(CNN) — Investigators have not ruled out an intentional fire being behind explosions at a fertilizer plant in the small town of West that left 15 people dead, the Texas fire marshal said Thursday.

State Fire Marshal Chris Connealy said investigators were unable to rule out three possible causes, including a spark from a golf cart, an electrical short or an intentionally set fire.

“The cause cannot be proven to an acceptable level,” Connealy told reporters.

Investigators said the incident was actually two simultaneous blasts triggered by the fire. The blasts, which registered on seismographs as a magnitude 2.1 earthquake and was felt 50 miles away, caused damage to a 37-block area of the town.

The announcement follows news last week that authorities launched a criminal investigation into the April 17 fire and explosion in West, about 70 miles southwest of Dallas.

Authorities announced the criminal investigation last Friday, the same day investigators said a paramedic who responded to the fire was arrested on suspicion of possession of a destructive device after investigators allegedly found materials to make a pipe bomb at his home.

Federal authorities have not said whether the arrest of Bryce Reed was connected to the fire and blast, and Robert Champion of the Dallas office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives declined Thursday to discuss whether a pipe bomb could cause the damage that led to the explosions.

The state fire marshal’s office had previously ruled out four potential causes: weather, natural causes, anhydrous ammonium and ammonium nitrate in a rail car.

The powerful explosion leveled a portion of the town, damaging numerous homes, a nursing home and the town’s high school and middle school.

In that weeks that followed, scores of investigators have following up on leads. At least 60 have been on site each day and have conducted more than 400 interviews in trying to determine how the fire started and what caused the explosion, authorities said.

The West Fertilizer Co., which operated the facility, had been cited by federal regulators twice since 2006.

In 2012, the Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration fined West Fertilizer $5,250 for storing anhydrous ammonia in tanks that lacked the proper warning labels. The agency originally recommended a $10,000 penalty, but it was reduced after the company took corrective action.

In 2006, the EPA fined it $2,300 and told the owners to correct problems that included a failure to file a risk management program plan on time. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality also investigated a complaint about the lingering smell of ammonia around the plant the same year.

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Copy this below and share it with EVERYONE you know! District of Columbia Act of 1871

WORST IDEA — Armed Revolt July 4 2013 WATCH THIS PEOPLE

Lazer Plasma Decontamination Weapon — USED IN Waco ????

Very Smart Phone Reimagines ‘Talk to the Hand’

TOKYO – It’s not exactly the next big smartphone, but if you spend one too many hours searching for that misplaced iPhone, this could be even better.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo are developing a system that puts the mobile phone on the palm of your hand – literally. Using a special camera that combines high-speed vision and two rotational mirrors, Masatoshi Ishikawa and his team at the Ishikawa Oku Laboratory here say they’ve found a way to project a device’s display screen or keyboard onto the palm, or any other surface, so that you can operate it remotely in your home or office.

Ishikawa says the system can detect the movement of a three-dimensional object every two milliseconds. Put simply, the high-speed vision allows the program to track moving objects, so users would be free to walk with the phone image in palm, without the display ever shifting.

That’s not all.

The computer system developed by Ishikawa beams ultrasonic wave emitters, so the user actually feels the keyboard pressing against their skin, without anything in their hand. The sensation is the equivalent to a 3-gram or 0.1- ounce object, he says.

“You won’t need a keyboard, you won’t need to carry a smartphone, or a computer,” Ishikawa says. “You can make a call without anything.”

The concept is similar to the one featured in the movie “Total Recall” last year. In the film, Colin Farrell’s character, Douglas Quaid, uses a phone embedded beneath the skin of his palm. The phone lights up, when a call comes in, allowing Quaid to answer by putting his hand to his ear.

Ishikawa says his system is far more advanced than anything featured in Hollywood, but he has yet to allow users to make actual calls from their palms. The researcher says he expects that to become reality in a year or two.

The palm phone is the latest in a string of systems Ishikawa has developed, using high-speed vision technology. Last year, he unveiled a robotic hand designed to win the game rock-paper-scissors 100 percent of the time. Processing 1,000 frames per second, the hand moved 33 times faster than humans, staying a step ahead of the opponent.

Prior to that, Ishikawa developed a mechanical finger that could dribble the ball faster than the human eye can see. Years ago, he created a batting robot capable of hitting any ball within the strike zone, every single time.

Ishikawa now hopes to perfect the projection phone, so users can dial from their palms, and view 3-D images. The phone is strictly for indoor use only, and he doesn’t expect the complete system to be on the market for at least 5 to 6 years.

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I’m coining a new term today … “Ultrasonic-Touch” UST .

Using frequency to produce a PHYSICAL SENSATION of an actual object.

We’ve heard the conspiracy theories.. use blue beam to make a 3d hologram.. then use frequency to make it appear physical to the touch..

Well.. the physical touch part is now taken care of.

The question now becomes.. is bluebream really real?  I don’t know.

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The computer system developed by Ishikawa beams ultrasonic wave emitters, so the user actually feels the keyboard pressing against their skin, without anything in their hand. The sensation is the equivalent to a 3-gram or 0.1- ounce object, he says.

http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/very-smart-phone-reimagines-talk-hand-151350274.html