A comprehensive analysis published by AstroTurf experts on turf field safety identifies several critical factors that separate premium synthetic surfaces from standard installations.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.Â
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.Â
A comprehensive analysis published by AstroTurf experts on turf field safety identifies several critical factors that separate premium synthetic surfaces from standard installations.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.Â
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.Â
A comprehensive analysis published by AstroTurf experts on turf field safety identifies several critical factors that separate premium synthetic surfaces from standard installations.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.Â
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.Â
A comprehensive analysis published by AstroTurf experts on turf field safety identifies several critical factors that separate premium synthetic surfaces from standard installations.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.Â
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.Â
A comprehensive analysis published by AstroTurf experts on turf field safety identifies several critical factors that separate premium synthetic surfaces from standard installations.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.Â
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.Â
A comprehensive analysis published by AstroTurf experts on turf field safety identifies several critical factors that separate premium synthetic surfaces from standard installations.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.Â
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.Â
A comprehensive analysis published by AstroTurf experts on turf field safety identifies several critical factors that separate premium synthetic surfaces from standard installations.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.Â
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.Â
A comprehensive analysis published by AstroTurf experts on turf field safety identifies several critical factors that separate premium synthetic surfaces from standard installations.
Opioid drugs including oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl have fueled an ever-worsening epidemic in the US. And after giant events in New Orleans they are popping up in the wastewater.Â
Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled.Â
At 7am on Tuesday, a frightful explosion rocked Luxor, where ancient Egyptian antiquities draw scores of tourists each year. The blast that engulfed a hot air balloon in mid air was heard and felt several kilometers away. One Egyptian and 18 foreign tourists are said to have died and the Civil Aviation Minister told Reuters that a committee is en route to the scene to investigate whether this accident that could have been prevented.
With everything else, this Hamat gader croc may have to put up with oil well drilling as well
The Golan Heights, that disputed piece of real estate that Israel captured from Syria in 1967 is returning to world attention due to the possibility that there are oil and natural gas reserves in its southern sector. Until now, energy ideas dealing with the Golan have mainly evolved around renewable energy projects like a 155 megawatt wind farm which Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu once referred to as a “national project.”  The “Heights” have also been considered a good location for solar energy projects. Proposed solar energy projects there even raised the question of whether wind turbines might be “taking a back seat to solar power” on the Golan.Â
Six-month-old Muhannad Al-Zaben is already a celebrity among Palestinians, the so-called “Freedom Ambassador”. He is the result of smuggled sperm his father Ammar transferred to his mother Dalal during a prison visit in 2006. Now a Palestinian fertility specialist says four other Palestinian women have become pregnant using similar secret methods, as security prisoners and their wives find a way to become parents while the father is still behind bars.
If you’ve got a jar of tahini going stale in the fridge, you’re missing out on all kinds of delicious flavor combinations that can make your meals special. As earthy as tahini is (or as we say in the Middle East, techinah) the semi-solid paste brightens up with lemon, garlic, herbs and spices. It’s great as a dip, but here are some new and surprising ways to eat tehini.
Halvah lovers know that tahini has a sweet face too. We recently enjoyed a light dessert created by chef Moshe Basson of Jerusalem, who squirted alternating threads of tahini and silan date honey onto a plate to form a pretty pattern and a delicious treat.
And if you’ve never baked our tehini cookies, well, you’re in for a delightful surprise.
Tahini has a particular affinity for eggplant. Dining in the Middle East, you’ll enjoy salads like Baba Ganoush (recipe below). And a simple grilled eggplant drizzled with olive oil becomes a feast with a good dollop of tahini on the side. Chopped tomatoes and herbs round the dish out, and then all you need is good bread or a hot pita.
How to make tehini as a dip:
You’ll want to brighten your tahini with lemon juice, a little crushed garlic, salt, and if you like, a little cayenne. Thin it to your liking with water – but beware: when first adding water, it looks like it won’t incorporate. Then all of a sudden, your tahini paste has gone liquid. Add water slowly, stopping once you’re satisfied with the taste and texture.
Now that you have seasoned tahini, try drizzling it over these hot dishes, just before serving:
grilled fish
grilled kebabs, either meat or vegetable skewers
quinoa pilaf
A typical Middle Eastern way of serving lamb kebabs is to surround them with humus and drizzle tahini over them.
Tahini seasoned as above makes a fine, simple dip for raw vegetable sticks.
Can you do anything with the floating layer of oil in a fresh jar of tahini? Sure. Skim it off and use instead of peanut oil in stir- fries. You don’t need much to add a subtle, nutty flavor to the dish.
Tahini substitutes for peanut butter in many recipes. Consider making your next smoothie creamy with a teaspoon or two of plain tahini.
Savory sweet, tahini adds a healthy dose of minerals, especially calcium, to your daily fare. It is rich, but sesame oil, unlike many other fats, has no cholesterol. So get that poor jar out of the fridge and put it to work for you.
Besides the really terrible ew factor, the consequences for the environment are as equally yuck: the Egyptian army is looking to stall and stop Gazan smugglers from digging tunnels from the Gaza Strip to Egypt’s Sinai have found a new and dirty way to flush out smugglers: they are pouring raw sewage into the underground tunnels. Leaders in Gaza are trying to figure out how this tactic bodes for future relations with the Islamic leaders in Egypt.
A Dubai neighborhood that is undergoing a dedicated urban densification plan, Al Quoz may have recently welcomed the first “largest LEED Platinum Government Building,” but it won’t be the last to claim this distinction.
“Sustainable Building” is the new 340, 000 square foot headquarters for a branch of the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) and reportedly the first in the United Arab Emirates to have achieved LEED Platinum, reports Khaleej Times.Â
So when students from the University of Engineering & Technology (UTEC) sought a creative solution to water scarcity as part of a campaign called “Ingenuity in Action,” they found a way to turn these two lemons into clean drinking water  with a billboard that sucks moisture from the air.
Take some guys interested in cutting edge technology and add a dash of old-fashioned capitalism and sometimes amazing alchemy results: That teamwork just happened in Lima, where collaboration between Peru’s University of Engineering and Technology and advertising agency Mayo DraftFCB resulted in the world’s first billboard that converts air into drinking water.
The brilliant billboard was erected in Peru’s rain-starved desert capital city. (Parched Jordan, the world’s fourth most water-starved nation, would be wise to replicate the project along our miles of highways for a gentle alternative to desalination.)
Green Prophet’s brought you news of domestic devices like the atmospheric water generators (AWGs) that produce drinking water via humidity extraction. And we’ve talked about creating fresh water from the condensation created by air conditioners. This billboard takes that technology to a grander scale, essentially milking the local atmosphere and turning polluted desert air into drinkable water.
Located in a coastal desert, Lima gets less than an inch of annual rainfall, but the city’s humidity hovers around 98 percent. The billboard converts harvested humidity into purified water by processing it through filters and a condenser, all integral to the sign structure. The purified water collects in 20-liter tanks located at ground level for easy collection. Locals are attracted to base taps by a neon display that reads “Agua aqui”.
The structure is expected to generate upwards of 25 gallons (96 liters) of water per day for the neighboring community. In the past three months it’s produced 9,450 liters of drinking water, capacity to sustain hundreds of families each month. Green Prophet raises a glass (of cool, clean water) to the clever folks behind the Aqua Billboard, hopefully coming to a roadside near you.
Before Green Prophet signed up for iContact, a fee-based email marketing email newsletter company, we tried to do it on our own. It was a mess and a dazzling disaster.
Emails we sent out didn’t get delivered or were marked as spam; we lost formatting options using our own template, and basically it was just a general disaster which was frustrating, and worse –– time consuming. Inefficient.
If there’s something that the Israelis do as well as or even better than clean tech, it is agriculture. When the state was established in the mid 20th century, the first pioneers faced large swaths of dry and barren land. It is part of the country’s legacy that they then proceeded to transform this wasteland into fields of green that still thrive today.
SHaGa Studio from The Netherlands collaborated with Israel’s Auerbach Halevy Architects to design a sustainable education campus in Ramat Efal called Fields of Knowledge. The concept, which received second place in an international design competition, celebrates these agricultural roots with a series of linear “knowledge fields” that incorporate a variety of strategies to conserve energy, water and space.
The MUV-e folding e-scooter from Israel can be personalized, linked to your smart phone, carried with you on the bus and stored in small apartments without taking much space. Estimated cost about $2000.
Urban transportation has recently taken on new and innovative forms, which include gliding along on electric skates, and surfing city sidewalks on various types of electric powered scooters. An electric powered unicycle, the U3-X being developed by Honda, even travel sideways. For those who commute daily into large cities by way of buses, trains, or subways, an even newer and fully portable transportation device is now being worked on that can be literally taken with them to work.
Reuse your tea bags in multiple ways. In this guide we use simple, black tea and herbal teas where stated.Â
Like our popular guide on reusing air conditioner water, old tea bags ? … that’s easy. As an avid tea drinker, I was intrigued when I stumbled upon a variety of sources that promoted the eco-friendly use of tea bags, outside the teacup. Arthur W. Pinero, an Englishman, of course, said, “Where there’s tea, there’s hope.” That’s definitely true. Brewed tea bags can provide a pick-me-up in ways you’d least expect. Here are 13 of them. You can use tea…
1. As a cold compress.
Got tired eyes, bruises, or sunburn? Bee stings or mosquito bites? Did your child just get a shot at the doctor’s but the free lollipop wasn’t consolation enough? Apply a cool, moist tea bag made from black tea to these kinds of affected areas on the skin to get soothing relief and quicker healing.
2. As a hot compress.
Trying to get rid of pinkeye, canker sores or fever blisters? Or maybe a plantar wart smack dab in the middle of the sole of your right foot? Warm, wet tea bags can draw out the infections.
3. To clean your carpets.
For more delicate, Persian or Oriental carpets, sprinkle almost-dry tea leaves on the carpet, and then sweep them away when dry. Tea leaves on more heavy-duty carpets can be vacuumed.
4. To take a flavored bath.
Treat your skin as you would your taste buds, in the bathtub. Give your bath salts a run for their money by running the bath water over several used tea bags. You’ll have yourself an aromatic, skin-softening soak in no time.
5. To feed your garden.
Cultivate your healthy plants and bring your dying ones back to life by breaking open a soaked tea bag and disseminating the contents over the soil. Roses and ferns do especially well with the acidic tannins found in black tea.
Don’t have a garden? Add the used tea leaves to your enrich your compost pile – and if you don’t have that, make one. (Remember to take the staples out of the tea bag, if there are any.)
6. To eliminate odors around the house.
Put dried tea leaves in your garbage can and your kitten’s litter box. They’ll also suck up food odors when stuck in a bowl in the fridge. And combine them with your favorite essential oils to make all-natural air fresheners.
Odors might also be closer than you think: especially if you’ve been handling fish, your hands might smell…fishy. Rinse your hands with old tea. As for your mouth and all that bad-breath bacteria, skip the shocking Listerine and go for a gentle mint tea mouth rinse.
7. To give your locks some love.
Tea acts as a sort of leave-in conditioner: Make your dry hair shiny by rinsing your hair with unsweetened tea. Leave your head alone to dry, then rinse out the tea. This works well in areas with hard water.
8. To polish your wooden floors.
You might need to amass quite a few tea bags for this one. Mop your wooden floors with brewed tea, and while you’re at it, shine up some furniture, too.
9. To say goodbye to greasy dishes.
Whatever it may be that is caked onto your plates from dinner, do not fear. Soak the dishes in hot water with a few brewed tea bags. The more the grease, the more time will be needed to break it down; soaking the pile overnight is recommended.
10. To recreate potpourri.
Rarely do used tea bags lose their scent completely. Dry out your favorite teas (any kinds will do) and add the leaves to potpourri; they’ll blend right in, aesthetically and also in form. After all, potpourri is made of dried fruit peels, herb leaves, flowers, and spices.
11. To replace Windex.
Maybe your kids had their hands all over the windows, or maybe the glass is just dusty. Make them sparkle by rubbing a damp teabag over them or applying brewed tea from a spray bottle, then wiping it away with a cloth.
12. To discover your inner Michelangelo.
Artists have started to use strong black teas to paint backgrounds or accentuate black-and-white sketches.
and my favorite…
13. To make flavored rice.
When cooking rice, add your used herbal tea bags to the water to allow a new, mild flavor to permeate throughout. Jasmine tea, one of my personal favorites, is a great choice for rice-flavoring.
After steeping a tea bag two or more times (because once is never enough) to enjoy my favorite hot drink, I always felt bad tossing it. Knowing now of brewed tea bags’ reusability, I’ll be able to leave the leaves out of the trash for a little while longer.
Mountaineer Omar Samra posted a photo on his Facebook page of him posing with Egyptian triathlete Omar Nour. Theirs is a match made in sporting heaven. Samra went from a hectic career in finance to being the first Egyptian to reach the top of Mt. Everest. (He also strives to be the first Egyptian in space.) Nour went from hitting 230 pounds while starting a telecommunications business to training to become the first triathlete from Egypt to make it to the Olympics. The story starts in Cairo.
New underwater photos from five different locations around the Gulf of Izmir confirm that life is returning to the once-blighted water.
The gulf was used as an open sewer system from the 1960s until 2000, when the city of Izmir initiated the Big Gulf Project to clean it up. Those efforts are paying off, according to observations collected by the Marine Sciences and Technology Institute of Turkey’s Dokuz Eylül University (DEU) in a newly released report, according to the Turkish paper Hürriyet Daily News.
Even though, perversely for a landscape photographer, I tend to seek out uglier-than-average places, this possibly wins the prize for one of the least glamorous locations I’ve photographed. It’s a very sizable field of human excrement on the road from Sharjah to Dhaid in the United Arab Emirates.
It’s part of the excellent work being done by Beeah, Sharjah’s award-winning waste management company. This drying field is one of the early stages in their process of converting sewage into valuable compost. The commodity is eventually resold into the local market at 11 Dirhams (or $3) a kilo. Not a bad price for a pile of ….
Note from the editor: this photograph is the second in a series called “Consumption” that seeks to document consumerism’s impact on the environment. From resource extraction and commodity production all the way down the supply chain to retail stores and waste processing facilities, Richard artfully examines what nature has come to mean in a world that depends on buying stuff.
At 7am on Tuesday, a frightful explosion rocked Luxor, where ancient Egyptian antiquities draw scores of tourists each year. The blast that engulfed a hot air balloon in mid air was heard and felt several kilometers away. One Egyptian and 18 foreign tourists are said to have died and the Civil Aviation Minister told Reuters that a committee is en route to the scene to investigate whether this accident that could have been prevented.
