Virgin trip to Changi East
from wonderful creation and colourful clouds blog.
Little Egret swallowing a prawn
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Update on the mass fish deaths at Pasir Ris and Pulau Ubin
from wild shores of singapore
Oriental Magpie Robin takes a termite alate
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Joyce Hooi, Business Times 19 Jan 10;
THE Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (Seris) announced the inauguration of South-east Asia's first solar module testing and certification laboratories yesterday.
The laboratories are the product of a collaboration between Seris and VDE-ISE Pte Ltd - a joint venture between the Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies (VDE) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE).
According to Joachim Luther, the chief executive officer of Seris, these laboratories will serve a dual purpose.
They will be used in performance testing for solar photovoltaic (PV) module certification in collaboration with VDE and ISE, as well as by Seris for its own research and development work on PV module technologies.
'With Seris' know-how in the field of solar energy we are able to offer performance testing of PV modules according to international standards. These tests and certification for the industry will qualify modules for the market,' said Prof Luther.
'Our aims are to increase the durability of industrial modules - which for certified modules is already more than 20 years - and to considerably reduce the cost of PV module encapsulation.'
Module technology currently accounts for about 20 per cent of the cost of solar technology.
Seris is also poised to adapt PV products to the challenges of local conditions through its research, according to Edwin Khew, chairman of the Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore.
'So far, PV products that have evolved in the market are for temperate climates. However, now, Seris will play a valuable role in applied research and development towards optimising PV components and systems for tropical conditions,' said Mr Khew.
Last month, Seris signed a $2 million research and development contract with Norwegian solar energy firm Renewable Energy Corporation to increase the efficiency of silicon wafer solar cells.
Vivian Yeo, ZDNet Asia 18 Jan 10;
SINGAPORE--Mandating take-back facilities for portable batteries is a "very good" move, but one industry observer familiar with the local green movement reckons that consumer recycling mindsets in the country are still lacking for such directives to work.
Responding to a recent development in the United Kingdom where battery sellers will soon be required to provide recycling containers for users to return their batteries, Howard Shaw, executive director of the Singapore Environmental Council (SEC), said battery recycling should be in place to complement efforts to reduce the use of conventional use-and-dispose batteries.
From Feb. 1, all distributors in the U.K. that sell 32kg or more of portable batteries in a year--either in a physical store, online or by mail order--are required to provide a take-back facility free of charge for consumers, according to a document released in December 2009 by the U.K Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). The Department said the amount is equivalent to about one pack of four AA batteries a day, and the directive also includes button cells such as those used in watches, and batteries in mobile phones, laptops and electronic appliances.
Batteries are a common problem, Shaw told ZDNet Asia in a phone interview, as toxic waste or fumes would end up in the environment regardless of whether batteries are disposed via landfill or incineration. "No matter how good your technology, a lot of these chemicals [present in the batteries] are not easy to screen out," he pointed out.
However, a similar directive to ensure batteries are properly recycled may not yet be practical in Singapore, he noted. One major challenge here is the lack of infrastructure to recycle batteries, he said, adding that consumer mindset is another obstacle.
"We are still fairly early on in nurturing people's attitudes to participate in voluntary recycling programs," Shaw said. "We've received a lot of queries here at the SEC [asking where to recycle batteries] but the interest level is confined to a very small minority."
Even if the collection of batteries is introduced at retail outlets, incentives such as offering a discount for new batteries, may be necessary to encourage consumers to return used ones, he added.
Enforcement will be challenging as well, he noted. The 32kg requirement, he said, will mean the inclusion of "every petrol station [and] every 7-11" convenience store in Singapore. "Logistically this is going to be a nightmare to operate, and it's going to be tiresome to enforce," he added.
In addition, such measures appear to penalize sellers--not consumers--so it may be limited to some extent in terms of effectiveness, Shaw said. Regulation that targets specifically consumers may eventually be employed in Singapore, he concluded.
User education is a long-term investment, he said, noting that Singapore typically "diligently tracks" such initiatives and may prefer to have "some form of regulation" to spur adoption.
In Japan, for instance, households are required to segregate their trash into different recycling bins, and if the waste is sorted into the wrong bin, no collection will be made, he said. And in certain boroughs of London, users will be issued a fine if authorities find recyclable waste in their mixed waste bins.
"There are so many cases of regulation that [can help] Singapore get where we want to go," Shaw said. "We did it with chewing gum and smoking in public places, and definitely [safeguarding] the environment is more important than chewing gum ending up on pavement."
Asian retailer chips in
Hong Kong-based Dairy Farm Group, which operates retail outlets across Asia including supermarket chain Cold Storage and convenience store cluster Wellcome, said in an e-mail interview the company has availed collection containers for used batteries in its domestic market, despite not being required to provide battery recycling facilities in the jurisdictions it operates in.
"Some of our businesses in Hong Kong do provide collection boxes or recycling bins for customers in collaboration with certain battery brands on a voluntary basis," a spokesperson noted. "We will cooperate fully with the local governments, if such facilities are required, to help reduce pollution to the environment."
The Ministry of Environment and Water Resources, which oversees environmental issues in Singapore, did not respond by press time.
Bernama 18 Jan 10;
PASIR GUDANG, Jan 18 (Bernama) -- The Department of Environment's (DOE) special task force has been tasked with stepping up operations against illegal oil dumping and transfer off the Pengerang waters through cooperation with maritime enforcement agencies.
The illegal activities have been rampant in that particular area with countless cases committed by foreign vessels.
Deputy Natural Resources and Environment minister Tan Sri Joseph Kurup said seven personnel had been assigned to the task force and daily patrols had been conducted with the Malaysia Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA).
"We are taking special interest in that particular area as there have been multiple cases throughout last year and this year," he told reporters after launching the Environment Seminar here Monday.
Kurup said that the ministry was taking the matter of illegal dumping and transferring of oil in Pengerang seriously.
He cited a recent success where two vessels along with 10 crewmen were detained for illegally transferring 280 bags of solid sludge and 80 barrels of liquid sludge off Pengerang waters last week through a join operation involving the DOE and MMEA.
Meanwhile, on the environmental quality in the Pasir Gudang industrial area and its surroundings, Kurup said he was satisfied with the quality but there was still room for improvement.
-- BERNAMA
Special unit to curb dumping of sludge
Ben Tan, New Straits Times 19 Jan 10;
PASIR GUDANG: The Natural Resources and Environment Ministry has stepped up the monitoring of ships to curb illegal oil dumping off Johor's southern coast.
Deputy Natural Resources and Environment Minister Tan Sri Joseph Kurup said that a dedicated unit, comprising seven members was formed about a year ago, specially trained to be on the lookout for ships that dumped oil and sludge.
"The unit, which is based near Pengerang, is currently working closely with the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) in monitoring the coast for possible offenders," he said after launching a seminar on the environment here yesterday.
Despite being a small team, he said it was sufficient for the time being as their roles were focused only on the coastal waters off Pengerang.
Asked about the rampant dumping of sludge off the coast of Pengerang, Kurup said the situation was under control.
"We will rehabilitate the coastal areas through cleaning operations and intensified surveillance," he added.
MMEA revealed that dumping of oil and sludge was once rampant off Pengerang.
In addition to dumping, even if a vessel illegally transfers fuel to another ship or conducts illegal cleaning, spillage will occur.
The special unit has been working closely with the MMEA to identify vessels that violate the Environmental Quality Act 1974.
They also participate in joint patrols and operations with MMEA enforcement officers.
Antara 18 Jan 10;
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Indonesia`s ownership of 92 outermost islands has yet to be fully secured, expert in international politics and international relations lecturer of Parahiyangan University Dr Andreas H Pareira said in Jakarta over the weekend.
He was responding to a statement made by the foreign ministry in Jakarta that the 92 outermost islands are completely safe from the claim of other countries, as the Indonesian ownership is guaranteed under international law.
"The safety from foreign claims on the basis of international law is merely a first stage guarantee, not yet a full guarantee," the former House Commission I member said.
In past experience, he said, other countries had different interpretations of international law, which could also happen in the future.
"This can always lead to overlapping claims. We therefore need to be constantly alert and never always rely on international law, our international law experts need to be aggressive in fighting for Indonesia`s ownership of its outermost islands," he pointed out. (*)
Many RI boundaries still without coordinates
Antara 19 Jan 10;
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Member of House Commission I Fayakhun Andriadi had once again criticized Law Nomor 43 of 2008 on state boundaries without border coordinates, which had often confused security guards at the boundaries.
"This is a serious shortcoming of the law, and we from Commission I had been urging the government to make a revision of the law, to make things easier for security guards to carry out their duties in the border regions, " he said in Jakarta Monday.
He made the statement in response to information that the President will soon issue a decree establishina a special body which would manage the development of border regions.(*)
Jakarta Globe 18 Jan 10;
An Irish racing yacht that struck the Gosong Mampango reef will stay there, reports said on Monday.
The 20-meter, 31-ton Cork Clipper was one of 10 yachts taking part in a round-the-world race when it hit the submerged reef off Kalimantan’s west coast early on Thursday morning.
The 16-person crew, hailing from Britain, Ireland, Australia and China, used lifeboats to get to nearby rocks where they were rescued by other racing boats, the Press Association reported.
Marine surveyors and salvage experts have determined the vessel is too badly damaged to be floated off the reef.
“It is with very great sadness that we have to accept that Cork Clipper will remain on the reef as we lose her to the sea,” race organizer Robin Knox Johnston said.
“This is the first loss Clipper has experienced in seven races,” he said. “Clipper accepts the surveyors’ practical opinion and I’d like to thank all of those who have assisted in our rescue efforts over the last couple of days.”
The Web site Sail-World.com criticized the decision, pointing out that there was “no responsibility taken for the fact” that local residents “did not ask for more plastic to be left on their pristine reefs.”
“How can we, as sailors who call the ocean our home, not be held responsible for making some effort to retrieve our rubbish, arguing merely that it is ‘not economic’ to do so?” Sail-World’s Des Ryan wrote.
Reader's Forum Jakarta Post 19 Jan 10;
The Trembesi tree, a native Latin American plant, will help Indonesia cope with climate change as it can absorb 28 tons of greenhouse gas emissions a year, a minister says. “In the next five years, trembesi trees will absorb huge emissions in Indonesia to tackle the climate change,” Gusti told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono distributed millions of trembesi seedlings (Samanea Saman) to local administrations to be planted in an effort to protect the environment. The launch was held at the State Palace, attended by a number of ministers and governors.
Your comments:
It sounds like another snake oil salesman has been doing the rounds if they think that the trembesi tree (known elsewhere in the world as the rain tree) is going to help solve climate change.
Yes, it is a nice tree as it provides good shade, but not much else, no edible fruits. Because of their aggressive root system and dense shading it is difficult to grow anything else under their very wide canopy, and its roots will readily dry out the surrounding land, including rice paddies.
There are many other useful tree species, including those native to Indonesia, that are perfectly capable of matching the carbon sequestration of the trembesi tree but with added advantage of producing edible fruit and/or valuable timber.
Mahogany and tamarind (pohon asam) are just two well-tried trees in Indonesia that produce valuable timber and fruit respectively. Is this just another one of those one-size-fits-all, “magic bullet” solutions like jatropha and tilapia that was going to be introduced to every habitat in every corner of Indonesia to solve climate change and food protein – irrespective of the suitability to local conditions, local culture or environmental values?
By all means plant trees, but be more imaginative. Trembesi is just another tree and may be nothing more than a distraction from the real issues of climate change. Better still, do more for climate change by stopping the massive illegal logging and deforestation of what is left of our beautiful native forests in Indonesia. Then we would not have to revert to planting introduced trees and believing in any magical powers of the trembesi (rain) tree.
Nairdah
Sydney
Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 18 Jan 10;
A study by the government has recommended a moratorium on peatland conversion if the country wants to meet its pledged emission cuts to tackle climate change.
The study commissioned by the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) also proposes a land-swap scheme to relocate existing licenses in the peatlands, but not in other degraded forests.
“Land swaps coupled with a revision of spatial planning to conserve unlicensed peatlands could contribute up to 37 percent in potential emission cuts,” Basah Hernowo, the director of forestry and water resources conservation at Bappenas, told The Jakarta Post at the weekend.
Indonesia has around 21 million hectares of peatlands, mostly in Sumatra with 7.2 million hectares, Kalimantan with 5.8 million hectare and Papua with 8 million hectares. Most of the peatland in Papua is untouched.
The study predicted that peatlands contributed about 1 billion tons of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per year, or half of the country’s total emissions.
Under a business-as-usual scenario, the study predicted emissions from peatlands would contribute 1,387 million tons by 2025.
“The utilization of the peatlands probably contributes less than 1 percent of GDP, yet accounts for
almost 50 percent of emissions,” Basah said.
The second phase of the study to assess economic aspects of peatlands will be conducted this year.
A number of plantations, industrial timber concessions (HTI) and forest concession holders (HPH) run business in the peatlands.
The Agriculture Ministry issued a 2009 decree allowing plantations to convert peatlands with a thickness of less than 3 meters.
Many said the decree was contrary to the ministry’s letters to governors in 2007, asking local administrations to stop the conversion of peatlands into oil palm plantations.
“Enforcing the law on existing forest and the plantation concessions operating in the peatlands could yield about 338 million tons in CO2 reduction, or 24 percent by 2025,” he said.
Basah said the rehabilitation of peatlands and preventing fires could also cut about 430 million tons of CO2 emissions.
Indonesia has pledged to abate the country’s emissions by 26 percent by 2020, of which 14 percent will be cut from forest and peatlands.
The study said that emissions from peatlands were dominated by anthropogenic fire emissions, peat oxidation and the removal of above-ground biomass from deforestation and forest degradation.
“The current emissions from the peatlands come mostly from Sumatra and Kalimantan, whereas Papua has extensive shallow peatlands that have the potential to increase Indonesia’s emissions if they are developed in the future,” he said.
Forest campaigner at Greenpeace Indonesia Yuyun Indradi, said the study should be made as a basis to cut emissions from peatlands.
“The problem is poor law enforcement against those companies that have already converted the peatlands,” he said.
Greenpeace has protested the destruction of peatlands in Riau, including in Semenanjung Kampar, which they say store around 2 gigatons of carbon, with peat layers of more than 15 meters.
The Bappenas study also recommended the need for effective institutions to overcome overlapping mandates on the management of peat and lowland areas in the country.
It also proposed the need to develop peatland carbon policies to attract financial incentives under the current Carbon Development Mechanism (CDM) scheme.
Leong Shen-Li, The Star 19 Jan 10;
ABU DHABI: Tenaga Nasional could be legally required to buy renewable energy under new laws being drawn up by the Government, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said.
The Prime Minister said the move would increase the availability of renewable energy in Malaysia by 100-fold from the current 50MW to 2,000MW by 2020.
He said one of the mechanisms the Government was looking into under the new law was “feed-in tariffs.”
Feed-in tariffs makes it compulsory for regional or national utility companies like Tenaga Nasional Bhd to buy renewable electricity such as electricity generated from solar, thermal, wind, wave or tidal power, biomass, hydropower and geothermal power from eligible participants.
“Currently, we are in the process of instituting a renewable energy law and one of the mechanisms we are looking into is feed-in tariffs to promote the usage of this type of energy,” he said in his keynote address at the World Future Energy Summit here yesterday.
Najib said the Government already had the Small Renewable Energy Programme, which provided for a higher purchasing price for electricity generated under this initiative by the grid operator.
“We have more than enough sunlight in Malaysia and increased use of solar power will be promoted aggressively,” he said, referring to the Suria 1000 programme which was launched in 2007.
The Suria 1000 programme allows houses and commercial buildings to become part of the country’s renewable energy initiative by producing energy through solar power.
Najib said a study has been commissioned to restructure and realign the Malaysian electricity sector.
“The findings will help lay the foundation for a more efficient industry through market mechanisms and liberalisation,” he said.
Najib pointed out that he had set up the Energy, Green Technology and Water Ministry last year to spearhead Malaysia’s transformation into a green nation.
“We will be looking at four main sectors to implement green technologies, namely energy, transport, buildings and water,” he said.
Najib said for transportation, the Government aimed at reducing carbon footprint by enhancing public transport.
He said energy efficient buildings have been promoted for some time and the introduction of the Green Building Index would hopefully see more buildings going green in Malaysia soon.
Besides Najib, the other heads of state or government attending the four-day summit are Greek Presi-dent Karolos Papoulias, Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Tan Ee Lyn in Hong Kong and Olivia Rondonuwu in Jakarta
PlanetArk 19 Jan 10;
HONG KONG - Disease experts in Southeast Asia will map out key poultry smuggling routes, especially along Cambodia's long border with Thailand and Vietnam, in a move to prevent the spread of the H5N1 bird flu virus in the region.
Researchers from China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam met in the Chinese city of Kunming to discuss ways to control the spread of the virus, which kills 60 percent of the people it infects.
Even though H5N1 transmission between people is weak, experts say it continues to pose a risk especially if it gets mixed with the now dominant H1N1 swine flu virus. Such a hybrid may then be both deadly and easily transmissible among people.
"In Cambodia, illegal or informal trade occurs along its long border with Thailand and Vietnam. There is that informal trade, not just in birds, but eggs and other poultry products, smuggling," said Khieu Borin, director of Cambodia's Center for Livestock and Agriculture Department.
"It can be in small or large numbers ... but because poultry has (can be infected by) H5N1, so smuggling of fighting cocks or chickens can carry H5N1, there will be some risk," he told Reuters in a telephone interview.
While scarce media attention has been paid in the last year to H5N1, there have been outbreaks of the disease in birds and it has killed people in China, Egypt, Indonesia and Vietnam.
Experts also discussed the role of wild migratory birds in the spread of the H5N1.
"Our China colleagues found that bar-headed geese fly from China to India and found records of outbreaks in poultry along the flyway. This suggests the role of these birds in spreading the virus along the flyway," said Witthawat Wiriyarat, a veterinarian and virologist with Thailand's Mahidol University.
"There are opportunities to meet other birds along the pathway like in paddy fields and wetlands. If one bird can release the virus into the environment, other animals can get it and spread it to poultry," Wiriyarat told Reuters.
One worry often cited by experts is Indonesia's insistence on not sharing virus samples. Researchers need to study the virus to track its molecular changes, which can influence its behavior.
Friday, Indonesia's health minister Endang Sedyaningsih said the country will continue to hold back samples until it secured guarantees from richer nations and drugmakers that poor countries get access to affordable vaccines derived from their samples.
"We will still insist that the responsibility to share virus should be at the same line with receiving the benefit from that," she told foreign journalists in Jakarta.
(Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
Richard Black, BBC News 18 Jan 10;
Ingredients of a new deal on protecting global biodiversity are likely to be decided this week at a London meeting.
About 55 nations are sending delegates to the meeting, which will be chaired by UK and Brazilian ministers.
A key aim is to agree what sort of targets should be set at October's UN biodiversity summit for curbing the loss of species and ecosystems.
Governments are keen to avoid the kind of fundamental divisions that dogged last month's climate summit.
Writing on the BBC News website, UK Environment Secretary Hilary Benn argues that humanity's exploitation of the natural world may be approaching a "point of no return".
"The action we take in the next couple of decades will determine whether the stable environment on which human civilisation has depended since the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago, will continue," he writes.
Smart targets
In 2002, governments set a target of reducing significantly the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010.
There is general agreement that the target will not be met; but at this year's summit of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), held in October in Japan, it is likely that governments will adopt a new set of targets.
According to UN documents prepared following consultations with governments, these could include:
* stopping the rate of biodiversity loss by 2020
* ending subsidies that harm biodiversity
* ending destructive fishing practices
* controlling the unintentional transfer of species from place to place
* placing at least 15% of land and sea area under protection
This week's meeting will see these options narrowed down, and its conclusions will form the basis of a draft agreement for the October CBD summit.
The UK hosts believe that discussing these ideas in advance among a wide group of nations will help avoid the wide divisions and acrimony evident during last month's climate summit in Copenhagen.
Delegates will also discuss what resources will be needed to ensure that developing countries can meet new targets.
Speaking at a scientific meeting last week, CBD executive secretary Ahmed Djoghlaf acknowledged that the 2010 target had been "a mistake", partly because many governments did not have the capacity to turn them into reality.
Mr Djoghlaf also pointed to a lack of awareness and knowledge about the natural world among the public and politicians, citing a study published last September showing that nearly 40% of British children between five and 10 did not know the difference between a bee and a wasp.
The UN holds that conserving biodiversity is important not just for itself, but for the benefits nature brings to humanity.
Investing in conservation, it argues, is of vital importance to human health and wealth, particularly in poor countries.
"Restoration of our ecosystems must be seen as a sensible and cost-effective investment in this planet's economic survival and growth," writes Mr Benn.
GreenerDesign.com Greener World Media PlanetArk 19 Jan 10;
It's time to review last year's bio-inspired products and services and pick my favorites, and, since this is my "sandbox," I have decided to shamelessly name my awards the Tommies.
I have also decided to give the awards to the creatures that inspired the innovation, rather than the human inventors. As a consolation, however, I will offer to buy each human an Irish coffee at the Buena Vista Bar here in San Francisco. Email me; I would be honored to talk to each of you, whenever you visit!
The penguin, in the strictest biomechanical sense, doesn't really swim underwater, but rather flies. That is, the creature gets both lift and thrust from the action of its flapping, planar wings. It has inspired the latest development in robots highlighted by the German engineering firm Festo AG at the Hanover Messe Trade Exhibition in April.
The Aquapenguin mimics the hydrodynamic body features of the bird and is made with soft material and glass fibre rods, a motor and 3D sonar device by Evologics of Berlin. These allow the bot to swim with great flexibility and avoid collisions with obstacles or other swimmers, important in situations demanding a high degree of flexibility and autonomy. Festo has already developed a commercial product, an industrial arm with a gripper end, based on this technology.
The manta ray also flies underwater and inspired another Festo product that took to the skies. The Air_ray is a remote-controlled helium-filled ballonet made of aluminum vaporized PET foil and shaped like the ray. It contains a small servo that beats its 6-foot wings with a clever linkage mechanism modeled after the tail fins of many fish. Two alternating pressure and tension flanks are connected by ribs. When one flank is pressured, the structure bends from its geometry in the direction opposed to the force. While super light (the buoyancy of the helium can only support 1.6 kg of weight), the Air_ray can perform some simple maneuvers including loop-de-loops and flying backwards. The slow moving Air_ray can also carry a camera.
The Morpho butterfly, along with many other insects and birds, exhibits brilliant colors because of the nanostructure of the microscopic scales on its wings. White light is broken up by this surface. Its component colors, of different wavelengths, are bounced back in a different array. Some colors cancel each other out which is why you might see the shifting hues in a peacock's feathers. This phenomenon inspired the structural color display Mirasol, developed by the Qualcomm Corporation.
Qualcomm engineers looked at this occurrence and devised a way to mimic this so-called interferometric process. Using a MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical system), engineers have designed a reflective device that opens or closes tiny gaps between a mirror and a glass plate in a tiny pixel. This allows a predetermined wavelength of light to emerge or be suppressed. A display will contain thousands of these pixels adjusted to reflect either red, green or blue. How these are programmed will determine the ultimate picture.
Readers may recall that another company, Teijin Fibers, Ltd. of Japan, saw a different application for structural color displayed in the Morpho. Since 2003, the company has sold its Morphotex line as a fabric or a powder coating for paints.
In the fabric, thin films of 70 nanometer thickness consisting either of polyester or nylon are laminated in 61 layers alternatively. Four types of basic colors such as red, green, blue and violet are allowed to be developed by precisely controlling the layer thickness according to visible wavelength. In items made from the fabric, the result is a shimmering of different colors expressed when the angle and strength of light changes. These products were the result of intensive research, begun in 1995, together with Nissan Motors and Tanaka Kinzoku Kogyo.
The shark has often inspired biomimetic innovations, from fighter jet tailfins to swimsuit textures, because of its hydrodynamic qualities. Sharkskins are also remarkably free of algae and barnacle growth. Sharklet Technologies has developed a nontoxic material for hospitals and schools that resists bacteria growth because of its structure. Millions of microscopic diamonds are arrayed in a way that the company claims can prevent formation of biofilms for up to 21 days. This "no-kill" approach is especially important in medical environments because it avoids the growing problem of promoting resistant strains of infections by the artificial selection of biocides. The company's Safetouch product, a self-adhesive film, was named one of the best innovations of 2009 by Inc. magazine.
The dolphin can swim up to 33 miles per hour and can use up to 80 percent of its energy to generate thrust. These capabilities inspired Ted Ciamillo, an inventor from Georgia, to design the Lunocet, a 2.5-pound monofin made of carbon fiber and fiberglass that attaches to an aluminum foot plate at a precise 30-degree angle. The fin is almost four feet wide and can propel a swimmer at eight miles per hour, nearly twice the speed of Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps.
Fish that school together form intricate patterns at high speeds without ever bumping into each other. This ability inspired the Nissan Corporation to develop the Eporo car by studying this behavior. The innovation offered is the ability of a group of vehicles to travel safely together, avoiding collisions and delays.
Engineers at Nissan learned that fish are able to school because of their lateral line sense and their sight and because of three simple individual behaviors that cause the emergence of the group phenomenon: collision avoidance, maintaining relative distance to your neighbors on your flanks, and closing any gaps to distant fish. They substituted laser range finder technology for the natural lateral line mechanism, and ultra wide band (UWB) radio communication for sight, and programmed the three algorithms into the controls of the vehicles. Six vehicles were demonstrated at the CEATEC JAPAN 2009 Exhibition at the Makuhari Messe in October.
The rat inspired researchers at the University of Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the U.K. to construct the Scratchbot, a whiskered search and rescue robot that relies on flexible sensors, rather than cameras, to assess dark, narrow spaces. Six years in development, it has 18 whiskers that move back and forth five times per second. Sensors detect the allowed sweep of the whiskers and reposition the robot toward surfaces that have been contacted. The Scratchbot can then determine the edges of the space and outlines of obstacles, including unlucky victims. The device recently won a Best of What's New for 2009 award from Popular Science Magazine.
Finally, the slime mold, Physarum polycephalum, must take top honors at the Tommies this year for the part it had played in the discovery of memristors. This past year, HP Labs of Palo Alto, Calif., announced that engineers there had advanced their discovery and successfully grafted a memristor array onto a standard silicon chip, and that commercial production could be anticipated in the near future. Memristors were the missing fourth passive circuit in electronic circuit theory predicted by Leon Chua of U.C. Berkeley in 1971: A resistor that could remember what current had previously flowed through it. It has been likened to a pipe that changes diameter according to the volume of liquid flowing through it.
Physarum is a colony of single cell organisms that could sense, react and anticipate conditions as they were imposed by research scientists at the Hokkaido University. Explaining this behavior, done without a brain or central nervous system, was a puzzle that was made easier when scientists realized that they might be looking at an organic form of the memristor, where basic physical properties of materials within the cell change with different external conditions.
The impact of the linking of brilliant, logical theorizing with careful biological research and tenacious engineering development cannot be overstated. Memristors will revolutionize computing and the way that scientists and engineers approach artificial intelligence and mimic the human brain. If it had a head and shoulders, Physarum would be standing that much taller than our other awardees.
Tom McKeag teaches bio-inspired design at the California College of the Arts and University of California, Berkeley. He is the founder and president of BioDreamMachine, a nonprofit educational institute that brings bio-inspired design and science education to K12 schools.
Paul Casciato PlanetArk 19 Jan 10;
LONDON - A British charity launched its biggest survey of the wildlife in school yards on Monday, aiming to get thousands of children watching excitedly to find out which creatures share their playgrounds.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said its annual "Big Schools' Birdwatch" will run until February 1st .
Classrooms will be turned into bird hides, binoculars will be fixed to eyes and children will be staring out of the window -- with the blessing of their teacher.
"The Big Schools' Birdwatch provides an opportunity to introduce thousands of children to the wildlife visiting their school environment," RSPB head of youth and education Andy Simpson said in a statement on its website (www.rspb.org.uk).
Last year, a record 90,000 children and teachers from more than 2,000 schools took part.
More than 60 different species have been recorded in school grounds, ranging from starlings and house sparrows, to kestrels and even pheasants. The blackbird took the top spot in 2009, with an average of 5.03 seen per school.
To take part, students have been asked to watch and count the birds in their school grounds for a total of one hour over the two-week period, then send one set of results back to the RSPB detailing what they have seen.
Wild birds are an unbeatable teaching resource, the RSPB says. Colorful, active and abundant, they enthuse and inspire children about the nature outside their classroom windows.
The survey also provides a purpose for their observations and helps paint a picture of how birds in Britain are faring and which are the most common visitors to school grounds.
Simpson said the charity wanted governments to make a greater commitment to ensure every child has regular, quality, first-hand experiences of the natural environment.
"How can we expect them to care about the natural world if they don't experience and enjoy it," he said.
(Editing by Steve Addison)
Mabvuto Banda PlanetArk 19 Jan 10;
A persistent dry spell and an army worm outbreak in Malawi have destroyed about 35,000 hectares of crops, threatening the food security of 123,000 families so far, a senior government official said on Monday.
Army worms have attacked nine districts and destroyed 5,000 hectares of crops, while 30,000 hectares of maize have been damaged due to the dry spell, information gathered from the country's eight Agriculture Development Divisions showed.
"The army worm situation is now under control and in some areas people have replanted," Andrew Daudi, principal secretary in the ministry of agriculture said.
Army worms, which can grow to around 5 centimeters (two inches) in length, are moth caterpillars and when present in large numbers can destroy swathes of vegetation and crops.
The Farmers Union of Malawi (FUM) said hunger was looming in the poor southern African country. It called on the government to act urgently.
"There are signs of widespread hunger because of the dry spell and the damage caused by army worms," FUM president Abel Banda told Reuters.
"When parliament meets next week, this issue should be top of the agenda because the crop is not good out there."
In recent years, Malawi has enjoyed bumper harvests following the introduction of a fertilizer and seed subsidy programme.
The country harvested a hefty 1.3 million tonne maize crop last year, its fifth consecutive surplus of the staple.
An El Nino weather pattern developing in the Pacific Ocean was expected to bring drought to much of southern Africa starting last year, hitting crop and livestock production and damaging wider economies.
Experts said long-range forecasts suggested South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, and most parts of Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and the southern half of Angola would have below average rainfall in the summer rainy season, which runs from October to March.
El Nino, meaning "little boy" in Spanish, is driven by an abnormal warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean, and creates havoc in weather patterns across the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.
(Editing by Muchena Zigomo and Keiron Henderson)
Michael McCarthy, The Independent 19 Jan 10;
Why are we asking this now?
Rather than renewing its current weather forecasting contract with the Met Office automatically, when it expires in April, the BBC is putting it out to tender – for the first time since 1922, when national broadcaster and national forecaster first became partners. No one on either side says how much the contract is worth.
Why would the BBC drop a national institution?
Allegedly because it is looking for a cheaper alternative from among the many independent weather forecasting companies which have sprung up in the last 20 years. But the Beeb's move also coincides with a period in which the Met Office's forecasting accuracy has come under unprecedented fire. There is speculation that the two may be linked.
Have recent forecasts been inaccurate?
Some of them have. Most recently was the snow in London and the south-east last Wednesday morning, which was heavier than had been predicted, and caused widespread disruption. But beyond that, the Met Office failed to predict this year's Big Freeze as a whole.
The winter seasonal forecast for 2009-10, issued on September 29 last year, said that "winter temperatures are likely to be near or above average over much of Europe including the UK. Winter 2009/10 is likely to be milder than last year for the UK, but there is still a one in seven chance of a cold winter". As it turned out, we are in the middle of the coldest winter for 30 years. And then there was the famous case of the "barbecue summer".
Can we recap on that?
Last April, the Met Office issued its seasonal forecast for summer 2009, and said it was "odds-on for a barbecue summer", in a tremendously resonant phrase which made big headlines everywhere, not least because it was such a terrific piece of good news after the washout summers of 2007 and 2008. Chief forecaster, Ewen McCallum, said at the press conference: "We do not see the London bus syndrome of three wet summers coming in a row. The likelihood of that happening is extremely small." That was a hostage to fortune if ever there was one: July turned out to be one of the wettest summer months on record.
By the end of it, the resentment from a public whose hopes had been firmly raised for hot dry evenings on the patio was so intense, that the Met Office felt obliged to issue a public apology.
Why were they wrong?
The funny thing is, on one level, they didn't; the key phrase was "odds-on", and the odds Mr McCallum was talking about were precise: they were 65:35. That meant that the Met Office supercomputer had run 50 different simulations of the weather over the coming summer, in what is known as an "ensemble" of forecasts, and 65 per cent of these had indicated it would be warmer and drier than average, while 35 per cent had indicated the opposite.
So the Met Office did say there was a 35 per cent chance or rain, which is how it turned out – but that was entirely lost on the public in the forceful catchiness of the "barbecue summer" phrase, which, of course, was chosen to make headlines. The Met Office got its headlines, but it paid a very high price, in image terms, for getting them wrong: barbecue summer will take a lot of forgetting.
What does the Met Office say in its defence?
That dealing with a chaotic system such as the earth's atmosphere means one can never make forecasts with complete accuracy, especially a season in advance. Although it is accepted that "barbecue summer" was a big blunder, the Met men assert that most of their forecasts are right most of the time, and although last Wednesday's snow might not have been fully predicted, most of the episodes of the big freeze have been accurately called.
Who might take over as BBC forecaster of choice?
The Beeb is said to be talking to Metra, the commercial arm of New Zealand's state-owned national weather forecaster. Weather Commerce, Metra's UK subsidiary, already supplies forecasts to Tesco, Sainsbury's, Marks & Spencer and Waitrose, which help with sales predictions and weather-related distribution issues. Metra is clearly panting to win the contract (it was obvious from news reports at the weekend that Metra itself was the source of the story). It could do so.
In the past, only national weather forecasting services, such as those of the UK, the US or Japan, had the resources to perform full-scale weather prediction, which needs immensely-complex mathematical models of the global atmosphere and supercomputers costing billions of pounds on which to run them (and which have to be replaced with newer and even faster models every couple of years).
But the advent of the internet has meant that these forecasts can be available and downloaded, sometimes free, sometimes paid for, by many smaller firms, who can then tailor individual forecasts to specific clients – such as north sea oil companies. One potential advantage such smaller companies may have is that they take into account a wider range of forecasts than a single national weather service relying principally on its own weather model. But you have to be fairly big to fill the BBC bill: only companies with a turnover of more than £10m have been invited to apply.
How do you win the contract?
You have to provide the BBC with meteorological data for five years, at a competitive price, obviously. But there's something more tricky, too. You have to provide them with weathermen (or weatherwomen, or weatherpersons) – a cohort of 20 meteorologically-trained TV presenters, who will become household names and household faces. You have to provide the next Bill Giles (he of the tough reputation). The next John Kettley (he of his own pop song). The next Michael Fish (he of his own hurricane).
Is that so difficult?
It's something that the Met Office, with its big staff, can do easily, but it may be a much tougher call for a small company. Live broadcasting is a challenge. So the Met Office is still in with a good chance of recapturing the BBC contract; don't be surprised if it carries on. It said yesterday: "We consider we are in the best position to provide the BBC with accurate and detailed weather forecasts for the UK, and we hope this successful relationship continues."
Wind of change
1854 Met Office founded to provide information on the weather and marine currents to the marine community by Robert Fitzroy, captain of Darwin’s ‘HMS Beagle’ and later Governor of New Zealand
1909 Transatlantic shipping starts to use wireless telegraphy to transmit weathermessages ashore
1914-1918 Military personnel become dependent on Met Office forecasts for war planning
1939 Second World War sees introduction of radio sondes – ‘a collection of balloon-borne sensors transmitting data on pressure, temperature and humidity to receiving sites on land’
1940 The Met Office moves from London to wartime accommodation at Dunstable
1953 Major floods in south-east England, caused by storms in the North Sea, lead to the construction of the Thames Barrier
1954 The first live BBC Television forecast, lasting five minutes, was made by Met Office forecaster George Cowling
1959 London Weather Centre opens in Bracknell
1964 The first operational satellite images become available
1972 An IBM 360/195 computer is installed in the Richardson Wing of the Bracknell headquarters
1974 The Met Office takes part in the first global observation experiment
2003 One of the world's fastest supercomputers – the NEC SX-6 – isinstalled at the Met Office
2004 The Met Office's new headquarters in Exeter is fully operational
Would the BBC be justified in abandoning the Met Office?
Yes...
*If it could secure a substantial saving for the same quality of service
*Some recent Met Office forecasts have been very wide of the mark, such as last year's barbecue summer and the recent big freeze
*The internet means a national weather service is no longer needed for serious forecasting
No...
*The Met Office's general forecasting record is nearly 90 per cent accurate. Could others do better?
*It has more experience than any other weather service in the world (it dates back to 1854)
*It is a respected national institution and the appropriate weather source for the national broadcaster
Krittivas Mukherjee, PlanetArk 19 Jan 10;
NEW DELHI - The U.N. panel of climate scientists said Monday it was reviewing a report containing a little-known projection that Himalayan glaciers might vanish by 2035, a finding trenchantly criticized by the Indian government.
The 2007 U.N. panel report says global warming could cause the Himalaya's thousands of glaciers to vanish by 2035 if current warming rates continue.
"We are looking into the issue of the Himalayan glaciers, and will take a position on it in the next two or three days," Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told Reuters in an e-mail.
Other experts have said the 10 major Asian rivers the glaciers feed could go dry in the next five decades.
Hundreds of millions of people in India, Pakistan and China would be affected.
Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh Monday questioned the findings of the 2007 report.
"They are indeed receding and the rate is cause for great concern, Ramesh said of the glaciers, but he told reporters the 2035 forecast was "not based on an iota of scientific evidence."
Other experts have said the 2035 projection was not based on peer-reviewed science. In London, The Times newspaper said the Indian scientist who first made the Himalayan thaw projection in 1999 now acknowledged it was "speculation."
Flaws in IPCC reports can be damaging since the findings are a guide for government policy. The IPCC's core finding in 2007 was that it was more than 90 percent sure that mankind is the main cause of global warming, mainly by using fossil fuels.
Ramesh said he had been accused of "voodoo science" in questioning the IPCC findings about the Himalayas in the past.
The IPCC's 2007 report said: "Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate."
However, the report also said of the glaciers: "Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 sq km (193,000 to 38,600 sq miles) by the year 2035."
At the Copenhagen climate summit last month, Pachauri, an Indian citizen, strongly defended the IPCC's core findings after a scandal over emails hacked from the University of East Anglia in England.
In the email scandal, climate change skeptics accused researchers of colluding to suppress others' data.
Ramesh had said in November that a paper commissioned by the Indian government had found no conclusive evidence to link the retreat of Himalayan glaciers to climate change.
He said many of India's 9,500 Himalayan glaciers are shrinking, but some are shrinking at a slower rate or even increasing.
(Editing by Paul Tait)
In new row, UN climate body to probe Himalayan glacier forecast
Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 19 Jan 10;
PARIS (AFP) – The UN's panel of climate scientists said on Monday it would probe claims its doomsday prediction for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers was wrong as an expert said he had warned of the mistake.
The Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is already under attack over hacked email exchanges which skeptics say reflected attempts to skew the evidence for global warming.
The new controversy focusses on a reference in the IPCC's landmark Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 that said the probability of glaciers in the Himalayas "disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high."
At the weekend, Britain's Sunday Times newspaper reported that this reference came from the green campaign group WWF, which in turn took it from an interview given by an Indian glaciologist to New Scientist magazine in 1999.
There is no evidence that the claim was published in a peer-reviewed journal, a cornerstone of scientific credibility, it said.
"We are looking into the issue of the Himalayan glaciers, and will take a position on it in the next two or three days," the IPCC's chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, said in an email to AFP.
In an interview with AFP, a leading glaciologist who contributed to the Fourth Assessment Report described the mistake as huge and said he had notified his colleagues of it in late 2006, months before publication.
Loss of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 would take two or three times the highest expected rate of global warming, said Georg Kaser of the Geography Institute at Austria's University of Innsbruck.
"This number is not just a little bit wrong, but far out of any order of magnitude. It is as wrong as can be wrong.
"To get this outcome, you would have to increase the ablation [ice loss] by 20 fold. You would have to raise temperatures by at least 12 degrees" Celsius, or 21.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
"It is so wrong that it is not even worth discussing... I pointed it out."
Asked why his warning had not been heeded, Kaser pointed to "a kind of amateurism" among experts from the region who were in charge of the chapter on climate impacts, where the reference appeared.
"They might have been good hydrologists or botanists, but they were without any knowledge in glaciology," he said.
The Fourth Assessment Report said that the evidence for global warming was now "unequivocal," that the chief source for it was man-made and that there were already signs of climate change, of which glacial melt was one.
The massive publication had the effect of a political thunderclap, triggering promises to curb greenhouse gases that had stoked the problem.
Kaser said the core evidence of the Fourth Assessment Report remained incontrovertible.
"I am careful in saying this, because immediately people will again engage in IPCC bashing, which would be wrong," he said.
But he acknowledged that the process of peer review, scrutiny and challenge which underpin the IPCC's reputation had "entirely failed" when it came specifically to the 2035 figure.
The 2035 reference appeared in the second volume of the Fourth Assessment Report, a tome published in April 2007 that focussed on the impacts of climate change, especially on human communities.
Part of the problem, said Kaser, was "everyone was focussed" on the first volume, published in February 2007, which detailed the physical science for climate change.
Work on this volume was "much more attractive to the community" of glaciologists, and they had failed to pick up on the mistake that appeared in the second, he said.
The question of glacial melt is a vital one for South Asia, as it touches on flooding or water stress with the potential to affect hundreds of millions of lives.
Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has repeatedly challenged the IPCC's claims.
The IPCC came under ferocious attack from climate skeptics last month ahead of the UN conference in Copenhagen.
Emails from scientists at Britain's University of East Anglia, a top centre for climate research, were leaked and seized upon as evidence that experts twisted data in order to dramatise global warming.
Some of the thousands of messages expressed frustration at the scientists' inability to explain what they described as a temporary slowdown in warming. Pachauri has vowed to investigate the affair.
Ali Khalil Yahoo News 18 Jan 10;
ABU DHABI (AFP) – World leaders raised a fresh alarm on global warming Monday, urging international action to increase use of clean energy at a four-day forum that opened in the oil-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi.
"If we don?t act now, our coral reefs and rainforests will die, desert countries will become unbearably hot and low lying countries like the Maldives, will slip beneath the rising seas," said the president of the Maldives, Mohammed Nasheed.
"Tackling climate change is not like dealing with other global issues, such as trade or disarmament. We do not have the luxury of time to meet, year after year, in endless negotiations," the leader of the low-lying Indian Ocean nation told participants at the World Future Energy Summit.
Nasheed was referring to the Copenhagen climate talks last month, which ended with a non-binding agreement to reduce rises in global temperatures, seen as a lukewarm commitment to save the planet.
"The Copenhagen Accord, in its current form, will not prevent catastrophic climate change. Our challenge this year, and next, is therefore to strengthen the accord so it becomes a blueprint for planet-saving action," Nasheed said.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan echoed the warnings of global warming, stressing the gravity of the challenge.
"Mitigating global carbon emission is one of the important hurdles ahead of us," he said addressing the opening session of the forum.
He highlighted the measures taken by Turkey to reduce dependency on fossil energy, saying that renewable sources represent 20 percent of the country's generated power, and that Ankara aims to increase this share to 30 percent by 2023.
He also said Turkey wants to contribute to Europe's security of energy resources through transporting gas, which is a cleaner source of energy than coal and oil.
"Our country aims... to contribute to Europe's energy security," he said, pointing to the Nabucco gas pipeline agreement, signed in July between Turkey and four EU states, which is aimed at reducing Europe's gas dependence on Russia.
Meanwhile, Qatar's Energy Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah, whose country is the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, protested against the use of the term "alternative" when referring to renewable energy.
"I'm not against renewables. I don't like the word alternative... We need a mix (in energy sources) but we don't need to eliminate each other," he told participants.
Qatar's reserves of natural gas amount to approximately 890 trillion cubic feet (25.2 trillion cubic metres), almost 15 percent of total world reserves and the world's third-largest behind Russia and Iran.
Spain's Prince Felipe said "interdependence amongst nations is no longer of an abstract nature," as he called for nations to work together to combat global warming.
He said Spain was currently generating 20,000 megawatts of electricity through wind power and was hoping to double that figure by 2020.
Denmark's Prince Frederik said the presence of businesses at the forum "proves that green technology is not only good for the environment but also (for) business... There is a significant potential for employment growth" in this industry.
And Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said "energy efficiency is the lowest-hanging fruit... Our planet can no longer withstand man's wastage."
Parallel to the summit runs an exhibition of the latest technologies of renewable energy.
Abu Dhabi was chosen last year to be the host of the newly established International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in an apparent acknowledgement of its commitment to harness clean energy.
The emirate sits on more than 95 percent of the proven oil reserves of the United Arab Emirates -- the world's fifth largest.
It has established the Masdar initiative to create a zero carbon-emissions city that would be home to 50,000 people. Masdar will host the headquarters of IRENA, as well as research institutes that would aim to build Abu Dhabi's status as a leading party in renewable energy.
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