March 19, 2002
-
The brown revolution - NAIROBI, From The Economist print
edition, Reuters, The world is in the middle of a surge of
urbanization, with more than a dozen new “megacities” having arrived in
the past two decades. THE main street of Huruma is a hive of activity.
Market traders are selling everything from live chickens to trainers to
herbal medicine from the front of rickety shacks. The street is unpaved,
muddy and lined with compacted rubbish. Huruma is an unplanned
settlement built on council land in the outskirts of Nairobi. Behind
this market street are five slums, housing about 6,500 people at
densities of up to 2,300 per hectare. There is only one toilet block and
but a few water outlets. In the narrow gaps between the shacks, where
people walk and children play, open earth canals provide sewerage...
March 14, 2002
-
Power play over fuel cells
- From The Economist print edition, Government
and industry have joined forces in California to thrust stationary fuel
cells into the public eye and on to the grid. SHORTLY after a wave of
power cuts rolled through California in 2000, Scott Samuelsen, an
engineering professor at the University of California in Irvine, and
director of the National Fuel Cell Research Centre, started getting
frantic telephone calls from all round the state. Business owners, heads
of school districts and county representatives wanted to know how they
could cut crippling electricity bills (which had in some cases shot up
by nearly 60% in six months) or sidestep scheduled blackouts which were
costing some companies millions of dollars in lost revenue...
March 28, 2002 -
First Earth images from "green eye"
- NewScientist.com news service, Europe's giant
Earth-monitoring satellite Envisat has beamed back its first images one
month after launch. They highlight the changing environment of our
planet. One picture shows the break-up of the huge Larsen B ice shelf in
Antarctica. Another depicts a bright green bloom of phytoplankton off
the coast of Mauritania. These were captured using two of Envisat's 10
instruments...
Archive
of Environmental News - March
2002
