This white paper examines the current challenges for clean energy infrastructure and identifies solutions that industrial clusters, transport and logistics industries, and the wider clean energy value chain can jointly explore in order to accelerate its deployment. Thirteen new industrial clusters from Australia, Brazil, Colombia, India, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, …
URBAN Villages studies reasons for the breakdown of community ties and traces the genesis of social unrest in our cities and towns. It's interesting to observe how this happens in places where new buildings have damaged rather than enhanced local character; where older but potentially useful buildings have become derelict …
BRITAIN is to spend L29.5 million over the next 10 years on an international project to enable astronomers to witness the birth of a planet. The project, Gemini, involves setting up two eight-metre telescopes that will detect both planets in the making as well as stars being formed in galactic …
SCIENTISTS claim to have unveiled through a DNA analysis the mystery about the fate of Czar Nicholas II and his family in the wake of the Russian Revolution. A team of British and Russian forensic experts matched the DNA from blood samples provided by three living relatives of the Czar's …
LINKING together individual molecules to make complicated structures, much in the same way as children playing with Lego, chemists are now trying to construct materials whose properties they can fix beforehand. At least half a dozen groups in USA, Canada, Europe and Australia are assembling large arrays of molecules to …
Two British consultants have developed an underwater pump that can irrigate riverside fields without using fuel or causing pollution. The prize-winning turbine is easy to construct and can work continuously (Ceres 141, Vol 26, No 3). Originally designed to harness the energy of the Nile to irrigate the desert areas …
EVEN AS Calcutta's transport authorities plan to phase out the tram, it is making a comeback in other parts of the world as technology's solution for a low-cost, non-polluting urban transport system. British firm JPM Parry and Associates has developed a modern tramway system, which does not require overhead wires …
SOCIOECONOMIC factors greatly influence pregnancy rates among teenagers, according to a 11-year study by Trevor Smith published in the British Medical Journal. The study, based in Tayside, Scotland, found the pregnancy rate in girls below 16 years was three times as high in the most deprived areas as in the …
UK CHANCELLOR Kenneth Clarke blocked renewed moves to impose an energy tax at a meeting of European Community finance ministers in Luxembourg in June. Clarke maintained his predecessor had done enough to curb carbon emissions through the proposed imposition of VAT (value-added tax) on domestic fuel and the commitment to …
AFTER ten years of frustrating toil, a band of gene-hunters from USA and the UK have at last nabbed the gene that causes Huntington's disease, a debilitating disorder of the nerves. The researchers are hopeful the discovery will provide a better understanding of what causes the nerves to degenerate, and …
DID AKBAR, the great Moghul (1556-1605), relish dam aalu? Probably not, especially as one doesn't have firm evidence he did. The record kept by his minister, Abul Fazl, of crops grown in India in Akbar's time doesn't mention the potato (called aalu, in Hindi). India produces about 16 million tonnes …
A FORMER British hairdresser, Maurice Ward, who traded his shears in the early 1970s for an executive desk at a plastic-recycling firm that he set up, says he has invented a fireproof plastic called Starlite. Ward says the plastic can withstand temperatures as high as 10,0000 C and can be …
ANY DAY NOW, we'll have the perfect potato -- not too waxy or floury, not mottled with bluish grey stains or with a scaly skin. When it does make its debut, it will be thanks to a little genetic engineering. Assures botanist Michael Wilkinson of the Scottish Crop Research Institute, …
THE INTERNATIONAL Institute of Environment and Development (IIED) in London has been conducting research on environment- and development-related policy issues for the past 20 years. Policies for a Small Planet is its vision of "sustainable development" prepared for the 1992 Earth Summit and could well rate as one of its …
SURROUNDING a potential target by an army of bodyguards may actually increase the risk of assassination, according to researchers at Middlesex University, London (New Scientist, April 3, 1993). Too many guards increase the risk as it is probable the bodyguards may accidentally harm the person they are meant to protect. …
A British firm is marketing an environment-friendly, flushless toilet that doesn't require disinfectants, deodorants or sewer connections and even turns human waste into compost (New Scientist, Vol 138, No 1868). Dubbed the Clivus system, the innovative toilet has a chute beneath the pan that conveys waste downward to a polyethylene …
THIS IS probably one of nature's most intriguing survival games, involving two innocent players and a cunning third who eventually outwited. Caterpillars of the blue butterfly, Maculinea rebeli, masquerade as larvae of the red ant, Myrmica schencki, so that they can obtain free lodging and boarding at the ants' expense. …
THE PRINCE of Wales wants it known far and wide that he was "not entirely dotty" when he switched to organic farming on his vast estates both around his country home 160 km west of London and in the Duchy of Cornwall. Prince Charles said that organic farming was a …
In late April, the Indo-British Environment Initiative (IBEI) was launched simultaneously in London and New Delhi to help unblock follow-up international green negotiations after the Rio summit. The intiative was taken up by British environment secretary Michael Howard, who wrote to his Indian counterpart Kamal Nath, inviting him to set …
A TACTFUL reply to seven members of the US congress who had complained about the Thorp nuclear reprocessing plant in Britain, US president Bill Clinton says he will take up the matter after a full review of Washington's non-proliferation policy. The congresspersons had warned the plutonium produced at the L2.8 …
UNDER pressure from influential figures in the US congress, the Clinton administration has exempted ethanol and methanol from the proposed energy tax. The tax is to be levied at 25.7 cents per million British thermal units, with a surcharge of 34.2 cents per million BTUs on refined petroleum. Oil for …
