Bridges

Mexican art and Mexican American art often have treated each other more like strangers or distant cousins than like the fraternal twins they really are. In the United States, apart from in California and the Southwest, many museums and art professionals until relatively recently tended to isolate or ignore Mexico's contributions to global movements such as Modernism or Conceptual and performance art. Similarly, in Mexico, U.S. Chicano art of...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The state Board of Pilot Commissioners has determined that pilot error led the 748-foot tanker Overseas Reymar to collide with a tower of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in January. After a weeks-long investigation, the board on Thursday temporarily suspended the license of Capt. Guy Kleess, who was responsible for maneuvering the ship safely out of the bay. The commission will next file a formal accusation against Kleess, resulting in a trial and possible license revocation.

A portion of the westbound 10 Freeway near Citrus Avenue in Fontana was closed for three hours Thursday after two big rigs struck a temporary bridge and showered the roadway below with debris, according to California Highway Patrol spokeswoman Terri Casinga.  The crash occured about 4 p.m., and a SigAlert was issued about 20 minutes later. One truck carrying an earthmover on a flatbed trailer struck a beam supporting the wooden bridge, causing debris to hang down. The second truck, which was carrying a forklift, struck the hanging debris.

As a member of the New Jersey Institute of Technology's Swarm Lab , Simon Garnier studies how living things coordinate their behavior in large groups. The assistant biology professor recently used a swarm of micro-robots to dissect the behavior of invasive Argentine ants (read the robot ant story here ), and has also studied nomadic army ants in the jungles of Panama to observe their extraordinary bridge-building capability. In one of two papers published in PLOS Computational Biology on Thursday, Garnier and colleagues from Princeton University described the mechanics of how army ants use their own bodies to erect a bridges over gaps, allowing their fellow ants to walk over them.

Two Caltrans technicians tasked with doing foundation testing for construction projects claimed over 260 hours they didn't work, and one of them falsified testing data on 10 projects, according to an investigative report Thursday by state Auditor Elaine Howle. The supervisor for the two technicians failed to require them to obtain preapproval for overtime, or to review records available to confirm that they did the work they claimed, said the report, which was based on a whistle-blower complaint in 2009.

This post has been updated. See below for details. Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard C. Parks on Wednesday endorsed council candidate Ana Cubas in the May 21 race to represent part of South Los Angeles, calling her a “bridge builder” between the district's various racial and ethnic groups. Parks, a former police chief, described the former council aide as someone who would bring together the black, Mexican American and Salvadoran communities in neighborhoods immediately south of downtown.

Starting Wednesday, drivers crossing the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco will encounter no human toll takers. The bridge has switched to an all-electronic system . For those with FasTrak passes, nothing changes. For others, cameras will capture your license plate number, and you will have to pay up later. Officials estimate that about 70% of vehicles crossing the bridge already use FasTrak accounts, which are good on all Bay Area bridges and express lanes. The toll for passenger cars is $5 for FasTrak holders, $6 for others.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Keep your wallet in your pocket. At least when you're crossing the Golden Gate Bridge into the City That Knows How. Starting Wednesday morning, the humans will be gone from the iconic structure's toll booths, the windows will be covered and all-electronic tolling will go live. Regular bridge crossers are advised to open a FasTrak account, which can be done online at www.bayareafastrak.org . Motorists using the system's dashboard transponders get discounted toll rates ($5 instead of the usual $6)

Tours of the Golden Gate Bridge inaugurated during its 75th anniversary in 2012 are back for a second season starting April 1. Fans and even locals give this tour high marks on Yelp for the engaging back-story about the bridge's Art Deco style, the dangers during construction and why civil engineers selected it as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World . Tours last 45 minutes and are offered six times daily through Oct. 6 on...

WASHINGTON - An Alabama bridge that was the site of the "Bloody Sunday" civil rights march, an Oklahoma battlefield where "Native Americans fought as members of both Union and Confederate armies," and a Kentucky distillery that operated before, during and after Prohibition are among the latest national historic landmarks. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Monday announced the addition of 13 sites to a list of 2,540 landmarks, declaring that the largely honorary designations will "help tell the story of America.