ROME (Reuters) - European Central Bank President Mario Draghi phoned Italian President Giorgio Napolitano after media reports that the 87-year-old head of state was planning to resign early to clear the way for new elections, newspapers reported on Sunday.
Napolitano pledged on Saturday that he would stay in office until the end of his term on May 15 following reports that he planned to step down to break the deadlock created by last month's election, which left no party able to form a government.
The move would be needed to allow Italy to return to the polls before the summer holiday period, because of constitutional provisions which prevent a president from dissolving parliament in the final months of his mandate.
The main newspapers on Sunday all reported that Draghi had called Napolitano to express concern that his resignation would leave Italy without leadership at a time of mounting tension in financial markets, exacerbated by the bank crisis in Cyprus.
An ECB spokesman declined to comment. No comment was immediately available from Napolitano's office.
Helped by the ECB's pledge to backstop countries by buying their bonds if necessary, financial markets have not shown the levels of panic seen during the crisis which brought down Silvio Berlusconi's last government in 2011.
However a poorly received auction of mid and long-term debt last week underlined the danger of a renewed bout of turmoil that could destabilize Italy's 2-trillion-euro public debt if the impasse continues.
Rumors have been circulating for days that Moody's is preparing to cut its rating on Italy's sovereign debt, which is already only two notches above "junk" grade, partly due to the uncertain political outlook.
(Reporting by James Mackenzie and Paul Carrel in Frankfurt; editing by Andrew Roche)
Najib Ullah Latify, the owner of factory High Standard Pipe explains about their factory in Kabul March 17, 2013. High Standard Pipe employs 850 people and supplies pipes for projects providing clean water all over Afghanistan. Picture taken on March 17, 2013.
By Katharine Houreld, Reuters
KABUL ? One of Afghanistan's most surprising success stories lies tucked away on a potholed street notorious for suicide bombings and lined with rusting construction equipment.
The work of the country's top tax collector is more inspiring than the view from his office in Kabul. Taxes and customs raised $1.64 billion last financial year, a 14-fold increase on 10 years ago. That means, now, the government can pay just over half of its recurrent costs such as salaries.
Thanks to tougher enforcement procedures, Afghanistan's tax to GDP ratio today stands above 11 percent - ahead of neighboring Pakistan's dismal 9 percent.
Increasing revenues is vital as donors begin reducing aid ahead of the 2014 drawdown of NATO troops, who have provided the backbone for security since U.S. forces invaded after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
By the end of this year the United States alone will have spent $100 billion on Afghan reconstruction. But future pledges are a fraction of that.
"We are largely dependent on international aid. We would like to be independent," said Abdurrahman Mujahid, the new head of the revenue department. "I would like a sustainable Afghanistan for all the children."
Despite rising revenues, the government will rely heavily on donors for years to come. Taxes, customs and mining revenue will only meet $2.5 billion out of a $7 billion budget this year.
Most of the revenue comes from large corporate taxpayers, who complain their payments have not improved power cuts, potholed roads or security.
Corporations pay a flat tax of 20 percent - the same rate for an individual earning over $2,000 a month.
But unlike developed countries where personal income tax generates a sizeable chunk of revenue, most Afghans scoff at the idea of giving the government some of their meager earnings.
The average annual income, in a country ranked one of the world's poorest, is just $470, according to the World Bank. Those making less than $100 a month don't have to pay tax.
"It's not a good government," said moneychanger Abdurrahman Arif, 28, as he held a wad of soiled notes and scanned for customers. "I don't pay tax. The rich people don't and the government should go to them before they come to me."
Afghanistan has a similar problem to neighboring Pakistan - the very wealthy don't pay their share, and weak institutions often have little way of forcing them.
Authorities admit that taxing the rich isn't easy in a country where the powerful often command militias. But Mujahid promises tax evaders will "be introduced to the law enforcement agencies".
SUBSTANTIAL ACHIEVEMENT
Much of Afghanistan's money is in an undocumented black economy. Corruption is endemic and the country produces 90 percent of the world's opium. Billions of dollars in cash leave the country every year in suitcases.
The security situation is discouraging. Taliban and other militias have made gains in many areas as foreign combat forces wind down their missions.
But some Afghans still manage to make money. Many businesses are fuelled by the aid dollars that have poured into the country over the last decade. Luxury supermarkets, travel agencies and stationery shops crowd the capital's streets.
A U.S. embassy official in Kabul commended Afghanistan's ability to raise tax revenues.
"It's a pretty substantial achievement," the official said, but noted the nation still faced a large funding gap, partly because of its huge security bill.
"It's going to continue being a problem until they can get revenues from the extractive industry, and that's going to take some time," the official said, referring to Afghanistan's rich but undeveloped mineral deposits.
Donors currently pay for just under half Afghanistan's operating costs - mostly government salaries - and more than three-quarters of all development projects like roads, dams and electricity equipment.
Rampant corruption means this money is often stolen, angering donors, fuelling anti-government rage and keeping aid from some of the world's neediest families.
Donors hope that if Afghans foot more of the bill for public services they may become less tolerant of graft from their leaders.
PUGNACIOUS PREDECESSOR
Mujahid, the new head of the revenue department, has large shoes to fill. His predecessor Ahmad Shah Zamanzai oversaw much of the department's growth and didn't shrink from confrontation.
When a vice-president refused to pay tax on income from renting out houses he owned, Zamanzai threatened to leak it to the press. Elections were approaching. The vice president paid up.
Under Zamanzai, the tax department jailed more than 20 tax evaders, froze bank accounts, slapped on travel bans and shuttered the premises of businesses that refused to pay.
In one showdown, he took on the glitzy wedding halls that have mushroomed up in the capital. When the 60 or so venues refused to pay their dues, he had police padlock a dozen of the biggest until the rest fell into line.
Zamanzai was appointed head of the state-run Pashtany Bank as part of a bureaucratic reshuffle this month. His first task, he said, would be to use skills honed in the tax department to extract overdue loan repayments from powerful Afghans.
But the tough tax enforcement has angered some businessmen.
Najib Ullah Latify's spotless factory, full of humming machinery and rows of workers in blue overalls and yellow hard hats, stands a few minutes drive from the tax office. High Standard Pipe employs 850 people and supplies pipes for projects providing clean water all over Afghanistan.
Latify said he'd expand but harassment from the tax man was hurting his business.
In recent years, he says, he's been repeatedly overcharged by the tax office and promised refunds have not been credited. Officials frequently offer to slash his tax bill in return for bribes, he added. When he refuses, he says, officials disrupt his imports and suspend his license.
"I don't know what to do, I have shouted everywhere that they are ruining my business," he said.
"I don't mind paying taxes. Even if 60 percent of it is spent on drinking and shopping and trips for (politicians') wives, maybe 40 percent will go to schools or hospitals. But they must tax me correctly."
The new tax chief, Mujahid, was not familiar with Vitaly's case, but promised to investigate. More than 10 tax collectors - whose basic salaries start at $180 a month - have been fired for corruption in the last two years.
"Corruption is a part of public life in Afghanistan," said Mujahid. "We have the aim to make this department corruption-free."
This year he's planning to finish computerizing tax records, usher through a law on Value Added Tax, and strengthen collection in the provinces - more than 90 percent of government taxes currently come from the capital.
"There's a lot of achievements, but for sure we have problems, and the biggest problem is corruption," he said.
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
Year after year, Google pulls the best pranks. It'll be tough for Maps or Gmail to top this tomorrow.
Thanks for all your great entries. YouTube finally has enough videos to begin selecting a winner. What do you think is the #bestvideo on YouTube?
We've been thrilled with all of the diverse, creative entries we've seen so far, and we can't wait to begin the process of selecting the best video. We'll be announcing the winner in 10 years.
Slow clap, YouTube. Slow, building clap.
In honor of YouTube's shuttering, here are some of my favorite iMore videos over the years.
BREMERTON ? Local artists are honoring National Poetry Month by selecting works by local poets and visually interpreting them.
Interpretations are in two-dimensional and three-dimensional works in a wide range of mediums. View the poems and the art at the First Friday Artwalk, April 5, 5-8 p.m. at these Bremerton venues: ? IZM, 247 4th St. ? Elaine Turso Photography, 249 4th St. ? Valentinetti Puppet Museum, 257 4th St. ? Bremerton Chamber of Commerce, 286 4th St. ? Mistarian Roses, 519 4th St. ? Claywerks Too, 345 6th St., Suite 600. ? Toro Lounge & Tapas, 315 Pacific Ave.? ? Hudson?s Photography, 321 Pacific Ave. ? Collective Visions Gallery, 331 Pacific Ave. ? Amy Burnett Gallery, 408 Pacific Ave. ? Juan Rodriguez, 408 Pacific Ave. ? Two Sisters Fine Jewelry, 520 Pacific Ave. ? Edward Jones Financial, 555 Pacific Ave., No. 101.
The ?Ars Poetica 2013? book features 27 regional poems and 16 CVG artists. To order, email photoartbybev@aol.com. Pre-order price: $10.50.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) ? A formal complaint filed with New York's lobbying board asks it to investigate whether Artists Against Fracking, a group formed by Yoko Ono and son Sean Lennon, is violating the state's lobbying law.
The complaint obtained by The Associated Press was made by the Independent Oil & Gas Association to the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics.
The energy trade group based its request for an investigation on an AP report that found that Artists Against Fracking and its advocates didn't register as lobbyists. Registration requires several disclosures about spending and activities.
A spokesman for Artists Against Fracking says the group's activities are protected because they were made during a public comment period. He also says celebrities involved in the group are protected because they are longtime activists, not lobbyists.
Making do with more: Joint BioEnergy Institute researchers engineer plant cell walls to boost sugar yields for biofuelsPublic release date: 29-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lynn Yarris lcyarris@lbl.gov 510-486-5375 DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
When blessed with a resource in overwhelming abundance it's generally a good idea to make valuable use of that resource. Lignocellulosic biomass is the most abundant organic material on Earth. For thousands of years it has been used as animal feed, and for the past two centuries has been a staple of the paper industry. This abundant resource, however, could also supply the sugars needed to produce advanced biofuels that can supplement or replace fossil fuels, providing several key technical challenges are met. One of these challenges is finding ways to more cost-effectively extract those sugars. Major steps towards achieving this breakthrough are being taken by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI).
"Through the tools of synthetic biology, we have engineered healthy plants whose lignocellulosic biomass can more easily be broken down into simple sugars for biofuels," says Dominique Loque, who directs the cell wall engineering program for JBEI's Feedstocks Division. "Working with the model plant, Arabidopsis, as a demonstration tool, we have genetically manipulated secondary cell walls to reduce the production of lignin while increasing the yield of fuel sugars."
JBEI is a scientific partnership led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) whose mission is to advance the development of next generation biofuels that can provide the nation with clean, green and renewable transportation energy that will create jobs and boost the economy. Loque and his research group have focused on reducing the natural recalcitrance of plant cell walls to give up their sugars. Unlike the simple starch-based sugars in corn and other grains, the complex polysaccharide sugars in plant cell walls are locked within a robust aromatic polymer called lignin. Setting these sugars free from their lignin cage has required the use of expensive and environmentally harsh chemicals at high temperatures, a process that helps drive production costs of advance biofuels prohibitively high.
"By embedding polysaccharide polymers and reducing their extractability and accessibility to hydrolytic enzymes, lignin is the major contributor to cell wall recalcitrance," Loque says. "Unfortunately, most efforts to reduce lignin content during plant development have resulted in severe biomass yield reduction and a loss of integrity in vessels, a key tissue responsible for water and nutrient distribution from roots to the above-ground organs."
Lignin has also long posed problems for pulping and animal feed. To overcome the lignin problem, Loque and his colleagues rewired the regulation of lignin biosynthesis and created an artificial positive feedback loop (APFL) to enhance secondary cell wall biosynthesis in specific tissue. The idea was to reduce cell wall recalcitrance and boost polysaccharide content without impacting plant development.
"When we applied our APFL to Arabidopsis plants engineered so that lignin biosynthesis is disconnected from the fiber secondary cell wall regulatory network, we maintained the integrity of the vessels and were able to produce healthy plants with reduced lignin and enhanced polysaccharide deposition in the cell walls," Loque says. "After various pretreatments, these engineered plants exhibited improved sugar releases from enzymatic hydrolysis as compared to wild type plants. In other words we accumulated the good stuff polysaccharides - without spoiling it with lignin."
Loque and his colleagues believe that the APFL strategy they used to enhance polysaccharide deposition in the fibers of their Arabidopsis plants could be rapidly implemented into other vascular plant species as well. This could increase cell wall content to the benefit of the pulping industry and forage production as well as for bioenergy applications. It could also be used to increase the strength of cereal straws, reducing crop lodging and seed losses. Since regulatory networks and other components of secondary cell wall biosynthesis have been highly conserved by evolution, the researchers feel their lignin rewiring strategy should also be readily transferrable to other plant species. They are currently developing new and even better versions of these strategies.
"We now know that we can significantly re-engineer plant cell walls as long as we maintain the integrity of vessels and other key tissues," Loque says.
###
A paper describing this research in detail has been published in Plant Biotechnology Journal. The paper is titled "Engineering secondary cell wall deposition in plants." Loque is the corresponding author. Co-authors are Fan Yang, Prajakta Mitra, Ling Zhang, Lina Prak, Yves Verhertbruggen, Jin-Sun Kim, Lan Sun, Kejian Zheng, Kexuan Tang, Manfred Auer and Henrik Scheller.
This research was supported by the DOE Office of Science.
JBEI is one of three Bioenergy Research Centers established by the DOE's Office of Science in 2007. It is a scientific partnership led by Berkeley Lab and includes the Sandia National Laboratories, the University of California campuses of Berkeley and Davis, the Carnegie Institution for Science, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. DOE's Bioenergy Research Centers support multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research teams pursuing the fundamental scientific breakthroughs needed to make production of cellulosic biofuels, or biofuels from nonfood plant fiber, cost-effective on a national scale.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit http://www.lbl.gov.
DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the Unites States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit the Office of Science website at science.energy.gov.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Making do with more: Joint BioEnergy Institute researchers engineer plant cell walls to boost sugar yields for biofuelsPublic release date: 29-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lynn Yarris lcyarris@lbl.gov 510-486-5375 DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
When blessed with a resource in overwhelming abundance it's generally a good idea to make valuable use of that resource. Lignocellulosic biomass is the most abundant organic material on Earth. For thousands of years it has been used as animal feed, and for the past two centuries has been a staple of the paper industry. This abundant resource, however, could also supply the sugars needed to produce advanced biofuels that can supplement or replace fossil fuels, providing several key technical challenges are met. One of these challenges is finding ways to more cost-effectively extract those sugars. Major steps towards achieving this breakthrough are being taken by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI).
"Through the tools of synthetic biology, we have engineered healthy plants whose lignocellulosic biomass can more easily be broken down into simple sugars for biofuels," says Dominique Loque, who directs the cell wall engineering program for JBEI's Feedstocks Division. "Working with the model plant, Arabidopsis, as a demonstration tool, we have genetically manipulated secondary cell walls to reduce the production of lignin while increasing the yield of fuel sugars."
JBEI is a scientific partnership led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) whose mission is to advance the development of next generation biofuels that can provide the nation with clean, green and renewable transportation energy that will create jobs and boost the economy. Loque and his research group have focused on reducing the natural recalcitrance of plant cell walls to give up their sugars. Unlike the simple starch-based sugars in corn and other grains, the complex polysaccharide sugars in plant cell walls are locked within a robust aromatic polymer called lignin. Setting these sugars free from their lignin cage has required the use of expensive and environmentally harsh chemicals at high temperatures, a process that helps drive production costs of advance biofuels prohibitively high.
"By embedding polysaccharide polymers and reducing their extractability and accessibility to hydrolytic enzymes, lignin is the major contributor to cell wall recalcitrance," Loque says. "Unfortunately, most efforts to reduce lignin content during plant development have resulted in severe biomass yield reduction and a loss of integrity in vessels, a key tissue responsible for water and nutrient distribution from roots to the above-ground organs."
Lignin has also long posed problems for pulping and animal feed. To overcome the lignin problem, Loque and his colleagues rewired the regulation of lignin biosynthesis and created an artificial positive feedback loop (APFL) to enhance secondary cell wall biosynthesis in specific tissue. The idea was to reduce cell wall recalcitrance and boost polysaccharide content without impacting plant development.
"When we applied our APFL to Arabidopsis plants engineered so that lignin biosynthesis is disconnected from the fiber secondary cell wall regulatory network, we maintained the integrity of the vessels and were able to produce healthy plants with reduced lignin and enhanced polysaccharide deposition in the cell walls," Loque says. "After various pretreatments, these engineered plants exhibited improved sugar releases from enzymatic hydrolysis as compared to wild type plants. In other words we accumulated the good stuff polysaccharides - without spoiling it with lignin."
Loque and his colleagues believe that the APFL strategy they used to enhance polysaccharide deposition in the fibers of their Arabidopsis plants could be rapidly implemented into other vascular plant species as well. This could increase cell wall content to the benefit of the pulping industry and forage production as well as for bioenergy applications. It could also be used to increase the strength of cereal straws, reducing crop lodging and seed losses. Since regulatory networks and other components of secondary cell wall biosynthesis have been highly conserved by evolution, the researchers feel their lignin rewiring strategy should also be readily transferrable to other plant species. They are currently developing new and even better versions of these strategies.
"We now know that we can significantly re-engineer plant cell walls as long as we maintain the integrity of vessels and other key tissues," Loque says.
###
A paper describing this research in detail has been published in Plant Biotechnology Journal. The paper is titled "Engineering secondary cell wall deposition in plants." Loque is the corresponding author. Co-authors are Fan Yang, Prajakta Mitra, Ling Zhang, Lina Prak, Yves Verhertbruggen, Jin-Sun Kim, Lan Sun, Kejian Zheng, Kexuan Tang, Manfred Auer and Henrik Scheller.
This research was supported by the DOE Office of Science.
JBEI is one of three Bioenergy Research Centers established by the DOE's Office of Science in 2007. It is a scientific partnership led by Berkeley Lab and includes the Sandia National Laboratories, the University of California campuses of Berkeley and Davis, the Carnegie Institution for Science, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. DOE's Bioenergy Research Centers support multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research teams pursuing the fundamental scientific breakthroughs needed to make production of cellulosic biofuels, or biofuels from nonfood plant fiber, cost-effective on a national scale.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit http://www.lbl.gov.
DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the Unites States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit the Office of Science website at science.energy.gov.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
According to Reuters, North Korea has readied its rockets to attack US military bases in South Korea and the Pacific Ocean after the US made a show of force earlier today by flying stealth bombers over South Korea. Kim Jong Un had apparently signed off an order for North Korea's rockets to be "on standby for fire". More »
Mar. 28, 2013 ? Virginia Tech College of Engineering researchers have unveiled a life-like, autonomous robotic jellyfish the size and weight of a grown man, 5 foot 7 inches in length and weighing 170 pounds.
The prototype robot, nicknamed Cyro, is a larger model of a robotic jellyfish the same team -- headed by Shashank Priya of Blacksburg, Va., and professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech -- unveiled in 2012. The earlier robot, dubbed RoboJelly, is roughly the size of a man's hand, and typical of jellyfish found along beaches.
"A larger vehicle will allow for more payload, longer duration and longer range of operation," said Alex Villanueva of St-Jacques, New-Brunswick, Canada, and a doctoral student in mechanical engineering working under Priya. "Biological and engineering results show that larger vehicles have a lower cost of transport, which is a metric used to determine how much energy is spent for traveling."
Both robots are part of a multi-university, nationwide $5 million project funded by U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center and the Office of Naval Research. The goal is to place self-powering, autonomous machines in waters for the purposes of surveillance and monitoring the environment, in addition to other uses such as studying aquatic life, mapping ocean floors, and monitoring ocean currents.
Jellyfish are attractive candidates to mimic because of their ability to consume little energy owing to a lower metabolic rate than other marine species. Additionally, they appear in wide variety of sizes, shapes and colors, allowing for several designs. They also inhabit every major oceanic area of the world and are capable of withstanding a wide range of temperatures in both fresh and salt waters. Most species are found in shallow coastal waters, but some have been found in depths 7,000 meters below sea level.
Partner universities in the project are Providence College in Rhode Island, the University of California Los Angeles, the University of Texas at Dallas, and Stanford University. Priya's team is building the jellyfish body models, integrating fluid mechanics and developing control systems.
Cyro is modeled and named after the jellyfish cyanea capillata, Latin for Llion's Manemain jellyfishJellyfish, with "Cyro" derived from "cyanea" and "robot." As with its predecessor, this robot is in the prototype stage, years away from use in waters. A new prototype model already is under construction at Virginia Tech's Durham Hall, where Priya's Center for Energy Harvesting Materials and Systems is based.
"We hope to improve on this robot and reduce power consumption and improve swimming performance as well as better mimic the morphology of the natural jellyfish," Villanueva said, adding that the project also allows researchers such as himself to better understand aquatic creatures live. "Our hopes for Cyro's future is that it will help understand how the propulsion mechanism of such animal scales with size."
A stark difference exists between the larger and smaller robots. Cyro is powered by a rechargeable nickel metal hydride battery, whereas the smaller models were tethered, Priya said. Experiments have also been conducted on powering jellyfish with hydrogen but there is still much research to be done in that area.
In both cases, the jellyfish must operate on their own for months or longer at a time as engineers likely won't be able to capture and repair the robots, or replace power sources. "Cyro showed its ability to swim autonomously while maintaining a similar physical appearance and kinematics as the natural species," Priya said, adding that the robot is simultaneously able to collect, store, analyze, and communicate sensory data. This autonomous operation in shallow water conditions is already a big step towards demonstrating the use of these creatures."
How does the robot swim? Its body consists of a rigid support structure with direct current electric motors which control the mechanical arms that are used in conjunction with an artificial mesoglea, or jelly-based pulp of the fish's body, creating hydrodynamic movement.
With no central nervous system, jellyfish instead use a diffused nerve net to control movement and can complete complex functions. A parallel study on a bio-inspired control system is in progress which will eventually replace the current simplified controller. As with the smaller models, Cyro's skin is composed of a thick layer of silicone, squishy in one's hand. It mimics the sleek jellyfish skin and is placed over a bowl-shaped device containing the electronic guts of the robot. When moving, the skin floats and moves with the robot, looking weirdly alive.
"It has been a great experience to finally realize the biomimetic and bio-inspired robotic vehicles," Priya said. "Nature has too many secrets and we were able to find some of them but many still remain. We hope to find a mechanism to continue on this journey and resolve the remaining puzzles."
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A police helicopter flies next to the Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft as it is transported to its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on March 26. The Soyuz will carry NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy along with Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin to the International Space Station.
By James Oberg, NBC News Space Analyst
For more than 30 years, Russian spaceships have taken two days to dock with their target ??but on Thursday, the travel time for a Soyuz capsule carrying three spacefliers to the International Space Station is being trimmed to six hours.
Has the Soyuz suddenly become speedier? Not really.
The Soyuz itself won't fly any faster when it's sent into space at 4:43 p.m. ET from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It won't have any fundamentally new or improved guidance and navigation system. "All the systems of the vehicle are the same, but the work is more intense," Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov, the Soyuz's commander, said last week during a news briefing. "There are no new systems or modes in the vehicle, but the coordination work of the crew should be better."
This faster flight plan is possible only because someone else is doing the real work. The space station itself has shifted its position to be nearer to the Soyuz when that spacecraft goes into orbit. It is quite literally moving itself right in front of the speeding Soyuz.
The rapid rendezvous procedure has already been tested twice with robotic supply flights, but this is the first time it's been used with a crewed spacecraft. If it works, the crew should be docking with the station at 10:31 p.m. ET Thursday, taking the fastest ride to an orbital destination since NASA's Skylab missions, 40 years ago.
Hunter and hunted Chasing down a target in the trackless void of space is not as simple as merely catching sight of it and thrusting towards it. The inflexible rules of orbital mechanics ??motion along orbital paths ? demand precise timing of critical course changes on the part of the vehicle that's doing the chasing.
For any space rendezvous, the first critical time is the moment when the chaser?s launch pad passes below the target?s circular orbit. If the chaser is launched during this moment and heads in a direction parallel to the target's orbital course, it winds up more or less in the same orbital plane as the target. That's the "planar window" for a launch.
But there's another critical timing requirement, having to do with how far ahead the target is when the chaser enters orbit. The target could be at any point in the circular path it follows around Earth, but it's important to choose the right point for launching the chaser.
Shamil Zhumatov / Reuters
The Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft is transported from its assembly hangar to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on March 26.
The numbers give you an idea of the scale of the problem: The space station travels in a circular orbit that ranges from about 205 to 255 miles (330 to 410 kilometers) in altitude, and the chaser spacecraft are usually launched into initial orbits averaging around 143 miles (230 kilometers). That lower orbit is faster, both because gravity is slightly stronger there, and because the radius is smaller, which makes each circuit shorter.
For that difference in average altitude, a typical chaser spacecraft will catch up with the station at a rate of 560 mph (900 kilometers per hour). So if the chaser starts out 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) behind the station in its orbit, it will take about 10 hours to overtake the station. If it?s 16,800 miles (27,000 kilometers) behind, it would take 30 hours. And it might be even farther.
Flexibility is key If you have a long period of time available for making your rendezvous ? say, one or two days???you have more flexibility for launch opportunities, even if your chaser spacecraft starts out lagging far behind the station. Mission designers prefer to pick launch days on which the lag falls within a certain range. If it?s relatively far away, the chaser stays lower and faster for a longer period, to make up the lag. If the target is not so far away, the crew flies their ship higher sooner, to slow down the approach rate and arrive at the target at the same desired time.
The fast-rendezvous scenario, in contrast, has very little flexibility. The Soyuz has only a few hours to vary its altitude in order to accommodate a range of possible target distances. The range of acceptable distances between the chaser spacecraft and the space station is known as the "phase window." For a fast rendezvous, the phase window shrinks from what's typically about half of each orbit to as little as 5 percent of each orbit.
There are only a few launch opportunities when the precise time of the planar window also falls within the narrow slot of the phase window. That makes it harder to select an appropriate launch date for a fast rendezvous.
The job was easier back in the '60s, for the early rendezvous missions conducted by NASA and the Soviets. That's because those missions involved launching the target satellite first, and then launching the chaser no more than a few hours later. In such cases, the lag distance for the chaser's launch could be customized to fit the short range for a quick docking.
These days, the only way to approximate that required narrow slot in the sky is to have the International Space Station do an engine burn. This can push the station ahead or behind in its orbit, so that it happens to be at the proper distance at precisely the time when the Soyuz is launched.
That critical orbital maneuver took place a week ago: On March 21, a Progress cargo craft attached to the station fired its thrusters for 11 minutes and 13 seconds, pushing its orbital altitude from 253.5 to 255 miles (408 to 410.5 kilometers). It's just a mile and a half, but it's enough to ensure that the station will be in the right place, assuming that the Soyuz launches at the right time.
For all the virtuosity of the cosmonauts in their steering, the factor that makes the briefer trip at all possible is the target generously maneuvering itself right into the chaser?s sights. And for every quick rendezvous in the future, by Russian or American or other orbital vehicles, the same elaborate target line-up will be required.
More about orbital hookups:
NBC News space analyst James Oberg spent 22 years at NASA Mission Control, where he carried the title of Rendezvous Guidance and Procedures Officer?? RGPO, pronounced "Arr-Jeep-O." In that capacity he sat in the center of Mission Control's front row, down in the legendary "trench" of space maneuvering specialists.
Tapulous, one of the earliest, big mobile games makers for the iPhone, made its splash with Tap Tap Revenge, the first in a series of apps where users tapped on dropping balls in time with music ? a formula that proved wildly successful and eventually resulted in the company getting bought by Disney in 2010 for reportedly $50 million. Now, one of the co-founders of Tapulous, the Australian Andrew Lacy, has hotfooted it to Paris to tackle something new: the online travel market, with the launch of ZapTravel, a semantic travel search engine.
The idea of ZapTravel is to do away with the need for all the extra ?data entry? required by many travel sites today, from selecting calendar dates to entering destinations from pop-up menus and more. ZapTravel searches are based on what you type into a single window, with details ?human? as what you?d type to a friend. For example, ?I?d like to go to Stockholm.?
When you register, ZapTravel makes note of your location, so all searches are by default from there. You can also set other defaults around, say, how fancy/budget you?d like your accomodation to be. ZapTravel then creates discounted trips based on the information you have provided, offering flights and hotel options. It?s working with some 3,000 partners now to create those deals. With the longer-term emphasis on experiences as much as getting you from point A to B, it looks like the plan is to present more packages in the longer run (not just directing you to a cool city for food, but suggesting and booking a table at a top restaurant).
In that sense, ZapTravel is also trying to cater to users who are undecided about where they would like to go. Lacy says that since ZapTravel?s soft launch last week, one of the most popular search terms (go Internet go!) has been ?sex,? to which ZapTravel?s engine ?diligently returns dynamically constructed deals for nightlife destinations and places with lively atmosphere.? It also includes city guides, created by aggregating content from other sites like Frommers and locals enlisted by ZapTravel.
Lacy ? who is a lawyer and MBA by training but coded half the site ? describes ZapTravel as ?a learning system.? He says that there is an ongoing mix of algorithmic processing, along with some human shaping. The platform?s ?vocabulary? already has ?3,000?destinations, 10,000 different reasons to go, and 15,000 events? to trigger search results, says Lacy.
?The more people use it and the more content we feed it, the better it is able to put together packages to match specific interests,? he says. Others on ZapTravel?s team include engineer?Nicolas Martignole, who organizes the French Java conference?Devoxx France,?and used to build?complex financial systems for Reuters; user experience specialist?Olivier Desmoulins; and?Mathieu Seguin. There is also a separate office for development in Eastern Europe, says Lacy.
Where games end and travel begins
ZapTravel and Tapulous couldn?t be more different ? one mobile-first and created for pure entertainment, and the other launching first on desktop and focused on e-commerce and using new technology around semantic search to help complete travel transactions; one based in Palo Alto and the other anchored in Paris ?because Europe is a much bigger market for travel in general.? But there are some threads between the two. In addition to the entrepreneur himself, there is the fact that both are trying to create markets for products that have yet to be established.
In the case of Tapulous, it was making iPhone apps before Apple had even officially moved into the space itself. ZapTravel, meanwhile, is hoping to establish itself as a semantic travel platform at a time when the playing field is still wide open.
But that is changing.
For one, services like Siri on the iPhone and Google Now on Android offer users quicker, less labor intensive ways of discovering new information; and that is whetting people?s appetite to have easier user experience everywhere. In addition, the ever-growing number of online travel options ? why book an expensive, touristy hotel on Travelocity if you can stay in a cute loft with Airbnb? ? will mean that those sites that make it easier to give you the right information stand to win your business.
On top of that, there has been some significant M&A in the space as the bigger players in online travel look to expand their features more to compete against others, with huge deals like Priceline?s acquisition of Kayak?for $1.8 billion, Expedia?s majority stake in Trivago?for $632 million, and also smaller startup plays like Tripadvisor buying Tiny Post last week.
Would-be competitors include Expedia, which is beta-testing a semantic search called YourVisit; and?CheapAir, which is beta-testing ?Easy Search? for semantic searches of flights. Among startups, there is Desti, the ?personal travel assistant? spun out from Siri-creators Sri International. And?Hopper, staffed up by a team that left Expedia that has raised $22 million?for what also appears to be a semantic search app, but it is still in stealth mode.
ZapTravel will be trying to meet the market and exceed what others are already doing.
?The travel industry has a lot of poor quality experiences,? says Lacy. ?I learned how to make beautiful products at Tapulous and that?s what i?m trying to do here.?
He says that plans for the mobile app will include the ability to enter search requests by voice as well as text. One area I?ve seen that will need room for improvement is its ability to deal with people who make typos (like me). This too is being worked on, says Lacy.
ZapTravel is currently bootstrapped but is in the process of raising an Angel round that it expects to close in the next few months.
At Zaptravel, reinventing travel search through semantics, content and a commitment to beautiful products. I?m a serial entrepreneur, angel investor and advisor to startup companies. I am currently based in Europe but commute frequently to the Silicon Valley. I am presently working on Zaptravel, a disruptive personalization travel meta-search business. Zaptravel help people who don?t know when or where they want to go to great travel deals that match their interests and the experiences they want to have. My investment and...
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Tapulous is a developer of applications for the iPhone and Android platforms. Some of their apps include Tap Tap Revenge (the sequel to Tap Tap Revolution), Twinkle (a Twitter client) and Collage (a real-time collaborative photo sharing application) and the newly launched Riddim Ribbon.
Logan Morrison has missed all of spring training as he recovers from knee surgery, but the Marlins first baseman is scheduled to take a big step in his comeback when he starts throwing, fielding, and running next week.
Morrison told Manny Navarro of the Miami Herald that he?s hoping to come off the disabled list by mid-May and described himself as ?frustrated? by having to sit out so much action.
Casey Kotchman has made the Marlins after signing a minor-league contract and will open the season as the starting first baseman. It?ll be interesting to see what happens if Kotchman fares well, because while Morrison has played quite a bit of left field in the past the Marlins probably wouldn?t want him in the outfield post-knee surgery and Kotchman can only play first base.
A once-promising approach for using next-generation, ultra-intense lasers to help deliver commercially viable fusion energy has been brought into serious question by new experimental results and first-of-a-kind simulations of laser-plasma interaction.
Researchers at The Ohio State University are evaluating a two-stage process in which a pellet of fusion fuel is first crushed by lasers on all sides, shrinking the pellet to dozens of times its original size, followed by an ultra-intense burst of laser light to ignite a chain reaction. This two-stage approach is called Fast Ignition, and there are a few variants on the theme. In a recent paper, the Ohio State research group considered the long-discussed possibility of using a hollow cone to maintain a channel for the ultra-intense "ignitor pulse" to focus laser energy on the compressed pellet core. Drawing on both experimental results from studies at the Titan Laser at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and massively-parallel computer simulations of the laser-target interaction performed at the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) in Columbus, Ohio, the research team found compelling evidence that the cone-guided approach to Fast Ignition has a serious flaw.
"In the history of fusion research, two-steps-forward and one-step-back stories are a common theme," said Chris Orban, Ph.D., a researcher of the High Energy Density Physics research group at Ohio State and the lead theorist on the project. "But sometimes progress is about seeing what's not going to work, just as much as it is looking forward to the next big idea."
Since the ultra-intense pulse delivers energy to the fuel through relativistic electrons accelerated by the laser interaction, the Ohio State study focused on the coupling of the laser light to electrons and the propagation of those electrons through the cone target. Rather than investigating how the interaction would work on a high-demand, high-cost facility like the National Ignition Facility (NIF), which is also based at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and one of the largest scientific operations in the world, the researchers considered experiments just across from NIF at the Titan laser, which is much smaller and easily accessible.
Despite its size and despite having lower total energy, for a brief moment the Titan laser is many thousands of times more intense than NIF, which makes it a decent stand-in as a second-stage ignitor pulse. The OSU-led experimental team focused the Titan pulse on hollow cone targets attached at the tip to copper wires and observed the burst of X-ray photons coming from the copper as a measure of the laser energy to relativistic electron conversion efficiency.
The X-ray signal was much lower from the hollow cones with thicker cone walls. "This was strong evidence to the experimental team that the typical approach to cone-guided Fast Ignition wouldn't work, since thicker cones should be more realistic than thin cones," said Orban. "This is because electrons are free to move around in a dense plasma, much like they do in a normal metal, so the thicker cone target is like a thin cone embedded in a dense plasma."
These intuitions were tested in simulations performed at OSC. Whereas earlier efforts to simulate the laser-target interaction were forced to simplify or shrink the target size in order to make the calculations more feasible, Orban used the LSP code to perform the first-ever, full-scale 2D Particle-In-Cell simulations of the entire laser-target interaction using fully realistic laser fields.
These simulations also included a sophisticated model for the pre-heating of the target from stray laser light ahead of the ultra-intense pulse developed by collaborators at the Flash Center for Computational Science at the University of Chicago.
"We were delighted to help Chris use the FLASH code to provide realistic initial conditions for his Particle-In-Cell simulations," said Don Lamb, director of the Flash Center. "This is an outstanding example of how two groups can collaborate to achieve a scientific result that neither could have achieved alone."
To conduct the simulations, the Ohio State researchers accessed OSC's flagship Oakley Cluster supercomputer system. The HP-built system features 8,300+ Intel Xeon cores and 128 NVIDIA Tesla GPUs. Oakley can achieve 88 teraflops, tech-speak for performing 88 trillion calculations per second, or, with acceleration from the NVIDIA GPUs, a total peak performance of 154 teraflops.
"The simulations pointed to the electric fields building up on the edge of the cone as the key to everything," said Orban. "The thicker the cone is, the further away the cone edge is from the laser, and as a result fewer energetic electrons are deflected forward, which is the crucial issue in making cone-guided Fast Ignition a viable approach."
With both the experiment and the simulations telling the same story, the evidence is compelling that the cone-guided route to Fast Ignition is an unlikely one. While other studies have come to similar conclusions, the group was the first to identify the plasma surrounding the cone as a severe hindrance. Thankfully, there are still many other ideas for successfully igniting the fusion pellet with current or soon-to-be-constructed laser facilities. Any future efforts to spark fusion reactions with these lasers using a two-stage fast-ignition approach must be mindful to consider the neutralizing effect of the free electrons in the dense plasma.
"We could not have completed this project without the Oakley Cluster," Orban noted. "It was the perfect combination of speed and RAM and availability for us. And thanks to the profiling I was able to do, the compute time for our production runs went from two weeks in November 2011 to three or four days as of February 2012."
"Energy and the environment is one of the primary focus areas of the center, and this research fits perfectly into that domain," said Brian Guilfoos, the client and technology support manager for OSC. "Many of our systems were designed and software packages selected to best support the type of computing required by investigators working in fields related to our focus areas."
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The paper describing the study, "Coupling of high-intensity laser light to fast electrons in cone-guided fast ignition," was recently published in Physical Review E, a journal of the American Physical Society.
Ohio Supercomputer Center: http://www.osc.edu
Thanks to Ohio Supercomputer Center for this article.
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Do intellectual property rights on existing technologies hinder subsequent innovation?Public release date: 27-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Adam Gannaway agannaway@press.uchicago.edu 773-702-2037 University of Chicago Press Journals
A recent study published in the Journal of Political Economy suggests that some types of intellectual property rights discourage subsequent scientific research.
"The goal of intellectual property rights such as the patent system is to provide incentives for the development of new technologies. However, in recent years many have expressed concerns that patents may be impeding innovation if patents on existing technologies hinder subsequent innovation," said Heidi Williams, author of the study. "We currently have very little empirical evidence on whether this is a problem in practice."
Williams investigated the sequencing of the human genome by the public Human Genome Project and the private firm Celera. Genes sequenced first by Celera were covered by a contract law-based form of intellectual property, whereas genes sequenced first by the Human Genome Project were placed in the public domain. Although Celera's intellectual property lasted a maximum of two years, it enabled Celera to sell its data for substantial fees and required firms to negotiate licensing agreements with Celera for any resulting commercial discoveries.
By linking a number of different datasets that had not previously been used by researchers, Williams was able to measure when genes were sequenced, which genes were held by Celera's intellectual property, and what subsequent investments were made in scientific research and product development on each gene. Williams' conclusion points to a persistent 20-30 percent reduction in subsequent scientific research and product development for those genes held by Celera's intellectual property.
"My take-away from this evidence is that at least in some contexts intellectual property can have substantial costs in terms of hindering subsequent innovation," said Williams. "The fact that these costs were in this context 'large enough to care about' motivates wanting to better understand whether alternative policy tools could be used to achieve a better outcome. It isn't clear that they can, although economists such as Michael Kremer have proposed some ideas on how they might. I think this is an exciting area for future work."
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Heidi L. Williams, "Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation: Evidence from the Human Genome." Journal of Political Economy 121:1 (publishing in February 2013 issue--due to release in April).
One of the oldest and most prestigious journals in economics, the Journal of Political Economy has since 1892 presented significant research and scholarship in economic theory and practice. The journal aims to publish highly selective, widely cited articles of current relevance that will have a long-term impact on economics research.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Do intellectual property rights on existing technologies hinder subsequent innovation?Public release date: 27-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Adam Gannaway agannaway@press.uchicago.edu 773-702-2037 University of Chicago Press Journals
A recent study published in the Journal of Political Economy suggests that some types of intellectual property rights discourage subsequent scientific research.
"The goal of intellectual property rights such as the patent system is to provide incentives for the development of new technologies. However, in recent years many have expressed concerns that patents may be impeding innovation if patents on existing technologies hinder subsequent innovation," said Heidi Williams, author of the study. "We currently have very little empirical evidence on whether this is a problem in practice."
Williams investigated the sequencing of the human genome by the public Human Genome Project and the private firm Celera. Genes sequenced first by Celera were covered by a contract law-based form of intellectual property, whereas genes sequenced first by the Human Genome Project were placed in the public domain. Although Celera's intellectual property lasted a maximum of two years, it enabled Celera to sell its data for substantial fees and required firms to negotiate licensing agreements with Celera for any resulting commercial discoveries.
By linking a number of different datasets that had not previously been used by researchers, Williams was able to measure when genes were sequenced, which genes were held by Celera's intellectual property, and what subsequent investments were made in scientific research and product development on each gene. Williams' conclusion points to a persistent 20-30 percent reduction in subsequent scientific research and product development for those genes held by Celera's intellectual property.
"My take-away from this evidence is that at least in some contexts intellectual property can have substantial costs in terms of hindering subsequent innovation," said Williams. "The fact that these costs were in this context 'large enough to care about' motivates wanting to better understand whether alternative policy tools could be used to achieve a better outcome. It isn't clear that they can, although economists such as Michael Kremer have proposed some ideas on how they might. I think this is an exciting area for future work."
###
Heidi L. Williams, "Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation: Evidence from the Human Genome." Journal of Political Economy 121:1 (publishing in February 2013 issue--due to release in April).
One of the oldest and most prestigious journals in economics, the Journal of Political Economy has since 1892 presented significant research and scholarship in economic theory and practice. The journal aims to publish highly selective, widely cited articles of current relevance that will have a long-term impact on economics research.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
ROME (Reuters) - Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi resigned on Tuesday over his government's decision to return two marines to India to face trial for the murder of local fishermen while on anti-piracy duty.
Terzi said he was stepping down to protect the "honor of the country, of the armed forces, and Italian diplomacy", during testimony to the lower house of parliament, drawing loud applause from lawmakers.
"I can no longer be part of this government and I announce my resignation," he said. "My reservations about sending the marines back to India were not listened to."
The marines, Salvatore Girone and Massimiliano Latorre, are facing trial in India over the shooting dead of two fishermen off the southern state of Kerala in February 2012 when they were assigned to protect an Italian commercial tanker from pirates.
They said they fired warning shots at a boat they believed to be a pirate vessel.
Since the incident, India and Italy have been embroiled in an escalating row at a time when Rome is trying to secure a major deal to sell helicopters to the Indian government.
The marines were allowed home for Christmas, and then again to vote in the Italian elections in February, on condition they returned to India.
On March 11, the outgoing technocrat government of Mario Monti said it would not send the marines back because Indian courts did not have jurisdiction over the incident, which Rome said occurred in international waters.
But Italy reversed its position last week after India prevented the Italian ambassador from leaving the country.
Latorre and Girone returned to New Delhi on Friday in what defense forces chief Admiral Luigi Binelli Mantelli called a "farce".
The two men themselves wrote a letter to lawmakers saying their return to India was a tragedy.
The confused handling of the dispute has been a black mark on Monti's brief, 17-month government, and has led to accusations that it has made Italy appear diplomatically weak.
The marines' anti-piracy duty was conducted under the umbrella of a U.N. resolution to safeguard shipping from repeated pirate attacks.
MONTI "ASTONISHED"
Terzi's decision to quit was a reversal of the sentiments he expressed in an interview he gave to a newspaper last Friday in which he said he "didn't see a reason" to step down.
Monti said he was "astonished" by the resignation because he had seen his foreign minister on Tuesday morning and he had not been told of the impending announcement.
He said Terzi's opinion that the marines should not have been returned to India "is not shared by the government" and that he would address parliament on Wednesday "on the whole affair".
Later, President Giorgio Napolitano named Monti to serve as interim foreign minister.
Italy has been in a political limbo since elections last month, which gave no political group a working majority in parliament. But Monti's government, now in a caretaker capacity, is unlikely to remain in power for more than a few weeks.
Defense Minister Giampaolo Di Paola, who spoke immediately after Terzi, rejected his gesture.
"It would be easy for me to resign today, leaving a seat open that will be filled by another minister soon anyway," Di Paola said. "But I won't abandon a ship in difficulty, with Massimiliano and Salvatore on board, until the last day of the war."
Several lawmakers, led by Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party, accused Monti of mishandling of the affair.
"The incredible conflict within the government took place to the detriment of our marines ... and it demonstrates once again the political inadequacy of Monti," said Deborah Bergamini, a PDL lawmaker.
(Additional reporting by Naomi O'Leary; Editing by Barry Moody and Michael Roddy)
You Are Here: Home ? General News ? Group to support government achieve its renewable energy policy
Page last updated at Tuesday, March 26, 2013 4:04 AM //
The Ghana Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, had been launched in Accra to support government to achieve its renewable energy policy and climate change programmes.
The Alliance is made up of representatives of civil society (CSO), non-governmental organisations (NGOs), financial institutions, researchers, marketers and donor agencies.
It is aimed at bringing stakeholders together to promote coordination, information sharing, capacity building and develop a thriving local market for the cook stoves sector as well as improving fuel usage.
It is also to increase international awareness and recognition of the positive work achieved in the Ghanaian cook stove sector.
Mr Amagoin Keita, Country Director of the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV), addressing the members, said it is important for stakeholders to come together to create synergies, reduce multiplication of efforts and enhance improvement in quality and capacity of the sector.
He encouraged the stakeholders to work together towards the development of the clean cook stoves sector and called on them to strengthen national, regional and local alliances to ensure that the programme reaches all the people in Ghana.
Mr Keita noted that to improve the energy efficiency of cooking by reducing exposure to wood and charcoal smoke, the SNV Ghana promotes the use of efficient and clean cook stoves.
Mr Kwabena Otu Danquah of the Energy Commission presented an overview of the cook stoves sector in Ghana and said wood-fuel accounts for over 70 percent of total primary energy supply.
He said the development of the improved cook stoves has the potential to reverse the depletion of the country?s forest resources by minimising the use of wood-fuel which causes diseases while generating employment and enhance technology transfer.
He stated that inadequate access to sufficient and efficient energy had several negative effects on livelihoods and deepens the poverty and climate change situation of the country.
Mrs Gifty Tetteh of the Ministry of Energy gave the assurance that government would collaborate with the Alliance to develop a database to reach out to all the stakeholders to reduce carbon emissions from open fires that affects the health of women.
Mr Lovans Owusu-Takyi, Coordinating Secretary of the Alliance expressed his appreciation to SNV Ghana, Trees for the Future, an NGO and youth volunteers for the environment for their support in organsing the Alliance.
Sunghwan Jung is a fan of the 19th Century born John William Strutt, 3rd, also known as Lord Baron Rayleigh. An English physicist, Rayleigh, along with William Ramsay, discovered the gas argon, an achievement for which he earned the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904.
But it was Rayleigh's lesser-known discovery of a physical phenomenon in 1878 that was more intriguing to Jung. Some 135 years ago, Rayleigh wrote that two fluid jets or drops do not always merge into one body of liquid, a counter-intuitive topic or phenomena in physics that has since been studied in much detail, cited Jung, Virginia Tech assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics.
The significance today of this fact is that when noncoalescence takes place between two fluids, it might impact a variety of industrial and everyday processes such as fuel efficiency, ink jet printing, and the development of spray coatings.
New information on Rayleigh's verbal description of the collision of fluids now appears in a contemporary paper authored by Jung and Pavlos Vlachos, professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech, and Navish Wadhwa, of Blacksburg, Va., a doctoral candidate in engineering science and mechanics. The paper, accepted in Physical Review Letters, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Physical Society, is called "Noncoalescence in the oblique collision of fluid jets."
"In Rayleigh's original paper, he mentioned two things: drop bouncing on a liquid bath and jets bouncing. No pictures were given. Much work has been done in drop-bath bouncing, but no work has been done in bouncing jets except for a couple of demonstrations in textbooks. We are the first ones to rationalize the physical mechanism of bouncing jets," Jung explained.
In their experiments, the researchers studied two silicone oil jets bouncing off each other upon collision. Silicone oil is used in most experiments in order to avoid any surface contamination, Jung said, and it is often the base for hydraulic fluids or lubricants.
"Intuition tells us that two or more jets of the same fluid impinging into each other will readily coalesce to form a single mass of fluid, and are well-studied phenomena," Jung explained.
Velocity is key to bringing the two silicone oil jets into a single flow of liquid. Since these jets of fluid drag along air, considered to act as a cushion, the two jets will bounce off of each other. But when the speed of the flow is increased beyond a certain threshold, the air is no longer stable due to the high inertia of jets, and the liquid jets will coalescence, Jung added.
To attain fuel efficiency in space rockets, two different fuel fluids need to mix well to maximize the combustion.
"In our experiments, we showed they are able to bounce off each other and inhibit the mixing. However, in rocket fuel tanks, the fluids come out of the nozzles are a very high speed, so no bouncing happens in their cases," Jung said.
Jung's earlier work on fluid flow won him the 2010 international Milton Van Dyke award at the 63rd annual meeting of the American Physical Society.
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Virginia Tech: http://www.vtnews.vt.edu
Thanks to Virginia Tech for this article.
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Public release date: 29-Mar-2013
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The Ghana Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, had been launched in Accra to support government to achieve its renewable energy policy and climate change programmes.