This guidebook provides practical and operational guidance on how to assess and overcome barriers facing the transfer and diffusion of technologies for climate change mitigation and adaptation. The guidebook is designed to support the analysis of specific technologies, instead of pursuing a sectoral (e.g. transport) or technology group (e.g. renewable …
FOR generations scientists have tirelessly been looking for a cure to what appears to be the enemy from within—cancer. Though tremendous progress has been made and multiple avenues of treatment made available, it is apparent that there is never going to be a single golden bullet to cure cancer because …
THE UN General Assembly has adopted a watered-down political declaration to reduce the burden of chronic lifestyle diseases. The event signals the beginning of a larger fight between industry and health policy makers. The resolution was passed at a summit ahead of the General Assembly in New York on September …
IN SEPTEMBER last year, China halted shipments of rare earth metals, crucial for the manufacture of everything from guided missiles and hybrid cars to flat-screen televisions and BlackBerry phones, to Japan over a territorial dispute. It also cut down its export quota for rare earth by 72 per cent for …
For years the World Health Organization (WHO) maintained that radiation from cell phones is generally safe. But on May 31, it changed its stand and announced that cell phones pose a possible cancer risk. A panel of 31 scientists at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a part …
The links between digital technologies and politics, especially in the light of the recent West Asian-North African uprisings, have been well-established. But there is a pervasive belief that the technologies of computing, in themselves, are apolitical. There are two warring groups when it comes to debates around political participation and …
The average human spends three years of his or her life in the toilet. The filthy streets of Europe are thought to be the reason for the sudden popularity, in the 17th century, of high heels. The poet W H Auden allowed his guests only one toilet paper a day. …
ON FEBRUARY 13, the sun unleashed a massive solar flare. Three more followed on March 7, 9 and 19. Flares originate from sunspots—areas on the sun’s surface that have high magnetic activity. These flares and other activities of the sun throw ionised gases or plasma towards the earth. The plasma …
This new report provides basic quantitative and qualitative facts about nuclear power plants in operation, under construction, and in planning phases throughout the world.It finds that nearly three-quarters of reactors under construction are located in China, India, Russia & S.Korea but none of these nations have historically been transparent about …
Ideas and ideologies, images and reports of events, both minor and cataclysmic, fly on the Internet, swirling through cyberspace, gathering resonance, metamorphosing and touching millions of lives in different ways. Many of the ideas—and visuals—could be banal (as they very often are), some dangerous, others bringing promise of change. Some …
Our world is increasingly held together by the network of digital communications networks we call the Internet. Business, government, politics, science and the arts have all been fundamentally transformed by the fact that everyone’s connected to everyone else, everywhere, and no one needs to get permission to collaborate, trade, or …
TWO recent studies have clinched enough empirical data to repudiate any climate change sceptic. For the first time, the studies have pinned down greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for frequent extreme weather events like rainfall and floods. In one study, UK and Switzerland researchers analysed one of the worst floods in …
This article reports a comparative analysis of the thrust in solar photovoltaic (PV) research during 1981–1988 and 2001–2008. Global solar PV literature in the latter period recorded a 4.5-fold increase over those in 1981–1988.
A tremor ran through the cutting- edge electric car industry last month. Mathieu Tenenbaum, working with French automaker Renault, was just another faceless name till then. But one espionage story that hit the newsstands made him infamous in a single stroke. Tenenbaum was sacked for spying. Not that he had …
Life has no free lunches. More so, when a rapidly growing population wants to somehow bite into the limited pie of resources. This mad scramble has made measurement of who uses how much all the more vital. It is for this reason that utility managers are investing in meters that …
The World Economic Forum—the gathering of power glitterati each year in Davos—has assessed the top risks the world faces in 2011. According to this analysis, climate change is the highest-ranking risk the world will face in the coming years, when its likelihood and impact are combined. What’s even more important …
Why doesn’t carbon trading work? The basic argument for carbon trade is that since global warming is a worldwide phenomenon it does not matter where the emissions are reduced. But it creates pollution hotspots. If the larger energy crisis underlying the problem is to be addressed, the entire energy system—how …
The new UNEP report demonstrates that a transition to a green economy is possible by investing 2% of global GDP per year (currently about US 1.3 trillion) between now and 2050 in a green transformation of key sectors, including agriculture, buildings, energy, fisheries, forests, manufacturing, tourism, transport, water & waste …
This book released recently by the Wotld Bank contends that most countries are relatively highly dependent on natural capital initially, and the ones that progress most successfully are those that manage their assets for the long term and reinvest in human and social capital as well as in building strong …
