Latest news with #HIP
American Press
6 days ago
- Business
- American Press
Louisiana launches High Impact Jobs Program focused on energy, advanced manufacturing
(Special to the American Press) A new state program designed to boost high-paying employment in Louisiana officially launched this month, offering grants to companies in sectors deemed critical to the state's economy — including energy and advanced manufacturing — while excluding industries like gaming, retail, and solar farms. Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois told The Center Square that the program has received four applicants so far. The High Impact Jobs Program, administered by Louisiana Economic Development, was created to provide performance-based grants to businesses that create full-time, benefits-eligible jobs paying above-average wages. To qualify, companies must meet wage thresholds based on regional or parish averages and operate in eligible industries. Bourgeois said the program emerged from a confluence of factors her department identified after she took office earlier this year. According to Bourgeois, there were two or three issues that 'seemed disparate' at first — the Industrial Tax Exemption Program changes under Governor Edwards, a 20-year-old Quality Jobs Program that had never been fully reimagined, and the lack of a modern strategic plan at the department. 'Where we've landed with all this is that they're not independent,' Bourgeois said, suggesting that HIP is meant to address all three issues. To participate in the new program, businesses must be located in Louisiana and approved by the LED secretary. Eligible projects must either create jobs in distressed areas with wages at least 110% of the lesser of the parish or regional average wage, create jobs in other areas with wages at least 125% of the parish average wage, or retain highly skilled workers with advanced degrees, if approved in advance by LED. Grants are reimbursable and based on the annualized wages of qualifying new jobs, capped at $2,000 per job, per year. The reimbursement rate depends on the wage level: 8% for jobs in distressed areas that meet the lower wage threshold, 18% for jobs that meet 125% to 150% of the parish average wage, and 22% for jobs that exceed 150% of the parish average wage. A separate grant is available to retain highly skilled workers with advanced degrees, subject to LED approval. Bourgeois emphasized that the new program is fiscally capped at $125 million annually, unlike the Quality Jobs Program, which was open-ended and dictated entirely by statute. 'That was a commitment we made to the Legislature — that our new proposal would be fiscally responsible while still allowing us to compete and win,' Bourgeois said. According to LED rules and program documents, energy and process industries — including liquefied natural gas services, nuclear components, and carbon ecosystem management — are explicitly listed among eligible sectors. Other targeted industries include manufacturing, logistics, aerospace and defense, biotechnology and medical device production, agribusiness, data centers and general management operations, and technology fields such as robotics, cybersecurity, and industrial software. LED may also approve projects aligned with its strategic plan, which is updated periodically. Bourgeois said that updating the department's strategic plan helped shape the direction of the program. 'We identified five North Stars for the department…one of those that's really fundamentally important is wage growth,' Bourgeois said. 'If Louisiana citizens aren't seeing rising wages to support their families, then are we really effective?' Some industries are expressly barred from participating. These include gaming, retail, solar farms, professional sports teams, local utilities such as water and sewer systems, solid waste disposal, legal and accounting services, call centers, and entertainment companies such as film, music, and live performance production. In the Quality Jobs program's final week, major companies including Shell, Exxon, Air Products, Dow, Meta, Hyundai, and Woodland filed applications before that program's sunset. Each of those companies 'has used the incentive in the past and built project plans around that economic formula,' Bourgeois said.
News18
04-07-2025
- Science
- News18
Astronomers Discover 'Suicidal' Alien Planet Triggering Explosions In Its Star
Last Updated: HIP 67522 b, a Jupiter-sized planet, orbits its star in just 7 days. Its closeness disturbs the star's magnetic field, triggering stellar flares that scorch the planet's atmosphere A rare and astonishing sight has emerged in the universe, one that has left even scientists baffled. Astronomers have, for the first time, observed an alien planet seemingly inviting its own destruction. The planet, named HIP 67522 b, orbits so dangerously close to its host star that it is gradually being scorched and torn apart. Roughly the size of Jupiter, HIP 67522 b behaves like a suicidal world. It completes an orbit around its star in just seven days, and its proximity causes it to disturb the star's magnetic field. This disturbance results in massive stellar flares—explosions that strike the planet's atmosphere. A Self-Destructive Cosmic Duo According to researchers, this is the first time a planet has been seen influencing the activity of its own star. Typically, stars affect the planets orbiting them, but in this case, the planet appears to be fuelling stellar eruptions, creating a destructive loop never witnessed before. Astrophysicist Ekaterina Ilin from the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy explains, 'As it orbits, the planet whips the magnetic field lines of the star like a rope. When the energy reaches the star's surface, it explodes with far more power than expected." Stars already possess intense magnetic fields, and when these get tangled, they trigger solar flares and coronal mass ejections. But this is the first instance of a planet being the catalyst. Unveiled by TESS and Cheops The discovery was made possible by NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and the European Space Agency's Cheops telescope. Initially, TESS detected unusual flare activity in the HIP 67522 system. Later, Cheops confirmed that whenever the planet passed in front of the star, 15 flares erupted—most of them directed towards Earth. A Planet Burning Itself Away These continuous blasts are stripping away the planet's atmosphere, layer by layer. While the planet is currently as large as Jupiter, scientists believe it could shrink to the size of Neptune over the next 100 million years. It's a cosmic spectacle that feels straight out of a sci-fi film—a giant alien world accelerating its own demise. Scientists now aim to study this rare system more closely using future telescopes, especially ESA's PLATO mission, set to launch in 2026. Researchers want to analyse the exact nature of the flares—particularly the UV and X-ray radiation, which can be the most destructive to planetary atmospheres. Ekaterina Ilin adds, 'This is such a new and unique case that I have millions of questions in my mind. We need to find more planetary systems like this to truly understand the pattern." First Published: July 04, 2025, 14:13 IST
India Today
03-07-2025
- Science
- India Today
One year on this newly discovered plant is just seven days on Earth
Astronomers have discovered a new planet, which is so close to its star that one year lasts just seven days. The planet completes one revolution around the Sun in just seven team found that the planet, dubbed HIP 67522 b, orbits its parent star so tightly that it appears to cause frequent flares from the star's surface, heating and inflating the planet's new planet was discovered by a team of scientists from the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland, led by Ekaterina Ilin of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. They used space-borne telescopes, Nasa's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and the European Space Agency's CHaracterising ExoPlanets Telescope (CHEOPS), to track flares on the star. This is the first-ever evidence for a 'planet with a death wish'. Though it was theorised to be possible since the nineties, the flares seen in this research are around 100 times more energetic than expected. Astronomers using the European Space Agency's Cheops mission have caught a clingy exoplanet that seems to be triggering flares of radiation from the star it orbits. (Photo: ESA) advertisementThe planet is orbiting a star named HIP 67522, which was known to be just slightly larger and cooler than our own host star, the Sun. But while the Sun is a middle-aged 4.5-billion-year-old, HIP 67522 is a fresh-faced 17-million-year-old. It bears two planets."The star and the planet form a powerful but likely destructive bond. In a manner not yet fully understood, the planet hooks into the star's magnetic field, triggering flares on the star's surface; the flares whiplash energy back to the planet. Combined with other high-energy radiation from the star, the flare-induced heating appears to have increased the already steep inflation of the planet's atmosphere," Nasa said in a being bombarded with so much high-energy radiation does not bode well for HIP 67522 b. The planet is similar in size to Jupiter but has the density of candy floss, making it one of the wispiest exoplanets ever found. Graphic: ESA Over time, the radiation is eroding away the planet's feathery atmosphere, meaning it is losing mass much faster than expected. In the next 100 million years, it could go from an almost Jupiter-sized planet to a much smaller Neptune-sized planet seems to be triggering particularly energetic flares. The waves it sends along the star's magnetic field lines kick off flares at specific moments. But the energy of the flares is much higher than the energy of the waves. We think that the waves are setting off explosions that are waiting to happen,' points out Ekaterina.- Ends
Scientific American
02-07-2025
- Science
- Scientific American
Astronomers Found the Most Self-Destructive Planet in the Sky
Stars often whip their planets with solar winds and radiation, pull them ever closer with gravity and sear them with heat. But a newfound planet exerts an unexpectedly strong—and ultimately self-destructive—influence on its star in return. The star HIP 67522 is slightly larger than our sun and shines roughly 408 light-years away in the Scorpius-Centaurus star cluster. It's 17 million years old, a youngster by stellar standards, and has two orbiting planets that are even younger. The innermost of these two planets, a Jupiter-size gas giant called HIP 67522 b, orbits HIP 67522 at a distance of less than 12 times the star's radius—almost seven times closer than Mercury's distance from the sun in our Solar System. This in-your-face proximity, combined with HIP 67522's volatile teenage nature, has created a spectacle astronomers have never seen before: a planet that triggers powerful flares on the surface of its host star, leading to the planet's own slow destruction. 'In a way, we got lucky,' says Ekaterina Ilin, an astrophysicist at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), who led the study on the HIP 67522 system, published on Wednesday in Nature. 'We took all the star-planet systems that we knew of and just went ahead looking for flares—sudden intense bursts of radiation coming from the star's surface.' Parsing through the data gathered by two space-based telescopes, NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and the European Space Agency's CHEOPS (Characterizing Exoplanet Satellite), Ilin's team noticed that HIP 67522's flares seemed to be synchronized with its closest planet's orbital period. And those flares were gigantic—'thousands of times more energetic than anything the sun can produce,' Ilin says. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. The orbiting gas giant likely sparks these powerful flares by perturbing the star's strong magnetic field lines as it passes by in its orbit. This sends waves of energy downward along the lines—and when those waves meet the star's surface, a flare bursts out. The star's magnetic loops are 'almost like a spring waiting to be let go,' Ilin says. 'The planet's just giving it this last push.' Based on the team's observations, HIP 67522 b triggers a flare once every Earth day or two. And this action has severe consequences for the planet itself: Ilin estimates the unlucky gas giant gets six times more radiation than it would if it wasn't triggering flares and blasting away its own atmosphere. At this pace, Ilin's team says, HIP 67522 b will shrink from Jupiter's size to Neptune's in about 100 million years. 'Flaring might cut the lifetime of the planet's atmosphere in half,' she says. Researchers had suspected this type of star-planet interplay might occur, but they had never previously seen it, says Antoine Strugarek, an astrophysicist at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission's (CEA's) center CEA Paris-Saclay, who was not involved in the new study. 'This is the first time we see very convincing evidence such interaction has been actually detected,' he says. Ilin says it's too early to draw far-reaching conclusions from this first example of the phenomenon. As a next step, she says, researchers can compare HIP 67522 b with the other planet in the system, which orbits a bit farther from the star, to calculate how much mass the more closely orbiting world is actually losing through this process compared with the more distant one, which is likely only hit with random flares. Another unanswered question is exactly how the flare triggering works. 'Is it a wave [of magnetic energy] that propagates from the planet?' Ilin wonders. She suggests that what happens could be similar to an effect that has been seen on the sun: smaller solar flares sometimes perturb nearby magnetic loops and tip them over the edge to snap and produce a larger flare. But perhaps the most important question is how common the newly observed phenomenon is. For now, Ilin wants to focus on finding more systems where planets induce stellar flares that scientists can study. 'Once we figure out how it works, we can turn it into a planet-detection technique,' she says. Instead of searching for the planets themselves, researchers could look for stars that flare following a certain pattern—suggesting they, too, might have planets with a self-destructive bent.
AsiaOne
27-06-2025
- General
- AsiaOne
Falling concrete in flats: Who is responsible for maintenance — town council, HDB, or homeowner?, Singapore News
Recently, there were two instances of concrete blocks falling from ceiling of HDB units. FM Love 972 radio DJ Ho Ai Ling narrowly avoided injury on June 22 when a chunk of concrete fell from the toilet ceiling in her flat at Block 81 Commonwealth Close in Queenstown. Ho moved into her 58-year-old flat 14 years ago. Earlier, an elderly man was struck by falling spalling concrete from the ceiling of his toilet in his Yishun HDB flat on the morning of June 19, sustaining injuries to both his leg and head, requiring more than 10 stitches. The flat was completed 41 years ago. While his family received assistance from Nee Soon GRC MP K Shanmugam with payment for repairs, where exactly does the buck stop when it comes to responsibility for spalling concrete in HDB homes? Is it the owner, HDB, or the town council? Owner's responsibility: HDB HDB has said that spalling concrete is a common issue for older buildings, exacerbated by damp conditions such as those in kitchens or toilets. It occurs when concrete breaks away from a surface due to numerous factors, such as moisture build-up or corrosion of metal reinforcement within the concrete. "As the owner, you are responsible for the prevention and repair of any spalling concrete in your flat," according to HDB, adding that spalling concrete within HDB flats can be prevented with regular maintenance. It has advised homeowners to repair spalling concrete themselves if the affected area is small, or engage a contractor for larger areas before more concrete dislodges and causes injury. [[nid:719319]] If left unattended, concrete spalling can spread to a bigger area and weaken the building structure, HDB stated. It also has multiple inspection regimes in place to detect issues such as spalling concrete, according to response by the Ministry of National Development (MND) to a Parliamentary question by Joan Pereira on Oct 20, 2022. Under the periodic structural inspection regime, inspections must be conducted for all residential buildings every 10 years to ensure that building structures are well maintained. For flats completed before Jan 1, 1989, HDB conducts additional inspections at five-year intervals. Periodic façade inspections are also conducted for buildings above 20 years old and more than 13m in height every seven years. The goodwill repair assistance (GRA) scheme also allows HDB to provide aid to flat owners to repair spalling concrete issues. Under the scheme, HDB co-pays 50 per cent of the cost of repairs, up to $300 per flat. For rental flats, HDB bears the full cost for the repair of spalling concrete. HDB's home improvement programme (HIP) for blocks built up to 1997 also repairs spalling concrete and structural cracks in flats. Town council responsible for common property While many residents may contact their town councils for assistance when they spot spalling or cracked concrete in their homes, the town councils' involvement in resolving the issue should be minimal. According to a response by MND to a parliamentary question by Christopher de Souza on Aug 7, 2024, town councils are responsible for maintaining the common property. View this post on Instagram A post shared by AsiaOne (@asiaonecom) This means that the maintaining the interior of flats and necessary repair works are not their responsibility. Instead, should flat owners encounter issues with their main soil pipe or exterior and façade walls, the town council can assist. "Minor wall cracks inside flats do not affect the structural integrity and safety of the building," MND stated. "Flat owners can patch up and repaint their walls. For exterior and facade walls, the town councils carries out inspections and upkeep of these walls." HDB also follows-up with regular inspections and will immediately repair if the crack could potentially compromise the structural integrity of the building, they added. Homeowners and their responsibility Speaking with AsiaOne, PKWA Law associate director Mark Cheng said that in most interior spalling cases, HDB's stance that the homeowner is responsible is legally sound. "Flat owners are responsible for maintaining their interiors, but in certain cases, they may be eligible to apply for co-payment from the HDB," Cheng said. Town councils handle common property such as external facades and roofs and would not be responsible for internal spalling, he stated. Cheng said that town councils may investigate and get involved if spalling debris originates from facades or falls onto void decks, corridors or exteriors. But homeowners aren't always liable for concrete spalling. In instances of spalling caused by leakage upstairs, HDB can mediate or enforce repairs, or even take legal action should the person in the unit above refuse access for necessary repairs, Cheng explained. "In addition, the homeowner might not have to pay for repairs if the spalling falls within upgrading schemes such as the HIP, or occurs during the defects liability period for new builds." "Knowing when liability shifts is key," he added. "With the assistance of a lawyer, homeowners can be better advised on their rights, in order to trigger the correct government funding for repairs, or seek redress if coverage is wrongly denied." [[nid:719492]] khooyihang@
