‘A ‘sacred stone’ from Venezuela that has been taken to Berlin, Germany and turned into sculpture has strained Germany – Venezuela relations as Germany is in a fix whether to return the stone to Venezuela or not.
Wolfgang von Schwarzenfeld’s sculptures in a Berlin park were meant to promote world peace, but the 79-year-old German now finds himself at war with a Venezuelan tribe which accuses him of stealing a sacred pink stone known to them as “Grandmother”.
With Caracas calling it robbery, and the sculptor arguing that the stone was a legal gift, the monolith is emitting more negative energy than its esoteric fans in Berlin are used to.
The Venezuelan tribe has accused that stone’s removal is bringing misfortune on the tribe, like drought and the disappearance of the ants they eat in spicy sauce.
We are aware that Mosquitoes attack some people more than the others.
You become a sort of magnet for them.
Why?
Mosquito Alert (Photo credit: Travis S.)
Researchers seem to have come to some conclusions.
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Although researchers have yet to pinpoint what mosquitoes consider an ideal hunk of human flesh, the hunt is on. “There’s a tremendous amount of research being conducted on what compounds and odors people exude that might be attractive to mosquitoes,” says Joe Conlon, PhD, technical advisor to the American Mosquito Control Association. With 400 different compounds to examine, it’s an extremely laborious process. “Researchers are just beginning to scratch the surface,” he says.
Scientists do know that genetics account for a whopping 85% of our susceptibility to mosquito bites. They’ve also identified certain elements of our body chemistry that, when found in excess on the skin‘s surface, make mosquitoes swarm closer.
“People with high concentrations of steroids or cholesterol on their skin surface attract mosquitoes,” Butler tells WebMD. That doesn’t necessarily mean that mosquitoes prey on people with higher overall levels of cholesterol, Butler explains. These people simply may be more efficient at processing cholesterol, the byproducts of which remain on the skin’s surface.
Mosquitoes also target people who produce excess amounts of certain acids, such as uric acid, explains entomologist John Edman, PhD, spokesman for the Entomological Society of America. These substances can trigger mosquitoes’ sense of smell, luring them to land on unsuspecting victims.
But the process of attraction begins long before the landing. Mosquitoes can smell their dinner from an impressive distance of up to 50 meters, explains Edman. This doesn’t bode well for people who emit large quantities of carbon dioxide.
“Any type of carbon dioxide is attractive, even over a long distance,” Conlon says. Larger people tend to give off more carbon dioxide, which is why mosquitoes typically prefer munching on adults to small children. Pregnant women are also at increased risk, as they produce a greater-than-normal amount of exhaled carbon dioxide. Movement and heat also attract mosquitoes.
So if you want to avoid an onslaught of mosquito bites at your next outdoor gathering, stake out a chaise lounge rather than a spot on the volleyball team. Here’s why. As you run around the volleyball court, the mosquitoes sense your movement and head toward you. When you pant from exertion, the smell of carbon dioxide from your heavy breathing draws them closer. So does the lactic acid from your sweat glands. And then — gotcha.
With a long track record — mosquitoes have been around for 170 million years — and more than 175 known species in the U.S., these shrewd summertime pests clearly aren’t going to disappear any time soon. But you can minimize their impact.
“Saudi Arabia has finally noticed it has twenty centuries of solar reserves and has made plans to tap them. For its own use. The Kingdom has just announced a $109 billion plan to create a solar industry that generates a third of the nation’s electricity by 2032, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. Maher al- Odan, a consultant at the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KACARE) announced a plan to have 41 GW of solar capacity within two decades.
To put 41 GW in perspective, China is the world’s leader in wind power now, overtaking Germany and the U.S. with about 48 GW of wind. This is a very serious move by a country well able to afford this kind of investment, that till recently has lagged the rest of the MENA region in renewables trailing Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and the United Arab Emirates.
Traditional photovoltaic (PV) solar is to supply 16 GW, but the bulk of the solar (25 GW) is to come from the very desert-friendly concentrated solar power (CSP) that focuses the sun with mirrors to create the intense heat that drives turbines in a thermal power plant. Citing government officials, Deutsche Bank said the capacity would be added in competitive bidding starting with 1,100 megawatts of PV and 900 megawatts of solar thermal in the first quarter of 2013. A second round of bidding is due in the second half of 2014.
Solar Reserve, which is constructing the largest 24 hour solar CSP project worldwide in Nevada has already been in talks with the Saudis. Kevin Smith the CEO of Solar Reserve told GreenProphet that the company is among those looking to bid. The CSP company uses similar technology to the Gemasolar project built in Spain by Abu Dhabi’s visionary state-funded clean energy company Masdar. Because both use molten salt as both the transfer liquid and the storage medium, they can supply electricity long after dark.
“They really only–in the last couple of years–have started to really increase their solar activity” he said of Saudi solar ambitions. “We expect there will be projects going into construction in Saudi next year. Hopefully with us, but certainly, with someone. We expect that their program will kick off next year. We hope we get can projects in construction in 2013.”
The Saudis could potentially save 523,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day over the next 20 years by such a boost to renewable energy, according to Saudi officials. “The difficulties the Saudis have is their economy is all oil based” Smith concurred. “Really they want to maximise their exports of oil, but really what they’re using a lot of their oil for power generation in the country. It’s fine if oil is $20 a barrel, but now that they can sell it for $100 plus a barrel, it’s not a very cost-effective use of their oil.”
Nuclear, wind and geothermal would together contribute just half that amount at a still staggering 21,000 megawatts (21 GW) as we covered here: Solar-Rich Saudis Running after Nukes. But the new solar plans dwarf these. As they should. “We are not only looking for building solar plants,” al- Odan said in an interview in Riyadh yesterday. “We want to run a sustainable solar energy sector that will become a driver for the domestic energy for years to come.”
The Saudis may require bid winners to supply from factories built in the nation, according to Vishal Shah, an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG in New York, as we have covered previously: Saudis to Make Desert Sands into Solar Polysilicon. About $82 billion will go to capital costs, with the remainder of the $109 billion going to train the Saudis to run the solar plants as well as for maintenance and operation, al-Odan told Bloomberg. Once the strategy, which includes new regulations and financial incentives for private investors, is approved “we will start implementation directly,” al-Odan said.
Saudi Arabia may burn 850 million barrels of oil a year, or 30 percent of its crude output, to generate electricity by 2030 if doesn’t become efficient in energy consumption, Electricity & Co-Generation Regulatory Authority Governor Abdullah Al-Shehri said in a presentation in Riyadh May 8.
Its plans are likely to be approved later this year, al-Suliman said, according to a copy of the presentation he gave on May 8. “The Saudi Arabian government has a powerful incentive to diversify its energy mix to reduce dependence on oil,” said Logan Goldie-Scot, an analyst at New Energy Finance in London. Assuming initial capital costs for the solar projects of about $2.17 per watt of capacity installed, he added “The state could generate an internal rate of return of approximately 12 percent if it built a PV plant and sold the displaced oil on the international markets.”
Susan Kraemer writes for the Green Prophet, from where this article was adapted.
The bulb is the most energy-efficient yet, lasts about 20 years and is supposed to give off a pleasing, natural-looking light. But what separates it from the pack most is the price: $60.
That price reflects the cost of the components, especially the top-notch chips, or diodes, that give off the light, and is the price commercial customers will pay. But the manufacturer, Netherlands-based Philips, is discounting it right away to $50 for consumers, and working on deals with electric utilities to discount it even further, by as much as $20 to $30.
This means the bulb will cost anywhere from $20 to $60, depending on where it’s found. Online, consumers will be paying $50 for each bulb, because utilities don’t subsidize online sales.
Congress launched the L Prize contest in 2007, with the goal of creating a bulb to replace the standard, energy-wasting “incandescent” 60-watt bulb. The requirements were rigorous, and Philips was the only entrant. Its bulb was declared the winner last year, after a year and a half of testing. The contest stipulated that the winning bulb be sold for $22 in its first year on the market.
In that context, the $60 price tag has raised some eyebrows. Ed Crawford, the head of Philips’ U.S. lighting division, said it was always part of the plan to have utility rebates bring the price down to the $22 range.
American and Chinese scientists are flabbergasted after discovering a giant 298-million-year-old forest buried intact under a coal mine near Wuda, in Inner Mongolia, China.
They are calling it the Pompeii of the Permian period because, like the ancient Roman city, it was covered and preserved by volcanic ash.
Like Pompeii, this swamp forest is so perfectly maintained that scientists know where every plant originally was. This has allowed them to map it and to create the images above. This extraordinary finding “is like Pompeii”, according to University of Pennsylvania paleobotanist Hermann Pfefferkorn, who characterized it as “a time capsule.”
It’s marvelously preserved. We can stand there and find a branch with the leaves attached, and then we find the next branch and the next branch and the next branch. And then we find the stump from the same tree. That’s really exciting.
They are in fact finding entire trees and plants exactly as they were at the time of the volcanic eruption, just like archeologists in Pompeii found humans, animals and buildings at the base of Mount Vesuvius, near Naples, in the Italian region of Campania. Except Pompeei was buried in AD 79 and this forest was covered in ash 298 million years ago, during the Permian period.
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