered 35% support, up from 34% last year. Some investors have long complained that super-power voting weighs down the value of publicly traded companies, while giving founding families sometimes unwarranted control.

"That's why we don't have Kings and Queens anymore -- it's a roll of the genetic dice," said Nell Minow, vice chair with ValueEdge Advisors, a shareholder advocacy firm. "We've seen in companies like Motorola and Anheuser Busch that it hasn't worked out to continue to pass the baton from generation to generation."

Since Bill Ford became chairman in 1999, the automaker's shares are down 91%, while the S&P 500 index is up 129%. Unlike General Motors and Chrysler, however, Ford avoided bankruptcy in 2009.

On Thursday, Bill Ford expressed disappointment in the stock performance but confidence that the shares will rise as the company executes its turnaround efforts, which include new models such as the electric Mustang Mach-E and the revived Bronco sport-utility vehicle.

"We feel very good about our plan," Ford said. "Management's compensation is heavily tied to our stock, so it's in everyone's interest to get our stock price back up."

And for all their problems, the Fords have earned a reputation for not meddling in the corporate decision-making process. "The Fords, in general, have a pretty good history of letting the executives run the company," said Rob Du Boff, environmental, social and corporate governance analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence.

Henry Ford III and Ford English are likely years away, if ever, from assuming the uppermost leadership roles. Jim Farley, promoted March 1 to chief operating officer, is the clear heir apparent to current CEO Jim Hackett. But each is now moving through a variety of jobs at the company. Henry, known as "Sonny" among friends and family, was director of corporate strategy before taking the investor relations job. He is the son of Edsel Ford II, a board member and now a company consultant.

Ford English, the daughter of Bill Ford, assumed a corporate strategy position similar to the one previously held by her cousin, while also being named to the board of Rivian Automotive, the electric-truck maker in which Ford has taken a significant ownership stake.

Each declined an interview request through a Ford spokeswoman.

Their seasoning is similar to what their fathers received while rising in the ranks in the 1980s and '90s. Bill and Edsel Ford landed on the company's board of directors in 1988 while still in their 30s and agitated successfully for more prominent roles as directors. Edsel eventually rose to president of Ford's highly profitable credit unit before retiring in 1998, and Bill became company chairman in January 1999 and served as CEO from 2001 to 2006.

For Henry and Ford English, working in the family business may not have been preordained, but close to it. After graduating from Dartmouth in 2002 with a degree in history, Ford III taught middle and high school math and history.

Then in 2006, at the age of 25, he joined Ford in labor relations. He helped to negotiate a contract with the United Auto Workers, similar to Bill Ford's first job at the company in 1979. Henry III went on to work in purchasing, dealer relations, as a vehicle program analyst and as global marketing manager for Ford's high-performance sports cars, drawing on the company's racing heritage highlighted in last year's Academy Award-winning "Ford v Ferrari."

"In the back of my mind, I knew I always wanted to work for Ford," Henry Ford III told Automotive News in 2014. "Our family's legacy and heritage are very important to me and I knew it was something I wanted to carry on."

In investor relations, the young scion will face tough questions about Ford's falling stock and growing losses.

"Investor relations is the best place that you can put somebody that you're trying to groom for leadership because they are going to be dealing with complaints all the time," Minow said. "It will give him a real reality check."

Unlike some children of famous people, he has no qualms about using his name in business, recalled Los Angeles Ford dealer Beau Boeckmann. Ford III worked at his store selling cars during the summer of 2009 while getting an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"When he walked through the door, he said I want to be called Henry Ford and have it on my name tag," Boeckmann said. "Customers would say, 'Wait a minute, your name's Henry Ford, are you any relation?' And he'd laugh and say, 'Yeah, I'm Henry Ford III.'"

Ford English also tried out another industry after she earned a bachelor's in human biology, physiology and neuroscience at Stanford and an MBA at Harvard. She worked in retailing in the merchandising divisions of Tory Burch in New York and Gap in San Francisco.

Her first job at Ford, in 2017 at the age of 29, was in a department helping to find new mobility solutions for crowded cities, and then she moved on to Ford's self-driving vehicle unit.

"I was originally hesitant to join Ford because I don't have a technical background and it's a company built upon engineering," Ford English said in a 2018 company-sponsored video. "But I knew what I could bring to the company and I was very aware of those skills."

Joining the company and rising to the top are two different things, of course. Henry Ford II, the outsize and colorful leader of the company for 35 years until his 1981 retirement, once famously declared "there are no crown princes at Ford."

The latest Henry has said he works hard not to appear "to have any sense of entitlement." That may be what drove him to turn down an invitation to a Fourth of July party from dealer Boeckmann back in the summer of 2009. Instead, the scion remained in the showroom all day, selling cars in the California heat.

"I said, 'Hey Henry, why don't you come join us for the family picnic?' But he said, 'Thank you, but I'm here selling cars,'" Boeckmann said. "He's extremely humble and he is aware that he needs to work harder because of his name."

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Henry Ford III is rising to top of dynasty in deep trouble - San Antonio Express-News

Want to get faster? Sleep slow. Slow-wave sleep (SWS)the deepest, most restorative stage of sleepcan help you recover from heavy training and races.

Experts now say what and when you eat affects how much slow-wave sleep you get and how well your sleep recharges and restores your body and mind. Along with good sleep hygienelike sticking to a regular sleep schedule, powering down electronics in the last hour before bed, and keeping your sleep environment dark and quietfocusing on what you eat (and when) may help boost the quality of your deep slumber.

Sleep quality is improved if you shift your carbohydrate intake to the morning, which helps avoid a blood sugar crash right before bed and keeps blood sugar more stable overnight, says Jose Colon, M.D., MPH, a sleep disorders and lifestyle medicine specialist (and avid runner). You may also want to avoid eating in the last hour or two before bed since digestion draws blood and warmth to the core, disrupting the natural progression into deep sleep. If you need a pre-bed snack, choose something light, and with a lower glycemic indexfoods with a high glycemic index reduce slow-wave sleep, possibly because they promote inflammationsuch as a cup of veggie-rich soup or a small amount of hummus, no less than an hour before hitting the sheets.

Multiple studies show caffeine results in shorter sleep times and less slow-wave sleep. The compound stays in the system for 8 to 10 hours, so steer clear of the pick-me-up, including caffeinated gels and sports drinks, after 12pm.

Just one or two drinks daily can throw off your sleep stages, resulting in sleep thats less restorative. While alcohol makes you feel drowsy, it doesnt allow you to stay in the deeper stages of sleep and may wake you up in the wee hours once its effects wear off.

A balanced, brightly hued diet rich in phytonutrients that reduce oxidative stress can promote better-quality sleep, says Colon. Aim for 6 to 8 servings a day of colorful produce such as spinach, sweet potatoes, dark berries, plums, and squash.

Intermittent fasting may improve sleep quality, according to some studies, because digestion, particularly breaking down heavy, high-glycemic-index meals, seems to hamper sleep quality. So limiting the hours your body breaks down food could help you sleep better. Other studies show that low-carb and ketogenic diets similarly boost sleep quality and support slow-wave sleep; scientists believe the higher quantities of healthy fats in these diets may be responsible.

The following nutrients may increase the depth and quality of your sleep and boost slow-wave sleep to help restore and recharge your body and mind. As always, talk to your doc before trying any new supplement.

An anxiety-reducing amino acid found in tea. Paired with gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), a neurotransmitter that calms the nervous system, it can boost slow-wave sleep by 20 percent.

Research links the mineral to longer, better-quality sleep and enhanced athletic performance and recovery. Whole grains, milk, oysters, and red meat are good food sources, or pop a daily multi.

Vitamin D isnt actually a vitaminits a hormone that can increase the amount of melatonin (the hormone that regulates the sleep-wake cycle) your body creates. Low levels of vitamin D are linked to insomnia and fragmented, poor-quality sleep. Natural sunlight exposure helps the body make vitamin D (and catching rays in the morning may help sync your circadian rhythm so youll fall asleep easier at bedtime, too). When sunlight is scarce, find vitamin D in fatty fish, fortified foods, cheese, and egg yolks, or a supplement.

Taurine, which is found in meat, shellfish, and dairy (in lower amounts), promotes deep sleep by helping the brain process GABA. Get it from food or take a supplement hour before bed. Carnitine, an amino acid found mainly in animal products, can improve sleep quality, mood, and performance. Consider takign a supplement if you follow a vegan or vegetarian diet. The naturally occurring amino acid 5-HTP promotes healthy levels of serotonin, which increases sleep pressure, the biological drive to fall into a deep, restful sleep at bedtime. To avoid a potentially dangerous overbalance of serotonin, avoid taking 5-HTP with antidepressants.

This phospholipid improves sleep by reducing cortisol (the stress hormone, which builds up during intense exercise) and regulating circadian rhythms, especially when paired with omega-3 fatty acids DHA and EPA. Youll find phosphatidylserine in foods such as soy, fatty fish, and liver, but its difficult to get enough of these nutrients through food alone, so consider a supplement.

The mineral is essential to high quality, restorative sleep; deficiency can cause restless legs syndrome and fatigue. Add iron-rich foods like red meat, beans and lentils, tofu, spinach, and cashews to your plate, or take a daily supplement.

Found in dark chocolate, avocados, nuts, seeds and whole grains, the mineral calms the body and mind to prepare for sleep. Get it through your diet or take a magnesium glycinate supplement one hour before bed. Be careful if you get your magnesium through chocolate, however: Chocolate also contains caffeine.

Research shows it can significantly increase slow-wave sleep by increasing the activity of GABA receptors.

Sources:Jose Colon, M.D., MPH, sleep disorders and lifestyle medicine specialist; Michael Breus, Ph.D., sleep specialist; Amy Archer RDN, integrative nutritionist; Angela Foster, nutritionist and performance coach; Carissa Alinat, Ph.D., APRN, hormone therapy specialist; Jason Koop, performance coach.

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6 Nutrition Tips to Help You Sleep Better and Run Faster - runnersworld.com