Thursday, March 31st, 2011
A chunk of England’s publicly owned forest will still be sold off, Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary has admitted, despite the public outcry over plans to privatise woodland. In an embarrassing admission earlier this year, the minister was forced to back down from plans to change the law so the government could sell all the
Thursday, March 31st, 2011
More than one third of Germany’s 21,500 wind turbines are located in the nation’s east. This concentration of generating capacity regularly overloads the region’s electricity grid, threatening blackouts. German Economics Minister Rainer Brüderle recently warned that Germany faces frequent power blackouts because too much ‘green electricity’ is being pumped onto the grid. While this is a problem
Thursday, March 31st, 2011
The situation on the European energy marked makes it more important to keep the Shtokman project on schedule, said Gazprom’s Alexey Miller and Statoil’s Helge Lund on Tuesday. Chairman of the Gazprom’s Management Committee Alexey Miller and Chief Executive Officer of Statoil Helge Lund met at the Gazprom headquarters to discuss the situation in the European
Wednesday, March 30th, 2011
These are among the 10 ideas now in line to win a share of £150,000 as part of Ordnance Survey’s GeoVation Challenge aiming to improve transport in Britain. The GeoVation Challenge is an innovation programme run by the mapping agency with support from Ideas in Transit, a five-year project funded by the Technology Strategy Board, the
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011
Pigs rootle fastidiously through the foothills of the mountain of rubbish dumped at Tuol Sen Chey on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. A few metres away, cross-legged amid the clouds of flies and shaded from a fierce sun by a broad-brimmed hat, Tim Chan Tha is sifting and flattening used plastic bags for
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011
Even though Taiwan is a hi-tech country, it relies heavily for its electricity on coal-fired power plants. But it is slowly making the switch to hydropower, with one plant in the south-west of the country already supplying some 13,000 households with clean energy. The project is made possible by the international carbon emissions trade, with
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011
The fast-growing Brazilian economy offers vast opportunities to foreign and Turkish constructors as business in the country grows ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, according to a business professional. “Construction is one of the fastest growing markets . The size of the construction sector in the country rose by $90 billion in 2010. Some
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011
Auckland’s traffic issues are under the spot light again and an environmental planning expert says it is New Zealand’s 10 acre dream which is fuelling the problem. Waikato University professor of Environmental Planning, Bob Evans says New Zealand, like the world’s other prosperous economies, is continuing to pursue economic growth despite the long-term dangers. “We’ve reached peak
Monday, March 28th, 2011
Two little piles of stones surrounded by scrub pine in northern Manitoba may have given archeologists and historians a physical link to one of North America’s greatest explorers and map-makers. Archeologist Perry Blomquist believes the rocks at Sipiwesk Lake on the Nelson River are remnants of chimneys from the post and storehouse that was David Thompson’s
Monday, March 28th, 2011
ESA’s Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer mission was launched in 2009 to map variations in Earth’s gravity with extreme detail and accuracy. Two years in orbit have resulted in a unique model of the ‘geoid’ – the surface of an ideal global ocean in the absence of tides and currents, defined only by gravity. The
