AMARELEJA, Portugal — The most ambitious and innovative solar power project in the world kicked off Monday in this white-walled village in the southern Portuguese municipality of Moura, one of the most impoverished areas in the European Union. The Acciona Energy S.A. company has put into service the Amareleja photovoltaic power plant, located 150 km south of Lisbon, which is capable of producing enough energy to supply 30,000 households in the south-central region of Alentejo. Almost simultaneously, the mayor of Moura, José MarÃa Prazeres Pós-de-Mina, was selected as one of the ten finalists for the prestigious 2008 People of the Year award granted by OneWorld, a non-governmental news network that is one of the most highly-respected international organisations devoted to raising environmental awareness and promoting change. The only requirement for nomination was that the candidates embody the values of OneWorld, which include human rights for all, fair distribution of the world’s natural and economic resources, simple and sustainable ways of life, the right of every individual to inform and be informed, participation and transparency in decision-making, and social, cultural, and linguistic diversity. Pós-de-Mina, who was born 50 years ago in PÃas, another village in the municipality of […]
China has a shortage of land, Africa a shortage of food. So one entrepreneur had the bright idea of persuading Chinese farmers to emigrate. Liu Jianjun is wearing a brightly coloured African tunic, the tall hat of a tribal leader, a string of red beads round his neck and carrying a stick with a secret knife in the handle. Beside him sits a portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong. It is a slightly incongruous scene but one that mirrors the ever-closer relationship between Asia’s economic giant China and the world’s poorest continent. ‘The African people yell, ‘Mao Zedong is all right’ and they are very warm-hearted when I’m there,’ says one of China’s most prominent private sector ambassadors. ‘The minute Chinese people get off the plane, the Africans are friendly. Chinese do not bring rifles and weapons; they bring seeds and technology.’ China’s Ministry of Commerce triumphantly announced this month that its bilateral trade with the continent is set to hit $100bn (£67.8bn) by the end of 2008, two years ahead of schedule. Africa’s plentiful oilfields and rich mineral deposits are top of China’s imports, and in return the world’s most populous nation is exporting tens of thousands […]
When it comes to the world of the very, very small - nanotechnology - we may have a big problem: Nano and its capacity to alter the fundamentals of nature could be failing the moral litmus test of religion. In a report published today in Nature Nanotechnology, survey results reveal some sharp contrasts in the perception that nanotechnology is morally acceptable. Those views, according to the report, correlate directly with aggregate levels of religious views in each country surveyed. In the United States and in European countries where religion plays a larger role in everyday life, like Italy, Austria and Ireland, nanotechnology and its potential to alter living organisms or even perhaps lead to synthetic life is perceived as less morally acceptable. In less religious European countries like France and Germany, individuals are much less likely to find nanotechnology ethically suspect. ‘The level of ‘religiosity’ in a particular country is one of the strongest predictors of whether or not people see nanotechnology as morally acceptable,’ says Dietram Scheufele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of life sciences communication and the lead author of the new study. ‘Religion was the strongest influence over everything.’ The study compared answers […]
Home values in 20 large metropolitan areas across the country dropped at a record pace in October as the fallout from the financial collapse reverberated through the housing market, according to data released Tuesday. The price of single-family homes fell 18 percent in October from a year earlier, according to the closely watched Standard & Poor’s/Case Shiller Housing Index. All 20 cities reported annual price declines in October; prices in 14 of the 20 metropolitan areas surveyed fell at a record rate as the financial crisis reached a critical point. ‘October was clearly the free-fall month,’ said David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at Standard & Poor’s. ‘Everything was going against us in October, without exception.’ After increasing steadily through the first part of the decade, home prices have fallen every month since January 2007, their slide accelerating as troubles in the housing market infected the broader economy and brought down financial firms. Prices are falling at the fastest pace on record, a sign that the housing market is a long way from recovery. ‘It is unlikely that we are anywhere near a bottom in nationwide home prices,’ Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist […]
WASHINGTON — Researchers have found out what made the 1918 flu pandemic so deadly — a group of three genes that lets the virus invade the lungs and cause pneumonia. They mixed samples of the 1918 influenza strain with modern seasonal flu viruses to find the three genes and said their study might help in the development of new flu drugs. The discovery, published in Tuesday’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could also point to mutations that might turn ordinary flu into a dangerous pandemic strain. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin and colleagues at the Universities of Kobe and Tokyo in Japan used ferrets, which develop flu in ways very similar to humans. Usually flu causes an upper respiratory infection affecting the nose and throat, as well as so-called systemic illness causing fever, muscle aches and weakness. But some people become seriously ill and develop pneumonia. Sometimes bacteria cause the pneumonia and sometimes flu does it directly. During pandemics, such as in 1918, a new and more dangerous flu strain emerges. ‘The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most devastating outbreak of infectious disease in human history, […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
