In The News

Google Invests in Cycle-Powered Monorail

Holger Dambeck October 26, 2010
As the world’s largest search engine, Google could have an edge in detecting newest trends and technologies. The company hosts occasional contests in search of innovative ideas that improve the world – allowing users to select among the finalists, then issuing prizes and investing in the projects. The latest award for a cycle-powered monorail by the name of Schweeb anticipates declining fossil...

Climate Change Threatens Global Rice

October 21, 2010
The high-yield IR8, so-called Miracle Rice, was developed in the 1960s and saved millions in Asia from starvation. But now, climate change seems to be reducing yields. According to research by Shaobing Peng in the current edition of the journal Field Crop Research, yields have fallen by 15 percent, primarily due to hotter nights, and also air pollution and changes in soil properties from...

Hungary Toxic Sludge Spill an “Ecological Catastrophe” Says Government

Mark Tran October 7, 2010
An industrial dam broke loose, releasing a torrent of toxic red sludge, left over from an aluminum manufacturing plant, over the Hungarian countryside. In minutes, the sludge transformed picturesque communities into scenes from a horror movie, with deaths, injuries, mass evacuations and threats to the Danube and Raba rivers, already heavily polluted in that nation. “Local environmentalists said...

40 Percent Decline in the Ocean's Phytoplankton

Steve Connor October 1, 2010
Researchers have found that phytoplankton – the microscopic plants at the base of the ocean’s food chain – have declined by 40 percent over the past century. The change is the biggest for the global biosphere, with more implications than deforestation, reports Steve Connor for the Independent. Warmer ocean waters could prevent the flow of nutrients, food for the micro plants, from the ocean’s...

Steps Out of the Global Development Crisis

Jens Martens September 20, 2010
As world leaders gather in New York to review the progress of the Millennium Development Goals set a decade ago, the enormity of the task ahead is clear. As the economic crisis spread across the globe, the government quickly adopted stimulus packages to stave off collapse. The fixes were temporary, though, failing to address immense structural challenges of trade imbalances, wage inequality and...

Another New World Order

Kevin Lynch September 17, 2010
This century’s diverse series of threats – from the Y2K computer glitch to terrorist attacks, war, financial meltdowns and environmental degradation – have both raised expectations and eroded faith in government leadership, observes Kevin Lynch for the Globe & Mail. He lists four structural trends driving a new world order: globalization, demographics, the information revolution and climate...

The Food Crisis

Martin Walker September 10, 2010
The world’s food supply is based on limited natural resources. Any disruptions in water supplies or weather patterns – exacerbated by growing populations and increased development of land – can quickly lead to food shortages, high prices and unrest. Martin Walker, writing for UPI.com, predicts “pressure on food supplies for decades to come.” Climate change and a fast-mutating fungus Ug99 that...