BORN TODAY: Clay Carroll....

Clay Palmer Carroll (born May 2, 1941 Clanton, Alabama) is a former relief pitcher in Major League Baseball with a 15-year career from 1964 to 1978. He pitched for the Milwaukee Braves & Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Reds, St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates, all of the National League, and the Chicago White Sox of the American League.

Carroll, nicknamed "the Hawk" was selected to the National League All-Star team in 1971 and 1972. He led the National League in saves in 1972 with 37, and finished tied for fifth in the Cy Young Award voting. The 37 saves stood as a National League record until Bruce Sutter broke it in 1984 with 45 saves pitching for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Carroll's best seasons were with the Reds, who he pitched for from 1968 to 1975 which earned him a place in the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame.

Carroll pitched in three World Series for Cincinnati including the 1975 World Series which the Reds beat Boston 4 games to 3. Carroll starred in the 1970 World Series as he appeared in five of the six games, hurling 9 shutout innings with 11 strikeouts to buyou a staff that otherwise struggled with injuries and ineffectiveness against Baltimore. Carroll was the winning pitcher in the Reds' only victory against the Orioles. Overall, Carroll had a stunning 1.39 ERA in 22 postseason appearances, allowing just five earned runs in 32.3 innings.
 

Behavior of seabirds during migration revealed....

The behaviour of seabirds during migration -- including patterns of foraging, rest and flight -- has been revealed in new detail using novel computational analyses and tracking technologies. Using a new method called 'ethoinformatics', described as the application of computational methods in the investigation of animal behaviour, scientists have been able to analyse three years of migration data gathered from miniature tracking devices attached to the small seabird the Manx Shearwater (Puffinus puffinus).

The Manx Shearwater is currently on the 'amber' list of UK Birds of Conservation Concern. Up to 80% of the world population breeds in the UK, travelling 20,000km each year in their migrations to South America and back.

In a continuing long-term collaboration, researchers at UCL and the University of Oxford collected data over three consecutive years. In this study, published in the Royal Society journal Interface, they show that the migration of the Manx Shearwater contains a complex pattern of three behavioural states; rest, flight and foraging.

Results indicate that in winter, birds spend much less time foraging and in flight than in breeding season. Also, a much larger proportion of birds' time in the southern hemisphere was spent at rest -- probably a reflection of their release from the demands of reproduction and also the increased costs of flight during the winter.

Dr Robin Freeman, from the UCL COMPLEX (Centre for Mathematics and Physics in the Life Sciences and Experimental Biology), and first author of the study, said: "Understanding the behaviour of these birds during migration is crucial for identifying important at-sea locations and for furthering conservation efforts. By tracking the movements, foraging behaviour and environmental drivers of such species, and developing new techniques to do so is critical as they continue to be subject to environmental and anthropogenic pressure."

He added: "Methods to understand animal behaviour from complex data series -- what we're calling 'ethoinformatics' -- are increasingly important as we continue to gather large amounts of data about animals in the wild."

Professor Tim Guilford, who leads the team at the University of Oxford, said: "At the Oxford navigation group, we have been able to gather an unprecedented amount of information about these elusive ocean wanderers. We trying to understand the processes that govern the behaviour seabirds at sea, and the decisions they must make during migration and foraging."

During the study, birds were fitted with miniature geolocators and lightweight GPS loggers. The geolocation devices have been developed by the British Antarctic Survey and record salt-water immersion and light levels. Using behaviours identified from GPS tracking during the breeding season, the team demonstrated that these behaviours could be predicted solely from data collected by the much smaller immersion-loggers.

Unlike other devices that limit broad use because of their mass, cost and longevity (life span), these devices can record continuously for many years and weigh less than two grams.

During the birds' migratory journey the team identified areas of high foraging behaviour, with concentrations off south-eastern Brazil during the southbound journey and in the Western Atlantic during the return. Rest also occurs throughout migration, with greater concentration towards the very end of the route in both directions. This could reflect distinct stopover types, like foraging stopovers to take advantage of the high prey availability or rest stopover to recover from long flight periods.

The researchers also discovered that the birds' behaviour responded to different environmental conditions. There was a significant relationship between behaviour and environmental variables such as net primary production (the rate at which all the plants in an ecosystem produce net useful chemical energy), chlorophyll and sea surface temperature. During migration, resting behaviour was found to occur in much more productive waters than other behaviours.

Dr Freeman said: "We're very excited about these new techniques and their application to understanding the behaviour of such and important and captivating bird. This is just the beginning of our on-going investigation into understanding the behaviour of these animals in the wild."

VLA gives deep, detailed image of distant universe....

Staring at a small patch of sky for more than 50 hours with the ultra-sensitive Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), astronomers have for the first time identified discrete sources that account for nearly all the radio waves coming from distant galaxies. They found that about 63 percent of the background radio emission comes from galaxies with gorging black holes at their cores and the remaining 37 percent comes from galaxies that are rapidly forming stars. "The sensitivity and resolution of the VLA, following its decade-long upgrade, made it possible to identify the specific objects responsible for nearly all of the radio background emission coming from beyond our own Milky Way Galaxy," said Jim Condon, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).

"Before we had this capability, we could not detect the numerous faint sources that produce much of the background emission," he added.

Previous studies had measured the amount of radio emission coming from the distant Universe, but had not been capable of attributing all the radio waves to specific objects. In earlier observations, emission from two or more faint objects often was blurred or blended into what appeared to be a single, stronger source of radio waves.

"Advancing technology has revealed more and more of the Universe to us over the past few decades, and our study shows individual objects that account for about 96 percent of the background radio emission coming from the distant Universe," Condon said. "The VLA now is a million times more sensitive than the radio telescopes that made landmark surveys of the sky in the 1960s," he added.

In February and March of 2012, Condon and his colleagues studied a region of sky that previously had been observed by the original, pre-upgrade, VLA, and by the Spitzer space telescope, which observes infrared light. They carefully analyzed and processed their data, then produced an image that showed the individual, radio-emitting objects within their field of view.

Their field of view, in the constellation Draco, encompassed about one-millionth of the whole sky. In that region, they identified about 2,000 discrete radio-emitting objects. That would indicate, the scientists said, that there are about 2 billion such objects in the whole sky. These are the objects that account for 96 percent of the background radio emission. However, the researchers pointed out, the remaining 4 percent of the radio emission could be coming from as many as 100 billion very faint objects.

Further analysis allowed the scientists to determine which of the objects are galaxies containing massive central black holes that are actively consuming surrounding material and which are galaxies undergoing rapid bursts of star formation. Their results indicate that, as previously proposed, the two types of galaxies evolved at the same rate in the early Universe.

"What radio astronomers have accomplished over the past few decades is analogous to advancing from the early Greek maps of the world that showed only the Mediterranean basin to the maps of today that show the whole world in exquisite detail," Condon said.

Condon worked with William Cotton, Edward Fomalont, Kenneth Kellermann, and Rick Perley of NRAO; Neal Miller of the University of Maryland; and Douglas Scott, Tessa Vernstrom, and Jasper Wall of the University of British Columbia. The researchers published their work in the Astrophysical Journal.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

 

Touchscreen typists urged to abandon qwerty keyboard for KALQ....

Smartphone and tablet typists are being urged to abandon the qwerty keyboard layout for a new design it's claimed will make them more than a third faster.

Researchers at the University of St Andrews have developed a keyboard for handheld touchscreens called KALQ that allows typing 34 per cent faster. It will be released as a free Android app.

The team studied thumb movements and developed "computational optimisation techniques" to determine where letters should appear on the keyboard.

"The legacy of qwerty has trapped users with suboptimal text entry interfaces on mobile devices," said Dr Per Ola Kristensson of the University of St Andrews’ School of Computer Science.

The qwerty layout was developed in the 1870s and was popularised on Remington typewriters. Many alternatives have been developed since, such as the Dvorak SImplified Keyborad, which proponents claim reduces errors, is faster and reduces the chance of repetitive strain injury. All challengers have failed to usurp the qwerty layout, however, despite their advantages.

"Before abandoning qwerty, users rightfully demand a compelling alternative. We believe KALQ provides a large enough performance improvement to incentivise users to switch and benefit from faster and more comfortable typing," said Kristensson. 

KALQ is designed for two-thumb typing with fewer sequences of single-thumb tapping, and so the movement required of each thumb is reduced.

"The key to optimising a keyboard for two thumbs is to minimise long typing sequences that only involve a single thumb. It is also important to place frequently used letter keys centrally close to each other," said Dr Antti Oulasvirta of the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany, who collaborated on the research.

The computational optimisation techniques used by the researchers assigned every vowel to the right thumb. The letter Y, which can be used as a vowel or a consonant, was assigned to the left thumb.
Combined with an error correction algorithm, trained KALQ users were able to reach 37 words per minute, the fastest typing rate ever reported for thumb typing on touchscreen devices.

Android smartphone and tablet owners will be able to download an app from the Google Play store to adopt the KALQ keyboard. It will not be available for iPhone or iPad, however, because Apple does not allow third parties to alter the iOS keyboard.

Pro-Environment Light Bulb Labeling Turns Off Conservatives, Study Finds....

How many conservatives does it take to change a light bulb? A more intriguing question might be, "How many conservatives can you persuade to switch to energy-efficient light bulbs?" New research suggests that fewer will buy such bulbs when they're labeled as being good for the environment, largely because the issue of carbon emission reductions is so politically polarizing in the United States.

"I think we've shown the negative consequences of environmental messaging," explained Dena Gromet, of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, lead author of a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "In particular, you can lose significant portions of people who would otherwise be interested in these products when you use that environmental labeling. So it indicates that different messages can reach different groups."

The United States is one of many countries forcing a switch to more efficient light bulbs. In January, new efficiency requirements went into effect for 75-watt incandescent bulbs, following new standards on 100-watt bulbs a year earlier. (See related story: "U.S. Bids Farewell to the 75-Watt Incandescent Light Bulb.") The changes are driving a projected 857 percent reduction in energy used for U.S. residential lighting by 2040, a greater cut than for any other area of household energy use. But consumer complaints have been persistent, and Congress cut funding to enforce the standards.

Gromet and colleagues from Wharton and Duke University's Fuqua School of Business first queried 657 volunteers to find out whether their opinions on energy-efficient products were split along a political divide. They were, she reported, and the issue of emissions reductions explained much of that ideological distance.

Then, a set of 210 potential buyers were armed with information on the benefits of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL), which last 9,000 hours longer than incandescent bulbs, and cut energy costs by 75 percent. They were asked to choose between lower efficiency and higher efficiency options; efficient bulbs were offered, labeled with a "protect the environment" sticker in some cases, and at other times with a blank sticker.

Political divisions appeared in purchasing choices—but not until price became an issue. When all bulbs were priced the same, every participant save one chose the energy-efficient option regardless of political persuasion.

"That indicates that people recognize the greater economic value of the bulb when there isn't a higher up-front cost," Gromet explained. But when the study represented retail realities, that more efficient options carry a higher up-front price tag (though consumers save money in the long run through lowered utility bills), fewer conservatives were willing to pay the extra cash for bulbs labeled as good for the environment.

"Our results demonstrated that a choice that wasn't ideologically polarizing without a ("protect the environment") label became polarizing when we included that environmental labeling," Gromet said. "We saw a significant drop-off in conservative people choosing to buy a more expensive, energy-efficient option."

The explanation, Gromet suggests, could lie in labeling a consumer choice to represent values that simply aren't shared by all buyers—in this case the environmental issue of reducing carbon emissions.

"So it makes that choice unattractive to some people even if they recognize that it may be a money-saving choice. When we asked afterward, those consumers identified the CFL bulbs as providing greater monetary savings over time. But they would forgo that option when that product was made to represent a value that was not something they wanted to be identified with."

The study also suggested that pro-environmental messages don't have much of a positive influence on liberal consumers at the other end of the political spectrum. "We didn't see a significant boost among political liberals when we used the environmental message in our study," Gromet added. "We'd need a lot more data, but one possibility stemming from that is that you're not necessarily getting that much of a boost on the liberal side."

Other Factors at Work? Jacquelyn Ottman, a marketing consultant specializing in sustainability who wrote The New Rules of Green Marketing, said she wouldn't expect green labeling to provide a big consumer boost for liberals or conservatives. People buy green products for the value they represent and because they work, she explained. Environmentally aware consumers do appreciate health benefits, and hope to protect the future for their families, but they aren't entirely swayed by green messaging, she said.

"Green marketing I lump in with things like "made in America" or thunion label." They are nice for some people to think about when purchasing and maybe they add a little value are not really game-changers in terms of swaying decisions. Some people conclude that Americans don't care about the environment because if they did they'd be buying more green products. But by that logic you'd say Americans don't care about America because if they did they'd be buying more "made in America" products also."

As for the possible negative implications of green labeling, Ottman said other factors are likely at work besides politics. Some green offerings still battle stereotypes from decades ago, she said, when many were viewed as "alternative" products that simply didn't work as well and weren't produced by the larger brands consumers had come to trust. "There is a lingering misconception about green products that they don't work and that they are overpriced because they are gouging people based on their sentiments about saving the planet," she said.

Some recent market research suggests that a different factor might be at work: Consumer dislike for CFLs may be a far greater problem than price or messaging. Sales of solid-state LED lighting are growing rapidly, even though this high-efficiency choice is more costly than CFLs. The Wharton-Duke study did not test attitudes on LEDs. 

Ottman added that some marketers might be more interested to learn about how short-term versus long-term savings factor into consumers' decision making, especially vis-à-vis premium pricing for many environmentally preferable products—including light bulbs.

That's an issue Gromet hopes to explore as well, along with energy independence and other benefits of efficient products unrelated to the environment.

"It's an open question whether emphasizing those other aspects of energy-efficiency might have different appeal to different (political sensibilities) and a different impact on consumer decisions," she said.

UMass Amherst biologists propose a new research roadmap for connecting genes to ecology.....

A team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is proposing a new investigative roadmap for the field of evolutionary developmental biology, or "evo devo," to better understand how innovation at the genetic level can lead to ecological adaptations over time. Evo devo seeks to understand the specific genetic mechanisms underlying evolutionary change. Seven UMass Amherst authors, all biologists but with diverse research programs including evolutionary genetics, developmental biology, biomechanics and behavioral ecology, describe the new framework they created to link genes to ecology in the May issue of Trends in Ecology and Evolution. They propose a set of hypotheses that can form the basis for further studies. "We advocate strengthened collaborations," they point out, among evo devo disciplines "to consider all links from genes to resource use."

In the past, evo-devo research has focused narrowly on connecting gene-level changes with evolution of different anatomical shapes, known as morphology, but it has been less successful in identifying mechanisms of more subtle, continuous changes that are important for how an organism performs in its particular environment. For example, how do genes and mechanisms evolve in relation to how fast an animal runs, how far it jumps or how hard it bites?

Lead co-authors of a new paper, Duncan Irschick and Craig Albertson, say that the field has to date been "hugely successful" in providing a mechanistic basis for the evolution of specific traits including bat wings and turtle shells, but they also point out that the old approach left a major gap in our understanding of what drives evolutionary change.

"Connecting genes to a single discrete trait does not necessarily tell you how that animal performs in its environment, and it is the way an organism interacts with its environment that directly affects its survival," says Albertson. "Performance traits are often multi-dimensional. While gene for jaw width, for example, can tell you something about how an animal feeds in the wild, the full picture involves much more information, such as jaw length, skull depth, muscle size, the kinetics of jaw movement and a slew of other factors."

"We want to expand the research program beyond genes and discrete traits. We argue that if researchers focus on the phenotype and work back to the genes, we will gain a much more comprehensive understanding of how the genome affects an organism's survival in a particular environment. A key first step in this process should be to figure out how genes influence the way an animal negotiates its world."

Co-author Betsy Dumont point out that this work also has immediate practical implications. "We believe this approach has the potential to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how the genome influences an organism's ability to adapt to a changing environment."

Irschick adds, "As a group, we set out to create new intellectual ideas and to provide a platform for scientists to understand the world. I could not have been more pleased at how we all worked together towards that goal, and how we accomplished it."

Albertson says of the team's work, "Understanding how changes at the genomic level can influence an organism's survival in a changing environment is a long-standing question in biology, and one that no single research program can address in a comprehensive manner. It is a rare and special thing to be among colleagues who can pull together their collective expertise in order to begin to tackle this important question."

"By integrating ideas from the disparate fields of developmental biology, functional morphology and evolutionary ecology, we lay out a research program to examine how changes at the genomic level promote ecological success in a changing environment. Our long term goal is to turn these ideas into an integrative training experience for graduate students in the organismic and evolutionary biology program here at UMass Amherst," he adds.

How petals get their shape....

Why do rose petals have rounded ends while their leaves are more pointed? In a new study published April 30 in the open access journal PLOS Biology, scientists from the John Innes Centre and University of East Anglia, UK, reveal that the shape of petals is controlled by a hidden map located within the plant's growing buds. Leaves and petals perform different functions related to their shape.

Leaves acquire sugars for a plant via photosynthesis, which can then be transported throughout the plant. Petals develop later in the life cycle and help attract pollinators. In earlier work, this team had discovered that leaves in the plant Arabidopsis contain a hidden map that orients growth in a pattern that converges towards the tip of the bud, giving leaves their characteristic pointed tips. In the new study, the researchers discover that Arabidopsis petals contain a similar, hidden map that orients growth in the flower's bud. However, the pattern of growth is different to that in leaves -- in the petal growth is oriented towards the edge giving a more rounded shape -- accounting for the different shapes of leaves and petals. The researchers discovered that molecules called PIN proteins are involved in this oriented growth, which are located towards the ends of each cell.

"The discovery of these hidden polarity maps was a real surprise and provides a simple explanation for how different shapes can be generated," said Professor Enrico Coen, senior author of the study.

The team of researchers confirmed their ideas by using computer simulations to test which maps could predict the correct petal shape. They then confirmed experimentally that PIN proteins located to the right sites to be involved in oriented growth, and identified that another protein, called JAGGED, is involved in promoting growth towards the edge of petals and in establishing the hidden map that determines petal growth and shape.

Unlike animal cells, plant cells are unable to move and migrate to form structures of a particular shape, and so these findings help to explain how plants create differently shaped organs -- by controlling rates and orientations of cell growth. From an evolutionary perspective, this system creates the flexibility needed for plant organs to adapt to their environment and to develop different functions.

Environmental labels may discourage conservatives from buying energy-efficient products....

When it comes to deciding which light bulb to buy, a label touting the product's environmental benefit may actually discourage politically conservative shoppers. Dena Gromet and Howard Kunreuther at The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and Rick Larrick at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business conducted two studies to determine how political ideology affected a person's choice to buy energy-efficient products in the United States.

The authors suggest that financial incentives or emphasizing energy independence may be better ways to get people to buy energy-efficient products than appealing to environmental concerns because these represent unifying concerns that cross political boundaries.

Their paper, "Political Ideology Affects Energy-Efficient Attitudes and Choices," is published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"A popular strategy for marketing energy efficiency is to focus on its environmental benefits," said Gromet, the lead author on the studies. "But not everyone values protecting the environment. We were interested in whether promoting the environment could in fact deter some individuals from purchasing energy efficient options that they would have otherwise selected."

The first study surveyed 657 U.S. adults, 49 percent men, ranging in age from 19-81. Participants were given a short description of energy efficiency and answered questions about the psychological value they placed on reducing carbon dioxide emissions to protect the environment, reducing dependence on foreign oil and reducing the financial cost of energy use. They also indicated how much they favored investing in energy-efficient technology. Participants were asked about their political ideology, and how much they identified with different political parties.

The more conservative the participant, the less likely that person was to support investing in energy-efficient technology. The study found that this divide was primarily driven by the lower value that conservatives placed on reducing carbon emissions. The values of energy independence and reducing energy costs had more universal appeal.

The second study involved 210 participants, 61 percent female, who ranged in age from 18 to 66. Again, all participants gave information about their political ideologies. Participants were given $2 to spend on a light bulb and could keep whatever they did not spend.

They were then educated about the benefits of compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs over incandescent bulbs. (CFL bulbs last 9,000 more hours and reduce energy costs by 75 percent). Some of the CFL bulbs came with a sticker that said "Protect The Environment" while the others had a blank sticker.

In some cases, the CFL bulb was priced at $1.50, while the incandescent bulb was 50 cents. When the more expensive CFL came with no environmental label, liberals and conservatives selected it at roughly the same high frequency. However, when the more expensive CFL bulb also was accompanied by a "protect the environment" sticker, participants who identified as more politically moderate or conservative were less likely to buy it.

For other participants, both incandescent and CFL bulbs were priced at 50 cents. All but one of these participants bought the CFL bulb regardless of the sticker, indicating that everyone was attracted to a good economic deal regardless of their political leanings.

"The environmental aspect of energy efficiency has an ideologically polarizing impact that can undermine demand for energy-efficient technology, specifically among more politically conservative individuals," Kunreuther said. "On a more positive note, the results of the second study indicate that focusing on the nature of the message coupled with economic incentives should promote investment in energy-efficient products."

"These findings demonstrate that a one-size-fits-all approach is unlikely to be successful for making energy-efficient products appealing to consumers," Larrick said. "People have different energy-related values which can influence their choices, including leading them to reject options that they recognize as having long-term economic benefits. In many cases, a tailored message may be needed to reach different market segments."

Vexillology or Fun With Flags: The US Virgin Islands....

 

THE US VIRGIN ISLANDS

The flag of the United States Virgin Islands was adopted in 1921. It consists of a simplified version of the Great Seal of the United States between the letters V and I (for Virgin Islands). The eagle holds a laurel branch in one talon, and three arrows in the other, representing the three major islands: Saint Thomas, Saint John, and Saint Croix.

The Virgin Islands of the United States (commonly called the United States Virgin Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, or USVI) are a group of islands in the Caribbean that are an insular area of the United States. The islands are geographically part of the Virgin Islands archipelago and are located in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles.

The U.S. Virgin Islands consist of the main islands of Saint Croix, Saint John, and Saint Thomas, along with the much smaller but historically distinct Water Island, and many other surrounding minor islands. The total land area of the territory is 133.73 square miles (346.4 km²). The territory's capital is Charlotte Amalie on the island of Saint Thomas.

As of the 2010 census the population was 106,405, mostly composed by those of Afro-Caribbean descent. Tourism is the primary economic activity, although there is a significant rum manufacturing sector.

Formerly the Danish West Indies, they were sold to the United States by Denmark in the Treaty of the Danish West Indies of 1916. They are classified by the UN as a Non-Self-Governing Territory, and are currently an organized, unincorporated United States territory. The U.S. Virgin Islands are organized under the 1954 Revised Organic Act of the Virgin Islands and have since held five constitutional conventions. The last and only proposed Constitution, adopted by the Fifth Constitutional Convention in 2009, was rejected by the U.S. Congress in 2010, which urged the convention to reconvene to address the concerns Congress and the Obama administration had with the proposed document. The convention reconvened in October 2012 to address these concerns, but was unable to produce a revised Constitution before its October 31 deadline.

HISTORY

The Virgin Islands were originally inhabited by the Ciboney, Carib, and Arawaks. The islands were named by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage in 1493 for Saint Ursula and her virgin followers. Over the next two hundred years, the islands were held by many European powers, including Spain, Great Britain, the Netherlands, France, and Denmark-Norway.

The Danish West India Company settled on Saint Thomas in 1672, on Saint John in 1694, and purchased Saint Croix from France in 1733. The islands became royal Danish colonies in 1754, named the Danish-Westindian islands (Danish: De dansk-vestindiske øer). Sugarcane, produced by slave labor, drove the islands' economy during the 18th and early 19th centuries, until the abolition of slavery by Governor Peter von Scholten on July 3, 1848.

For the remainder of the period of Danish rule, the islands were not economically viable and significant transfers were made from the Danish state budgets to the authorities in the islands. In 1867 a treaty to sell Saint Thomas and Saint John to the United States was agreed, but the sale was never effected. A number of reforms aimed at reviving the islands' economy were attempted, but none had great success. A second draft treaty to sell the islands to the United States was negotiated in 1902 but was narrowly defeated in the Danish parliament.

The onset of World War I brought the reforms to a close and again left the islands isolated and exposed. During the submarine warfare phases of the First World War, the United States, fearing that the islands might be seized by Germany as a submarine base, again approached Denmark with a view to buying them. After a few months of negotiations, a selling price of $25 million in United States gold coin was agreed.(This is equivalent to $2,200,000,000 in 2012 dollars @ $1770 per ounce.) At the same time the economics of continued possession weighed heavily on the minds of Danish decision makers, and a consensus in favor of selling emerged in the Danish parliament.

The Treaty of the Danish West Indies was signed in August 1916, with a Danish referendum held in December 1916 to confirm the decision. The deal was finalized on January 17, 1917, when the United States and Denmark exchanged their respective treaty ratifications. The United States took possession of the islands on March 31, 1917 and the territory was renamed the Virgin Islands of the United States. Every year Transfer Day is recognized as a holiday, to celebrate the acquisition of the islands by the United States. U.S. citizenship was granted to the inhabitants of the islands in 1927.

Water Island, a small island to the south of Saint Thomas, was initially administered by the U.S. federal government and did not become a part of the U.S. Virgin Islands territory until 1996, when 50 acres (200,000 m²) of land was transferred to the territorial government. The remaining 200 acres (81 ha) of the island were purchased from the U.S. Department of the Interior in May 2005 for $10, a transaction which marked the official change in jurisdiction.

Hurricane Hugo struck the Virgin Islands in 1989, causing catastrophic physical and economic damage. The territory was again struck by Hurricane Marilyn in 1995, killing eight people and causing more than $2 billion in damage. The islands were again struck by Hurricane Bertha, Hurricane Georges, Hurricane Lenny and Hurricane Omar in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2008, respectively, but damage was not as severe in those storms.

GEOGRAPHY

The U.S. Virgin Islands are in the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, about 40 miles (64 km) east of Puerto Rico and immediately west of the British Virgin Islands. They share the Virgin Islands Archipelago with the Spanish Virgin Islands (administered by Puerto Rico) and the British Virgin Islands. The territory consists of four main islands: Saint Thomas, Saint John, Saint Croix, and Water Island, as well as several dozen smaller islands. The main islands have nicknames often used by locals: "Twin City" (St. Croix), "Rock City" (St. Thomas) and "Love City" (St. John). The combined land area of the islands is roughly twice the size of Washington, D.C.

The U.S. Virgin Islands are known for their white sand beaches, including Magens Bay and Trunk Bay, and strategic harbors, including Charlotte Amalie and Christiansted. Most of the islands, including Saint Thomas, are volcanic in origin and hilly. The highest point is Crown Mountain, Saint Thomas (1,555 ft or 474 m).

Saint Croix, the largest of the U.S. Virgin Islands, lies to the south and has a flatter terrain. The National Park Service owns more than half of Saint John, nearly all of Hassel Island, and many acres of coral reef.

The U.S. Virgin Islands lie on the boundary of the North American plate and the Caribbean Plate. Natural hazards include earthquakes and tropical cyclones (including hurricanes).

 

BORN TODAY: Magnus Kaakonsson....

Magnus Haakonsson (Old Norse: Magnús Hákonarson; 1 May 1238 – 9 May 1280), known as Magnus the Lawmender (Old Norse: Magnús lagabœtir, Norwegian: Magnus Lagabøte), was the King of Norway from 1263 to 1280. His greatest achievement was his modernisations and nationalisation of the Norwegian law-code, which is what gave him his epithet. He is the first Norwegian monarch who is known to have used an ordinal number, although he counted himself as IV instead of the modern VI.

Early life

He was the youngest son of King Håkon Håkonsson and his wife Margaret Skuladotter. He was born in Tunsberg and was baptised in May 1238. He spent most of his upbringing in Bergen. In 1257 his older brother Håkon died, leaving Magnus the heir-apparent to the kingdom. His father gave him the title of king the same year. On 11 September 1261, he married the Danish princess Ingeborg, the daughter of the late Danish King Erik Plogpenning, after she was practically abducted by King Håkon's men from the monastery she was living in. The struggle to claim Ingeborg's inheritance from her murdered father later involved Norway in intermittent conflicts with Denmark for decades to come. Magnus and Ingeborg were crowned directly after their marriage, and Magnus was given Ryfylke for his personal upkeep. On 16 December 1263 King Håkon died while fighting the Scottish king over the Hebrides, and Magnus became the ruler of Norway.

Reign

Foreign policy

Magnus' rule brought about a change from the somewhat aggressive foreign policy of his father. In 1266 he gave up the Hebrides and the Isle of Man to Scotland, in return for a large sum of silver and a yearly payment, under the Treaty of Perth, by which the Scots at the same time recognised Norwegian rule over Shetland and the Orkney Islands. In 1269 the Treaty of Winchester cemented good relations with the English king Henry III. Magnus also seems to have had good relations with the Swedish King Valdemar Birgersson, and in the 1260s, the border with Sweden was officially defined for the first time. When Valdemar was deposed by his two brothers and fled to Norway in 1275, this stirred Magnus into gathering a leidang-fleet for the first and only time in his reign. With a large fleet, he met with the new Swedish King Magnus Ladulås to try to bring about a settlement between the two brothers, but without success, Magnus of Sweden would not give in to pressure and the Magnus of Norway retreated without engaging in hostile actions.

Internal policies

Page from the national law (Landslov) of Magnus.

 

In internal politics, Magnus carried out a great effort to modernise the law-code, which gave him his epithet law-mender. These were adopted at the Things in the years 1274 (Landslov) and 1276 (Byloven). In 1274 he promulgated the new national law, a unified code of laws to apply for the whole country, including the Faroe islands and Shetland. This replaced the different regional laws which had existed before. It was supplemented by a new municipal law (a law for the cities) in 1276, and a slightly modified version was also drawn up for Iceland. A unified code of laws for a whole country was at this time something quite new, which had until then only been introduced in Sicily and Castile. His code introduced the concept that crime is an offense against the state rather than against the individual and thus narrowed the possibilities of personal vengeance. It increased the formal power of the king, making the throne the source of justice. The municipal law gave the cities increased freedom from rural control. A specific section fixed the law of succession to the throne, in accordance with the arrangements laid down by King Håkon Håkonsson in 1260.

Magnus giving his national law to a lawman, illumination from the 14th century Codex Hardenbergianus.

 

The royal succession was an important and prickly matter, the last of the civil wars, fought for decades over disputed successions to the throne, having finally ended only in 1240. In 1273 Magnus gave his eldest son, five-year-old Eirik, the name of king, and his younger brother Håkon the title of duke, thus making unequivocally clear what the royal succession would be.
Although Magnus was by all accounts a personally very pious king, his work with the law-codes brought him into conflict with the archbishop, who resisted temporal authority over the church, and sought to preserve the church's influence over the kingdom. The Tønsberg Concord (Sættargjerden in Tønsberg) signed in 1277 between King Magnus and Jon Raude, Archbishop of Nidaros, confirmed certain privileges of the clergy, the freedom of episcopal elections and similar matters. The church preserved considerable independence in judicial matters, but gave up its old claim that the Norwegian kingdom was a fief under the ultimate authority of the Catholic Church.
In cultural terms Magnus continued his father's policy of introducing European courtly culture to Norway. In 1277 he replaced the old Norse titles lendmann and skutilsvein with the European titles baron and riddar (knight), at the same time giving them certain extra privileges and the right to be addressed as lord (herra). Magnus is probably also the first Norwegian king to have named himself using an ordinal number - he called himself "Magnus IV" (he did not count Magnus Haraldsson (II) and Magnus Sigurdsson (IV)). Immediately after his father's death, he commissioned the Icelander Sturla Þórðarson to write his father's saga, or biography. In 1278, he commissioned the same man to write his own saga. The Saga of Magnus the lawmender (Magnúss saga lagabœtis) thus became the last of the medieval Norwegian kings' sagas; unfortunately only a short fragment of it has been preserved.

Death and aftermath

Seal of Magnus, obverse (left) and reverse (right).

In the spring of 1280, Magnus fell ill in Bergen and died 9 May. He had already planned to have his son Eirik crowned at midsummer as co-ruler, instead Eirik now took over as sole king at the age of 12. Real power fell to a circle of advisors, prominent among them Magnus' queen Ingeborg. Magnus was remembered as a good ruler, who ruled by law rather than by the sword. Some modern historians have considered him a weak king, for giving up the Hebrides and giving in to demands of the church, but others consider these wise policies, sparing the kingdom unnecessary and unfruitful wars abroad, while preserving stability at home. Magnus was buried in the church of the Franciscan monastery in Bergen, which has since the 16th century been the Bergen Cathedral (Bergen Domkirke).

The Hutu....

THE HUTU:

PRONUNCIATION: HOO-too
LOCATION: Rwanda; Burundi
POPULATION: Approximately 10 million
LANGUAGE: Kinyarwanda; Kirundi; French; Swahili
RELIGION: Christianity combined with traditional beliefs   

INTRODUCTION

The word Hutu is the name for the majority of people who live in the countries of Rwanda and Burundi. The Hutu have much in common with the other peoples of these countries, the Tutsi and the Twa. All three groups speak the same Bantu language.

Social relations in Rwanda and Burundi were affected by European rule. Both countries were European colonies between 1890 and 1962. The Germans ruled from 1890 until the end of World War I (1914–18). They favored the upper-class Tutsi. The Belgians who followed the Germans also favored the Tutsi at first. In the 1950s, however, they supported Hutu leaders because the Tutsi were seeking independence.

Rwanda and Burundi took very different paths to independence in 1962. In Rwanda, Hutu leaders overthrew the mwami ( the Tutsi king) and seized power by force. In Burundi, the change to independence was more peaceful. The mwami helped the Tutsi and Hutu reach an agreement.

However, the peace did not last. The Hutu tried to gain power by force, and they were defeated.

At the time of independence, opposite sides controlled the two countries. Burundi is controlled by a branch of the Tutsi. In Rwanda, the Hutu ruled until 1994. Then Tutsi refugees from Uganda invaded the country. The government was overthrown and thousands of Hutu fled to neighboring countries.

Many have returned since 1996.     

LOCATION

Rwanda and Burundi are mountainous countries in east-central Africa. They share a common border. Their total combined area is roughly 20,900 square miles (54,100 square kilometers)—about the combined size of the states of Maryland and New Jersey.

The combined Hutu population of Rwanda and Burundi was about 13 million in 1994. Many Hutu have left the two countries in recent decades. Thousands fled Burundi in 1972. Hundreds of thousands fled Rwanda in 1994. Many ended up living in refugee camps in neighboring countries.

They started returning in 1996.     

LANGUAGE

The Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa all speak the same Central Bantu language. It is called Kinyarwanda in Rwanda and Kirundi in Burundi. The two versions differ slightly in pronunciation. Some words are different, also.

Many Rwandans and Burundians speak French and have French first names. Swahili is also spoken, especially along the Tanzanian border and in the cities.

The Rwandans and Burundians have long names with clear meanings. For example, the name Mutarambirwa means "the one who never gets tired."     

FOLKLORE

The Hutu tell proverbs, folktales, riddles, and myths. Samadari is a popular folk hero. He broke the rules everyone else had to follow. He could make fun of the rich and powerful and insult the wealthy cattle owners.     

RELIGION

Today most people in Rwanda and Burundi are Christians. However, they have kept some of their ancient beliefs. The ancient Hutu god, Imaana , had many human qualities. Imaana meant well, but he was distant from the people.

The abazima were the spirits of the ancestors. They could become angry and bring bad luck to the living. Gifts were offered to the abazima for protection. People contacted them through fortune-tellers.     

MAJOR HOLIDAYS

The Hutu observe the Rwandan and Burundian independence days, May Day (May 1), New Year's Day (January 1), and the major Christian holidays.     

RITES OF PASSAGE

When a baby is born, the baby and mother stay alone in their house for seven days. A naming ceremony is held on the seventh day. Children who live nearby take part, and food is served.

Marriages are legal when the man's family pays the bride wealth to the woman's family. It is paid in cattle, goats, and beer. For the ceremony, the bride's body is covered with herbs and milk to make it pure.

Death is marked by prayers, speeches, and rituals. Close family members do not take part in certain activities. After a death, they do not work in the fields or have sexual relations during the period of mourning. When the family declares that the mourning period is over, they hold a ritual feast.     

RELATIONSHIPS

The Hutu have different greetings for morning, afternoon, and evening. The morning greeting— Warumutse ho?— is answered with Waaramutse. The afternoon greeting— Wiiriwe ho?— is answered with Wiiriwe.

Hutu young people meet each other through group activities such as dances and church events. Western-style dating is practiced by wealthier Hutu in the cities.     

LIVING CONDITIONS

Almost all Rwandans and Burundians live in rural areas. Traditional Hutu houses are huts made from wood, reeds, and straw and are shaped like beehives. High hedges serve as fences. In recent years, modern houses have been built with modern materials.     

FAMILY LIFE

Women take care of the home. They also plant, hoe, and weed the crops. Men and boys look after the livestock and clear the fields to prepare them for planting.

In the past, the families of the bride and groom decided all marriages. These days most young people choose the person they want to marry.

Marriages between Hutu and Tutsis have always been rare, although Hutu men were allowed to court Tutsi women. Such marriages occur more often today, but they are still uncommon.     

CLOTHING

In the past, Hutus wore skirts of cloth made from tree bark, and cloaks made of animal hides. These have long been replaced by Western-style clothing. However, handmade beaded necklaces and bracelets are still worn.     

FOOD

The staple foods of the Hutu include beans, corn, millet, sorghum, sweet potatoes, and cassava. Milk and beef are important foods. Goat meat and goat milk are eaten by people of low social status. Meals are often planned around a family's work schedule.

An alcoholic drink made from bananas and sorghum grain is saved for special occasions.     

EDUCATION

Only about half the people in Rwanda and Burundi can read and write in their native language. Even fewer can read and write French. There are schools for teachers and at least one university in each country. Well-educated persons speak French. Rwanda's educational system was disrupted by the 1994 conflict.     

CULTURAL HERITAGE

Music, dancing, and drumming are important parts of rural life. Men and women have different dances. The dancers move their arms and bodies quickly. They also stomp their feet in time to the music. People sing alone (solo) or in a chorus. There are many different kinds of songs. They include hunting songs, lullabies, and songs in praise of cattle ( ibicuba ).

Hutu literature consists of myths, legends, and praise poetry.     

EMPLOYMENT

Most Hutu have always been farmers. Raising and herding cattle are ranked more highly than raising crops.     

SPORTS

Both young people and adults enjoy a game called igisoro (or called mancala in other parts of Africa). Beans are placed in holes in a wooden board. The players line up their own pieces in rows and try to capture those of their opponent.

The main spectator sport in Rwanda and Burundi is soccer.     

RECREATION

Movie theaters in the capitals of Rwanda and Burundi show current European and American films.     

CRAFTS AND HOBBIES

Hutu crafts include pottery, woodwork, jewelry, metal work, and basket weaving.     

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

Thousands of Hutu civilians fled from Rwanda to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) in 1994. In 1996 they were caught up in a civil war in that country. Many returned to Rwanda.

 

Hey, Professor Touchscreen, keep your fingers off our Qwerty keyboards ; Pro'd and Con's.....

Apparently we'd all type a lot faster if the alphabet on our smartphones was rearranged. But is it too late to teach old dogs new tricks?

There aren’t many inventions from the 19th century that remain in daily use across the world, completely unmodified. The flushing loo, the ballpoint pen and the safety match merit a mention. But one is so ubiquitous that most of us take it for granted: the Qwerty keyboard.

Ever since it was first produced in 1873, we have stuck with it. First on clunky, mechanical typewriters with their pleasing chika-chip-cha-chip-DING-ziiiiiiiip, then with electronic word processors and computers. Even now, touchscreen smartphones and iPads all boast the distinctive layout, despite the fact that very few of us are dexterous enough to touch‑type on a device smaller than a cigarette packet.

Even the most digitally supple teenager tends to use a hot-thumb shuffle to bang out their texts.

And so researchers have created a new keyboard that they claim is designed for people using two thumbs on a touchscreen device. Instead of Qwerty, they have come up with KALQ. Dr Per Ola Kristensson – possibly because he has a very difficult name to type (as I’ve just discovered) – says that the traditional layout has trapped users in “suboptimal text entry interfaces”.

He and his colleagues at St Andrews University calculate that the standard keys on a touchscreen device limits typing to about 20 words a minute. With their funky new KALQ board, which has all the vowels on the right-hand side, users were able to get up to 37 words a minute.

 

This is an obvious improvement. But it is not that surprising, because many difficult-to-spell pointy-headed academics, think the Qwerty keyboard is one of the least efficient pieces of kit ever invented.

Indeed, if we believe them, it is a miracle that this article ever made it on to the page. It would be quicker to scratch out my words using a stylus and wax tablet, and shout the finished article through a cup attached to a piece of string, than type it using a standard keyboard.

 

But the reason for Qwerty’s inefficiency is also the reason for its success.

 

Typewriters were invented by Christopher Sholes, a Wisconsin senator and newspaper editor. His first attempt, logically, placed all the keys in alphabetical order. But this meant that the mechanical levers, attached to the keys, became jammed if someone typed too quickly. So, after many experiments, he moved the most commonly used keys apart.

 

Thus the Qwerty was born. In fact, it was originally Qwe.ty – but then Remington, famous for its sewing machines and guns, and which produced Sholes’s typewriter, moved the R to a more prominent position.

 

There is no proof that Sholes wanted to slow down typing; he just wanted to stop his machine from becoming a ball of jumbled metal. But the effect was the same – typing using a Qwerty just isn’t very quick. Also, the spacing out of common pairings of letters is responsible for millions of people developing repetitive strain injury.

 

There are many other machines that allow people to type more swiftly and safely, most notably the Dvoˇrák board (invented by a distant cousin of the Czech composer), developed in the Thirties. Crucially, this version allows your fingers to jump and stretch less and your left hand and right hand are used equally – with a Qwerty, your left hand does well over half the work. The world record for typing on this version is more than 200 words a minute, a speed that would cause snapped fingers with a Qwerty board.

 

And if it’s supersonic typing you are after, you should have seen the old stenographers at work at the Old Bailey, who used strange machines that worked like pianos – they struck chords that produced phonetic sounds like “th” and “sh” and could type more than 300 words a minute.

 

Qwerty has survived for the simple reason that it got there first and provided a machine for a world that craved standardisation. This was the era when a nut produced in Manchester would not fit a bolt manufactured in London.

 

As Professor Doron Swade, a computer historian, says: “The big lesson of Qwerty was the fact that it was standard; it wasn’t the most efficient or the most ergonomically sound.”

 

To anyone who touch‑types, using Qwerty is as automatic as handwriting.

 

That is why, despite its myriad faults, Qwerty must stay. It is hard‑wired into our brains; to create two separate keyboards for different devices would cause a major short circuit.

 

ON THE NEW SIDE

 

Touchscreen typists urged to abandon qwerty keyboard for KALQ

Smartphone and tablet typists are being urged to abandon the qwerty keyboard layout for a new design it's claimed will make them more than a third faster.

Researchers at the University of St Andrews have developed a keyboard for handheld touchscreens called KALQ that allows typing 34 per cent faster. It will be released as a free Android app.

The team studied thumb movements and developed "computational optimisation techniques" to determine where letters should appear on the keyboard.

"The legacy of qwerty has trapped users with suboptimal text entry interfaces on mobile devices," said Dr Per Ola Kristensson of the University of St Andrews’ School of Computer Science.

The qwerty layout was developed in the 1870s and was popularised on Remington typewriters. Many alternatives have been developed since, such as the Dvorak SImplified Keyborad, which proponents claim reduces errors, is faster and reduces the chance of repetitive strain injury. All challengers have failed to usurp the qwerty layout, however, despite their advantages.

"Before abandoning qwerty, users rightfully demand a compelling alternative. We believe KALQ provides a large enough performance improvement to incentivise users to switch and benefit from faster and more comfortable typing," said Kristensson.

KALQ is designed for two-thumb typing with fewer sequences of single-thumb tapping, and so the movement required of each thumb is reduced.

"The key to optimising a keyboard for two thumbs is to minimise long typing sequences that only involve a single thumb. It is also important to place frequently used letter keys centrally close to each other," said Dr Antti Oulasvirta of the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany, who
collaborated on the research.

The computational optimisation techniques used by the researchers assigned every vowel to the right thumb. The letter Y, which can be used as a vowel or a consonant, was assigned to the left thumb.
Combined with an error correction algorithm, trained KALQ users were able to reach 37 words per minute, the fastest typing rate ever reported for thumb typing on touchscreen devices.

Android smartphone and tablet owners will be able to download an app from the Google Play store to adopt the KALQ keyboard. It will not be available for iPhone or iPad, however, because Apple does not allow third parties to alter the iOS keyboard.

Saudi Arabia Stakes a Claim on the Nile.....

After draining four-fifths of its massive underground aquifer for unsustainable agriculture, the Saudi Kingdom turns to verdant Ethiopia

The cows appear on the horizon like a mirage. Drive about a hundred miles (160 kilometers) through the Arabian Desert southeast from Riyadh, and you will come across one of the world's largest herds of dairy cattle. Some 40,000 Friesian cows survive in one of the driest places on the planet, with temperatures regularly reaching 110°F (43°C).

The cows live in six giant air-conditioned sheds, shrouded in a mist that keeps them cool. They churn out 53 million gallons (200 million liters) of milk a year, which heads off down the highway in a constant stream of tankers.

Welcome to Al Safi, one of the world's largest and most improbable dairy farms, the creation of the late prince, Abdullah al Faisal, eldest son of Faisal, the Saudi king from 1964 to 1975. It is not alone in one of the largest bodies of sand in the world, more than three times the size of Texas. Down the road is the Almarai dairy farm, almost as big, the creation of a racehorse-breeding Saudi prince and his Irish chum, dairy magnate Alastair McGuickan.

Saudi Arabia's Glass Is Four-Fifths Empty

Anyone flying over Saudi Arabia today will see the desert dotted with cow sheds and huge circles of green, where crops to feed both the cows and Saudis are grown. The water to irrigate those fields, and cool those cows, does not come from rivers. There are no rivers. It comes from what was once one of the world's largest reserves of underground water. More than a mile beneath the sand, the water was laid down tens of thousands of years ago during the last ice age, when Arabia was wet.

The sheikhs of Saudi Arabia have been farming the desert in this way for 30 years, spending hundreds of billions of dollars of oil revenues to pursue their dream of self-sufficiency in food. The Saudi government has been paying farmers five times the international price for wheat, while charging nothing for the water, and providing virtually free electricity to pump that water to the surface. Fortunes have been made as the giant pivots green the desert, and cows graze in their mist-filled sheds.

 

 But now many of the pumps are being silenced and the spigots turned off. The Saudi government says wheat-growing must cease by 2016, and the water-cooled cow sheds may be abandoned soon after.

The water is running out.

The mirage of water in the desert, and of food self-sufficiency for a desert nation, is fading.

Forty years ago, when the farming started, there was a staggering 120 cubic miles (500 cubic kilometers) of water beneath the Saudi desert, enough to fill Lake Erie. But in recent years, up to five
cubic miles (20 cubic kilometers) has been pumped to the surface annually for use on the farms.

Virtually none of it is replaced by rainwater, because there is no appreciable rain.

Based on extraction rates detailed in a 2004 paper from the University of London, the Saudis were on track to use up at least 400 cubic kilometers of their aquifers by 2008. And so experts estimate that four-fifths of the Saudis' "fossil" water is now gone. One of the planet's greatest and oldest freshwater resources, in one of its hottest and most parched places, has been all but emptied in little more than a generation.

Parallel to the groundwater pumping for agriculture, Saudi Arabia has long used desalination of seawater to provide drinking water. But, even for the cash-rich Saudis, at about a dollar per 35 cubic feet (one cubic meter), the energy-intensive process is too expensive to be used for irrigation water.

But the Saudis have not abandoned their dream of growing their own food. If they no longer have water of their own, they are looking to someone else's. They are scouring the world for well-watered lands where their desert farmers can move to grow wheat, rice, and other crops that can be shipped home. But will their actions bring another tragedy, this time a human one as much as a hydrological one?

Grabbing the Headwaters of the Nile?

To find out, in mid-2011 I traveled some 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) south of Riyadh, across the Red Sea, to meet some poor Africans who say they are paying the price for the Saudi dream. They live in Gambela, the most impoverished corner of Ethiopia, at the headwaters of the Nile River, the world's longest. One of Ethiopia's nine kililoch (divisions), Gambela is a horn-shaped region that protrudes into South Sudan.

Here, amid the wet pastures and forests, unrest is brewing. Locals say the Saudis want their water.

I met Omot Ochan, a tall, dark-skinned member of the Anuak tribe, wearing combat shorts and sitting on an old waterbuck skin in a forest clearing. He was angry. He said the lush forests and marshlands where he and his ancestors have hunted for generations were being taken by Saudi Star, a company owned by one of Saudi Arabia's richest men, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Ali al Amoudi.

Yards from his hut, the company was digging a canal that Ochan said would drain the nearby wetland, where he fished. And nearby, al Amoudi's 24,711-acre (10,000-hectare) farm had taken over a reservoir built by Soviet engineers in the 1980s.

Government officials had told Ochan and hundreds of others that they had to move out of the forest and into government villages. Ostensibly the purpose was to provide better services, but Ochan believed the real reason was to clear the land for al Amoudi, a friend and sometime campaign financier of Ethiopia's prime minister at the time, Menes Zenawi.

Half an hour later, I drank tea in the shade of a huge mango tree with one tribal elder who spoke to me quietly about how he and his fellows had been forcibly moved from their fields. But he told me: "We have decided, each of us, that in the rainy season we will go back and cultivate our ancestral land. If they try and stop us, conflict will start."

And they were as good as their word. Months after my visit, in April this year, unnamed local gunmen invaded Saudi Star's company camp near the town of Abobo. They killed at least five workers. In an effort to root out the culprits, government soldiers allegedly went on a rampage in local villages, rounding up and torturing men and raping women.

The group Human Rights Watch interviewed some of those who fled to neighboring South Sudan afterward. The people said that their original raid was in retaliation for the company grabbing their land and water. A local churchman told me: "My son has gone but wants to come back and fight."

 

 Wildlife at Risk?
T
his may be a wildlife tragedy, too. The waters of Gambela are vital to millions of white-eared kob, antelopes that cross from South Sudan in the dry season in search of the open water and wetlands at the head of the Nile. These animals—along with a scattering of elephants, an endangered antelope called the Nile Lechwe, and the giant shoebill stork—were the main reason for the creation back in the 1970s of the Gambela National Park. But the park has not been fully secured and much of its land has been given to Saudi Star. The migrating animals now face tractors, canals, and fenced pastures.

All this for water? The Saudis are determined that they will continue to feed their own people. They have plenty of land, but no water. They fear that, without water, even their oil will not save them from a perilous future of food insecurity. As one senior Saudi official told me: "We cannot eat oil." So they are determined to buy foreign land that has access to plentiful water.

Asked about the Saudi Star water grab in Gambela earlier this year, the Saudi minister for agriculture, Fahd bin Abdulrahman Balghunaim, said: "I honestly never heard any complaint coming out of Africa. What I read were some articles written by foreign correspondents about things happening in Africa, which we did not see happening."

Saudi Star declined to comment for this article.

Courting Foreign Governments

The King Abdullah Initiative for Saudi Agricultural Investment Abroad, launched in 2008, is providing government credit and diplomatic support for Saudi companies buying up foreign land and water to feed Saudis. Schemes are under way from the banks of the Senegal River in West Africa to the rain forests of Indonesian New Guinea. In most deals, Saudi investors have generous access to water and the right to export at least 50 percent of the harvest back to Saudi Arabia.

Some host governments are happy with these terms. Ethiopia's Zenawi, who died in August, had an instant answer to those who criticized his largesse toward his Saudi friend. "We want to develop our land to feed ourselves, rather than admire the beauty of fallow fields while we starve," he said.

Fair enough. But a 2012 report from one of Africa's biggest banks, Standard Bank in South Africa, suggests he was wrong and that Saudi investments may be bad value for the continent. "For African countries courted by Saudi agribusiness firms, a clear appreciation of the value of the asset on which they rest is necessary," it said. "Under-selling of agricultural assets (both land and, perhaps more critically, water) remains a profound threat."

Ochan and his fellows in the forest say they agree with that.

European cooperation in North Sea Power to Gas Platform for future energy storage system.....

A European consortium of 11 leading companies have established the North Sea Power to Gas Platform, to further develop the concept of Power-to-Gas (P2G) – the conversion of renewable electrical power into a gaseous energy carrier like hydrogen or methane.

Power-to-Gas (P2G) will play an increasingly important role in the future energy system, as it reduces temporary surpluses of renewable power by converting them into gases. P2G has considerable potential, as these gases can be used for different purposes such as transportation, domestic heating, feedstock for the chemical industry, and in power generation.

‘The establishment of the North Sea Power to Gas Platform is an important step in the transition towards a sustainable energy system,’ says Lukas Grond, P2G expert at DNV KEMA and secretary of the Platform. ‘I am pleased that this group of reputed companies has joined forces to bring this technology a step further into the global energy market.’

The Platform is an initiative of energy consulting and testing & certification company DNV KEMA, and includes Fluxys and Hydrogenics in Belgium; Energinet.dk and Maersk Oil in Denmark; Alliander, Gasunie and TenneT in the Netherlands; ITM Power and National Grid in the UK; and Open Grid Europe in Germany.

The share of electricity from renewable sources in the European electricity mix is increasing. As power generation from wind and solar fluctuates, the match between renewable power supply and demand is becoming more challenging. At the same time, there are additional challenges in transmitting the increasing amounts of renewable power from wind or solar farms to end-users.

The good news is that the gas infrastructure can accommodate large amounts of electricity converted into gas, in the case that the supply of renewable power is larger than the grid capacity or electricity demand. As a result, P2G enables the share of renewables in the energy mix to increase, making this innovation an important topic in achieving a carbon-neutral gas supply by 2050.

P2G is of particular interest for the North Sea region, since its onshore and offshore natural gas infrastructure is well developed. In addition, the combined generating capacity of offshore wind farms in the North Sea could reach around 100 GW by 2030. And the solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity installed in the countries surrounding the North Sea is expected to increase from 35 GW in 2012 to almost 60 GW in 2020.

The North Sea Power to Gas Platform is a joint body, based on an integrated network of stakeholders, that aims to further develop the concept of P2G in the countries surrounding the North Sea. The Platform is collaborating with the European Gas Research Group (GERG), the Mediterranean Power2Gas Platform (currently being established), as well as shipping companies, NGOs, utilities, energy technology providers, Transmission System Operators, and Distribution System Operators.

A year ago ITM Power announced the GridGas project, working with National Grid and others to investigate the feasibility of injecting hydrogen generated from electrolysis fed from excess renewables into the UK’s gas networks. And Hydrogenics is working with Enbridge in Canada to develop utility-scale energy storage via hydrogen in gas grids.

Entrepreneurs Fight for the Future of Fish—Beginning With the Bottom Line......

Sea to Table is a boutique distributor working with small fishermen such as the one pictured, and is one of the many small businesses working toward seafood sustainability with the support of Future of Fish

Future of Fish is a nonprofit that is helping entrepreneurs who hope to reinvent the seafood industry by attacking problems throughout the long supply chains used by today's industrialized fisheries.
"We hope to change incentives for behavior in the industry so it's no longer profitable to overfish and to fish non-sustainably," founder Cheryl Dahle explained. "And we're looking to reward sustainable behavior with a better price."

The effort begins with making information more available, properly identifying fish, and tracking it all the way from sea to plate. Today's consumers have little idea where, when, or how most of their fish was caught. In fact, genetic studies show they often don't even know what kind of fish they are really buying.

"Estimates vary but some 30 to 70 percent of the fish sold in the United States is mislabeled," Dahle said. "If fish is mislabeled you don't have a real choice to eat the right kind of fish. Until the marketplace becomes transparent you can't value fish for where it came from or how it was caught—and those are two main pillars of sustainability."

At the same time, many popular fish species like orange roughy and bluefin tuna have collapsed under fishing pressure. Some studies suggest that today's populations of large ocean fish are at just 10 percent of their preindustrial levels. Some scientists warn that all fisheries could be in collapse by 2050.

However, many fish populations have shown an ability to rebound if they are managed. Tough regulations often encounter pushback, but Future of Fish hopes to drive adoption by making them better for business. "Our approach is not a substitute for policy changes," Dahle said. "But we're trying to re-engineer the incentives through the ways fish are traded every day."

Improving Supply Chains

Future of Fish's entrepreneurial partners work with processors and distributors to improve sustainable practices, both for frozen fish and fresh.

"The truth is that fresh is not a regulated term," Dahle added. "It's defined as not frozen or smoked, but fresh is in the nose of the salesman. Often what you are buying as fresh fish may be 30 days old.

If people knew more about fish distribution they would understand the value of buying fish that was landed just days before they eat it as opposed to weeks."

One company Dahle works with is using tag technology to track the temperature of fish as it moves through the supply chain, to better monitor quality—this is especially important when it comes to sushi-grade products.

"Once you have tracking technology imbedded in fish you also have a perfect traceability chain," Dahle added. "Was this tuna part of a catch using fish aggregating devices? Was it caught legally? You can start to track some of these things that really matter for sustainability."

Consumer Buy-In

Dahle is confident that many consumers are concerned enough about the health of our oceans to pay a premium for sustainably caught product. But she also stresses that, once they are being rewarded, such practices can spread throughout the larger seafood market as well.

"Not all coffee is Fair Trade, but the advent of Fair Trade has changed and improved the practices of a much larger portion of the supply chain, including large buyers like Dunkin' Donuts," said Dahle. "The premium, sustainable market doesn't have to be the largest percentage of the market to have a big influence."

But the sustainable market does have plenty of room for growth, she added, which could mean less pressure on ailing fish stocks.

"There is no reason why you can't take [sustainably caught] Alaskan salmon, and portion it properly and sell it at a price point that can be served in a fish taco," Dahle said. "It's absolutely possible to do sustainable, affordable fish."