MIT researchers say that soon all we’ll need to harvest our vast solar resource is grass and stabilizing powder. While Masdar and Suntech and other solar energy projects are laboring under expensive, high-tech materials in order to improve their energy-absorbing capability, MIT researchers in the United States are taking a different approach: using grass. (No, […]
Next Wednesday activists will hold a public forum to democratically demand access to the Horsh Beirut urban park. In 1696, the Horsh Beirut Pine forest used to be as large as 1,250,000 square meters but the Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans, and World War II allies each took their turn plundering its timber in order to build ships and weapons. Further damage […]
A powerful short film by Iranian-Canadian filmmaker Raha Shirazi, Acqua will make you look at water with new eyes. Raha Shirazi’s film Acqua is almost guaranteed to make you never take water for granted again. In it, a woman walks through snow in search of water with a jar on her back. Everywhere there is water, […]
Frank Wouters of Masdar Power at Abu Dhabi’s World Future Energy Summit. With its first large scale solar farm expected to be operational by August, Masdar is now about to construct its second utility-scale solar project in the UAE, the 100 MW Nour 1. The first, Shams 1, used concentrated solar-thermal power (CSP) technology, that drives a steam turbine […]
Ultrasounds are routinely used in prenatal care in women. New research suggests his testes could be next on the agenda. The lizard look is optional. Researchers have been exploring a male birth control pill, but with the exception of condoms, vasectomies or coitus interuptus – each with varying success rates and not necessarily halal depending […]
Join the debate: is the world’s first all-women falconry association in Qatar a bad idea? Falconry is a time-honored tradition in the Gulf, but like more recent sports such as race-car driving and rugby, it is a male-dominated sport. So when the Katara cultural village in Qatar recently announced the launch of the world’s first female […]
Jason deCaires Taylor uses eco art to conserve a fragile ecosystem See a starfish caress a schoolgirl’s cheek as she holds hands with the boy with the algae beard. Watch a baby shark swirl‘round that Beetle parked curbside to coral and lobsters. Underwater, everything’s magnified. Changing currents and depths cause kaleidoscopic effects. Dive in next […]
Adventures in Lebanon is offering a Valentine’s Day snowshoeing tour that is bound to heat up this special day! Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and if you’re anything like us, you’re scratching your head looking for fun-loving things to do that don’t involve diabetes-inducing chocolate and environmentally destructive flowers. Why not treat your […]
A green shopping mall is not green if its AC sounds like a jet liner taking off When previous articles of making shopping malls more sustainable and green, such as Amman Jordan’s new Mega Mall, were posted, it appeared that these large enclosed shopping centers are on the right track to becoming more environmentally friendly. […]
Founded by a retired biologist who supplied cancer patients with home-grown marijuana, Tikun Olam farm grows the herb and gives guidance to people disabled by pain.
The Makhtesh Ramon Crater in Israel’s Negev desert is just one site that will be more accessible as a result of two planned rail links. On Sunday black globe winner Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a plan to build two new railways linking the country’s two seas – the plastic-filled Mediterranean and the Red. The […]
The Bedouins are a group of skaters and artists who are empowering post-revolutinary Tunisian youth. When Nathan Gray and his posse of skateboarders and street artists collectively known as “The Bedouins” were scouting out the perfect place to build a skate park in post-revolutionary Tunisia, some of the locals suggested they inhabit Imed Trabelsi’s abandoned […]
If you are of the 41 percent that lives in drylands, your future depends on supporting plant biodiversity. An international team of researchers including Dr. Bertrand Boeken of the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev suggest in a new study that plant biodiversity preservation is crucial to buffer negative […]
When marine politics get nasty: Ahmet Aslan recovers in a hospital after being shot in the eye by a gang of illegal fishermen. Fishing is a time-honored Istanbul tradition. But to catch and sell fish, one must have a license nowadays. That doesn’t stop some from illegally trawling for fish in the Bosphorus, or the […]
People waiting for the bus on a hot day in Cyprus will soon be able to purchase cold water from a solar powered vending machine.