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, …
THE AUSTRALIAN parliament has passed legislation that gives aborigines the right to make claims on government-held territory if they can prove their unbroken connection to the land. Under the law, passed in December, aborigines are obliged to respect mining, ranching and other leases on any property they win claim to. …
OCTOPUSES, sting rays and other marine creatures may soon have their first encounter with a personal computer (PC). Bruce W Macdonald, a marine engineer at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville, Queensland, has developed a WetPC that can help divers to count fish, check maps and diagnose equipment …
Remember how Hansel and Gretel followed a trail of bread crumbs back home? Australian scientists have engineered an industrial robot that spits out camphor, which it can later detect and follow. The robot, developed by researchers at Griffith University in Brisbane and Monash University in Clayton, Victoria, can either follow …
A PROPOSED Australian law that allows aborigines to claim land has been criticised by the country's business community, which fears it could curb mining. The proposed native land-title legislation arose from a 1992 high court ruling that recognised the native title to land under the country's common law. The ruling, …
After reports of the success of cloud seeding in the US, Australia and the Philippines, Union agriculture minister Balram Jakhar has become a strong votary of the practice. "There is no reason why cloud seeding cannot become a major component of our dry-land farming programmes," he says. The Indian Council …
IRKSOME mosquitoes? Forget mosquito repellant mats, grow a geranium instead, and have the odour of citronella waft the annoying creatures away. An Australian company has developed a new plant -- Mozzie Buster -- a cross between an African geranium and citronella grass, which they say is an extremely effective mosquito …
THE ANTI-GOLF movement is gaining momentum almost in tandem with the game's popularity. Anti-golf activists see the sport as "the most serious environmental problem in the world". Tricia Barnett, a British conservationist and supporter of the Global Anti-Golf Movement (GAGM) (Down To Earth, August 15, 1993), thinks the campaign has …
WHAT HAPPENS when a tiny nation's only tradeable natural resource runs out? It gets a ravaged environment, some compensation and a bleak future. This is exactly what happened to the Pacific island-state of Nauru, whose only natural resource, phosphate, was mined by Australia. After a 30-year battle, Australian Prime Minister …
THE PACIFIC island-state of Nauru, once abundant in phosphates deposited by birds, now lies devastated and desolate. Most of the phosphate was mined by Australia and royalties made the Nauruans one of the richest people in the world. Now, they are left without any natural resources and only an investment …
WITH PREDICTIONS by World Health Organisation officials that 40 million people will be infected by HIV by 2000 and six million of them will go on to contract AIDS and die, a cure for the disease holds out promise for vast profits -- and the Australians, at least, are determined …
The Tamil Nadu State Electricity Board (TNSEB) has been castigated by the Union ministry of coal for trying to import Australian coal to step up power generation. The ministry is worried the high sulphur content of Australian coal may cause acid rain. A disgruntled TNSEB has retaliated by pointing out …
FACED with the daunting task of making Australia's meat-and-potatoes consumers switch to meat-and-rice, growers are hoping to exploit the recent royal wedding in Japan. They have launched an advertising campaign urging Australian couples to adopt some of Japan's rice-related wedding rituals, especially the placing of white rice cakes in the …
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 …
AUSTRALIAN Prime Minister Paul Keating dismissed fears that the concept of giving aborigines title to native land could put the country's agriculture and mining industries at risk. Keating was responding to a leading conservative politician's warning that the high court ruling, which handed ownership of government land to aborigines, would …
NEVER take an expert's word as gospel -- that's what a team of Australian schoolboys would tell you. Despite experts warning them their project wouldn't work, the schoolboys have successfully built a solar-powered catamaran that is "50 per cent more efficient than any comparable vessel". Students from Prince Alfred College …
SHEEP treated with a protein found in the salivary glands of male mice can shed their fleece on their own. Scientists use the protein produced artificially through genetic manipulation in a technique called biological wool harvesting. The technique has been found to be so effective nets have to be put …
AUSTRALIAN astronomers have chanced upon a rare type of pulsar (a word coined from pulsating star) -- a cosmic source of regular and rapid pulses of radiation, usually at radio frequencies. The pulsar is lurking at the edge of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Named PSR J0437-4715, the pulsar is …
SCIENTISTS at the Malaria Research Centre (MRC), New Delhi, say neem oil used in low concentrations effectively repels malaria-carrying mosquitoes that are resistant to pesticides. This is welcome news because malaria has re-emerged as a major public health threat because the malaria-causing microorganism, Plasmodium falciparum, is increasingly resistant to chloroquine …
INDIAN scientists are exploring the possibility that neem could provide a non-toxic AIDS therapy. In Ayurveda and Unani, neem is prescribed for diverse ailments ranging from skin diseases to diabetes. Scientists at the National Institute of Immunology (NII), New Delhi, postulate neem's efficacy is not so much because of its …
INDIA'S miracle neem (Azadirachta indica) is moving from the laboratory to the market and many US and Australian firms are getting involved in manufacturing neem-based pesticides. Says Michael O'Shea, managing director of Neemoil Australia Pvt Ltd, "Indian suppliers have been swarming about us like flies around honey." In USA, a …