http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Earth_Continents_Middle-East_18_197_685.html Press Review of the Earth from the most relevant websites. Keep in touch with the Earth and your future ! fr-FR http://www.earth-stream.com/logo-stream-Earth.png http://www.earth-stream.com Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:22:05 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Happy-Lesser-Bairam-to-Egypt_18_197_685_134654.html Parks and beaches opened its doors since early morning to welcome visitors and the good weather as well as moderate temperature help people to spend a nice time. Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:26:44 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Demographic-Parameters-of-Yellowfin-Croaker-Umbrina-Roncador-Perciformes-Sciaenidae-From-the-Southern-California-Bight1_18_197_685_134367.html By Pondella, Daniel J II Froeschke, John T; Wetmore, Lynne S; Miller, Eric; Valle, Charles F; Medeiros, Lea Abstract: The yellowfin croaker, Umbrina roncador Jordan & Gilbert, 1882, is a common nearshore and surf-zone species in the southern California bight. Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:26:42 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Breaded-Fish-Fillet_18_197_685_134358.html By Brown, Jordana GOAL: Getting lean WHEN TO EAT IT: For dinner during a get-lean phase INGREDIENTS: * Olive oil * 1 egg * 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese * Shake of garlic salt * Shake of Italian seasoning * 8 oz. Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:00:42 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Cucumbers-on-the-23rd-floor-_18_197_685_134306.html Imagine strolling a few steps in your underwear to pick fresh tomatoes from the garden, without ever leaving your apartment. All that and more in an urban desert, no less. Israeli architectural firm Knafo-Klimor recently won an international competition for their design of a modern apartment building that incorporates interior gardens into its residential units. The high-rise has 4 columns, the exterior two consisting of standard living spaces, while the two interior form contiguous, vertical gardens, attached to each individual apartment. Engineering tricks allow for sunlight and heat to enter through the windows and create greenhouse conditions, while also blocking them in summer, reducing air-conditioning needs. Given that the gardens are elevated and interior, fewer insects wander in, hence less call for pesticide. Purified gray water from the residences and rain water drawn from the roof are collected for automated irrigation, allowing for virtually fuss-free gardens. Basically, plant seeds, watch them grow, and enjoy. Aside from the gardens, the residential areas themselves leave a clean conscience, as the buildings will generate most of their own electricity and water. The whole structure aims to use green residential technology to the fullest, thusly maximum self-sufficiency with minimal impact. Thu, 02 Oct 2008 06:59:31 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Greenest-City-in-the-World-to-be-Masdar-City-in-United-Arab-Emirates_18_197_685_134305.html The world’s most ambitious “eco-city” has broke ground in the United Arab Emirates. Masdar City will be a  zero-waste, zero-carbon community powered by renewable energy. All garbage will be recycled, and inhabitants will grow organic produce. The first residents, 100 alternative energy postgrads at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, who will move in September 2009. Via: Plenty Image: Foster and Partners Wed, 01 Oct 2008 23:34:32 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Why-Van-Jones-should-be-Obama-s-Secretary-of-Prosperity_18_197_685_134132.html In his new book to be released next week, Van Jones lays out a sensible roadmap to solve our long-term economic problems. How? By making sustainability the centerpiece of a national renewal. And, if we justify spending hundreds of billions on an economic solution no one completely understands, why can’t we make it an even greater priority to create a sustainable economy that will last us the next thousand years? Let me start with the obvious: these are some wild times. Since this whole financial mess began to unfold, we’ve learned a lot about what’s possible. Although I knew how much we’ve borrowed to pay for the Iraq war, I never really understood that we could just up and borrow upwards of a trillion dollars in one fell swoop. Ever since I became aware of the possibility, I’ve been telling people that Obama should hit back. “$700B? Why not borrow a trillion and solve our energy dependence, and fix health care to boot?” Of course, that was before the bailout bill failed in the House. As we face the potential for a new depression, along with the potential stresses caused by global climate change, possibly the greatest immediate need we have is for people to show us Americans the difference between what we know the present looks like and what we know is possible. Faced with a national hopelessness during the (first?) Great Depression, FDR was masterful at connecting our greatest problems to our greatest opportunities in speeches like his 1933 inaugural address: Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accompanied in part by direct recruiting by the government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our national resources. Barack Obama has been almost FDR-like at inspiring people to believe at a gut level that in ... Wed, 01 Oct 2008 21:47:44 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/It-s-the-Oil-Shale-Stupid_18_197_685_134110.html Today, a long-standing ban on the commercial development of oil shale on federal lands expired. That means America is now on the edge of an abyss, about to take the plunge into an endless fossil future. The steady march toward this awful future of extended oil addiction is a fact hidden in plain view. It is a march being aided and abetted by half a billion dollars of oil and coal lobby money, by the recent votes of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and by a media more lap dog than watchdog. Though unintended, even all the campaign talk about a clean energy economy is serving to obscure this clear and present danger. Oil shale is one of the dirtiest fossil fuels known to man. Its extraction releases two to five times more greenhouse gases than conventional crude oil, and uses vast amounts of water. In Western lands where oil shale deposits are abundant, water is already in scarce supply. America's energy and climate future will be determined by what the nation decides to do with its deposits of oil shale. There are as much as 1.8 trillion barrels of oil locked up in shale deposits in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. There's more oil in the shale than there ever was in Saudi Arabia. It's value? More than half a trillion dollars. It's the most important energy issue there is, and no one is talking about it. Here's what you have to do to extract oil shale. Oil workers start by constructing a five foot thick wall around a 1000-foot square foot cube of the Earth. They drill deep holes into the cube at 25 foot intervals and insert massive electric heating coils. The coils are turned on and left on continuously for two or more years at 650 degrees F. Finally, the oil slides out of the shale. You've heard of electric cars? This is electric oil. If oil shale gets developed, the nation and the globe will be sent on a path to an endless fossil future and a steep acceleration of global warming pollution. Forget clean energy. It will be lights out, game over ... Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:03:48 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Ancient-skulls-buried-in-U-K-back-in-Egypt_18_197_685_134002.html Two ancient skulls unearthed in an English yard have been returned to Egypt and the mystery of how they got from Egypt's hot sands to the rainy north of England has been solved, investigators said yesterday. Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:23:20 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/NextWave-Closes-Israel-Subsidiary_18_197_685_133909.html US-based NextWave Wireless has announced plans to close its Israel-based subsidiary Go Networks as part of its global restructuring efforts. Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:29:52 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Did-Pirates-Seize-Ship-With-Iranian-WMD-_18_197_685_133772.html By Joseph Abrams courtesy As Somali pirates brazenly maintain their standoff with American warships off the coast of Africa, the cargo aboard one Iranian ship they commandeered is raising concerns that it may contain materials that can be used for chemical or biological weapons. Wed, 01 Oct 2008 01:32:38 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Climate-Change-and-the-Presidential-Debate-The-Topic-that-Dare-Not-Speak-its-Name_18_197_685_133718.html All eyes were fixed on Oxford, Mississippi, this past Friday where, after a week of tumultuous activity on Wall Street and Capitol Hill, the University of Mississippi was set to host the first presidential debate between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain. The debate had been in limbo until that morning after McCain abruptly decided to suspend his campaign on Wednesday in order to return to Washington and take part in the discussions over Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s $700 billion bailout plan – this despite his lacking a leadership position on the Senate Finance Committee and professing to have a rudimentary knowledge of economics, at best. Ironically, a tentative deal that had been hammered out by Senate and House leaders collapsed soon after his arrival. One humiliating volte-face later – with a bipartisan consensus on the plan still nowhere in sight – and the debate was back on. Given the ill winds buffeting the nation’s finances, the debate’s moderator, PBS anchor Jim Lehrer, kicked things off with several questions about the contentious bailout plan and the candidates’ own economic policies. Both candidates offered their usual sets of bromides in support of Main Street: McCain pledging to stamp out pork-barrel spending and to reorganize the government’s priorities while Obama promised to cut taxes for the middle class and to push a set of reforms that would impose more stringent regulation on Wall Street financiers. Neither seemed particularly willing to fully embrace the pending bailout – each going only so far as to express cautious optimism about its eventual resolution – despite Lehrer’s many entreaties on the subject. The candidates regained their footing once the discussion shifted to national security and foreign policy, with each laying out a starkly different set of priorities for the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama and McCain engaged in oft heated verbal fisticuffs – the Democratic nominee accusing McCain of ... Wed, 01 Oct 2008 01:29:56 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Spanish-SEAT-Brisa-Is-Solar-Powered-Two-Seater_18_197_685_133717.html Spanish car company SEAT (Sociedad Espanola de Automoviles de Turismo) has a solar-powered, three-wheeled two-seater for the eco-crowd: the Brisa (Breeze). The design concept is credited to Miguel Ángel Iranzo Sánchez, while the inspiration for the sleek, fluid design is said to come from the designer’s love of flamenco and the sea. Source: Environmental Graffiti Image: SEAT Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:16:58 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Tata-Communications-and-Batelco-Extend-MPLS-Network-to-Middle-East_18_197_685_133611.html India-based Tata Communications has extended its MPLS network into the Middle East through a partnership with Bahrain Telecommunications Company. Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:36:14 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Harris-Corporation-Highband-Networking-Radios-Selected-By-U-S-Army-for-First-Battlefield-Deployment-of-System-to-Iraq_18_197_685_133498.html MELBOURNE, Fla., Sept. 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Harris Corporation , an international communications and information technology company, announced today that its Highband Networking Radio(TM) system will be deployed to the U.S. Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:21:13 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Absolute-Madness_18_197_685_133421.html Arable farmer Geoff Buckle is proud to farm some of East Yorkshire's most productive land. There is nothing more rewarding for him than harvesting bumper crops of wheat, barley, peas and oilseed rape. Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:47:10 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Carbon-markets-A-flare-for-credits_18_197_685_133341.html The Middle East has been slow to cash in on cutting emissions. That is now changing. Projects to cut greenhouse gas emissions should be big business in the Middle East, as they are in other emerging markets such as China, because of the Kyoto protocol. Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:41:00 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Increase-Collaboration-Within-Pdf-Files_18_197_685_133329.html By Tudor, Emily K Jordan, John M Adobe Systems introduces Adobe Acrobat 9 software, an upgrade designed to transform the process of creating and sharing electronic documents. Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:12:02 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Absolute-Madness-Arable-Farmer-Geoff-Buckle-is-Proud-to-Farm-Some-of-East-Yorkshire-s-Most-Productive-Land-_18_197_685_133275.html Arable farmer Geoff Buckle is proud to farm some of East Yorkshire's most productive land. There is nothing more rewarding for him than harvesting bumper crops of wheat, barley, peas and oilseed rape. Tue, 30 Sep 2008 06:22:53 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Charles-Ferguson-Beware-of-New-Easy-to-Make-Nukes_18_197_685_133263.html In the past, malefactors seeking to enrich uranium to bomb-grade quality needed either a highly conspicuous industrial plant or specialized equipment that was hard to obtain and relatively easy to monitor. But there's a new method on the horizon, and it's potentially far easier to hide. For the past four years, Charles Ferguson has been tracking the progress of a technology known as laser isotope separation. Still experimental, it requires only a warehouse-sized space and the kind of lasers within reach of a high school science geek. "The A. Q. Khan network is old-school," Ferguson says, referring to the Pakistani scientist who sold bomb secrets to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. "The next Khan network could use this new technique." WMD experts often overlook laser enrichment because it's not yet productive enough for industrial use. That's a serious mistake. In 2002, dissidents exposed laser experiments in Iran; at least a dozen other countries are known to have dabbled in the technique. Bottom line: The US needs to develop its own small-scale laser-enrichment operations, which it could study to learn more about the telltale signs of illicit setups. For example, key equipment used for the faux projects could then be flagged for additional monitoring. If authorities can learn to track these small-scale operations, they have a decent chance of bringing the clandestine potential of laser uranium enrichment in from the cold. Bomb Factories Uranium enrichment facilities are getting smaller—and easier to hide.   Gaseous Diffusion This Cold War-era method of enriching uranium is expensive and difficult to conceal. It consumes large amounts of energy (which can be monitored easily) and requires industrial facilities of several acres, almost always conspicuous in satellite imagery.   Gas Centrifuge Separation This process takes less space and energy than diffusion but poses other inconveniences to would-be proliferators. Few manufacturers are capab ... Tue, 30 Sep 2008 03:43:55 GMT http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Continents/Middle-East/Scotland-to-Pioneer-Tidal-EFarmse_18_197_685_133213.html It seems that Scotland, with its windy coasts and seaside cliffs, is the Saudi Arabia of… tidal power. ScottishPower Renewables wants to turn that power into clean electricity. According to its director, Keith Anderson, Scotland has 25% of Europe’s tidal resources and 10% of its wave potential. By building 20 underwater turbines in various locations off the Scottish coast, ScottishPower Renewables hopes to generate 60 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 40,000 homes or provide at least a third of Scotland’s energy demand. The tidal farms will be consist of Norwegian-made turbines called “Lànstrøm devices”. These look like underwater turbines (see picture above), and have been extensively tested in Norway. The 20 meter blades will reach no higher than ten meters below the surface; not that anyone will be allowed to travel through the waters above, of course. And the blades move slow enough so as not to endanger the local marine wildlife. The prognosis is quite good. ScottishPower Renewables says that these farms could be operational by 2011. One of the benefits of tidal power over, say, wind power is that the former is extremely predictable whereas the latter has been oft criticized for its unpredictable nature. However, let’s not forget that tidal power projects sometimes do not work as planned. Take, for example, Verdant Power, the company that tried to put turbines in New York City’s East River. Their turbines broke down, though they are giving it another go. In other international turbine news, Israeli company S.D.E. Energy has signed a contract to build an undisclosed number of one megawatt wave power stations for China. Check out the rest of that story here. Via Scotsman Image via New Energy Focus