Archived material from historical editions of The Generator
From the World Watch Institute Casual observers might consider it a setback for proponents of ethanol and biodiesel now that Europe is planning to ban biofuels made from crops grown on high-value conservation lands. But the truth is, shunning biofuels produced on wetlands, grasslands, and deforested land is good for both critics and supporters. Continue Reading →
BEIJING – Pollution has turned part of a major river system in central China red and bubbly, forcing authorities to cut water supplies to 200,000 people and close schools, a government news agency reported Wednesday. Some communities along tributaries of the Hanjiang River — a branch of the Yangtze — in Hubei province were using Continue Reading →
The researchers have been working with the Arabidopsis (file photo). (www.delawarewildflowers.org)
As global temperatures increase, so too have efforts to find ways of making plants more resistant to drought.
Now researchers in Finland and California say they have made a breakthrough in the field.
In the online edition of the journal Nature, they say they have identified a gene which controls the opening of plant stomata – the tiny pore on a plant’s surface.
"I’m quite excited because we have identified a component in the machinery which is regulating plant stomata opening – which means carbon dioxide uptake for photosynthesis in plant leaves and, at the same time, which is controlling water loss of plants, so that they don’t lose too much water," said Jaakko Kangasjarvi, professor of plant biology at the University of Helsinki.
Almost unnoticed in the rich world, a trial for Crimes Against Humanity is taking place in the Hague. From a shiny modern courthouse, a medieval story is emerging – one where the poorest people in the world were invaded, raped and mutilated, just to seize some shiny stones for the richest people in the world to wear. The evidence and testimony at the trial of the former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor over the past few months has stretched beyond the court’s tight remit to determine his own personal cruelty. Instead, the witnesses are finally revealing the inside story of the biggest diamond heist in history – one that killed 75,000 innocent people, crippled an entire country, and left a trail of blood that runs right to your local jewellery store.
This story begins and ends with diamonds. Sierra Leone is a tiny West African country blessed with four and a half million people and cursed with hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds. As soon as the glistening chunks of carbon were discovered by the British imperial occupiers in the 1930s, they became a locus of conflict as the desperate locals swarmed with picks and hammers to chip away their own fraction of the fortune. By the 1950s, De Beers – who had been granted exclusive rights to exploit the diamonds by the British – were paying private companies to litter the country with landmines to keep the natives out.
TEHRAN, Feb 27 (Reuters) – The signing of a contract with China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) to develop Iran’s northern Pars gas field has been postponed to the "near future", an Iranian official said on Wednesday. The deal was first announced in late 2006 but signing it has been delayed in the past. An Continue Reading →
By Guy Chazan, Wall Street Journal
In 2003, in his final year at Stanford Business School, Matt Scott was given an unusual assignment.
He and his classmates were asked to come up with a safe alternative to the main source of artificial light in the developing world — lamps lit by kerosene, a relatively cheap and widely available fuel, but also a major source of air pollution and accidental fires.
The ensuing discussion changed Mr. Scott’s life.
Before the year was out, he and three fellow students had set up a company to supply low-cost light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, to the poor of India. Their chief product: the MightyLight — a waterproof, portable lamp that runs on solar-powered batteries. Today their company, New Delhi-based Cosmos Ignite Innovations Ltd., has distributed 10,000 of the lights and is working on a solar-powered mobile-phone charger.