Drinking Water Out of a Billboard in Peru
Two recent reports from Survival show how badly communications are needed by remote tribal people. Even the remotest, as yet ‘uncontacted’ tribes are facing annihilation as their forests are being destroyed. November reports from Brasil and Paraguay both tell of uncontacted people fleeing from forest destruction. It is their very remoteness that facilitates the illegal…
Tablet test: Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop Per Child, describes experiments involving children in Ethiopia at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference. With 100 million first-grade-aged children worldwide having no access to schooling, the One Laptop Per Child organization is trying something new in two remote Ethiopian villages—simply dropping off tablet computers with preloaded programs and seeing…
Wireless ‘wi-fi’ technology should be removed from schools to prevent millions of children suffering a heightened risk of cancer and sterility, teachers have demanded. The Association of Teachers and Lecturers called for classroom wireless networks to be suspended immediately until research has properly considered the threat to health. Members said they were concerned by scientific…
Like the Marvel Comics superhero Iceman, some bacteria have harnessed frozen water as a weapon. Species such as Pseudomonas syringae have special proteins embedded in their outer membranes that help ice crystals form, and they use them to trigger frost formation at warmer than normal temperatures on plants, later invading through the damaged tissue. When…
Computer Aid has published the results of a study into the best low power PCs for use in ‘developing’ countries, carried out in conjunction with three African Universities and the ZDNet technical labs in the UK. Download the full report. (.pdf)
Until relatively recently, most scientists thought rain was caused by mineral particles in the air which were just the right size for water (or ice) to condense around them. Research is beginning to show that a major factor in rain creation could be bacteria associated with plants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioprecipitation If this is true then it is yet…