Turkish Cabinet Invokes Wartime Law To Seize Property For Hydro Projects

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The more than 20 hydroelectric projects that Turkey has built on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers have been sharply criticized for displacing populations and harming the local environment. Now it’s even easier for hydro companies to build destructive dams in Turkey. Real estate for 13 different hydroelectric projects in 12 provinces can now be seized […]

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Qatar Eco-Summit Spotlights Environmental Safety

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8th annual Health, Safety and Environment Forum in Energy happens in Doha from October 8 -10 Accidents associated with oil and gas operations endanger human life, damage adjacent communities and threaten the environment. The shockwaves of these accidents affect the business involved and its workers, and extend far beyond.  Millions of dollars are spent annually […]

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Nuclear Updates from Jordan, Egypt and the UAE

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From growing protests in Jordan and Egypt to the first ever approved plant in UAE – we have the latest on nuclear from the region Jordan’s nuclear ambitions, which have faced a particularly rocky time over the years, encounters more drawbacks. Not only was the nuclear programme declared ‘hazardous and costly’ by a parliamentary committee […]

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Novel-tee Charges Your Phone, Someday

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Charging our clothes to credit cards is nothing new.  Now our clothes may be doing the charging. Scientists at the University of South Carolina (USC) have devised a way to turn the material in a cotton T-shirt into a source of electrical power. They envision a future where electronics are part of our wardrobe. A […]

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Biofuel from Plastic for this Young Egyptian Scientist from Alexandria

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Azza Abdel Hamid Faiad was the winner of the 2011 European Union Contest for Young Scientists for finding a new way of turning plastic into biofuel. A sixteen-year-old Egyptian student, Azza Abdel Hamid Faiad from the Zahran Language School in Alexandria has identified a new low-cost catalyst which can generate biofuel by breaking down plastic waste. The idea of breaking down […]

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Leap-second Bug Consumes Megawatts of Electricity

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Was it the leap-second bug that pushed America’s power plants beyond their capacity? A 61 second minute was added to clocks around the world on June 30, 2012 at 23:59:60 UTC in order to compensate for slight variations in earth’s rotation speed.  This triggered a number of software bugs one of which caused a spike […]

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Google Resorts to Going Green With Trash Talk

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Gmail offers recycling tips. Apparently, they’ve been doing this for years. What rock have I been under? I was doing some email spring cleaning during an especially snooze-inducing conference call, and there in my Gmail Trash file, up popped a random recycling tip.  Newspapers can be reused as wrapping paper for gifts. I’ve been painting the New York […]

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Jordan Gets REEL About Renewables

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Jordan’s nuclear industry is wildly volatile, especially when you consider it doesn’t actually exist. Arwa reported on last week’s parliamentary vote to shelve Jordan’s first nuclear reactor. Exploratory mining for uranium was also stopped. The program will surely resurrect once new feasibility analyses are complete, but against a backdrop of a pressurized economy, scarce water […]

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